EXHAUSTION had finally pulled the child into the deep oblivion of heavy sleep. His face was pressed to Rebekka’s neck, but she didn’t stop stroking the small back, the gesture as soothing to her as it was to him. It had taken a while to gain his trust, then longer to understand his baby talk and to learn his name. Eston.
Where is his mother?she wondered, though she held no illusions when it came to men—or women. It was possible the toddler’s mother was as evil as the trapper had been.
There were plenty of humans who wouldn’t protest capturing and selling Weres to run in the maze. An uncomfortable number of them would applaud it.
Weres had rights—but only when they were in their human form. And even then, who would enforce them? Not the police or guardsmen. Not in Oakland anyway.
Was it any wonder the Weres, whose ability to shift form gave them an advantage when it came to survival, chose to live away from places where humans ruled? She didn’t blame them, though it meant the Weres who lived in the human world were the outcasts who’d fled to escape punishment or chosen to leave because staying meant death.
Eston whimpered in his sleep, his arms tightening around Rebekka’s neck and sending a twinge of longing through her heart. She wanted a child of her own, but she also wanted a husband, and she saw little chance of gaining one.
What few men she encountered regularly were those who visited the brothels. She’d never accept one of them. And the Weres, like Levi…
Marrying one of them was to be forever trapped between worlds, just as they were. It meant hardship, not just for her as a human, but for any children who might come.
That left only the gifted as potential mates and she knew so few of them. Beyond that, her talent wasn’t one to help overcome the stigma of being the daughter of a prostitute and growing up in a brothel, even if she’d never lain with a man for money.
Rebekka sighed, a soft sound of sad acceptance as her fingers combed through Eston’s silky locks of hair.
Next to her Levi asked, “What are you going to do with him?”
His voice was carefully neutral, as if he could guess the nature of her thoughts and didn’t want to tread on the land mine her heart had become or be the one to point out the harsh reality of the world they lived in. There was only one choice. He knew it as well as she did.
“I’ll take him to the Mission tomorrow,” she said, arms tightening at the idea of leaving the child at the orphanage. But she couldn’t keep him in the brothel and she didn’t have the resources to try to reunite him with his mother—nor did she want to call attention to herself by attempting it.
Both the police and the guardsmen turned humans over to run in the maze. If word got to Anton Barlowe or Farold that she had the trapper’s son, it could lead to questions, to retribution for the loss of the dragon lizards and the others being transported to the red zone.
Rebekka shivered. She glanced at the werewolf padding along next to her now that the trail had widened, then at the werecougar, still slung over Levi’s shoulders and just beginning to stir and fight his way back to consciousness.
“If either of them is able to take a human form, maybe they can tell us where the trapper lives,” she said. “Davida cares for the children left with her. She has the support of the Church and the government, as well as some of the wealthy. They have the resources to get Eston back to his mother if they know where to look.”
“I’m not convinced they’d incur the expense, but if we learn where Eston is from and take him to the Mission, at least a story claiming he was handed off to a prostitute in the red zone will be believable. We know a man was traveling with the trapper.”
The wereman jerked into sharper wakefulness. Levi quickly lowered his burden to the ground, pinning the shapeshifter on his stomach with his hands behind his back while animal instinct prevailed and made the werecougar dangerous to all of them.
Rebekka knelt where he could see her, the child snuggling closer, seeking safety in his sleep. “It’s okay,” she murmured softly, both to the toddler and to the struggling Were.
She pitched her voice to soothe them, touched the werecougar’s emotions and calmed him through the use of her gift. He stopped fighting, though he continued to shake with fear.
Rebekka’s heart went out him. She wondered how he’d come to be trapped between forms. A pure Were mother would kill an infant at birth if it didn’t quickly settle into one shape or another. A mixed child born to a human mother wouldn’t fare any better.
“We don’t mean you any harm,” Rebekka said, willing the wereman to meet her eyes, but he was too timid, or too traumatized by all that had happened, to look anywhere other than the ground.
“Levi is going to let you go in a moment,” she continued. “Before he does, I want you to understand you have a choice.”
Her throat tightened for an instant, her thoughts straying to Levi, to the memory of offering him this same terrible choice, the loss of one part of himself in order to avoid a lifetime of being trapped between forms.
“I’m a healer. I can push the parts of you that are human back or I can push the animal away, so you’re one or the other. Or I can do nothing and leave you as you are. Whatever you choose, you’re free to go your own way. But if I change you, there’s no going back. You will remain animal or man. Do you understand?”
The Were spoke, an unintelligible word forced through a misshapen cat’s mouth. She assumed it was yes and met Levi’s gaze, gave a small nod. He eased his grip on the werecougar, slowly releasing him, though Rebekka knew Levi would act quickly and lethally if there was the slightest hint of aggression.
For a long moment the Were remained still as he gathered his courage. Finally he tilted his head enough to look at Rebekka. He spoke again, a sound that might have been help or cat or something else entirely.
“Do you want me to help you?” Rebekka asked, feeling pity where others would feel revulsion at the sight of pelt and skin, human features as well as animal on the same body, as if a madman had hacked apart two separate beings then cobbled pieces of them into one.
This time the wereman nodded instead of trying to speak, accompanying the gesture by cautiously raking his claws in the dirt.
“You want the cougar’s form?” Rebekka asked, wanting to be sure.
Another nod.
She didn’t remind him there was no going back. She understood his choice and guessed he knew he would continue to be a victim if he elected to look human.
There was no advantage to it. In his animal form he might be accepted into a Were community, perhaps even allowed to breed. In Oakland he would have to hide his nature outside of the red zone because there were plenty of humans who feared and loathed Weres—in any form.
It might be different in other places, though she’d never heard of any. Only the vampires lived openly among humans. But in the cities where they did, like San Francisco, they ruled with an iron fist, ensuring safety to the humans who worked for them but guaranteeing death to any who defied or challenged them.
Rebekka passed off the sleeping child to Levi. Eston’s face scrunched up, but he didn’t wake.
“I’ll need to touch you,” she told the werecougar. “It won’t hurt. But it’ll feel strange, like you’re a piece of clay in the hands of a sculptor. The calmer you are, the faster it will go.”
She waited for him to make eye contact and consciously relax his taut muscles before she slowly leaned over and placed her fingers against the bare human skin. At first there was only a tingle, as if the magic of her gift was gathering information about the nature of her patient. The sensation passed and then she applied her will and her fingertips became like blunt knives sliding into soft clay, only more so.
It was a melding that took her completely, sucked her in and blocked everything else out. She saw the human parts that needed to be pushed back from the surface. She tugged at the fabric of the cougar, expanding it, pulling it forward to conceal anything not matching it.
When she came back to herself, a mountain lion was rising to its feet where the wereman had lain. It shook itself off, gold-colored eyes meeting hers briefly before its attention centered on the wolf.
The cougar went into a crouch, revealing yellowed, deadly fangs as it gave a feral snarl and prepared to leap. Levi’s gun was out before Rebekka could move.
“Leave or die,” he said, and even in a human form, Levi was alpha, the gun replacing the teeth and claws of his lion form.
The cougar slunk away, waiting until he’d gained the sanctuary of the forest before he screamed in protest at being denied the opportunity to attack the werewolf. The werewolf whined and grov eled, crawled over to lick Rebekka’s foot before slipping into the woods where all signs of obsequiousness disappeared.
ARAÑA stopped when she reached the stream. She knelt and splashed cold water on her face before drinking, her eyes searching for and finding the markers Levi had described during the hike to the cemetery.
There was safety upstream, a small concealed lair he’d built with his brother before they were captured and sold to the maze owner. To get there she’d travel in the creek, a risk because water drew prey and predators alike, but an advantage because water also would make it more difficult to track her.
It had been an unconscious decision to head there rather than back to Oakland. Some instinct guiding her, or perhaps it was training—splitting up lessened the odds of being caught.
Separating herself from Levi and Rebekka had also allowed her a chance to think, to make her own plans. After today’s events, she considered her debt to them paid.
Her side throbbed painfully. Of greater concern was the blood soaking her shirt, a scent guaranteed to attract predators. She listened for the sound of Tir and heard only insects and birds.
It was for the best, she told herself. She’d known the moment his footsteps slowed, but she’d kept going despite the cry in her heart.
For a moment she allowed herself to remember his beauty, the heat she’d seen in his eyes when she’d knelt in front of him, and afterward when he’d reached for her. It was better this way, she repeated, turning it into a mantra. Whatever had caused her to touch her life to his in the vision place, it didn’t change the truth of what the demon mark meant.
Staying with him and being unable to touch him or be touched in return would be torture. Coming to care for him would only lead to horror and pain.
Her throat closed up as memories rose, stark and brutal. Once she’d foolishly thought love could make a difference. She’d thought the convictions of her heart and the driving need to act on them would make a difference. She’d believed in whispered words and sweet promises, in a confident tone and a knowing masculine smile.
Araña opened her eyes and found the spider still on her hand. She shivered as she remembered the man she’d thought she was in love with when she was sixteen, how he’d coaxed her into sneaking away to his boat even after Erik and Matthew had warned her against it until they could learn more about him.
As with the guardsman who’d tried to rape her, the demon mark didn’t hesitate to kill. Only unlike that death, she still carried the guilt of the other one with her.
She would never have what other women had. She’d never know what it was like to be held and caressed, to give her body over to a man, to claim and be claimed physically.
Araña forced her thoughts to the present. She stood, her hands settling on the knife hilts. The need for revenge burned like a hot ember in her belly, as did finding a way to reclaim the boat. Without Constellation there was little chance of getting home.
A stab of pain sliced through her with the word. Home was more than a place. Home had always meant Matthew and Erik. She stiffened her spine and found her earlier resolve not to allow grief to swallow her.
The sudden silence of the forest cut through her thoughts and sent her heart racing. She turned, expecting to see guardsmen, or Tir.
Instead there was a flash of gray as a dragon lizard erupted from the growth. It was on her in a burst of speed.
If her hands hadn’t been resting on the hilts of her knives, there would have been no time to draw a weapon. She pulled the blades, and slashed at the deadly reptile even as it knocked her to the ground.
Her forearm against its neck was the only thing keeping it from biting her. Its tail and head thrashed violently as she sliced its underbelly, adrenaline giving her strength though its weight hampered her movements.
Fetid breath struck her face. Claws raked against her chest and sides.
Pain spurred her on and terror turned her into a creature of pure instinct.
Fluids gushed from the lizard’s body and into her wounds. Burning. Stinging. Increasing her fear and making her more savage.
She dragged the knife upward and felt slick entrails emerge from the opening. The dragon lizard rolled away, trailing viscera.
Araña tried to get to her feet but slipped on blood and gore in a wave of nausea. She hit the ground and the lizard’s head snapped around. It lunged, the orange irises marking it as male.
Her blades were there to meet the attack, this time going into the neck, driven deep by the lizard’s momentum. Its blood sprayed across her face, into her eyes, blinding her so she didn’t see the moment the reptile died, though she felt the severing of its spine as one of the knives slid through it.
Araña’s arms trembled as she held the lizard’s upper body away from her and wiped her face against the sleeve of her torn shirt. When she could see, she pushed the reptile to the side but remained crouched rather than trying to get to her feet.
This time the dragon lizard didn’t move. Its orange eyes dulled as she watched.
She stood slowly then. Became aware of the sound of panting intermingled with whimpers and realized it was coming from her.
Her heart thundered, beating so hard that pain reverberated through her, drawing her attention down to her shredded shirt and flesh, to the blood trailing in bright red rivulets to soak into her pants.
The demon mark was on the back of her hand. She didn’t know whether it had sent its poison into the lizard or not. She guessed it had for the fight to end so quickly and without her feeling the lizard’s teeth sink into her skin.
The venom and bacteria from the reptile’s mouth would have turned her into walking death, a corpse waiting only for organs to fail and a final breath.
Adrenaline washed out of her, leaving her trembling, vomiting for long moments. She got into the creek and lay down, letting the cold water wash away the stink of lizard and the fluids coating her clothing and skin.
Her teeth were chattering by the time she rose to her feet. Dizziness made her stagger.
Araña fought it. She forced it away and started up the creek toward the lair and sanctuary.
The chills continued unabated despite the distance she put between her and the dead dragon lizard. Her clothing dried and then became soaked with sweat, each step becoming harder to take. Twice she stopped and bent over with dry heaves.
Her heart fluttered erratically in her chest, her mind attributing it to loss of blood, to shock, refusing to consider anything else, shying away from thoughts of the lizard’s body fluids pouring over her open wounds, from contemplating the possibility that more than its bite was deadly.
The mound of rocks and downed trees hiding Levi’s lair came into view. She climbed out of the streambed, relief making her sink to her knees in a pool of sunlight, the heat of the sun a hand pushing her forward to lie against warm soil.
Something was wrong. It was a fleeting thought lost in darkness as consciousness slid away.
TIR ran. Harder and faster than he had before. The nameless urgency he’d experienced as he turned away from Oakland and toward Araña had only intensified when he discovered the dead dragon lizard.
How she’d survived the attack at all was beyond imagining. But she had.
She still lived. He refused to believe it was too late. He wanted to believe she hadn’t been bitten at all.
The evidence suggested otherwise.
His fists tightened around the knives. Her knives. He’d found them near the dragon lizard’s corpse, as if she’d forgotten she was holding them. She would never have left them behind if she was well.
He owed her for his freedom. That’s what drove him forward, he told himself. But he had no explanation for the bolt of agony spearing through his chest when he rounded the corner and saw her lying on the ground only a few steps from the water.
She whimpered when he pressed his fingers to her throat, a faint sound that could have been protest or a longing for the comfort of touch. Her pulse was weak, her breathing thready, and her skin fevered though she trembled as if freezing.
Tir rolled her to her back. Bile rose in his throat as the smell of infection and death reached him. It radiated from the scratches on her chest and sides, oozed from her flesh.
In all his memory he’d never willingly tended to another. But his hands worked without his conscious decision, stripped her of clothing so he wouldn’t miss any of her wounds. And then he slashed her knife across his palms.
Never in all the times his blood had been used to heal had he endured the agony of it without promising himself one day vengeance would be his. But this time, as he pressed his hands to her fevered flesh, he willed his blood to make her whole, to restore her to health.
The agony of it was excruciating, worse than it had ever been, perhaps because on other occasions the healing had been involuntary. Pain sliced through his skull and the muscles of his arms and neck stood out in violent relief. His breath came in tortured pants. His jaw clenched against the need to scream as he battled to heal rather than kill.
Time slowed. Every minute contained an eternity of suffering as, wound by wound, he kept his palms pressed to her flesh, only leaving one spot for another when her skin was unblemished, unmarred. Perfect.
As abruptly as the torment started, it was gone, leaving him disoriented, his eyes unfocused for long moments, until the smooth texture of her skin and her nakedness burned away the haze left by the painful echoes of his sacrifice.
She was beautiful. Beyond what he’d imagined the night before when her appearance in his dreams had made him wake and take his cock in hand.
He caressed every inch of her with his eyes. The earth-rich color of her skin stirred primitive emotions, a fierce possessiveness twined with the searing flames of lust.
They were the same feelings that had made him turn away from her earlier and take a different path. But looking at her, he knew he wouldn’t be able to leave her again without taking her first.
His attention lingered on dusky breasts tipped with dark areo las, then moved to her smooth, bare mound. Carnal hunger clawed through his belly, ravenous and dark.
It was a bestial urge to dominate. To mate. To cover Araña as she offered herself to him on hands and knees, her thighs parted and her folds slick and open.
The strength and suddenness of the erotic fantasy, the power she had over his body—even when she was unconscious and helpless—brought the return of uneasiness.
It damped down the lust, cooled it, until his gaze went to the place between her thighs, drawn there again against his will.
A moan escaped as he fought the need to tumble forward, to prostrate himself like a supplicant and press his mouth to her tempting flesh.
Seconds earlier the lust pulsing through him had been primitive in nature. Now he wanted to worship her with heated kisses and an adoring tongue. He wanted to inhale her scent, taste the honey of her arousal, and hear her whimper as he pleasured her.
Once again the force and suddenness of the desire, the intensity of the fantasy, shook him. Only this time his uneasiness was met with a wall of lust, a lava-hot need that had built up over centuries and wouldn’t be denied.
Tir couldn’t stop himself from rising to his feet and shedding his clothes before lifting her into his arms. He stepped back into the creek, going to a sun-warmed pool his subconscious had noted.
As he sat, cradling her on his lap, his hands smoothing away all evidence of her near death, he told himself he meant only to clean her of blood. It was a lie, one he admitted as soon as her eyelids fluttered open and she tried to escape.
Tir’s arms tightened automatically, ruthlessly, as if some part of him feared he’d lose her if he freed her. “I won’t hurt you,” he managed, her struggles inflaming him, the rub of slick flesh against slick flesh making his buttocks clench and his cock throb.
“Stop,” he said, holding her against his chest, nearly moaning at the feel of her breasts with their dark, dark nipples brushing his skin, sending icy hot streaks of sensation down his spine and through his penis. “I don’t intend to hurt you.”
The words barely penetrated Araña’s consciousness. Panic. Fear. Confusion. The emotions held her in their grip as she tried to make sense of where she was and what had happened.
It came to her in hazy, fever-shrouded glimpses. The fight with the dragon lizard. The trip up the creek. Collapsing on the bank. Tir.
Clarity brought shock. She was alive when she should have been dead.
Araña stopped fighting. With a thought she found the demon mark above one nipple, trapped against Tir’s bare chest.
A more familiar fear made her heart trip into a frantic beat. Panic from a different source gathered and she started to struggle again as she said, “Let me go. It’s not safe to touch me. The mark—”
Tir’s arms tightened, preventing the words from escaping. His laugh was a heated stroke along her spine, a hot cupping of her breasts and mound.
“You can’t kill me,” he said, burning away her fear and panic with the absolute certainty in his voice.
Araña stilled, for the first time becoming aware of the smoothness of her flesh now, where earlier it had been ragged and bleeding, torn in the fight with the dragon lizard and the encounter with the guardsman. Becoming aware, too, of the heat of his skin, the hot throb of his cock trapped between them.
She felt bombarded by sensation, by something she’d only imagined. Heat pooled in her labia, her breasts. Her breath came faster, taking in his scent, imprinting it on her consciousness along with the feel of his body against hers.
She wanted to turn in his arms, to wrap her legs around him and press more tightly to him. To guide him into her and touch her lips to his as her fingers explored him. She wanted to capture this moment of physical contact and turn it into a memory she could cherish and savor for a lifetime.
Araña closed her eyes and did nothing but feel. His heart beat steadily against her breast, sending subtle vibrations through her nipple and straight to her cunt. The taut muscles in his arms as he restrained her made her feel safe rather than confined.
Warm water lapped against her, caressing her folds as sunlight slid over her back and shoulders. His heat seeped into her.
Birds sang and leaves rustled. The stream rippled over rocks. All of it the music of the living.
A shiver of need went through her. A primal craving that came with surviving, that fed on Tir’s touch and the hardened length of his cock trapped between them.
Carnal hunger knotted in her belly, urging her to press her lips to his neck and leave a trail of kisses on her way to his mouth. To coax him into opening for her, to twining his tongue to hers in wet heat and shared lust.
He’d healed her. She tried to remember something of it, but couldn’t. Perhaps that was why the spider allowed his touch. But it didn’t guarantee the spider would allow more—or ever allow it again once the contact was broken.
His arms loosened enough for her to ease away from him. The instant her gaze met his, spider vision and reality melded in the deep water blue of his eyes, submerging her in the memory of the soul thread unlike any she’d seen before, the sigil-inscribed collar glowing icy blue when she followed the strand to him.
Levi had said Tir smelled completely human, but held in Tir’s arms, Araña thought the Were was wrong. Fear and worry, hard-learned habit, made her try again to warn Tir. “The spider—”
Tir stopped her with another laugh, with fingers tracing her collarbone—the feel of it something out of fantasy, so exquisite she never wanted it to end.
She’d hungered for touch all her life.
A moan escaped. It was followed by a gasp when his palm covered the demon mark.
“If it was possible for me to die at the hands of a human, it would already be done,” he said, the words nearly lost when his palm glided downward over her hardened nipple.
Araña shuddered. She fought to think, to question, to choose—though deep inside she knew she wouldn’t turn away from the lust she read in his eyes, from the needs of her own body to know a man, to have, for a little while, what others could have for a lifetime—a lover.
He wasn’t human. His words confirmed her suspicions.
He wasn’t Were. That much Levi had right.
She didn’t think he was vampire.
“What are you?” Araña asked, her voice barely audible.
His eyes became instantly hooded. “Does it matter?”
He shifted their positions abruptly, rolling so she lay underneath him, caged in the shallow pool, her upper body held out of the water by her elbows.
“Does it matter?” he asked again, his cock rubbing against her swollen folds and stiffened clit, making her tremble with need and the desire to cant her hips and have him pierce her.
Did it matter?
A small voice said yes. She might hunger for touch, but her soul longed for true intimacy— the joining of spirit and flesh as Matthew and Erik had.
A more insistent voice said no. Tir could touch her where others couldn’t. And at least for a little while, she wanted to lose herself in passion, to forget what she’d lost.
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered, putting more weight on one elbow in order to free an arm. She mimicked his earlier touch, tracing his collarbone, though her touch was more tentative than his had been. “I was dying and you healed me.”
He brought his face closer to hers, the movement causing the long, silky strands of his hair to become a curtain enclosing them in a private world. “It was a fair trade. You freed me.”
Araña gave a small nod of acknowledgment, reading in to his words that they were even now—a debt had been incurred and paid. There was no longer any obligation between them.
She ducked her head, feeling suddenly shy with the stranger who lay so intimately on top of her. She wanted this. She wanted him. But her normal confidence seemed to have deserted her.
Another shiver of need went through her, accompanied by a small sound of longing. Her fingers tangled in the black silk of Tir’s hair as her hips lifted, pressing the unprotected head of her clit against the hot steel of his erection.
“Please,” she whispered, a small word holding so many different meanings for her.
Raw need twisted in Tir’s gut, urging him to possess her even as it was tempered by an unfamiliar, inexplicable desire to protect her. She was beguiling him, drawing him into a web with her at its center.
He didn’t understand her, couldn’t guess at what motivated her. Her emotions were quicksilver he couldn’t grasp, her thoughts hidden in dark eyes.
Only her body was easy for him to read. And it sang to his, a siren’s song of temptation he had no will to resist.
“You’re beautiful,” Tir said, brushing his lips against her cheek, the touch gentle despite the savage ache in his cock as she ground her bare mound and clit against it.
Her soft laugh made him smile. “You’re the beautiful one,” she said, and he caught the words with the press of his mouth to hers.
Deep inside him, in the hidden recesses of lost memory, a warning sounded against sharing breath with her—but it came too late. He moaned against the satin of her lips, the sweet yielding of feminine to masculine as she opened for him, welcomed his tongue with hers in a slow, sensual slide.
He was sorry now he’d brought her to the water. The first taste made him hungry for more.
Later, he promised himself. Later he would kiss down her body and press his mouth to her swollen cunt lips. He’d lap the honeyed arousal he found there.
He shouldn’t care that no other man had ever touched her this way. But a savage, primal satisfaction surged through him at the thought of having her as only he could.
Liquid hunger poured into his bloodstream as one kiss melded into another, then another. He settled more heavily on her, changed their position, his arms sliding underneath her shoulders and his hands cupping the back of her head, his elbows supporting them both in the shallow pool.
His strength made it easy. His reward was the feel of her arms wrapped around him, her fingers tangling in his hair, holding him to her as if she were afraid he’d leave.
Soft, desperate sounds spilled from her mouth to his, enflaming him further. The head of his cock found her opening, sending a jolt of unparalleled ecstasy through him.
He rubbed back and forth, tormenting them both, swallowing her gasps and soft cries. She retaliated by lightly raking her fingernails down his back, by grabbing his hips and trying to hold him steady so she could impale herself on him.
Tir resisted with a husky laugh, with the rub of his chest over the tight points of her nipples. Fiery need arrowed straight to his cock each time his nipples struck hers.
He wanted to lift up, to press his nipple to her mouth and feel the lash of her tongue, the grasp of teeth and pull of lips as she laved and bit and sucked. He wanted to kiss downward to her breasts and do the same to her.
Later, he promised himself. Later he would explore more of her, conquer every inch of her.
A shock of pleasure made him gasp. Lost in his fantasies, he’d forgotten about resisting, about drawing out the moment when his length would be held deep in her body.
She’d captured his cock head in the hungry mouth of her opening. And it wept, cried in ecstasy, his arousal joining hers in a heated wash as she clenched him.
Twin urges assailed him. The desire to swallow her virgin cries warred with the desire to watch her face as he forged inside her for the first time.
The latter won, though his lips clung to hers and his tongue was loath to leave the wet heaven of her mouth. When he was finally able to draw away, her sound of protest added to his pleasure.
The sight of her midnight eyes clouded with desire filled him with a satisfaction he wouldn’t have believed himself capable of, not when it came to a human. But she wasn’t just any human. She was the one who’d freed him.
She cried out when he pressed deeper. She was so tight, so hot he nearly came from the exquisite pleasure of having the muscles of her sheath tighten and spasm on him.
“Araña,” he whispered, the name torment and benediction.
It strained his control to keep from thrusting all the way in a single stroke, to keep from giving in to the mindless, clawing hunger she created in him—a hunger magnified by centuries upon centuries of abstinence.
Alpha and omega. The first and the last.
He couldn’t remember anything as pleasurable, didn’t know if he’d ever lain with a woman before.
He’d never imagined how close ecstasy and torment could be.
With excruciating slowness he worked his way in. He couldn’t resist the urge to cover her mouth with his, to feel her open for him, letting his tongue slide past her lips as his cock had done through the slick, swollen folds of her labia.
He shivered when he was fully seated. Stilled.
It was beyond imagining.
Tight vaginal muscles rippled and clenched, welcomed and resisted.
Heat surrounded him, bathed him, made him want to cry out.
Araña.
Her name echoed through him. In warning? In recognition?
He didn’t know. He knew only that nothing had ever felt as good as this, as having her beneath him, her body open and his penis held deep and fast inside her.
Araña’s arms tightened around Tir’s neck. The thick length of his cock was a throbbing presence in her channel, an echoed heartbeat filling her, stretching her in a seamless blending of pain and pleasure.
His lips left hers and she cried out at the loss. When their eyes met, the intimacy was nearly too much for her. She felt exposed, stripped bare, the shields necessary to survive no longer hiding her vulnerability, her need for love and touch.
Araña lifted her head and pressed her mouth to his, wanting to hide, willing to give her body but not her soul, not to a stranger who would soon be gone from her life.
His kiss didn’t allow the escape. His tongue plundered, commanded, insisted she cling to him, surrender a part of herself she knew she would never recover.
It didn’t matter, she told herself, knowing it was a lie and forcing everything from her mind but the moment, the reality of having Tir inside her.
She felt him fighting to give her time to adjust to his size even as need pulsed between them in a fierce, rapid beat that made it impossible to remain still.
Her sheath tightened on him. Feminine pride surged through her with the catch of his breath, the sharp thrust of his hips.
“Please, Tir,” she said against his mouth, and it was as if some barrier inside him broke.
His tongue fucked against hers as the hard length of him surged in and out of her.
She clung to him, moved with him.
Ecstasy. There was no other word for it.
She understood then why fortunes and lives and honor itself were sacrificed for the promise of passion.
Hot flesh and masculine desire turned her into a primal woman, a creature caught in the endless spirals of fierce joy.
She struggled for breath.
To get closer.
To reach the pinnacle that expressed itself in a sharp cry and brought exultation when her orgasm triggered his, leaving her swamped in feelings she never thought she’d experience.
For long moments afterward he continued to lie on top of her, nuzzling, kissing, his cock still inside her, as if he were in no hurry to part from her.
He was everything she’d dreamed a lover would be.
It was foolish, she knew it was, but she closed her eyes and allowed herself to pretend she’d always have this. Tir’s touch. His body covering hers. The pleasure he’d shown her was possible between a man and a woman.
When he finally rolled away to sit in the shallow pool, she wanted to follow him, to climb onto his lap and cling to him. Instead she sat, bathing herself in the sun-warmed water, struggling in the aftermath of sex to find words, chiding herself for the fierce longing to be held, for craving true intimacy as well as touch.
Her eyes teared with memories of Matthew and Erik together. Their shared glances and casual caresses, the way it was impossible to think about one of them without thinking about the other. Her throat tightened and she forced the pain back to the place in her heart that would always contain it. She couldn’t afford the weakness.
Live in the moment, in the here and now. That’s what life had taught her.
Make the most of every opportunity. That was the lesson favored by Erik and Matthew.
Tir watched the play of Araña’s thoughts across her face. Her emotions buffeted him, sliding through mental barriers erected over centuries.
What was it about this human that affected him so strongly? Stripped away his control as though it were nonexistent?
She rose from the shallow pool, black hair and water trailing down her back, tanned skin covering sleek muscle and a beautiful feminine form. She was like the Eve of the religious— unbearable temptation capable of leading any man to his destruction.
Tir caressed her with his eyes, hunger flaming to life, filling his cock so it rose along his abdomen, filling his testicles so they hung heavy with seed. There was a fleeting thought to ask her about the scars crisscrossing her back, the brand on her hand, but when she stepped onto the mossy bank and turned toward him, dark eyes sultry, holding a knowledge he’d given her, only carnal desire remained.
“I want you again,” she whispered, meeting his gaze boldly before lowering her eyelashes, shy temptress and brazen seductress rolled into one.