His eyes must’ve wandered to the door to Cara’s room, because Carlos shook his head. ‘‘She’s asleep.’’
The lights were up in the suite and the TV was on, though, and Cara was a light sleeper of epic proportions.
Sven nodded, accepting the lie. ‘‘Okay. No problem. I just . . .’’ wanted to see her, wanted us to maybe go for a walk like we used to. He’d wanted to inject a bit of normalcy into the craziness, to get her take on things that were moving too far, too fast for his hang-loose brain to keep up with.
‘‘I know.’’ Carlos nodded as though Sven had said all that aloud. ‘‘But things are different now.’’ He paused. ‘‘She’s not your sister anymore, kid. She’s your servant. If you want me to wake her, I will.’’
She’s not my servant any more than she’s my sister, Sven wanted to argue, but didn’t, because there were some things better left alone. So he shook his head. ‘‘No, let her sleep. Besides, this should probably come from you anyway. I think . . .’’ He paused, weighing his loyalties. ‘‘I think you should tell her to leave.’’
The older man’s eyes widened fractionally. ‘‘Why?’’
Sven shifted, faking a shrug. ‘‘She’s a semester away from her degree. Seems silly to keep her here when I barely even see her as it is.’’
‘‘And?’’ Carlos said with no shift in his expression.
She doesn’t want to be here, Sven wanted to say. Can’t you see that? But he didn’t say it, because he could also see how much it meant to Carlos to have sired the only second-generation winikin in the group, how much he was enjoying having Cara around. So instead he said, ‘‘What we’re going to be doing here is dangerous.’’ He looked at the coyote mark again, because the binding ceremony had made the whole end-of-the-world-as-we-know -it thing seem a whole lot more real than it had when they’d just been sitting around talking about it. ‘‘I don’t want her to get hurt.’’
‘‘Neither do I, but I don’t think that’s what this is really about.’’ Carlos waited, but Sven didn’t say anything else, couldn’t explain it to the man who’d raised him when he could barely understand it himself. After a long moment, the winikin sighed. ‘‘Do you command this?’’
Sven nodded, feeling like a total poser. ‘‘I do. She’s my winikin.’’
‘‘And for that I’m sorry.’’ Carlos shook his head. ‘‘I should be the one serving you.’’
‘‘Nobody’s serving anybody here. We’re all in this together—I’m just trying to figure out how to minimize the danger.’’
‘‘It’s not a Nightkeeper’s job to protect his winikin.’’ Carlos paused. ‘‘But I’ll do as you ask. She’ll be gone before the end of the week; I’ll take care of it. You just concentrate on learning how to control your powers . . . and yourself.’’
Which answered one question, Sven acknowledged with a dull thud of pain. Carlos definitely knew about what’d happened between him and Cara, knew why he’d taken off and why he hadn’t been back since. He’d always figured Carlos didn’t know, for the simple reason that their relationship had stayed close despite the physical distance. Now, he realized it’d been more a case of the winikin’s imperative to keep tabs on his charge outweighing the other stuff.
The thought was humbling. And damned awkward.
That wasn’t how it was, he wanted to say. I can control myself. But that begged the question of why he’d come knocking on her door too late at night, with his blood humming and his senses on high alert.
So instead, he said, ‘‘Thanks. I owe you one.’’
Carlos nodded, but he didn’t speak, and he hadn’t moved from the doorway, hadn’t invited Sven inside.
That rejection, that split in their onetime family unit, had Sven backing away and searching for a grin as he waved, making sure his mark showed. ‘‘Mine’s still bigger.’’
The older man’s smile didn’t touch his eyes. ‘‘Size doesn’t matter until you know how to use it, kid.’’
After chowing down enough leftover mac ’n’ cheese to feed a boatload of Vikings, and washing it down with a bottle of lemon Perrier, Nate tried to go to back to bed and sleep off the rest of the postmagic hangover. And failed miserably.
Score: Boner 1, Blackhawk 0.
After an hour he finally gave up and headed for the gym on the lower level of the main house, figuring that if he racked enough iron, he should be able to exhaust his dick into submission.
The gym stretched along the short side of the mansion. It was below ground level, so there were no windows, but when he hit the light switch just inside the double door, the fluorescents were bright enough to sear his eyeballs. Like most of the compound, the room wore a fresh coat of stark white paint, new flooring, and had zero in the way of character. But that was okay with him; he was looking to sweat, not have a spa experience, and there were enough top-end machines to promise he’d get a good stink on, along with an equally high-end sound system to crank some tunes.
Hoping the room was soundproofed—or far enough away from the sleeping quarters for it not to matter— he tuned the satellite radio to something heavy on the bass and dance rhythms, gave a couple of halfhearted stretches, and headed straight for the free weights, figuring he’d go old school for the evening’s antistiffy program.
Ever since that hey, here you go, have an instatattoo ceremony, he’d been a walking hard-on. He felt like a teenager, or like he belonged in one of those Cialis commercials where the voice-over guy warns about the dangers of priapism. If your erection lasts for more than four hours, seek medical help. Or a woman. Whichever comes first.
And that was the problem. There was a woman . . . and yet there wasn’t.
Alexis wasn’t Hera—he knew that. Hera was straight out of his imagination, an amalgam of tits and ass that made her a gamer’s wet dream, along with the sharp, strategic intelligence required by any self-respecting warrior-goddess.
However, Alexis was the spitting image of Hera, and that just freaked his shit right out, because between the lectures and the binding ceremony, he was having trouble believing it was just one of those things. The Nightkeepers didn’t seem to go in for coincidence.
Which meant what? That she was his match? His mate?
As he started lifting, he tried to figure out why the thought made him want a one-way ticket to hell and gone. Maybe it was meeting her when everything he thought he knew about himself—and about reality—was taking a serious beating; maybe it was his inner rebel hating the whole your-life-is-ruled-by-destiny thing. Who knew?
He thought about it as he lifted; thought about her. Sweat started beading on his body despite the central AC, and his muscles had a good burn going after a half hour or so, but a dick check revealed he was still sporting serious wood. If anything, it’d gotten worse rather than better, tenting the front of his gym shorts as he lay back on the weight bench.
Current score: Boner 2, Blackhawk 0.
Glaring at it, he warned, ‘‘All right, that’s it. Two more sets and I’m bringing out the duct tape.’’
‘‘Excuse me?’’
For half a sweaty second, he thought the damn thing was talking back—and wouldn’t that be a trip?—and was doing so in Alexis’s voice. Then what was left of his brain fired up, and he shot a startled glance at the doorway and saw her standing there, watching him talk to his johnson.