by Reina Torres
If they only knew…
Donal wanted to physically clamp a hand down over his gorilla’s mouth, but the beast within him would only dodge away from his hand quite easily.
When they were close enough to use their radios, Amahle spoke quickly to let them know that they had one captured hunter and an injured member in their party.
Donal saw Thabisa’s mouth twist into a lopsided frown. No, she did not appreciate the fuss they were making, but she understood that they cared. That’s the important part.
That they all had someone, or rather an entire group of people who cared for each other and would protect them in the dark times and heal them when the need arose for that.
And when they reached the outskirts of the main camp Donal saw that the fuss went beyond the normal welcoming party.
While the police would take a while to come, there were additional vehicles in the area reserved for parking and beside that there was an energy surrounding the camp that felt like a flowing river over his skin. Warm and filled with energy, trailing like fingers up his arms.
He knew she was there before he saw her.
He felt the rush of heat that had nothing to do with burning sunlight.
Tamsin.
Yes, even the wild side of him knew her in an instant, and she’d never been near him since he’d discovered the extent and the depth of his curse.
Even the beast inside knew enough not to argue with his thoughts. They’d been through the argument enough that they could recite it word for word for each other.
But that didn’t stop Donal from wanting to turn tail and head back out the way he came. He wanted to put a world of distance between the two of them, because he knew that once he saw her, he was never going to be able to let her get away.
Tamsin.
He hated the way his beast said her name, because he said it the same way Donal did when he laid his head down at night and prayed for her. They said her name like it was the prayer itself. Like it could conjure her into existence before them.
Tamsin.
And then it did.
She was there. Standing at the edge of the mess tent, her hand on one of the posts, gripping the wooden length as if it was the only thing holding her upright.
And maybe it was.
Because the only thing that kept him on his feet when he jumped down from the back of the jeep was the sheer will of his beast, the very creature who Donal had thought to protect her from years before.
He wasn’t sure how he managed to move. Donal didn’t recall taking the first step in her direction, or the next, or however many steps separated the two.
What he did remember was the way she lifted her hand toward his cheek.
Donal felt her breath on his face and saw the soul-deep pain in her eyes, but when he braced for the impact of her palm, steeled himself for the pain that was rightfully his, he ended up waiting for something that didn’t happen.
No, Tamsin Ellery, the woman who had lived and breathed in every dream and every nightmare since the day he’d left her behind, touched the side of his face with infinite care and drew her fingertips down over his two day growth before she parted her lips to speak.
“I can’t believe it’s really you.”
He had to touch her too.
Had to put his hand on her skin.
Covering her hand with his, he lifted her searching fingers from his face and turned it over so he could lean his nose into her palm. He drew in a breath, bringing her scent so deep into his body that he could taste it on his tongue.
She smelled of rain and cotton, cinnamon, and sugar.
She smelled of every good memory he’d ever had in his life because she was a part of those moments.
“Tamsin.” He said the name out loud and felt her hand tremble in his.
“Donal,” his name caught in her throat, and he longed to see if he could taste it on her tongue. “You’re alive.”
He saw her wince at her own words, but he wouldn’t allow her to take them back or apologize.
“I can see why you would question it, Tam. I wanted to tell you-”
“This isn’t Victorian times, Donal. Even back then when people traveled to the different continents, and what they considered the ‘corners’ of the world, letters were sent. They didn’t need telephones or the internet, they still got their message through.”
He saw the shift in her eyes. The deep, churning ache sharpened and turned cold and distant. Or maybe she’d just buried the heat down deep below the glassy surface of her eyes.
Tamsin took her hand back from his. She didn’t tug or yank. Calm, she raised her other hand and peeled his fingers away. He wouldn’t grab at her or pull her back. He wouldn’t disrespect her like that, but he couldn’t let her pull too far away before trying to explain.
“I couldn’t tell you where I was or what I was doing. I couldn’t do that and expect you to stay where you were. I couldn’t chance that you’d decide to come after me, or bring me home. I knew if I let you in, I’d never be able to keep you away.”
He heard the crunch of dirt under her boot and felt as if she’d set it straight down on his heart. No matter how much it hurt him to watch her take a step back, the way her voice trembled felt as if it could turn into an earthquake at any moment and split him in two.
“You didn’t want me to come after you?”
“Want? Of course, I wanted you to come, Tamsin. It’s the only reason I left alone in the first place. It wasn’t about what I wanted. It was about your safety.”
“Oh,” she scoffed at him. “I’ve heard this before.”
The hard edge to her voice shocked him. “From who?”
“From you, from your uncle, from everyone in my life who never understood that I grew up. I turned eighteen, and then I passed twenty-one. I’m all grown up, Donal. I can make my own meals, shop for my own clothes, and when I’m feeling like I really want to flex my big-girl muscles, I can cross the street on my own.”
Donal heard more than a single snickering laugh coming from the people watching their little exchange, and it didn’t hurt his feelings or make him angry. No, he knew what he’d done and how angry it had made her. To be completely honest, he didn’t even mind if she wanted to take a swing at him. He could take it.
“But let’s be clear, Mister Graystoke.”
Oh, he was in trouble.
“Whatever you thought you were protecting me against was nothing compared to the worry and anguish that I went through. Do you have any idea what went through my mind? Every report of a man fitting your description that was found in a hole or rotting by the roadside, wore your face.
“Every night when I went to sleep wondering if you were healthy. If you had a roof over your head. If you had food to eat. All of those thoughts drove me crazy! All I needed to know were two things. One – that you were alive and well.”
He nodded, and gave her what he hoped was an encouraging smile. “And two?”
Donal swore he could hear her heart pounding in her chest, and his own heart found a way to match the thundering rhythm.
“Two.” She shook her head and stepped back putting another foot between them, making it feel like it was the Grand Canyon. “Why did you have to travel across the Atlantic Ocean to get away from me? What did I do to make you leave me behind?”
Chapter Five
It wasn’t about hurting him, but Tamsin felt some little pang of satisfaction when she saw the impact of her words hit him like a physical blow. But that satisfaction fell away instantly, and the hurt turned right around like a ricochet and hit her square in her chest.
It almost doubled her over.
Staggered her back.
And that canyon of distance yawned between them.
Whatever relief she’d felt was now bottoming out into sorrow.
For herself.
All those years, wasted.
All those years, believing that he was alive, but incapable of contacting her. Incapable of easing
her worries.
All. Those. Years.
“Hey.”
She swung her head toward the voice and saw Magheli’s eyes full of concern.
“You should sit down.”
He reached out for her, but a moment before his fingers could touch her, Donal was there, his hand wrapped around Magheli’s wrist.
“Donal?”
His focus wasn’t on her. Donal’s eyes, and every ounce of emotion in his body, were focused on Magheli. White knuckles slashed in contrast to Donal’s sun-tanned skin and as his mouth opened, Tamsin caught sight of bared teeth. “Don’t touch her!”
“Donal, stop.” It took her a moment to gather her wits around her. “Donal, let him go.”
It seemed like he couldn’t hear her. His whole body was rigid and strung tight like a bow.
And then she put her hands on him. On his shoulders.
His whole body reacted to her touch.
The fury in him melted, and he turned, letting the other man go so quickly that Magheli staggered back as Donal moved almost through her.
One moment she was trying to pull Donal off of another man and then she was moving, her feet dangling above the ground. Moving further and further away from the camp. It all came at her in a rush. Broad, flat leaves slapping against her back and her arms, she focused her gaze back in the other direction. She couldn’t seem to grasp what was happening, but she was able to grasp him.
He held her against him with her chin over his shoulder and a rock steady arm around her body, his hand gripping her hip.
He was running, but she barely felt the impact through her body. How could he be traveling that fast and not bouncing her against his larger form? Not causing her any pain?
Confusion? Oh, she had plenty of that!
But he held her with such tender care that the differences in his behavior made her head spin.
“Donal, stop.”
He continued, but he slowed his pace, lowering her a scant inch along his muscular form.
And that’s when she tensed even more in his one-armed hold.
“Donal?”
He took a few more steps and stopped, coming to rest in a small clearing under a rooftop of trees.
Tamsin managed to release his shoulders from her grasping fingers and laid her palms over the unfamiliar rise of muscles that hadn’t been there when she saw him last. “You’ve changed.”
He didn’t speak.
She heard each breath that passed through his nose and into his body.
Again, she moved her hands and tried to wrap her hand around his arm just above his elbow. She hadn’t quite been able to do it before. It had just been a way to put her hands on him and hold him close, but at that moment, during their sudden and stunning reunion, she doubted that her hand could reach halfway around his arm at that point.
Shaking her head, she lifted her gaze to his face and saw all the ways that he had changed there too.
His hair had always been on the long side. His mother had called him her ‘wild boy’ when they had been children, running around the gardens. And even when she’d passed, Donal had kept it long, choosing to let Tamsin cut it for him even though she was woefully inept at first. Still, looking at it in that moment, Tamsin saw that it had been cut recently, closer at the sides than she’d ever seen it.
Tracing the hairline with her fingers she found herself mourning the length that had been there.
The length that she had run her fingers through as he seated himself inside of her.
The memory flared in her mind like a torch roaring to life and she turned her head to the side as if doing so would make it go away, or put it behind her.
Instead, it burned even brighter, and the heavy press of his body on hers was more than just her imagination.
“Tam…”
She felt the way his jaw moved under his skin, the way it stretched under the heel of her hand, and the stubble bristling against her tender flesh.
“You’ve changed so much.” She said the words, but she wasn’t even sure what she meant, or even if it was about one thing or Donal in his entirety. “I see that it’s you, but there’s so much about you that’s a stranger to me.”
“Tam-” He covered her hand again and turned his head until his lips touched her wrist. “Tamsin. You’ve always known me.”
She wanted to agree.
It would be so easy to do it. It would mean less of a confrontation. Less sadness for both of them.
“No, I don’t think so.”
The eyes that had once been so open to her seemed to shutter in that moment. The shade of the trees fell heavily under the canopy of their leaves, and as she felt him reach for her she stepped back and put enough distance between them that she could regain her physical balance.
And hopefully her perspective.
“How long have you been here?” She reached for an easy topic and hoped she’d found one. “Working with…”
“The Bandile?” He didn’t wait for her nod. He understood her question. “A little more than a year. There are a number of groups that work against the poachers, but this group,” his eyes searched the dark underbrush as if he was expecting something to leap out of the shadows, “felt like friends from the first time I joined them.”
She felt a twinge of sadness at his words. These women were his friends.
Where did that leave her?
“And you are well?”
His head tilted a little to the side and reminded her of an animal’s curious stare. “I’m alive. All my limbs intact. Everything in its place.”
She looked at him and then the area around him.
He was dressed like the others in a combination of camouflage clothing and muted earth colors. And just like the others, he looked like a fitting piece in the puzzle of his surroundings. Looking down at her own clothes she was sure she made a decent approximation of a tourist trying to fit in and failing miserably. It wasn’t much different from how she felt in America. Even though her family had worked for Graystokes for more than a generation, and she had grown up within a stone’s throw from the Graystoke mansion, she had always felt out of place, except when she was with Donal.
And now, even that had been taken away from her.
He fit in here.
She didn’t.
“We should get back.”
Tamsin moved to walk past him and stopped short when he reached for her arm.
“Don’t.”
Birds burst from one of the trees, turning Tamsin’s head to follow the sound. When she turned back to Donal she saw a war of emotions on his face. Sadness. Frustration. Confusion. Anger was there, too, but it wasn’t directed at her.
“This is why.” He swallowed and let out a sigh that silenced the jungle growth surrounding them. “This is why I left.”
She didn’t understand. The gravitas in his voice told her his words held weight for him, but it felt empty to her.
“I had to hide it from you.”
“Hide what?” Tamsin stepped closer to him, holding out her hand toward his face. She saw a light sheen of sweat on his skin. Had it been there before?
Before she could touch his skin, he reached out his own arm and folded their fingers together, his left holding her right, intimately linked.
“Donal, are you ill? I can help.”
“There’s only one thing you can do.”
Her heart twisted painfully in her chest. She couldn’t say a word so she nodded for him to continue.
“Maybe two,” he echoed her words as his mouth curved into a wry smile. “Don’t try to run. And don’t scream. People will come, and I don’t know how he’s going to react if they try to get between us.”
Her mind was reeling. “I don’t understand, Donal. What do you mean between us? I-”
His hand had nearly engulfed hers before, but as she watched, his hand became… something else.
Another hand.
Another species entirely.
Thick, blunt-tipped
fingers as long as her own, but the palm was larger than her entire hand. It took every ounce of courage in her to look beyond that giant hand to the arm that could easily knock her into next week, or crush her with hardly a thought.
But that wasn’t enough. She had to look further and make sure that her mind hadn’t completely twisted and left her insane. No, beyond the massive hand and arm was a gorilla the size of a small mountain.
Oh, she knew that she was exaggerating, but who was there to tell her that she was losing her mind? A small laugh escaped her lips and she cringed, watching the great beast before her. Donal said not to scream, but what about a laugh? A little I’m-about-to-lose-my-ever-loving-mind laugh? Or maybe just a please-don’t-kill-me laugh?
Tamsin was prepared to press her lips tightly together and keep completely quiet, but her instinct told her she could, no… that she should, talk to him.
The face of the gorilla, easily two to three times the size of her own, was calm enough to give her some confidence. Strange that having her hand held by such a powerful creature didn’t instinctually lead to panic.
“Oh, God. I’m losing my mind.”
Before she could think better of it, she pulled her hand trying to release it from his hold.
Rather than free her hand, Tamsin felt the gorilla pull her in. All she was able to do was allow him to tug her closer, stumbling across the leaf-strewn ground and into his embrace. She felt a rumble of sound that moved through his chest and into hers. He still had her hand where their fingers were tucked together, but then his massive arm curled around her, cradling her against his shoulder.
The soft cushion of his hair against her cheek made her smile, remembering some of what Donal’s mother had taught them as children. “Mountain gorilla.”
A soft grunt of sound rolled through his massive body and into her ear.
It seemed silly, even though her entire situation seemed like the best and worst kind of hallucination, but she knew that the sound was a gentle one.
“It’s really you in there, isn’t it?” She had spoken without thinking, and as his head turned in her direction, Tamsin was stunned at the delicate shift in his eyes. Instead of the dark eyes that she had seen a few moments before, she saw the whites surrounding the irises of Donal’s eyes.