by Raven Dark
“It started before I was even old enough to remember,” he said quietly. “Years before we left the home we lost when the volcano where we lived blew.”
“Before Sheriff brought you all to the Grotto. Mount Dire. Dice told me,” I said when he raised a brow at me.
“The first time I remember him coming for me, I was five. Almost ten years of hell would go by before I was free of him. The first time, I woke up in bed, and he was in the doorway, a huge shadow with an axe in his hand. He was drunk. I could smell it on his breath.”
“An axe?” My stomach turned. “Did he…did he attack you?”
“No. He didn’t come after me with it. Not then.”
Not then. Oh, Light.
Could I handle what he was about to tell me? Could I hold onto the image of the man before me, strong and wise, yet picture the same man as small and hurting without getting too lost in his pain?
For Hawk, I would handle it. I’d find a way to be what he needed.
“The axe had blood dripping off of it. His clothes were stained with blood. He demanded to know where my mother was.”
Hawk paused when he saw me look at him with confusion.
“See, my father was a traveling merchant. He wasn’t home much. He’d come and go for months at a time. Before that night, he’d been gone for a good six months or so. Of course that night, I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. So he stormed through the house, caving in walls and screaming that he’d kill her. I ran to look for my mother, to try to save her. He caught me and broke my arm. Years later, when the same thing happened again, I tried to save her, but he got to her first. He cut off her head.”
I covered my mouth. “What happened? I mean, didn’t anyone do anything?”
“Why? She was a slave.” His voice was caustic. “He taught us to hide things well. He knew how to put on a smile and play the good guy in front of others. Even Dice. Behind closed doors, that’s when he changed.”
“Why would he do something like that to her?”
“My father was a sick man, Kitten. Paranoid. If she even looked at another man, he thought she was fucking him. That’s why she’d stay as far away as she could when he was home. She didn’t know it wasn’t just her that he hurt. If she had, well…”
“Anyway, after that, around the time I turned ten, he started coming into my room every night. Every night, he’d tell me he hated me, because I looked like the whore who’d carried me. ‘One day, I’ll kill you, boy,’ he would say. ‘One day I’ll kill you, when you’re of no use to me.’
“Sometimes, he’d choke me. He’d do it until I passed out and then revive me only to do it again. Other times, he’d just sit at the table with that axe lying there, like he was reminding me what he’d do to me the moment I outlived my usefulness. Other times, he’d burn me.”
I looked at his arms, covered with the sleeves of a black shirt. “That’s what those are? He burned you?”
He nodded. “From his cigars, yeah. A few years later, I learned that before he’d come home and killed my mother that night, he’d gone into the next town and murdered the man who delivered our milk. He hacked up the whole family because he ‘knew’ my mother had lain with him.”
“Maker’s Light. That’s awful.” I rubbed his shoulder, longing to take away his pain.
“After all those years of dealing with him, I still wake up in the middle of the night, thinking I’m a little boy, and any moment my father will come home with his booze and his axe swinging.” He looked at me at last. “Kitten, do you remember that night we were together the first time? The nightmare I had that night?”
“You were dreaming of him.” My blood ran cold.
“Do you remember what I did to you when you woke me?” His fingers traced my neck.
I nodded mutely.
Hawk’s hand dropped. “I thought you were him. Since I was old enough to have a woman, I’ve made it a rule never to actually sleep with anyone. Fuck them, yes, but never sleep.”
“Because you knew you might wake up one day and find yourself attacking them, thinking they were your father.”
He raised a brow again.
“I read a book that had something similar in it, Master. The effects of a…trauma on the mind. There were men in the wars, soldiers, who came back suffering a condition in which they thought the person sleeping next to them was an enemy combatant. There were a few moments upon waking when they’d forget where they were, who they were with, even what time period it was. If someone was with them, they’d attack and even kill them, only realizing their victims weren’t the enemy when it was too late. The Old World called it flash terrors.” I sighed. “I’m so sorry, Master.”
“I told you I was dangerous,” he murmured.
“Maybe, but it isn’t your fault.”
“I’m a bad seed, Kitten. Fruit of the poisonous tree.”
“I refuse to believe that.”
He said nothing, staring out into the darkness. I laid my hand on his shoulder. “Do the others know? Sheriff, Pretty Boy, Steel?”
“They do. They’re the only reason I finally escaped him and ended his murdering ass.”
I widened my eyes. “How?”
“That’s another story. I’ll tell you that one some other time.” He made a sweeping motion with his hand. “But my past…that’s why I meditate. The Yantu have a meditation technique that involves opening up the mind to the dreams, letting them play out. Letting them flow through you so you can deal with them, then shutting the mind down when you sleep so that the terrors don’t bring the nightmares.”
“So that’s why you became Yantu. To help you deal with the memories?”
“No, it’s more than that. When I was a boy, I was consumed with rage. I wanted to hurt anyone who said or did anything that reminded me of him. When I grew older, and I learned about the Yantu, I saw a way to become something better. The Yantu prize lack of emotion, total control over all else.”
“Perfect Enlightenment, they call it.”
“Yes. In the Yantu way, I saw a way to shut myself off from the memories, the fear. The pain. I could disconnect from it, become someone who wasn’t a monster. Someone who wasn’t him.”
“You didn’t have to feel,” I whispered, putting the final pieces together.
“Exactly. For five years, I trained in a temple, away from the rest of the world. My tai dan—my Yantu Master—taught me how to channel my anger, how to discipline my mind and body with the sword. Eventually, I learned how to shut off my emotions and push down the darkness, the monster my father tried to turn me into. I can push him down, but he is always there, just under the surface. Last night fighting the Dregs, and that night in my meditation cave with you, he broke free.”
Sadness washed over me. I wanted to take his pain into myself, to save him from the demons he fought every night. I stood and knelt slowly in front of him. Then I took his face in my hands. He didn’t pull away. His eyes were a burning fire in the night, a gaze that begged me to forgive him. To accept the darkness in him.
“So now you know,” he said quietly, tracing my mouth with his fingers. “Now you know what kind of man wants you every night. A man who can kill an army of Dregs and like what he does. A man you could wake up next to and find his hand around your throat.”
“No.” I stroked his cheeks with my thumbs. “No. You are not a monster, Hawk. You’re a man who kills to protect his brothers and his woman. Who goes without sleep or companionship at night to keep them safe. A man in so much pain he thinks he has to become someone who can’t feel anything at all.”
“A damaged man. A man who could hurt you. Can you live with such a man?”
I put my arms around him and held him close. If he’d thought his secret past would frighten me off, it had the opposite effect. He’d opened a part of himself up to me that he knew might damage what we had, revealing something I knew cost him everything to reveal. I only loved him the more for it.
“Always,” I whispered into his che
st. “My master, always.”
He sighed into my hair, kissing the top of my head, his hands resting carefully on my arms. “You’re not frightened of me?”
“I’d be lying if I said no.” My eyes stung with emotion for him. “But we’ll figure it out together. No matter what you do, you won’t change how I feel about you.”
“How can that be?”
“Because. Whatever your father did, you are not him. You aren’t a killer. You’re a protector. Everything a master should be.”
A low groan left him. He stood, hauling me to my feet. Then he seized my face, and the next instant, his mouth was all over mine. His mouth bruised, but I melted into the kiss. He devoured me, and the need in him, the rawness in him, threatened to consume me.
Hawk seemed to pour all his passion, all his pain and darkness into that kiss until there was only a man, a man burning with need for his woman. The tension in him drained away, and he melded me to him, wrapping me in his arms as if there was only us.
When he broke the kiss, I buried my face in his chest. He held me close, and we were silent for a while. He’d told me so much, and yet I knew there was more. How were the others connected to this?
“You know I don’t condone murder or killing anyone,” I said at last. “But for such a despicable monster, I hope you paid him back.”
“We did.” When I looked up at him, there was a frightening light in his eyes.
“We. You mean you and…? How?”
“You already know Steel, Pretty Boy, and Sheriff are my Brothers, but I don’t think you understand just how close we are. Or why.” He shook himself. “All right, enough dwelling on the past. I only want to think about us right now.”
He cupped my face and tipped it up, claiming my mouth with his. All other thoughts fled on the waves of warmth and need that wrapped around me in that kiss.
It was as if, in knowing I wouldn’t run from him in fear, the walls he’d built up fell away. Here and now, the ghost of his father was gone, a demon that, in this moment, couldn’t touch him. Couldn’t touch us.
This time when he lifted his head, I stared into his amber gaze, my chest heaving against his. His heart hammered into me, heavy and hard and racing as fast as mine.
“Thank you, Master,” I whispered.
“For what?” He brushed my bangs from my forehead.
“For letting me in. For sharing such a difficult thing with me.”
“I’m the one who should be thanking you.”
“For?”
“For forgiving me. For accepting all that I am.”
Love for him swelled to bursting, and I tore my eyes away before he could see it. “You need sleep, Master. Can someone else take over for T-Man?”
He tipped my chin up. “You think you’re going to sleep after what you just did to me?” His crooked smile made my stomach flutter.
“I don’t want to sleep. I want you, Master.”
He rested his forehead against mine. His warm breath mingled with mine, his big palms warming my cheeks. “No man is worthy of you, Setora. Still, you belong to me, to us, and I will never let you forget it.”
I buried my face in his neck. He smelled wonderful, a masculine, woodsy scent with a hint of some kind of spice. “Please make me forget, Master. Make me let go of everything for a while.”
I just wanted the world to disappear for while, the horror of the past two days, the worry for Emmy, the memories of Pup and Latch and the harsh realities of the world their deaths refused to let me push away.
Hawk brushed my lips with his. Then he nodded to a tree behind us. “Go in there and wait for me.”
“Where are you going, Master?”
“To wake Doc.” He smiled crookedly. “Someone has to take over for me while I fuck you senseless.”
Chapter 15
Tied to the Heart
Even after I left Hawk and slipped into his tree, his words echoed in my mind, dominating my every thought.
While I fuck you senseless.
I leaned against the inner wall of the tree, closing my eyes, savoring the promise in those words. Loving the way my core ached just for him.
Opening my eyes, I looked around at the makeshift room. Like his meditation cave in the Grotto, it was darker than the one he lived in, but there was more warmth here than the place where he’d last taken me.
Candles he must have brought with him sat on natural crevices and ledges that grew out of the tree wall. The light of the flames set the space to a soft glow, low and calming, yet they did nothing to soothe the need racing through my blood like fire.
That single thin mat lay across the middle of the tree hollow, serving as the room’s only furniture, a blanket rolled with his usual obsessive neatness at one end. He used that mat to meditate on as well as to sleep. A smile tugged at my lips. If I knew him, he wouldn’t be doing either for a while, and not because of his nightmares.
I lifted my gaze. Across the bower, a thick root about fifteen feet off the ground snaked from one side of the tree to the other. At each end, it twined with other roots that held it in place. From the root hung two ropes at about head-height, each looped at the ends and arms-length apart. Curiosity sparked in me. How had those ropes ended up there?
His words echoed in my mind, and I nearly hiked my tight skirt up to my waist, slid my fingers inside my panties, and stroked myself right there. I was too turned on to be shocked at my desire to self-pleasure, an act I’ve never thought to do before I’d met these men, my Four. I forced myself to wait, knowing how Hawk would react if I took such a pleasure away from him.
Just when I was starting to wonder where he was, Hawk strode into the hollow. His eyes found mine.
“Waiting for me, Kitten?” His low voice was pure carnality as he set his bow and quiver against the wall.
Surely he didn’t know my mind well enough to know what I was thinking of doing just a moment before?
I licked a bead of sweat from my lip. “Yes, Master.”
He stripped off his cut and let it fall to the floor, then pulled his shirt over his head and let that fall too. His muscles bunched and flexed beautifully, making the tribal tattoos on his arms and chest seem almost alive. The firelight danced across his smooth, bronzed skin.
“Good girl. Your pleasure belongs to me. You will leave it to me to give you what you need, won’t you?”
I nodded. So he did know. My gaze veered from him to the ropes visible beyond him. My mind raced with all the things he could do with those.
He looked over his shoulder, following my stare. His grin was wicked. “They’re exercise ropes, Kitten.”
I bit my lip, hoping he didn’t see on my face the images that filled my thoughts.
He turned and crossed the hollow to the ropes. Ignoring the loops at the ends, he grabbed the ropes, one in each fist. He lifted himself up until he hung with his arms straight.
Maker, he made it look easy, thick muscles holding him up as if the rest of him weighed nothing. His eyes closed, and he climbed up the length of one rope, hand over hand. When he reached the top of the rope, he made his way higher still, up thick vines that hung down from the darkness. He somehow climbed so fast and so smoothly he looked almost inhuman.
My head dropped further and further back, following him higher and higher until he hung way up off the floor. Then he looked down at me for an instant…
And let go.
Hawk dropped to the floor with a soft thud, squatting like a cat.
“Are you showing off, Master?” I grinned.
He shook his head. “A Yantu warrior never shows off.” He walked slowly toward me. “The exercises I do take extreme discipline and control. Do you trust me, Kitten?”
After what he’d told me, I thought I understood why he was asking. He needed to know I didn’t fear him.
“I do, Master.”
“I will not unleash the monster in me on you again. But you need to understand, there will be times when I have to do everything I can to con
tain the demon. You awaken him, Setora. You make me feel too much. Sometimes, I will have to pull back from you, even leave you for a time. I do it to protect you. Do you understand?”
What he was telling me sank in slowly. When he distanced himself from me, it wasn’t because his feelings for me were gone. I’d have to accept it when he needed that distance.
Again, I nodded.
“I will always come back to you when it is safe. I couldn’t live with myself if I harmed you.”
“You won’t, Master.”
“No, I won’t.” He’d stopped a few feet from me. “Someday, I will possess such discipline that I won’t have to pull away. But that would take a much higher level of skill than I have at this time. Once I’m a true Yantu Master, a tai dan, you will never have to fear me.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Yantu way has six levels of discipline. I am only a fourth level master. When I am a fifth, I will earn the title of tai dan. When that happens, I will be able to control the darkness in me completely.”
“But isn’t that what you were talking about before, where you can’t feel? Perfect enlightenment?”
“No, that’s level six. My master is such a man.”
“I don’t want you to be like him.” It was selfish, perhaps, but I didn’t want him to become cold, completely without emotion, no longer able to feel the burning need he felt for me. I didn’t want him to become a being beyond desire, who saw sharing himself with others as something beneath him. Besides, becoming such a man was to shut himself off from his demons. He needed to face them, not shut them out.
“I don’t want to lose you,” I added softly. “Does that make me selfish?”
“No more than me.”
Hawk crossed the rest of the space between us and pushed me against the wall of the tree. He pinned me between the wall and his frame, but instead of feeling trapped, I felt safe. Enveloped in him.
He lifted my skirt up slowly, agonizingly slow. His eyes burned with lust, but he was the epitome of self control.
“If we had more time, I’d spend hours playing with you.” His short fingernails scraped along my thighs, creating a mix of pain and pleasure that had me shuddering with want.