Dark Stranger Revealed Read online

  "Mistress, I brought you supper in case you became peckish." Okidu's voice woke her.

  There was a thick robe draped over her back, which explained why she felt so warm and toasty even though it was getting late. Syssi was touched by the butler's thoughtfulness. With the two of them alone in the place, it must have been Okidu who had covered her. "Thank you for the robe. It was very kind of you." She slipped her arms into the overlong sleeves and looped the belt twice around her waist, then brought the lapels closer to her cheeks. Kian's scent was all over the thing and combined with the warmth of the thick terry fabric it cocooned her in what felt like home—safe, hers. Syssi closed her eyes. She missed Kian. Which was nuts.

  "You are welcome, Mistress. It was getting chilly, and I did not want to wake you. You looked so peaceful. But it is late, and the master would not be happy if I did not provide you with nourishment. Would you like to dine outside? Or should I take the tray inside?"

  By now, it was indeed a little cold out on the terrace, but recalling yesterday's sunset, she wanted to watch it again. "Here would be great, thank you."

  Syssi ate her dinner at the small bistro table, watching the clouds turn all shades of orange, red, and purple until they faded into darkness by the time she was done.

  She couldn't help feel a bit disappointed that Kian had not returned in time to join her for dinner, and as she carried the tray to the kitchen, she wondered what was keeping him. He had been gone for hours. But then, he obviously couldn't just drop everything to be with her.

  And wasn't that a shame.

  Evidently, when Amanda had told her about Kian's insane workload and long hours, she had not been exaggerating.

  The little Syssi knew about him, she had learned from Amanda's complaints about how difficult it was to get him to come see her teach because he was always working; busy running the family business.

  What kind of business? Amanda had never said. It was clear, though, that big money was involved—owning this building for starters—and Amanda certainly couldn't afford her rich taste in apparel on a professor's salary.

  Curious, Syssi decided she would do some snooping around to find answers. But it could wait for later. Right now, there was a jacuzzi tub with her name on it waiting.

  CHAPTER 2: DALHU

  Dalhu paced the length of the mansion's opulent home office, contemplating his newfound knowledge. The professor's little red notebook had been an eye-opener on so many levels.

  It had taken him a while to decipher her illegible handwriting and cryptic references, but eventually an interesting picture had emerged.

  First and foremost, he had discovered that the enemy still adhered to the old taboos against procreating between members of the same matrilineal descent. Second, and not less important, that they had no Dormants of other lines.

  He'd always assumed that they were a cowardly bunch; the kind who preferred running and hiding to honorably facing their enemies in battle. But as the real reason for their tactics became glaringly obvious—that there just weren't enough of them to offer a fight—he was grudgingly compelled to grant them respect.

  How the hell had they managed to achieve so much—stolen knowledge notwithstanding—when there couldn't have been more than a few hundreds of them?

  Making tracks in the luxurious Persian rug, his mind went back to the issue of Dormants. Apparently, the professor believed that finding mortals with special abilities, of the paranormal kind, would lead her to potential Dormants.

  Why?

  None of his brethren had any of the various traits she had mentioned in her notebook. And certainly, none of the Dormants he had encountered as a child had exhibited anything out of the ordinary—not his mother and sister, nor any of the other women in Navuh's 'Special harem'.

  Navuh's powers were to be expected, after all, he was the son of a god, and so were his sons' formidable abilities.

  The rest of the men could thrall most mortals to some extent, but not all—the weaker the mind, the less it resisted manipulation—but that was it.

  As to Dormants, they were a rare and precious commodity, guarded fiercely by Navuh for obvious reasons. And apparently, the despot was the only one to possess any.

  Dalhu closed his eyes as his thoughts drifted back to his mother and sister. His mother had been a whore, as all the other Dormant women in Navuh's special harem—and the same fate had been awaiting his sister—he just hadn't been around to witness it.

  After all this time, he had trouble remembering their features. The only clear memory that he still managed to hold on to was his mother's voice. Some nights, he still heard her singing to him in his dreams.

  Dalhu had been taken away to the training camp and turned at thirteen, never to see his small family again. He hadn't been allowed. The one time he'd tried, he'd gotten off easy with a severe beating as punishment, only because he'd been so young. An older male would've been beheaded.

  The group of Dormant women were Navuh's secret brood-mares. Selling their bodies to serve wealthy mortals provided him with a source of income and male children for his army of near-immortal mercenaries.

  The sons were activated and became soldiers, the daughters were not and were relegated to prostitution like their mothers before them. Neither were given a choice.

  Once the boys were turned, they were never allowed near the Dormants again. Fornicating with one carried the death penalty for both.

  The Dormants were to serve mortals only.

  In the past Dalhu, like the rest of the soldiers, had assumed that the women weren't turned because according to the teachings of Mortdh they were deemed inferior. It took him centuries to piece together the real reason behind the segregation. If turned by an immortal male's venom, an immortal female's chances of conceiving dropped to nearly nonexistent. And Navuh needed the women to bear as many children as possible, which they had, providing over the millennia thousands of warriors for his army.

  The special harem had always been heavily guarded—nowadays even more so as a fenced-off enclave of Passion-Island.

  A selective breeding program was pairing Dormants with clients believed to possess the traits valuable to Navuh; mainly physical size and strength, with sociopathic tendencies a close second.

  Navuh needed his soldiers to be strong and ruthless—nothing more.

  Dalhu sat back at the desk and pulled out a quarter from his pocket. He tossed it up in the air and slammed it onto the desk when it came down. Repeating his experiment twenty times, he was assured of having no special precognition ability.

  As expected, his predictions came true roughly half of the time.

  Returning the quarter back to his pocket, he wondered if these abilities could be somehow developed, learned. He wouldn't have put it past Navuh to conceal this kind of information from his troops. As power hungry as Navuh was, the despot would not have wanted his divine status undermined by his lowly soldiers exhibiting even a fraction of his abilities.

  Dalhu lifted the professor's small red notebook off the desk and leaned back in the heavy executive swivel chair. Flipping through the pages, he searched for the one containing the list of paranormal subjects.

  Interesting stuff really... Telepathy, both sending and receiving, or only one-way transmission. Remote viewing, past viewing, precognition, influencing—emotional and otherwise. The ability to cast illusions. Communication with the dearly departed.

  Most of the test subjects exhibited dismal talent. Except two.

  A woman named Syssi, a lab employee, was the sole recipient of the score of ten—the highest. Her talent was precognition. What a powerful tool that could be, he mused, wondering what kind of predictions she could make.

  The other interesting subject was a guy named Michael: a student on the same campus. His talent was telepathy—of the receiving kind—his ranking was eight. Not bad... being able to read other people's minds could be a great asset too, probably a more useful tool than that of the female's.

  Soon, Dalhu
would have both to do with as he pleased.

  The woman's address had been easy to find. The hacker he had hired had very little trouble retrieving her record from the university's HR database; especially with that weird spelling of her given name.

  The telepath posed a greater challenge, but it was nothing money couldn't overcome. His cellphone number was listed to his parents' account in Minnesota, so the phone bill was useless for finding his address. And there were five students named Michael Gross living on campus. He had to be located by his phone's signal.

  The guy Dalhu had found to do it had been expensive but worth it. Unfortunately, he had gotten the job done only late in the evening, pinpointing the boy's location to a popular student hangout, a club not far from the dorms, which was currently teeming with people.

  Dalhu had men in position at both locations.

  The team at the woman's house was poised to snatch her as soon as she came home. Though if she didn’t show up soon, he planned to fork out the money for the guy to track her cellphone as well.

  The other team, dispatched to bring the telepath, was hanging outside the club. Without a picture to identify him by, they would wait for the boy to get out and separate from his friends. Regrettably, the acuity of the tracking device was limited to pinpointing the place, but not one individual out of a tightly packed crowd.

  But it wouldn't be much longer.

  Soon, Dalhu's phone would be buzzing with the confirmations of their capture.

  CHAPTER 3: KIAN

  As Kian made his way up to the penthouse, he was looking forward to picking up where he had left off with Syssi.

  During the long hours he had spent attending to the most pressing items on his agenda, his resolve to do the right thing and leave her alone had crumbled to dust. Delegating and postponing every task he possibly could, he had been counting the seconds until he could get away.

  Except, when he finally made it back, she wasn't there.

  Searching, he poked his head into every room, checking even out on the terrace, but she was nowhere to be found.

  Where the hell can she be?

  He pulled out his phone and ringed Amanda. "Is Syssi with you?" he asked without preamble.

  "No, did you manage to scare her off already?" Amanda taunted.

  With a grunt, he ended the call and shoved the phone back in his pocket.

  The obvious conclusion was that she had left. Though, how she had managed to do that without a thumbprint access to the elevators, or security letting him know, baffled him.

  Maybe Okidu had helped her, taking her down in the elevator. With that main obstacle out of the way, there would have been nothing preventing her from waltzing away.

  And as the guys in security were more concerned with people coming into the building than leaving it, they would have thought nothing of her casually strolling out the front door.

  With a vile curse, Kian kicked a planter, wincing as the thing toppled.

  He had no one to blame but himself.

  After all, he hadn't specifically forbidden her to leave, or informed security to detain her if she tried.

  Walking back inside, Kian pulled out his phone ready to call Okidu when he heard a distant hum.

  Jets.

  Whirlpool tub's jets.

  So that's where she is…

  Relieved, he shoved the phone back into his back-pocket and followed the sound.

  When he reached the room she was in, Kian shook his head. Syssi had chosen the smallest, most plainly furnished suite in the penthouse. It was so like her. Though how he knew that about her puzzled him. He just did.

  With a sigh, he kicked off his boots and plopped down on the bed. It seemed that despite the long hours it had taken him to get back to her, his wait wasn't over yet.

  Amazing, how much work had accumulated while he had been busy rescuing his damsels in distress; yesterday, getting Amanda and Syssi out of the lab, and this morning, whisking Syssi away to safety.

  Being fucking Prince Charming had been a lot of work, not that anyone would accuse him of being charming, or mistake him for a prince. More a Shrek, he chuckled, maybe not the green skin—but certainly the ogre's surly disposition.

  Closing his eyes Kian made a go at some shuteye, but it was no use. Problem was, he kept imagining Syssi's gorgeous body soaking naked in that tub… the tips of her perfect breasts peeking above the soapy water…

  Oh, hell. With that scenario doing all kinds of things to his male anatomy, he itched to barge in there and…

  Yeah, as if that would end well…

  "Not!" he muttered as he reached inside his pants, adjusting himself. But his damned erection was so distended that it jutted above his waistband.

  Cursing, he covered it with his shirttails.

  With all that had been going on lately, he hadn’t had the time or the inclination to go prowling for sex. And the long stretch of abstinence was taking its toll.

  His biology was demanding its pound of flesh.

  Except, the thought of slaking his need with some cheapie he picked up at a bar, suddenly felt repugnant to him.

  He craved Syssi. Her fresh, sweet innocence was calling to his tainted soul.

  Soon.

  She would get out from that bathroom and find him waiting for her like some creepy stalker, and realize that her time was up.

  What the hell is taking her so damn long?

  Kian was losing his patience.

  As the tub began draining, his pulse sped up. Any moment now, she'd get out…

  No such luck.

  He growled deep in his throat. Then he heard her applying lotion. And more lotion. And just as his agitation was gaining critical velocity, he heard what sounded suspiciously like a moan…

  What the hell?

  Had the little minx rebuffed him just to go ahead and pleasure herself without him?

  Oh, no, she didn't!

  With a surge, Kian shot out of bed and was about to barge in on her, when he heard the hairdryer turn on. His palm a fraction of an inch away from the door handle, he barely managed to stop in time.

  His body bursting with barely contained aggression, he plopped back down on the bed, crossed his arms over his chest, and ordered himself to calm the fuck down!

  One deep breath after another, he kept talking himself down from the high tree branch onto which he had climbed.

  Take it easy, moron. She has no idea you're lying in wait for her like a fucking perv…

  He kept telling himself he needed to be patient, romantic, go slow…

  Except, how the hell would he manage that when he was strung up tighter than a bow string?

  Exasperated, Kian banged his head against the headboard.

  CHAPTER 4: SYSSI

  Syssi's fingertips were starting to prune.

  As fun as the spa was, it was time to get out. Turning the whirlpool off, she stepped out of the tub and wrapped herself in one of the plush towels stacked by its side.

  All during her soak, Kian's words from earlier had been playing over and over in her mind, providing a background soundtrack to the vivid images they were painting.

  On one hand, all these new and intense sensations electrified her. It was like discovering a whole new world of pleasure she had never known existed. It was exhilarating. On the other hand, once she had gotten a taste for how it could be, she was afraid she would do just about anything to get more of it.

  Before, she had never understood what drove people to indulge in careless sex, despite the potential utter devastation it entailed. Unwelcome pregnancies, ruined marriages, family feuds, wars… Literature painted an abundance of catastrophic scenarios, Syssi had used to believe were mostly fictional. After all, what was so difficult about keeping your pants on?

  Now, as need gnawed at her like a hungry beast, she understood.

  Standing on the cold marble and looking out the window at the dark sky, she grew nervous. Kian would be back soon. And then what? Was she strong enough to say no t
o him, or at least not yet? Or was she going to surrender to her longing and have reckless sex with a man she barely knew but wanted desperately?

  Toweling the moisture off with the excessive vigor of her rising frustration, she questioned her indecision. What was really the point of delaying the inevitable? If not tonight, then the next, or the one after that… If Kian still wanted her, that is. He might have concluded that she was too much trouble, and go for the easy and available.

  Everyone around her was talking about hookups and booty calls, instead of dates and relationships. People treated sex as casually as going to the movies or out for a drink. In this uninspiring, emotionally disconnected landscape, the pursuit of sexual gratification was the norm, and the rare relationship an exception. An oddity.

  Still, she wondered if all these people were deluding themselves into accepting this sorry state of affairs as gratifying. Perhaps they were just desperately reaching out for any kind of connection, hoping something real would sprout from all that carnality.

  She couldn't see herself living that way. Maybe she was old fashioned, or just naive, but she needed at least the illusion of a relationship, if not the real thing, to get all hot and sweaty with a guy.

  Oh, but Kian… He was like an addiction, an obsession, calling to her, drawing her in like a moth to a flame. She knew she was going to burn, but at this point she didn't care.

  She was going to do it, had to…

  Catching her panicky reflection staring back at her from the mist-covered mirror, her hand flew to her chest.

  Oh, God! She wasn't ready!

  It had been so long since her last time, Syssi felt like a virgin all over again; nervous, insecure, frightened. So okay, it probably wasn't going to hurt like the first time had—thank heavens for small favors—but she felt anxious nonetheless.

  What if she fell short of Kian's expectations, what if he found her unexciting… lacking…