Subtle Touch

An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

www.ellorascave.com

Subtle Touch ISBN # 9781419910067 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Subtle Touch Copyright© 2007 Beth Kery Edited by Lesia Ward & Ann Leveille. Cover art by Willo. Electronic book Publication: April 2007 This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 443103502. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

Content Advisory: S – ENSUOUS E – ROTIC X – TREME Ellora’s Cave Publishing offers three levels of Romantica™ reading entertainment: S (S-ensuous), E (Erotic), and X (X-treme). The following material contains graphic sexual content meant for mature readers. This story has been rated E–rotic. S-ensuous love scenes are explicit and leave nothing to the imagination. E-rotic love scenes are explicit, leave nothing to the imagination, and are high in volume per the overall word count. E-rated titles might contain material that some readers find objectionable—in other words, almost anything goes, sexually. E-rated titles are the most graphic titles we carry in terms of both sexual language and descriptiveness in these works of literature. X-treme titles differ from E-rated titles only in plot premise and storyline execution. Stories designated with the letter X tend to contain difficult or controversial subject matter not for the faint of heart.

SUBTLE TOUCH Beth Kery

This is dedicated to M.L.H.

Trademarks Acknowledgement The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: Taser: TASER International, Inc.

Subtle Touch

Note So there may well be in existence a creature endowed with a rational spirit and a corporeity less gross, more subtle than man’s. For the incubus, by reason of his rational mind and immortal spirit, is equal to man; and by reason of his body, more noble, because more subtle, so he is more perfect and more dignified than man. Consequently, when having intercourse with an incubus, man does not degrade, but rather dignifies, his nature. They (incubi) practice perfect coition, and sometimes beget. Incubi, from their nature, may be well be styled Sons of God. It is clear that (incubi) are neither evil Demons nor Good Angels. “…the children thus begotten by incubi are tall, very hardy and bloodily bold…It is generally a fact that men thus begotten (by incubi) excel other men, yet such superiority is not always shown by their vices, but sometimes by their bravery, and even their virtues.” —Lodovico Maria Sinistrari, Demoniality The Watchers were…known in Hebrew as nun resh…‘those who watch’… —Andrew Collins, From the Ashes of Angels—The Forbidden Legacy of a Fallen Race “…The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair…” —Genesis 6:2a

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Glossary Dionytion Ceremony: The Watcher celebration that occurs when a mate in her new incarnation reaches her Second Change, and thus can be reunited with her Watcher lover. Dionytion Stone: An ancient, columnar stone that is a tool for raising the vibratory rate of subtle energies. Watchers use it to amplify the power of a mate’s Rush in the Dionytion Ceremony. Druaga: The ancient line of priestesses who were identified at birth as being able to wield power in the subtle realms and then trained for that specific purpose. It was only women such as the Druaga that were able to successfully mate with the mysterious Watcher Fathers. First Change: This is the change in a female human’s subtle and physical bodies that equates with what humans would call puberty. Grigori Council: The Watcher ruling body consisting of the king and five other Watchers who have been chosen and tested for their degree of wisdom and strength. Leman: A human female not powerful enough to be a true mate but still having the sexual power to feed and empower a Watcher to a greater degree than typical women. Rush: The burst of rarified, subtle energy provided by a human female’s orgasm. A Rush is essentially Watcher food, their sustenance for existence in the physical world. Scisen: The Watcher chosen for the Dionytion Ceremony. He is usually the most powerful unmated Watcher. Second Change: The refinement of a woman’s subtle bodies that occurs when she is in her thirties or forties. The Second Change is too subtle for humans to acknowledge it physically but it is this change that signals that a female human is sexually viable to a Watcher and thus able to perpetuate their species. Sigil: Every Watcher possesses a generally known sigil, or symbol, that connotes him and him alone, in addition to a private one, which he reveals only to those he trusts and loves. This symbol is placed above the right breast of Watcher mates. Subtle Bodies: Generally speaking, any of several energy bodies, all of which are more rare or subtle than the physical body but which permeate it and act as the template for the flesh. Truest Image: This is the Watcher’s most genuine form, the one he takes when he is on the Astral Plane, but also at various times in the physical world, such as during his own sexual climax, when he takes the Path of Sorrow or during special ceremonies. To see a Watcher in his Truest form can be potentially fatal because of the power and purity of the energy. Only a true mate can witness her lover’s Truest Image.

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Chapter One He had experienced almost everything from her but fulfillment, but soon he would have that from her as well. Yes. Our wait is almost over. Sophia Galanis will be yours very soon, the voice in his head, which was not his own, reassured him. He smiled crookedly. Limitless power surged through him, exponentially more potent than a cocaine high. Yes, she had tortured him long enough with the mere image of her smooth, honey-colored skin, her depthless eyes that were both innocent and breathtakingly sensual at once. He had seen tears overflow those velvety eyes and spill like liquid diamonds down her delicate cheeks. He had witnessed those same enigmatic orbs become luminous with warmth and laughter. Of course, millions of men had seen the same thing. She was such a teasing whore, to show so much of her soul and her beautiful body to so many, and yet to actually give away so little. A woman like her wasn’t meant to be worshipped from afar. Ancient man had the right idea. He subjected his goddesses to his will, planting himself deep within her, just as the earth was forced to part beneath his plow and receive his seed. Worship her? Perhaps, but her power doesn’t belong to her. It’s ours. Asmoday assured the human that had willingly allowed himself to be possessed by him. They shared mutual goals, after all. The man’s grin widened. Once, perhaps weeks ago, he would have been shocked by his own image in the vanity mirror as he passed it to recline on his bed, but no longer. It was never his looks that drew women to him, anyway. The lithe blonde who would share his bed tonight, for instance, hadn’t bothered to look twice at him initially. But then the host of the party had told her who he was and her light had switched on for him. Let me see what we have in store for her. The voice sounded less friendly now, more sly and demanding. But he was beyond caring, since he was in agreement with the order. He already throbbed with arousal as he unzipped his khaki pants and lowered them and his boxers down over his thighs. His eyes glowed with manic excitement as they inspected what twitched between his legs. A low laugh resounded in his head. You’re surprised at your size? That pleases you, does it? He merely nodded, because it wasn’t as if he were completely and utterly mad and actually talking back to the voice in his head. A thrill went through him when he wrapped his hand around the base of his penis and felt how thick and engorged he was.

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Talk about power…and yet, what was happening to it, there at the head? The memory of seeing a stinkhorn fungus when he was a child flashed across his brain and he grimaced. Those phallic-shaped anomalies of nature also had a lacy, lattice-like head. The sight of the cylindrical fungus had disgusted and thrilled him as a child, just as the image of his large, meaty, mutating cock did now. The stark ridges and valleys that were forming on the first few inches of the tip both fascinated and repelled him. The head throbbed and ached even more acutely than did the stalk. He reached up to stroke the roughening skin. Ah, ah. Don’t be foolish. You’re so powerful now that even your lovemaking carries a necessarily potent cutting edge. But his lust hadn’t been entirely dulled by the warning. For a few seconds, he groaned in sublime pleasure before his hand snapped back and blood spattered on the sheets. His mouth twisted with frustration and rage. Damn, it had happened again! It was the second time today that he’d drawn blood while trying to stroke that exquisitely sensitive portion of his penis. The stiff ridges that alternated with deep invaginations felt like sharp glass beneath his fingers. He cursed bitterly and the laughter in his head increased in volume. But despite the taunting quality of the laughter, his cock jerked in an unbearable frenzy of lust. He desperately folded the sheet several times and used it to protect his bleeding hand. His head fell back on the pillows in mindless ecstasy as he stroked himself. Yes. It feels so good, doesn’t it? And just think how much better it will feel when it’s Sophia’s little pussy that’s squeezing you. Yes. Imagine that.

***** One second Che Ammadon had been sitting in the office of his Space, Inc. headquarters in San Francisco and, in the next, he was on the Astral Plane. He blinked to clear the unfamiliar emotion of surprise. As a Watcher, such shifts in his vibrational level of existence weren’t unusual for him. What was shocking was that he’d made the shift from material existence to the astral world without conscious intent. The Astral Plane could be dangerous at any time, but for an unprepared visitor, it could be a deadly place. He ignored the stabbing pain in his side, a remnant of the injury that Asmoday had inflicted when he had tried to kill him just twelve months ago. Without having to think about it, Che assumed the form of a warrior, balanced and relaxed, ready to flow into smooth action at a moments notice. “So nice of you to visit me, Che.” Che knew that his face gave away nothing. A warrior expected anything. Even the impossible. “Asmoday.” He raised his quarterstaff almost casually before him, but the blade that graced one end of the deadly weapon glittered ominously. Never mind that Asmoday didn’t 8

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appear to be armed. He hadn’t been armed on that day a year ago when he attacked Che with a blast of coarse energy fire that would have utterly destroyed his ability to physically manifest himself. “How did you bring me here?” Che asked woodenly. Asmoday shrugged nonchalantly. “You know how things work on the Astral Plane, Che. One has to be in total control of one’s thoughts or emotions in order to navigate it. If there’s no control, then alas! Whatever one thinks or feels becomes a reality.” “By the Fathers, you’re an accomplished liar, Day. You know as well as I do that I’ve had control at this vibrational rate for millennia.” His stance became subtly more aggressive. “How is it that you’re even alive?” “You cocky Ammadons didn’t think that you were rid of me for good, did you?” Day asked with a lurid grin. Che forced himself not to wince. Something that looked like a thick, white worm oozed beneath an open sore on Asmoday’s gums. He shook his head to clear his revulsion at the sight of his one-time peer’s obvious spiritual decay. This could not be. All of the Watchers had been sure that Asmoday had been obliterated beyond recognition on all known realities. Of course, few Watchers ever physically died. And no Watcher had ever taken another Watcher’s life in their known history. Until Duse Ammadon killed Asmoday in Che’s defense. Or, at least, they’d believed Asmoday had been killed. “I’ll ask the question once more, Day. How did you bring me here?” “You know the laws on the Astral Existence, Che. Like calls like.” Che’s aquamarine eyes flamed with molten, liquid fire. Asmoday cringed in fear at the sight before he recovered, laughing madly. “What’s wrong? Does the truth hurt so much? You’ve been tainted with First Changer’s energy. I, myself, have begun to crave their sexual response. What is it that the humans say? You are what you eat?” Day laughed again, the sound scraping across Che’s spirit like a gauntlet grinding against armor. “Let me guess, Che, you’ve been tempted to sample the charms of a First Change human woman, too?” Che gave a low, furious growl at the flagrant insult. It was the equivalent of a human male taunting another by saying that he sexually craved a child. He tensed in preparation to complete what his cousin, Duse, had started one year ago. Rage motivated him, but so did common sense. Day no longer even vaguely resembled a Watcher. His spirit was rotted through, depraved and corrupt. “Don’t!” The slight fracture in Che’s concentrated attention at the sound of a woman’s voice acted like a splinter in a laser beam. Asmoday wriggled through the manacle-like hold of Che’s focus and disappeared. Che instinctively knew that to pursue would be fruitless.

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He immediately had his quarterstaff pressed tightly to the front of the woman’s slender throat while his hand pinioned her securely from the back. It was a symbolic hold. What really held the woman utterly his prisoner was Che’s powerful attention and inhuman consciousness. “You’re in league with Asmoday.” The grim proclamation sounded like a death sentence to Sophia Galanis, even though she had never heard the name Asmoday in her life, nor seen the bedraggled, elegant, sly-seeming man whom it seemed that the man who held her prisoner referred to and who had just winked out of existence. She sensed the immense, alien power of the being who held her captive. Fear expanded in her breast, almost causing her to lose her own focus in this reality. Then she forced herself to look up—way up—into the face of the creature that held her. He shone so brightly that she shuddered in awe. It was like looking into the face of an archangel. She sensed intelligence so vast and precise and cold that it almost drove her mad to be forced to consider it. Her voice grated in her throat. “I don’t know that name or that man to whom you were just speaking. I only warned you because you were about to strike out in anger. And the universe would recompense you in like terms.” Che watched her calmly while she struggled for air. “You’re human. There are very few human women who could hold their focus for this long on the Astral Plane. Usually humans have no power of focus here, and thus no power of purpose.” His voice resonated with a sovereign potency. Sophia bristled against his tight hold. But he would not waver. Instead of letting her garner distance from him, he pulled her closer. His eyes were like fiery nails, pinning her irrevocably into this place, into this time, into this experience. His body emanated heat and power. “I’ve practiced,” she finally managed. She longed to beg for her breath, for her very life, but pride stilled her voice. “You also espouse the laws of the universe like a Druagish priestess. Didn’t you consider that it may have been Asmoday who struck at me first, and that I was to be the arm of Lamad, and not the other way around?” Sophia paused at that. Somehow, she intuitively knew that by Lamad, he meant what she understood as karma, or Judgment. Her chin rose in a feeble display of defiance. “You may be more powerful than I can comprehend. But you’re not so powerful that you consciously choose for Judgment. Surely you must know the consequences of such pride,” she spat out defiantly. Her eyes fixed warily on his impassive face. Would he strike her down for it? Smote her like a temperamental Old Testament deity? “How can you be so sure that it wasn’t Asmoday’s fate to be extinguished once and for all a moment ago?”

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“Because he wasn’t.” Che’s eyes flared eerily at her response. Who was this human that she defied him— even here, on the Astral Plane, while he inhabited his Truest Form? It was unheard of in Watcher experience. She must be extremely powerful… Sophia’s hand rose to her throat in an automatic defensive gesture when he abruptly lowered his weapon. She felt the opening in the steel-like grip of his attention. She could have fled at that moment. He was allowing her to do so. Yet she hesitated. He regarded her silently with an alarmingly cold, impassive visage. Sophia thought she must be crazy for sensing a powerful curiosity emanating from him as well. The golden light surrounding him seemed alive, radiating and pulsing around him, as though it were just as much a part of his body as an arm or a leg. Through the light that seemed both gentle and fiery at once, Sophia made out that he was dressed like an ancient warrior. He wore a short tunic, a red cape that shimmered and flowed and was beautiful to behold, and sandals with leather thongs that fastened around muscular calves. His skin was golden brown and flawless to her enraptured eyes. His shoulder breadth and height suggested more than just a strength of Will and intelligence. He epitomized raw command as well as subtle power. But it was his eyes that continued to hold her prisoner even when he had loosed his hold on her. They were like fire and water fused, fluid flame, liquid passion. “Who are you?” Sophia asked. Just then, she felt something brush against her bare arm. The shiver that raced up her spine was purely instinctual. Rationally she experienced only confusion at what she saw. A mottled, inchoate blob of green, purple and brown filmy vapor slid over her upper arm and shoulder. Or was it flesh? Moist, clinging, sucking flesh? She cried out in a dawning horror that went beyond the sensation of the touch of the inchoate substance on her skin. A twisted feeling rose in her breast, a heavy, constricted sensation of sickness and anger and the need for revenge on all that she had always cherished and loved about life. And all the while, the substance encroached further and further upon her body, like a cancer come to life. Yet something in Sophia stood strong. Something in her identified the feeling as other, not her. She resisted a powerful urge to flay her arms and run in blind panic. Che stood very still while he meticulously examined the entity with his consciousness. It must be some kind of decomposed sylph, those lethal, infinitely subtle elementals that occasionally terrorized Watchers on the Astral Plane and even rarely on the physical plane. But no, his first instinct had been correct. No matter how unlikely that possibility was. “That’s right. Don’t move, Sophia. Have courage. It’s searching out your spirit, looking for a commonality, something it can bond with so that it can take root. Stay 11

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very still,” Che said quietly as his focus narrowed to a piercing, deadly arrow of precision directed at the force that allowed the malignant thought form to do the impossible. Sophia was acutely aware of the tall, shining being standing next to her. He radiated a sense of power and impenetrable calm. She unconsciously reached out to him, borrowing a modicum of his infinite strength to stave off the loathsome entity that currently oozed across her chest. It felt like the suffocating physical manifestation of dread. The man made an abrupt movement with his hand. The brownish blob seemed to explode, but in slow motion, as if the particles of which it consisted suddenly expanded to the point of dissipation. Just before it became entirely invisible, Sophia heard a popping noise and felt a burst of energy on her skin. Sophia breathed in raggedly as the constriction on her chest faded. “What the hell was that thing?” Che heard her desperate question, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he gently nudged her sleeping brain back to the material world. He was filled with a mixture of awe and anxiety. His concern stemmed from the fact that the dangerous thought form had showed an unheard of power of focus, as if it had been directed specifically to seek out the human woman who stood before him. He feared he knew the unusual strength behind its focus…Asmoday. He was bent on wreaking whatever havoc he could, now through the dangerous medium of the Astral Plane. But in the last minute, Che had realized something else, something very elemental. The woman was beautiful and desirable beyond belief. The entire time that he had contact with her, she had maintained the same form. Even when she’d become almost wild with fear as the foul thought form tried to insinuate its way into her spirit, her being had remained cohesive. She had been entirely present and aware. Humans blinked in and out of the Astral Plane while they slept frequently. Humans were energy beings, after all, even though they usually denied all but the material body. When they accidentally encountered a being such as Che, they usually turned away, blind to him, or projected all manner of fantasies upon him. Humans were typically incapable of controlling their emotions and thoughts on the Astral Plane, where a desire or a fear would immediately manifest itself. It was impossible for them to actually see his Truest Form. But this woman had. Che found that fact to be remarkably exciting. He had also become poignantly aware that she stimulated him in the same way that an attractive human female would a male. He was part human, after all. Watchers covered the gamut in their taste as far as how much physical aesthetic beauty actually mattered to them. It was a woman’s subtle bodies that attracted him; how rarified her essences were and the level of conscious awareness that she was able to transform into physical reality. His cousin Duse often teased Che that his taste and lovemaking habits were suspiciously humanlike. He was voracious in his sexual appetites. Little did Duse

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know that his disproportionate amount of power and his ability to maintain a corporeal body for far longer than most unmated Watchers related to Che’s deeply innate love and proclivity for the voluptuous vibrancy of physical flesh. That, and a powerful secret that he’d never been able to reveal to anyone, even to Duse. Although he’d never been blessed with a mate, his mother, a Druagish priestess, had created a spell of powerful magic, gifting him with the rare and exquisite presence of Rochen dui—two powerful lemans, Andrea and Avala, who were consistently reborn every other generation. Their unselfish love for him and generous responsiveness had made him more powerful in the physical world than most unmated Watchers could ever dream of becoming. They were incarnate currently and well into their Second Change. Che had always been faithful to them under those circumstances. For what reason had he ever possessed to be anything else? But the woman who currently stood before him wiped all thought of Andrea and Avala from his mind. He found himself thirsting for her in a way that he couldn’t recall ever doing in his many millennia of conscious existence. Her skin was like pale honey, smooth and golden. Her dark blonde hair was gathered onto her head. Che found the loose curls that spilled around her neck and ears haphazardly to be intoxicating. She wore a formal gown that reminded him of dresses that women used to wear in ancient Greece, although this one was fit to highlight the woman’s slender, but delightfully curving figure. Her breasts were an exciting fullness above her narrow waist. Che guessed that if he spread his hands while they encircled her at the middle that his fingers would easily span her narrow waist. If he pressed upwards, his large hands would plump her shapely breasts for his hungry mouth. He saw the expression shift slightly in her dark, velvety soft eyes, and he wondered how much of his thoughts he was giving away. This was the Astral Plane, after all. She began to fade. No matter. He would follow her to her bed. Something more powerful than his previous unspoken tendency for exclusivity with Andrea and Avala pulled at him. He could no more have resisted it than he could have denied his own existence. He smiled with genuine anticipation. Seducing a woman was always a delight. But for the first time in his long existence, Che felt a curiosity about this woman beyond mere survival or sexual gratification. He realized that he would have followed her even if he didn’t so greatly desire the power and pleasure that her sexual response would grant him. For a Watcher craved the acknowledgment of a human’s conscious awareness, and what greater acknowledgment of precise focus could there be besides that which occurred in lovemaking—and more specifically, the intense moment of pleasure and heightened awareness that occurred during the pinnacle of climax? Yes, admittedly Che craved that from this woman. Sophia. It was that, but it was something else that pulled at him like iron to a lodestone, something unnamed, something utterly compelling.

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***** Sophia opened her eyes and groaned deep in her throat with sexual arousal. The scrubbed pine walls of the bedroom in the guesthouse at the Sierra Lodge seemed to glow with golden, cozy sunlight. She felt both unbearably excited and secure and content at once, as though she was being exquisitely made love to within an encapsulating globe of protective warmth. In the way of dreams, she didn’t question the fact that she didn’t know the man whose face was currently buried between her thighs. Or at least she didn’t think she did. She vaguely took in the fact that whoever it was had longish light brown hair that was interspersed with incandescent strands of gold, and beautiful, sun-kissed skin that tightly gloved the rounded muscles of his shoulders and the smooth expanse of his back. Most of her awareness swam in a delightful sexual haze. Whoever this guy was, he knew how to use his mouth. He was drawing an orgasm out of her with the ease of a long-time lover, as if he was inside her head and knew exactly what she wanted and needed. Somehow, Sophia realized that the wave of incipient climax that reared over her wasn’t the first. This man had been pleasuring her for hours and hours… But how could that be? Her brief confusion was forgotten when the man flicked his tongue over her clit rapidly then applied suction with a degree of precision that sent her tumbling over the edge, quaking and screaming. She gripped at his thick, soft hair desperately as she succumbed. After the shocks of pleasure had jolted almost violently through her for impossibly prolonged moments, making her jerk and shudder, she opened her eyes with dazed wariness and curiosity. Who was this man that he could make her come so powerfully, without a shred of inhibition, and with more honesty than she’d ever admitted, even to herself? She inhaled sharply when she saw that his eyes were open and that he was watching her. Those enigmatic orbs were the color of Lake Tahoe itself—so many hues of blues and greens swirling together in the golden sunlight. Surely those incredible eyes were familiar to her. Weren’t they? His gaze pinned her, holding her captive. And all the while that he watched her steadily, his mouth and tongue teased her up yet another slope of orgasm. “No, not again,” she whispered. But her heart wasn’t in her request. There wasn’t a straight woman alive who would really want this man to stop what he was doing. She had never known that her senses could be such fine-tuned instruments for experiencing pleasure. Her body sang notes of pure desire, and this man was the musician who coaxed them out of her with such skill. Despite her meager protest, her hips shifted up against the divine pressure of his wet, raspy tongue. Yes. Again. And after that…again. Sophia sighed and relented when she heard the quiet, yet forceful voice. How could he have spoken so clearly when his mouth was so busy? Sophia moaned shakily as her fingers threaded once again through his untamed hair. She couldn’t tear her eyes from 14

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him. The vision of him pleasuring her was incredibly erotic. He pressed against her sinuously, damp bare flesh to damp bare flesh. Sophia blinked in amazement, but the vision didn’t waver. Her flesh truly was bare and smooth. She had no memory of shaving, but nothing, not even the meager covering of pubic hair stood as an obstacle between them. Her clitoris, shockingly swollen and exposed, throbbed with renewed arousal at the realization and his continued stimulation. “Who are you?” she whispered. She felt desperate at least to know that before pleasure flooded her entire awareness once again. She groaned when he raised his head, but she couldn’t have said if it was in protest for his abruptly absent mouth on her wanting cunt or if it was in desire for the achingly appealing, vaguely familiar sight of his face. He was so wild and beautiful that it hurt a little to look at him. And his lower face was slick with her cum. Sophia unconsciously tried to clamp her legs together to give herself relief for the powerful pinch of lust that bit between her thighs. She gave a stifled cry when he stopped her movement with his hands, keeping her fully spread and open to him. “Alloces Ammadon. It’s a name I reveal only to a few. Will you keep it safe?” The question made Sophia pause in dawning wonder. Some combination of the raw power and authority of his deep voice and the vulnerability inherent to his question left her stunned. “Of course,” she managed weakly when she realized he was waiting tensely for her answer. “Che. Just call me Che.” Without another pause, he went back to eating her. His eyes stayed on her face, though, steady and lambent with an emotion that Sophia couldn’t name. He removed one hand from her thigh and slowly, deliberately inserted a thick finger into her drenched slit. Sophia began to squirm and keen with pleasure when he thrust in and out of her as he continued to stimulate her hyper-sensitized clit. His finger abruptly left her and he stilled her thigh when she began to close it over the growing pleasurable ache at her center. This time, Sophia cried out in bitter protest at her interrupted gratification. “Keep your thighs spread wide and stay as still as possible,” he admonished her with a desire-roughened voice. The slight quirk of his beautiful lips suggested amusement. “Make yourself completely open to me, Sophia.” She nodded quickly. She would have jumped naked into Lake Tahoe in the dead of winter if he’d asked her to when he gave her that small, poignant, immensely sexy smile. She couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed when he didn’t immediately begin to finger fuck her again. But his tongue resumed the stimulation on her blood-swollen cunt, lashing at the tumescent, erect flesh with restrained movements that varied in pace and pressure. Sophia groaned with desire. But it wasn’t enough. And he knew it. “More,” she begged softly as her hips left the mussed bed and danced toward his pleasuring, but increasingly elusive mouth.

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“More what?” “More everything!” she said with rising desperation. “More of you. I want you inside me.” She saw his handsome face tense and his eyes flame at her words. He wanted her. No matter how controlled his lovemaking seemed. “And you’ll have me, Sophia, many, many times,” he promised with rough emphasis. One large hand caressed her hip as it moved up her body. It spread wide over her belly, tenderly feathered her waist and settled deliberately on her breast. He filled his palm with her flesh. Sophia’s breath came raggedly as she watched him pluck at a tight, rosy nipple between his forefinger and thumb. “Your skin and hair reminds me of honey…sweet, golden honey. Your taste is like honey, too. Come one more time in my mouth, Sophia. I need your taste running thick and sweet down my throat…just once more.” Sophia almost came just at the impact of the lust in his hoarse voice and the leaping fire in his magnificent eyes. When he lowered his mouth to her again and rolled her nipple between his fingertips, she lost all sense of control. She pressed against him, struggling, needing the powerful climax that hovered teasingly over her consciousness seemingly more than she needed her next breath. She sweated. She saw nothing but the red haze of desire, she begged him for relief. She gasped at the acute pain of depravation when he abruptly rolled her back and held her steady with a forearm at the back of her knees. She yelped in disbelief when he cracked her flesh against his palm, first one buttock, then another. He waited until her eyes were opened wide and he fully had her attention. “Stay still, honey,” he warned gently. “Don’t strain for your release. Let me bring it to you.” Sophia had to close her eyes in the face of the immense lust that she felt at that moment. Had he actually just spanked her? The heated glow on her butt cheeks told her that it hadn’t just been her overactive imagination. It hadn’t hurt, but it had certainly fed the inferno of her desire. The tingling sensation seemed to inch along her flesh until it melded with the burning ache in her pussy. She’d never allowed a man to be so overtly dominant in bed. Although part of her had admittedly craved it. Because of her celebrity status as an actress and what she represented to some men, there were always those who would try to use her in order to gain power or prominence. If she gave them an inch, they’d take a mile. She knew that from bitter experience. Sophia couldn’t afford to lose control in bed. She couldn’t afford to lose herself, period. But her thoughts were melted by lust as he released her legs and his mouth was back on her and first one finger, then another, plunged into her throbbing pussy with a steady, relentless pressure. God, it was good. And yes, she was going to come again. She didn’t know how it was possible, but this time was going to be even more powerful than all of the prior climaxes he had given her. 16

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“Yes…yes! Oh God, Che!” Sophia sent up a quick, desperate prayer that she would survive the tumultuous rush of pleasure before she plunged over the crest of the orgasmic wave, giving herself wholly to the indescribable sensation. When she next came to awareness, she saw that he was on his hands and knees, leaning over her. Their positioning should have made her feel vulnerable. He was an extremely large man. In relation to him, she felt small, delicate…very feminine. But she didn’t feel powerless. Utterly weak and spent from her recent mind-shattering orgasm, yes. But not powerless. The power she held over him shown clearly from his singular eyes as he studied her. She didn’t understand how it was possible. But the truth was right in front of her, clear for her to see. She—Sophia Alexandra Galanis—was the most precious thing in existence to this man…this stranger. She inhaled sharply. God, what a magnificent dream this was! And what a magnificent creature he was. Her body quickened back to life despite her recent shattering climax. The mold of his long, lean frame seemed to have been designed and apportioned by a divine artist. She longed to touch the expanse of smooth, bronzed skin that ran tautly over the rounded, dense flesh of his shoulder muscles. Her tongue flicked rapidly over her lower lip, hungry to taste and caress all of him, even that scar that ran from his right lower rib and over his hard, ridged abdomen. Her gaze lowered. She was vaguely aware that his eyes followed her own as she inspected him breathlessly. His cock was like the rest of him—mouthwateringly beautiful, extremely hard and uncommonly large. Sophia inhaled in rising lust. She’d never seen anything so erotic, inches and inches of straight, proud, male tumescence capped by a thick head that sloped gradually to a point, like a rounded, fleshy arrow tip. In truth, his size and sheer power looked a little ominous in such close proximity to her paler skin and slender body. A sound of protest rose in her throat. Twin lasers of aquamarine light suddenly leapt to her face. For a second, their stares melded as they watched each other soberly. Sophia cringed. He’d somehow divined her thoughts. Damn. She hadn’t meant to insult him. In truth, the sight of his smooth, turgid cock was singularly beautiful to her. She wanted to feel him inside her. A lot. She just didn’t think such a thing was possible… Suddenly, he gave her that slow, sexy smile and the heaviness of the moment melted in an instant. Sophia stared, round-eyed. That smile ought to be outlawed for its mind-altering effects, forget what it was doing to her pussy. His greenish-blue eyes sparkled with a mischievous light. His deep, low laughter flowed over her like lapping, warm water. “Oh, it’s possible all right, honey.” Sophia’s eyebrows rose in amazement at his apparent ability to read her mind. Her lips quirked, sharing in his amusement. Her gaze slid down over him again. 17

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“You’re so beautiful. I want you inside me so much,” she whispered. Palpable desire rose in her again, a pressure that wouldn’t be denied. She touched his solid chest with gentle fingertips, enraptured by the sensation of smooth, taut skin gloving such dense muscle, aroused by his quick intake of breath, even at her small, tentative caress. “Even if it’s not a possibility, I want to try.” He abruptly swept down and captured her mouth with his own. It was a quick, lancing kiss, but it left Sophia speechless with wanting. His taste…God, she needed more of him. No, she required it. Once again, he seemed intimate with her thoughts, because he leaned down again and speared the damp hollow of her mouth repeatedly before shaping her lips languorously to his own. Sophia craned upwards toward his pleasuring mouth, ravenous for him. He slid their flesh together and nibbled at her until Sophia moaned with increasing desperation as he spoke to her through his nipping, teasing kisses. “It’s more…than a…possibility. Neither nature…nor fate would be so…careless as to make you…anything…but…a tight…perfect fit for me, Sophia.”

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Chapter Two Sophia groaned into his mouth, aroused beyond measure by his taste and his words. She moved her hands down his ridged stomach, felt his hard, warm flesh leap with excitement beneath her fingers, like a marble sculpture that had turned to flesh solely for her pleasure. Her sex flooded with fresh surge of wetness. She wondered if it was her imagination or if she could actually feel the heat emanating off the straining pillar of his sex as she reached for his considerable length. He groaned, as if in anticipation. Before her eager hand could encircle his girth, however, he said something sharply in a language she couldn’t identify. Surely it had been a curse. Sophia’s eyes leapt up to his. “I have to release you now, honey. I have to go.” “No! Why?” she cried out in confusion and the beginnings of thwarted longing. The last thing she recalled from the dream was the expression in his singular eyes. The longing was surely a reflection of what shown in her gaze, but there was something else there, too, like a calm, determined promise. She had a vague, unformed thought that a promise from this man, even an unspoken one, was no small thing. Sophia slept deeply after that, peacefully, in a way that she hadn’t slept since she was a small, trusting child.

***** Che sat next to her on the bed for almost an hour until dawn outlined her finely drawn features with pale golden light. She looked like a miracle to him. She was a miracle to him. The desire to reach out and touch her—flesh to flesh—overwhelmed him with its intensity. But a quick inspection of the intricate, delicate workings of her nervous system told him that she would awaken soon. And if she did, she would see him just as she would any other flesh and blood man. Sophia had given him that. She had just gifted Che with nothing less than the miracle of a permanent, fully corporeal body. His strength in the physical world had literally just magnified hundreds of thousands times what it had been, perhaps more. The energy she had released during her sexual response had been enormous, bowling him over physically and shocking him to the core of his spirit at its seemingly infinite depth and potency. He had made the mistake of thinking he knew how strong a human woman who had the potential to be a Watcher mate’s response could be. He had never been so flagrantly wrong in his long, long life. 19

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He had participated in innumerable Dionytion Ceremonies, the traditional Watcher celebration of a Watcher mate’s Second Change. But although the Dionytion Stone amplified and transformed the energy released during a Watcher mate’s orgasm, the amount of energy that had infused him during the Ceremonies was always divided among all of the Watchers present. And as all Watchers knew, the power of a woman’s Rush was always exponentially greater for the one who had specifically conferred her pleasure as opposed to merely being a bystander to the event. Yes, he thought with awe as he gently brushed aside a lock of honey gold hair. She was a miracle. A human woman who was powerful enough to be a Watcher mate. His mate. Their spirits, though not completely bonded as of yet, were a perfect match, each to the other’s. He had psychokinetically made love to her repeatedly while she slept. Their mating was well on its way to completion. But he had held her in the dream for too long, and her body had warned him that it required release from her prolonged state of REM sleep. He would never take the risk of harming her, so he had released her before their mating—the fitting together like a template of their subtle bodies—could be completed. Che knew he had no other choice in the matter. Still, a sense of foreboding overcame him. Even though the mating process could technically be completed psychokinetically, Bale’s protective spell required fully corporeal intercourse. It left him wary. The fact that they were meant to be mated would be obvious to most Watchers. Sophia was his. Che knew this in the most basic sense, like he knew that he was most magically powerful in the elements of fire and water or that his true name was Alloces. Sophia had called out to something essential in his spirit. But as the Watchers had recently discovered, the rare human woman who was powerful enough to be a Watcher mate could potentially, although rarely, form a bond with more than one Watcher. It had been one of the most shocking discoveries in Watcher history; one that had the potential to revolutionize their race’s consciousness and governance. They’d learned about it from Duse’s mate and wife, Skylar. Duse’s younger brother, Jax, had also been made to match Skylar’s spirit, although he could never do so because of her previous bond to Duse. Che’s jaws tensed with anxiety. Worst of all, Asmoday was still alive and bent on making trouble for the Watchers, most especially his long-time enemies, the Ammadons. And Che hadn’t forgotten how that foul thought form had aimed itself at Sophia, directed there by a force of Will stronger than a mere human could ever muster. What kind of an idiot was he, sitting here and gawking at Sophia when there were so many potential threats against her? He needed to inform King Ammadon, the leader of the Watchers that he had discovered his life mate. At last. Che’s race, known as the Watchers, had been conscious of their mates’ existence for thousands of years. Humans throughout the ages had called them incubi, demons, shining ones, fallen angels, the Gentry, fauns, jinni and lutins, among other things. Since a Watcher could take any form that he pleased, at least for a short period of time, they 20

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were bound to be the source of myth and speculation over the ages. The title of incubi— the spirits that sexually tempt and seduce women in their sleep—at least captured the Watchers long and complicated evolutional and genetic history with human women. Every Watcher had a human mother and every Watcher craved human women, especially the extremely rare type that could possibly conceive his child. Human women provided them with the sustenance they required to exist and operate in the physical world. The subtle energy that was released during the intense, focused explosion of sexual orgasm was the primary source of their sustenance. For a Watcher, it was the ultimate form of acknowledgment of their existence on the physical plane. Women everywhere, in every time in history, owed the Watchers gratitude for some of their most pleasurable wet dreams, realistic night visitations and in the case of the more powerful Watchers, corporeal lovemaking. But it was only with those very rare and exceptional women, women who possessed extremely powerful and rarified essences, that the Watcher could achieve full corporeality and the rare ability to perpetuate their dying race. The train of Che’s thoughts made him shake his head in amazement. Sophia was one of those rare, nearly nonexistent women. It was a surreal experience, sacred in its intensity. He was soon to be mated. And his woman lay just inches away from him. It was the most profound and elusive dream of a Watcher. Not even the human woman’s death could break the powerful mating bond. The Watcher was destined to wait, half in mourning, half in hope, for his mate to be reborn. Even when she was incarnated again, he must endure his solitude even longer. Not until his mate had reached her Second Change, the period in a woman’s early thirties to early forties when her subtle bodies and physical chemistry shifted and altered, was it possible for her Watcher mate to divine her location. In Watcher terms, the Second Change signaled that a woman was sexually mature. Human men were only capable of recognizing a woman’s First Change, the period when she became able to reproduce their species, but the Second Change was a much more subtle shift in a woman’s spirit, and yes, in her physical body as well. It always amazed Che that human men couldn’t sense it, but it flabbergasted him that they didn’t find it as exciting as a Watcher did. Despite Che’s almost overwhelming desire to be with Sophia, he forced himself to stand. It was imperative that he warn Bale and the rest of the Grigori Council—the Watcher governing body, of which Che himself was a member—that Asmoday still existed, at the very least, within the realms of the astral world. He also needed the assistance of Watchers that he truly trusted, like Bale, Duse and Eli to help him guard Sophia. Che didn’t want to take any chances after what had happened on the Astral Plane. Duse probably shouldn’t be incommoded currently, however, considering the fact that he and Skylar had just had their son, Pheynix. Che might have to rely on one or two of his trusted knights, Watchers who had pledged to his service for a period of time due to Che’s ranking status. He scowled, realizing that 21

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his cousin Jax Ammadon would have at one time been at the top of his list of trusted confidantes. But Jax had betrayed his own brother when he went into league with Asmoday so that he could take Skylar for his own. Che’s anger still bubbled threateningly near the surface when he thought about Jax’s betrayal of not only Duse, but everything that the Watchers represented. No, Jax Ammadon was the last person that he wanted near Sophia. Even a century ago, the small race of Watchers would have found the concept of one of their own kind conspiring to harm a Watcher mate incomprehensible, even ridiculous. By tradition, Watcher mates were cherished and revered greatly among them. But the consciousness of the Watchers was changing. Evil had entered the garden of their once peaceful existence. And the snake’s name was Asmoday. Che used his subtle touch to gently stimulate the portion of Sophia’s brain that would wake her. He needed to leave her and she would be safer fully alert and in the material world. At the last second, he magnified an especially stimulating memory of their lovemaking and hit the equivalent of a neural replay button. He grinned wryly. He needed all the help with her that he could get. Not that anything, even Sophia’s opinion on the matter, was going to stop him from completing the mating process. Even Bale Ammadon, who was the leader of the Watchers and who was meticulous on such matters, could only name three times in the past seven thousand years when a Watcher had been punished by the Grigori council for being too aggressive in his seduction of a human female. When a Watcher was bent on lovemaking, a human woman usually didn’t have the capability, let alone a vague interest, in saying no. If things went the way Che planned, the final stages of the mating process would be completed in the material world. He wanted Sophia awake and conscious when she finally accepted his fully corporeal body into her own. He’d finally found her. No one and nothing was going to stop him from making her utterly and completely his.

***** The sound of the phone ringing broke into the critical moment of Sophia’s wet dream. She glanced around the bedroom of the Lake Tahoe vacation home in disorientation. An orgasm so acutely pleasurable that it verged on pain broke over her while she came to full consciousness. “Che,” she cried out as she trembled. Thirty seconds later, she didn’t recall having said the name while she gasped in climax. The only memory that remained as she stared up dazedly at the ceiling was a pair of incredible greenish-blue eyes and a nameless, nagging feeling of longing. Her

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fingers ran experimentally across her damp pubic hair. She had a strange, impulsive urge to shave herself clean, to feel sensual and smooth as she exposed herself fully, even if her exposure was only it was only to the cool, tickling breeze and brilliant Tahoe sunlight while she sunbathed nude. Whoever was trying to reach her, however, seemed to have no consideration for her fey, pensive, hyper-erotic mood, or for the fact that she was on vacation, fully deserving of all the wet dreams and strange moods that came her way. She finally sighed and sat up when the phone started to ring again for the third time. She shoved aside several of the heavy books she’d been reading to help her in her diplomatic efforts in Africa as she searched for the buried phone. Her whereabouts were typically kept under the usual secretive wraps but recently, a particularly rabid anonymous fan had mysteriously gotten hold of her cell phone number and started leaving some obscene threats via voice message. Only her mother, brother and her agent had the number at the vacation home at Tahoe. Unfortunately, it was the latter who greeted her when she picked up the phone. “Sophia? Is that you? I was worried when you didn’t answer.” “Can’t a girl even sleep in on her vacation?” Or enjoy an extremely rare orgasm in private? Sophia added to herself with a wry grin. Tony Mendelero had been her agent for the past six years. For the first four, he’d enthusiastically shared her limelight while she was at the apex of her acting career. But for the last few years, he’d become more and more frustrated as she increasingly turned down prime roles and devoted herself to several charitable organizations and diplomatic peace efforts in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Very funny, Sophia. You know as well as I do that you consider six a.m. as midday. The weather has been wonderful here in Sacramento. How is it at Tahoe?” Sophia paused before she answered in order to tamp down her disappointment. Tony had told her weeks ago that he might visit friends in Sacramento over the weekend. Sophia had invited him to spend a night with her at Tahoe at the time, thinking the relaxing, incandescent early Tahoe summer days might be as good a setting as any for breaking the news to him that she no longer required his services as an agent. But now that the opportunity was here, she regretted her invitation. She had an overwhelming urge to laze away the next week in mindless solitude on her private Tahoe beach, absorbing the golden, voluptuous sunshine, staring into the alpine lake’s aquamarine waters…the color of which reminded her so much of his eyes. Sophia paused. Whose eyes, exactly, had she just been referring to in her rambling thoughts? “The days are crystalline and the nights crisp. Tahoe sparkles in early June, and there are blessedly few tourists,” she finally answered with a sigh. “Good. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve been worried about you staying in the enormous mansion all by yourself. Especially with that creep that’s been stalking you.”

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“Tony, no one knows that I’m in Tahoe but my family and you, and my mother reserved the property for me. The good news is that I’m not even up in the mansion. I convinced the agent to give me the guesthouse. It’s directly next to the lake and absolutely darling. Much smaller and cheaper than renting the Sierra Lodge. Perfect for me.” Sophia glanced around the scrubbed pine walls and the overstuffed, ivory upholstered chairs. She felt strangely safe here…encapsulated, like she was in a globe of warmth and security. She realized with a flash of insight that the emotion stemmed from a memory, an elusive one, perhaps something from a dream? Tony interrupted the ephemeral thought. “Sophia, it hurts me to hear you worrying about finances. Listen, I’ve got great news. Guess who I found out is vacationing just a few miles away from you? Andy Moore. When he found out you were in the area, he extended an invitation for dinner. Isn’t that great? He just got named as the director for that new Henry James adaptation. A role in that movie could very well gain you your third Oscar, Sophia.” Sophia sighed. Thirty seconds of conversation and it had started already. She knew that Tony wanted what he believed was best for her, but Sophia was able to set the goals and priorities for her own life, thank you very much. “Tony, I’ve made it clear that I’m only doing one movie every two years until I can get the peace initiative off the ground. I don’t have time for it with all the traveling I’ve been doing in Africa. I’m almost dead with exhaustion as it is.” “But this is Andy Moore, Sophia! Every actress in Hollywood, including Julia Roberts and Gwyneth Paltrow, would give their right tit for this part! But Moore wants you. He called me a few days ago, and specifically requested a meeting. Joel Harvey, that writer friend of mine, says that Moore would give anything to work with you!” Sophia responded with silence. She’d learned long ago that it was often the most effective and puissant response at a difficult moment. “All right, look. We have plenty of time to talk about it when I get there. Do you think you can work me in between four and five this afternoon?” Sophia’s sudden laugh was warm and genuine. After knowing her for so many years, did Tony really believe that she was the type of person to pencil people into her vacation schedule? She shook her head. God, Hollywood was such a world of illusions. She was one of the most recognized faces on the planet, but no one ever saw her. Few people, save her mother, brother and a few special friends, really knew her. They projected all manner of desires and hopes and anxieties upon her image, but the real Sophia was left alone. That fact had always felt like a blessing to Sophia. She couldn’t say why on this promising, sun-kissed morning that the exact same truth made her long for something more. “Sure, Tony. I’ve got an extra suite set up for you. I should be able to work you in between my sunbathing and my afternoon nap.”

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***** After seven years of knowing her, Tony Mendelero still experienced admiration and not a little lust when he looked at Sophia Galanis. She wasn’t as young as she used to be, of course. Tony knew that she’d be thirty-six on her next birthday. Hollywood was always the first to take note of middle age. He’d started to gloss it over, fudge the numbers just a tad with his public relations and media contacts. But if he were meeting her for the first time tonight, Tony would have guessed that she was only in her late twenties. She was a remarkably beautiful woman. She had single-handedly been responsible for promoting the fashion trend for dressing “down” and allowing one’s natural beauty to take center stage versus distracting from it with rich fabrics, expensive jewelry or heavy makeup. The denim industry owed her a huge debt for tripling jeans sales and making that tried-and-true garment once again the mainstay of a woman’s wardrobe. Of course, few women could boast features with the pure, delicate lines of natural beauty that Sophia did, the vibrant, exceptional color and flawless quality of her skin, or the lean, yet womanly soft curves of her body. Yes, Tony thought as he sipped his wine and covertly studied her, Sophia had held up exceptionally well for her age. A stranger might take her for a slender, quiet twentysomething-year-old until they actually spoke with her for a minute. Then they might guess her age as being even older than it was. And it wasn’t just because of her calm, confident demeanor or the fascinating paradox of her innate warmth and kindness juxtaposed with a sense of detachment, a cool aloofness. No, her sense of wisdom came from more than that. She was an old soul, Tony decided suddenly, vaguely amused by his unusual poetic turn of thought. It was that aura of unavailability and mystery that still had Tony’s libido boiling after all this time, despite the fact that he preferred his women young, built and biddable. He repressed an irritated frown. How he wished Sophia Galanis was biddable! She’d made a habit of refusing almost all of the professional advice that he’d given her over the years. And yet, damn it all, her low profile and understated image succeeded in making her even more of a darling with the press and the public than if she’d shown up glittering in diamonds and designer gowns for every high-profile event in Hollywood. He bristled when a swarthy, bodybuilder type approached her and asked her for her autograph, but he could tell by Sophia’s warm smile and gracious acceptance of the man’s pen that she didn’t want Tony’s interference. “I told you it wasn’t a good idea to go out in public without any type of cover,” Tony scolded, referring to the fact that Sophia had refused to wear any type of glasses or a hat this evening, making her more noticeable to bothersome fans. Sophia shrugged. “I’m not worried about it. It’ll be the exception. Let’s face it, Tony, my popularity is waning. Besides, Tahoe is very laid-back and so is this place.” She glanced around the nearly empty outdoor deck of the restaurant that boasted a prime lakeside view. Sophia had wanted to sit outside and relax on the many Adirondack

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chairs arranged around a crackling fire. Lake Tahoe evenings, even in June, were chilly. She sighed with contentment as she gazed out over the alpine lake that glittered like a deep blue sapphire beneath the darkening sky. “Besides, it will be dark soon,” she added. “Are you sure you’ll be warm enough out here?” She nodded. “If you’re okay with it, I am. This old sweater will keep me warm and the fire is heavenly.” Tony’s eyes glittered with masculine appreciation as she sighed with sensual satisfaction and gave the fire a distracted, mysterious, very sexy smile. “Right. How about another glass of wine, then? I have an important phone call that I need to make,” Tony said as he stood. He brushed Sophia’s shoulder in a casual, but pointedly intimate gesture as he passed. He’d actually just recalled that he had a date scheduled for tonight with an aerobics instructor in Los Angeles. He’d been worried that Sophia would cancel her invitation to Tahoe and he wanted to keep all of his options open. Ms. Aerobics USA would have to keep hot on the back burner until another time. He sighed as he flipped open his cell phone. He’d not yet had the opportunity to actually fuck the little firecracker and that was the sole reason that he was even bothering to call her to cancel at all. This was the first real opportunity that he’d ever had to bed Sophia. A feeling of euphoria rushed through him. Why not tonight? She may need a little convincing, but Tony felt more than up to the challenge. The possibilities were tantalizing. After he’d left a message and put in his order at the bar, he took a moment to consider some of those promising possibilities in earnest. Sophia seemed especially relaxed currently after her whirlwind United Nations tour of several African war-torn countries. He hadn’t seen her this content in ages. Tony and Sophia had historically done little more than flirt in a friendly fashion, although he had made it clear on an occasion or two that he would interested in more than that. Sophia had made it just as clear that gentle flirting was all she was interested in. Tony had never pushed the angle. But he needed something more to tie her to him besides their professional relationship. His importance in that area of her life was diminishing all too quickly. Sophia Galanis was a hot ticket to almost any venue, and Tony couldn’t afford to lose her. Besides, there was something about Sophia tonight that he’d never sensed before, something soft, approachable, very sensual and potently attractive. He fantasized that if he caressed her, she just might rub up against him and purr. The idea of Sophia finally succumbing to him made him throb with excitement. His thoughts seemed to find a voice outside his head. “She’s a remarkably beautiful woman. You’re a very lucky man.”

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Che Ammadon studied the thin, handsome man who stood next to where he sat at the bar, taking in the arrogant, cold tilt of his chin as he examined him in return. He also noted the subtle look of satisfaction as his last sentence fully soaked into the man’s awareness. Cocky bastard. You can pretend like Sophia is yours until the Fathers come home, but wishing ain’t gonna make it happen, jerk. Sophia’s companion looked him up and down with a quick, disparaging glance. Che made sure that he didn’t see much more than a harmless, long-haired southern Californian who wouldn’t have looked out of place either with a surfboard or an electric guitar if he didn’t look like he was too old to hold either one and still maintain an ounce of respect. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Che gave a whatever you say, pal shrug of indifference. “Hey, I just thought I’d try to get in good with her boyfriend, seeing as how the agent who leased me Sierra Lodge seemed to think that Ms. Galanis wouldn’t care for me too much.” “You’ve leased the Sierra Lodge?” Che stuck out his hand and grinned, carefully dimming the power of its impact. “Che Ammadon. I bring a couple of my employees from Space, Inc. up here every year in appreciation for all their hard work. It’s the first time that the lodge was available, though.” Tony studied Che’s hand like he suspected that he’d just sneezed in it. Eventually, social convention took over and he shook it briefly as he introduced himself. “Space, Inc.?” he queried as he checked the progress of the bartender, eager to be gone. “Yeah, I see that you’ve already guessed at the potential problem with Ms. Galanis and me sharing the same property.” Tony’s mouth hung open slack for a few seconds. He obviously had guessed at no such thing, but Che ignored that fact. “I’ve read plenty about how she publicly denounced those two senators and the lobbyist for Lochtech. Heard she’s got a brother in the military. Probably doesn’t appreciate the idea of Lochtech giving the army those defective guns or the government sending them over to our boys with what suspiciously seemed like full knowledge of it. It’s going to take awhile before those senators can clean all the shit off their faces. She’s not only a beautiful woman, but a spirited one, too, huh?” Tony hid a grin as understanding dawned. If this guy’s company was a weapons contractor for the Department of Defense, there wasn’t a safer bet in the history of gambling that Sophia would turn his balls to ice cubes before he said “hello”. “How did you find out that the Sierra Lodge’s guesthouse tenant is Sophia Galanis?” Tony asked with studied indifference. “I got a look at you two when you walked off the property earlier. She doesn’t have a face that’s easily mistaken for someone else,” Che said just as casually as he took a swallow of beer. “I can understand you’re asking about it, though. You must have to keep her whereabouts pretty top secret.” 27

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“Only her closest family members know her current location.” “And you, of course,” Che said softly. “I guess that means her secret is locked up safe with us.” He studied Tony’s brown eyes searchingly but the bartender chose that moment to set down the two glasses of wine, diverting Tony’s attention. “I suppose I should introduce you to her at least briefly, so that she’s not surprised to see you on the property.” Tony blinked as he threw some money down on the bar. Why in the world had he suggested that? In truth, he couldn’t wait to be away from the guy. Something about him really bugged Tony. “Hey, that’d be great.” Che stood and reached for one of the glasses of wine. “Let me help with you with that.” Tony’s jaw came unhinged. What the fuck…? How could he not have noticed how tall Che Ammadon was? He must be at least six and a half feet! Granted, he had been sitting on the barstool until a second ago, but Ammadon wasn’t just tall. Surely Tony should have noticed his hard, rangy build, the obvious power inherent in his long, jeanclad thighs or the dense upper arm muscles just evident beneath a loose-fitting T-shirt. And why in the world had he thought that he looked like an aging surfer? The only thing that contributed to that entirely inaccurate assessment, besides the well worn Tshirt and faded jeans, was the unruly, sun-streaked brown hair and his vibrant-looking bronzed skin. Tony found himself trailing after the most physically prepossessing man that he’d ever encountered in his life, utterly dumbfounded as to how he could have been so stupid as to offer to introduce him to the elusive woman that he finally had the perfect opportunity to fuck after seven years. “Thanks,” Sophia murmured when a glass of cabernet magically floated before her eyes. She reached up for the stem, but the glass didn’t waver at her touch. She glanced up in vague puzzlement only to find herself locked in a steady, aquamarine gaze. Just for a split second, his name was fully in her consciousness. Not just any name—his true name. Alloces. Che was so deeply touched by the unexpected fact that she carried a memory of his dream visitation that he almost didn’t deflect her quickly enough from saying it out loud. His newly birthed flesh quivered with life and arousal. Sophia knew him. Her acknowledgment or his True Self, vague and unformed as it was, still expanded his being. In purely physical terms, it felt like a whispery, evocative caress along his cock. Che tensed. He thought he’d been more than prepared to play his role as stranger to her tonight, but he hadn’t expected the raw, primitive need to mate that seemed to vibrate and enflame every new cell of his being. Perhaps the mating process had advanced further than he’d thought. “Che,” he said as he released the glass of wine to her stiff fingers, watching to make sure that she didn’t drop it in her temporary disorientation. “I’m Che Ammadon.”

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“Che?” Sophia asked, surprised. She blinked. Why had she just been convinced that his name had been…something else? It had faded. She laughed uncomfortably. “I’m sorry. I’m a little confused. We’ve met before, haven’t we?” “I’m sure both of us would recall if we had.” Sophia just stared for a moment as the ambiguity of his response sunk into her consciousness. “He asked to be introduced to you, since he’s sharing the Sierra Lodge property with you,” Tony muttered perfunctorily as he resumed his seat. He didn’t ask for Che to join them. Nevertheless, the tall man looked entirely at ease standing next to Sophia’s chair with his arms loosely crossed over his whipcord lean torso and a bottle of beer suspended between his fingers. Tony stiffened at the uncharacteristic tactlessness and intensity of Sophia’s next question. “Are you staying there alone?” “A few of my employees are with me.” Tony grunted. “Yes. Mr. Ammadon owns a company called Space, Inc. What was it that you said that you manufacture?” Che gave a small smile at Tony’s pointed question, but he never broke eye contact with Sophia. She was still twisted around anxiously in her chair, staring up at him with a dazed look in her wide eyes. By the Gods, she was lovely. Her dark blonde hair was brushed smooth and fell casually around her shoulders. She wore an oversized, warmlooking sweater of Irish wool. Her long, slender legs were encased in faded jeans. Wellworn, scuffed leather boots completed her ensemble. Not many women could have made the outfit look like the height of chic, but Sophia did in spades. I’m not going to have a second of peace until I make you mine, Sophia. Che knew that they weren’t at the point yet where they could telepathically communicate as naturally as breathing. Still, a connection had been made. Even if Sophia didn’t actually understand the specific words in his message, he knew that she had gotten the gist of what he’d communicated when she gave him a shy smile that slowly segued to one of unintentional invitation. His hand almost rose to his chest in panic when he felt his newly formed heart squeeze tightly as a consequence of witnessing her luminous spirit manifesting itself so purely, so truly into flesh. “What do we manufacture?” Che repeated after a moment with a small shrug of his shoulders. “Dreams, I suppose.” Sophia’s eyes widened. “Dreams?” Tony scoffed at the same moment. “Dreams? Whose dreams? The Defense Department’s?” He turned to Sophia and laughed with disbelief. “Surely it’s more like nightmares for the enemy.” Che saw confusion and then caution flicker across Sophia’s features.

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“Mr. Ammadon owns a company that produces weapons for the United States military,” Tony said in a bored voice as his gaze shifted to the lake. Indecent good looks or no, it was less than ten seconds before Che Ammadon was politely dismissed. “Oh?” Sophia asked stiffly. Che shook his head slowly. “Mr. Mendelero misunderstood me. I started Space, Inc. in order to encourage the creation and production of the technology for low-cost, safe space travel. People who submit ideas to my company are just individuals with big dreams, and usually a lot of brains. But because they don’t work for one of the large government-backed corporations or government agencies, few will actually give credence to their ideas.” He watched as Sophia’s arched, tawny eyebrow rose in interest tinged with doubt. “So far space travel has only been accomplished by governments because the cost has been too enormous for individuals, with the exception of one or two very rich men who had bank accounts that equaled the treasuries of most countries. I started Space, Inc. because I think that the best creative efforts of mankind usually happen outside of governments and bureaucracies. The people who submit ideas to me are doing it solely for the mental challenge and the love of what their doing.” “That’s fascinating,” Sophia expressed sincerely. But wariness still lingered in her eyes. “So, you’re not a weapons manufacturer?” Che shook his head steadfastly. Because of Watcher laws, he would never be permitted to get involved in any type of human weapons manufacture. Of course, Che was considered the ultimate expert among Watchers on issues of weapons and warfare, but now wasn’t the time to tell Sophia about that. “You’re not the first person who has made that assumption mistakenly. It’s pretty unprecedented for someone to start a company like Space, Inc. and not get involved on some level with the Department of Defense.” Che’s grin unintentionally widened. Duse always ribbed him that Che’s fascination with space travel throughout the centuries was something passed on by the Fathers. But since none of them recalled a thing about the Fathers, Che would never know for sure about that. “Unfortunately, whether it’s through spy satellites or Star Wars-type technology, space is being seen as the newest, most promising territory for waging warfare.” His eyes on her remained steady. “Since I started Space, Inc., I’ve always personally make sure of that none of the ideas that we cultivate will be used as a weapon, Sophia.” The relief that flooded Sophia’s awareness was surely out of proportion to what the situation deserved. Still, Che Ammadon was the most attractive, charismatic man that she’d met in a long time. Okay, he was the most handsome, exciting man that she’d ever met. Of course, he could be lying through his teeth in order to appease her. People had done much worse just to associate with her. But for the moment, Sophia suspended her typical distrust. It was those mesmerizing greenish-blue eyes that sparkled at her with simmering heat and humor that made her do it. Why were those eyes so familiar?

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“I’m sorry. Please, won’t you sit down?” Sophia asked abruptly when she realized her rudeness at leaving him standing. Che finally broke their locked gaze and glanced over at Tony, who gave him a withering frown. Che responded by ignoring him good-naturedly. “Sure, I’d like that.” He lowered his large frame into the Adirondack chair next to Sophia. Tony’s frown deepened. Che wasn’t even one hundred percent sure of what he said as they made small talk over the next half-hour. Because she’d asked, he told Sophia about some of Space Inc.’s most innovative new inventions, including a small, portable chamber that could chemically alter the environment of small areas, cleansing the air and changing unbreathable gases into oxygen. Mostly, he was hyperaware of Sophia sitting less than two feet away from him, the warmth and beguiling softness of her body, the sheer physicality of her. He found himself almost losing control, both of his emotions and his newly formed body. And losing control just wasn’t something that Che Ammadon did. He felt vaguely ashamed of himself, but as he focused in on the slight tremble of Sophia’s full, pink lower lip, saw the dazed heat in her large, liquid eyes, he subtly began to sexually stimulate her with his mind. He knew that it was inappropriate. Public lovemaking wasn’t uncommon for Watchers, but only when all parties were agreeable. At the Issian Festival, it was the norm. Now that Duse, Eli and Bale were mated and loyal to their mates even when they were incarnate, Che didn’t engage in communal lovemaking as frequently as he once did, although in recent history he and Jax had harvested a bunker crop of Rush energy with three lithe, adventuresome newage witches in London. That had been just before Avala and Andrea reached their current Second Change, and Che’s sexual sustenance needs were met with even greater abundance. Once a Watcher became mated, public lovemaking occurred, but only in the technical sense. A Watcher was fastidious about setting shields of privacy for their mates, lemans or any lovers to which he was loyal. He always ensured that no bystanders caught a hint of knowledge of what was happening between them, carefully blocking his lover’s Rush from all energy beings besides himself. It was a matter of solemn trust between the Watcher and his lover. There were, of course, exceptions, like the Dionytion Ceremony, when the Dionytion Stone was used ritualistically. But even with the Ceremony, the Watcher and his mate were completely alone, at least in the human, physical sense of the word. The only difference was that a Watcher was forbidden by law to place shields on his mate’s Rush—the energy released during her orgasm—making it accessible to all Watchers in the near vicinity. But no matter how he split hairs on the definition, Sophia definitely wasn’t going to be as enthusiastic about the idea of him making love to her under these circumstances. But he was so aware of her, so aroused. Apparently, she was far from being unaffected by him, either. The realization was heady. He’d never experienced a need so strongly in his life. 31

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He found that he couldn’t deny himself. He wouldn’t. The heat from the fire almost felt tangible to Sophia as she studied Che Ammadon’s starkly handsome profile while he conversed with Tony. She gave a deep sigh, not sure if she was bereft or relieved that she wasn’t presently the object of his intense, intoxicating attention. She sipped her wine and swallowed languorously. All the while, her eyes detailed the outline of Che’s magnetic features and the breadth of his shoulders and back as he leaned forward in his chair. She felt an overwhelming urge to run her hand through his glossy, burnished hair, knowing it would feel thick and sensual between her fingers, warmed as it was by the fire. His vibrant, sun-kissed skin would also feel wonderful against her appreciative fingertips, so smooth and dense. A heavy, pleasant torpor seemed to slide over her consciousness. That’s right, honey. Relax. Let go. Without thinking about what she was doing, Sophia uncrossed her legs. Her thighs opened. She almost groaned out loud. It was if the fire-warmed air around her had thickened and congealed into form. She felt an arousing sensation, like tingling electricity, on her cheeks, breasts and belly, but most acutely against the suddenly needy piece of sensitive flesh at her sex. Her hips wiggled experimentally. She bit her lip as the forbidden sensation slowly unfurled, and warmth escalated to a simmering, erotic burn that required pressure. Immediately. Her eyes widened. Good Lord, what the hell was wrong with her? She glanced over at Che, then guiltily over at Tony. But they both seemed involved in their conversation about how the air-cleansing invention, something that had been originally designed on a small scale with reference to the terraforming of other planets, was currently being practically adapted as a precautionary safety device for coal miners who constantly worked with the threat of collapsed mines and subsequent suffocation. Sophia’s breath drew in sharply. She didn’t fully trust her own brain at that moment, but she’d just felt fingers caress the side of her neck, fire-kissed, calloused, thoroughly hypnotizing fingertips. Every sensory nerve in her body leapt into a state of alert pleasure. Her head unconsciously tilted into the touch. Her eyelids flickered closed. She couldn’t have repeated the actual content of what Che said as he conversed with Tony, but she was utterly focused on his deep, authoritative voice. Her being seemed to ride and flow with the mesmerizing sound, even as his words seemed to glide over her, pitching her senses into acute excitement. Of course, it was impossible for a voice to make love. But Sophia vaguely acknowledged that was exactly what was happening. The disembodied fingertips soothingly, sensually stroked her neck, then lowered with agonizing slowness until they caressed the upper slope of her left breast. Sophia held her breath in tense expectation. Her nipples pulled tight in anticipation. Her clit seemed to alternate between a friction-mandating tickle and a hot throb, stimulating her beyond belief. She felt it with amazing clarity, the slide of fingertips across her appreciative skin, the erotic rasp of masculine, slightly rough flesh against her feminine softness. She stifled her gasp when they feathered one erect nipple, then closed around 32

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it and pinched with gentle, exquisite precision. An arrow of desire shot down to her sex, causing an even greater pinch of pleasure at her clit. Her eyes sprang open wide, because the pressure there thickened even further, until it felt like the long, hard ridge of a finger pressing against her. Bizarrely, everything looked exactly as it should be. Night had eclipsed her view of the lake, but Sophia could still hear the regular rhythm of waves breaking on the beach as she gasped desperately for air. She dazedly noticed Tony’s expression of resentment mixed with grudging respect as Che answered one of his questions in a manner that was at once comprehensible, intelligent and concise. Sophia’s eyes narrowed as she studied Che. He seemed utterly focused on the conversation. It’s an illusion, Sophia. I’m utterly focused on you. Sophia almost choked out loud in disbelief. She had heard his voice perfectly, although Tony was currently speaking and Che’s entire attention seemed to be on the other man. She felt a stubble-roughened chin erotically abrade the tender skin of her neck, as though he were pressing his face to her and inhaling her scent deeply. The air seemed to shift and thicken around her mouth, and then she clearly sensed firm lips tasting her own. Her heart fluttered erratically in her chest, because all the while, her breasts and her clit was being stroked and played by masterful fingers. The fire in her was building and building. Sophia knew that the only way to extinguish such an inferno was to allow it to reach its natural peak of eruption. She became aware of a droplet of sweat running between the valley of her breasts. A small, muffled sound of aroused desperation came from her throat. Shhhh. Fragrant, warm air rushed across her sensitized lips. Damp, slightly rough flesh tenderly licked the drop of sweat off between her breasts. Several seconds passed in painful anticipation as she sensed him savoring her taste. Then she felt his tongue slowly, deliberately follow the path of the moisture. Sophia glanced downward sharply. But all she saw was her own familiar body in the chair. Nobody and nothing was touching her. Anxiety hammered at her heart, but Sophia couldn’t say what was causing her the most unrest, panic or impending orgasm. Oh God, I’m losing my mind. It’s all right, honey. You’re not crazy. You know that’s true. But I can’t just… I’ll distract his attention. Just let go. I’ll keep you safe. No one will ever know, now or in the future, when I’m loving you. But… No. Trust me in this. Sophia blinked. His words had been uttered into her mind with startling authority. Then her head fell back against the hard wood of the chair. She hadn’t consciously

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submitted, but the pleasure of what was happening to her was too enormous to be denied. She clearly felt the length of a thick, long, stony cock pressing and rubbing between the desire-swollen, slick lips of her outer sex. The amount of pressure applied was perfect…exquisite. She clearly saw it in her mind. She heard the wet, slight sucking sound of hard, unyielding flesh sliding against her giving, wet, delicate tissues, man against woman—hot, pressing, stony flesh, gliding and rocking and throbbing against her. The knowledge of how to breathe escaped her. Then he dipped lower, and the clearly defined ridge of the head of the invisible penis slid along her clit, once…then twice. A roaring sounded in her ears, but it was only unmoving air that made the overwhelming noise. And she was coming. “…at the very top of that mountain to the right of the harbor. See, where those lights are up there among the trees?” Sophia stared in utter confusion a moment later as Tony pointed to the right of them and exquisite aftershocks of pleasure quivered through her body. God, what had just happened? What had she just done? Her eyes flashed in dawning disbelief to Che. He was leaning back casually in his chair, the image of confident male insouciance. He nodded with his gaze fixed on where Tony indicated in the distance. “Your friend must have a beautiful view from up there,” he murmured in a mellow voice. “He does. It’s a shame he only uses the house a few weeks out of the year…” Tony’s voice faded into incomprehensibility. Thank God. Neither of them seemed to realize that she’d just had a thunderous orgasm while they chatted and sipped cocktails. Why in the world would she think that Che had been privy to her experience anyway? Was she becoming delusional in addition to having hallucinations? She set down her wineglass with a dull thud on the arm of the chair. A thick wave of fear broke over her awareness when she glanced at Che again and he was still engaged with Tony in casual banter. What was wrong with her? Did someone slip a drug in her wine? Disjointed thoughts of brain tumors and madness flickered across her numb awareness. God, was this the first stages of early Alzheimer’s, or maybe some rare middle-aged psychosis? Che abruptly reached out and encircled her hand in his. Sophia’s eyes darted downward in shock, checking to see if her sensations would match what she saw this time. And yes, her hand was definitely in Che’s. The caress felt warm, like it was meant to be comforting, but Sophia’s mind was in too much of a tumult to take it that way. By the time Tony turned back to face them, he’d let go of her. Che gritted his teeth in frustration when Sophia suddenly lunged upward. He saw the whites of her large eyes as her gaze skittered over him.

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“I, um…need to…excuse me, but I’m not feeling well. I’ll see you at home, Tony,” she said with abrupt finality before she turned and walked into the restaurant. Tony couldn’t help but feel modicum of grim satisfaction when he saw Che Ammadon noticeably blanch beneath his tan. “Don’t feel too bad about it, man. Sophia Galanis isn’t exactly the type of woman who warms up to a guy easily.”

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Chapter Three “It’s kind of hard—no pun intended—once you get one on a permanent basis not to want to put it to immediate and frequent use.” Che glowered over his shoulder at Eli Aurelious, who had just taken his physical form several feet behind him. The blond-haired, green-eyed Watcher would look like the spitting image of a Greek god come to life if it weren’t for the fact that he was wearing a casual sport jacket and a pair of jeans. “From the way you’re staring at that house out there all moony-eyed, I’m guessing that’s where the newest addition to our family is located.” Che turned his back on his good friend and returned his gaze to the guesthouse where, even now, Sophia was likely cursing the moment that she’d told him to sit down and join them that evening. He had been watching the small house from the large deck at the back of the Sierra Lodge for almost half an hour, wondering how in Hades he was going to salvage the mess he’d made earlier this evening. What had he been thinking, making love to Sophia like that when they weren’t even fully mated yet, when she didn’t have a clue about what was going on between them? He kept recalling the look in her beautiful eyes when she’d abruptly left him and Tony earlier. She’d been panicked. Worse, she’d been afraid. Of him. The thought clawed like an angry sylph at his insides. “I’m not so sure you should make that assumption yet.” He sensed Eli pause at that, considering. “You mean she isn’t your mate? I don’t understand. You’re tens of thousands of times more present and powerful in this world than you’ve ever been. And Bale said—” “I said the truth, obviously.” Both Watchers heads turned to the source of the voice. Bale Ammadon, their king and leader, stood just feet away from them on the deck. He was an impressive figure. Che lowered his head without conscious thought. He was family to Bale, a prince in his own right, and such formalities weren’t usually exchanged between them. But the fact that Bale didn’t expect an obeisance from him didn’t mean that Che didn’t automatically respond out of genuine respect. The slight tilting of Bale’s stern mouth, however, was more fitting to that of a teasing cousin than a king. “His power and corporeality are incredibly strong,” Bale said in an offhand fashion to Eli, as though Che weren’t even present. “You can’t imagine for a second, can you, that he would encounter the rarest type of human woman—a woman strong enough to

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be mated to a Watcher—and not plan to have her bedded, mated and sigiled before the night is through? He is Che Ammadon, after all.” Che’s scowl deepened and he turned away from his two friends in sheer frustration. Bale had just said Che Ammadon like someone might say Don Juan in a parallel human situation. Uncertainty and anxiety boiled in his stomach, giving Che his first sample of the agonies of stress on the flesh. The sound of Bale’s and Eli’s low laughter only made the burning in his belly amplify. Abruptly, both Watchers quieted, sensing Che’s genuine unrest. “What is it?” Bale asked sharply. Che couldn’t turn around. His shame felt like a thick, stifling cloak. “I doubt Sophia will ever want to see me again.” A long pause ensued. Eli and Bale exchanged a quick, knowing glance before they considered Che with fond amusement and not a little sympathy for his situation. “Did you…offend Sophia in some way?” Bale began cautiously. Che’s mouth twisted with dissatisfaction. “You might say that.” “The mating bond is still incomplete?” “Yes.” “Ahh.” “Is that all you have to say? You, the wise leader of our people? I admit a major crisis to you, and your only word of advice is ahh?” Bale hid his smile as Che spun around to face him, his eyes blazing with formidable power. He held up his hands defensively. “A crisis, maybe, but not a major one. It’s a shocking experience when you’re first exposed to your mate. Our ways are so different from theirs. Your ideas about self-control tend to evaporate in the presence of all that energy and…heat. Watchers love to make patronizing jokes about the lack of control of human men when it comes to sex, but—” “That’s before they get the permanent equipment,” Eli finished with a bark of laughter. Bale noticed that Che was watching both men with a combination of amazement and disgust. His meaning was broadcast clearly for Bale to read without telepathic communication. How in Hades can you two idiots laugh at the idea of losing control when it comes to sex? It was a given that Watchers were in consummate control during lovemaking. Their survival in the material world depended on evoking the most powerful climax possible from a female, after all. Selfishness rarely contributed to that. Bale cleared his throat in order to redirect his onerous amusement. Che had a lot to learn when it came to being blessed with a mate. “Completing the mating bond can be a tricky procedure, especially if time is of the essence. Won’t you consider completing it while she sleeps?”

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“No. I won’t do it! Did you ever even once consider doing such a thing with Helen?” He waited tensely until Bale shook his head. His head swung around to Eli. “And you? Would you have wanted to be anything but physical when you completed the mating bond with Jean?” Again, he waited for the sign of negation. He’d known the answer to his questions before he’d asked. Not that Eli or Bale had ever told him about the private, intimate details of the original bonding with their long-time mates. He just knew Eli and Bale, and they would never have accepted anything less for such a powerful, sacred moment than to have their future mates accepting them physically and consciously. Che’s fiery, defiant eyes swung back to Bale. He stilled. What he read in his expression felt like a slap in the face, a blow to the spirit. Bale’s eyes were compassionate, but it was the sadness that Che saw that was almost his undoing. He turned toward the lake again. It shimmered like opaque black glass. “Maybe you’re right. I am being selfish. The Gods know that the smart thing to do would be to finish it now, to make sure that she’s protected. Things aren’t the same among the Watchers as they were when you two first mated,” Che said hollowly after a heavy moment. “Che, I never said that. I never meant that…” Bale began. Che heard the sincerity and concern in his cousin’s voice, but he heard the regret, too. “Nevertheless, it’s…” Eli’s and Bale’s heads swung around in unison when they sensed Che’s sudden tense wariness. “What is it?” “There are two men on the property.” “Humans?” Eli asked tautly. Che nodded. Both Watchers could feel the acute power of Che’s consciousness as he directed it, like a powerful search beam, with his strength of Will. Neither of them was anywhere near as attuned to Sophia’s being as Che was, and thus, neither could automatically sense when she was in danger or threatened. His face was impassive, but his eyes glowed with banked energy when he turned to Bale. He was already shifting his consciousness to his mental body. He faded even as he spoke. “One is crossing those rocks to the right of the guesthouse as we speak. The other one is nearer to the house. Eli, attend to the human male that’s staying in the bedroom down the hall from Sophia. Bale, see to the other intruder.” Sophia is their target. Che was gone before the last sentence was physically spoken. He came into physical existence on the twelve-foot by twelve-foot balcony outside Sophia’s bedroom. The elevated patio stood on supports grounded into the shallows of

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Lake Tahoe. Last night, Che had learned that Sophia liked to sleep with the patio doors wide open, letting the chilly, invigorating alpine air into her room while she slept nude, but toasty beneath several thick blankets. Che found her tendency to sleep this way to be as fascinating and sensual as everything else about her. The first time he’d entered her mind and stimulated her into orgasm, he had willed himself into partial corporeality while he stood on the balcony, relishing in the sensations of the earth, the brisk, cool mountain air, the ancient consciousness of the gigantic pine trees, the deep impenetrable lake that, like him, combined the paradoxical essences of fire and water, passion and calm. Then he had twined his spirit with Sophia’s, and his already acute awareness of the earth had exponentially sharpened. When Sophia had climaxed that first time, he’d dropped heavily to his knees on the wood deck, shaking like a newborn colt as it takes its first steps. The energy of Sophia’s Rush had been so enormous that he had no way to describe it given the limitations of language and his former experience. He marveled at how much could change in a twenty-four-hour period as he stalked into the room and positioned himself between Sophia and the door. She hadn’t reached the most profound level of sleep yet, but she still was under deep enough that there was no threat of her waking and crying out at the sight of him standing there. She was going to be startled soon enough. Nothing he could do about that, now. His senses were pitched so exquisitely on the activity of organic life in the small house that he knew that the intruder took a ragged, anticipatory breath before he turned the handle on Sophia’s bedroom door and entered the room as silently as a shadow. Che was shocked at the enormity of his rage at that moment at the prospect of another being wanting—no, relishing—the idea of hurting Sophia. The humanlike emotions that came with a physical body were a little frightening, as well as overwhelming. His subsequent ability to put aside all of those feelings and focus with eerily sharp clarity on his task was just as utterly inhuman. He approached the intruder soundlessly from behind, immediately immobilizing him by violently forcing his right arm up along his back, making his fingers nearly touch his own skull until he heard a precise snap, all the while holding his left arm relatively immobile next to his body. A sharp shout of pain ripped through the still room. Something fell heavily to the floor next to Che’s foot—a weapon, no doubt. The man hissed a curse and began to struggle. He wasn’t a weak man, Che realized with a measure of satisfaction. Watchers loved to do battle and they frequently sparred with each other using practice weapons, shifting their bodies in and out of corporeality, increasing the rapidity and complexity of the fight beyond human perception. But presently, Che fully relished his fully physical body and the punishment it was efficiently inflicting on the intruder.

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He felt the man successfully use his strong leg muscles to resist him as he struggled to escape his tight hold and the pain that accompanied it. Che allowed him to stagger a foot forward, before he muttered harshly, “Get down on the floor.” The stark order was accompanied by a lancing blow to a kidney and an abrupt movement of his right leg that neatly sliced the man’s feet out from behind him, causing him to sprawl to the floor facedown. The man’s breath punched out of him with a loud grunt of bitter surprise. Che was aware of a moan of muffled distress from Sophia’s direction, but he didn’t turn around. He felt the man tense for action just as Sophia twisted the switch on her bedside lamp. She gasped in disbelief. “Not a good idea,” Che said softly to the man who was lying on the floor. He was fully in tune with the intruder’s body and primitive, aggressive thought processes. He knew he was about to spring away from him. The blood that pumped through his veins at the moment felt hot and vibrant and intoxicating. He wanted nothing more than to finish the fight physically, to take out some of his rage and frustration on the giving flesh of the man who had dared to try to harm Sophia. But she was awake now. He sensed her far more acutely than the man. Che sighed as the stocky, muscular man abruptly brought up his legs and hurled his body forward. He stiffened and fell to the carpet again just as rapidly. Gagging sounds filled the room. “I told you it wasn’t a good idea,” Che remonstrated softly. He’d formed a bond around the man’s throat utilizing material from his own subtle essences. He focused intently and attenuated the hold until he was satisfied that the man was incapacitated while still getting enough air into his lungs to keep him alive. Barely so. For a few tense seconds, he kept his back to Sophia. By the Blessed Mothers, if she’d fled from him in terror earlier this evening, how much worse was her fear of him going to be now? Che closed his eyes and uttered a quick prayer for luck in his mother’s name. The blessing of a Druagish priestess was always welcome in a desperate moment. He turned around to face her. She just stared at him, her eyes as wide as a startled doe’s. Her hand fluttered slightly at her neck as she clutched the blankets up around her protectively. Che’s heart pounded even louder in his ears than it had as he subdued the intruder. “I was standing on the back deck earlier and I saw him slinking around the guesthouse. I tailed him in here,” he said. Sophia’s face looked stunned and very pale. For a split second, Che wondered if she was going to scream at the bizarre sight of two strange men in her bedroom, one of which who was currently apparently choking to death on her floor. Then he heard her low, mellifluous voice, and he was acutely reminded of his experience with her on the Astral Plane that Sophia was a gifted, courageous woman one who was certainly not prone to panic or hysterics. “Is he choking?”

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“I think he may be having a seizure or something,” Che evaded. “Did you call the police?” Che shook his head. “Don’t you think I should now?” Sophia felt the shock of surprise that her question caused in him, although his face remained impassive and his body didn’t flinch from his balanced stance. He must have been in the military, Sophia thought vaguely through her sense of shock. She recognized the animal-like, thoroughly misleading, almost lazy poise of a man that had been trained to fight until the lessons were drilled down into his bones…into his very spirit. The tension and full readiness would leap into his muscles within a hairsbreadth of a second when danger was imminent. But a man like Che Ammadon didn’t waste needless energy until it was fully warranted. That would only dull the killing edge of his fighting ability when he most needed it. Oh, yeah, he was light-years away from just being the easygoing, charming young entrepreneur that he’d represented himself as earlier this evening. Whenever Sophia tried to wrap her mind and intuition around what Che Ammadon actually was though, she ran up against nothing but tantalizing mysteries and definite impossibilities. And why had he been caught off guard when she asked if she should call the police? Che nodded his head once. A sense of disbelief crowded into his awareness when he fully took in Sophia’s emotional state as he watched her dial the phone. She was confused by what she’d awakened to, and frightened as well. She was containing both emotions with admirable control. But the thing that shocked him the most was that she wasn’t afraid of him. In point of fact, the sense that he got from her was that she felt just the opposite. She was managing her fear so well because she trusted him. The realization stunned him. Any Watcher could have seduced Sophia, made her respond wholly to his subtle touch. Their existence in the physical world depended on their ability make human women respond sexually, after all. But Sophia’s trust in him, as unconscious of it as she likely was, given the stress of the moment, empowered and magnified Che’s being in a way that he’d never before imagined. For the first time in his many millennia of existence, he felt humbled. After Sophia had hung up the phone, she inched over in the bed in order to glance warily at the man who was gutturally gasping for air on the floor. “Don’t move, Sophia.” She froze at the sound of his quiet, firm voice. It sounded eerily familiar. Don’t move, Sophia. Have courage. It’s searching out your spirit. She blinked in confusion at the turn of her thoughts. “Why?” she asked Che breathlessly. His aquamarine eyes stayed fixed on her unblinkingly, but he didn’t speak. Still, Sophia read his thoughts. It wasn’t an uncommon ability for her. She’d been able to do

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it, randomly and with varying degrees of accuracy, since she was a child. But her mental telepathy had never been so strong or clear in the past. Because even the sight of you is fuel to that sick slime. Che’s voiceless response spontaneously brought up an elusive memory in Sophia’s mind—a stifling, slick substance pressing down on her chest, a complex, twisted feeling of hatred and the need to punish and hurt… For the first time, Sophia saw Che’s expression shift. His brow furrowed and his sensual mouth pressed into a grim line. He turned and studied the man on the floor, as though he was actually seeing him for the first time. “Maybe you should take a look at him, Sophia. Get out of bed on the opposite side. And put on some clothes.” Sophia felt her pulse throb in her neck as she followed Che’s calm instructions. She tried to reassure herself that her response was a normal reaction, given the frightening situation she found herself in, but she couldn’t entirely convince herself. The truth was, her heart was beating so hard because Che had known that she was naked beneath the covers the entire time. His words told the truth of it, but the altered inflection in his voice when he’d uttered that last sentence seemed to speak volumes about the depth of his awareness of her. The thought of him knowing that she was in bed nude made her feel shivery and strange—vulnerable, but acutely sexual, too. It was ridiculous. But so was almost everything associated with her experiences of Che Ammadon so far. If he hadn’t actually known she was naked before, he certainly would now, Sophia thought wryly as she flung back the covers and stood in the chilly room. If he bothered to turn around, anyway. Which he wouldn’t, of course. That kind of thinking was just an extension of the hormone-rampant, delusional fantasies she’d been experiencing with alarming regularity for the past twenty-four hours. She grabbed the pair of jeans that she’d been wearing earlier and dragged them up over her legs and hips. Her fingers stilled as she clumsily tried to fasten her button fly over her freshly shaved sex. Her hair flung back from her face as she sharply raised her head. His eyes were like liquid flame as they pinned her from across the bed. She froze, no longer capable of commanding her muscles. His expression was immobile, cold even, but his gaze on her felt hot and consuming. Sophia was acutely aware of her body as he slowly lowered his gaze. Her nipples already pebbled from contact with the cold night air. But when Che Ammadon’s eyes raked over them like a palpable caress, they tugged painfully tauter. A puff of warm air left her lips in a sharp gasp. He was doing it again, touching her without touching her. His eyes flashed up to meet hers. “Do you mind?” Her voice sounded ragged and brittle to her own ears. She would have expected to see an expression of embarrassment on his face, even if it was cosmetically applied. The deep sense of unrest and vulnerability that she saw instead made her mentally falter even further, though.

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Sophia thought that she’d imagined the brief, but potently erotic moment and his subsequent expression of intense shame a few seconds later. She still fastened the buttons on a hastily donned thick, flannel shirt as she came around the foot of the bed. “Stop there,” Che said. Sophia halted ten feet away from the top of the intruder’s head. He was dressed in black jeans and a black windbreaker. Her eyes skittered over to the gun that had been kicked to the side of the room. It looked like a plastic gun. The man struggled desperately for air. What was wrong with him? Was it a seizure, or maybe some kind of allergic reaction? “Have you seen him before, Sophia?” Sophia nodded tensely. “Where?” Che asked with a measuring gaze. “Tonight. At the Lone Wolf,” she murmured, referring to the restaurant where they’d met. “He asked me for my autograph.” Her eyes flicked up to Che’s face. “It was before you got there.” She looked away in embarrassment, knowing that she couldn’t hide the burst of color in her cheeks from him. God, she’d been hoping that she’d wake up in the morning and the whole crazy, impossible, incredibly arousing memory would have faded, like a dream did. Because, as she’d prepared for bed tonight, that’s repeatedly what she’d told herself the whole thing had been. But as she currently stood not fifteen feet away from Che, Sophia had to admit that dream or no, the evocative memory still felt more real to her than any of her memories of being awake ever did. “Never before that?” She shook her head slowly. “No. I…don’t think so, anyway. Is that…is that a real gun?” Che’s glanced over to where Sophia was staring, wide-eyed. “It’s a Taser. It will temporarily short-circuit the nervous system, immobilizing a person,” he said grimly as he bent over the helpless man and extracted the contents of his pockets roughly. The man’s grimace amplified and his head rose weakly in a vain effort to resist. Che looked pointedly into his furious eyes. “Not a pleasant feeling for anyone, I can imagine, to be completely helpless in the hands of their enemy.” A metallic clicking noise made the intruder’s eyes flick downward rapidly to the gleaming blade in Che’s hand. The whites of his eyes became more evident as he stilled with fear. “Especially when their enemy is packing such nasty weapons.” Sophia’s gaze flashed warily between Che and the man who had broken into her vacation residence. As usual, Che’s face was an expressionless mask, but a frightening emotion glowed in his magnificent eyes at the discovered evidence of the man’s lethallooking knife. She didn’t know what looked more ominous at that moment, the ugly killing blade or Che’s wrathful eyes. The terrifying realization of what the man had planned to do to her, had Che not stopped him, made her shiver in fear. 43

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She startled at the sound of police sirens. Without her being aware that he’d even moved, Che was suddenly standing beside her. The touch of his hand on her shoulder was meant to be comforting, Sophia knew, but reassurance was only one of the myriad emotions that the mutual contact of their flesh evoked in her. “Why don’t you go with my friend Eli and meet the police. I’ll be right down after I’ve made sure your visitor here is safely secured.” “Friend?” Sophia asked blankly as she looked up—way up—into Che’s greenishblue eyes. She stood transfixed for seconds…or minutes. She couldn’t be sure. The sound of a deep, droll voice in the doorway broke the mesmerizing spell of Che’s eyes. “That would be me, Sophia.” Sophia glanced around Che’s broad shoulders in partial shock only to see another impossibly handsome, tall man leaning casually in the frame of her bedroom door, an amused expression on his hard, yet artistically hewn features. She was vaguely aware of Tony’s pale face behind the man’s shoulder. Her mouth fell open in amazement when this god-in-man-form suddenly smiled and gave a slight bow of his head. “Che’s told us all about you, but he failed to fully convey the extent of your beauty. Although I can see now that mere words would fail to do it justice. Eli Aurelious, at your eternal service, Sophia.” Che scowled accusingly at his friend’s display of depthless charm, and Sophia’s subsequent stunned expression. By the Fathers, it serves you right, Ammadon. How many times have we had to stand by in panic while you flirted shamelessly with our bonded mates at a Dionytion Ceremony, not to mention every chance you got afterwards? Eli teased with a devilish glint in his green eyes. Maybe this will make you think twice, lover boy.

***** Sophia returned to the kitchen after seeing the last police officer out the front door. Tony Mendelero’s nervous restlessness and pale features stood in sharp contrast to the other three men who sat at the kitchen table. Sophia studied the calm face of Che’s cousin, Bale Ammadon, with a prickle of anxiety before she cleared several coffee cups off the table. Since he’d shown up earlier, controlling another struggling, cursing would-be-intruder with an ease that was both reassuring and vaguely alarming at once, Sophia had found Bale to be nothing but a kind and considerate man. Bale’s and Eli’s eyes were as different from Che’s and each other’s as three snowflake designs might be under a magnifying glass. But their eyes had things in common besides being compelling. Their gazes all communicated a vast, precise intelligence and infinite coldness. She reconsidered that estimation when she heard Che’s voice behind her. Like his friends, Che definitely had an almost eerie impenetrable calm about him. But unlike them, his eyes could suddenly leap with a flame when he looked at her that left Sophia feeling breathless, confused…and wanting. 44

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“Let me help you with those.” The sound of his low, rumbling voice caused a shiver to tingle down Sophia’s neck. She glanced up nervously between lowered eyelashes. He was standing close. Sophia imagined that she could feel his body heat. She didn’t have to imagine his smell. The unique scent of fresh air, barely discernable cologne or soap and pure male filled her awareness. She inhaled deeply and sighed with relief. Yes, it definitely was there; something comforting…something human. She blinked when she realized the train of her thoughts. “Che…” “Yes, Sophia?” He leaned over and brushed her right hand softly with his own as he took two of the cups from her. She was vaguely aware of Bale Ammadon answering Tony’s anxious question about follow-up police protection over at the table, but the majority of her senses were acutely pinpointed on the man who stood just inches away from her. Unlike Bale Ammadon, who had a subtle Scottish accent, Che’s accent was typically Californian. But every time he said her name, his voice had a lilting quality that sounded both exotic and natural at once, like he was saying her name, but more than her name. It never failed to make a shiver of excitement ripple down her spine. “Uh…you, and…” She became painfully aware that she was stammering as she looked up into Che’s aquamarine eyes. She forced herself to break his mesmerizing gaze. Her hand shook slightly as she indelicately set the two coffee cups in the sink, making a loud clanking noise. When she spoke again, she addressed the drain, but her voice was a heck of a lot steadier than it was when she’d been staring into Che’s eyes. “I was wondering if you and your friends have had military training.” When he didn’t immediately respond, Sophia forced herself to look up at him. She swallowed heavily as she studied his stark, yet perfectly harmonious profile. Yes, better to face it, to admit to herself what she’d just been thinking. She’d actually been reassured at the subtle scent of Che’s skin, and the reason for that made her fear for her own sanity as much as anything else. She had just been wondering with only partial conscious clarity if Che Ammadon and his friends were even human. “My brother Teddy serves in the Air Force, Special Operations. The way you and Bale subdued those men, your…manner… I heard the police officer ask you the same thing, but I didn’t hear your reply.” “I told him no,” Che said quietly as he turned on the faucet and rinsed out the coffee cups, being as careful in his movements as he was in answering. He didn’t want to start out his relationship with Sophia by lying to her. The fact was that Che did have extensive military experience. He’d fought in thousands of battles in his lifetime, always on the side that pulled most strongly for his sense of justice, when the nameless, inscrutable power of Judgment told that it was not only right, but that it was good to intervene and serve as her fist in the material world. He had fought with his own shortlived flesh and he had battled through the bodies of human soldiers that Fate had marked as heroes.

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In many ways, Che Ammadon was the living embodiment of the human archetype of the warrior. He hadn’t been entirely lying earlier when he alluded to the fact to Tony Mendelero that there may be complications between what he was and Sophia’s well-documented antiwar attitudes. Che was considered to be the foremost expert among his people in matters of warfare and combat. It wasn’t as if Che was pro-war. Most conflicts were based on ignorance and could undoubtedly be avoided if something was done proactively to ensure that negative energy was not built up to the point of explosion. But Che saw things from the more objective, wide-angle stance of the universe. Sometimes war was wrong, and sometimes war was needed for change. Karma and energy required their outlet and they wouldn’t be denied. Che didn’t see that as “good” or “bad” any more than he saw cataclysmic events such as the violent volcanic activity that had made Lake Tahoe eons ago as being “good” or “bad”. It just was. He certainly hoped that their differing views weren’t a point of contention between him and Sophia. Sophia noticed that he treated the chipped coffee cups like they were the finest of china as he rinsed them. She couldn’t take her eyes off his large, blunt fingers as they moved with such finesse. Another shiver coursed through her, this time feathering the skin of her chest, like a delicate, subtle touch. “But…?” She waited tensely as Che glanced down at her with mild surprise. Her tension gave way when he smiled. Humor danced in his aquamarine eyes. His grin had the same effect as golden sunlight reflecting in warm, rippling water. “I was being honest, Sophia. Or at least, honest in the spirit that they asked the question. I’ve never served in any official capacity in the military, and neither has Eli or Bale.” Che sensed that she was about to demand a more specific answer, so he forestalled her with an offensive maneuver. “Sophia, I think it would be a good idea for you to stay at the lodge with me for the rest of your vacation.”

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Chapter Four “What?” Sophia asked, clearly knocked off-center by his sober statement. Che shrugged with forced casualness as he set a cup in the plastic drainer. “It makes sense, after the break-in tonight and after what you told the police about that guy stalking leaving you those obscene messages on your cell phone. Not to mention that little piece of information that cop let slip about finding that woman’s body dumped in a ravine not ten miles from here that looked like she’d been raped by a…” He stopped abruptly, knowing that Sophia had heard what the cop had said and not caring to repeat it—like she’d been raped by a meat tenderizer. He finished his thought in his head. And after the creator of that vile thought form that attacked you on the Astral Plane the night before last just happened to show up in your bedroom with a knife that could have gutted an elephant. He needed to have a long discussion with Bale and the rest of the Grigori Council about that as soon as possible. Che only had the opportunity to utter a few terse telepathic sentences about how Asmoday had found a way to control emotionally unstable, violent thought forms and their human producers through the medium of the Astral Plane. He could tell that Bale was eager to be away to discuss it right this second. The Borderlands of the Astral Plane were peppered with dangerous thought forms. Usually, those violent manifestations of desire only had an effect on dreamers of individuals with similar thought and emotional vibrational patterns. The thought forms of a serial killer like John Wayne Gacy, for instance, definitely had an impact on other human beings thoughts and emotions, usually via states like a trance, dreams or even in psychosis. But the thoughts of John Wayne Gacy as they manifested themselves on the Astral Plane were only attracted to like-minded thought forms. The thoughts and desires of someone like John Wayne Gacy could influence and even magnify the thoughts and desires of a Jeffrey Dalmer, for instance, because of their possibly similar vibrational rates and quality. These dark, cancerous manifestations usually conglomerated in the denser areas of the astral world, the region that the Watchers called the Borderlands. Typically, Che never gave a second thought to crossing the Borderlands. Thought forms and the elementals they used to take form there were just as repellent to him as his spirit was unattractive to them. But Sophia’s luminous and refined spirit was just as different from the heavy, rabid thought forms that populated the Borderlands as Che’s. Yet somehow, Asmoday had used his own focus of Will to train the elemental, violent essence onto her. And what was more frightening, Asmoday had moved the power of influence in the opposite direction. If Che didn’t miss his guess, Asmoday had somehow managed

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to implant secret information—Sophia Galanis’ whereabouts—to the actual human in the material world that had created the violent thought form. It may have been done clumsily, and without reference to Che’s protection, but the plan had the alarming ability to work, given the sheer numbers of violent fantasies that too many people could produce with shocking focus and intensity. And more specifically, given Sophia’s celebrity status, she was likely the target of a frighteningly large amount of them. The realization terrified him. Asmoday’s manipulations in the astral world might be providing powerful surges of manic motivation and the grandiose illusion of infinite power to already violently insane individuals, along with all the necessary demographics and instructions in how to make their sick fantasies a reality. But something even worse was gnawing away at Che’s usual unflappability. It would appear that Asmoday possessed prior knowledge of what Sophia was—a woman powerful enough to be a Watcher mate. How else was it possible that he’d planned to attack her with the diseased thought form, even before Che had full awareness of what Sophia was? Sophia folded her arms at her waist in what he recognized as a defensive gesture. Great. He’d come on too strong once again. “That’s very generous of you to offer, Che, especially after everything you and your friends did here tonight.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “I still can’t believe it happened.” “You’re in shock.” The chilling image of the hatred in the second man’s eyes earlier when he’d looked at her, the snarl of rage that bared his teeth effectively vanished when she glanced up and her gaze locked with Che’s. The seconds seemed to lengthen along a dimension that Sophia had never before divined. He looked so appealingly real to her, so amazingly present. His body, so big and vibrant and male, seemed to pull at her like a powerful magnet that she was having great difficulty in resisting. She sighed. Who was she kidding anyway? There couldn’t be more than a handful of straight women alive who could resist Che Ammadon. She would do well to keep reminding herself that his boundless sex appeal and potent charm were impersonal forces of nature, like the tide or the brilliant sunlight of a summer’s day, not agents that were meant specifically for Sophia Galanis. “Maybe a little,” she finally admitted. “I’ve had my share of strange incidents over the years, but this was the most…frightening.” She stilled when he cupped her shoulder in his palm. His deep, low voice soothed her. His touch felt good…so right. “You know as well as I do how big the Sierra Lodge is. There’s room for everyone there, with room to spare. Wouldn’t you feel a little safer knowing there was someone within shouting distance?” It was on the tip of her tongue to remind him of Tony, but she abruptly stopped herself when she saw the mildly incredulous expression in Che’s eyes. Damn. He was a magician, the way he could read her mind. The unbidden, flagrantly arousing image of

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what it would be like to look into those eyes while he thrust his cock in and out of her caused Sophia to blush. Would he be as exquisitely keyed in to her pleasure as he was her thoughts? Che certainly seemed aware of them currently. Tony had been a pale, nervous wreck ever since Eli had abruptly awoken him earlier and he’d seen the man struggling on Sophia’s floor. He hardly inspired a sense of instinctual trust in Sophia the way that Che did. And then there was the fact that— “He’s leaving tomorrow evening. Weren’t you planning on staying for the week?” “Yes, but plans were made to be changed,” she said briskly as she straightened and broke eye contact with Che. If she kept staring into those depthless aquamarine eyes, she would be his willing slave in a matter of seconds. And Sophia Galanis was a slave to no man. She realized that Tony was speaking to her from across the room. “I couldn’t agree more, Sophia. We’ll both fly out of Reno tomorrow. We can always reschedule with Andy Moore back in Los Angeles,” Tony said anxiously. He was relieved to hear that Sophia was going to change her plans. He would feel obligated to volunteer to stay at the guesthouse with her if she insisted on staying. And he’d be damned if he wanted to be in the vicinity of any more knife-wielding lunatics. The guy that Bale Ammadon had dragged into the yard earlier foamed…actually foamed at the mouth in crazed rage when he caught a glimpse of Sophia and he realized that his sick plans were being thwarted. The sight had made Tony’s bowels spasm alarmingly. If Bale Ammadon didn’t have the build of a linebacker and the unruffled calm of Lake Tahoe on a windless day, Tony had not a doubt that the crazy son of a bitch would have been tearing at Sophia like a rabid animal. And Tony didn’t want to be next on that sick fucker’s list. “Sophia?” Tony’s lips had flattened into an irritated line. “I’m not going to let those two jerks ruin my vacation, Tony. I’m not leaving Tahoe until next Sunday.” “But Sophia, that’s not—” “I’m staying here, Tony. At the guesthouse.” Her eyes flashed defiantly to Che’s. “End of story. Besides, thanks to my neighbor’s heroics, I’m safer now than I was before those two nuts were put behind bars.” She gave Bale and Eli a warm, genuine smile. Her eyes as they flicked over to Che became notably more determined. They widened in surprise when she took in the wintry cast that had entered his usually summertime eyes. Che took her firmly by her elbow and pushed her toward the door. “If I could just have a minute of your time, Sophia, there’s something I need to discuss with you.” Sophia bit her lip to still her protest when she sensed his implacable determination. She got the uneasy feeling that if she’d resisted Che at that moment, he would have tossed her over his shoulder and continued with his plans completely undeterred. The grim warrior had returned, making it impossible to believe that the warm, charming man had ever existed. Sophia was all too aware of Bale’s and Eli’s stony expressions

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and Tony’s disbelieving one as they watched Che herd her out the door. Once they were outside, he led her down the front steps toward the small, private beach that Sophia had been sunbathing on with so much delight the past few days. The night was relatively still, but chilly. The breaking waves made a soothing noise that stood in direct contrast to Sophia’s chaotic emotions. “What’s so important, Che?” she asked when he finally paused and spun her around to face him. He’d led her beneath the shadow of a massive pine, and all Sophia could make out of his features was his tall outline against the starry night sky. “This,” he muttered before he pulled her to him roughly. Sophia’s mouth had just begun to open in surprise when she realized what he was planning. She never got out a syllable of protest. All the sensory nerves in her body leapt to abrupt, shimmering life, and she was drowning in the sensations of Che Ammadon. He moved his lips hungrily over hers until she began to unthinkingly reciprocate his kiss. Sophia both heard and felt his low growl of seeming approval as it vibrated from his hard flesh to her own. He slid one large hand up the back of her skull, tangling his fingers in her loose hair, holding her steady as his tongue speared her lips. Sophia supposed that what followed was technically called kissing, but she felt more like she was being sexually branded. He felt so hot and hard against her. His tongue thoroughly dominated her awareness as he alternated between slowly savoring and boldly fucking the depths of her mouth. He demanded a complete response from her, all or nothing. Sophia found herself giving all, both excited and sobered by the extent of all that she suddenly felt that she had to give. Her body strained against his hard flesh. She gripped his wide shoulders helplessly as powerful waves of sexual heat flooded her. By the Gods, he needed to have her now. The chilly night air didn’t matter, Bale’s tense warning that they needed to talk didn’t matter, the fact that they were outside, where he couldn’t possibly hope to officially complete the mating process with any degree of comfort didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was this lovely, generous, electrifyingly exciting woman in his arms, her intoxicating taste, the sexy, catchy moans of pleasure that exuded from her throat, the feeling of her soft hair between his fingers, the sensation of her full breasts pressing into his ribs, the tips pointed and hard, thrilling and maddening him. The skin stretched painfully across his swollen, thrumming cock, seemingly incapable of handling the volume of blood and desire that hammered through his flesh. He was fit to bursting for her—he, Che Ammadon, who had never lost control over a woman in his many, many millennia of conscious existence. Sophia made a confused sound of protest when he raised his head and she was deprived of his hot, talented mouth. Then she felt his hands moving with rough precision at the buttons of her flannel shirt. Although she couldn’t make out his features in the darkness, she could easily imagine the stark determination on his handsome face. “Che?” Her voice sounded shaky in the darkness. She knew that she should say something to put a stop to their crazy behavior, but her sex ached and seeped with 50

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intense arousal. She’d never responded to a kiss like that. She felt winded, stunned, half-wild with pure lust. “Ohh…” Her head fell back and she moaned softly at the sensation of Che’s hands slipping into her partially unbuttoned shirt and cupping both of her breasts at once. He wasn’t exactly rough, but he wasn’t gentle, either. What those large, warm hands were, Sophia admitted to herself with a ragged exhalation of pleasure, were confident and knowing and…capable…oh, yes, very capable. He massaged and plumped her flesh in his palms. His thumbs sought out her sensitive centers and whispered over them at first, before returning to flick and tease the turgid flesh until Sophia cried in uncontrollable desire. Che thought her breasts were perfect, very firm—larger than medium-sized, but still delicate and infinitely feminine. He loved their pointed, thrusting quality. Her responsive nipples excited him almost unbearably. He’d nearly lost control at the sight of them bared earlier. The vision tempted his mind as he filled his palms with her flesh. In immediate physical manifestation of his thoughts, Che’s cock leapt upwards in aroused agony. He shook his head slightly. Full corporeality was mind-bogglingly powerful. He couldn’t bring himself to let go of Sophia’s breasts, so he used his hold on them to bring her nearer, keeping her steady while he pressed his engorged cock into the soft juncture of her thighs. He gritted his teeth when she thrust her hips against him in a mutual caress. “Ah, you feel that? Gods, I never even knew what wanting meant until I saw you, woman.” A broken sound of longing exuded from Sophia’s throat. She spread her hands and moved them up over his neck, hungrily seeking out the sensation of warm, smooth skin beneath his T-shirt. His voice had sounded so stark, so disbelieving…so desperate. Surely it was the out-of-control sex hormones that were currently bathing her neurons, keeping her from rational thought. A small part of her consciousness told her that it was ridiculous to think that a man like Che went around spilling his heart out to strange women without some ulterior motive, the most obvious one currently being to get a piece of ass. But let’s face it, Sophia had pretty out-of-control desire for Che’s muscular ass herself. Not to mention the excitingly full, dense package between his thighs that she couldn’t stop rubbing against like a cat in heat. “I want you too, Che.” She bit her lip over another groan as he used his thumb and forefinger to lightly pinch her right nipple into impossibly further pronouncement. His mouth came down to worship the side of her neck, feeling hot and insistent on her prickly, sensitized skin. “But we should talk about this…oh God…or…at least, wait until later, when we have some…ah, that feels so good…but…privacy…yes, privacy…and…” He raised his head. “No.” “N…no?”

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“No. I’ve waited for longer than you’ll ever even be able to imagine, honey. I’m tired of second-guessing myself on this. We’ll wait to have intercourse later, if that’s what you want, but I am going to touch you, Sophia, my flesh to yours, right here, right now,” he said in a harsh, desire-bitten voice. “Shh,” he forestalled her when he sensed that she was about to protest and why. “I told you earlier tonight that I’d always protect you when I’m making love to you. The others won’t hear or sense or see anything. Now hush. Hold still while I suck on your pretty nipples.” Sophia’s gasp of shock that he’d just admitted that he knew about her erotic, seemingly hallucinatory experience from earlier segued to one of stunned pleasure. He had deliberately moved her thick, warm flannel shirt off her right nipple, exposing the sensitive flesh to the cool night air before he bent over and encapsulated the tip in his hot mouth. The abrupt contrast in temperatures, the sensation of him tugging on her nipple erotically, alternating with the sensation of his wet, rough tongue lashing at her flesh created a churning meltdown in Sophia’s core. She practically choked at the enormity of pleasure that rocked her body. The sounds of Sophia’s surprised, honest arousal gratified him like nothing ever had. He leaned back slightly after a moment, as if to inspect her breast in the pitch darkness. She sighed unevenly as he used his encircling hand to move her wet, stiff nipple across his closed lips in an erotic glide. Che was intoxicated by the sensation, letting just the tip of his hungry tongue join in on the experience. He kept himself immobile and gently manipulated her nipple against him. He felt her shiver and instinctively knew that the cool night air mixing with his own heat was amplifying the sensation for her. “Do you like this, Sophia?” he asked distractedly as he brought her turgid flesh against his slightly opened teeth and rubbed her ever so gently across the rough upper and lower ridge. She trembled like a leaf in a brisk wind. “Yes,” she panted. “Oh, yes.” “Let’s see how much.” He carefully pulled her insulated shirt over her taut, damp nipple, protecting her from the bite of the cool air. Sophia felt an electric thrill run through her when he straightened and reached for her pants. She wanted him to kiss her again, to stroke and suck her nipples until she was mindless and thrashing with need. But he didn’t. He didn’t speak or caress her as he deliberately unfastened her jeans and peeled back the opening, granting him access to her. And his single-minded intensity made her even more hot and anticipatory than if he’d been encouraging her submission with his mouth and hands. The crisp, cool hair seemed to tingle on the moist, exposed lips of her outer sex. She felt his tension, too, like a tangible pressure, a power coiling incredibly tight but a force equally as strong, urging it to spring free. He slowly pushed her jeans down a few inches over her hips, letting his hands linger to caress the upper globes of

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her partially bared ass. He raised one hand and held her at the waist while the other worked its way under her shirt and spread across her belly. For a moment, he didn’t move. Their awareness of each other in the darkness was so exquisite that Sophia imagined their life forces throbbing and pulsing in tandem. The heat from his palms vibrated into her. She had the strange sensation of being sandwiched between his big hands, held immobilized, helpless…indescribably cherished. “You shaved,” he said quietly, his volume pitched just above the sound of the waves crashing on the beach. When he sensed her surprise, because he hadn’t yet touched her, he gave a small smile. “I saw earlier, when you were dressing. I’m sorry for staring like that. I couldn’t help myself.” Sophia couldn’t help laugh softly, given the present circumstances. “It’s okay.” “Why did you?” Sophia sighed unevenly. He was making tiny, erotic circles over the tender skin of her pelvis, just agonizing inches away from her hungry sex. “Why what?” she panted. “Why did you shave? Is that how you like to be? Naked and smooth, totally exposed to your lover?” “I…yes, I suppose. I mean, no.” She grunted in vague dissatisfaction with her answer and the fact that he wasn’t touching her where she most needed it. “I don’t really know, Che. I just did it this morning, on a whim.” She bit her lip and wiggled her hips slightly. She felt so horny that she even craved the misty caress of the cool night air on her damp cunt. “Are you being honest, Sophia?” he asked tenderly as he increased the pressure of his hold on her and lowered his mouth to make nibbling, teasing movements with his lips and teeth on her ear. Sophia felt liquid spurt warmly between her thighs when he sealed the opening with his mouth and kissed her repeatedly before sliding his tongue in to taste her. “What…what do you mean?” she wondered distractedly. Her clit burned and ached so acutely as the crisp night air coolly licked at it that she began to wonder if she was going to combust without him ever touching her. “I think you did it for me.” Her mouth fell open in disbelief. Was he teasing her again by dropping references to the fact that he somehow knew about her dreams, fantasies and hallucinations? “Che, what’s that supposed—” “Hush,” he whispered next to her mouth as his hand slid down and cradled her sex warmly for several full, breathless seconds. He inhaled sharply and buried his head in the crevice between her shoulder and neck. His breath burned thickly in his lungs, the pain momentarily throbbing in sympathy with the ache of his cock. He pulsed the hard ridge of his upper palm gently against the damp, smooth flesh of her sex lips.

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“Sophia,” he gritted out harshly. Before he could stop himself he reached down and pressed his middle finger to her entry. She was molten and warm, flowing over his hand. Despite her abundant lubrication, however, he had to twist his finger to gain entry to her, and even then, he was only granted access up to the first joint of his finger. “By the Gods, you’re tight,” he muttered next to her neck, his voice thick with lust. “But you’re all honeyed up, aren’t you? You’re running down my hand. You did like having your nipples sucked on, didn’t you? Spread your legs, Sophia,” he ordered abruptly. “Let me in.” His tense, hard voice combined with the erotic content of his words had Sophia so hot that she wasn’t even sure if her legs would hold her anymore, let alone if she could move them. He seemed to understand. His arm encircled her waist, holding her steady as she did what he’d asked, even encouraging her to give a little of her weight to him, so that she could slightly lean back and give his finger a better angle for entry. “That’s right, just relax,” he soothed as he worked his finger high up into her snug, slippery sheath. Sophia’s head fell back and she made a muffled keening sound as he began to not only move his finger in and out of her, but also to shift it subtly back and forth and around when he was buried in her. For a few seconds, Sophia moaned and wiggled her hips with mixed arousal and vague discomfort at his bold movements. She yelped when he smacked her bottom, not hard, but causing enough of a cracking noise to garner her complete attention. “Hold still,” he said tensely. Then he reached high and rubbed. His mouth covered hers abruptly, stifling her sharp scream of pleasure. He moved his other hand downward as he steadily stimulated her sweet spot. Her jeans were only pushed down to the middle of her ass, which was making this whole process tight and constraining, but strangely piquing Sophia’s increasingly mindless excitement. She wondered if he was going to shove her pants down farther. But instead, he merely palmed an entire ass cheek, spreading his big hand wide across both her jeans and the flesh of her bottom that he’d bared. He gripped her ass firmly, his biceps flexing, and began moving her in a counter-rhythm against his fucking, rubbing finger. “Oh God, Che! I’m going to—” “Come,” he both finished for her and ordered. He shoved another finger into her silky channel. By the Fathers, he didn’t know how he was going to be able to wait two seconds, let alone hours or—the Gods forbid—days before he buried himself in the heaven of that. His anticipation for her first Rush while he loved her corporeally was so sharp that he wouldn’t have wagered that he wouldn’t just spontaneously explode in his jeans when it hit him. The muscular walls of her pussy convulsed around his fingers. He heard her surprised cry as pleasure broke over her. Then the outer edges of her Rush smacked into him, suffusing his being with wave after wave of energy. His rarified bodies and, eventually, his physical body vibrated and shimmered at the impact, creating profound

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changes in his subtle essences as well as his flesh. His eyes opened wide in shocked pleasure, unknowingly matching Sophia’s expression as she climaxed. When Sophia came to awareness, she realized that she was clumsily pulling down heavily on Che’s T-shirt as she grasped blindly at his waist. Her sense of unsteadiness must have all been from her earth-shattering orgasm, though, she realized dazedly after a moment because Che’s hold below her waist was firm and steady. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled incoherently as she let go of the material that she’d been stretching out with her gripping fingers. He pushed her reassuringly into him and she sagged forward with an uneven sigh, her cheek pressed to his lower chest. “An apology hardly seems appropriate.” Sophia craned back her head slightly, wishing she could see his face in the darkness. She had the feeling that there would be a small, sinful grin on his face. For some reason, that realization brought her to the far more startling one that his fingers were still embedded in her body. Unconsciously, she gripped him. He growled softly. “Are you trying to tell me we’re not finished yet, Sophia?” “No, I wasn’t trying to tell you that!” she hissed, suddenly acutely aware of where she was and what she was doing with a man who was practically a stranger. She realized how she must have sounded like a stepped-on cat, and she prevaricated. “I’m sorry. I know how selfish that must have sounded. But I’m not really all that comfortable—” “You were plenty comfortable just a second ago.” “Fooling around outside in the cold.” “You really don’t feel all that cold, Sophia. In fact—” “I…I can’t think of why I would be acting this way. It must be the aftereffects of the adrenaline, or maybe the shock. The fact is, Che, I’m…really uncomfortable at the idea of doing this when you’re a stranger to me.” She was surprised when he didn’t respond to that with tender amusement like he had her other statements. Tension palpably increased in his lean body. She suddenly tingled with growing anticipation at every point of contact of their flesh. His low chuckle felt like a sensual rake down her neck. “We’re not strangers, Sophia. And don’t kid yourself. We’re definitely not finished, either.” “But…oh! That’s so not fair, Che.” He’d just slid his fingers slowly, sensually out of her, only to slice mercilessly back in when she began to speak. Sophia felt like every sensory nerve in her body just blinked eagerly back into the “go” position. “Don’t you think we should…?” She forgot how to speak suddenly when he slid one of his soaking fingers between the tender slit of her outer lips. Sophia just stared blankly for a moment, panting. It was the first time that she’d ever been touched there with her sex thoroughly bared and clean. And she was so wet, so slippery. God, she would be embarrassed if she weren’t

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becoming so mindlessly aroused all over again. His fingers glided between her swollen lips without the slightest hindrance or obstruction, completely friction free. Oh Lord, the pleasure was unknown to her, so hot…so forbidden in its sheer intensity…so… “Beautiful. Thank you for shaving, honey. It’s going to feel so good to slide my tongue into your smooth, soft folds. Do you feel that?” he asked hoarsely before he flicked his finger over her with a precision that made her cry out sharply. “You’re so aroused that your clit is swelling down between your lips.” He rubbed the hard ridge of his finger along the hyper-sensitized, slick kernel of flesh to demonstrate to her with an accuracy that had her eyes rolling back in her head. The friction he created had a hot, sizzling quality. Because he could no longer resist, Che bent and ate the sexy little moans that began to erupt erratically between her lips. Her taste entranced him. He began to love her instinctively, sensually, without thought, like a spirit that had been caught and snared by mesmerizing music and voluptuous sensual delights. But he was a fully corporeal spirit now, and his painfully aroused flesh wouldn’t let him forget it. As if in confirmation of this, Sophia began moving her hands restlessly over his body. She was losing herself again, falling utterly under the spell of his magical fingers as they applied exquisite pressure on her clit, taking her inexorably up the slope of orgasm once again. His other hand smoothed across the upper curve of her bottom in a gentle, erotic caress that represented a genius counterstroke to its partner’s violently arousing movements. Her own fingers mindlessly sought out his skin beneath his T-shirt. The relentless tide of pleasure that he evoked in her with such ease with his hands and sensual kisses was only amplified as her awareness sharpened on the sensations of his dense, muscular flesh. Her hand moved upward in fascination along the gorgeous slant that led from his trim waist, over his rib cage, until it rested several inches below his armpits, encircling the wide expanse of his chest. She tingled with excitement as she felt him go utterly still beneath her. She was hyperaware of his lungs expanding for air and of the strong beat of his heart between her cradling hands. “You’re so beautiful,” she whispered in dawning awe. Her hands began to seek out all the sensations of him—the warm smoothness of his dense skin so tightly gloving muscle, bone and sinew, the erotic feeling of the crinkly hair at his chest beneath her rubbing palms, the hard discs of his small, erect nipples under her sensitive fingertips. “Sophia,” he gritted out between clenched teeth. He was one hundred percent physical man, fully aware of his wanting flesh, as he firmly grasped her wrist and placed her hand over his erect cock. He pressed himself to her, forcing her to acknowledge the depth and the intensity of his need for her. “I feel like I’m burning alive for you,” he admitted in a strangled voice. Sophia needed no further encouragement. She pulled at his button fly roughly, desperate to release what she felt beneath the material into her wanting hand. His tense,

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erotic words of desire muttered harshly into her ear between hot kisses only made her more anxious to touch him. She had to stretch his briefs tautly in order to spring his entire length free. And then he was in her hand, the feeling of him like nothing she had ever before experienced, like vibrant, striking life itself manifested into hot, hard flesh. She fisted his throbbing, arrow-straight stalk greedily, stunned and aroused by the fact that his thickness prevented her from completely encircling him. Her cry of pleasure as she swept across the defined ridge and onto the even thicker, fleshy head of his penis blended with Che’s groan of immense satisfaction at her touch. Suddenly, Sophia froze as a voice penetrated her focused attention. “Sophia? Are you out there?” Sophia’s hand jerked reflexively in shock. “Don’t you dare move away, Sophia Galanis,” Che breathed out with eerie calm. “Sophia?” Another shout penetrated the pitch blackness. “It’s Tony,” Sophia whispered desperately. “I’m aware of who it is,” Che said. He resumed moving his fingers over the smooth, delicate folds of her cunt, aroused all over again at her gratifying amount of glossy lubrication. He heard her sharp intake of breath. “Keep stroking my cock.” “But Che, he’s—” “Not going to bother us, honey. Never going to. I told you before. I want you to trust me on this.” His words seemed to hover between them like a palpable force. Che gritted his teeth in frustration, feeling the edge of her indecision like a knife’s blade. They both heard the guesthouse door open and the sound of Bale’s deep, authoritative voice as he appreciatively intervened. Che shifted his fingers on Sophia’s ass, burying his forefinger down into the warm, soft furrow between her buttocks. He used the intimacy of the hold to pulse her steadily against his manipulations on her clit. “Oh God, Che!” Sophia cried out in sharp arousal, her concern about being caught while on the verge of orgasm with Che’s huge, hard dick in her hands utterly incinerated by desire. “By the fucking Fathers, Sophia, will you move your hand?” Che muttered in a half crazed, tense voice. Just the feeling of her small, warm hand gripping his sensitive head so tightly was about to bring him off, and thousands of years of being incorporeal had drilled into Che’s being that a Watcher never, never climaxed before he’d received his lover’s Rush. His crudity and desperation cut through her fog of pleasure as her orgasm built. She made tiny, sharp cries of arousal deep in her throat as she fisted him down to his balls and stroked him back up to his puffy, arrow-like head, then repeated the process with a speed and wildness that matched the out-of-control crescendo he built in her in return. God, it felt so good. He felt so good. She had to move her entire arm, not just her

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hand and wrist, in order to do full justice to every inch of his cock. It excited her beyond belief, as did the sound of his low, guttural grunts of arousal. She found herself jacking him off with an energetic enthusiasm previously unknown to her as she tipped over the wave of her own shattering orgasm. “Oh, no…oh God…Oh yes!” she sputtered in mindless release. Che could barely keep his legs steady as her Rush sheared into him relentlessly. She’d momentarily faltered in her highly appreciated, almost athletic pounding of his cock while she whimpered in orgasm. With a single-minded focus that would have shocked him just a day before, Che put his hand on top of hers and firmly signaled that he wanted—no, needed—for her to finish him off. By the Gods, no wonder human males were considered to be so selfish when it came to sex. How could you be anything else with this flaming, throbbing flesh always demanding its due between your legs? He was vaguely surprised that he had enough common sense remaining to remember to mentally manipulate Sophia to keep her eyes closed as he crested. He had none of the misgivings that Sophia did about their privacy, roaring out his gratification uninhibitedly as the tightly wound coils of his powerful control snapped free. The pleasure that racked through him would have brought a weaker man to his knees. “Oh…oh my God…that was so…” she muttered wildly between pants for air. The sound of her shocked, disoriented voice brought Che back from the outer realms. “Shh,” he soothed instinctively, raising his hand to her scalp in a reassuring gesture. “It was incredible, Sophia.” He became vaguely aware that she was resisting bringing her body directly against his. He glanced down in vague irritation, wanting her softness and warmth more than anything at that moment. His irritation faded instantly when he sensed how she was standing awkwardly with her right hand out from her body. “I’m…it’s…I don’t want to get you…” “Never mind,” Che said with a low chuckle as he shrugged out of his T-shirt. They didn’t speak for a several seconds as he carefully wiped his cooling cum from her hand, shirt and sleeve. Although he’d ejaculated while in a physical form innumerable times before, he’d never come anywhere near this volume. And the quality of his semen was different too, now that he’d become so much more powerful in the material world. He wondered sadly why even the seed that his new body could produce wasn’t viable yet for reproduction. He almost immediately forced down the feelings of shame that accompanied the thought. Watchers were highly vulnerable about the fact that they were, for the most part, sterile. It had been the reason their powerful Fathers had rejected and abandoned them on Earth. Besides, one day—even if that day was a millennium in the future—he would likely become corporeal enough to father a child with Sophia. Even the thought made him a little dizzy. A sense of incredulity and unease began to filter into Sophia’s awareness as Che silently wiped off what seemed to her like a gallon of cum. The erotic memory of him

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throbbing in her hand and climaxing so powerfully for such an extended period of time while she determinedly worked every last drop of semen out of him would likely be indelibly imprinted in her brain until the day she died. Embarrassment caused her cheeks to flush. “Now your T-shirt is soaked,” she murmured uncomfortably when he finally finished.” “I don’t care,” he said truthfully as he wrapped her in his arms again, bent his knees and lowered his head so that he could inhale the singular smell of her where it was concentrated at her neck. It was true, of course. He didn’t give it a second thought. His clothing was created from the elements of his own subtle bodies. He’d wait until he wasn’t holding her and didn’t require corporeality. When he willed himself back into his physical body, his T-shirt would be officially cum-free. He was so lost in the sensation of her that it took him a moment to sense her rising tension. “Sophia…” “No, Che, you’re not going to talk me out of it this time,” she whispered with rising panic as she forced herself to move away from the intoxicating sensation and scent of his warm, bare skin. “I can’t believe we did that! I can’t believe I did that. God, do you think Tony heard?” Who did she think she was kidding, anyway? They must have all heard there at the end, she realized with rising embarrassment. “Nobody heard us, Sophia. How many times do I have to tell you?” he asked stiffly. “And how could that be, exactly, Che?” she asked in a voice gone brittle from the dawning realization of what she’d just done on top of the already bizarre circumstances of the evening. “What? Do you have superhuman powers or something?” “I can do a lot of things that the physical body of a human can’t, Sophia. That’s because I’m only partially human. But you already suspected that. Part of you already knows it.” He almost cursed out loud when he felt the wave of disorientation and shock that overwhelmed her as a result of his calm words. Their mating bond had just strengthened immeasurably for him to feel her emotions so acutely. “You’re out of your mind.” “That would be a convenient explanation for you, wouldn’t it? Too bad it’s not the truth. There are so many things I have to tell you, Sophia, if—” “No.” “No?” Che repeated with tense incredulity. “No.” Sophia struggled to free herself of his arms. “This was incredible, like you said, Che. But I need to go inside. I…really don’t have anything to say to you right now.” He sighed dispiritedly. By the Fathers, had he really just managed to chase away his life mate not once, but two times in one evening? Gods, he was never going to hear the

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end of it from Duse when he eventually learned of it. He forced himself to stay utterly still as she fumbled with her jeans in the darkness. “Sophia?” “Yes?” Sophia stopped abruptly in her flustered flight from him at the compelling sound of her name on his lips. Not all that anxious to run away, are you? she told herself bitterly. “Your shirt is still unbuttoned.” “Oh.” How had he known that in this pitch blackness? Sophia wondered, not really sure that she wanted to know the answer. He waited in silence while she fastened her shirt. “Okay, well…thank you again, Che. I’ll um…see you…that is…” “That’s right, honey. You’ll see me tomorrow.” Sophia’s mouth sagged open at the soft reply that held just a hint of steel, as though he were daring her to defy him. She didn’t have the energy or the composure to do so at the moment. She shivered uncontrollably as she climbed the steps. The temperature must only be in the high forties. Yet she knew that one of the foremost sensations that would remain in her memory from that crazy, erotic interlude with Che Ammadon was heat— palpable, sizzling heat.

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Chapter Five A stunned silence clung heavily in the air around King Bale Ammadon and the five members of the Grigori Council. Bale’s abrupt, shocking news had managed to do the unthinkable. It had stopped Che from ruminating and fretting about Sophia, something that had been impossible for him to do since she’d left him standing on that beach alone last night. Of course, since she was insisting on staying in the guesthouse, Che had watched over her in incorporeal form all night. He’d flip-flopped repeatedly on his decision to complete the mating process while she slept, but by the time dawn arrived and Sophia showed signs of waking, their spirits were still not yet fully locked, one to the other. His experience with her last night only made him desire her trust more than he ever wanted anything. Of course, he could continue to strive for her trust once the mating bond was complete, but somehow it didn’t seem the same to him. Surely he could keep her safe, like he had last night, for just a little longer? After all, he reasoned, the threat to Sophia last night might have originated from a Watcher, but it was humans who were sent to put it into action. Placing his sigil on his bonded mate would only protect her from being harmed by a Watcher, not a human being. But by the time Bale had informed him that morning of a crucial meeting for the Grigori Council, Che was convinced that he was an absolute moron for not completing the mating bond. None of his trusted friends—Bale, Eli or Duse—would be able to guard Sophia while they were all at the meeting. Che had no choice but to put the trust into the hands of one of his knights. He’d cultivated a profound trust for the four men who had pledged service to him. They were all fine Watchers, eager to learn from him about the complex arts of warfare and self-defense. They were loyal to the last. He would have trusted them with his own conscious existence. But this was Sophia. It was different. Everything was different among them since Day had raped and murdered Helen Ammadon. Now any Watcher—yes, even one of his faithful knights—might follow in Day’s twisted path, hungry for the incredible power that a woman like Sophia could bring them, even if he killed her in the process. He’d sat through the meeting in anguish over his decision, although he’d calmly described his experiences with Day on the Astral Plane, the attacking thought form and the subsequent attempts to harm Sophia. He’d answered the Grigori Council’s many questions to the best of his abilities and given his honest hypothesis about what Day’s plans might entail. But his worries and ruminations about Sophia’s safety, not to mention whether or not she would ever speak to him again, dropped out of existence when Bale impassively informed the Council that the Dionytion Stone had been stolen.

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“How can you be sure it was stolen?” Dante asked after a long moment of stunned silence. They were meeting in the great hall of the lodge, a huge, airy room decorated in the old Tahoe style, with enormous lodgepole pine columns for supports, deep, decadently soft sofas and chairs arranged in multiple comfortable sitting arrangements around the room, and floor-to-ceiling west-facing windows that directly overlooked Lake Tahoe. The late morning, incandescent sunlight shining through the windows caused all of the Watchers’ shocked faces to look unusually washed of color. The Dionytion Stone was sacred to them, a relic that had existed since their earliest memories of the physical world. Its use was undoubtedly connected to their origins as energy beings that could become visible and manifest into physical matter with varying degrees of strength. “The fact that the stained glass panes on one of the library windows at Dunleavy was shattered and that the locked cabinet where the Stone was stored was hacked to pieces as though someone was planning on using it for kindling gave me my first clue,” Bale answered Dante blandly, referring to the ancient, deeply occult Ammadon stronghold where Bale lived on the Isle of Skye. “But Dunleavy has protective wards—” Duse cut off Eli as he watched his brother Bale with an unusual expression on his dark, handsome features. “Was anything else taken, Bale?” Bale gave Duse a long, unreadable stare. Because he knew Bale and Duse so well, Che could tell that a tense exchange had just passed between them, although their communication had been private. It made him uneasy. This whole development left him uneasy. “No,” Bale eventually answered. “Only the Stone. And no…” Bale said as he glanced over at Zep, answering his telepathic question aloud. “I don’t know who did it or what their intentions are.” Another tense silence followed their leader’s statement. The Dionytion Stone was traditionally been used during the Dionytion Ceremony, the celebration of a Watcher mate’s Second Change and her subsequent reunion with her mate and the rest of the Watcher race. It was used ritualistically at the Issian Festival, as well. The Stone was both an amplifier, but also a transformer used for turning subtle energy into material substance—a compact, exponentially more precise Stonehenge, in a matter of speaking. Its history was sacred to them, especially considering their unclear memories of their origins. But even more crucially, the Stone was a powerful generator of energy. In the wrong hands, it would be a formidable weapon. Especially if the person who stole the Stone also controlled a Watcher mate…or a woman powerful enough to be one. Che stood abruptly. It took all of his considerable strength of Will not to just fade out of the room and assure himself personally of Sophia’s safety. He stilled his urge and momentarily calmed himself by engaging in a quick telepathic communication with Shem, the knight who currently guarded Sophia. The reply assured him only partially,

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and he wasn’t soothed until he sensed impressions from Sophia herself—sun-dappled water, sensual heat and an uneasy feeling that had nothing to do with being in danger. “This is connected to Asmoday, to his manipulations with humans on the Astral Plane,” Che said tensely. Dante and Zep both gave him incredulous looks. “How do you reach that conclusion?” Zep challenged. “How can you not?” Che asked just as aggressively. “We discover that Asmoday is conscious, at least on the Astral Plane, and that he’s managed to learn how to control emotionally unstable, violent thought forms and…yes!” Che countered before Duse could interrupt with his previously expressed misgivings about Che’s next hypothesis. “Manipulating those thought forms into the opposite direction and moving them like chess pieces in the physical world.” “Che, there’s no proof that those two men last night were related to the thought form that attacked Sophia or any of Asmoday’s plans,” Duse repeated with only a trace of exasperation in his voice. “Yes, there is.” One raven dark brow rose in curious challenge at Che’s steady assertion. “Sophia is the proof. You haven’t met her yet, Duse. She’s amazingly sensitive about subtle realities, although she admittedly doesn’t appear to have much conscious knowledge of it. When she examined that asshole that broke into her room last night, she recognized him all right, and more than just as being the guy who asked for her autograph at the Lone Wolf. It just wasn’t in a way that she knew how to communicate with words. But I was able to catch her meaning, unformed though it was. Part of Sophia’s spirit recognized that she’d been in contact with something elemental about that man. Part of her remembered being on the Astral Plane and being attacked by his thought form.” Duse studied Che for a long moment. He had to admit it was a possibility. His wife was incredibly adroit at reading subtle energies and seeing patterns that he couldn’t. Skylar also barely caught a glimpse of just how powerful she was. He had been trying, with varying degrees of success, to communicate that to her. Only a portion of Watchers’ powers stemmed from their inhuman fathers. Their exceptional mothers had given them rare gifts, as well. And of course, women like Skylar and Sophia shared, not only the slight traces of Watchers in their genes, but also a strong influence from their unusual Watcher mothers. In the case of the four Ammadons, their mothers were more than unusual, they were Druagish priestesses, women whose potential had been identified from birth and who were subsequently taught to leash their power. Duse continued to evolve in his understanding of the subtle essences of not only Watchers and Watcher mates, but also the subtle bodies of human beings, invisible as they were to most humans themselves. “All right” was Duse’s only response after a considerable pause.

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“If you accept my assertion that Sophia recognized that human who attacked her last night, then you must be able to accept that whoever willfully formed the channel that allowed that violent thought form to attack her must be operating on the Astral Plane as well. And who did I just happen to run into the second before I encountered Sophia?” “Asmoday,” Eli said with an unreadable expression. “Exactly. But not only that, what has Day continually been obsessed with for the past few millennia?” Duse responded thoughtfully even though he knew Che meant it as a rhetorical question. “The Rush Initiative. His efforts to change Watcher law based on the idea that the power that Watcher mates can confer rightfully belongs to the entire race and not just her Watcher lover. He was a convincing political force among us, cleverly posing the whole conflict into the black-and-white issue of the powerful versus the powerless. He was always making a big deal about how convenient it is that a large percentage of Watcher leaders, both on the Grigori council and in the world community, are mated. He conveniently forgot that what he suggested as an alternative would be the equivalent of taking away the rights of an entire minority of our society—mated Watcher women.” Duse laughed humorously. “Skylar once put it this way, ‘I wasn’t put here on earth to be some kind of power generator for your race.’” Che waited while that puissant statement soaked into all their awareness, including his own. “But after the Rush Initiative was voted down by Bale and the Grigori Council,” he continued, “a countermovement was begun by a conservative faction. And Day fought against that initiative fiercely and won. And that piece of legislation involved—” “The Dionytion Ceremony,” said Bale menacingly. Che blinked once in surprise at the passion in Bale’s voice, as did several of the other Grigori Council members. Everyone knew that Bale had grieved terribly after Asmoday’s rape and the resulting death of his mate, Helen. He had shown remarkable poise and strength in regards to Asmoday’s trial, however, and never overtly broke Watcher law. The profound edge of anger in his voice just now reminded all of those present, however, that it was highly unwise to cross Bale Ammadon. “Exactly,” he said quietly. “And obviously, for something similar to the Dionytion Ceremony to occur, something involving the harnessing of immense power, Day would need not only a mate—like Skylar Ammadon, for instance, who he already tried to abduct earlier—but the Stone.” Another tense silence ensued. “Despite all of your criticism against a man who isn’t here to defend himself, I can’t help but recall,” Zep said quietly from where he sat at the edge of the group, “that the two individuals who voted against the passage of the Mate Law, and thus continued the ritual whereby Watchers allow a mate’s Rush to be conferred to the race—a token,

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ceremonial version of what Day argued for on a global level with the Rush Initiative— were you and King Bale, Che.” Che paused for a tense five seconds before he responded. “You know as well as I do that Bale’s and my decision on that related to our belief that these exceptional woman give our dying race hope, that they’re nothing less than the divine feminine transformed into flesh. Bale’s mother and my own were such earthly representatives for the Goddess. Our motivations for voting down the Mate Law were hardly similar to Asmoday’s.” His aquamarine eyes narrowed as he studied Zep. “But you already know all of that, so I have to assume that you have a relevant point that I’m missing, Zep.” Zep chose to ignore the subtle threat in Che’s voice and shrugged negligibly. His light skin, classical features and waving, chestnut brown hair gave him a patrician quality to which his keen intelligence and frequently cool observations only added to. “I would think it’s obvious. King Bale has the very understandable excuse of grief to motivate his current passion, and you have the new, obviously…exciting involvement of a woman who has the potential to be a Watcher mate.” Che seethed. Sophia was his mate, not just a woman who had the potential to be any Watcher’s mate. Had Zep just given Duse a pointed glance? Yes, Che thought he must have, given the way Duse’s expression stiffened. By the Fathers, this situation with Duse, Jax and Skylar Ammadon sometimes seemed like it signaled the end of everything for the Watchers. “Surely I’m mistaken in thinking that you’re casting doubts upon the fact that Sophia was meant to be my mate,” Che said in a chilling tone that made every Watcher in the room still in tense wariness. “Of course not,” Zep said in a manner that seemed both placating and patronizing at once. Che forced himself to make conscious contact with each of his subtle bodies, one by one, calming himself in each before he uttered another word. By the fucking Fathers, why hadn’t he completed the damned mating process once and for all? It wasn’t as if Sophia didn’t want him. She clearly did, even if she did have the typical human insecurities and doubts. So why in Hades had he hesitated? But of course, part of him knew exactly why he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He desperately wanted Sophia to accept him willingly, even knowing what he was. “I can’t help but make the observation—” “You could if you really tried,” Che muttered irritably, unmoved by Bale’s quelling glance. Zep continued as though he’d never been interrupted. “That we’ve just been informed that an artifact that is of prime importance to our race has been stolen, and yet we’re focusing on Asmoday, who is no longer even among us.” “Are you unconscious, Zep?” Che asked forcefully. “I’m telling you that he is still among us, or at least, able to exert his influence among us.” 65

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Zep studied Che impassively. “I’m in full understanding that’s your story, Che.” “My story? Leave be, Duse! What the fuck is wrong with you, Zep?” Che asked through a snarl as he started aggressively toward Zep and Duse stepped between them to intervene. Zep remained seated, watching the proceedings calmly. “I’m just saying that as important as your experiences with Sophia have been, maybe we should be concentrating all of our energies on this crucial matter of the Stone being stolen,” Zep said as he caught Che’s furious eyes over Duse’s broad shoulder. “That’s what I am doing. What are you hoping to gain by calling me a liar, Zep? What’s your agenda, you pompous, aerial—” “Enough, Che,” Bale said abruptly. “He has the right to voice his opinion!” “And I have the right to demand satisfaction for being called a liar,” Che replied darkly, never removing his eyes from Zep. “I never said you were a liar, Che,” Zep prevaricated. “It certainly sounded like you were,” Duse bit out over his shoulder as Che resumed his efforts to get around him. Che flickered rapidly between subtle and physical bodies, but he was distracted, and Duse matched his consciousness with relative ease, continuing to block him. Duse and Che had a lot of experience in covering each other when one of them was in a temper. But Che suddenly broke free. “I said enough, Che!” Bale thundered. Che stopped himself, but only just. Zep glanced away nervously when he looked into the liquid fire of his furious eyes. A bitter, tense silence ensued. “As always, I appreciate all of the Council members’ opinion. But as the Watcher leader, the Dionytion Stone was specifically put under my care. This isn’t a matter for the Council’s vote. It’s my decision on how we’ll proceed in this,” Bale said in a voice that brooked no argument. “In this instance, I tend to suspect that Che is right and that Asmoday is somehow connected with the theft of the Dionytion Stone, although I can only hope that he’s wrong.” Everyone, including Che, stared at Bale with surprise. “The situation being what it is,” Bale continued evenly. “I’ve asked Jax to investigate the matter.” “No!” Che and Duse both shouted. Bale suddenly straightened and his eyes flashed with a white fire. “I’ve spoken.” There wasn’t a Watcher alive besides the other three Ammadons who would have gainsaid Bale when he looked like he did at that moment…and then only hesitantly. The eerie flames were banked until only Bale’s royal blue eyes remained, but the ice was still there when he spoke directly to Che and Duse. “It was the ruling of the remaining Council members and the other Watcher leaders who stood in place of us that Jax would serve his punishment by taking a binding oath to become our first law enforcement official, giving him the opportunity to redeem himself. You are bound by their judgment as much as you are by any Watcher law,” 66

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Bale warned them quietly. He had been the one that insisted the Ammadons remove themselves from the process of prosecuting Jax. Duse looked mutinous, but he didn’t trust himself to speak. Che spoke concisely for both of them, however. “I wouldn’t trust that traitorous, sneaky mate poacher to mail a letter for my secretary, let alone allow him to even hear Sophia’s name.” Bale glared ominously at Che. “Well, then you better get used to the idea of joining him as a Watcher outlaw, Che. You know as well as any of us does about Jax’s gift for divining secrets. I would think you would be glad of his assistance.” When he saw that Che was about to refute him again, he added coldly, “Jax is going to be here this evening to investigate this matter, and if you’re not completely cooperative with his efforts, I’ll have you placed under arrest and confined to an energy prison immediately. And wouldn’t that be a helpful place for you to be when Sophia is in clear danger, cousin?”

***** “Let me help you with that.” Sophia jumped like she’d been goosed. The tube of sunscreen she’d been holding popped out of her greasy fingers and fell to the beach. “Che! What…what are you doing?” He looked at her with contrived surprise as he maneuvered a reclining chair directly next to hers with a deft flick of his wrist. “I was told by the agent that the use of this beach was part of the rental agreement. Where’s Tony?” Sophia forced herself to close her mouth when Che casually whipped off his T-shirt and was left wearing nothing but a pair of bright blue swimming trunks that covered much of his long, muscular thighs but made up for it by riding erotically low on his lean hips and flat belly. It was just as well that his trunks were longer, Sophia thought with stunned awe, because from what she poignantly recalled about the size of his cock, Che would never be able to wear a shorter pair of trunks, let alone spandex briefs—not if he wanted to be remain even remotely decent, anyway. Not that the sight of his hewn, muscled torso and bronzed calves covered with a sprinkling of golden brown hair weren’t practically pornographic in and of themselves. Sophia was staring at the thin trail of sun-kissed hair that descended from his taut bellybutton before it disappeared beneath the low waistband of his trunks when she abruptly realized that he was standing very still…as though he were patiently allowing her to look her fill. Sophia shoved her face beneath the reclining chair in search of the tube of lotion, hoping to hide her pink cheeks. “Tony left earlier,” she muttered. “Why?” Che asked with vague curiosity. He was already fully aware that Tony Mendelero had left this morning with his suitcase in tow. Most of Che’s attention was

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presently captured by the enticingly feminine swell of Sophia’s hip, the elegant sweep of her bare back and a lovely, plump buttock that had been partially exposed by an upriding bikini brief as she evaded him by rooting around under the deck chair. “It’s a long, boring story, actually. Suffice it to say that it was necessary for me to…well, fire him, to be quite honest. He didn’t take it very well.” Che grunted. “Good riddance to him, as far as I’m concerned.” Sophia sat up so abruptly that the clip that had held her hair onto her head shifted, allowing dark gold strands to fall free haphazardly. Her face was flushed and damp from the sun and her discomposure. “He’s not a bad person. Anybody would be upset after being let go from a job that they’ve held for six years.” “Maybe, but it seems pretty crass just to leave you alone after what happened last night,” Che murmured from where he reclined insouciantly next to her. He waved the bottle of sunscreen casually in the air. Sophia scowled darkly and held at her hand. “I’m a grown woman, Che. I don’t require a man to keep watch over me. May I have it please?” she asked as she pointedly glared at the sunscreen, refusing to reach for it. “You’re not in a very good mood today.” Che felt a little guilty for teasing her, since he was just recovering from a foul mood himself. He’d sent Shem away and watched her for a full half-hour, invisible and ethereal, while he tried to calm his temper about what had occurred at the Council meeting. Damn Zep, and damn Bale, and damn Jax Ammadon for being such a bloody, blatant traitor when Che loved him like a brother. “What do you expect after last night?” Sophia demanded hotly. Che admired the volatility in her large, velvety brown eyes. He definitely could identify her fiery Greek heritage when she got angry. “Do you mean after the break-in?” he asked quietly. Sophia blinked. “Yes…” “Or do you mean after we brought each other off out here on the beach and I told you that I was only part human.” Sophia’s irritated expression collapsed. Silence stretched between them for several long seconds. “May I have that please?” she finally asked desperately, referring to the sunscreen. She knew that she sounded like an idiot, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say that would subsequently result in her own sanity. Because the thought that had haunted her restless night and heckled her consciousness all morning felt like it truly was threatening her sanity. Che wasn’t mad and he hadn’t been lying last night. As impossible as it seemed, she knew that to be a fact. And that was the realization that had her half convinced she was going stark raving mad. Che’s gaze at her softened. “You’re not mad, honey. Lay down and I’ll put the lotion on your back. It’ll be alright,” he told her with quiet reassurance when she

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opened her mouth to protest. “I can sense how upset you are, Sophia. If you let me touch you, my essences will be able to calm yours. And then I can try to explain.” Sophia’s perception of the incandescent, warm Tahoe day blurred hazily as she turned around in the chair and lay on her belly. Several tears scattered down her cheek as she listened to Che open the cap on the sunscreen. After a suspended moment, she felt his big hand gliding deliberately over her lower back. Despite her best efforts to do otherwise, she sobbed in fear and longing. “Shhh, it’ll be okay, Sophia. I promise,” he whispered feelingly near her ear. She stared sightlessly past him and shuddered with emotion. He forced his being into calm so that his subtle essences would soothe hers, but his heart squeezed painfully at seeing her in so much distress. His hand continued to massage her warm, soft flesh, as though he were physically loosening her emotional knots of confusion and anxiety. “It really was you touching me…making love to me last night at the Lone Wolf, wasn’t it?” she asked shakily between sobs. His hand paused on the swell of her right hip. “Yes,” he admitted as he resumed his ministrations. “I’m sorry, Sophia. I couldn’t help myself. You’re the most beautiful thing in existence to me.” The honest vulnerability in his deep voice made her crane her head up in awe to meet his gaze. “Why would you say that?” she asked starkly. But what she really meant was “why is that true?” And he knew it. Che swallowed heavily as his hand repeatedly palmed and caressed the side of her fragile rib cage, all the while achingly aware of her luminous, fierce life force. Her beauty struck him with a sharp, poignant pain of desire. “It’s true because you and I were meant to be together, Sophia,” he said calmly. “I’ve waited for you for my whole existence. I’ve waited for you for thousands and thousands of years.” Her mouth sagged open as she continued to stare at him. She abruptly reached out and gripped his hard biceps as though she were falling. “Oh God. I am going crazy, because I believe you! Why do I believe you?” she asked him incredulously. “Our subtle bodies were already highly compatible in composition and fit. But since we’ve come together, since I’ve begun to make love to you, they’ve begun to shape together, like a template, like two pieces of a puzzle. You know that I’m being truthful because we’re already fusing. We were meant to mate, to bond spirits. Soon, you’ll be able to read my thoughts and sensations with ease, just as I will yours.” “You’re some kind of ghost or something, aren’t you? But you feel so real.” Che gave a small smile and glanced down to where she squeezed his upper arm reflexively. “I’m no ghost. I’m very real. I have you to thank for that, honey. And stop worrying about going crazy. Some people see realities that aren’t really there because they can’t handle reality as they see it. Some people truly see other realms and go mad because they aren’t strong enough to handle what they see. But you’re different, Sophia. You’ve been this way for as long as you can remember, haven’t you? You’re an 69

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exceptional human, because you have the ability to see and hold your focus in other realities, and you’re emotionally strong enough to process and accept what you see.” “I don’t know what you mean,” Sophia muttered uneasily. Che gently removed her deathlike grip on his arm and placed her elbow back on the chair. He continued to rub the lotion into her back, using both his subtle touch and his physical one to reassure her and ground her in the solidity of the moment, knowing instinctively it was what she needed. “Yes, you do, honey. You can read other people’s thoughts sometimes, I’ll bet. And glean subtle emotional energies and their exchanges during interactions, things of which other people aren’t even aware? That’s why you’ve been so skilled in your diplomatic work and with your acting career, Sophia. Most people just exist in the physical world, but not you. Sometimes, you can see what’s invisible to others, can’t you?” Che asked softly. Sophia watched him with wide eyes. “You mean…like…when I’m sleeping?” Che was gratified to hear the return of the low, smooth quality of her voice that he loved, even if it was still edged with caution. He nodded slowly. “What happens to you, honey?” Sophia couldn’t bring herself to speak at first, having no real language for conversing about those experiences. It felt surreal to have someone broach the subject that she had kept safely secret since she was a child. “I go to a dream world. It became a game for me since I was very young, to learn how to…control myself there. I can’t describe it with words now, but I recognize it when I’m there.” “You’ve learned to focus your consciousness in a place that we call the Astral Plane. It’s an enormous accomplishment. It took me a hundred years to do it with as much skill as you, and I had teachers. You use your mental body to do that, Sophia, which is a subtler body than your physical one, made of finer, rarer essences. You have subtler bodies still, bodies that interpenetrate your physical body. Each one has a potentially separate reality. Perhaps you have some knowledge of those existences, as well, although it likely isn’t fully in your waking consciousness.” Sophia’s mind immediately leapt to another childhood secret, but she quelled it when she saw Che’s expression sharpen. “Whom do you mean when you say we?” He met her eyes soberly. After a full moment, his hand slowly stroked the indentation of her waist. It gratified him immensely to know how acutely she experienced his touch. “My kind are called Watchers, Sophia. Our mothers were human, but our Fathers…weren’t, to put it simply. The fact is that our origins are as unclear to us as our earliest memories. Consciousness on the physical world came to us slowly over time. You might say that our beginnings were dreamlike to us, even though that’s a term I use only for you, honey, seeing as how we really don’t sleep.”

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“But if your fathers weren’t human, then what were they?” Sophia asked. She’d twisted around as she watched him with a rapt focus. Che’s newly formed heart beat more rapidly at her question. Did she actually believe him? Yes, at least part of her did. The other part of her, the part that questioned her own sanity, would take longer to convince. Although completing the mating bond would go a long way to helping her assimilate their vastly different existences. He studied his hand as he deliberately opened it over her narrow waist. His cock twitched in longing. He could literally span her width with the width of his outstretched hand. “We’re not exactly sure. The Fathers were beings of subtler essences, to be sure. Our myths tell us that they weren’t of the earth, but we don’t know if that means that they were from different parts of the physical world, like other planets, for example, or if they weren’t of the material world, meaning a different realm that interpenetrates this one. Legends say that they begat us with several rare, exceptional human women whose essences were also subtler than most. We were all born males. But when our Fathers saw us, they were disappointed in the fact that we were sterile, both with human women and their own kind. As a consequence, they left us behind.” Sophia’s eyes burned. Che’s face looked emotionless, but Sophia something else entirely. “That’s so sad. What about your mothers?” Che began rubbing her soft, smooth flesh again, moving his hand lower, dipping his forefinger into the enticing little dimples in her back just above her black bikini bottoms. Would the miracles of the physical world ever cease to amaze him? He gave a small shrug. “Most of us know next to nothing about them, for they were mortal. The Ammadons know more than most, and I know even more of my mother than Bale, Duse and Jax know of theirs. If we were to consider our life spans relative to humans, it would be the equivalent of saying that our mothers died when we were only a few weeks old. But our records tell us more about them than any other of the Mothers. My mother and Bale, Duse and Jax’s mother were sisters, powerful Druagish priestesses. Paim and Batos, two of our wisest Watchers, hypothesize that our mothers were the reason for Bale’s attribution as king and leader of our kind, while Duse, Jax and I were always known as princes.” “Bale is the king of the Watchers?” Skylar asked, wide-eyed. “Yes.” “And Eli? He’s one of you as well?” Che just nodded. To his surprise, she sighed with relief. “What, honey?” “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m glad to hear it. I knew there was something odd about you three last night—something beyond that whole thing at the Lone Wolf, that is,” Sophia added under her breath. “It was eating away at me, but I couldn’t put it into words exactly.”

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Che smiled and reached up and brushed the pad of his thumb lightly across her full lower lip. He felt her go entirely still beneath him. “You did put it into words, but then you decided that your words were ridiculous.” She stared into his beautiful aquamarine eyes. How could he seem so distant and emotionless at times, when at others—like now—his gaze sparkled with infinite warmth and amusement? His mesmerizing touch on her back and on her lower lip was hardly cool or impassive, either. A slow, insistent ache began to throb at her core. “You actually knew I was thinking that?” she asked in a hushed voice that reflected their growing awareness of each other. “Yes,” he said softly. “I also know what you’re thinking right now.” Her eyes widened slightly in alarm. “Che? What the…what are you…oh!” Sophia sputtered when he calmly slid his hand beneath her bikini panties as he continued to spear her with his gaze. He gently massaged one round buttock, then another, firmly cupping her from beneath and shaping her to his big palm. “You have a phenomenal ass, Sophia.” “What’s that got to do with anything? Che! You still have a lot more explaining to do, you know.” “I know. But there’s no hurry for that, like there is for…” Sophia gasped as he nudged apart her thighs and found her molten channel with his long middle finger. “This,” he finished huskily. “Umm. From the feel of things, you agree with me.” “Oh God,” she muttered thickly as he slowly slid his finger into her body. The sensation of being penetrated by him while the hot sunshine beat down on her bare skin was indescribably sensual and arousing. Despite herself, she curved her spine and lifted her bottom slightly to grant him more access to her. “How can you think about sex at a time like this?” He laughed softly. The sound tickled her spine like gentle knuckles had just run down it. “How can I not? Watchers have very strong sexual appetites, Sophia.” “They…they do?” she whimpered softly as he began to stroke her in a lazy, languorous motion that caused her clit to throb hotly. “Umm-hmm,” he growled low like a well-satisfied cat as he watched his hand move into her flesh. “A woman’s sexual response feeds us, providing us with the sustenance we need to exist in the physical world. For most of us, having a human woman respond to us sexually is our first solid memory. The acknowledgment of a woman’s body and mind, her focused response to us, is what brought us into our awareness of the material world, what made us long for a physical form.” Her head swung around to study him at that. Although she hadn’t denied him access to her body, Che definitely felt her subtler substances resist him. He slowly, regretfully removed his finger from her, but kept his hand warmly cupping her seeping sex and lower buttocks.

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“What do you mean by that, exactly?” “You’ve probably heard references throughout human history to women experiencing…visitations while they slept or dreamt?” “You mean like an incubus? Are you trying to tell me that’s what you are?” Sophia asked, eyes wide with panic. She felt her heartbeat begin to beat wildly at her throat. Oh no…this was too much. He was just way too much. She closed her eyes briefly in selfcontempt. What had she expected? What had she been hoping? That this sublimely beautiful, sensual, utterly masculine creature was hers, and hers alone? No, that was never the way of it, was it? Just like all the men she’d known and lusted after or loved in the past—all the human men, that is—Che just wanted her for something, but in his case, it was just a little bit more of an elemental motive than for human men. “You’re wrong, Sophia. I am yours and yours alone, just as you’re mine.” Sophia felt his sudden fierceness like a tangible force. His large hand on her flesh began to emanate waves of gently pulsing, erotic heat. Was that anger she felt flowing off him like a physical force? If it was, it must be mixed with a good dose of palpable lust, too. “I’m not asleep, Che. I’m awake. And no matter how I behaved last night, no matter how much I…” Sophia paused uncertainly. Am attracted seemed like such a lame words for what she felt for Che Ammadon. Burn might be more appropriate, if it could anywhere closely imply the enormous sensual hunger that she felt, or want, if the word implied the degree of mandatory necessity that a person felt for their next breath when they were being deprived of air. The language that she’d used her entire life just didn’t suffice when it came to her feelings for Che. Still, she had her pride, cold solace that it was. “Desire you,” she finally sufficed. “I don’t want to give you the impression that I want to fool around with you for a few times, even if the only result is immense pleasure for me, and you know…” She flushed hotly, feeling ridiculous saying it because her rational mind knew how it sounded. “Well…continued existence for you.” She saw Che’s hard jaw tense at that. His emotions rolled off him like a great storm. “What?” she asked in rising concern. She’d never experienced anything like what she felt from him at that moment. “I’m sorry, Che. I know most women would take you up on your offer in a second. I’m sure they do on a regular basis. I mean you’re so,” she waved her hands around in the air hopelessly, “and you seem like you really know what you’re doing around a woman’s body. All you probably have to do is look at a woman, and she’s most likely spreading her—” “Hush, Sophia. You’re rambling.” He waited until the dazed expression went out of her liquid brown eyes and they sharpened on him in acute irritation. “You’re right about some things and dead wrong about others,” he said. “I wish I could make this whole process easier for you, honey. The only comfort I might be able to offer is to say that you’re turning me inside out, as well. Do you think I don’t know 73

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that you’re afraid of being used, Sophia? I’d like to rip the heart out of the chest of that gray-haired asshole who told you that you were the most gifted woman that he’d ever met and that you smelled like a meadow after a spring rain and then took that phone call from his wife while you were lying in bed next to him one morning. I’d rather just sink my corporeal fist into the face of that slick, black-haired kid who seemed to worship the ground that you walked on, and then let that director that you respected so much fuck him the second you agreed to introduce the two or them, or that—” “Shut up, Che! How dare you, you son of a—” “I’m sorry,” he breathed out with eyes blazing as he cradled her tense jaw in his palm. “But how else can I tell you that I know? That I know that you want me, but that you’re afraid? You never let me finish. Sophia, you’re not just another nighttime seduction for me. You’re my life mate. Watchers share a lifelong dream of finding a woman like you, a woman powerful enough to comprehend and sustain what we truly are, a woman who gives us everything…including our permanent physical body from her response to us. No, Sophia, listen!” Che insisted when he saw her open her mouth in protest. He tried to calm his riled emotions as they stared at each other in the tense silence that followed. “You are the only woman in existence who has the essences, the unique spiritual template and subtle chemistry to have gifted me with my physical body. Because that’s what you did, Sophia, you brought me into full existence here on the physical plane. We’re not just meant to be mates because I found you before my brethren did and recognized what you are. You’re my mate because like draws like. You’re my mate because our spirits fit together so perfectly.” His eyes flamed hotly down at her. “You’re my mate, Sophia Galanis, because you’re my mate.” Sophia’s lips fell open slightly at his tautological, yet strangely adroit argument. Che breathed deeply, trying to calm his erratically vibrating essences. By the Fathers, what did he hope to attain by shouting at her like this? There was a much better way to both gain her understanding and soothe her considerable emotional unrest. “Che, don’t,” Sophia moaned softly in protest when he began to slide her bikini briefs down her thighs. His eyes flamed in something other than turmoil when she wiggled her hips and ass and pressed up against his hand at her lower back. “Stay still, honey.” He glanced down to meet her troubled eyes. “I know you think I’m just being selfish, and I am, but only partially. By touching and pleasuring each other, our subtle essences will come into closer contact, blending and fusing. It will soothe your mind and put you in a better place to view what must seem very bizarre and alien to you.” He leaned over her, still holding her firmly at her lower back, and slid her bikini panties down over her legs and feet. Sophia groaned in pleasure when he caressed her sun-warmed heels and calves before he reached up and calmly pulled the tie of her bikini top.

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“Are Bale and Eli still up at the lodge?” she asked uncertainly as Che swept aside her last meager stitch of clothing. She lay before him, utterly vulnerable and nude with the bright Tahoe sunlight and Che’s fiery gaze bathing her in sensual heat. “What did I tell you last night, Sophia?” he asked distractedly as he swept his large hand down her side, lightly caressing the globe of a full breast, before sweeping into the indentation of her waist, caressing the curve of her hip and then plumping an ass cheek with obvious relish. Sophia’s chin rested on her shoulder as she watched with a heavy-lidded gaze as he palmed and squeezed her flesh. Wetness trickled down her left thigh. “You told me that no one would see us. But how? I don’t understand.” “Look up at the lodge,” Che muttered. He had a tense expression on his face as he stood and straddled Sophia’s chair. “Oh my…Che, what did you do?” she asked in panic. She whipped her head around, dislodging her hair even further from on top of her head, only to find Che spreading her legs and kneeling between them, his gaze focused between her thighs. The mind-boggling fact that the lodge had completely disappeared temporarily melted from her consciousness under the influence of Che’s hot stare. “Che?” she demanded finally in a strangled voice. “It’s still there, honey, don’t worry. It’s just an illusion; not a particularly complicated bit of magic either, just a matter of bending the light. I’ll teach you how to do it sometime,” he said distractedly. “Bring your knees up, Sophia. Here…” He assisted her by lifting her pelvis gently. When he released her, Sophia realized she’d never felt so vulnerable and disoriented in her life, but never so horny, either. He had moved her so that her rear end was sticking straight up into the air and her knees were tucked beneath her. “Put the house back!” she insisted raggedly. She didn’t know why, but it became of paramount importance to her to see the disappeared Sierra Lodge again. “It’s there, honey,” Che said gently as he parted her bottom cheeks. Sophia shifted her gaze abruptly and sighed with relief when she saw the Sierra Lodge, perfectly intact. “It was all along. I was just trying to show you one of the ways that I’ll always protect you. There are other things—a ward that acts as a powerful shield for keeping others out and our energies in, for instance. But you wouldn’t be able to see that, although you could sense it if you tried.” He paused, his eyes glued to the awesome sight just inches from his face. He’d fully spread her honey-hued, round ass cheeks in order to expose her treasures to his hungry eyes. The two plump pillows of flesh parenthesized her bare, glossy sex. The smooth, delicate folds of her cunt were already flushed and pink. Che smiled, enormously pleased by her innate sensuality. The sight of the blood-swollen, tiny, erect bundle of flesh that slightly protruded from her lips and the puckered, closed bud of her asshole made his cock bob heavily forward as though it had a mind of its own.

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Where was a Watcher to begin with so much glory spread before him? He lowered his nose to within an inch of her pussy and inhaled with sublime appreciation. He heard her soft cry of anticipation, echoing his own feelings, as he used his thumb and forefinger to slightly widen the moist opening. And with no further ado, he lowered his head and slid his tongue in deeply to taste her. Sophia’s eyes opened wide in an expression of sheer incredulity at the intense pleasure. Her fingers closed tightly on the metal frame of the chair, making her knuckles turn white, as though she hung on for dear life. Her eyelids scrunched shut as every cell in her body tingled in awakened awareness of what occurred at her sex. She bit her lower lip desperately to keep from screaming out her pleasure, but it didn’t stop a series of broken, muffled cries from exuding from her throat. The warm sunshine beat down on her nude body with gentle, resonant waves of energy as Che continued to tongue-fuck her pussy with a slow, languorous, sensual appreciation that Sophia knew she’d never experienced with another man in her history. Although there was that dream… Her eyes abruptly flashed open. The memory of an electric, aquamarine gaze staring up at her from between her thighs made her gasp. “Che, you’ve done this to me before, haven’t you?” she asked huskily. “You’ve made love to me…like you said Watchers usually make love to women…while they sleep?” Che didn’t answer for several long, tense seconds. He couldn’t bring himself to withdraw from her honeyed depths. Every time he speared her narrow channel, he hoped he was going just a little farther, a little higher. He wished he could drench himself in her cum. He considered refusing to answer her until after he’d felt her spasm in climax around him, but he knew how selfish that would be. Sophia quivered in protest when he slowly withdrew his long, talented tongue. “Yes. The night before last,” he said gruffly. She felt him grasp both of her ass cheeks more firmly in his palms, folding her back even farther. She panted as he placed several light, quicksilver kisses and elusive flicking licks with his tongue on various portions of the damp, quivering tissues that he’d exposed between her legs. Damn him. It felt so good and it was making it extremely hard for her to speak. “Ch…Che?” was all she managed to get out, allowing her tone of tense exasperation to speak for itself. Che sighed as he removed his mouth from Sophia’s sex, telling himself that it would only be a temporary deprivation, whether Sophia insisted on more talk or not. “I first saw you on the Astral Plane, Sophia. You had just defended one of my greatest enemies, Asmoday, because you were concerned about me striking out in anger. Afterwards, I followed you to the physical world, to your bed. I wanted to make love to you more than anything, despite the fact that I haven’t engaged in random lovemaking for years now, because of… Better get to that part later. Suffice it to say that there was something about you that piqued more than my hunger for sustenance. I knew that you were uncannily strong for a human already, because of your ability to hold focus on the Astral Plane.” 76

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He paused when he noticed that the whites of her eyes were notably pronounced as she twisted her head to watch him. Without thinking, Che cupped one round ass cheek from below and sent his forefinger deep inside her pussy. Sophia gasped at the impact of the sudden erotic invasion combined with the steady, indirect pressure he applied to her clit as he gently pressed up on her. “Che, don’t…” “Hush, honey,” he murmured in a roughened voice. He stroked along her sunwarmed spine soothingly. “I’ll keep explaining, but this will help you to absorb what I say. Trust me. Hearing these things, having your sense of reality challenged is like a blow to your spirit. Pleasure and the blending of our essences will act like a layer of insulation for you, letting you mentally accept what you can and keep in abeyance that which you’re not yet ready to hear until a time when you are. I know what I’m doing, Sophia.” Sophia let her head fall and scrunched her eyes shut tightly. He knew what he was doing all right. She was going to be exploding within seconds if he kept up that indirect, yet pulsing, hot friction on her clit, not to mention the pleasure that his finger-fucking evoked. Immediately, as if he’d read her mind—which Lord help her, he probably had—the relentless pressure eased slightly, just enough for Sophia’s double vision to ease back into focus once again. She felt him lean over her and press his lips warmly to her waist. “Okay?” “Yes,” Sophia whispered into the canvas cloth of the deck chair. His tender gesture and the concern in his deep voice gave her a different, but no less powerful pleasure than his talented manipulations on her sex evoked. “I began to make love to you psychokinetically while you slept in the normal way of Watchers. When you came, I fell over on the balcony and banged my knees on the wood. It hurt. A lot. Do you know why?” he asked gruffly as he squeezed his second finger in with his first and began to fuck her with a quicker, harder rhythm. “No…why?” Sophia managed between pants of pleasure. “Because your Rush—the energy that you release during orgasm—was hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than a typical woman’s. In that one miraculous moment, when your energy sheared into my being, you gifted me with my physical body, Sophia. Afterwards, I made love to you repeatedly while you slept, shaping our subtle bodies even more precisely…mating with you.” “So, it’s done?” Sophia asked breathlessly. Sweat dampened her face and chest. She moved her pelvis in a natural counter-rhythm to Che’s fucking fingers. Erotic slurping and slapping sounds entered Sophia’s dazed awareness as he became more forceful in his movements. A glorious release from all of the friction and pleasure that Che built in her hovered tantalizingly nearer and nearer. “Not quite yet, although every time you come for me, we’re a little…bit…closer,” Che muttered tensely as he powered his fingers into her in rhythm with his words to

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highlight his point. “It’s different for every couple, but I believe that when I finally put my cock in you, and your physical body finally shapes to mine, when my balls finally kiss you right here, then we’ll be fully mated at last.” He knelt and quickly flicked his tongue over her swollen sex lips before transferring to her protruding clit, treating it to a brisk lateral lashing. Sophia pitched forward and shouted out as the first wave of orgasm slammed through her. Che held her hip firmly and pulsed her back against his rigid, pleasuring tongue, ensuring himself that she received the full impact that her orgasm could confer. It was a skill for which all Watchers strived, but that few had mastered to the degree that Che had. To bring a woman off with ease was one thing, but to know just how to stroke her in order to maximize her orgasmic pleasure, to guide her across the subtle, powerful Rush of her energies like a butterfly mastering flight through a brisk wind, to play her flesh in order to evoke the most powerful blend of friction and release, like a master musician would his instrument—that was something that Che excelled at doing. As her Rush pounded into his subtle essences, he was able to stretch and amplify and prolong it, until every last drop of quivering pleasure had been tasted and savored by both of them. Sophia opened her eyes dazedly to the reality of the sunny day. She’d only been vaguely aware of Che flipping back the armrests of their chairs so that he could stretch out next to her, or the fact that he’d lifted and readjusted her until her upper body weight rested on his chest with his arms encircling her. For the most part, she existed in a bubble of warm sunshine, complete security and utter repletion. She’d never felt this good in her life. Her hand moved with sensual appreciation across sun-kissed skin and dense muscle. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eyes on,” she murmured as she circled her finger around the coppery disc of his nipple. “And that’s saying something, because I’ve seen some pretty awesome samples of the male of the species in my day.” Che’s lips twitched with amusement, but his cock did the same with pure lust. “Are you trying to make me jealous, Sophia? Be careful, it might work.” But Sophia only half heard him as she leant down to delicately taste what she touched. She was vaguely aware of Che’s hiss of tense pleasure. He tasted divine. She became hungrier for him as she sampled each of his nipples in turn, then dipped her tongue into the furrow of his rib cage, tasting salt and fire and man. When she came to the white scar on his ridged, tight abdomen, she glanced up at him uncertainly. He was watching her with blazing eyes. “That Watcher that you spoke of, your enemy…he did this to you?” Che nodded. Wordless meaning passed between them faster than the speed of light. Without hesitation now, Sophia lowered her head and traced the long scar with her tongue. Emotion swelled in Che’s chest, feeling strange and overwhelming. Without being entirely aware of what he was doing—he’d planned on convincing Sophia to come

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inside with him into the bedroom so that he could finish making love to her—he lowered his swim trunks. His cock felt iron-hard in his hand. Sophia paused. Her tongue ran over her lower lip in anxious anticipation. Just the sight of Che’s cock bathed in golden sunlight was enough to cause powerful changes in her body. Her skin seemed to pull tight in prickly pleasure. Her breasts felt huge and achy, as if they were desperate to be touched. And best not to even consider the chemical and physical reaction of her pussy that the sight of Che’s cock evoked. The sun gilded his erect flesh as he caressed himself slowly at the root, then lightly shifted his full, round testicles. Sophia couldn’t have imagined a more erotic sight if she tried. It was downright pagan in its intensity. She reached out and placed her hand higher up on him, gripping his fleshy, pronounced head, then sliding down over the first several inches of his shaft. They didn’t speak for a minute as she stroked the upper half of him and he slowly moved his large hand over his lower portion and all the while the brilliant sun beat down on both of them with sensual heat. Nevertheless, the silence between them, broken only occasionally by Che’s tense grunts of pleasure, was full and taut with meaning. Che went completely still as he watched her lower her mouth to within an inch of the head of his cock. He knew what she was thinking, but he could only hope that she would express her concern so that he could reassure her. He pulled gently at the clip that haphazardly still confined a portion of her hair and tossed it to the sand beneath them. His fingers ran with sensual appreciation through the sun-warmed silk. Sophia sighed with pleasure as she touched the tip of her tongue to velvety skin that stretched with impossible tautness over his blood-engorged member. She heard him gasp at the same time that she saw the round globule of pre-cum seep from his slit. She sunk her tongue into it greedily, savoring his masculine, salty essence. Her hand fisted him tighter, moving up on him, milking another bead of moisture from him. “Che,” she whispered hoarsely as she dazedly watched the tiny globe of cum swell in his slit. “I want to…but you’re so large. I don’t think it’s physically possible to bring you into my mouth very far.” “It’s okay, honey,” he reassured her huskily as he raked his fingers through her hair and watched her through desire-leaden eyelids. “Just take what you can and it will bring me more pleasure than you know.” She moved forward eagerly, as though relieved by his statement. He gripped her shoulder, stopping her. He waited until she looked up at him, her big, liquid brown eyes turning him on at that moment in a way that a woman’s gaze never had before in his long history. “Lean this way,” he said thickly as he adjusted her upper body. “I want to watch you.”

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Chapter Six Sophia was too eager for the feeling of taking him into her mouth to do anything but quickly comply. Once she hovered over him, though, the practical complications of the maneuver struck her again even more powerfully. She opened wide, stretching her jaw and encircling his wide girth. For the next few inches of him, she had to push him between her straining lips. But soon, she held every succulent bit of the fleshy, thick cap of his penis in her mouth. Sophia loved the sensation, but soon realized that she was having difficulty controlling her salivation while her mouth was stretched so tightly. “Don’t worry about it, honey,” Che told her in a low growl, easily reading her mind in her vulnerable state. “I like the sound of all that wetness when you suck…ahh.” His words were cut off abruptly as she began to do so with more gusto. The slurping, sucking sounds she made drove him wild. Her hand continued to pump him below her mouth, pushing him ever so slightly, but steadily, farther into her warm cavern, until she enveloped him two inches past the rim of his head. The feeling of her running her quick tongue over his exquisitely sensitive head and applying a mind-numbing suction was erotic enough, but the sight of his cock stuffed into her stretched lips got him so excited that he had to force himself to glance out to the greenish-blue lake on several occasions to keep from losing control. She seemed to enjoy what she was doing so much, and her head was bobbing with such an enthusiastic rhythm over him that Che was surprised when she rose and he sprung out of her mouth with an erotic popping noise. “Sophia, honey…” “Shhh,” she soothed him distractedly as she quickly repositioned herself so that she was kneeling between his spread knees. He found the focus on her face and the moistness around her mouth to be incredibly exciting, but when she shooed away his hand, fisted him in her palm and ran her wet, red tongue up the entire length of his shaft, he almost lost it completely. “By the Fathers, honey, that feels so fucking good,” he groaned out as he continued to watch the limber antics of her tongue. Her tight fist followed the tease of her tongue with a hard, relentless caress. His eyes widened in arousal when she took one of his balls between her fingers and squeezed gently while she put the other into her mouth. She sucked gently, but steadily. Che’s vision temporarily went completely white for a few moments. Gods, was he unintentionally communicating to her exactly what he liked? He panted heavily as he watched her stroke his cock long and hard, and then hover over the head again. Che thought surely that the sight of her stretching her lips over his girth and hearing her sweet, avid sucking would make him come immediately. He was

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already right on the edge. But instead, she gripped him firmly at his base, opened her lips slightly over him and waggled his long cock across her lips. It was an incredibly erotic sight for both of them. Che had the stark vision of how it would look when he erupted on her open lips any second now. Then she slid her hand to just beneath his thick base, attenuating her movements, forcing his sensitive flesh to beat rhythmically against the solid wall of her closed teeth with a shocking degree of precise friction. Che grabbed her head and came with a howl of stunned gratification. Pleasure rocketed and splintered through his flesh. He managed to keep his eyes opened long enough to see his seed jetting onto Sophia’s full, open lips and chin. Then she’d stretched her mouth wide and brought him into her warmth. He became vaguely aware after several suspended seconds that someone had been yelling their fool head off, only sheepishly realizing awhile later that it had been him. But he couldn’t help himself. The pleasure she’d given him had been unthinkably immense. He couldn’t recall ever coming so thunderously, so mindlessly. His eyes snapped open in dawning panic. She was kneeling still beneath his spread legs. But she’d moved down farther on the deck chair. And the whites of her eyes were in clear evidence again. “I’m sorry. I should have made it so that you didn’t see until I prepared you,” he said slowly. By the Fathers, was she about to run, screaming in fear and panic? He honestly couldn’t read her at that moment. “I have seen you before last night. I remember now,” she whispered. Her eyes flicked over him anxiously. He was back to his human form, but the sight of the creature that had leapt into brief existence as Che roared out his orgasm a few moments ago would be forever branded on her memory, unearthly bright eyes so fierce that they might have blinded her with their focused consciousness if he had remained in that form for long—a being that was also a weapon, honed and precise and battle ready. Che forced himself into calm before he spoke. “It’s our way, Sophia. What you saw just now—and the other night, on the Astral Plane—was my Truest Form. We take it in the physical realm, but rarely enough. When we climax, during immense emotional chaos, and when we choose to take the Path of Sorrow and death.” “You can die?” Sophia asked tensely. “Death is a relative term, honey, and that’s true for humans, too. Very few Watchers have ever died because one would have to be fully, entirely corporeal in order to do so, and that rarely ever happens among us. Bale is the most powerful Watcher in existence. Duse has done some tests on his subtle and physical bodies. He says that Bale is aging, albeit extremely slowly. We believe that as members of our race become more and more corporeal, we’ll eventually die, just as humans do, but over a much longer lifespan. Sophia,” he changed topic and tone abruptly. “Stop looking at me like that. At least tell me what you’re thinking.” Her eyes softened, but he still sensed her wariness.

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“It’s a shock, that’s all. I mean, I thought I believed you before, but seeing you like that…I’m not sure what I’m experiencing right now, Che.” He nodded stiffly. What she said made perfect sense. How could he have been so insensitive as to lose himself in his pleasure like that, with no regard for her fragile state? “I wanted you to lose yourself in the pleasure!” Sophia said with sudden passion, reading his mind instinctively. “That was the best part about it.” She realized she was blushing like a shy virgin, not an almost thirty-six-year-old woman who may not have the sexual of experience of many, but still had made love to men in many different ways, including giving head more times that she cared to recall at this point. So why was she blushing so hotly now? Even as she asked herself, though, she knew. What she’d just done with Che had been shockingly intimate. She wondered why she’d never realized before that intimacy implied a heightened awareness of oneself and one’s lover. Intimacy was just another word for focused consciousness, which was exactly what Che most represented to her. She stood on the beach and reached for the towel that had fallen below the chair. She wrapped herself in it, even though her skin was delightfully warm and she still tingled with erotic awareness. It was a meager barrier, but she needed it at that moment. The vibrant reality merging with the stark unreality of Che left her feeling exposed and raw, both in spirit and flesh. He just watched her unblinkingly for a tension-filled moment. When he stood abruptly and pulled up his trunks around his trim hips, Sophia regarded him uncertainly. “Are you leaving?” she asked in her characteristic, smooth, low voice. His aquamarine eyes speared her. “Is that what you want?” “No.” He stared across the shining, brilliant blue expanse of Lake Tahoe. His fingers raked through his tousled brownish-blond hair restlessly. “Nevertheless, it’s what I’m going to do.” Sophia’s lips fell open in surprised hurt. She hadn’t expected him to say that. “Oh, well…” “Stop, honey. You misunderstand me.” Che hated the span of six feet that separated them, but he didn’t attempt to go to her. She needed to decide what she wanted now. Giving her the power to decide their fate was the most difficult decision he’d ever made. What if she refused him? He’d be the only Watcher in history that had ever been turned down by the woman meant to be his mate. Of course, he could encourage her…bowl her over with the sheer power of pleasure. But he couldn’t do that. Not to the lovely, velvety-eyed woman who currently watched him with a trepidation that cut deeper than a sharp spear into his newly formed flesh. “I thought that nothing would matter more than completing the bond,” he said gruffly. “I told myself that it was all that mattered because once the bond is complete, I 82

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could work the spell that would keep you safe from power-hungry Watchers like Asmoday.” He shook his head with a grim expression when he saw the question in her eyes. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe, honey.” “I know, Che. That’s not what I meant.” “But since I’ve been with you,” he continued, “since I’ve been changed by your spirit, once I understood how you’ve been hurt by others, I’ve realized there was something even more important than seeing the bond complete, crucial though that is. I want your trust, Sophia.” Neither of them spoke for several seconds as the waves lapped gently on the beach behind them. He gave her a small, reassuring smile before he turned to go. “Che, wait.” He kept his face blank of all expression as he turned to her. “I don’t really think I can wrap my mind about what you mean by all this mating business. I just know that I don’t want you to go.” “Sophia, if I stay, I don’t think I can…” His eyes ran over her hotly, leaving her in little doubt of what he meant. “I know,” she said with a nod. “I don’t want you control yourself. I want to go to bed with you.” Che felt his heartbeat pulse with uncomfortable clarity in his ears. “It won’t just be about a few hours of sex, Sophia,” he said gently. “Do you really understand that?” “I told you that I’m not sure about anything. But I do know that I want you, Che. If it’s true that other Watchers have taken mates before, then those human women couldn’t have understood everything completely in the beginning either, could they?” Che hesitated. He’d never really thought of it that way in the past. But of course, Sophia must be right. Complete understanding of such a new world view took time. “Let’s go up to my bedroom,” Sophia whispered, vaguely shocked at her boldness. Che Ammadon had effortlessly created an inferno of need in her that desperately required a quenching. It was all she could consider at that tense moment. Che took one look at the luminous, desire-darkened eyes of the woman who was destined to be his life mate and reached for her hand. How in Hades could he turn down the temptation of that? He was only a Watcher, after all.

***** Sophia laughed with delight when she finally stood and inspected their handiwork. Che had muscled her mattress out onto the cool, breezy balcony outside her bedroom, but they had refastened the sheets and put the pillows on their makeshift love nest together.

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Sophia had just tossed a thick blanket at the foot of the bed, imagining that they might get chilly later, after their sweat-dampened skin had cooled and the bright sunshine had begun to fade. She glanced over her shoulder, both excited and selfconscious by the direction of her thoughts. Her brows creased in confusion because her bedroom appeared to be completely empty. “Che?” she asked with a smile as she walked into the room. But no, although he’d been right here earlier, helping her arrange the bed, caressing her warmly whenever he got the chance, stealing kisses that ended up leaving them both breathless and teasing her while that sexy, mischievous sparkle lit up his aquamarine eyes, he was currently nowhere in sight. Seeing isn’t everything, honey. “Che?” Sophia felt warm breath mist her and then firm, warm lips whispering over her cheek and jaw. Her heart began to hammer heavily in her breast, but she forced herself to stay very still and examine the experience with as much objectivity as she could. It was difficult, though, when she felt Che slide his hand beneath the short robe she’d thrown on while they were making the bed and settle over her thumping heart. Don’t be afraid, honey. “I’m not afraid,” she whispered. “Is this some kind of Watcher law or custom? Are you supposed to make love to me like you did at the Lone Wolf?” Sophia hoped that she’d kept the disappointment from her voice. Having him pleasure her incorporeally had been incredible, but she’d rather see every inch of his beautiful body and look into his singular eyes while he was inside her. It was something she’d fantasized about since she first recalled looking into his hyperconscious, summertime eyes. She sensed his chuckle more than heard it. Don’t worry, Sophia. Watchers don’t believe in impinging on an individual’s rights with thousands of ridiculous laws. I wouldn’t dream of loving you any other way than with the body with which you honored me. Sophia felt him turn her slightly. Her hair parted and he placed a hot kiss on her nape. The kiss electrified her as if Che somehow knew that specific, tiny portion of skin would be supersensitive for her. Shivers coursed down her spine pulling her nipples instantly erect. No sooner did she have the realization when gentle fingers were there, soothing the taut buds, then creating more friction. Sophia groaned. She thrust her hands out to the side and swept in back of her. Her moan of arousal turned to one of dismay. “Why can’t I feel you?” Because I’m not in physical form, honey. I’m holding my consciousness in my desire body, or emotional body. I have a stronger one than many Watchers because I’m strongest in the elements of fire and water. “But why can I feel your hand on me?” I’m stimulating you psychokinetically. It’s sort of hard to explain, but to me it feels like I’m touching you, too. But I’m only manifesting change in the physical world right now through the 84

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medium of your nervous system. If I were to make a change in the physical world, like this… Sophia’s eyes rounded when the opening of her robe widened until her breasts were fully exposed. I would have to identify with my etheric body, but keeping it solid in the physical world for an extended period of time requires an enormous amount of energy. Making love in the desire body is very pleasurable and requires less energy, but it’s easy to become swept up into the sensations, and things can become dreamlike too easily. Maybe you can begin to see why Watchers have always craved the physical form. Sophia’s focused on his words with sharp interest until he began to stimulate her. Her eyes fluttered closed and her mouth sagged open when she felt exquisite, tiny ephemeral kisses and licks on both of her nipples at once, as if a tiny mouth had been assigned to pleasure each individual nerve ending in those sensitive areas. She felt her knees weaken and her pussy became instantly molten. She realized with a vague sense of shock that she was seconds from coming. Suddenly, the sensation lessened and she found that she could breathe again. You see one of the many advantages of making love with the desire body. Sophia nodded dumbly, suddenly thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to make love with Che in that way… Not a chance, honey. “Well, then why did you…” She stopped herself from saying become invisible, already sensing how crude such an expression would sound to Che. “Identify with your desire body?” Much to her amazement, she actually sensed Che hesitate. That wasn’t embarrassment she felt coming from him, was it? I always imagined what it would be like to make love to my mate—how erotic, how wonderful it would be to take physical form in front of her while she watched, even if she hadn’t yet climaxed and provided me with the energy for a temporary corporeal body. Sophia swallowed. Her body felt heavy and hot. She recognized that Che had just revealed a sexual fantasy to her. Although it wasn’t something that should have made a human aroused, considering the fact that it seemed to be a fantasy strictly associated with Watcher ways, it did. She’d divined Che’s emotional meaning with startling accuracy, bringing her a giant step closer in being able to comprehend his world. The powerful, sharp edge of lust and longing that he currently felt cut deeply into her, making her feel restless and very aroused. What do you want me to do? She felt so connected to Che at that moment that she didn’t realize she’d just spoken to him telepathically until she sensed his smile. Take off your robe and lie down on our bed. Sophia smiled at that, too. It was their bed because they’d made it together…and for the purpose it would serve now. The sheets were cool beneath her naked skin, already chilled by the shadows and breeze. Not twenty feet away from the balcony, the sun filled the air with golden light and reflected brightly off the gemlike waters of Lake Tahoe. At this time of year, the temperature difference between the sun and shade might be a full fifteen degrees. But 85

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Sophia didn’t mind. She was too aroused to feel the chill. The sheets felt sensual and comforting against her prickly, sensitized skin. She powerfully sensed Che’s presence, but she still couldn’t see him. When a breeze caressed her belly and breasts, she wondered if it was his subtle touch but couldn’t be sure. When he spoke, his voice was in her head, but it strangely felt like it also was coming from somewhere near her right ear. Spread your thighs, lovely. Open yourself to me. Sophia complied, feeling the cool air lick at her inner thighs and exposed sex as she did so. She felt vulnerable in that moment, but so cherished that it made her eyes burn. Cherished, yes, but so much more. Someday you’ll understand. You’re the most beautiful thing in existence to me, Sophia. Your skin is so flawless and soft. Sophia stopped breathing when she felt a touch as light as butterfly wings caress her cheek. And you taste like you look—sweet and smooth. Sophia inhaled sharply and her hips shifted restlessly when Che tasted her, making a quick, flicking movement with his tongue at her inner thigh. Your eyes are as soft as velvet, innocent sometimes, wise and depthless at others. But when you looked up at me while my cock was in your mouth earlier your eyes told quite another story. Sophia felt her cheeks heating, but knew it was only partially from embarrassment. The memory of sucking on the thick, fleshy, arrow-shaped head of his cock gave her a pinch of pleasurable pain at her clit. It didn’t help things when she felt her nipples being caressed with airy fingers. She closed her thighs to grant herself relief at the pressure that built at her core. Stay spread, honey. I like you like that. Wider, Sophia. Sophia responded to the thick tension in his voice, forcing her thighs as wide as she could. It felt incredibly exciting to her, both her position and the fact that Che had ordered her to do it and that she had complied. Your breasts are perfect. I like the size, large enough to excite me and so firm. Everything about you is so delicate and feminine. Your nipples are so sensitive. It seems like all I have to do is think about them and you grow stiff for me. Sophia closed her eyes and her head began to thrash mindlessly on the pillow because he was stimulating her crests again. Every nerve ending that she possessed in her nipples had just been set afire. There was some kind of connection that led directly from her nipples to her clit that Sophia had never known existed until she met Che. There are other pathways. They just need to be activated. What do you think of this one, lovely? Sophia gasped for air and her eyes sprung open in shock. Pleasure zipped like a bolt of lightning from her nipples directly to her anus, causing that nerve-packed opening to pulse and resonate with sex energy. Sophia pressed her bottom down into the bed, suddenly desperate to alleviate the awakened friction there. “Che,” she mumbled helplessly as she writhed in pleasure against the mattress.

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I’m sorry, honey. I couldn’t resist. Your ass gives me a flash of insight into the Fathers. How great the temptation must have been to make them crave human flesh. Sophia sighed in both relief and regret when the electric stimulation at her sacrum ceased, although pleasure still vibrated subtly there. I love the way you curve. I’d like to devote a whole day to worshipping the bend of flesh that begins at your tiny waist and leads to your hips and ass. Sophia whimpered breathlessly as she turned slightly on one hip in order to grant his ethereal hand access to all the places which he had just referred. “Che, come to me now. I want to touch you in return.” A moment, honey. You have no idea of what a turn-on this is for me, possessing the knowledge that I really can come to you physically and make love to you not once, but thousands of times, even without your climax. And all because of your beautiful, rarified spirit. Besides, don’t you want me to tell you what I think of your soft, firm thighs, Sophia? Or your divine little pussy? Close your eyes, honey. Sophia responded immediately to the quiet authority in his voice. She already panted as a result of the soft kisses she was receiving on her inner thighs. She wiggled her hips and made a strangled sound in her throat when she felt several drops of wetness trickle from her pussy down into the crevice of her ass. A warm, wet tongue sought them out, savoring their taste as much as the softness inside the shadowy cleft. “Oh, no!” she muttered desperately. “Che, I can’t take this anymore.” Shhh. Tell me what you want, he soothed as he returned to worshipping the damp flesh on her thighs less than an inch away from her soaking channel. “I want you to…slide your tongue everywhere. I want you to lick my clit and suck it, and…ahh, Che. Please!” She cried out in mindless arousal because he wasn’t doing exactly what she asked. Instead, he ran his wet, slightly rough tongue over a smooth, desire-swollen outer lip, just millimeters from her erect, sizzling flesh. She could clearly sense how much he savored the juices he found collected there. The realization of how much he enjoyed it left her gasping in sheer disbelief. Yes, Sophia. You just caught a glimpse. My feelings for you are hard to convey, but so powerful. Now, tell me what you want without using words. “I…I can’t,” she murmured thickly as he continued to lick her sensitive folds, driving her nearly wild by carefully avoiding her needy flesh. She moved restlessly on the sheets until she felt both of his hands holding her hips steady for his mouth, allowing her no mercy. You can. You did earlier. Merge your consciousness with mine for a moment. Sophia didn’t fully comprehend his request, but she gave herself, nevertheless. For a brief, yet paradoxically eternal moment, she experienced Che’s consciousness, suspended with shocking precision at the tip of his tongue as he caressed her soft flesh. And her entire awareness existed in the electrified, excited sensations of her sex. Then they merged and there was no need to tell him with words what she needed, because he was her and she him. She felt his tongue run over her swollen clit and press hard, just as 87

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she required, because who knew what she needed most but herself? The experience was a glorious, shared whole. She tilted her head along with him, aligning his mouth over her clit and applying a firm, relentless suction. Her being exploded into a million pieces of subtle light, vibrating and expanding, mingling with Che’s luminous essence, parts of her fusing with him joyfully… …so generous in your response, so sweet. Sophia made a startled sound deep in her throat because she had the distinct impression that Che had been speaking to her for a while now, but their temporary merger had made it impossible for her to objectively evaluate his words. Open your eyes now, lovely. Sophia opened her eyes, squinting even in the dim light of the shadowed balcony. At first, the gently crashing waves directly below them sounded distant, but then they grew nearer and louder until she felt fully aware of the moment. At the same time, she felt Che slowly leave her consciousness. She mentally cried out in longing for him. The air at the end of the mattress flickered and congealed. He took form before her eyes. Sophia knew with a painful clarity that she’d never even begun to glimpse the manifold, complex meanings of desire until that moment. He was a part of her and now he was miraculously separate. And this was an earth-shattering, deeply occult secret— that their wordless, inchoate desire had created the other, brought it to form and gave it a name. “Alloces,” she whispered in awe. His eyes were like glowing embers as they ran over her naked body. He stood over her, nude and magnificent, proud and fully aroused, desire transformed into solid, teeming flesh. Then he smiled, slow and sexy, and the fey moment faded. He was just a man now, impossibly beautiful, but a man of blood and sinew and bone, nonetheless. For a moment, they just stared at each other across the space between them, erotically aware of their separateness. Then Sophia smiled, too. “Didn’t they once burn women at the stake for allowing creatures like you into their bed?” She didn’t expect the somber frown on his handsome face as he kneeled and crawled over her supine body. “Don’t joke about it, honey. We were horrified by the way humans behaved during that time in history. There was a particularly terrible incident at a convent where I—” he stopped abruptly, seeming to catch himself. His eyes leapt guiltily up to meet hers. “Suffice it to say that ignorance can kill a thousand times more readily than a weapon can. Thank the Fathers I was able to rectify that situation without any bloodshed.” Sophia’s smile deepened. His cock acknowledged that brightening of her spirit with a lurch. Her eyebrows rose in aroused amusement when she noticed. She reached up and caressed the delineated sinews of his upper arms as they bulged from holding himself off her. “You don’t need to pretend like you’ve never had a lover before, Che. I know you must have had…what, millions?” “I don’t know. I forgot the second I looked into your eyes.” Sophia laughed at his suspiciously human-sounding male platitude.

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Che grinned. He loved the sound of her laughter. He vowed then and there to make sure that she laughed greatly and often. His stomach muscles jerked in excitement and pleasure when she ran her sensitive fingertips over his abdomen. “We’ve been like this before,” Sophia whispered. “Yes,” he acknowledged as he watched her fingers caress his appreciative flesh. “It was while you slept two nights ago. I had to release you because I’d held you in the dream too long and your body was protesting.” Sophia glanced up at him in wide-eyed, innocent wonder. That was why Che gasped out in surprise when she closed her fist on his cock and stroked him warmly. “I actually remember. I was mad, because I never got to do this.” Che grunted and shifted his hips slightly, adding his own friction to Sophia’s caress along the length of his penis. “Nothing to stop you now, honey.” Sophia glanced down between their bodies. She felt the increasingly familiar pussy meltdown when she saw his cock in her stroking hand. His shaft was so long and straight, his balls were full and tight with his seed, and the puffy, fat head of his penis… “Oh…” Che laughed softly. He bent his elbows out wide, leaving room for Sophia’s arm and pumping hand, and idly tongued a flushed, dark pink nipple. “So, you remember that part of the dream, as well.” “You’re enormous, Che. I’ve never taken a man like you. I’m not sure it’ll…” “It’ll work,” he said with amused gentleness as he nipped ever so gently at a distended nipple and Sophia whimpered in pleasure. “It has to, doesn’t it?” Sophia asked distractedly as he fully took the tip of her breast into his warm mouth and applied an eye-crossing suction. As he slowly came back into focus, she watched him lash erotically at her nipple, soothing and exciting her all at once. “We won’t be mated if you can’t get it into me?” “No. We could have been mated even through the dream, with me being incorporeal.” “Oh,” Sophia muttered with relief. “But I have to have intercourse with you to set the spell of protection that Bale created for mated Watchers.” “Oh,” Sophia repeated, confused and more than a little anxious. Che’s eyes seemed to spear right down into her soul. “And besides, I wanted the mating to be completed this way. I want you to accept my flesh into yours, Sophia. I want your body to learn my shape, to form around me so that we’ll fit together physically like a lock and a key, just like our spirits do.” Her lower lip fell open at the erotic tension that exuded off his hard body in near palpable waves. His cock throbbed in her hand, resonating heat. “I can fuck either your pussy or ass. Bale’s spell requires intercourse but he wouldn’t have specified vaginal intercourse. He loves ass-fucking too much to do that.” 89

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“What?” Che’s brow crinkled in confusion and concern when he sensed her emotions. “What’s wrong?” Sophia was still sputtering over his calm, matter-of-fact statements. Lord, they really were totally different. She said the first thing that came to mind. “How in the world would you know what Bale likes sexually?” Che shrugged, still not comprehending the reason for her unrest. “I should know. Bale, Duse, Jax and I made love to thousands of women together—before Bale and Duse mated, of course,” he added quickly when he saw the frozen expression on Sophia’s face. “Watchers are more faithful than humans, Sophia. A Watcher will completely abstain from sex, even psychokinetic sex, when his mate is incarnate, even for hundreds of years, if necessary, for as long as he can last without taking any type of sustenance to maintain his physical existence. He might find sexual release on an alternate plane of existence, but that doesn’t compare with sexual communion with a human woman. But after his mate, other women’s essences seem unpalatable to him, highly coarse and difficult to metabolize.” He looked down at her in rising concern when he saw the strange, disoriented look in her large eyes. “Gods, what is it, Sophia?” “We’re…so different,” she mumbled in rising panic. “I don’t know how I can ever please you, Che.” Her heart squeezed in pain when she saw the stricken expression on his handsome face. “Why in Hades would you say that?” She felt like she was gasping in air, and yet her lungs burned as though she needed more oxygen. “Because! I’ve never done those things!” she burst out anxiously. “Anal sex or group sex or God knows whatever else you expect of me.” His mouth fell open in surprise, only to be followed by a leaping fire in his greenish-blue eyes. “I would never share you with anyone, Sophia! By the Gods, what do you take me for?” he thundered. When he saw the relieved expression on her face, undoubtedly created by his temperamental, inadvertent assurance, guilt swept over him like a summer storm. “Gods, I’m sorry, honey. Forgive me.” Sophia reached around his back and caressed him while he leaned down and softly kissed a few scattered tears off her cheeks. One of her hands buried into his thick, unruly hair and held him at the nape while she pressed her lips to his. “I don’t want you to be disappointed in me,” she whispered, emotion clogging her throat. “It’s not even a remote possibility, Sophia.” She looked deeply into his eyes, seeing his earnestness, sensing his love…yes, love, impossible as it seemed. Her hand lowered again between their bodies. She gripped his throbbing pillar in her hand and spread her legs wider. “In my pussy, Che,” she murmured with pointed glance of warning that was followed by a grin when she saw the disgruntled look on his face. She just shook her head and laughed. “Are you sure? You’re ready?” 90

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Sophia nodded, never taking her gaze from his beautiful eyes. He didn’t remove his from hers, either, as he took his cock into his own hand and settled the pointed, thick head at her juicy entry. “Say it,” he said hoarsely. “Ask for it.” Sophia bit her lip to stifle her arousal at the sensation of him pressing to her sensitive entrance. “Come into me,” she whispered. He pressed gently, but firmly, and Sophia felt her tissues give way under protest. “The head is the thickest,” Che muttered apologetically. He watched her expressive face intently as he pushed the first inch of his flesh into her tight sheath and she winced. He paused. “I could alter your body with my mind, Sophia, and make this easier for you,” he said quietly. “Is that…is that what you want?” she asked with difficulty, overwhelmed by the incredible sensation of him pressing into her bit by bit. “No,” he admitted after a long moment. “I want to stretch you, form you to my cock, honey. It sounds primitive, even to my own ears. But it’s what I want, nevertheless.” Sophia felt sweat gather on her upper lip as she watched him slowly pierce her body with his fleshy spear. He flexed his lean, powerful hips, and she whimpered in acut