Deliver Me from Chaos

by Tes Hilaire

  “We were scoping out one of the entrances and I guess they must have gotten a bead on us, then followed us when we got in my car.” He met the gaze of the other warrior, even knowing the man would see the fear in his eyes. “They rammed us, we flipped, got pushed into another car. I blacked out for a couple minutes and they took her.”

  He started to tremble as he remembered the panic he’d felt when he realized she was gone. Valin squeezed his shoulder. “You got her back.”

  He shook his head, his failures crushing down on him like a vice. “Not in time. Not before those bastards hurt her.”

  Silence met that statement. Good thing, too, Mike was not in the mood to deal with platitudes. Shae had moved onto Katrina’s arm. The bone made a sucking pop as she realigned it. Mike’s own stomach twisted. Both worried and glad when she didn’t wake with the action.

  “I will start the mending, but I’m pretty much drained, so she’ll still have to wear a splint for a week or two.”

  Mike about laughed. A splint, some butterfly bandages, and a few scars. It seemed both too much and too little. Too much because any wound on her body meant he’d failed her, too little because a half hour ago he’d seriously believed she would die in his arms.

  Not die. Protect mate!

  An itch scratched across the back of his neck, a concurrent tickle fluttering against the edges of his mind. Mike snapped his head up, his focus zeroing in on Valin who still stood beside him. The man’s focus wasn’t on him, but on Gabby. They’d locked gazes, their focus too intent to merely be exchanging a look. Talking mind to mind?

  He growled, not liking the thought of them speaking so openly behind his back. All kinds of things could be discussed that way, not all of them good.

  “What is it?” he asked, then swore inwardly when he realized how hoarse his voice sounded. The beast was riding near the surface.

  Valin arched his brow, giving Gabby another long look, though they didn’t try and speak to one another again. “We’re just wondering…This entrance they followed you from. It was an entrance to where?”

  Mike clamped his mouth shut wishing he hadn’t asked anything, because, yeah, not answering that. He didn’t know these people. Sure Logan had sent him here, but that could have been because they wouldn’t know enough to understand what Kat was, not that she was safe from them if they did know.

  In the back of the room, Gabby shifted, moving closer to Katrina, her head tipped as she studied her.

  The back of Mike’s neck bloomed with tingles, his nostrils flaring. Musky heat hit the back of his throat. He narrowed his eyes as he studied the woman in return. Red curling hair, wide, exotic green eyes. Suspicion dawned, but that wasn’t possible, was it? Logan had said this woman was a Paladin.

  Beside him Valin tensed, his grip shifting from supportive to one of warning.

  “Are you… like her?” he asked, his question directed at Gabby.

  Gabriella looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes narrowing. “Like her how?”

  He shook his head. Didn’t dare voice it. If he were wrong, he might very well be signing Kat’s death sentence. “Nothing, you just were looking at her like you recognized her.”

  Gabby looked him straight in the face, her green eyes steady as she said, “I never met her before in my life.”

  ***

  Valin watched as the man, Mike, settled next to the hospital cot beside the woman, his hand rubbing her good arm as he took up vigil. Shae had finished a few minutes before, asking Mike and Valin to transfer her patient to the cot as she gave some short instructions—rest, give me a call when she wakes—then had left to seek her own bed.

  Valin and Gabby had lingered for a couple minutes, mainly to see what the man would do. No, not a man, a part-blood Paladin. And a powerful one, too, given that he’d caught his and Gabby’s well shielded conversation. Very few here could sense when he and Gabby spoke, but this Mike had. Just as he’d sensed that there was something different about Gabby. Of course, Gabby had certainly seemed to sense something about the woman, Katrina. Not that Valin would ask her what that was until they had left their oversensitive new friend’s presence.

  “Here…” Gabby reached into a rumbling fridge, pulled a bottle of water and set it by the cot. “There is more in there if she wakes and is thirsty.”

  “Thank you,” Mike replied, though underlying was the unspoken now go away.

  “You need anything else?” Gabby asked, though Valin suspected they both already knew the answer. And sure enough, Mike shook his head, his attention perfectly focused on his mate. And damn if the woman wasn’t his mate, the signs were all there, right down to the over-possessive and willing-to-die-to-protect-her instincts. Poor bastard. Valin just hoped this incident was a fluke and not that the merker had decided to target her. If so then the chance of a happily-ever-after ending for them was looking decidedly grim.

  “If you do, or when she wakes, just give me or Valin a little ring up here.” Gabby tapped her head. “You do know how to do that, right?”

  “I do,” Mike confirmed.

  Gabby nodded, then with a significant look at Valin, headed for the door. Valin was right on her heels, closing the door firmly behind him. He considered throwing the bolt on this side, but figured it wouldn’t stop the man and only lead to distrust, so he left it and followed Gabby down the hall.

  “You know her,” he said, when they were far enough away that he was sure Mike, even if he did have amped up senses, wouldn’t hear him.

  She shook her head, her red curls bouncing across the tops of her breasts in a highly distracting way. “Never met her.”

  Down boy, stay focused. This was the problem with being mated, good timing, bad, didn’t matter, he always wanted her. “Well then, you know something about her.”

  “No, don’t know, but I do suspect something.”

  “What?”

  She slowed, stopped. A quick scan showed no one in the vicinity. “There are stories. Stories about a half-succubus who a little over five years ago fled after making a deal with Ganelon.”

  Okay then. He glanced back toward the room, shook his head, his sympathy ratcheting up another notch for the poor bastard clinging to the edge of that cot. Not just a half-succubus—aka their bond would never be acknowledged amongst a good portion of their Paladin brothers—but one who’d made, then broken a deal with Ganelon—enough said on that. Still he had to ask. “What sort of deal?”

  Gabby sighed, crossing her arms over her breasts in a gesture he realized was more defensive than judgmental. “The sort of deal one makes when they are desperate. The kind of deal you make when you’ve spent the last ten years in hell as the underdog, being taught day after day your proper place. The kind of deal you make when you don’t see any other way out from the humiliation and pain.”

  Valin stiffened, he could feel his eye ticking. He knew the kind of humiliation and pain his mate was referring to. He’d experienced it through her own memories. Memories from before. Before he’d known her. Before he could stop the monsters that tried to crush his Gabby’s spirit.

  “What was the deal?” he asked carefully, trying to keep his anger checked behind carefully laid shields.

  “Her first born child for his protection. “

  Why would Ganelon care about some half-succubus’s child unless… “Ah, fuck. It was his. She ran with his child, didn’t she?”

  Gabby nodded. “Before the child was born, actually. Two guesses as to why she’d want to find her way back into hell now though.”

  “He has the child. Ganelon tracked them down and took what he was owed.”

  She looked back at the room, her green eyes clouded with remembered pain. “Chances a single Paladin will lift a finger to help them?”

  He linked his hand through hers, giving it a squeeze. “Well, I can’t speak for everyone else, but I think I know of two.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mike twisted, trying to escape the flashes of images that were slammi
ng into him like a freight train: a dark cavern, flickering candles, irrepressible heat, slick bodies, soft bed, panting, satin sheets. Only these images, which should have signaled some sort of erotic fantasy had quickly taken a dark turn. He was pinned down, hands locking his arms to the bed as a man—no, something more than a man—rocked above him, a twisted smile on his face. Worse was what came with the images: an aching agony so exquisite all it left him with was a hollow craving for something, anything… and with it, shame. So much shame.

  Mike roared, arms fisting as he struck out at the cause of such hurt. He tumbled, his elbow smacking into the hard ground before he could gain his feet. Adrenaline pumped through him as he took in his surroundings: a small room, cracked vinyl flooring, cabinets lining the wall, a rumbling fridge. The makeshift hospital room.

  Shit, just a dream.

  A sharp moan had him spinning back around. Still on the cot lay Katrina, her head shaking side to side, her limbs thrashing in the threadbare sheet as she fought to escape the nightmare.

  Not his. Hers. Oh, God, these nightmares were hers.

  Protect!

  On this he and his beast were in complete accord. He slid back into the bed, pulling her tight to his chest as he stroked her back. “Katrina, wake up, beauty.”

  She didn’t surface and it took all he had not to shake her out of the horrid dreams, but with how close his beast was riding to the surface, he feared he might actually harm her if he let his frustrations loose. Instead he opened his mind, finding the link that bound them, and sunk back into her dreams.

  For a second he stood as an observer, watching tears slide down his Katrina’s face as the man rose and fell above her. Mike took a step forward. The first thing that had to go was this bastard. It was as Mike was trying to figure out how he was going to accomplish this in this dream world, that he heard it: the sibilant hissing emitting from the man. Not words, not really, but a suggestion that was being drilled into Katrina’s mind, and because Mike was actually here, with her, even though just an observer this time, he could decipher what it was: You love me. You need me. You’d die for me.

  Katrina shook her head and continued to cry, even as her body quaked with a flutter of pleasure; a pleasure so sharp that it bordered on pain. Exquisite agony—that’s what he’d felt when he’d been trapped in her dream. And now he understood that this was the true power of a sex demon: to make their prey desire them against their will. Desire them so much that what they received from the sex—pain, pleasure—it didn’t matter; what mattered was that their entire world became their lover’s demands.

  Mine!

  No, ours, he corrected his beast, and stepped forward, swiping his fisted hand at the creature that continued to torture his Katrina in her dreams. His hand passed right through him, yet in the dream the essence of the demon clung. Neither Mike nor his beast were having any of that.

  “You can’t have her anymore. She’s mine now.” He didn’t look at the demon. Wouldn’t matter. The man wasn’t real anyway. But down at his Katrina, his will pitted against the memory of this demon, begging her to see him, see that he was here and real, not this nightmare.

  “Mike?” His name, filled with such hope and yes, even fear, drove a knife through his chest.

  “I’m here.” He reached his hand out, palm up, offering it to his beauty who sucked in a shocked breath. She looked longingly at his hand. The demon above her snarled, his knuckles whitening on the flesh of Katrina’s arms. Katrina yelped, her eyes wild as she looked back at the demon.

  “He’s not real, beauty. He’s the past, not part of now. Let him go.”

  Hunger for just that locked her gaze back to his, even as she shook her head at the impossibility of the task he asked.

 

  He felt the moment when determination set. Her body stiffened, no longer caught in her nightmare lover’s rhythm. The demon hissed, the powers of his suggestions slamming into them both.

  Need. Want. Me. Sex. Only one. Love me. Only me. Need me. Die for me.

  Katrina screamed, trying to reject the suggestions.

  Fuck this asshole!

  Mike roared and let the beast loose. He didn’t know what he expected the beast to do in this dream realm, but it wasn’t what happened next. The beast bent down, stretching in front of the dream demon, and ignoring the hands latched onto her arms, linked Mike’s fingers through Katrina’s.

  “Look me,” the beast growled through Mike’s lips, his command echoed across the bond that existed between Katrina and himself. “Only me. I here. I real. I yours. You mine.”

  Katrina nodded, though she whimpered at the slice of pain as the demon tried to find its way past. And then the beast bent down, his lips touching Katrina’s with such agonizing sweetness that even Mike’s breath was taken away with the tenderness of the kiss.

  Holy fuck, who knew his beast was capable of this?

  Not me. Not you. Us, the beast chided him, even as he continued to woo their Katrina from her remembered pain.

  Mike… His name, spoken across their bond, with such wonder snapped something.

  The demon roared, a sound of inhuman fury, his hands snapping off Katrina as he grabbed at his head, stumbling off the bed. And then, just like that, the demon was gone, as were the flickering candles, and the blood red sheets. They were back in the hospital room. Beneath him Katrina lay panting, the fingers of her good arm clung tightly to his, eyes wide with real desire and none of that fake shit the demon had been trying to force on her.

  “You’re here.” Her voice was breathless and filled with such wonder that it pained him.

  “I’ll always be here.”

  She closed her eyes, tears running down her cheeks. He could feel she didn’t believe it and the knowing made his gut twist sharper.

  Was this why she rejected what they could be to each other? Had she been so thoroughly mind-fucked by that demon that she didn’t believe Mike’s declaration of love could actually be real?

  He’d asked back in his apartment if there was anything more than attraction between them and she’d said there couldn’t be. She’d never said that she didn’t want there to be, or didn’t wish there to be, or that there wasn’t. Just that there couldn’t be. Why? Because allowing for love meant allowing for hurt? God knew, if even half of what he’d seen in her dream was real, that she’d had enough of that in her life.

  Not with me. I will not be a catalyst to any more hurt for her.

  Yet he needed her. Needed to completely erase the horror from the nightmare that they’d both now lived. He needed her to see him as her lover, her friend, her mate. He needed her to know that this was it, that for him his world was, in fact, her. He needed her to know that she was his everything. Damn but he needed her.

  “Always, Katrina. I will always be here for you,” he told her firmly, then bent to kiss away the tears. He couldn’t stand to see her cry. It about killed him.

  She didn’t resist, but slipped her hand from his, cupping the sides of his face as she directed his mouth to where she wanted it: her own sweet lips. And damn, it really was like kissing a rainbow. The world might be in chaos around them, the storm might be powerful and vast, but here, with Katrina, was all the things that made all that shit worth fighting through.

  “Mike, I need…” she trailed off, a flash of the nightmare’s horror trying to reclaim her. He kissed her, using the passion of their melded mouths to drive it away.

  The kiss wasn’t punishing, but a mix of gentle and insistent, as he tried to expose himself completely—mind, heart, body and soul—knowing that only when she truly believed in him, and thus in them, would they be able to fully drive the nightmares away.

  Mate! See us, commanded the beast.

  She gasped, pulling back, her eyes glazed with wonder and need. “How is this possible? You’re a Paladin and I’m…”

  “You. You are you. My beauty. And you were made for me and my be
ast.” He smiled, flipping them so he was beneath her and she had all the control. This time the beast didn’t object to giving over the reins. She was his other half, if he couldn’t trust her with all that he was, then who could he trust? “Take me, beauty. See me. See how right we are.”

  ***

  Katrina shook under the overwhelming stream of emotions that vibrated between her and Mike. Hope, need, want, desire, longing…love. God, she didn’t even know what that was. Not in this way. She loved Mia, unconditionally, but love between a man and woman? There was always someone who lost in that bargain.

 

  She jumped a little at the presence of his mind within hers. She knew Paladin spoke mind to mind, projecting their thoughts, but this, as the other time earlier in her nightmare, was far more. She could feel him. And what she felt was so overpowering it took her breath away. He truly believed they were meant to be. That they were mates. And he...he loved her with everything that he was. She also knew he was waiting for her to accept that love and claim him in return.

  The responsibility of that was both uplifting and overwhelming. To reject his love now would be to reject all that they could possibly be. She still wasn’t convinced it was her right, but damn if she didn’t need this. Need him.

  She bent down, brushing his lips in the sort of tender kiss that his beast had used to help break her free of her nightmare. And wow, there the beast was, riding not alongside Mike, but so completely intertwined that she had a hard time determining where Mike ended and the beast began.

 

  She shuddered at the truth of the beast’s words. The vibration ran through her into Mike and he shuddered too, moaning as he clenched her hips.

  “Damn, beauty. You are too much.”

  No, not enough. She would never measure up to this man who offered her everything.

  Both the beast and Mike growled at that, a spark of light flashing across the back of his retina as he glared at her.