“Such strong emotion is not advisable in a warrior.”
Brand jerked Addy beneath him, covering her nakedness with his body. “Ansgar.” His voice was without inflection. “What is your purpose here?”
The blond warrior shrugged. “What else, but the hunt? I tracked the djegrali into the village near here and lost him. I thought, perchance, we might join forces. But you pursue game of a different sort, I see.”
“How came you past the safeguards I set in place?”
“You timed your spells to end at sunrise.” There was a hint of mockery in Ansgar’s cool tone. “The sun is up, my brother, and you have yet to continue the chase. Or is that the djegrali you grapple with, cleverly disguised as a . . . flower, was it?”
“Let me up.” Addy was mortified beyond belief. God, she was such a skank, a hoochie mama, a slut of biblical proportions. What was the matter with her? She’d come within an inch of . . . well, within an inch of coming and letting this guy do her.
Brand’s cold gaze flicked over her and back to the other warrior. “No. You are unclothed. He will see you. This I cannot allow.”
“Cannot allow? Cannot allow? That’s it. I’ve had enough of this macho crap.” Addy shoved against Brand’s broad shoulders, but he did not budge. “Get off of me, you big ape.”
“Not while you are unclad.”
“Then tell that blond horse’s ass to get out of my room.” Addy decided to take refuge in fury. “Better yet, tell him to get out of my house And you, too, while you’re at it.” Her head whipped around at a sudden thought. “Wait a minute, where’s Dooley?”
“Do not distress yourself. The animal is unharmed.” Ansgar sounded bored. “She chases a stag through the smallish wood situated at the edge of this demesne.”
“Stag? You mean a deer? This is a gated community. There aren’t any deer here.” Addy’s blood pressure rose. “You’ve done something to my dog. Again. That tears it. Out. Both of you. Out of my house. NOW!”
One moment, the heavy weight of Brand’s muscular body pressed down upon her, warm and hard and unbelievably sexy, and the next instant he was gone. Addy sat up and looked around. Ansgar had disappeared, too.
“Good riddance,” she mumbled. She wiped her stinging eyes with the back of her hand. Tears of humiliation and outrage, that’s what they were. No way was she crying because that big jerk got her all hot and bothered and turned into Icicle Man once his buddy showed up. She stomped over to the closet and pulled on a pair of shorts and a clean T-shirt. Shoving her feet into a pair of flip flops, she stormed out the back door in search of Dooley.
Brand landed on a wide stretch of mown grass beside a paved road, his senses still spinning with Addy’s intoxicating warmth and scent. He looked around. To his left, the wind sang through a forest of pines. On his right, an immense field of freshly tilled earth stretched like a fallen red clay giant in the early morning sun. It was a peaceful scene, at odds with the firestorm of lust and frustration raging within him. He was rock hard and aching with lust. He wanted Addy. Wanted to lose himself in her sweetness and warmth until the devil’s brew of desire and emotion she aroused in him was spent.
Barring that, he wanted to slam his fist in Ansgar’s smug face for interfering.
As if summoned by his thoughts, the air shimmered and Ansgar appeared.
Brand schooled his face into an expressionless mask. “You have a purpose for bringing us to this place, I assume?”
Ansgar raised his brows. “I? I thought this was your doing.”
“No.”
“How . . . unsettling. I hoped you had perchance come to your senses and abandoned the wench.”
“In good time,” Brand said through his teeth. “But first I will use her to trap the djegrali.”
“Very clever of you. I suppose it was necessary to disrobe the human in order to—er—bait the trap?”
Something dark and unfamiliar clawed its way from the deepest recesses of Brand’s soul. The sensation was strange and disquieting, and it was a moment before he recognized it. Jealous; by the sword, he was jealous. Ansgar had seen Addy in all her unclad glory, her exquisite body bare but for an inconsequential wisp of fabric that hugged her delectable backside. The other warrior’s eyes had roamed the graceful curves of her back and long, smooth legs. Perhaps he even caught a glimpse of Addy’s luscious breasts before Brand pulled her beneath him. The knowledge made Brand want to kill Ansgar with his bare hands, to wipe the memory of Addy’s body from the other man’s mind. With an effort, he tamped down his anger. Such emotion was undesirable in a warrior. He was a demon slayer, he reminded himself. In a race of disciplined fighters, he was renowned for his self-control. He would not lose his temper. “She is amusing, I will admit.” He shrugged. “But the Dalvahni are immune to human wiles, as you well know.”
“So I thought, but she is a most distracting female, is she not?” Ansgar’s cool voice held a thread of amusement. “Such spirit and fire contained in a delicious package. Small wonder if you were distracted, brother. It makes me want to—er—check her snare myself.”
The demon of jealousy burst forth. Brand slammed his fist into Ansgar’s face and knocked him to the ground. He stood over the other warrior, fists clenched. “You will keep your distance, brother,” he snarled. “If you value your life.”
Ansgar climbed to his feet, his expression one of stunned disbelief. “You hit me. You hit me over a woman, Brand. Such unbridled spleen is unsuitable in a warrior. I should report you.”
“But you will not. Because that would mean abandoning the hunt, and that you will not do.”
“No, I will not relinquish my prey. But that is not all that keeps me here.” Ansgar rubbed his bruised jaw and gazed at the smudge of trees on the far side of the plowed field. “Strange forces stir in this place. The djegrali gather here, but to what purpose? And then there is your behavior. Most uncharacteristic. In the eons I have served beside you, you have always been a model of restraint. But no more, it would seem. Why, I ask myself? My curiosity is aroused, as well as my hunter’s instincts. I have questions, and I mean to find the answers.” He turned to Brand, his silver-gray eyes sharp. “For instance, if you did not transport us to this place, and I did not, then who did? This, at least, is a mystery I think you can answer. How came we here, brother?”
Brand tightened his jaw and measured his words with care. What he was about to admit was unprecedented. “In thinking the matter over, it is perhaps possible that Adara—uh—I mean, the female may be responsible.”
Ansgar gazed at him without blinking. “She is a sorceress, then?”
“No. As I told you last night, she was harmed during the fight with the djegrali.”
“Harmed in what manner?”
“An ice dagger. The creature stabbed her in the chest as it fled. ’Twas a mortal injury. I repaired it.”
For the first time in Brand’s memory, Ansgar’s perpetual air of imperious complacence wavered.
“A mortal wound and you repaired it? Such a thing is not permitted. If she is responsible for transporting us here, then that means . . .” Ansgar’s eyes widened. “It means you gave a human a portion of your essence! It is forbidden.”
“She came to my aid and in doing so was injured. Healing a human comrade wounded in battle is not unknown, although I will admit it is unusual and generally discouraged. As for the other, where is it written? I do not recall such a prohibition.”
It was Ansgar’s turn to clench his teeth, a circumstance that gave Brand some small measure of satisfaction. “You do not recall it because it has never been done,” Ansgar ground out. “We are immortal. The consequences of what you have done could be disastrous.”
“Don’t