Chapter Nine
“This is your home?” Vela looked around awestruck.
Samuel smiled. “Not what you expected?”
“I should say not and yet it suits you so well.” Just as Endelle had said, he’d built the house on a hillside overlooking the northern reaches of Scottsdale Two, but the entire back half of the large sprawling home encompassed a massive atrium, three stories high.
He led Vela into the atrium, where three large, wood-carved hawks, painted in great detail, cruised the air streams. A forest of plants below them sweetened the air. “I’d had a sort of vision for this decades ago. I needed a house, but I thought, what the hell, I didn’t want the same-old, same-old.” He gestured west. “You can see through the front windows and the view is beautiful night or day. That long ridge in the distance the White Tanks, of course, and beyond that the White Lake Resort Colony.” She turned back to the atrium. “This is amazing. Stone, wood, glass.” She turned toward him. “Who did the work for you?”
“A designer. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her. Tazianne?”
“Of course. Who hasn’t? She’s won a lot of awards. I know that Warrior Antony has a piece in his villa.” She tilted her head. “You’re an amazing mix, Samuel: powerful as hell, kind, and now a surprising architectural aesthetic. And yet I’m not surprised. I’ve had a sense of you from the first, a gift of the breh-hedden, I think, and all of this fits, helping me to see the whole man. Although I suspect if I went to the fridge—” She let the words hang.
He shrugged. “What can I say?
Unfortunately, Merl and I have a few things in common.” As he met Vela’s gaze and absorbed her compliments, all that she’d said beyond the oh-so-true food comment, the shift in his life stunned him. How much his world had changed in two days that what had seemed right, now seemed so wrong, that he had lived his solitary existence content. “I want you to know that you’re the first woman I’ve brought here, Vela. I want you to know that, how much you mean to me.” She nodded and reached for his hand.
“So what do you want, Samuel, here, tonight? Do you know?”
“There’s only one thing I want right now, but I’m not sure how you’ll feel about it.” He drew her into his arms, adjusting to make sure he didn’t pin down all that hair, and took a deep breath. “I want to complete the breh-hedden with you.” She slid her hands around his neck.
“You know that means mind-diving, right?” But she smiled, such a beautiful smile, her large blue eyes glittering.
“I know that it means you’ll know more about me than you may ever want to know.” A chill went through him of what he’d endured at Sharav’s hand. He hated the thought of her seeing any of that.
“Samuel, I’m prepared. And I know that I’ll see things that will distress me, but I can handle it.” He nodded. “Okay. So the breh- hedden is what you want as well?” he asked.
“Without question. You were so right about me. When I was chained up in Duncan’s cell, and your power beat at me, I remembered something about that attack in 1922: I wasn’t as unequipped as I’d always thought. I called for Jeff. I did that myself telepathically. The moment I realized my part in surviving the attack, I knew I wouldn’t ever go back to my former life, that what I wanted, what I needed was right here with you, with this crazy darkening power, and with whatever the future holds.” He kissed her, a single kiss on the lips then drew back. “I hated seeing you chained up then attacked by my own power and it’s going to take me some time to get over what happened to you, to us. At the same time, it pushed me where I needed to go. You were right; I’ve been afraid of connection all my life.”
“But you’re not anymore.” He chuckled softly. “I wouldn’t say that. Let’s just say, I want to connect with you and I know I belong fighting beside the Warriors of the Blood. No question.
But it’s you, Vela, you’re the why of this moment, why I would say yes to something so invasive as the breh-hedden.”
“I feel exactly the same way.”
“I know. God, I’m so sorry you had to be in that cell.”
“I’m not, well maybe I am, but look where it got us?” He watched tears fill her eyes and love suddenly flowed like a powerful force through his body, a rush of heat, affection, and desire combined. He kissed her and she moaned, her lips parting. He drove his tongue into her, tasting her, savoring the feel of her in his arms. Never in a thousand years would he have believed that something like this, so full of passion, sex, and love would have descended on his life.
He was amazed. “Let me take you to bed.” She nodded.
He slid an arm around her shoulders beneath the weight of her hair and using his free arm to catch her behind her knees, he lifted her up. Carrying her meant something, that she belonged to him and more of that warm affection flowed.
He moved out of the atrium and down the stone path that led to his bedroom. The wall curved, so he shifted her at an angle taking care that he didn’t bump her head or crush her foot.
As he carried her across the threshold, she gave a soft cry. “Look at that view.” Scattered lights twinkled in a long vista north to south.
“That’s why I chose this site.” His bedroom had a wall of windows and no neighbors, just a view of distant lights, and various hills creating a soft dark skyline against a panorama of stars.
He turned her in the direction of his massive larger-than-king bed.
“And that’s a big bed,” she said, laughter in her voice, a sound he’d come to love. Vela had a basic love of life.
“What can I say? I like room to spread out when I sleep.” She looked up at him and caught his face in her hand. “And you won’t mind me taking up some of that space?” His heart did that balloon floating thing and a soft moan left his throat. “No. I want you taking up that space more than anything in the world. I love you. There I’ve said it. I love you, Vela.”
“I love you, too. I honestly didn’t think I’d have love again, ever. My life had closed down to this small little box that I’d crawled into when Jeff died. And now you’re here, this tremendous miracle in my life.”
“This is a miracle, isn’t it?” She nodded, then leaned in to kiss him, a sealing of vows spoken, of desire and need, of hearts reaching and joining.