by Jill Monroe
He placed the barest of kisses against her mouth, and her bottom lip trembled. “Then tell me to stop, and I’ll stop.”
How could she when she ached to be in his arms? To draw his mouth down to hers? To finally live every emotion and sensation the Osborn of her dreams promised right now in real life?
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
His fingers began to caress the skin below her ears, never thinking how sensitive she was there. She watched as the muscles lining his throat worked. Something dark and slightly possessive flashed across his face, turning his features stony. But this wasn’t scary. Oh, it was dangerous, and should be a warning, but it was so, so tantalizing.
He lowered his head, and this time she met his kiss, unafraid, and as an equal as when she lay on her bed and joined him in her dreams. The fear and the hunger and the pain of the past few days faded from her mind. Osborne took over. The delicious scent of him filled her. The harsh sounds of his ragged breathing pervaded her ears. The taste of him on her lips…
Breena wanted more.
Standing on tiptoe, she twined her arms around Osborne’s neck, drawing him down as close as she could. She sunk her fingers into his long, damp strands of hair and she pressed her mouth to his with equal force.
Osborne groaned, the sound rumbling through his chest. His desire for her made Breena’s stomach feel hollow, the way it did in her dreams. His hands began running up and down her back, and when she teased his tongue with hers, his hands finally stopped their quest and grabbed her backside, lifting and fitting her against the hard swell of his arousal.
Breena shivered as a wave of powerful desire sped through her. This incredible sensation was what the chambermaids giggled about at night when they didn’t realize they could be overheard by their princess. What the young men of Elden fought battles over in the practice fields outside the castle walls. This is what drove her back to her dreams with him whenever she could. For the first time, Breena felt like she was living. Living what she wanted to live. Every sense, every pore, every part of her body, ached for more and more.
A harsh gust of wind blew through the trees, rustling the leaves and startling the birds. A shadow fell across the lake as dark clouds barred the sunlight. An eerie chill poured over her exposed skin, despite being wrapped in Osborn’s arms.
He lifted his head, and she glanced toward the sky.
Something black and snakelike streaked over the treetops. Breena had never seen its like before, but her stomach tightened and grew queasy at the sight. “What is that…?” she began, but couldn’t continue. Another formed in the sky, aiming toward them. She began to shudder, every part of her rejecting the horrifying entity charging for them. The vile thing oozed evil. It swallowed the sanctity of this soothing place, returning only fear and pain and a promise of misery.
Osborn swore, and glanced behind her back toward the pack he’d discarded on the bank. “My weapon,” he whispered. “On my count, run toward it. But stay behind me.”
They wouldn’t make it. The bleak thought appeared in her mind out of nowhere. She shook her head, rejecting the hopelessness invading her soul. She knew the grim conviction in her mind had to be planted by the monsters in the sky.
“Now,” he urged, still keeping his voice low so as not to alert the creatures coming for them. He jolted in front of her, spinning her around, and aimed for the bank. This water had once welcomed her, took away for a few moments all the pain she’d felt since she’d awoken in the strange land. Now that lake seemed to turn hostile. Heavy water swirled around her waist, tugging at her feet and dragging her down deeper into the depths.
“Resist,” Osborn ordered over the harsh crashing of rushing water. “It senses your fear, but that thing has no power over you.”
Breena propelled herself, pushing for each step she took. She had to be slowing Osborn down, preventing him from reaching his pack. “Keep going,” she told him.
He shook his head, instead gripping her arm tighter, pulling her behind him. But it was too late. The tip of the entity began to wrap and wind itself around Osborn’s free arm. His breath came out in a pained hiss, and she felt his body stiffen.
He dropped her arm and shoved her away from him. “Go, Breena. Get out of here and warn my brothers.”
He turned and faced the creature, landing a blow with the kind of force that would have felled a large man. With one last burst of energy, she managed to drag herself onto the bank. The sound of the battle behind her was horrific. The creature shrieked as Osborn rained blow after blow along its snakelike skin, but still the beast never fully released him. His face grew red as he fought with nothing but his brute strength. Vines grew from the snake creature’s sides. Osborn hacked at them with his bare hands.
With a hideous shriek, the creature struck Osborn across the side of his face. Blood seeped from a gash across his cheek, and began to bubble from the poison.
How could he fight? How could he win against something so vile? Burns marked where the creature had grazed his skin. Osborn sank to his knees. Struggled to stand.
Dark images flashed across her memory. A creature with razors for fingers. The sounds of the dying in her ears. The smell of death. Her head filled with pain. No.
All her muscles tensed and she began to shake. An angry energy began to build inside her. No. The word seemed to fill her ears, Blocking out any other noises.
Breena lifted her arms and pointed at the snakelike beast attacking Osborn. “No!” she shouted at the evil thing, and a hot bolt tore from her fingertips. The creature shrieked as if burned. Osborn fell to the ground as the beast turned and aimed straight for her. Fear knifed through her. She almost turned and ran.
But she was done with running away.
Breena locked her knees, faced the evil coming toward her and lifted her hands again.
That thing has no power over you.
If she could prevent the monster from hurting Osborn, she could do more. The thing sped toward her. Another bolt flew into the creature’s side and it twisted with a shrill howl. She sent another and another, until sweat filmed her forehead and it grew hard to breathe. Then she sent one more.
With a final shriek, the creature broke apart in a burst of blood. Red gore fell to the churning water, as if the purity of the lake wanted to repel the carnage rather than absorb it. She expected the other creature in the sky to attack next. It circled twice above their heads, then slithered away into the horizon. Finally the water in the lake settled. The wind died down and the sky lightened.
Breena sunk to the ground. Her muscles shook as she struggled to breathe. Whatever energy she’d used to kill the creature sapped her of any strength. She looked around for Osborn. She spotted him still lying where the creature had dropped him. Beaten. Poisoned. Burned. And still he fought to help her get away.
Now he didn’t move.
She choked back a sob. Her stomach tightened, and a fluttery panic filled her chest. “Osborn!” she shouted as she crashed through the shallow pools of water and sand, where he lay facedown. “Please be alive. Please.” Breena didn’t think she could take another death. Certainly not that of her warrior.
With a strength she managed to scrounge up from somewhere, she rolled him over. She gasped when she saw his face crossed by scratches and deep wounds. She smoothed the blood away with her wet hands, fear making her fingers shake.
“Osborn.”
Nothing.
Breena leaned closer, getting her nose almost to his. “Osborn!” she yelled.
His eyelids snapped open. “If that’s your idea of healing skills, you’ve got a lot to learn.” He groaned.
Her shoulders sagged in relief, her damp hair falling and shrouding them from the sun.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?” he asked, his breath fanning her cheek.
“I slowed you down.” And nearly got you killed.
“I wouldn’t have made it, anyway.”
A realist. She liked th
at. Sort of. It would certainly take some getting used to. Breena was used to life in the castle where she rarely saw the struggles of others. Was protected from it. Osborn would never lie to her. That’s what she needed.
“Those things were too fast.” His words were grim. His eyes narrowed and his expression turned stony again. Whatever fog he’d been in since she’d rolled him over was dissipating. Her angry warrior was back.
He pushed himself up.
“You shouldn’t be trying to sit yet. I think you need to rest.”
He only glared at her, and flexed his arms, then his legs, checking for injuries. He hissed in a breath. He’d obviously found one.
She reached for him. Breena had only meant to pat his shoulder, offering a touch of compassion. But her intended comforting brush of her palm turned into a near caress. She’d never been so close to a man before, especially not one who was naked and so, so fascinating. At least, not while she was awake. She still had the taste of him in her mouth.
Every tendon and sinew of his body was tight and defined. Powerful muscles roped his chest, and bunched at his arms. Scars—some old, some new—ran along his body. And he’d have new ones today. “I’m sorry,” she told him again, already leaning forward, her lips just inches away from his skin.
His fingers circled around her hand, drawing her touch away from his warm skin. “What have you done?”
The anger lacing his every word broke her from her daze.
“Done?” Breena began to shake her head. “I haven’t done anything.”
Yes, her angry warrior was definitely back, this time tinged with a streak of suspicion.
In one quick movement, his hands were at her hips. He rolled her over, her back pressing into the damp sandy bank. He straddled her, blocking any opportunity for her to get away.
“What have you brought here? To my home?” he bellowed at her, his finger digging painfully into her shoulders.
“I don’t know.”
He leaned in, their noses almost touching. “Those creatures…those things, that was magic. Blood magic.”
Her heart began to pound, and her throat grew dry. Blood magic.
The idea of it repelled her. Every part of her—every emotion, every thought, every memory—rejected it and was sickened by the words.
Blood magic could only work by taking of the blood of the unwilling. Forced. Drained until dead.
“You know of these?” she asked. Dreading his answer, hoping it was something he battled on a regular basis here in Ursa and not something she’d brought down on their heads. But a memory, a flash of recognition of the magic, nagged at her. Then the pain returned.
“In places, but not here. Never here.”
His confirmation made her shake. She’d brought the magic of death to this peaceful place. For a moment her thoughts lingered on the poor soul whose blood had created such a thing. How they’d experience excruciating pain, and then praying, even begging, for death. A death denied.
“Those things travel in pairs, so one can always lead more here. To my home.”
With his weight pinning her to the ground, Osborn moved his hands from her shoulders. She began to shake as his fingers traveled over her naked skin, traced the line of her collarbone until meeting at her neck.
“When I came here I made a vow to kill anything that threatened Ursa ever again. Endangered what was left of my family.”
His thumbs caressed the soft skin of her throat. One press, that would be all that it would take, just a little force from his thumbs, and he’d deny her breath. His gaze slammed into hers. “Tell me, Breena. Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you.”
CHAPTER FIVE
HE’D NEVER KILLED a woman.
It was his rule when he hired out his sword to anyone who had the coin. His only rule. An Ursan warrior never fought until forced and only to protect his family and his homeland. What he’d done to survive, to ensure his brothers’ survival, would have brought shame to his people. In those early days after leaving Ursa, he’d sunk to the lowest depths. He lived with other mercenaries, men who’d kill him in his sleep to get his job, or just for the pleasure of watching him bleed.
He’d worked for the grasping, greedy overlords who cared more about securing their own power than taking care of their people. They starved while his people, whose rulers were just and fair, died. But those thoughts always led to madness. Hell, he had been a little crazy after he fled his homeland with his brothers. The harsh, pained sounds of the dying people echoed in his ears. The echoes only silenced when replaced by the cries of his young brothers begging for a mother who wouldn’t come to comfort them. Would never come.
Only cheap ale and a few moments’ pleasure in a paid woman’s bed drowned out the noise. A part of it.
Then he’d broken his own rule. He was paid to kill a young girl, no more than ten. All for the sake of more power. More coin. The girl’s only crime was her marriage alliance. She was promised to a boy who’d one day be king of his lands. A rival family had a daughter of their own they wanted to see sitting upon the throne.
He located his intended victim sleeping in her bed. Her tiny hand curled around a doll. He’d found his own sister this way many times.
What had he become? The blood of honorable warriors flowed through his veins. He was one with the bear…and he was about to cowardly cut the neck of a small girl. He’d stuck his dagger into the wooden chest next to her bed as a warning to her family, grabbed his brothers and fled into the night.
He prayed to the spirits of the bears that they might let his family enter their sacred grounds, and he vowed to protect those lands with his life, even to kill any trespasser who dared to enter the domain of the bear.
And here she was. The person who dared to defy the warnings staked on the outskirts of this isolated land and intrude where she had no right to be.
Osborn looked down at the woman stretched naked beneath him. Her very presence mocked his vow and his rule—to never kill a woman—and yet he must kill. She brought menace, blood magic, the worst kind, here.
Her breasts rose and fell as she took one ragged breath after another. The tight dusky tips invited his touch and his tongue and he was distracted for a moment. Her hair splayed all around the ground, like it did when he dreamed of her. She wore only an odd timepiece around her neck. Her soft lips were parted and a pulse hammered at the base of her throat.
He was distracted longer than a moment because she slammed her knee into his side. His breath came out in a grunt, but he didn’t budge. It would take more than a small woman’s shove to overpower him. He gripped her wrists and tugged them high above her head to prove his point.
“Are you daring me to kill you, Breena?”
“Let me go!” She bucked her hips, trying to shake him off, but only managed to shift her legs so that she cradled him. He felt the slick heat of her woman’s body, and his cock stiffened. How long had it been since he’d touched a woman? Since bringing his brothers here, he’d driven every emotion, pounded every desire and drove every wish he’d once had for himself into creating something on this land. Raising his brothers, keeping them alive, making sure they had a life so that when he left to seek revenge on those who’d brought down the destruction of his family, his brothers could and would carry on without him.
In an attempt to dislodge him, Breena jerked against his cock, and his breath came out in a hiss. Years. It had been years since he’d sunk himself into a woman’s inviting warmth. But the female beneath him wasn’t just any female; she was the woman of his dreams.
No. She was the woman who’d invaded his dreams and made him dream of her.
“You cannot best me.”
“I can try,” she told him, meeting his gaze. Defiance and something like desperation mingled in the green depths.
He knew those sentiments.
Felt them.
Lived them.
She shouldn’t have to feel that.
Why he should even care, he couldn’t fathom
. But for some reason, Osborn cared. It had been a long time since he’d really given a damn about anything.
Her bottom lip trembled for a moment, and he couldn’t look away from the tempting softness of her mouth. Then he felt her spine stiffen. “If you’re going to kill me, do it now, otherwise—” Her otherwise was punctuated with the top of her head meeting his chin. His teeth snapped together, and his head reared back, but the shock of her action didn’t loosen his grip. Instead, he shifted both her wrists to just one of his hands and gripped her chin to make her meet his eyes. Just to prove that he could.
“A moment ago I was thinking I wouldn’t kill you. I’m back to thinking I will.”
“I…” But her sentence trailed. Had he expected her to apologize for wanting to live?
Her one word drew his glance back to her lips. The tempting seductress of his dreams, or the sleepy enchantress come to life. Now Breena was a woman. Naked. And under him.
Osborn lowered his head, and took from her what he’d wanted. And she gave it to him. Her lips met his, her mouth opening to welcome in his tongue.
She tasted like promise and better than his dream.
He wanted to taste all of her.
“Please,” she said, her voice broken and needy.
Please what? Please don’t kill her? Please make her feel something other than fear for a moment? Fear he’d caused?
He slumped against her, burying his face in her drying hair. The drive to explore her body died, and was replaced with something less primal. Guilt? Regret?
He didn’t need more of that in his life. He had enough for a dozen lifetimes.
“I won’t kill you.”
He felt her sag beneath him, the fight draining from her limbs. He released her hands, and balanced above her, Breena’s sweet, soft curves still cradling him. “But I need answers.” He eyed the sky, noting the position of the sun. “It will be dark soon. You can stay tonight, but you leave tomorrow after I’m satisfied I know all I need to about this threat. And, Breena…”
“Yes?”
“Don’t come back.”