Luck of the Irish Blog Hop

[xakara]

Greetings, Kittens!

Welcome to the Luck of the Irish Blog Hop! For those of you who joined us for the New Year's Hop and Valentine's Day Hop, you know that there are lovely free reads that await your lovely attention. Our St. Patrick's Day Hop is going through March 19th and our lovely grand prize is a Kindle 3! Yes, a Kindle 3 so enjoy the stories and leave comments to enter to win.
 
Readers from the New Year's Hop will recongnize the characters below from that free read. If you didn't get the download or are new to the blog hop you can read the first installment HERE. The download for all of the New Year's stories is HERE. If you fall off the hop, just click on the banner at the end of the post. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Enjoy.

 

 

Stone Warriors
Part 2

Aamon fought the smile forcing itself across his lips. He'd tried hard to dislike Jordan for the last ten weeks but the younger warrior didn't make it easy. He took every hit and got back up eager and ready. He excelled at every training exercise and remained humble. He couldn't be more green but he saddled up for the ride like a pro, never worried about where it would take him, reassured by the fact that it always be somewhere he needed to go. Aamon hated that. He hated the wide-eyed optimism, the endless bravery that could only come from someone drunk on love. That had been Aamon at one time. Some days it still was.

"Bend your knees more, roll forward on the balls of your feet." Aamon crossed his ankles and settled his back against the houseboat's railing. "You're going to fall, Jordy." He knocked back a swallow of whiskey straight from the bottle. "That'll be dangerous in these waters. It's dark but there's an entire town beneath us, who knows what you'll impale yourself on, especially with whatever damage was caused when I dropped anchor. Pay attention."

Jordan stood and repositioned his feet on the narrow post. "Thanks, you're very helpful." Jordan took a deep breath and crouched back into position, knees bent, heels lifted, arms wrapped around his legs, weight on the balls on his feet. "Is there really a town underneath us? I thought the dam only flooded St. Thomas and only partway."

"You only hear about St. Thomas because the government actually purchased it and the inhabitants moved. But it wasn't the only town lost. There's rarely ever only one."

"I grew up hearing about St. Thomas." Jordan said. "1871 the Mormons abandoned it when the state line shifted and they were suddenly in Nevada instead of Utah. Nevada demanded back taxes from the town and they moved instead of paying. My ancestors were among the people who claimed the town."

Aamon studied the naked lines of Jordan's body. "You're great-grandfather Hugh Lord was the last to leave on June 11, 1938."

Jordan turned to look at him and lost his balance. He hit the water, for not the first time that day. His hand came up for the guide rope and Aamon grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him aboard with such momentum that he landed in Aamon's arms. Jordan laughed. "That doesn't take anything out of you to just snatch me out of the water like that, does it?"

"Are you kidding? It invigorates me to haul your otherwise perfect ass out of the water over and over again in reminder of how much you still have to learn."

Jordan got his balance and pushed his hair out of his eyes. "Is the perfection of my ass the reason I have to do this naked?"

Aamon slapped his backside and walked past him back to his seat. "That's my consolation prize for having to puppy-sit you through all these phases."

"I'd learn faster if you used better treats."

"I've got your treat right here." They laughed together. Aamon stopped and sniffed the air. "You're hurt."

"I feel fine." Jordan ran his hands over his body. "I'm not finding anything."

Aamon sighed. "Get under the showerhead." He pulled his shirt over his head and sat down to pull at one leather boot."

"Don't worry about it. I'm sure I'll find it when the soap hits it."

"Uh huh." Aamon pulled the other boot free and stood. "I'm checking anyway." He shucked out of his jeans and socks. "Aila would be a touch upset if I broke you just three days before the equinox and St. Paddy's Day or not, I'm not counting on my luck of the Irish to reassure me on this."

The rainfall showerhead covered them both in warm spray. The scent of blood was faint but present. It wasn't a scalp wound unless the object was still embedded. To be sure, Aamon hooked the slotted bench with a foot, dragged in fully under the spray,  pushed Jordan to sitting on the bench beneath and began to wash his hair.

"Mmm, I like this a lot more than I think I'm supposed to." Jordan leaned back against his body. "Hopefully, whatever small wound I have is on the bottom of my foot and you have to work your way down twice to find it."

Aamon's stomach clenched in want and his eyes closed. "No wonder you're learning so slowly. I told her we should use tough love instead of all this new age, positive reinforcement crap."

"I don't think that would work." He reached back and ran his hands down Aamon's legs. "You stop every time something breaks my skin, tough love means powering through."

"Looking at your mug, as is, will be hardship enough over the coming years. The last thing I want to do is scar is all up and be stuck looking at that for a century." He worked his fingers over Jordan's forehead and traced the strong lines of the face that managed to be handsome without ceasing to be pretty. Aamon had heard similar descriptions about himself—Aila definitely had a type. Perhaps by default, Aamon did too. Trying to deny his attraction to Jordan was useless but he fought it all the same. After the transformation Jordan would be a warrior, he would be strong and durable and real. Right now he was just a fragile, mostly human boy and Aamon clung to that desperately.

"What's the time to really kiss me?"

Aamon snapped out of his thoughts. "What?"

"The town that just tried to kill me, what's its name?" Jordan asked.

It took a moment for Aamon to collect himself. Amusing as the misunderstanding might be, he didn't take it as a good sign. His thoughts were getting away from him. "We're anchored over the town of Promise, Nevada. It never appeared on a map and exist in few records beyond the ones rotted away in the postal stop and clerks office below."

"You know a lot about the area. Are you from here?"

This was more familiar territory. Jordan forever fished for information no matter how many times he was deflected. "You know I'm not from here. I met Aila in New York."

"But you're not from New York. Where were you born?"

Soap slipped between his fingers as he straddled the bench and worked his hands over Jordan's chest and back at once. "Boston. Are you happy, now? I was born in Boston on a Friday at ten-ten a.m. at Mass General Morgue."

"You mean maternity." Jordan corrected. He turned his head and stared across the intimate distance. "You said morgue."

"And I meant morgue, now stand up." He worked his hands over Jordan's left thigh.

A long silence met the revelation. Jordan touched his shoulder until Aamon looked up. "Was she a doctor working in the morgue?" He swallowed and his face crumbled but he grasped for the most positive option. "Or a patient and they were out of beds everywhere else?"

And there it was, the devil in the details. "Neither. A pregnant Jane Doe was wheeled into the morgue without vital signs or fetal movement. The docs took a lunch and came back to a bloody newborn still attached to the placenta and a missing body. One the records say was carried out by a single male by the tracks." He turned Jordan to work on his right side. "Either she was still alive and delivered on her own; or she'd actually died and an industrious medical student delivered me as an experiment only to find a live infant and he panicked. They only thing the notes are clear on is that there wasn't enough blood for an impromptu cesarean on a living patient. However it happened, someone carried her out of there and either chose to leave me to be discovered or simply didn't make it back in time to retrieve me. I was wrapped up and tucked in a safe spot, so they meant me well either way, but they moved quickly, too quick to even clean me off."

"I'm sorry. I don't know what to say. The way you talk they never found her or who took her." Jordan sat down and faced him. "I'm really sorry, Aamon. I never knew my birth parents either. I was raised by my mom's cousin, one that had never met her. I don't know anything about her or my birth father that's not in the adoption paperwork."

A heart-to-heart was out of the question. Aamon was not about to rehash age old emotions with a child. His leather jacket had two decades on Jordan. Nope, never going to happen. "At least you have paperwork. Check your feet. I've found two wounds, make sure you don't have more. We need these healed up by the equinox, scars can act as a weak spot in the stone when you change." Jordan held his gaze for a long moment and then nodded and began to soap his feet. Aamon stood, grabbed the smaller handheld showerhead in the center of the larger rain-head and bit back a sigh. "They think she came from money and that she was Irish. Her body had been partially processed. Her clothing was expensive. The notes say she had a necklace, a Celtic knot and an Claddagh ring, um, Irish wedding band, on her right ring finger. I was wrapped in a large silk scarf from around her neck." He held his hand up. "It was embroidered with a shamrock about the size of my palm. The city, the jewelry the scarf, Irish was a good bet. They put it on my records and I was placed with an Irish Catholic family within the week. A few months later when it was clear no one was going to step forward to claim me, I was formally adopted and the family moved back to Dublin to take care of my adopted great-grandparents."

"That's the accent! I couldn't figure it out. Every time you get, uh, hmm." He looked everywhere that wasn't Aamon. "Passionate about something, there's a bit of an accent."

Aamon wasn't sure how to take that. "Second generation American parents, native Irish great-grandparents, one of which is Scotch-Irish, working at the neighborhood pub, the Pot of Gold and all the tourists that brought and a lifetime of travel; it's going to make an accent hard to place. All the edges get rubbed down until it's soft and indistinct. Except obviously when I'm passionate about something. Which means what exactly?"

"I don't know, I can think with you running your fingers through my hair like that."

"Sure you can. You're just more likely to be truthful and you're avoiding that."

Jordan wiped the cascading water out of his face and looked up, his expression unguarded. "Sometimes, when you talk to Aila, you're voice changes depending on how caught up in her you are." He smiled and looked away. "And although startlingly luxurious, the boat's not that big. Sometimes your excitement carries to my room."

Aamon shut off the water and lowered to the bench. "You listen when I make love to Aila?"

Jordan acknowledged his question with a look and a larger smile. "So how did you know about my great-grandfather being the last to leave St. Thomas?"

"I make it a point to research my competition. It always comes out for the best in my book."

The young warrior's smile faded. "Is that what I am? Competition? I don't want to compete." He reached out and put his hand on Aamon's chest. "Is that why you keep avoiding being with me? Did I do something wrong that seemed competitive?"

Guilt wriggled in Aamon's gut. "It wasn't literal, don't get your knickers in a twist. You haven't done anything wrong." Although at first, well at first it had been quite literal. But his next words were no less true. "I guess because of how I came into the world and how I came up, family is important to me. I made it my business to learn about yours if you were about to join mine."

"Do you mean all of the Stone Warriors or you and Aila specifically?"

Aamon ignored him. "It looks like it's only the two scratches. I have a small crescent shaped cut just below your left earlobe and the deeper one on your chest I could smell bleeding." He leaned in. "It's small though, maybe the width of a fingernail. I didn't feel anything so whatever pierced you is out of the wound." He traced his finger at the edge of the cut and brushed his thumb over Jordan's nipple. "It's right at the areola, so even if it scarred it wouldn't be large enough or revealed enough to act as a target."

"I like your methods of distraction but I want to understand." Jordan covered Aamon's hand with his. "I watch the two of you together and I don't understand how you ever spent time apart. You avoid anything personal and then I learn you have this rich background that you're obviously proud of locked away behind the broody looks. There's so much going on in your head and I'm not privy to any of it, but you must want me to be, some day anyway. You just called me family. I know you have a sense of humor but it didn't feel like you were joking just now."

Aamon's jaw clinched. The kid was right, he'd been left with nothing but silence and seeming contradictions from Aamon. But Aamon didn't have to like it. "So I have a sense of humor?"

"Let me see." Jordan arched a brow at him. "You named your boat The Blarney Stone, that big rock they kiss in Ireland to be blessed with a silver tongue and a gift for conversation. But I can count the number of words you've said in the last three months. It's easy, I just count up the number of training sessions and multiply it by your six favorite phrases. Talking is not your strong suit." His expression became serious. "At least not talking to me."

The final transformation had to be in touching distance. He shouldn't care that Jordan's feelings seemed hurt. He shouldn't want to comfort him and to make all the doubt disappear. The Bond was forming and forming fast. He'd never again be able to fight it as he had in the beginning. "I named her The Blarney Stone because when I saw her, it struck me as perfect. She looked like a piece of the stone itself floating in the harbor and anything I said on her decks or below could only be the right thing at the right time."

Jordan looked around the boat. "The boat looked like the stone while in the harbor?"

"Yeah."

Jordan tapped his foot on the deck. "Why is it green? Isn't the actual stone a blue-grey kind of deal?"

Aamon moved closed to Jordan and placed his hands on the other man's head. "Yeah, I had to paint her after I stole her from the harbor." He turned Jordan's head. "Hold still. With marks this superficial it would be a waste to break out the salve." Aamon ran his tongue over the small wound, back and forth until it sealed. He sucked Jordan's earlobe into his mouth before he could help himself. The sounds and shudders pulled him in and he tried to slow his thoughts to make a conscious decision. He could pull back, heal the chest wound and walk away; or he could ride the delicious tension until it broke and he no longer had to fight the attraction, the impulses or the compulsion it had all become.

Aamon pressed a kiss to the sensitive skin just behind Jordan's earlobe and he laid him back against the bench. Another kiss moved him to Jordan's throat, a third to his collarbone. The fourth one placed his mouth over the wound and his tongue lashed it closed before claiming the hardened nipple. He let his lips, teeth and tongue have their way until Jordan's short moans changed. It was that sound more than any sensation that let Aamon know he'd reached much lower and now held Jordan's growing length in his hand.

He came up from Jordan's body panting. "I'm sorry. We need to stop and go below decks."

Jordan covered his face with his hands and gave a frustrated laugh. "Dammit! You just had to stop and think again." He sat up on his elbows. "Is this the part where you save my long absent virtue and we get dressed like nothing happened, as usual?" He sat up fully, a bit of bite to his next words. "Or maybe you're feeling romantic and this is where we go and cuddle in front of your lovely, marble, in-wall fireplace."

"Hey." Aamon stood. "I didn't build a pretentious boat, I just stole it from a pretentious man who didn't deserve it."

"Do you love, Aila?" Jordan asked.

Aamon turned and walked away.

Jordan went after him. "It's a simple question. Do you love her?"

Aamon turned and grabbed him by the throat just beneath his chin. "I love her in ways you don't yet know exist. Don't ever question that."

"I know you're in love with her." Jordan held his gaze unfazed. "I want to know if you love her. I want to know if that's what you mean by family."

"Of course it is." Aamon pulled his hand back. "Yes, I love her."

Jordan stepped closer. "Could you love me? Do you even want to? You study me, you've investigated me, you train me, but you hold back from me. Do you want to love me? Or is it that you don't want me to love you? Something that's not going too well if you hadn't noticed."

The weight of another's love was a burden, one Aamon had not always borne well. "I wouldn't call you family if I couldn't love you, if I didn't want to."

"Then why are you running away after the first time you've actually opened up fully without sarcasm or pretense?"

Aamon grabbed him and kissed him until their bodies melted into the planes and lines of one another. They broke apart slowly and Aamon rested his forehead against Jordan's. "You're human and incredibly more fragile than I am, more fragile than what I'm used to."

"I can't help that and I've gotten stronger."

"I know that." Aamon hissed, fighting his own urges. "Just hush a minute. One of the reason I don't talk is because you cover the spread for both us." He took a breath. "What I'm trying to say is that I've been distant and careful, but that's not why we have to go below decks. I'm tired of fighting this and the pull is more than I care to push against. You're more fragile than I'm used to and Aila is downstairs. We're going below so I can have a chaperone. Now move."

Jordan laughed and nodded. "Aye, Captain."

Aamon watched him disappear below decks and rubbed his hand over his face. This was either the best thing to happen since the last phase of the transformation started tugging at his senses, or the worse idea he'd had since he left Aila to explore on his own. Thinking of both of them below waiting for him, he simply couldn't care what it turned out to be. Tonight it would be everything he needed and he couldn't ask for more than that.

"I guess there's a little luck of the Irish on my side after all. Happy St. Patrick's Day to me."