Читать книгу Wolf Born - Linda Thomas-Sundstrom - Страница 12
ОглавлениеRosalind couldn’t stop pacing. Her heart continued to race as she moved back and forth in the hallway leading to Judge Landau’s living room. She felt caged, and anxious. The walls were closing in. She needed to be out in the dark, under the moon, where she could breathe...but she couldn’t go anywhere.
Her father faced her, sitting on a step, observing her motions in a quiet manner.
“He will heal?” she asked him.
“Not completely, I’m afraid,” he replied.
“We always heal, miraculously,” she pointed out.
“This is different, Rosalind. He has been torn to pieces by vampires. It’s a miracle that he survived at all.”
Rosalind shook her head, and continued to pace. Her heart was racing. She hadn’t been able to ease the edge of her anxiety since her father and his friends had turned the tide of the fight, and then brought the severely injured brown Were here.
Her brown Were.
“The wounds have ravaged his immune system. If he comes out of this, he will be changed,” her father said.
Rosalind paused, every muscle feeling strained. “How, exactly, will he change?”
“We don’t yet know the full extent.”
“Then how can you predict that he won’t completely recover?”
“You saw him not minutes ago, Rosalind. What did you see?”
“He is alive, and breathing much easier than he did two days ago.”
“What else?”
“His wounds are already better. Less vivid. Closed over.”
“Please state the obvious, Rosalind.”
Her father expected a reply. She didn’t offer him one.
“His color has changed,” her father said. “You saw that. What was he before this happened?”
Her father was in the way. She could have leaped over him, but knew that he was keeping her from going upstairs, to the wounded Were’s side.
“Brown and beautiful,” she said. “He was brown-pelted, and beautiful.”
“And now?” her father pressed.
“His hair is white. His skin is pale. But maybe that will change again.”
Jared Kirk shook his head. “White Weres exist only in legend, or so we thought. No one here has ever seen one, and the minds of the Weres visiting the Landaus go back quite a distance.”
Rosalind noted how her father paused to allow her time to soak that information in.
“He won’t be what he was before this if he heals enough to open his eyes,” he continued. “He’s a ghost, Rosalind. That’s what legend calls a wulf who shouldn’t have survived such horrific trauma, yet somehow did.”
Trauma. Was that the right word for near total destruction? Rosalind didn’t like the description. It left a bitter taste in her mouth.
“If he were to continue to get better,” her father went on, “he will likely choose to walk his own path, because he will have one foot in this world and one in the next. He has straddled the fine line at the end of his own existence.”
Rosalind ignored the fact that her father was eyeing her closely. She held her breath until he spoke again.
“Ghosts see out of the eyes of both worlds. This wulf was strong, and of royal lineage, but who could be the same after what has happened?”
“He is a wulf, and a cop. He will know what to do,” she protested.
“Rosalind. Listen to what I’m telling you. No soul can survive the cost of those kinds of internal damages intact. He wasn’t just wounded, he was mauled by vampires. Their blood has mingled with his. This fight didn’t kill him, but it has changed him. He has been altered. The white hair proves that. The best healers can’t change or reverse the process.”
No, Rosalind silently protested. She had just found her brave, lovely Were, and wasn’t ready to let him go. She was eager to find out why she felt connected to him, and why she wished so fervently for him to heal.
She desperately wanted to be near to this wulf—ghost or otherwise. She could feel him upstairs. She wanted to go to him.
“Maybe those are just stories, about the ghost wulf,” she suggested.
This strapping Were could not have been broken by vampires. Fate couldn’t be so cruel.
“Truth often fans the flames of myth and rumor, as you well know,” her father counseled.
“And some rumors are just rumors.”
“Werewolves, to the human population, are a myth. But we exist. We blend with humans because we choose to. We keep our secrets because it’s better for everyone that we do. A ghost wulf who has had a life here won’t be able to blend so easily. What will his friends think when they see him? How could he go back to work, or explain?”
Rosalind stopped pacing and looked at her father.
“He will leave them behind,” he father said. “He might choose to live in the shadows, on the fringes, not because he will be forced to, but because he will have to make peace with what he has become.”
“Which is?”
“An old legend, made new. A ghost wulf. Part man, part wulf, and for all we know, part vampire.”
Her father sighed, as if these explanations were a chore, and painful for him.
“You don’t know that. You’re not sure of anything,” Rosalind said.
“You’re right. Time will tell. But the elders who have tended to him have noted that something new has entered his bloodstream, and that out of necessity, this new thing will likely change his soul.”
This information didn’t sit well with Rosalind. In spite of everything being told to her, she still felt connected to the Were, oddly enough, now more than ever.
She had rushed to his side when the other Weres had arrived. She had seen him close his eyes, and fall to his knees.
She had pressed her mouth to his while the others finished off the vampires, and breathed into him some of her own chaotic energy.
If he was changed, as her father was saying, theirs would be a sympathetic bond. She had been forced to be a loner, almost held captive by her father for most of her life. She could relate to being apart from others, and living on the fringes. She had been called special. Which also translated to mean different.
They were both different.
A ghost and a loner. She and this injured Lycan were perfect for each other.
Her father’s voice dropped in tone. “You can’t wish him back to normal, Rosalind. You must accept this as fact, just as the Were upstairs will have to accept his fate.”
Rosalind squeezed her eyes shut to avoid her father’s wary expression. But the thought persisted that he had kept her from all Weres in the past, and that maybe this warning was just another example of her father’s overbearing overprotection.
Well, she wanted to say to him, I can’t be kept from this one. I won’t be kept from him. Not this one.
“He’s a ghost because of me,” she said. “The responsibility is mine.”
“Not so,” her father countered vehemently. “A vampire attack caused this. You were brave, but also foolish to have joined in such a fight. It’s a miracle you weren’t hurt equally as badly, and that Landau and the elders were with me, searching for you. You could be lying in a bed upstairs. What would I have done then?”
“Those monsters killed his family. He went after them, just as you or I or Judge Landau would have. He did this alone.”
A long pause preceded her father’s next remarks.
“Rosalind. It’s important that you hear what I’m going to say to you now. You and I will go home tomorrow. You have to let this wulf go. We will leave him in the Landaus’ care.”
“No.”
“I’m not blind or insensitive to your feelings, but this male is not for you. He wouldn’t have been compatible before this event, and certainly isn’t now. You have no idea what would happen if...” Her father’s voice trailed off, then returned. “You have no inkling of what his life might be like if he heals well enough to keep it.”
You have no idea what would happen if...
If what? Rosalind wanted to know, picking up on the unsaid portion of an argument and tasting the tang of withheld secrets.
Rosalind chilled up as she stared at her father with a new thought. Has he been keeping secrets from me all this time?
“I want to stay with him,” she said.
“That’s impossible.” Her father shook his head.
“Judge Landau will let me stay, if I ask.”
“You won’t ask. I forbid it.”
“Then the wounded Were can come with us.”
“You cannot have your way in this, Rosalind. My decision is final. You might be in real danger here, now that vampires have your scent in their filthy noses.”
“The bloodsuckers were killed.”
“They can transmit signals we have no notion of.”
Rosalind stubbornly stood her ground, legs splayed, hands on her hips. “It was my fault he was hurt so badly. My inattention did this. I owe him. Don’t you get that?”
“The Landaus are a powerful clan with powerful friends, and are experienced healers. He needs time, and couldn’t be in better hands.”
“He could be in mine.”
Her father got to his feet. “You can’t help him. This is a fact. Moreover, you cannot remain near to him. It’s imperative that you two are separated, the sooner the better.”
The authority in her father’s tone had hardened his formidable features. In the firm set of his mouth, Rosalind sensed the gap in his explanations. Her father’s secrets were heavy enough to be like the aura of another person in the room.
“Are you going to tell me the real reason he can’t come with us, without going around in circles?” she asked.
“It isn’t time for that, or necessary.”
“I’m not a child.”
“I know that. But two such extremes are destined never to meet, if in fact they could exist at all,” her father said.
His reply came with a sting. An unspoken message resided in what her father had said a message so terrible it couldn’t be spoken. A dark secret?
Extremes, he said.
Two such extremes are never destined to meet. If they could exist at all.
Her father had just called her a freak, without coming right out with the word.
He had uttered this remark as if he’d been near wit’s end and it had merely slipped out. Whatever he held inside didn’t want to see the light of day; a secret that if spoken, might come to pass all the quicker.
But she couldn’t accept that, and needed to have things in the open. Her father was keeping something important from her. And even though knowing he thought his daughter a freak hurt like a knife to the chest, she had to stand her ground. What other option was there?
“Not good enough,” she said. “Nothing you’ve said is good enough to change my mind about this Were.”
You aren’t the only one with secrets, she wanted to shout.
Separating me from the wulf upstairs will do no good, because against all odds, he and I have already bonded. And bonds between Lycans are unbreakable, except by death.
She had another secret. Her insides ached with longing for the Were upstairs. Her womb thrummed for the golden-fleshed man who had shed his clothes in the moonlight. She hungered for his gaze, and for what hung, hard and swollen, between his powerful thighs.
Instincts trumped innocence here, and she wasn’t to have that? Wasn’t to see him again?
“I know better than to argue with you,” she said.
Indeed, nothing would influence her father once his mind had been made up. Still, she was responsible for the Were’s injuries, at least in part. If she had gotten to him sooner, fought harder, not stopped to listen to the calls in the night, he might have been spared some of his wounds.
She looked past her father. The Were upstairs was stirring. She felt this, and her fingers twitched in reaction. Her inner defiance against her father’s restraints rose again.
There was more truth she had to hide from her father. Another secret pain that she didn’t understand. When she had issued the howl in the park that had brought help, something had happened to her. It was as if restraining straps had been unbuckled, setting part of her free that she’d had no idea existed. Wild. Complicated. New.
God, there was more, yet. The worst part.
In hearing her cry, the fanged monsters attacking her had stopped their attack. After that cry, they had transferred all their attention to the brown Were, leaving her alone, leaving her standing there, unheeded, untouched, while her golden-skinned, brown-furred male, heavily outnumbered, was ripped to shreds.
After her call, the fanged creatures had bypassed her as if she no longer existed; as if she had suddenly become invisible to them, and no longer mattered.
I’m not quite right inside. But how do I tell you the extent of this, Father? Your wizened eyes, gazing at me, suggest that you might know the reason for this, and possibly even why those bloodsuckers had left me alone. Freak, is what you were thinking. Not the time for reasons, you said.
Everyone, it suddenly seemed to Rosalind, had secrets. But so many secrets made the world a much darker, more unbearable place. She was going to get some answers. Now.
* * *
Colton wasn’t sure if he had died. His first thought was that he must have.
The last thing he remembered was that his heartbeat had slowed to near nothing when the last wave of fangs hit him. He recalled shutting his eyes when the pain had become too great and his limbs had stopped working.
Soon after that, he had fallen into a dark tunnel, listening to the sounds of a continued battle all around him without being able to participate.
As he lay where he was now, wherever that might be—heaven or hell, maybe—his thoughts kept returning to that brave Were who had come to his aid, and was little more than another smudge of darkness in his mind. He had, for the briefest seconds of time before his fall, imagined that other Were to be female. Maybe her lips had touched his, he thought, or else he had been dreaming.
Female werewolves were nearly as able as males, and he had sensed one in that park, earlier. But the werewolf fighting beside him had torn through the vampires like a creature hell-bent on utter destruction. That dark-coated werewolf, merely a blur in the night, had been nothing less than a total fighting machine.
Had he died out there? Was he in shock? There seemed to be a disconnect between his mind and his limbs. It didn’t hurt him to think, and his thoughts kept returning to the same questions. If he had died, had the other Were who’d helped him died, as well? Had she whispered something to him out there as his eyes had closed? More important, had those fanged vipers who had stolen the life from his family been defeated?
Colton’s pulse gave a sudden kick. He groped for the reason for this sudden alertness.
There was no sense of anything waiting to take him over. No overriding awareness of angels or demons surrounded him. The blanks in his mind were holes occupied by swirling drifts of a silver-gray mist. In that mist, he thought he saw Death’s outline hovering. He was almost sure he heard Death’s call.
The cop side of him wanted to fill the holes in his reasoning so he could understand his current state. Cops were trained to fill in gaps and connect the dots. But he just didn’t seem able to do that.
Pertinent lapses in memory could be his mind’s way of reaching for a temporary peace after encountering the rabid side of chaos, he reasoned. Those lapses could just as easily mean that consciousness continued for a time after the body formerly housing it had succumbed to its final loss of breath.
But he hadn’t lost his breath.
He was breathing now.
Colton suddenly sensed something else. He reached out to this new presence with his senses.
“Hey.”
The voice cut through the swirl of gray. He classified the sound as a word. Beyond it lay a familiar fragrance that was nothing at all like the stench of vampires.
Flowers. Musk and flowers.
Not hell, then.
“Can you open your eyes?” the soft voice asked.
It was an odd request, he thought, since he’d been sure his eyes were already open.
“Can you see me?”
This was said in the slightly husky tone of a female’s whisper.
Turning his head took effort.
“I’m not supposed to be here, but I had to see you,” she said. “My father will take me away tomorrow.”
Father? Some feeling came, centered in Colton’s chest. He knew that particular word because he had a father.
Sharp pain struck without warning, as though an arrow had pierced him. It was the arrow of past tense. He’d had a father. But not anymore.
“Can you talk? Will you make the effort to speak to me?” the female asked, her breathy voice bringing with it another hint of the taste of a floral bouquet. Roses. Bloodred roses, rich in color and sprinkled with dew.
No. Not dew. These roses were covered in fur.
Black fur.
Memory zigzagged. Colton wanted to slap his head to make things work more smoothly, but couldn’t move his arm.
A Were with a black pelt? Had he seen that out there?
Absurd.
Why should he remember that, when there were no true black-pelted Weres? Dark brown, yes, but not black. The color itself denoted unfathomable darkness. Even black-haired Weres in human form shifted to a different color.
“Yes,” she, whoever she was, coaxed. “I’m here. If you open your eyes, you’ll see me.”
The voice struck a distant chord. It was filled with submerged emotion and as demanding as it was inviting. This voice was the human equivalent of the howl of invitation a she-wulf had issued to him in that blasted park.
It’s her.
You.
Wanting nothing more than to see who was near, Colton struggled to do as she asked. His eyes hadn’t been open, after all. He opened them, sorry that he had when a glare of hurtful light hit him.
“Wait. I’ll dim the lamp,” she said. “It’s just one lamp, by your bed.”
Absorbing the ache that followed so much time spent in darkness, Colton forced himself to focus. His vision took a while to get into working order, and then he found himself gazing into a pair of large green eyes, very near to his.
His insides stirred restlessly.
There was something about those eyes. Not exactly familiar, but...
A surge of heat broke through his numbness. Again, he heard a howl, far away now, but there, all the same. He saw a dark-pelted wulf charge in to help him, and join in the fight.
His nerves began to simmer, then fry, which in turn caused feeling where there had been nothing but a wasteland.
The fire spread.
Hunger came upon him, heated, and with a ravenous need for the She with that mesmerizing voice.
His biceps tensed. His toes curled. He heard the crack of his spine straightening as whatever power those green eyes held hurled him toward full consciousness.
The flames tearing through him called up his beast. His wulf unfurled as fluidly and easily as if he’d merely spread his arms, the shift silent and uncommonly fast. It came on in a wave, similar to a smooth ruffle of air between two breaths. No extra pain. No forethought. No moon necessary.
Left panting from a transition that had no right to have happened in the first place, Colton, in werewolf form, squatted on a soft blue cloudlike surface, trembling and in shock. All he saw was the brilliance of the green eyes across from his that had not wavered in intensity or retreated by so much as an inch.
This female wasn’t afraid of him.
I know you, he thought again.
His growl was the sum total of his strange new feelings of hunger and longing, and lingered in the space around him.
“I knew it,” the green-eyed woman beside him said. “You’re still in there.”
* * *
Rosalind felt the throb of this werewolf’s blood in her veins. The erratic rhythm of his heart spoke of the depth of his inexplicable need for her.
There was no second-guessing what this need was. It came across as primitive, hotly sexual, and was, Rosalind would have known without the rapid acceleration of her own pulse, very much reciprocated.
She wanted to be with him. Be like him. She wanted to meet him wulf to wulf. Wanted everything this male had to offer.
Exerting pressure to control herself, Rosalind knew that she had been right. They had imprinted not long ago, without their eyes meeting, a fact as unusual as this wulf’s snowy-white pelt. Their hunger was mutual, no matter what shape he was in.
Rosalind was glad she had locked the door. As she stared into his eyes, she could barely keep her hands off the wulf on the bed. Her beast was starved for his beast. She craved his touch, and was left trembling.
“Yes,” she whispered. “We have bonded.”
Tremors rocked her. Similar tremors moved through the white wulf beside her. He was sharing the effects of their bond. He felt what she felt.
“I don’t understand why they would separate us,” she said, tilting her head, trying to speak slowly. “You’ll need details of what happened, some of which you probably already know.”
Rosalind swallowed her beast’s needs down and lowered her voice. “You’ve been badly hurt, attacked by bloodsuckers in the park. The same suckers that killed your family, I suppose. We’ve taken care of those fiends, got rid of them. My father and the judge brought you to Landau’s house. Judge Landau’s wife has been treating you.”
Placing a hand on her chest, as if that would slow her racing heartbeat, she continued. “These vampires were savages. The Landaus say you’ve knocked on Death’s door and stepped across the threshold, only to be pulled back by the strength of your will.”
It was impossible for her to slow down. A deep breath didn’t help.
“You’re alive, but changed. I don’t know how, exactly. I’m not sure what your white pelt means. They won’t tell me everything. They never have.”
The creature her father had called a ghost remained almost motionless, though his white fur rippled with the force of his pulse.
“I’m Rosalind Kirk,” she said. “My father is Jared Kirk. You’ll need to know those things in order to find me.”
The white wulf stared at her soundlessly.
She fell silent for a minute, maybe two, noting how the room at the top of the Landaus’ house that posed as a one-bed makeshift hospital ward smelled of clean laundry and antiseptic. It was sparsely furnished, with a large bed, one soft chair and two bedside tables. The window in the wall opposite the bed was open. The curtains moved in a faint breeze.
Rosalind had no idea what kind of care they had given this Were, or what those treatments entailed, but he had pulled through. Her actions in the park hadn’t killed him.
She blinked slowly to take that in.
On the surface, most of the stink of the vampires had been wiped clean from this wulf, and from the room housing him. Underscoring the room’s aura of calm, however, Rosalind still perceived hints of vampire. Black glittering molecules, as shiny and sharp as polished shards of glass, seemed a part of every breath she took.
Wary of this, and mindful of the fact that she had sneaked upstairs when the judge’s wife had gone for food, Rosalind went on.
“You’re at the Landau estate at the edge of the park. Since you’re a cop and a Were, I’m guessing you know Judge Landau and about some of the secrets kept in this place.”
The white wulf growled softly, as if trying out his voice through a throat the bloodsuckers had ripped open several times over. It seemed to Rosalind that she might have made a similar sound without realizing it, because her own throat felt raw.
The eyes looking at her were intent, piercing and the palest green. They were ringed by deep purple circles, leftovers indicative of how badly his face and body had been injured.
She didn’t want to think of how he had looked when her father and the others had come to the rescue. All that blood. And she had seen glimpses of bone beneath his torn and mangled flesh.
At the time, it seemed that a true miracle would be necessary in order for him to survive. “You look better,” she said, hoping this might calm him.
And that was true. He did look better. Already, after just two days, new skin covered bone and sinew, though several patches of fur and flesh were missing from his neck and shoulders, leaving lines of raw, reddened flesh. Red welts lined his face like the stripes of a tiger, but they were no longer oozing blood.
His moon mark, an indication of his superior place within their species, showed through the colorless fur of his left upper arm. It was riddled with tiny puncture holes, as though the vampires had purposefully gone for it with gusto, hoping to tear the mark clean off.
For a Were, removal of a moon mark was a blasphemy. For this big male, it would have been a forced emasculation. But the filthy blood drinkers hadn’t tackled this Lycan easily. He’d fought hard before succumbing to the sheer number of attackers. Burned into her mind was the image of the brown Were feverishly taking on the monsters.
“Brown or white, Were or ghost, you are the most beautiful, the most courageous being I have ever encountered,” she said.
And I have nearly caused your death.
“I’m to be taken away,” she repeated. “They will separate us, and it will hurt, when you’ve already been hurt so badly.”
Another growl came from him, noticeably stronger, and meaning for her to go on. Coming from this formidable creature who had looked Death in the eye, the sound seemed strangely exotic, and took her breath away.
“I come from the bayou country. I’m seldom allowed out from under my father’s strict supervision and rules. We have no modern forms of communication there. No computer, no television, no phones. Only a radio,” she said, pausing as the absurdity of these facts registered. “I learn about the world through that radio.”
They had, in fact, been living like they were deprived backwoods folk. Compared to the Landaus, they were decades behind the times. Backwoods cousins.
“This is the first occasion the Landaus have hosted us as guests, and I think this was due to an important meeting between Lycan elders. For me, it’s a quick visit here, and then back.”
They had so little time. She could hear it ticking away.
“Landau’s son and some of his pack aren’t here, though I’ve heard them talked about. I’ve seen no one my age, and only briefly have met Landau and his wife. I don’t think I’ll be allowed here again after this.”
She waited out a span of several shallow, rapid breaths before continuing, needing to get all this out in the open.
“There are other secrets hidden here. I don’t pretend to understand what’s really going on, only that some of those secrets pertain to me. I can sense being the focus of this meeting, and believe those secrets are why I’ve been kept away from other Weres, and ultimately why I’ll be kept from you. There is, I think, something wrong with me.”
Do you want me to go on?
The wulf continued to study her intently. He hadn’t moved.
“I understand the pain of loss.” Her voice was beseeching. “My mother was killed by hunters. Not vampires, but monsters in their own right.”
The white wulf blinked slowly, as if he was riding out a wave of pain.
“My father says that your fur has turned white due to the intensity of the injuries you have sustained. It might also be a physical manifestation of devastation and loss.”
She cleared her throat. “I wish I could take away the anguish of that.”
It had taken more than a dozen vampires to gain hold of him. This Were had fought like he was the right hand of Death, when even death, as vampires proved, didn’t have to be the end.
“I feel your pain. And I am so very sorry.”
She was hurting for herself, and for him. In sharing his heartache, she had to let him know how sorry she was that he’d been injured so badly. As much as she could bring herself to confess. When their imprinting was complete, he’d find out her secrets by easily reading her. They would eventually share thoughts.
“I didn’t help you enough out there,” she said, noting the alertness in this ghost’s eyes.
She couldn’t go on, was unable to utter the words that might have freed her from the terrible, plaguing guilt. If she spoke the truth in its entirety, if she confessed what she had or hadn’t done now, her white wulf wouldn’t want her. There was no way he’d come after her, find her, mate with her, when she wanted those things so desperately.
“I—” She paused when the green eyes across from her began to recede, and the white wulf shape-shifted in a slick, soundless, reversal.
“I couldn’t leave you to face them alone,” Rosalind whispered as the man from the park, who was now just as captivating with his white hair framing his wounded, angular face, reached for her.
* * *
Colton jumped to his feet. With both of his hands on Rosalind Kirk’s shoulders, he backed her into a corner so quickly that her breath escaped in a startled hiss of surprise.
He gave her no opportunity for further sound or protest. His mouth covered hers as if her breath alone could make him whole again. As if the beating of her heart against his bare chest could jump-start his, and prove finally, absolutely, that he was alive.
His need was all-consuming. His body was on fire.
He drank her in as if his survival counted on those things.
The fragrance of her breath seemed familiar.
Rosalind Kirk was a young, black-haired, oval-faced vision, and slight to the point of an ethereal thinness. Although her mouth was momentarily motionless beneath his, Colton sensed with every instinct he possessed how much she wanted to respond.
There was a possibility, he realized, that she didn’t know how.
Her lips were warm, supple, tender, sweet and not in the least bit rigid. In her stillness came a reminder of what she had told him. She had been kept from others. She’d been sheltered from actions like this by an overprotective Lycan father. She had no family or friends. This might, in fact, have been her first real kiss.
He wanted her in that moment as much as his beast had desired her in the park. Every inch of him yearned for her, now that he’d been awakened, and had captured her in his arms.
Had this slight, ebony-haired creature truly fought beside him, placing herself in jeopardy in order to help? Was she the one who had come to aid him in a time of trouble?
“You,” he whispered with his mouth on hers. “It really was you.”
Ignoring shaky limbs that refused to behave properly, and his heart’s offbeat rhythm, Colton leaned into her. Licking gingerly at her lips, nipping lightly at the corners of her mouth before again sealing his lips to hers, he took her breath into his lungs, and felt that breath warm him. One word resonated in his mind, on its own loop, playing over and over.
Mine.
He wasn’t dead. This moment was real. Where there was feeling, there was hope, and he desperately needed some.
He kissed her, and the kiss drew a gasp. The raspy sound of Rosalind’s breathlessness shuddered through him as the pleasure of being close to her far outweighed the nagging internal pain he harbored.
His captive wore a black shirt he hardly noticed, except that it felt cool and silky against his bare chest. His current impulse was to tear the shirt from her and get down to it, chest to chest, groin to groin. This was his animal side taking over. His beast voted for that.
Injuries be damned! This Were female had a name that rolled easily on his tongue. Rosalind. A name as creamy as the sexual act itself.
Her black hair, worn long and straight, spilled over her shoulders in a gleaming cascade. Her face, with its prominent, sharp-edged bones, would suit few people, but somehow suited him. She had a small, tapered nose. Perfectly arched eyebrows looked like dark smudges of paint on ivory skin decorated by huge, penetrating green eyes.
Her shoulders were narrow, her hip bones like blades. Lycan females never had overindulgent curves or ponderous shapes due to their super-revved metabolisms and the frequent nighttime sprints, and Rosalind didn’t break that mold.
Small, firm breasts, perfectly proportioned to the trimness of her body, pressed against him through her shirt, begging to be touched, licked, suckled, by someone who would understand what she needed in a mate.
She was no mere pretty young thing. This was a category of female he had never expected: unique, sensual, animal and almost supernaturally beautiful.
Mine.
Colton’s wulf roared, possessive and protective of Rosalind Kirk in spite of the fact that she had been a freaking lightning-quick fighting machine in that park.
Couldn’t have been her, his mind still argued. The female in his arms had a trembling, succulent mouth. The Were in the park had been lethal, black-pelted and incredibly fast.
Thoughts fled as her lips parted and her tongue, extremely hot and seductively moist, tentatively met his. The action cued something in Colton’s body that had long lain dormant. It was a real need for her, having nothing whatsoever to do with the concept of superficial. He longed for closeness and connection. He wanted to hold in his hands something fine and special and long-term. In the face of those needs, self-control was not an option.
The heat of her presence pushed his pain aside. Colton had a sensation of his strength returning by bounds, as if she were the one pulling it back, inch by agonizing inch, and as if the kiss connecting them was drawing his better parts out.
Her arms encircled his neck. Their hips ground lusciously together. Through the silky cloth of her shirt Rosalind continued to radiate the kind of enticement that he imagined would be similar to getting too close to the sun. Pure, radiant fire.
He groaned when her hands touched the nape of his neck, and he repeated the sound when her fingers moved upward into his hair. She grabbed hold of a handful of strands and tugged, trying to pull him closer. But the only way they could have been closer was for him to be inside her. And there was no way to describe how much he wanted that.
His body responded to hers as if he hadn’t been hurt. His erection was proof that a Were’s ability to heal was indeed nothing short of magical.
Rosalind’s touch made illness seem distant and irrelevant. The swift return of his libido told him that if his body wasn’t fully recovered, he was well enough to oblige the desire to claim her, and to enter the blistering heat he knew would be waiting for him if he did.
“Ties that bind. You and I, Rosalind,” he whispered to her, allowing her only a very small breath.
It seemed to him that the female whose tongue now swept boldly across his had somehow created an energy flux that encompassed them both. Maybe it was only a male-female attraction that had made him get up from that bed, because hell, he didn’t know how he could be standing up when he had only opened his eyes a short time ago. He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened to him out there in the dark.
Nevertheless, there was healing in her fingertips. Her breath rammed a steady stream of energy into him as she willed him to take her, and urged him to hurry.
She was a fast learner, an apt pupil. Already she kissed him back with enough fervor to melt away the doubts.
Oh, yes. One of his dreams lay within his grasp. All he had to do was what came naturally to them both.
But, his mind nagged, they are going to take her away. Away from him. This seemed a ridiculous impossibility, now that he had found her.
Dampness broke out on his forehead. Rationality warned that they were guests in someone else’s house, and that the door might open any minute. Rosalind had mentioned the name Landau.
Still, Rosalind’s fingers moved like little bolts of lightning across his upper back, scorching his tender skin, making him wince from the sheer intensity of the pleasure. She was exploring him, as well as the other way around, and she liked what she found.
He seemed to hear her whispering to him, though his mouth on hers left her no ability to do so. “Now,” she was thinking. “Seal our fate.”
