Page 43 of Warrior Unraveled

“Uh-huh.” She gave him a no-shit-Sherlock look.

“If they really are following us, then the last thing we should do is have any contact with the council. You said yourself that they’re the leaders of your race. I’m taking a wild guess here, but when was the last time any of the council members went hand-to-hand with a demon?” When she hummed in agreement, he continued, “The best thing we can do is to transport to a compound where all they do, day in, day out, is fight demons.”

“Let me guess. You want me to transport us to the Baltimore compound.”

“Glad you agree.”

“You do know that the guardians at that compound have been breaking every rule in the book, right?”

Wes grinned broadly. “Anybody can follow the rules. But these guys can improvise. They’re perfect. And I trust them.”

“Fine, but if something goes wrong, I’ll have your hide,” she warned.

He drew her into his arms and pressed a quick kiss to her lips. “You can have my hide anytime you want. I’m not opposed to being tied up and ridden like a bull if the woman riding me lets me admire her gorgeous naked body while she does so.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Impossibly sexy?”

“Impossibly annoying,” she shot back.

Wes slid his hand into her mane and pulled her head to him. Her flushed cheeks were too tempting, and if there wasn’t the chance that some demon was lurking in the shadows, he would take her right here. But he was smart enough to know when his desire for her had to take a backseat.

“You’ll get used to it, babe. Now let’s get out of here.”

~ ~ ~

Virginia had to grudgingly admit that Wesley was right. They couldn’t go meet the other council members. Most had been sitting on the council for many decades, some even for centuries. They weren’t warriors anymore, and while they had all learned how to wield a sword and a dagger in their youths, they were out of practice. They had other obligations and left the fighting to the young guardians, the men and women who lived in compounds all around the world, eager and prepared to do battle any day of the week. Willing to fight to the death. That was what they’d all signed up for.

She’d done the same back then. Trained and fought as a guardian in a compound. Protected humans worth protecting. Fought demons. Killed a lot them. But she’d made mistakes. Mistakes that had cost her compound dearly. Because she’d broken the rules, trusted the wrong person.

To repent she’d punished herself by vowing never to mate, and instead had signed up with the enforcers, an elite troupe of exceptional fighters who enforced their race’s rules. She’d undergone the most gruesome training and bowed to their stringent rules. And she’d managed to excel. All because she’d expelled emotion from her life.

Successfully.

Until now.

As they hiked toward the lost portal, Virginia cast Wesley a sideways look. He was everything she’d avoided for so many decades: a man who lived by his intuition, skirted the rules whenever it suited him, and didn’t seem to have a serious bone in his body. On top of that, he was driven by his desires—which turned out to be insatiable—and took every opportunity to rattle her, as if he found pleasure in seeing her lose her composure.

Any other man she would have beaten to a pulp by now. But there were other sides to Wesley that she had a hard time resisting: the man who risked his own life to save hers, the lover who made her body hum with pleasure, the witch whose skill both fascinated and frightened her.

And then there was the way he called her babe. And the way he looked at her with his baby-blues.

“Could that be it?” Wesley asked and pointed to a church that stood on a small hill, surrounded by tall grass that clearly nobody had mowed in months, if not years.

Virginia looked back at her map. “Seems so. It’s the only structure I can see. The portal needs something to anchor to, like a rock face or the side of a building, a wall, something with structure. It can’t be in the ground.”

“The portal I used in Sonoma was in a rickety old shack that was leaning against a boulder,” Wesley volunteered.

“One of the lost portals. The portals are centuries old. So the material they’re anchored to has to be old. In many cases it’s rock.”

“You said lost. What does that mean?”

“Until about a year ago we weren’t aware that there were any portals in places other than our compounds. But we were wrong. We’ve since found hundreds spread out all over the world. Not tied to any compound.”

“How do you think they came into existence?”

“We’re not sure.”