Tempting the Enemy (26 page)

He made a sound of mild disbelief, but that was okay too. She never expected him to believe her.

“More, Pale.” She licked the corner of his lips.

“More.”

His eyes closed, but he pressed deeper, as she wanted. Her breasts rubbed his chest, the feel of his skin almost as hot as the heat of his mouth. Almost as satisfying.

He kept driving forward, slow and smooth. He lowered his forehead to hers. “How deep will you take me, sweet Jade?”

“I want all of you.” Body, soul, stubborn male pride and all. Everything he had to give. Maybe it was the Instinct claiming him, but it felt like more. Like a choice she’d made the moment she first kissed him. Surrender. In 226

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her heart, that knowledge burned, but pleasured too. A brand on her soul she’d placed there herself.

All that she was, all that she’d ever be, she gave to him. “For always.”

He stole a kiss and proceeded to take her breath along with it, burying himself completely. He rolled against her, tentatively pulling away, then surging back home. Jade looped her arm around his neck, senses scattered.

What started small became a fluid motion, their bodies rocking together. Pale rose up on his hands again, his thrusts no longer gentle, but rough and deep. Long strokes she rode, eyes closed, body moving completely free of her mind.

“God, Jade,” he groaned as they pounded against each other.

She could feel the release coming, feel him swelling within her, and it was all she could do to hold on. Just a little longer. A little harder. And then—

White light filled her, like power but pleasure—

honeyed and drugging—instead. It overwhelmed her…
became
her. Mindless with sensation, her claws dragged into his back and her fangs sank deep into his shoulder. All at once, that empty part of her was gone. An altogether new sense of him surged through her, bringing with it a new sense of herself. In an instant, her entire being changed. Re-formed. Rejoiced. She heard her name, felt his body shudder and rack in her hold.

Then the world became still.

She slept. Pale lay behind her, propped on one hand, tracing the curves of her arm with one finger. He kept a Dee Tenorio

227

steady watch on the shadows creeping through his window. Sunset was coming. She’d wake up soon. He’d gotten the four hours he needed, off and on, between the times he made love to her, driven by the now completed bond to stamp her indelibly. By his own uncontainable hunger for her dark beauty and endless passion. He’d intended to wait before taking her again, to comfort her by setting her in a warm bath to soak away the soreness he’d no doubt caused. But she hadn’t wanted to be alone and there went all his plans to be gentlemanly.

He’d never been good at waiting anyway.

Or being a gentleman, for that matter.

Now the late sun painted her gold and set up all kinds of strange new imaginations in his mind. He wasn’t a romantic man. He had no fanciful thoughts and about the only thing he could claim to be creative about were his artful placements of bruises on anyone who’d wronged him or those he protected. But something about this small woman with her yards of silky black hair, still damp, inspired the strangest fascinations.

He could spend all day studying just one inch of her at a time. Learning the exact curve of her cheek as it sloped into that impossibly stubborn chin. Memorizing the plane of her shoulder as it led to her toned biceps, complete with that strange red tattoo. He rubbed his finger over it, surprised to find the spot…warmer. He stared at the design for a long while, touching the scrollwork lines and wondering at the four solid little dots. Far more ornate than any mark he’d ever seen nature make on skin.

Beautiful, though, just like the rest of her. Perfectly fitting.
His
. Even better, he was hers. Finally.

This was not what he’d expected bonding to be like.

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He’d expected his own emasculation to be at least somewhat disconcerting. At this point, he was as close as he could come to being overjoyed. The emptiness in his heart was gone. In its place he could feel her, her soul—

her life and energy—connected to his own. The Instinct was never wrong, no matter how the males of his species tried to bend their fates to their own will. From now on, where one ended, the other began. The fairy tales his mother had told all made a different kind of sense now.

They weren’t hopeless dreams. They were a reality.
His
reality.

Maybe he
could
build a real life, wake up with his mate every day and sleep with her every night, knowing that he’d kept her safe and the satisfaction that it brought.

His life could be fulfilling instead of the vast emptiness of death, responsibility and failure. Those things would come—he wasn’t capable of that much optimism—but he wouldn’t bear them alone. They’d face each together, part of each other, until death took them both.

Except…she hadn’t promised to stay.

He frowned, thinking past the unusual sense of contentedness. She’d offered herself, accepted to be his and no one else’s. Even accepted that she’d bear his children, was likely already breeding…

But she’d never said she’d
stay
.

Inwardly, anger began to bloom. No, not anger.

Betrayal. For all that she’d accepted him, she still considered herself Sibile. Still believed she had to return to her place there, taking his child to be raised by people who would hate it, while leaving him to pine for her until he died. Most likely of blue balls.

Shit.

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“I can
feel
you brooding, you know,” she mumbled against his pillow.

Pale looked down, glad that her lashes were still dusting her cheeks. It gave him time to school his expression back into one that gave nothing away. He still had her. There was time yet to convince her. Now that the bonding was complete, he had biology on his side.

Biology was something he knew how to use.

Her eyes opened slowly, brows already rising as he gently stroked down the length of her bare belly. She brought a small hand up to scrub over her lashes as she rolled onto her back, her warm body sliding in place against his stomach.

“Your face is prickly again.” Her hand touched his stubble affectionately and she smiled up at him. Sweet.

Unsuspecting. Completely unaware that the sheet had slipped down and bared a small reddish nipple to his attention. A shadow darkened her eyes and she sobered.

“Thinking about the case?”

Not even remotely. For the past several hours, he’d been able to think of nothing more than sliding inside her and making her scream with ecstasy. He considered informing her there was no way he could let her go back to her Order, or anywhere near the psychopath who chopped women into pieces for his own sick pleasure, but both options were sure to start an argument that would ruin what they’d shared. This time couldn’t be marred with anger. Or even his own resentment that she still sought to leave him. This might be the only time they had for peace.

So though he wanted to say all those things—any of those things—life was not something that listened to Pale Rysen. And his moments of self-delusion were over.

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All he said, voice strangling on the words, was, “It’s dusk.”

Chapter Sixteen

Pale dressed quickly, barely looking at her before walking out of the room, leaving Jade confused and alone in the bed. She frowned, going over the events of the day in her mind, but no answer came to the forefront.

This must be why men were not allowed to make decisions among the Sibile.

Not that the Sibile were making a world of sense lately either.

She’d dreamed of Jalla again. Unlike her last dream, Jade hadn’t been surprised to see the older woman. As before, the invisible wall kept them apart, but Jalla hadn’t been reliving a memory.

She’d been sitting in the middle of a white mist, dressed in full regalia, her black velvet robe wrapped around her, her blue eyes looking tired. All of her looked tired. “You’ve chosen your mate.”

Jade could only nod, wanting with all her being to cross to the older woman and find out what was wrong.

Her eyes filled with tears when Jalla smiled.

“Then it’s time.”

“Time for what?”

Jalla’s mouth pursed in censure. “You will never survive this if you purposely blind yourself, Jade-Scarlet.”

“I’m not. I—”

Jalla raised her brow and Jade fell silent. “You were born for a purpose. We all are. This is yours.”

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But she didn’t want this purpose. Couldn’t bear the weight of it. “Does the Tribunal know?”

“No one knows and that is how it will stay.” Her authoritative tone couldn’t be argued with. “No one but us and the ghosts who told you.”

Not told.
Showed
. Shared. Without mercy. The remembered agony of those deaths would follow her for the rest of her life. “Why haven’t you told them?” The deaths, all of them—shifters included—could have been avoided.

“Because it is not my destiny to stop this killer, or theirs. It is
yours
.”

No. No one could be so callous. So cold. But as she met Jalla’s unrepentant stare, she knew that the other woman had been exactly that cold. “How could you let them, all of them, go to their deaths?” The Wolves, little more than children. And the
others
… “How could you decide that?”

“I didn’t. The decision was never mine. It was his and he made it.”

“You could have stopped him.”

Jalla shook her head. “Some things we cannot afford to change. This is the path we had to take. The only one.”

“But—”

Jalla raised her hand. “This dream won’t last much longer. Ask the questions you really want to ask,
chère
.

There won’t be time for more.”

She struggled to quell the need to rail, to demand how this had been laid at her feet. But Jalla was right.

Fate did not believe in argument. And there were bigger fears on the horizon. “How can I possibly stop him?”

“Become light.” So simple. So easy.

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“That’s not an answer, Jalla.” An answer would have been telling her how.

“It is, if you trust yourself. This mate of yours, he’s unlocked more than your heart. Believe in the gift he’s given you.”

Jade looked down at her hands, extending her fingers to see her claws. He had opened her heart, changed her, but nothing could make her what he needed. “Pale wants a Wolf, not a Sibile.”

“No, my dear. He wants you. Just as you are.”

Jade scoffed. Because a woman who constantly pushed his set boundaries was his idea of perfection.

“He’s not like us.”

Jalla’s laugh was the first truly happy note Jade had heard from her. “Men never are,
chère
.”

“I don’t mean like that—”

“You mean he expects to be dominant. Your mother had the same problem.” Sadness drifted through the wall between them, swelling Jade’s tears until they fell over her cheeks. “She found a solution. I’m sure you will as well.”

“Was she—?”

Jalla waited, unwilling as usual to answer unspoken questions, though she always knew what you were trying to ask.

Jade forced herself, curling her fingers into tight fists. “Was my mother happy? Did she ever regret what she gave up to be with him?”

For the first time in years, Jalla’s smile curved with approval. “Oh yes,
chère
. She was happy.
Loved,
by a very good man. When you were born, she was at her happiest. You fulfilled the only part of her life that was still empty.” Her smile faded, stained by memories she 234

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didn’t seem inclined to share. “There are always regrets in the road not chosen. The path you decide not to take. But if she had had the choice, I know in my heart she would not have changed a thing.”

“How?” Jade demanded, her own senses telling her the dream was coming to a close. “How do you know that?”

“Because no matter how many times I looked into her future, she never had a fate without him.”

“What about me? What about my future?”

Jalla’s eyes took on a glitter Jade couldn’t decipher, except that she knew the woman she loved like a mother wouldn’t tell her. “Become light, young Lucescere.”

“Wait.” But just as the time before, Jalla began to fade and, when Jade opened her eyes, Pale had been staring down at her inscrutably.

And then he was gone too.

Jade scrubbed at her face, deciding that the next person who couldn’t simply say what was wrong with them was going to feel the hot edge of her temper. Old lady or Wolf, she didn’t care.

Nothing was right in the world. She’d betrayed the Order by not returning to them right after regaining consciousness outside the morgue and, despite Pale’s strange mood, she was going to betray them and Jalla both to him before she let him leave this house. He was facing something unimaginable in this Woodsman, something even the Sibile had no idea could exist. She should be afraid, terrified. Yet, as she lay there, her body aching in strange new places, in strange new ways, she still felt…happy. Whole.

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Maybe men weren’t the only strange beings in the universe.

Her muscles protesting, she rolled into a sitting position and began to look around for her clothes. Her pack sagged in a chair next to the window, her robe folded neatly next to it. Beneath the chair, her boots sat in the gathering shadows. Her brow wrinkled as she recognized how much thoughtfulness he’d put into arranging her things. As if he cared for them the way she would. Strange, strange Wolf.

Shrugging, she reached for the bag. Aches sharpened. With a sigh, she checked the sky. Not full dark, but dark enough for the basics. Bowing her head, she reached inward for power and found it quickly, almost as if it were already surging. Her eyes opened with her surprise. She felt stronger. No,
changed
. Her power, for all its uniqueness and force, had always been a struggle to harness. But now it was just…there.
Unlocked
.