Ensnared: An Eternal Guardians Novella Read online

  He was wrong. He was the fantasy. He knew just how to kiss a woman to make her weak in the knees. He didn’t rush things, didn’t push her lips open and plunder her mouth. He licked and nibbled until she was breathless for more, and when she opened and drew him in, he took his time tasting and savoring every inch of her mouth as if she were the sweetest wine.

  She felt as if she were floating. And maybe she was. Because when she finally pulled back to catch her breath and opened her eyes to look up, she realized she was no longer standing but was laid out on that chaise that had looked only big enough for one before but was now double the size.

  She blinked and glanced around. No, it wasn’t a chaise anymore. It was a plush, four-poster bed with thin gauzy white fabric hanging from each corner, creating a cocoon right there on the beach.

  “You are a delectable treat,” he whispered, trailing a hot line of kisses down her throat. “One I can’t wait to devour.”

  Oh gods...his deep voice vibrating from his chest into hers, his silky-soft lips nipping and licking at her skin, his heavenly weight pressing down on her, nudging her legs open...it was all exactly what she wanted, the very scene she’d dreamt of time and again. And too picture-perfect to ignore.

  “Wait. This...this can’t be possible.” She pushed a hand against his chest. “You can’t be real. And, and...I don’t even know your name.”

  His hand shifted to the mattress near her head, and he eased back and looked down at her, not the slightest bit irritated or angry that she’d stopped him. “But you do know my name.”

  She blinked up at his captivating eyes, completely confused by his words. Eyes that weren’t just a unique blue-green color as she’d assumed. They swirled with a mixture of blues and greens and purples that seemed to almost sparkle, much like the heavens at night. “I...”

  “You know me, fantasía. You’ve always known me.” He skimmed his thumb across her bottom lip, his entrancing gaze following the movement until every inch of her body felt alive and tingly. “Say my name and I will take you somewhere you only ever dreamt existed.”

  He leaned down and brushed his lips against the spot he’d just teased with his thumb. And still confused, she wracked her brain, trying to come up with a name that made sense. But all she could think about was how much she wanted this man—this whatever he was—right this very second. Even if he was a complete stranger. “I...”

  His lips slid down her throat again, leaving a line of heat that seared her from the outside in. His weight shifted, and he nudged her legs wider, making room for himself. Unable to fight the sensations he was building inside her, she closed her eyes and thought, Screw it. It’s just a dream. Nothing bad can happen in a dream.

  “Mm, that’s it, fantasía.” His fingers made quick work of the buttons on her blue silky pajama top, flipping them free one by one. Tingles rushed over her skin as cool air met her flesh. “That’s exactly what I’ve been aching for. You. Giving yourself to me freely. Just like this. In a few minutes, you’re not even going to care where I take you.”

  His words were spoken in that same husky timbre, but a shiver of foreboding slid down her spine. And a strange sense that this wasn’t just a dream trickled through her. Followed by one that made her feel alive in a way she’d never felt before.

  “R-Ryder?”

  His lips paused their hypnotic kisses and curled against her overheated skin. “See? You do remember me. Before this night is over, fantasía, I plan to hear you scream my name a dozen times from the heavens.”

  Her breath caught as he went back to nipping at her skin, but it wasn’t from fear. It was from the realization that this wasn’t a dream. It was real. He was real. She just wasn’t sure how that could ever be possible.

  * * * *

  “Well? What news?”

  Ryder jerked around at the sound of Zeus’s deep voice at his back. The image of the svelte blonde on the beach faded until there was no more heat beneath him, no more sand around him, nothing but blinding white marble, gilded furnishings, and the perturbed expression of the king of the gods.

  He shrugged on his shirt, tugging the two halves together and flicking the buttons through their holes, forcing himself not to think about the female’s soft skin and the way she’d felt only seconds ago beneath him. Yes, she’d been hot, but he’d had hot before. And this little interruption was a stark reminder that she was his mark, not his choice. His world didn’t mix well with the real world. He’d learned that lesson the hard way. No matter how drawn to the female he was, he knew better than to fall for her. “None. I only just began. And was just as quickly forced to finish because of an asinine question.”

  “Careful, god.”

  Ryder wasn’t in the mood to be careful. Thanks to Zeus’s little interruption, he was going to have to start all over. She’d just let down her guard. Now, the next time he went to her, she’d be on the defensive, wondering why he’d ditched her or—better yet—back to thinking he was a dream. He was no closer to learning anything about the female. No closer to getting the hell out of Olympus and away from the king of the gods. And, thanks to the last ten minutes, horny as freakin’ hell. “Try not to take this the wrong way, oh Great King, but you’re impatient as fuck.”

  Zeus flicked Ryder a hard look from across the room with eyes as black as coal. “Let me make something clear to you, dream weaver. You’re only here because I’ve a need for your gifts. And you’re only granted leeway in your dealings because of that need. Once you cease to be useful to me and my cause, I’ve no need to keep you around.”

  Yeah, Ryder knew that already. Zeus, the god-king of everything, took great joy in lording his dominion over his underlings, every chance he could. He also reveled in reminding all of them—even minor gods like Ryder who didn’t normally reside on Olympus—that they could be called into his service at any time.

  He checked his contempt, knowing it would do him no good here. Zeus might be an asshat, but he was a powerful one. And though Ryder would like nothing more than to weave a nightmarish hell the king of the gods could never wake from, he knew that was impossible. He’d tried before, failed, and been punished for it. A punishment he was not about to repeat. “We discussed this before. It takes time to build trust, even in a dream world. It’s going to take more than one fantasy for this to work.”

  Forget the fact she’d been pulling him into her dreams for months now. Forget the fact he’d spent those months trying desperately to resist her tempting smile and that luscious body. He didn’t want the king of the fucking gods knowing any of that. Zeus would only use it against him.

  “I want to know if she has the same gifts as her mother.”

  Ryder frowned. If Zeus had done his homework, he would know the female’s mother was a gifted healer. She couldn’t see into the past or future as her sisters could do. As descendants of the ancient goddesses the Horae, though, when the three sisters combined their gifts, they were able to see into the present—wherever they chose. Which was the gift Zeus hoped Zakara possessed. A gift Ryder did not want Zeus to get his hands on. “Why don’t you just go after the mothers instead of wasting time on a daughter?”

  “Because the Horae are carefully protected,” Zeus said matter-of-factly. “They rarely leave Argolea and are not easily lured away from those meddling Argonauts.”

  The Argonauts were the warrior protectors not only of the Argolean realm, but of the human realm as well. And each Horae, coincidentally, was mated to an Argonaut. Once praised by Zeus as heroes—the Argonauts were descendants of the greatest heroes in all of Ancient Greece—now Zeus despised them because they threatened the one thing he wanted most: control over the human realm and all its inhabitants. No god could claim that, though they all wanted it. Sure, Zeus commanded the heavens, Poseidon the seas, and Hades the Underworld, but none could direct the will of man. None could shape the future. And he who could do that would be more powerful than all the rest combined.

  “The Horae daughters are also ripe fo
r the taking,” Zeus went on. “As we saw with the Argolean queen’s daughter, they’re at that rebellious age where they’re desperate to break free of their parents’ hold, and anxious for a bit of adventure and romance.”

  Ryder’s blood warmed. Oh yeah, he knew that way too well. Resisting Zakara’s advances in her quest for adventure and romance was getting harder and harder for him to do.

  Huffing, Ryder reached down for his socks from the marble floor, missing that sand more than he should. “You tend to get love and sex mixed up more often than not. One does not equal the other.”

  A rare hint of amusement curled one corner of Zeus’s lips as Ryder sat on the gilded velvet chaise beside him and pulled on his boots. “Perhaps, but the end result will be the same. With enough seduction, I’ll get my answer. And if the female does have any of her mother’s or aunts’ gifts, it will be easy to lure her out of her hiding place.”

  That hiding place was Argolea. Ryder still wasn’t sure why Zeus just didn’t use his own freakin’ powers and poof into Argolea to get what he needed himself, but he wasn’t about to ask and extend this conversation any longer than it needed to be.

  He pushed to his feet and stared the king of the gods down. “I get it. Seduce her, find out what she can do, and report back. We’ve had this discussion before. Now you’re just slowing me down.” He moved to step past the god. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to weave a whole new world, thanks to your interruption.”

  Zeus didn’t try to stop him, only turned as Ryder headed for the gold double doors in the ugly bedroom suite he’d been given while he was on Olympus, something that looked like King Midas had vomited all over everything. “Hold up, dream weaver.”

  Ryder paused near the door and glanced over his shoulder.

  “Don’t get any ideas about the female. She’s a means to an end, nothing more.”

  Ryder’s chest tightened. He had plenty of ideas about the female. Ideas that would only put both of their lives in danger. Ideas that were growing stronger and harder to ignore by the day. “Are we done?”

  “So long as you remember what’s at stake, then yes, we’re done.”

  Ryder’s gaze lingered on the god’s dark eyes.

  His life. Zeus was hinting at Ryder’s continued existence.

  Thousands of years ago, Zeus had waged war on Ryder’s people. The king of the gods had wiped out Ryder’s entire family simply because he’d felt he hadn’t gotten his way. In the aftermath, Ryder had been imprisoned, and when he’d finally been freed, enslaved. Used not as a messenger as was his original purpose, but as another of Zeus’s minions, forced into doing the king of the gods’ dirty work. Ryder had no love for any of the Olympians, but as the last surviving dream weaver, he wasn’t about to do anything to give Zeus a reason to strike him down. So long as he kept his mouth shut and didn’t antagonize the god, he’d be allowed to return home to the heart of the cosmos.

  Eventually.

  Where no one waited for him. Where no one missed him. Where there was nothing but silence and emptiness.

  And where there would never be a sweet, beautiful blonde drawing him into her fantasies, making him the center of her universe.

  Motherfucking Zeus. Oh how he despised the god...

  “Trust me,” Ryder said from between clenched teeth. “I didn’t forget. How could I when I’ve got you here to remind me?”

  A slow smile worked its way across Zeus’s face. “Very good, dream weaver. You may survive this yet.”

  Chapter Two

  “That should do it,” Callia said as Orpheus pushed off the exam table in the medical clinic Kara’s mother ran in the Argolean castle. “I would tell you to be more careful when you’re out on patrol, but I know neither you nor any of the other Argonauts will listen.”

  From her spot at the desk in the other room, Kara glanced toward the open exam room door and watched as Orpheus, one of her father’s warrior brothers, smirked and tugged down his shirtsleeve over the fresh bandage on his biceps. “Just a flesh wound. Nothing to worry about.”

  Normally, Orpheus’s visits to the clinic entertained Kara and distracted her from the doldrums of her life, but not today. Today she was still on edge from that dream last night. From how real it had felt. From the fact it had vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

  “I wouldn’t have even bothered you with it,” Orpheus said. “But Skyla’s been a basket case ever since I had that run-in with the hellhound. And, well, I didn’t want to head home and freak her out about this.” He was as tall as Kara’s father—close to six and a half feet—and just as rugged and muscular as all of the Argonauts. But where her father Zander was blond, Orpheus was dark, and there was always a glint of mischief in his grey eyes that belied the seriousness of his role in their world.

  “Smart guardian.” Callia pursed her lips. “That was one of your nastier run-ins. None of us were sure you were going to pull through, most of all Skyla.”

  Skyla was Orpheus’s mate, and Zakara remembered all too well the chaos in the clinic the day not more than two weeks ago when the Argonauts had brought Orpheus back from the human realm bruised and bloody and barely even breathing. Or the implication of what a hellhound attack on an Argonaut meant—that Hades was setting something in motion. Something none of them yet knew how to define.

  Callia tipped her head, her auburn hair falling over her shoulder as she crossed her arms over her chest. “How are the wounds on your ribs? All healed? Do you want me to take a look at them?”

  “No. They’re fine.” Orpheus reached for his dusty leather jacket from a chair in the corner of the room and tugged it on without even wincing. Looking at him, you’d never know he’d been on death’s doorstep only a handful of days ago, but thanks to his superhuman genes, that’s how things rolled with the Argonauts. “I gotta get home before Skyla skins me alive. I’m already later than I told her I’d be. I’m sure the kids are driving her batshit crazy right about now.”

  The kids were Orpheus and Skyla’s five-year-old twins—a boy and a girl—both as mischievous as their father. And Skyla was no pushover. As a former Siren—one of Zeus’s elite warriors—she could match her mate in any battle. And Kara was pretty sure he was more afraid of her than he was of any hellhound.

  Callia laughed and stepped into the reception room as Orpheus did. “Then you’d better get home fast. I don’t want to have to close up any more of your wounds tonight.”

  Orpheus’s grin widened. “Thanks, Callia.” He looked toward the desk where Kara was finishing her paperwork. “Night, kiddo. Don’t let your slave-driver mom here work you too late.”

  Kara pushed her blonde hair over her shoulder and smiled. “I won’t. G’night, Orpheus.”

  Kara’s mother shook her head as she watched Orpheus leave then turned toward her daughter. “Every time one of the Argonauts comes in here all bloody and bruised like that, I’m afraid it’s going to be your brother or your father.”

  Kara was well aware of that fact. Her mother’s constant stress over Kara’s older brother Max’s training with the Argonauts was one of the reasons she wasn’t wild about working in the clinic.

  She pushed the desk drawer closed and shoved the thought aside as her mother turned back into the exam room. Max was every bit as big and capable as the other Argonauts. Not only that, but with his gift of transference, he was more powerful than the rest of them, able to take on any otherworldly gift of those he encountered. In his late thirties, it was well past time he completed his training with the guardians, but their mother would forever see him as a child. Just as she did Kara. The only difference was, in Max’s case, he knew what he was supposed to do with his life. Kara was still searching.

  A familiar frustration settled over her, one she didn’t like to think about too much, but at twenty-six, it was getting harder to ignore. Her mother was training her to follow in her and her grandmother’s footsteps as a healer. But Kara had no interest in treating the injured and sick. And so far, she lacked that o
ne necessary skill for the job—the ability to actually heal anyone with her gift. In fact, so far, she had no gift at all.

  She moved into the open doorway and leaned against the jamb as she watched her mother tug the bloodied paper cover off the exam table Orpheus had just been sitting on. “I’m finished with the supply lists. Do you need anything else tonight?”

  “No, nothing else.”

  Good, then she could finally get gone. It was already dark outside and she wanted nothing more than to fall into bed and drift into a mindless sleep. “In that case, I’m going to head back to my rooms for the night.”

  “Kara, wait.” Callia tossed the paper in the garbage and stepped toward her daughter. As Kara turned near the door, her mother placed both hands on her shoulders and squeezed gently. “Is everything all right? You’ve been quiet today.”

  Kara glanced up at her mother and briefly considered telling her about the weird dream she’d had last night and how real it had seemed, then thought better of it. Her mother would think she was certifiable if she started talking about hunky imaginary men. And truth be told, Kara was starting to fear that already.

  That wasn’t the first dream she’d had about Ryder. And she desperately didn’t want it to be the last. She’d been dreaming about him for months, but last night was the first time she’d actually tasted his lips, felt his hard body against hers, nearly let him slide between...

  Her cheeks warmed, and she quickly looked away from her mother. “I’m fine, matéras. Just tired. I-I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  “Why not?” From the corner of her eye, Kara saw the way concern creased Callia’s smooth forehead. Her mother was several inches taller than Kara, more olive-skinned than pale like Kara, but they shared the same facial features and the same violet eyes. And sometimes, when Kara glanced at her mother, it was like looking at herself in the future. In an alternate future. One in which she had a purpose. “Is something bothering you?”