Dark Peril (18 page)

He brought his mouth to her shoulder where the puncture wounds had been. “He nearly got you today.”

She nodded. “I was terrified. I never want him to get his hands on me again. I went into the river, just as poor Annabelle did.” She pressed her fingers to her temple and shook her head. “I left her there. In the river. To bait them. I don’t care about the jaguar-man, he can rot there. But I can’t get her out of my mind. I should have tried to find her body.”

“I found her body and I buried her deep where no human, no animal and no jaguar will ever find her. I removed all scent from the area. She is safe from them.”

The relief was overwhelming. Solange leaned back and rested her head on his chest once more. “Thank you. I’ve never left a woman alone in her death. I do my best to do right by them, even if I can’t save them. It would have haunted me that she wasn’t buried or burned properly.”

His arms circled her, just under her breasts, and held her close. “It is done,
sívamet
—my heart. You can rest now.”

She felt relaxed, the tension at last completely gone from her. His arms felt safe, and when she closed her eyes she allowed herself to drift a little and just enjoy the feel of him surrounding her. This, then, was what other women felt. Part of someone else. Cared for.

“I wouldn’t,” she murmured.

“Wouldn’t?” he echoed.

“Remove my scars. They’re part of me, part of who I am now. I don’t like being angry, and killing makes me sick. After a while I wonder if I’m as bad as they are, but in a way, you’re right about the scars. I didn’t break. I didn’t let him use me and turn me into something weak and helpless. I honored my mother and stepfather’s memories, as well as those of our friends and my two younger brothers.” She ran her fingers over her arms, for the first time seeing her skin differently. A tribute, not something so ugly.

“You are a gift, Solange. An amazing, priceless gift.” He swept her wet hair aside and brushed a kiss along her neck.

Without another word he lifted her into his arms and stepped out of the basin. She opened her mouth to protest. The water had been a cocoon of heat. For the first time that she could remember, she had been sheltered and comforted, and she didn’t want it to end. But there was something implacable about his expression. The lines were etched deep. His eyes were again a deep blue, and there was a hint of possession there she felt secretly thrilled about.

The cavern should have been cold, and Solange was prepared to shiver, but the air was warm. He had seen to her comfort once again. He set her on her feet in front of him, produced a soft towel out of the air, in the strange way Carpathians could produce clothing, and began to gently rub the droplets of water from her body. She found herself unbearably shy all over again.

He stood so close, his body heat enveloping her, his gaze drifting over her body as though it belonged to him. Hadn’t he actually used those words? He was slow and methodical, taking his time, using the corner of the towel to rub her arms dry, but then he suddenly leaned in and flicked a drop of water from the tip of her breast with his tongue. She jumped as streaks of fire rushed to her feminine channel, setting off a spasm of need. His mouth moved to the bite mark he’d previously healed. The punctures were sealed, but this time he lapped at the damaged tissue until she no longer even felt the mark on her.

“You don’t have to do that.” She shivered, not from the cold, but from his sensuous touch.

“You are wrong,
kessake
,” he corrected. “No other man can put his mark on my woman. He cannot harm her in any way. I
have
to heal you or I cannot live with myself.”

She let him. She didn’t know why she let him. His touch should have been disturbing, and perhaps, because it was arousing, it was—but she didn’t care. She had never experienced anyone’s attention before, let alone that of a man who focused so completely on her well-being. He made her feel special and beautiful, almost like a fragile flower there in the rain forest. She wasn’t, and they both knew it, but for those few minutes when he was lavishing such care on her, she didn’t want the moment to end.

A fairy tale. She closed her eyes and gave herself up to the experience. The perfect man, a warrior with changing eyes, the absolute calm in the center of a storm. He thought her beautiful when she was a perfect, dreadful mess. But he made it so. Somehow, Dominic made it so.

He paid attention to detail, and each time he found a bruise or an angry scratch, he bent his head and used his mouth to heal it. The act was erotic, although she guessed he didn’t intend it that way. He was focused on her health, not on her shape. His tongue found a puncture wound on the small of her back, several more near her buttocks. His hands held her hips motionless as he attended to each separate wound.

Solange worked hard to control her breathing. She was grateful he had moved behind her so she didn’t have to admire his physique, because, to her, he was perfection. She had no idea what could possibly happen after this encounter with him, but she’d take this moment and keep it in her heart forever. He made a complete circle until he was standing in front of her again. This time he leaned down and brushed a kiss on her trembling mouth.

Abruptly he went to his knees in front of her. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t find breath. What was a man like Dominic doing on his knees in front of her? It was so wrong. She could fight side by side with him, and she would consider herself his equal, no matter that he was a warrior unsurpassed. But she wasn’t his equal here. Not when they were alone. She wanted to protest, to back away, to serve him, but she had no idea how.

“I can’t do this,” she managed to get out. Her voice wasn’t her own, just a thread of shivery sound that could have been taken for fear.

He looked up at her with eyes darkened with desire. Her heart clenched hard in her chest. There was something so compelling in the way he looked at her. She was jaguar, used to direct stares—but that was the locked-on gaze of a predator. Dominic looked at her as if she were the most desirable woman in the world—and she was his. She shook her head, biting down hard on her lip to keep from upsetting him again by blurting out that she wasn’t.

“You deserve . . .” Her fingers tentatively touched the silky strands of that hair, so black, like the wing of a great bird shining in the sky. “. . . so much more. I can’t be what you need.”

“I deserve you,” he said, his voice as gentle as ever. “I need this.” He leaned forward and captured droplets of water running down her hip right over the jagged, ugly wound.

She cried out, the shock of his mouth on her sending waves of heat through her body. The brush of his hair against her thighs sent a thousand streaks of arousal burning through her legs so that she might have fallen if she hadn’t gripped his shoulders. He felt solid, like a rock, someone she could lean on if she just let herself break. And maybe that was what he had been after all along.

His hands spread her thighs. He didn’t say a word, simply positioned her with his hands. His breath touched her first. The sound of her heart echoed through the cavern. He carefully lapped at every single laceration, every scratch, and when he once again found the puncture wounds on her back and buttocks, she wanted to weep with the care he took.

“What happened?”

She had to search to find her vocal cords. He hadn’t touched her sexually, not really, yet her body was no longer hers. Pliant and soft, it belonged to him—she belonged to him. She didn’t know what kind of claiming the Carpathians did with their lifemates, but she felt claimed. She felt as if he cared for her like a rare and precious jewel. Nothing had ever come close to such a feeling before.

“I set a trap and he was waiting for me. He sacrificed his men, left them out in the open, and I took the shots. I was about to run when he dropped down out of nowhere. It’s difficult to fool my jaguar. She’s very alert, especially to any male in the area. She’s had to be. But he was there and now he has the scent of my blood.”

“Who is he?” Dominic bent his head forward to place a kiss on the puncture wounds, his hair making her shiver as it brushed against her skin.

“He’s called Brodrick. Brodrick the Terrible. He’s my father.”

Dominic was silent a moment, taking his time rising. He enveloped her body in the warm towel and drew her into his arms. “Tell me about him.”

Solange rested her head against his chest and allowed herself the pleasure of circling his waist with her arms. She could hear the steady rhythm of his heart, a reassuring beat. Where had all the men like Dominic gone? She doubted that she deserved such a man, not when she didn’t even know how to be a woman. But there were so many other women, good and loving, who would care and nurture and partner a man in the world. How had this happened? A mistake? Perhaps, but she was willing to accept the gift she had been given. Her time was past and maybe his was as well.

“He killed every person my cousins and I loved. He kills any woman or child who can’t shift. He kills every male jaguar child who has human blood in their veins. The men who follow him are not royals, but they all shift and they help him slaughter our people.”

“Why is he working with the humans if he despises them so much?”

“He’s made an alliance with the vampires as well. I think they’re compiling a database of women with psychic ability. He targets women he believes have jaguar blood. They’re kidnapped from all over the world and brought here. If she can shift, they try to impregnate her; if she can’t, she’s raped, tortured and killed. The entire alliance is built on a web of deceit. The humans don’t realize they’re working with vampires who are using them to kill the very people who protect them. Brodrick can’t be influenced by vampires, so he believes himself safe from them. And the vampires are trying to use everyone to build their numbers to defeat the Carpathians. They want all the women killed so there can be no lifemates for the Carpathians. At least, that’s what I believe.”

“How in the world did you learn all that?” His hand came up to bunch in her hair.

“I only recently managed to get inside, so some of what I just told you is guesswork. I spend a lot of time gathering information before I make a strike. I don’t have any help, and to plan a rescue with only one person is extremely difficult. “

“I thought your cousins . . .”

“They have lifemates. Their men don’t want them in jeopardy. In truth, neither do I. Jasmine is pregnant, and Juliette is too soft for this kind of life.” She sighed and looked up at him. “That’s not right, Dominic. She’s too good for this. There’s a brightness in her and I don’t want that to ever go away. At first I was terrified for her when she met Riordan, but I can see that he makes her happy. I’m grateful for him. He’ll take care of both of them.”

His eyes darkened. “You intend to kill Brodrick.” He made it a statement, neither good nor bad, no judgment in his tone, just a fact.

“Yes.” There was nothing else to say. She had no choice. He would never stop. Without him, the other men would scatter. They weren’t good men, and they would cause problems, but without direction, they would be manageable. If they went out of the rain forest, the law would eventually find them.

Dominic handed her a glass of water. “Drink.”

Where he got it, she had no idea, but she took it without protest and as she drank, he opened up the ground.

“I will need the soil to heal my wounds completely,” he said. “I have placed safeguards all around your cave and nothing will disturb us while we sleep.”

Solange looked down into the deep pit. A good ten feet down. Her cat could perhaps jump out if needed, but sleeping in the dirt? She wanted to be close to him, but . . .

He smiled at her, that slow, sexy smile that somehow turned her entire insides to a melted pool of acquiescing heat. How did he do that?

“You need to trust me.”

Trust.
He was a respected warrior. He had lived a thousand years with absolute honor. His word
was
his honor. If he said she was his, that she was beautiful to him, that she was the one he wanted, she should be able to accept that without all the self-doubts. And most of all, she should trust in him.

“I think trust is a gift,” she said in a low voice. “A beautiful gift so many women have naturally. I want it, Dominic. More than anything, I want that gift, but . . .” She trailed off. Was she even capable of trust anymore?

His fingers settled around the nape of her neck. “Your trust in me runs deep, Solange. You do not trust in yourself, the woman. You see yourself as two beings. One, the warrior: confident, incredible in her resolve, uncaring how the world views her as long as she can save the women of her species from the brutality of the men. You live in a world of deceit and violence and you understand and accept those rules. The other being is this one, the one who shares herself with me—her true lifemate. You are the other half of my soul. You are the light to my darkness. You cannot see yourself that way, because you have to live in darkness. You buried her deep, my woman, but what you do not understand,
sívamet
, is that I appreciate that in you. I do not wish others to see you as I do. I do not want to share this woman with anyone else, male or female. This side of Solange is mine alone.”

She shook her head, but took every word into her heart and held each close to her.

“Make no mistake, the warrior and the woman are not two separate entities. You are both, and I see you clearly. I know I have to share the warrior. That trait is strong, and there is no denying you. Events shaped what was already a fighter’s spirit, honed and perfected in the fires of agony. In order to survive and ensure the safety of women you love, the women only you stand for who survived, you had to suppress the light in you. But that light is there, and I can see it. If I am the only one who does, that is all that matters.”

God help her, every word touched her soul. He saw her. He knew her. He knew her better than she knew herself. She wanted to be everything for him, that woman who lived in the light, at least during the moments she actually could spend with him. She wanted to give him whatever he wanted.