The Fire Within The Night (Night Aberrations - Book Two) Read online

  I took a long shower while I worked on my plan of attack, hoping that the noise of the water would hinder Jakob from eavesdropping in my thoughts. It was my best chance for privacy. I already knew that the first step in my strategy would have to be learning how to block my thoughts. There was no hope of getting anywhere with him if he had the upper hand. The second step? I needed answers. If I knew more about my surroundings and situation, it would be easier to figure out why Soren didn’t want me around Jakob. I didn’t buy that brother/sister respect thing. That sounded like a handy excuse if I’d ever heard one. The third step? Well, I didn’t have one, but I was sure that I would figure out something. I had to. The instant attraction I felt with Jakob was too compelling to ignore.

  Luckily, when I stepped out of the shower, naked and wondering what I would put on, I found that Emelie still kept clothes in her old room. Although she and I had vastly different taste, we were close to the same size. The unfortunate part was that almost everything in her closet was sweaters and jeans. I wore skirts and heels on a constant basis. I liked appearing professional at work. Since the day I opened the store, every day was a ‘professional’ day. So, I rarely had the opportunity to wear anything that might be deemed casual or comfy. I smiled to myself as I slipped on the jeans, finding myself excited about my new family, and also because tomorrow would be my first day off since Christmas. Hell, today might be the best day of my life. Sex would just be the icing on an already wonderful cake.

  I found Jakob relaxed and bare-chested on the bed in his room, his laptop propped up against his stomach and knees. He didn’t look the least bit surprised to see me. Big shocker there.

  Joining him on the bed, I peeked at the screen. “You have Google here?”

  “We have everything you have at home and more. Midgard is within our realm. Remember?

  “Yeah, about that.”

  He closed the laptop and set it to the side. “Go ahead. I am ready for your questions.”

  “We might be here awhile,” I warned.

  “I have nowhere to go. It is daylight outside.”

  “Oooh, you’ve answered question number four hundred and twenty-eight.”

  He laughed and folded his arms behind his head. “Allow me to answer questions four hundred twenty-five, six, and seven. No, I will not turn into a bat, nor do I have to take blood to survive; that is for pleasure and mating purposes. Also, garlic does not affect me in any way.” He paused and frowned. “I cannot believe what you are thinking Erin. You can see that I do not sleep in a coffin and even if I did, I would never fuck you there.”

  My eyes shot to his. I could tell he was uncomfortable with what he’d said. He hadn’t meant to use such coarse language with me. However, I thought it apropos. I wasn’t thinking of white picket fences and making love. I wanted hot, primal, unforgettable sex with Jakob. I wanted him to fuck me so good that it would make me want that white picket fence.

  Jakob looked as if my thoughts were sending him into overload. “For the love of the Norse, Erin!”

  I grinned a Cheshire cat smile and changed the subject. “Tell me about Soren and Emelie. How long have they been together?”

  His face showed distrust. He knew I was up to no good. “Two years. Emelie has overcome much to be mated to your brother.”

  “How so?”

  “Many years before Emelie was born, her mother, Wist, who was a Norn herself, changed her fate to be aligned with my brother, Kristian’s, so that she would be allowed to mate Emelie’s father who was fated to my step-sister, Viveka.”

  I repeated what he said in my head to try to grasp all that. It was a mouthful. “Why did Wist do that to her own daughter? It’s just so cruel.” It was like, Disney Princess cruel. Poor, blonde, and beautiful Emelie can’t ride off into the sunset with her true love because her wicked mother made her marry a mad elf instead. I doubted that I’d seen that particular one on DVD before.

  He smirked. “You have a strange, human mind, Erin. It amuses me to see what you will think of next. Disney Princesses…Emelie will be thrilled at the comparison.”

  I smacked his arm. “Don’t you dare tell her! You just keep going on with your history lesson, Professor.”

  “Where was I at before you started abusing me? Oh, yes. How could Wist change Emelie’s fate? We will never know what the circumstances were that led to Wist changing Kristian and Viveka’s fates. Perhaps, she was evil, or Ander’s life was at stake, or maybe, she was in love with him and did not want to see him marry Viveka. No one knows. The one thing we do know is that Kristian could not stomach Anders, who was a light elf, on his father’s throne. In an attempt to keep the crown, he allied himself with someone who could obtain a Norn, a creature the Norse-lands wanted dead for many reasons. Good reasons, I might add.”

  “What creature?”

  “Freyr. He is known as a god in your Norse Mythology.”

  “I remember him. He’s the guy that’s always depicted with a sizable, uh, phallus. Makes perfect sense to me. I say that a male with a big penis can’t be trusted. Now, those are words you can live by.”

  “Yes, Freyr is known for his…fertility.” He looked almost unsettled. “Erin, I cannot understand your way of thinking. Are you in jest? You smile as if you are, however, your thoughts tell me that you believe in the theory.”

  I pondered his question for a moment. “Both, I guess. But, I shouldn’t limit that to males with large penises. I don’t trust any male—large or small.” I winked, then grinned at his discomfort. There was no doubt that he fell into the large penis department if he was worried enough to ask. Which pretty much cinched that best day of my life thing. Hands down.

  He looked more confused than ever. “I see.”

  Laughing at his bewildered face, I asked, “Do you?”

  “No. Not at all. I said before, your mind is a strange place.”

  “What’s sad is that’s the fourth time someone has told me that this week, and they can’t read my mind.”

  “That, I can believe.”

  “So, how did Mr. Fertility’s actions start the war?”

  “Kristian sought out Freyr’s doppelgänger—a creature whose treachery was famous throughout the Norse-lands. It was a dangerous, foolish thing to do. The real Freyr was our master once. We were given to him as a gift—as slaves.”

  “What? Wait. There was never any doppelgänger at all, was there?”

  “You are wise for one so young. No, it was Freyr. Kristian made a grave mistake when he allied himself with someone so evil. With his mind possessed by Freyr, Kristian called off the union between the elves. Years later, after Emelie was born, Freyr had Kristian start a war. He couldn’t risk the elves becoming strong now that he was so close to getting what he lost.”

  “So, did Emelie go through with it…the mating to Kristian, I mean?”

  “Yes, she did, the moment she came of age. It has been a great relief to have peace between the elves, though ties are still strained, especially with the young who have never known a life without war.”

  “Was he still possessed by Freyr when he mated her?”

  “Yes, for a day, maybe two. Freyr was imprisoned long enough to break the spell.”

  “You’re kidding? How long were they mated?”

  “A couple of days. The council demanded it annulled because of the illicit fate bonding by her grandmother, Myrgjöl. fates are not allowed to be changed by anyone, unless sanctioned.”

  “Is the council the government here?”

  “Most consider them a council of peers, but yes, they do govern the Norse-lands to an extent.”

  “Your step-sister must have been upset about losing her mate. And even more so after they annulled Kristian’s mating to Emelie anyway.”

  “The crown was the important thing to Viveka. When she found out that she had lost it to Kristian and Emelie, she went mad and did the worst thing possible. She started her own alliance with Freyr.”

  “What? If you can’t beat them, join
them?”

  “So it would seem. We believe that she joined forces with him in an attempt to control the elves in one way or the other.”

  I lay down next to him and stared at the ceiling. “And those two are still out there on the loose?”

  “We captured Viveka at the same time as Freyr, but did not realize that she had the power to shape shift herself into another creature, taking on their appearance, as well as their unique signature. Now that we have that information, it is a matter of time before they make a mistake and we imprison them again.”

  “That does not make me feel all warm and fuzzy.”

  “Nor should it. It is no coincidence that a spell book containing a way to rule over all of the elves found its way into the hands of one of Odin’s daughters.”

  I hadn’t thought about the spell book being planted, and he was right, but I didn’t want him to be. It made me happy to think that the spell book coming into my life was part of my fate. It had led me to Jakob or vice versa.

  “Erin.” His voice held a warning.

  I held up my hands. “Okay, okay. No more of that.”

  “Good. Now, do you have any more questions?”

  “Where were you while all this was happening to your kingdom?”

  “I was … away ... for most of the time.”

  “And when you weren’t?”

  “Erin, Kristian orchestrated a plan that started a war between the elves that lasted the entire twenty years it took Emelie to come of age. I would be a fool to stand in his way of this when I do not want it.”

  “Your people…uh, elves, wouldn’t have been subjected to a king that makes deals with the bad guys, if you had stood in the way.”

  “Are you reprimanding me for my inaction?”

  “No. Well, maybe. I just think that you should have stopped him when you saw how he was manipulating the situation to his favor.”

  “There were…I had my reasons,” he stammered, his demeanor becoming defensive.

  I pursed my lips. “I hope they were good ones.”

  “In the end, they were not, and there is not a night that goes by that I do not regret that. I was blinded to the truth.”

  I yawned and nestled into his pillows. “All this makes me thankful to be ignored by my parents. I could have ended up a pawn too.”

  “But, thankfully, you did not. Is there anything else that your inquisitive mind wants to know?” His smirk was telling.

  “Why don’t you tell me? You already know, don’t you?”

  “Do you think so little of my gift? Your thoughts are as auditory to me, as they are also visible. I know about your ‘three step plan’.”

  I sat up. “I wouldn’t have to plan anything if you’d get with the program.”

  He urged me back down, keeping a possessive hand at my neck. “I am in a program. It is the ‘do not get killed by your best friend for deflowering his baby sister’ program.”

  “There’s one thing wrong with that program, Jakob.”

  His eyes widened. “You have not been chaste?”

  “I’m twenty-five. That’s practically middle-aged for a human woman.”

  He looked thoughtful. “I suppose.”

  His expression concerned me. Would he reject me because I wasn’t pure?

  “No,” he assured me, his fangs slurring the enunciation of his words. “Your brother is the single reason I am not tearing Emelie’s clothes off your body and marking you as mine.” He paused to trace my bottom lip with his thumb. “I have not been ‘pure’ for the last forty-five hundred years.”

  I shivered under his touch. “Forty-five hundred?” I meant for it to come out as a question, but it was more a statement of wonder. If he was that ancient, I had good faith that he would be somewhat of a sex-god, and that made me want him more.

  His grip on my neck tightened as he tensed. “Erin, you need to go to your room—now. Before we do something that we regret.”

  “If you taught me how to block, you wouldn’t be subjected to my thoughts,” I reminded him, breathless with want. I still couldn’t figure out what made him so tempting to me. Sure, his looks and that sexy accented voice doesn’t dissuade from the temptation, but it was more than that. It was about who he was as a male, and what he said with that beautiful voice, than how attractive they made him. How could I not crave him? He was perfect.

  “You would still be thinking those thoughts, Erin, and I am not yet sure that you can keep your hands to yourself, or that I want you to.”

  I leaned up to bestow a lingering kiss on his cheek. “That sounds promising. Good night, Jakob.”

  “Good day, älskling.”

  I stopped at the door. “Viggo told me what älskling means.”

  “I know he did,” he said, and left it at that, presumably to keep me up for the rest of the day with cryptic phrases that I’ll never be able to understand.

  I lay awake in bed for hours after I left Jakob. I couldn’t seem to relax. Maybe it was because it felt so strange being in a foreign land, or maybe, it was the fact that he was sleeping shirtless in the next room. I couldn’t hear any noises coming from there—thank goodness. I’d be driving him mad with my incessant thinking if he were awake.

  Unable to bear my restlessness for another moment, I threw my feet over the edge of the bed and started for the door. I had to do something other than lay in this room and think—anything else.

  Jakob was standing poised to knock when I opened the door. I smoothed down my bedhead. “Uh, hi”

  “Nope, get back in there.” He spun me in the direction of the bed with ease, his naturally austere persona replaced with an aberrant, mirthful disposition.

  “But I can’t sleep,” I complained.

  “Yes, you can,” he disagreed, grinning and pulling me across the room by my hand. He climbed under the covers of my bed and held them up for me. “Get in.”

  I slipped in next to him. “This is so not how I thought our first time would be.”

  He dragged me into his body, molding himself against my back. “You are hilarious. Now, go to sleep.”

  Sleep? Was he kidding? I could try, but with him so close, even a coherent thought seemed a stretch at this point.

  “You are not trying hard enough.”

  I turned around to face him. “You know, I did give you the opportunity to teach me how to block.”

  His white teeth gleamed in the darkness. “So you did.”

  I waited on him to elaborate.

  “I am not going to. I am trying to sleep, as you should be.”

  Pouting, I asked, “Don’t I, at least, get a good night kiss?”

  His eyes popped open. “You are relentless, Erin. Go. To. Sleep.”

  I gave him a soft, unexpected peck on his lips. “You came to my bed half-naked. You don’t see how that gesture might have been misconstrued as you wanting to have sex with me?”

  He moved to trap me beneath him. “Make no mistake, älskling. I want to take you. I have wanted you since the moment you called to me.”

  Arching against him, my body begged for what he offered. I was so ready. He placed blistering hot kisses along my jaw and whispered soft, foreign words against my neck. “Please, Jakob,” I pleaded with him.

  Dragging his lips across my cheek to my mouth, he licked my lips open, all of his earlier control lost when I responded in kind. Panting, he pushed himself up on his knees to try to compose himself.

  “Jakob?”

  I cried out in surprise when he used a combination of his fangs and hands to rip the front of Emelie’s sweater open. “If we do this, Soren cannot know, Erin. Promise me.” His voice was hoarse with restraint.

  “I promise,” I responded without hesitation, and then took a deep breath—and another. I was so desperate to have him inside me. I would’ve agreed to anything.

  “Erin? Your eyes, they—” He broke off in alarm.

  I could see the reflection of blue flames in his eyes. “What is that, Jakob? Am I on fire?”

/>   No sooner than the words left my lips, a fire ignited inside of me. It licked down my arms and legs as if someone had put a match to gasoline. I screamed, and Jakob sprang into action, picking me up to run to the bathroom. Lowering me into the tub, he turned on a spray of freezing, cold water.

  Within seconds, the flames were out, but my skin remained untouched. “What just happened?” I asked, through chattering teeth.

  He turned the shower off and pushed the wet hair back from my eyes. “You are a fire-walker, älskling.”

  “Why didn’t the fire burn anything?”

  “What you produced is a magical fire. If you had concentrated long enough, you could have burnt the house to the ground. There can be no doubt that you are an elf now. Fire-walking is a rare elven gift. There are maybe a hundred in all of the light and dark elves combined.”

  “I’m gathering that sex is also a rare elven gift.”

  He laughed and handed me a towel. “You are wicked, Erin. You alone would lament the loss of sex when you have just realized that you have been bestowed with a much coveted power.”

  “Yippee,” I muttered, dropping my head back against the porcelain rim of the bathtub to stare at the ceiling. What else could happen to keep us apart?

  “I will get you some dry clothes.”

  I didn’t spare him a glance as he left. This whole thing had been so messed up—a complete disaster. I’d hoped for a romantic night that I would remember with fondness, not a night where the highlight was me setting myself on fire and ending up a drowned rat.

  “Do not be so dramatic, Erin. You look just as beautiful the way you are now as you ever do.” He frowned. “Wait. That did not come out right.”

  Accepting the shirt he held out, I stood and shed the ripped sweater. I didn’t have any dignity left. “The bra is coming off,” I warned.

  “I hope so.”

  Surprised and inspired, I unhooked the front of my bra and let in fall into the tub.

  His breath whooshed out. “You are perfect,” he whispered.

  Well, that was encouraging. “Are you sure you want me to put on this shirt?”