Refuge (31 page)

The words had barely left my mouth when I
heard a rustling to my left. I realized too late that I had been so
distracted by my success with Minuet I hadn’t noticed how close I
was to Alex’s cage. I turned my head to see the wyvern rushing
toward me, flames already shooting from his mouth.

The flames seared my arm a split second
before I was snatched away from the cage and out of the wyvern’s
range. Nikolas brought us to a stop and put out the fire on my
sleeve, but already I could feel the agonizing pain from my wrist
to my elbow. Tears welled in my eyes, and I cried out when my
charred sleeve touched the skin that was already blistering.

“Sara, are you okay?” Sahir cried, running
toward us.

Nikolas turned on him, eyes blazing.
“Goddamnit, Sahir, I told you it wasn’t safe in here for her. That
thing could have killed her.”

“It’s not his fault,” I said between clenched
teeth. “I was careless. I got too close.”

“The hell it’s not,” Nikolas raged, still
holding me. “He should never have allowed you in here.”

“Nikolas,” Chris said sharply. A look I could
not decipher passed between them, and Nikolas’s hold on me loosened
a little.

I tried to pull away from him, but his arm
was still like a steel band around my waist. “D-don’t blame Sahir
for this. I’m old enough to make my own decisions.” I tried again
to move away from him to no avail. “Let me go.”

Nikolas glared down at me, totally ignoring
my request. “You can’t keep taking risks like this.”

His condescending tone drove all thoughts of
pain from my mind. “Would you just get the hell over yourself?” I
shouted, pulling until he finally released me. I rounded on him.
“You don’t get to say where I can go or how I spend my time. And
I’m not some weakling you need to jump in and save all the
time.”

He cocked an eyebrow at me, and it only made
me madder. “Okay, you just did and I’m grateful, but that doesn’t
give you the right to yell at everyone or treat me like I’m
useless. If that’s all you think of me, I wish you’d just stayed
away.”

He took a step toward me. “I didn’t say you
were – ”

“Just forget it.” I put up a hand, and my
sleeve chafed painfully against my burnt arm. Biting my lip did not
stop the whimper of pain that escaped me.

Concern replaced the anger in Nikolas’s eyes.
“We need to get you to the medical ward.”

I turned for the door. “I don’t need your
help. I can get there on my own.”

“I’m coming with you.”

I pushed open the door. “No, you’re not. Just
leave me alone.”

I could barely see through my tears as I
hurried to the main building, and I didn’t know if they were tears
of pain, anger, or hurt. I felt miserable on too many levels to try
to separate my emotions, and all I wanted was to put some distance
between me and Nikolas.

The healer on duty was the same one who had
tended to me the first time I’d been burned by Alex, and she shook
her head when she saw my charred sleeve. Before she looked at my
arm, she gave me some gunna paste, and for once, I took it without
complaint. Within minutes, the pain receded, and as soon as I
relaxed she set to work removing my shirt and coating the burn with
the same cool salve she had used the last time. Then she wrapped my
numb arm in a soft gauze bandage and helped me back into my shirt,
ordering me to lie still for a few minutes.

When the door opened a few minutes later, I
turned my head, expecting to see the healer, but saw Nikolas
instead. His expression was unreadable, and I turned my head to
look up at the ceiling. “I’m really not up to arguing with you
again, Nikolas.”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine. I’ve had worse injuries,
remember?”

“I remember,” he said in a gruff voice.

Neither of us spoke for a minute, and the
silence in the room quickly unsettled me. Feeling vulnerable in my
current position, I sat up, letting my legs dangle over the side of
the exam table. I held up my bandaged arm. “Look, all taken care
of. I’ll be as good as new in no time.”

He did not smile, still wound up from the
incident. I didn’t understand why he got so angry over these
things. No one else had made a big deal of it.

“You don’t have to stay with me. The healer
said I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry for yelling at you.”

My jaw dropped.
Did I hear that right? Did Nikolas just apologize
to me?

“I never meant to make you feel useless. It
just angers me to see you taking risks like that.”

I tried not to let my own anger resurface.
“What do you expect me to do – hide out in my room so I don’t get
hurt? I can’t be safe all the time. You have to realize that I will
get hurt sometimes, especially if I become a warrior.”

The glint in his eyes told me I had said the
wrong thing again. “I thought you didn’t want to be a warrior.”

I threw up my good arm. “What am I training
for, if not to become one? Isn’t that what we do?”

He started walking toward me. “I’m teaching
you to defend yourself if you ever need it, not to go out looking
for trouble.”

“I’m not looking for trouble, and that thing
with Alex was a freak accident. It could have happened to anyone.”
I looked away from him and hugged my stomach with my uninjured arm.
After all the progress I’d made in training this week, did he think
I was totally useless? “Why is it so hard for you to believe I can
take care of myself? I’m not a child, you know.”

He stopped two feet away, and I discovered
that my seat on the exam table put our gazes at the same level for
once. Unfortunately, that meant I had nowhere to look but into his
eyes.

“No, you are not a child.” His husky words
made my mouth dry up like the Sahara. The air in the room grew warm
and thick, and I suddenly found it hard to breathe.

Another step and he stood between my knees,
close enough for me to feel his body heat and smell his warm, spicy
scent. My heart pounded in my ears; I tried to swallow and failed.
In my stomach a troupe of acrobats were having the performance of
their lives.

Nikolas’s stormy gaze refused to release
mine. His hand rose, and his thumb traced my jaw in a featherlike
caress that turned my limbs to noodles. Dimly, I felt my Mori
stirring. “Sara,” he said in a strained voice as he touched his
forehead to mine. I sat very still, battling the onslaught of
emotions that threatened to push my heart from my chest. “Yell at
me. Tell me to go,” he whispered.

I brought my hands up between us and laid
them flat against his chest to push him away, until I felt the
strong rapid beat of his heart beneath my fingers. I closed my eyes
and swallowed hard. “Nikolas, I . . . ”

He pulled back, and I felt like I’d been set
adrift until his fingers curled under my chin, lifting my face to
his. My eyes moved over his sensual lips, and all I could think
about was what it would be like to taste them. Shocked by my sudden
boldness, I raised my eyes to his and was lost in their smoky
depths. Something tugged at my chest, a vaguely familiar sensation
that drew me toward him. I read the intention in his eyes before
they lowered to my mouth.

Then I forgot how to breathe.

CONSCIOUS THOUGHT FLED when Nikolas’s lips
brushed mine. Warm and firm, his mouth explored mine with aching
slowness and infinite tenderness as his hands framed my face,
holding me against him. As if I had the strength to pull away.
Sensations I had never felt before blossomed in my chest, and
instead of trying to understand them, I leaned in and kissed him
back tentatively. I sensed something indecipherable shift between
us – like two repelling magnets that flip and are suddenly drawn to
each other – and my lips parted to let my breath escape in a soft
sigh. He pulled me closer, if that was possible, deepening the
kiss, and I surrendered to it, exhilarated and terrified at the
same time and never wanting it to end.

Seconds, or maybe a lifetime later, Nikolas
made a sound deep in his chest and pulled back. Trembling, I took a
breath and met his dark, smoldering gaze that told me I was not the
only one affected by the kiss. A storm of emotions assailed me:
wonder, bewilderment, elation, but they soon gave way to shock as
it hit me what I had just done.

Oh my God, I kissed Nikolas.

Neither of us spoke for a long moment, and I
was acutely aware of his hands still cradling my face and his lips
only inches from mine. Was he going to kiss me again? Did I want
him to?

Before I could answer that question, his eyes
became flat and unreadable and he dropped his hands to take a step
back. “I’m sorry. I did not mean to . . . ”

His hoarse words hung in the air between us
for a second before they hit me like a bucket of ice water.
He didn’t mean
to?
I tore my eyes from his, but not before I saw regret
creep into his expression. My stomach dropped, and my body grew
warm as humiliation washed over me.

“Sara – ”

“No.” I didn’t want to hear him to explain or
tell me it had been a mistake; his reaction said that loud and
clear. It didn’t matter why he’d kissed me. It was done and we
couldn’t change it. I did not want to talk about it, either. Tears
pricked my eyes, making me angry that I should let a simple kiss
bother me so much, even if it had been my first kiss.

A heavy silence stretched between us. I
refused to look at him, but I had never been so aware of another
person.
Please, just
go,
I begged silently.

Nikolas sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
Then he turned and walked away.

I knocked on Tristan’s office door, and he
looked up from his computer and motioned for me to come in. He
pressed the mute button on his phone. “I just have to finish this
call and I’ll be with you.”

“I can come back.”

“No, take a seat. It won’t be more than
another five minutes.”

I sat on the couch and stared out the window,
trying not to listen to his conversation, although bits and pieces
of it reached me anyway.

“ . . . That’s seven people in Nevada this
week that we know of . . . How many in California? . . . No, he
didn’t find any leads in Vegas . . . It seems to be mostly the
western half . . . ”

My mind began to wander as it did a lot
lately, and soon my thoughts drowned out Tristan’s voice
completely. I found myself going back, as I did way too often, to
that night in the medical ward three days ago. My fingers came up
to touch my lips the way they did every time I remembered the kiss.
Before that night, I had convinced myself that the stirrings I felt
for Nikolas weren’t real. But his kiss had not only reawakened
them, it had brought them back so strong that they’d sent me into
an emotional tailspin. Something had shifted inside me that night,
and I didn’t know how to put it back the way it used to be.

The embarrassment I’d felt after Nikolas
walked away was nothing compared to the burning rejection that hit
me the next morning when I found out he had left very early on
business and was not expected back for three or four days. Last
week, he’d said he wasn’t going anywhere for at least a month and
yet he was already gone. Did he regret kissing me so much that he
had left so he didn’t have to see me?

In his absence, I’d gone back to training
with Callum in the mornings. Now that I was doing better we didn’t
clash as much, and it was a far better than training with someone
who couldn’t even bear to face me.

“I’m sorry, I know I’ve been buried in work
the last few days,” Tristan said, pulling me from my thoughts. He
sat in the chair across from me and gave me a warm smile. No matter
how busy he was, he always looked happy to see me.

I returned his smile. “I understand. Comes
with the job, right?”

“It is a part of the job, but I will always
have time for you.” He studied my face for a moment. “You seem
troubled.”

“No, I’m good,” I said, because there was no
way I could tell him the truth. I could only handle so much
humiliation in one week. “I actually came to ask you something.
Well, two things. Terrence and Josh are going to a party in town
tonight and they asked me and Jordan to go. I wanted to run it by
you and see if it’s okay.”

“You are asking my permission to go?”

“Yes. I’d really like to go, but I know you
have all those restrictions for new orphans, even though I
am
a lot
older than most orphans.” I could probably sneak out if I tried
hard enough, but I wasn’t going to do that.

To my surprise, he nodded. “Butler Falls is
safe, especially with the others. I might worry about those town
boys, though.”

Nikolas’s look of regret flashed through my
mind. “Trust me; the last thing I want is to get involved with
anyone right now.”
Or ever.

Tristan smiled, and his eyes seemed a little
too shrewd for my liking. Did he know what had happened between me
and Nikolas? God, I hoped not.

“What else did you want to ask me? You said
there were two things.”

I shifted uncomfortably because my second
request was a lot harder to make. “My training is coming along a
lot better now. I’ve been working with Callum the last few days and
it’s going pretty good, so I wanted to ask if I could go back to
training with him.” With Nikolas due back any day, I knew I had to
get my trainer situation settled before I had to see him again.

I could tell he was not expecting me to say
that. “You want to work with Callum again?”

“If he’s available, or someone else.”

“Not Nikolas? But you have been doing so well
with him.”

I fumbled my answer even though I had
prepared for the question. “Nikolas helped me get started, but I’ve
really only trained with him twice. And you need him for warrior
business. This will free him up for that.”