Brides of the Kindred(87)

“But what can I do? How can I protect her?”

The priestess shook her head. “I wish I could tell you more but this is all the Mother of Life has given me to see. My own advice to you is to follow your heart. It may be that you will have to lose your bride in order to gain her. And I fear you may lose yourself in the process.”

“What does that mean?” Baird asked in frustration. “How am I supposed to follow advice I can’t even understand?”

She shook her head. “You will have to discover the meaning for yourself. I only pray you will be able to do so before it is too late.” Then she turned and glided away, her bare feet making almost no sound on the sacred grass.

Baird was left kneeling, his head filled with more questions than ever. Damn it, this was what he hated about consulting a priestess. Why couldn’t they just spell things out instead of all this mysterious mumbo-jumbo crap? But the worst thing was, it wasn’t just crap and he knew it. The priestesses of the Mother of Life were never wrong. In the very near future he and Olivia were going to be in danger—what kind he didn’t know.

He just hoped he could keep her safe and get them both out of it alive without losing her forever in the process.





Chapter Seventeen



The rest of the week was incredibly tense. Liv and Baird didn’t speak about their fight but things didn’t exactly go back to normal—or what she’d come to think of as normal, anyway. True to his word, Baird refused to let them leave the suite and toward the end of the week Liv was beginning to go stir crazy. It wasn’t just that she minded being confined to a single set of rooms, although that was bad enough. But there was also the growing attraction between herself and the big warrior to contend with and the more time she spent with Baird, the worse it got.

He warned me it would get worse. I can handle this, she told herself. Forewarned is forearmed. But somehow her determination to hold out and resist got hazy whenever she was near him. And it left her completely every night when it was time for the bathing ceremony. Because Baird insisted on following the contract and washing her in the bathing pool every single night despite the fact that she’d made it clear she didn’t want him anywhere near her.

Of course, there was nothing Liv could do about fulfilling the contract she’d signed. But she wished that just once, she could keep her cool and icy demeanor in place while Baird washed and touched her. Unfortunately, that never seemed to happen, no matter how sternly she talked to herself about not giving in to desire. When he put his big, warm hands on her and washed her bare breasts and stroked between her thighs with his fingers she lost her self control every single time. More often than not, she wound up begging him to take her and Liv knew that only the fact that he had promised not to bond her to him during this week kept Baird from doing just that.

Unfortunately, the end of their second week together was over. The first night of their tasting week was tonight and Liv was pretty sure that the minute Baird was legally allowed to go farther with her he absolutely would.

The worst thing was, she had caught herself wondering, more than once, if it would really be so bad to just give in. She could feel the love in Baird’s hands when he touched her, could see the need in his amber eyes when he looked at her. It was hard to remain unmoved when it was obvious that he had genuine emotions for her. And when she had feelings for him too, though she would scarcely allow herself to admit it.

She might have decided to hell with it and just let matters take their course—she was fighting a losing battle, after all, and she knew it. But there was still something that bothered her. She didn’t like the way she lost control when he touched her, the way she couldn’t remain cool and unfeeling when he washed her in the bathing pool. Liv had never been with a man she couldn’t distance herself from if she wanted to.

Mitch had only ever made halfhearted attempts at foreplay and even the main event with him had been lackluster. Liv hadn’t had a problem putting sex on the backburner with her old fiancé—there was literally nothing to get excited about. But with Baird, she found herself helpless not to feel, unable to block out his need for her and hers for him. He was so gentle and so passionate at the same time. She reacted no matter how hard she tried not to, her body betraying her every time.

There has to be something more to it than just all that crap about the right chemistry and our bodies needing each other that Baird is always talking about, she told herself. There has to be some reason why I can’t say no to him. Why I want him every time he touches me. Why every time he makes me come it doesn’t really satisfy me—it only makes me want him more.