Dark Peril (19 page)

They both had so little time left. She accepted that and so did he. They were committed on their individual paths. But this was their time—maybe their only time. She lifted her hand to his face, tracing those lines etched so deep, lines that made him look like such a tough, ruthless man. There was no boyish trait anywhere. He was all man. He didn’t move away from her tentative exploration, nor did he hurry her decision to get into that pit of dark, rich soil with him. He stood beneath her fingers and let her commit his face to memory.

“You want me to sleep beside you?”

“I do not want you even inches from me,
minan
. I need you this day.”

She swallowed every fear and lifted her chin. “How will you know I’m there?” She was going to give him this small thing. What did it matter? It was all he would allow her to give him. She couldn’t touch his body, couldn’t relieve that fierce arousal. He gave and gave, and she . . .

“I receive pleasure from giving you pleasure, Solange. And you are always gracious enough to share each moment with me, even though allowing me into your mind is terrifying to you. I will know you are with me.”

“I don’t understand why you won’t let me . . .” She couldn’t articulate what she wanted so she simply dropped her hand around his thick, rock-hard erection.

The breath hissed out of him. “It is not safe.” Very gently he removed her fingers and pulled her palm to his heart. “It is enough that I share your pleasure.”

She doubted that, but she was too unsure of herself at the moment to pursue it. She would have to think about his statement for a while. The vampire blood? He might lose control and convert her? She knew, from talking to Juliette, that the drive was fierce and unrelenting in the male to bind his lifemate to him, yet Dominic had shown no signs of needing to bind her to him, or wanting to convert her. What did that mean? If she took him at his word that she was everything he wanted, then there was another reason.

He swept his arm around her waist and took them over the edge of the deep pit. Just before her feet settled into the soil, a small, thin comforter covered one side of the dirt floor. Her bare feet landed on the material. He sank into the soil and let out a sigh.

“Juliette tried to describe to me what it was like to be rejuvenated by the earth, but I couldn’t get the concept.”

“You would like me to share the experience with you,
kessake
?” He settled into the cradle of dark, rich loam and held out his hand to her.

She took his hand and allowed him to pull her down to his side. She settled against him, curling like the cat she was, one hand flung boldly across his chest. “Yes.” She wanted every experience with him that she could have.

No one would probably ever know about Dominic, her dream lover. He was hers alone, and maybe it was the way it was supposed to be. She’d done a lot of terrible things in her life, committed a lot of sins. In the rain forest, she told herself it was kill or be killed, but the truth was, she was the one who determined who lived and who died. If she had two jaguar-men in her sights, she tried for both of them, but the first was always the one she considered the most dangerous and violent. These stolen moments of happiness with Dominic made up for a lifetime without.

He brushed a kiss on top of her head and then waved his hand. Another quilt settled over her. “While I sleep, should you wake, I do not want you cold.”

She touched the exquisite quilt with the symbols woven into it. The material was soft, dark greens, like her forest, with animals embroidered into squares beside the symbols. She found herself tracing each one with a light finger. “This is beautiful.”

“Gabriel’s woman makes them for us. She weaves in whatever is needed. I wanted one to comfort you and bring you peace of mind. I will appear dead, Solange, with no breath or heartbeat. You cannot panic.”

She smiled at the command in his voice. “I don’t easily panic. Well, not as a rule. You definitely shocked me.”

“By being real?”

“Yes.”

He laughed softly. “You shocked me as well. We have bad timing,
päläfertiil
. Maybe the worst timing of any couple in history.”

She turned his words over in his mind. “I needed time to grow, Dominic. There was so much anger in me, so much hatred for the men who slaughtered my family, who have been systematically committing genocide on our own people because they believe the bloodlines need to be pure. I hated for so long and I couldn’t distinguish between those men who have destroyed our species and other men. It wasn’t until Juliette met her lifemate, and I saw the honor in him, that I came to terms with my rage.”

He brushed the hair from her face with gentle fingers. She remembered those same tender caresses from her dream man and her heart fluttered in her chest. He was so much like the image she’d conjured up, and yet a little frightening. Mostly because she wanted to bring him the same peace and joy he brought her.

He nuzzled the top of her head, and at the same time merged his mind with hers, catching the next, not-so-altruistic thoughts, the need to give him the same release he had given her.

Dominic sighed inwardly.
I will not take the chance with you.

He could feel the need clawing at her, saw the erotic images in his mind, but he would never have been able to find the control to keep from claiming her both with his body and his soul. He craved her. A dark need that grew the longer he spent time with her.

His first duty was to protect her, even from himself. He had the blood of a vampire running in his veins, and with that acidic poison were thousands of greedy parasites working to consume him from the inside out—although . . . the vile creatures had gone still. None of them moved in him. There were no whispered commands, and there was no stabbing, relentless pain, not since he had been near his lifemate. Why was that? How could it be? Could lifemates provide such solace even for one already lost?

He took a deep breath. The night was gone. The sun rose steadily in the sky. He was deep beneath the earth, but he could still feel the effects on his body. Soon he would be a leaden weight and his heart would cease to beat. He felt Solange’s sharp intake of breath and knew she was experiencing the prickly sensation on his skin, the scorched feeling that lived right under his skin in all the nerves.

He relaxed into the richness of the soil bed. The earth welcomed him, whispered to him, the abundance of minerals immediately seeping into his pores, enriching his body, speeding the healing of every wound, the long slices caused by the sword that had bit deep into his flesh. Zacarias had helped to speed the healing, but it was here in the earth where he would find the natural medicine for his kind.

Solange’s wonder delighted him. She put her hand in the soil between them and allowed it to slip through her fingers. “I had no idea. All this time I’ve walked on it and yet didn’t feel it alive, living and breathing with cures. Even if they aren’t for my kind, it’s a miracle what the earth does for yours.”

“She welcomes us as her children.” He tried to put it in words she might understand, although he could feel her acceptance.

He would cover them with dirt, but not their faces. Unlike him, Solange would need the air to breathe. He moved, and the aching demands of his body moved with him.

“I could . . .” She stopped when he put his hand on her head and held her to his chest.

“You cannot tempt me, Solange. I battle with my honor. Honor is important to me. And you—you are my most precious gift. I could never live with myself if my selfishness placed you in danger. Go to sleep and it will be enough to hold you in my arms.”

He had sung to her in their shared dream, and he did so now, his song to her, the haunting melody, all the things he’d always wanted to say to his lifemate.

I was half-alive for a thousand years.
I’d given up hope that we’d meet in this time.
Too many the centuries. All disappears
As time and the darkness steal color and rhyme.

8

Can you find beauty in this rough-hewn woman?
Can you come to love a shapeshifter like me?

SOLANGE TO DOMINIC

T
he female jaguar smelled blood. The scent was in her nostrils and she quickened her pace, working her way along the branches, careful not to slip. She ignored the animals scrambling to get out of her way. She had no time to hunt them, all she cared about was getting to her mother. She had finally picked up the trail after four long years. Aunt Audrey was with her, and Juliette followed, keeping her eye on Jasmine, still so young.

Solange had argued with her aunt for hours, but after all, she was only twelve, and Audrey the adult. She knew they shouldn’t have brought Jasmine on the rescue mission, but they had nowhere safe to leave her. Audrey was right about that, but the cub’s presence doubled the danger to them all.

Already, Solange’s jaguar was a fierce fighter and she had learned to handle weapons, particularly guns. She practiced night and day. She went through hundreds of rounds of ammunition, which was difficult to get. She threw knives when she wasn’t shooting guns. And she practiced in the forest, stealth and tracking, sometimes coming so close to a male jaguar, she could have reached out and touched him, but he never knew she was there. Audrey often punished her for that, but Solange didn’t care. It was all for this reason. This moment. Getting her mother back.

Solange leapt from one branch to the next, and finally to the forest floor. The scent of the male jaguar was strong throughout the entire area. Her heart beat so fast. Her mother. Solange loved her fiercely and she had sworn, standing over her stepfather and brothers, that she would get her back. She’d snuck out so many times, disappearing into the interior of the rain forest for days, tracking the jaguar-men. They moved constantly, and she knew that once she’d picked up her mother’s scent, if she missed this opportunity, they would never recover her.

Audrey had been torn between protecting the children and getting her sister back. In the end, Juliette and Solange had persuaded her, or perhaps it had been the knowledge that Solange would have gone by herself. Her childhood had ended there in the clearing with the bodies of her loved ones surrounding her. She never went to sleep without hearing the cries of the dead and dying, or the sound of her mother’s anguish as the jaguar-men tore her daughter out of her arms and dragged her into the house to torture her.

She knew where the trail led now. The men moved prisoners often, but they used existing structures when they were on the move. Nearby was an old hut built into the trees, off the forest floor. It was rarely used, but the jaguars would know about it and they were most likely using it. Her jaguar was small still, moving through the forest along the game trails, slipping beneath large umbrella leaves as she unerringly moved close to the two trees supporting the structure.

Somewhere behind her was her aunt Audrey, ready to protect them if Solange were right and her mother was held captive in that house. Her heart beat loud, too loud, as she left the safety of the foliage and took to the trees once more. She spotted a sentry in the branches high above the wooden shelter. A jaguar lay in the shadows of the canopy, sleepy, nearly dozing, only the tip of his tail occasionally twitching.

Solange kept a wary eye on him as she crawled along the twisted limb. She was shaking with fear and anticipation. She had dreamt of this moment, prayed for it, spent the last four years preparing for it. Now that the moment was at hand, she could barely control herself. She needed every ounce of stealth she’d worked on to maintain the slow, inch-by-inch freeze-frame of her kind to keep from drawing the eye of the sentry. The closer she got to that tiny house, the more the scent of her mother filled her lungs.

She dragged herself across the two feet of sparse cover to gain the porch. She was now out of the sentry’s sight. She pulled herself up and peered into the dirty window. A woman half sat, half sprawled on the floor, a collar around her neck, her hands tied behind her. Her face was swollen, one eye closed. A cut on her lip oozed blood and there were bruises on her face and neck and down her arms.

Solange didn’t recognize her for a moment. She was thin, like a skeleton, her once glorious hair hanging in matted dreads. She raised her head slowly and opened her one good eye. They stared at one another, Solange afraid her heart would shatter. The fire was long gone from her mother, leaving a broken shell of a woman.

Solange looked around the room. Her mother was alone. It was now or never. She slipped inside and rushed across the space. She used her teeth on the ropes binding her mother. Sabine Sangria shook her head, tears leaking from her eyes.

“You shouldn’t have come, baby,” she whispered.

Solange thrust her head against her mother, the only way she could convey her deep love. They had to hurry. There was no time to throw herself into her mother’s arms. They had to go before the others returned. She watched her mother struggle to her feet and limp slowly across the floor to the door. They both peered out. Solange started to push her way out of the room, but her mother dropped a restraining hand on her shoulder. Solange paused and looked up.

“
Never
let them take you alive, Solange. Do you understand me? They are worse than monsters, and you can’t let them get their hands on you.”

Solange nodded. She’d seen them. She had seen too many women after the jaguar-men had gotten their hands on them to not realize the brutality of these men.

“Audrey? The girls?” There was anxiety in Sabine’s voice.

Solange indicated with her head they were waiting outside. Sabine nodded and Solange slipped out the door, her heart nearly bursting with joy. She couldn’t wait to put her arms around her mother and just hold her close. Four years of working toward this one moment and she was so close. She forced herself to go slow across that open space.