Tina Donahue - Deep Within Me

Liz watched them as her worry moved from Isabel to Diaz. Where was he? Had the young woman and Carreon’s lieutenant seen him when they’d left the strip club? Had they taken Diaz prisoner? Was Roberto torturing him for information on this stronghold or threatening to kill Pedro if Diaz didn’t talk?

Oh please, not that.

Liz covered her mouth with her hand, quieting her whimper. Zeke glanced over, checking on her. He seemed to have aged several years in the last hours. Liz wanted to tell him she was all right, at least physically, but couldn’t manage it.

She sat next to Jacob and rubbed his back. He grieved quietly over Kele, having loved her in the end even if it wasn’t in the way she’d needed.

Liz prayed Kele hadn’t suffered, that she was with her parents now. At peace and safe at last. Be happy, please, she thought and fingered tears from her cheeks.

More time fled by. Liz had no idea how much. Men came into the room, then left, only to return later. Everyone looked bone tired, but no one slept.

Was it dawn yet?

“Hey,” Paul suddenly shouted from the hall. “They’re back and headed this way.”

Liz exchanged a look with Zeke and Jacob.

“Kele’s back?” Jacob hollered, his tone incredulous and hopeful.

“Diaz and the boy,” Paul called out.

Zeke left the room immediately, followed by several of his men. When Liz tried to follow, Ike stood in her way. “Zeke wants you to stay in here.”

“I need to heal Pedro.”

“You’re not leaving,” Ike said. He was a mountain of a man, his determination as powerful as his physical strength.

Liz backed away from him and paced the length of the room.

Jacob pushed back in his chair. “This is all my fault.”

“No, it’s not,” she said.

“If I’d only given Kele what she needed, she wouldn’t have done this, dammit.” He hit the table with his fist. “She wouldn’t be gone.”

“She wouldn’t have been happy either. She would have known your feelings weren’t genuine. It would have been a slow death for her, knowing that pity more than love was behind what you did. Do you honestly believe she would have wanted that?”

He continued to frown even as his shoulders sagged. “I don’t know.”

Oh, Jacob. “Kele did what she wanted to do,” Liz murmured. “What she had to do. In the end, she—”

Footfalls sounded down the hall, stalling Liz’s words.

“I’ll take him to the next level,” Zeke said. “There—”

“No, here,” Diaz insisted. “He’s already too weak to be moved any more than he has been.”

Zeke said something Liz didn’t catch. Diaz continued to argue, his voice also lowered, his words indistinct.

Seconds later, Zeke carried Pedro into the meeting room and put him on the table.

Liz leaned against it for support. She stared at the wounds Carreon’s men had left on the boy’s lanky body. Many were infected. Sweat matted his dark brown hair and bathed his face, no doubt from a fever.

“You’re going to be all right,” she said.

“No.” Zeke grabbed her wrist to keep her from touching Pedro.

She twisted her hand, trying to get free. Zeke wouldn’t let her. “I have to do this,” she insisted.

“Get her father,” Zeke ordered Jacob.

“No,” she said. “His power’s stronger than mine. If he uses it on someone this young, it might cause more harm than good like it did with his sister. He finally told me about her. What happened.”

“What are you talking about?” Diaz said. “You can heal. You can reanimate. Dammit, do something to help him before it gets that far.”

Pedro moaned.

“Don’t let him suffer because you want to protect me,” Liz begged Zeke. “I’ll be all right. You and Jacob saw to it earlier. You can see to it again. Please, you have to let me do this. I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t do something.”

Zeke glanced at Jacob. His brother looked as unsettled as he did.

Pedro stiffened as though he were about to convulse. He gasped.

Zeke’s hand fell away from Liz.

She murmured to the boy, “You’re going to be all right. I’ll take care of you. Carreon and his men will never harm you again.”

Diaz stayed close to his cousin as he spoke to Zeke. “I swear I didn’t know what Kele had planned. She left me in the Jeep and ran toward the strip club. I should have followed sooner. Maybe if I had…” He shook his head and continued, misery in his words. “By the time I could see the building, it was on fire. The man and woman we saw during that earlier transmission drove away in Carreon’s SUV.”

“It’s all right,” Liz said when Zeke didn’t comment. “We don’t blame you.”

A strangled noise poured from Zeke as Liz laid her hand on Pedro’s forehead that burned with fever. Gently, she stroked it, doing everything she could to control her power so she didn’t pour too much or too little into him.

Within seconds, his forehead cooled. His color returned.

She worked on his wounds next, healing the deep gouges left by Roberto’s torture.

Within minutes, Pedro opened his eyes and looked around, confusion on his youthful features.

Liz moved aside as Diaz went to his cousin. He pulled the boy into his arms.

Zeke touched Liz’s shoulder. “How do you feel?”

She couldn’t lie to him. “A little tired—but only because I haven’t slept, the same as you.”

Zeke didn’t appear convinced. “Jacob, take care of things here, all right?”

His brother looked as though he wanted to join them. After a moment’s pause, he didn’t argue the point as he might have in times past. He simply nodded. His expression said it all. This wasn’t about passion…it was about making certain Liz was all right and accepting that she belonged to Zeke first.

Despite her insistence that she wasn’t an invalid, Zeke carried Liz to their bedroom and wouldn’t allow her a moment free of his touch. His lovemaking was tender and desperate, betraying his love, his worry. Through the coming hours, he took her repeatedly, burying his cock deep within her cunt. With his mouth on hers, he quieted her pleased cries with his tongue.

They made love as if this would be their last time…or as though it were their first. Unruly desire made their actions and responses fevered, out of control.

Even as Zeke rested, he wouldn’t pull out of her. Liz slept so deeply at times, he strained to hear her breathing and kept checking her pulse.

It beat steadily.

How long would it last?

He ached for sleep, but didn’t dare surrender to it. When the time came that he couldn’t keep his eyes opened any longer, he’d have Jacob come in here to hold and protect her…to mount her if that proved necessary.

For now, Zeke ran his fingers over her arm and back. He kissed her cheek and buried his face in her hair, pouring his love into her, strengthening their bond. It didn’t matter that they’d come from different clans. That they’d once been enemies. No one would separate them now.

Not even Isabel, or whatever her real name was.

Zeke fought panic as he wondered what her next demand might be and how he could fight it without her removing Liz from his mind. Maybe it was an empty threat. Maybe not. When Isabel made her move, would he have time to flee this stronghold with Liz, Jacob and her father? What if he wasn’t able to do—

His thoughts halted at the hissing he heard. Accompanying it was dazzling white, signaling his newest vision. He tried to fight it, didn’t want to know what new horrors the damned future would bring.

Relentlessly, his mind focused on the images that bled through the intense glare. He saw the young woman Carreon had threatened to kill earlier, her dark hair and black nails. She stood next to a man Zeke couldn’t see. Shadows fell across his face, obscuring his features. Lust and violence radiated from the two of them, no different from Carreon.

Zeke blinked rapidly, suddenly straining to see more, to determine what the vision meant.

Impossible. The images evaporated as quickly as they’d arrived, leaving him unsettled, uneasy about his clan, Jacob, Liz.

As though sensing his distress or having felt the tension in his body, she awakened. Her eyes were clear, her color good. “I love you,” she said.

Zeke held her so tightly he feared he’d crush her but couldn’t help himself.

Liz didn’t complain. She hugged him in return and whispered, “Carreon’s really gone.”

She sounded astonished as many did when a world leader was assassinated or a film star met an untimely end. Some people are so much larger than life they seem immortal.

Not Carreon.

“Yes,” Zeke said.

“It’s over, then?” she asked.

He wanted that more than anything else, but sensed it was not. The evil that was coming would be even deadlier than it had been with Carreon.

Again, he recalled his vision. The woman’s dark nails, her blue-black hair and a detail he’d forgotten.

Her smile—empty, predatory.

Trinidad leaned against an arm of the leather sofa in what had once been Carreon’s penthouse suite. Soft lighting glowed beneath the lamps’ bronze shades. Coppery pavers and beige walls gave the space a Southwestern feel.

Carreon owned—or had owned—the entire building. His most important lieutenants and their families lived here so he’d always been able to keep an eye on them. On the night Carreon had died, Trinidad went to his stronghold, her intent simple. To steal as much as she could—money, weapons, the priceless art and drugs she’d heard he had there—then disappear with the treasure, selling and using it someplace else. Perhaps Vegas. Maybe New York. Even Mexico had crossed her mind.