by Selena Scott
"Here," Dora said, handing over her phone. "I google imaged it to see if it rang any bells for you."
Glory took the phone and started scrolling breathlessly through the pictures. "Emin! My home! My motherland. Look! The waterfall near our cave and oh! The trees I learned to climb in. Emin!" She tugged his face over, purred over every picture until all he could do was trace a hand over her hair, pull her in for a kiss.
"We found your home, kvietka."
"Yes," she murmured, her eyes filling with tears. "And we'll go? Together? To find my mother?"
"Hold on, there," Dora said, knowing she was in for an uphill battle. "I'm not sure that's the best idea."
"What?" Glory asked, some of the light in her eyes automatically dimming.
Jeez, it was like kicking a puppy. Dora traced a hand through her short, glossy hair. "I'm just saying, this is where Navuka found you in the first place. Where they captured you, Glory. We have no idea what traps they might have set for you, or what kind of surveillance they might have set out."
"She's right," Emin realized. "It is too dangerous for you to go. I will go. Make sure it is safe for you."
"And then what? I'll follow after? No way. Never.” There was a light in Glory's eyes that neither Emin nor Dora had ever seen before. "I was captured by Navuka, yes. But I also escaped them, by myself. And they’ve never seen me in my human form. They would be looking for me as a tiger. So I'll stay in human form while we search." Glory twisted her hands in uncharacteristic anxiety. "And besides, you’ll never be able to find my mother without me. She’s an even better hider and fighter than I am. You’ll be dead before you can deliver your message."
Emin thought of how unsuccessful he'd been at tracking Glory in his own woods. And then he tried to imagine tracking an older, wiser tiger on her own home turf. It was a good point. They probably needed Glory.
"Okay. Just let me think for a second," Dora said, tracing a hand through her hair. "Look, I'm going, no matter what. I want to talk to this lady who gave me the tip in the first place, I want to look for more clues on Navuka. And I just want to go, period. So there's no shaking me loose. Which means there's no shaking Danil loose either."
"Package deal," Glory said, repeating a phrase that Dora had taught her a while ago.
"Bingo," Dora replied. "And I'm willing to bet that if Emin and Danil are going off into unknown territory, Navuka lurking in the shadows, then Maxim and Anton aren't going to be far behind."
"And don't forget AJ," Glory added. "It's never fair to leave out AJ."
"Yeah." Dora stood up, started pacing and clicking something into her phone. "We're gonna need a passenger van. Flying will be too conspicuous. Not to mention expensive. Okay, it's looking like a - yeep - twenty-hour drive. Okay."
"Wait," Emin said, needing to stop the ball that had begun rolling down the hill before he even had his bearings.
Both women ignored him.
"You get the supplies ready, because I won't have any idea about that. I've never really traveled in human form before. And it’ll be my job to tell everyone," Glory said. "How long until we have the van?"
"I just booked it," Dora replied, looking up from her phone and zipping up her bomber jacket. "Okay, we'll need camping equipment, food for a few days, and weapons. Yeah. Weapons. God, Danil is not gonna like this."
"Wait!" Emin said again. "This is crazy."
"Save your arguments for the group," Dora said, one hand on the doorknob. "Glorious, you get everybody together to meet at Mama and Papa's in two hours. We'll do the whole group vote thing then." And then she was gone, bounding down the stairs of the house.
Emin, speechless, stared after her. What the hell had just happened?
Glory was up, bustling with a purpose he'd never seen her use before. But then, the prospect of finding her mother had never been dangled in front of her like a big juicy carrot before either.
She whipped one of his sweatshirts over her head, was hopping into one shoe and then the other. "Dora will tell Danil, so I don't have to worry about that. I guess I’ll start with Maxim and circle back to AJ. Hopefully Anton is at Mama and Papa's-"
"Glory," Emin cut her off.
She turned to him instantly. She'd never heard his voice sound like that before. "There has to be another way. I will not let you go back there."
She stilled, her hands freezing on the laces she had been furiously tying. He rose, crossed the room to her and knelt before her.
"I do not say this to control. I say it because I have so much fear." The words strangled him and he laid a hand over his throat, his chest.
Her eyes softened, but he didn't even see them.
"Let me go. Let me go first and make it safe for you,” he pleaded with her.
She touched his face, felt herself swell and pulse and grow. "You would ask me to stay behind and suffer with the same fear that you feel now? Isn't it better that we both go? Together? Where we can protect one another if necessary. Fight for one another if we have to?”
He saw her logic, saw her words. And in that, saw that she would win. He knew that she would go. And he would go beside her. He just hadn't realized that he loved her. Not until this squeezing, petrified second. Because the thought of her going back to where Navuka had captured her, of potentially being captured again, that was as if his own heart was going to be taking those risks.
And because, for him, with her, to feel was to show, he took both of her hands in his. "You're my heart, kvietka. It walks around in your chest now. There's nothing in here anymore," he thumped his chest once for emphasis. "All my love is here," he laid a hand on her chest. "You're my heart."
He rocked back on his heels and stood to pace. "And they took you. They hurt you." A breath burst out of him, like fire from a dragon. "They hurt you. They cannot hurt you again."
He turned to her, scooping her up from where she sat, crushing her to his chest. "They cannot have you. They cannot have you again."
Glory knew, instinctively, that there was a time to soothe, to heal, and there was a time to let a storm rage its course. He wouldn't be calm until he let the fire inside of him burn clear out. And maybe because of how close they'd grown, or because she was just as scared as he was, she felt that twin fire burn in her chest.
She clung to him as he clung to her.
It was cruel, really, that they had to let go of one another to move closer. That he had to set her on the kitchen table to be able to tear off her clothes. She didn't want to unleash the hold she had on his neck to rip at his pants, but that was life. It made them both mad with frantic frustration. She ripped at his belt buckle while he slid off one of her shoes and then the other, yanked her pants down her legs. They stalled around her ankles but he didn't care anymore.
He mounted the table behind her, his t-shirt somehow torn, his pants around his knees, his cock huge and straining for her. Her shirt was pulled up enough to bare her breasts and he shoved it up even further as he flipped her around onto all fours. He did the most cursory of checks to make sure she was ready to take him, and she was, as always, dripping wet for his touch.
He didn't prolong anything before he thrust inside of her. They both cried out at the fit. The tight. The wet. The intensity of it.
He was wild for her and she took it. She knew they both needed this.
Emin thrust and thrust into her from behind, starting up an inhuman rhythm. Every beat sent Glory just a little bit further forward on the table. The table shook on its flimsy legs and they both cried out when the back two legs gave way under them, sending them crashing to the floor in a tumble of limbs.
Glory laughed and sprawled over Emin, but the tension wasn’t over for him.
“We broke the table!” Glory yelped, grinning. “Dora says one of the signs of good sex is that you break stuff while you’re doing it.”
He picked her up in his arms, her hair a fiery spill over her shoulder, her eyes so green they broke his heart.
He needed her in a way he’d
never needed anything else his entire life. More than sleep or air or water. He needed her in a way that tore at the very fabric of his soul. He twisted her so that her legs came around his waist, her pussy balanced just over the spear of his cock. She trembled, a smile still playing over her lips and tried to sink down on him, but he held her away.
The frantic realization of his love for her pumped through his veins still. Like adrenaline. But the actual love, there was nothing panicky about that. It was a deep, deep ocean inside him. So calm and constant, he’d been able to look past it these few weeks. But no more. He couldn’t ignore it.
He looked around at all the canvasses littered around his house, painting after painting he’d done since he met her. And he realized that part of him had never been able to hide it. She was there in every single brush stroke. He’d loved her with every breath he’d taken since he met her. And there was the evidence.
She tried to sink down on him again, but he held her still. He stood, his feet planted wide, in the middle of the wreckage of his kitchen table, with her wrapped around him like ivy. He felt as if he could lift her like this for the rest of their lives.
Resolution hardened inside him like water freezing in a pipe. He was going to burst his cage. And that was alright with him.
“Marry me,” he said, his voice low.
Glory’s face instantly sobered. She looked up at him, her eyes clear and calm.
“Yes,” she said immediately.
His mouth opened to say more. But he clapped it closed.
“Yes,” he repeated.
“Yes,” she said again.
He felt both cloudy and extremely clear at the same confusing moment. All he knew was her. He speared up into her and her back arched, her head falling back.
“Emin,” she moaned, a hypnotic smile on her face as she rode the wave of happiness and arousal that washed through her.
But he was still on the edge. Even her easy acquiescence hadn’t been enough to quell the racing in his chest.
“Now,” he growled, thrusting up into her as he banded her hips with his arm.
“What?” she asked, her eyes cloudy.
“Marry me now.”
She looked at him in confusion as he held her tight, and with his cock still impaling her, he moved quickly across his small cabin. He wrenched open the door of a closet and dragged a bath towel out. Ten came tumbling down with it but he didn’t care.
He held up the towel. It was a deep red with little autumn leaves printed on it, an old, tattered thing that he’d used for years. “Belarusian tradition, the woman drags towel to wedding. She ties around her wrist and then man’s. They are married together.”
Glory snatched the towel from him and instantly started tying it around her wrist. She scrabbled for Emin’s arm, but he couldn’t hold her up at the same time. He started to lower her to the ground but she stopped him.
“Outside,” she gasped. “I want to be married outside.”
So he stumbled across the cabin, burst onto the porch in the broad daylight. The forest closed in around them as the sun speared onto the small grassy front lawn. And that’s where he laid her, where she was supposed to be. The grass as green as her eyes as she frantically tied the towel to his wrist as well.
And then they were joined. Tied together. He looked down at her. And had to look away.
He lifted one of her legs over his shoulder and reared back, thrusting into her with the force his body begged him to use, inching her along the grass.
“Glory, god.” His eyes wrenched closed against her beauty. It was too much. He felt her arch and moan and scratch at him as he fucked her into the ground.
“Your hair is autumn,” he said, scrambling to put words to the thoughts that stampeded through his head. All he knew was that he needed her to know. “The same color as the leaves. God. That red. Your skin is so pale. So winter. It’s winter. And your spring eyes. Like a newborn. Spring. Starting over, reborn. I am reborn in your eyes,” he panted as he thrust into her. He could feel her body coiling up like a spring. “But your heart is summer. Your heart is summer. You are so warm. Hot and happy and bursting with sunshine. So joyful. So everything.”
He rolled with her, the towel yanking their arms as she rode him now. “You’re everything,” he told her over and over as he thrust into her from below.
The cool autumn sun kissed over them as she threw her head back, her free hand twisting into her hair.
“Yes,” Glory said, something flashing across her eyes. “I am your mate.”
She rose over him and fell again with a vicious stroke, nothing like the soft little pressing strokes she’d used when they had first started sleeping together. This was a woman seeking and taking.
Reaching down, she gripped Emin by the shoulders and pulled him up to sitting. She lowered her head and bit him fiercely on the neck. The pain of it rocketed through his body and he immediately twisted, grinding her back into the ground. Her nails scraped across his back and she gripped his hips, rolling them again.
Back on top, she twisted her hands in his hair and tugged. The gentle woman he’d known was gone. She was fierce and fighting and a warrior. It brought him rocketing toward the edge to see it. Her body was a taut, pale ribbon in the cool sunlight and she was marking him permanently. This was not a symbolic marriage ceremony. She was making it so that they could never go back.
She yanked at his hair again as she fell onto him, taking the lobe of his ear between her teeth.
Emin roared in pain and pleasure. He could feel the intensity of her feelings roar through him. Her feelings for him, her need to be tied to him, her fear and anxiety about her mother. Her arousal. He felt it all. The way a mate should.
So he rolled them yet again, on top as his back rounded and flattened with the force of his thrusts. He would make them into one pulsing, straining creature if it was the last thing he did.
She took his bottom lip in her sharp teeth and tugged. He tasted his own blood and looked down into her eyes. For one flashing second they glittered in the sun like a cat’s eye.
She shoved him back and came up off his cock. She flipped herself over, back onto her knees and he knew that she wanted it like an animal. Like two beasts in the wild. He was happy to oblige.
He thrust home from behind and gritted his teeth against the pleasure of it. She was so strong, so alive for him as he leaned forward, pressing his weight into her. She tumbled forward and buried her face in the crook of her own arm as she took everything from him.
Soon her hips gave way from his weight as well and she was flat on the ground as he took her, his weight grinding her into the grass.
Her body tightened, flew, shrank and expanded, burst into existence and infinity all at once. Every feeling sharpened and intensified by the love she felt for him. By the deep safety she felt at his hands. And she screamed his name. Screamed and came and came undone for him.
She felt him behind her. And she knew he was going through the same ordeal. She could feel his pleasure racing through her as if it were her own. His body caged her in. Protected her, held her, and mated with her.
Minutes passed before Emin could roll off of her. They panted into the cold air, their breath in delicate white fogs in front of their mouths. She shivered from the dew and from the ecstasy she’d just undergone.
“I love you,” she whispered in his ear.
“Forever,” he responded instantly. “I love you now and forever.”
They stood then, together, laughing at the dirt and grass stains covering their bodies. They both wanted to linger, shower and drink coffee, tangled and naked.
But Glory’s home called to both of them.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
By the time he and Glory were walking up to Mama and Papa's house, the shiny rental van in the driveway, a calm had stolen over Emin. He was at peace with his new reality. Glory was his world and he would die to keep her safe if he had to.
There was no locking her in a box and just
hoping she wouldn't claw her way out. She was too strong for that. Too smart. He knew that there was no way to keep her safe and healthy other than being alongside her. And stepping in between her and danger when the moment was right. And for that, he needed to be calm and ready.
Even so, the sight of his brothers and parents assembled on the front porch had his stomach flipping. All those arms crossed across their chests. Maxim scraped a hand over his stubble as he discussed strategy with Papa. Danil argued with Dora over who was driving and Anton stood, stony-faced, glaring down at AJ who was glaring right back.
And Katya. Katya just looked worried. She came down the porch stairs to take Glory's face in her hands.
"Oh, child," she said.
"We have to go, Katya," Glory said, her voice solid and older than Emin had ever heard it. "You know Emin won't let me go alone."
"And his brothers will not let him go alone," Katya replied, nodding. "All my children go. Into the wilderness. Where Navuka waits."
"We can't hide from them, Mama," Anton said, brushing past AJ and coming to wrap an arm around his mother. "They win if we hide. We can't let them capture and torture and split up our families." He reached out to Glory then, pressed a quick kiss on her forehead.
Glory's eyes filled.
Emin stepped forward and kissed his mother's hands. "I have two mothers now, Mama. You and Glory's mother. Because Glory is my whole heart. I love her until I die. Happily. With joy. I give her my family. She gives me hers."
Katya nodded again.
Maxim loaded a bag of supplies in the back of the van. "We're not going off to war. Let's get a move on." On closer inspection, he looked a little worse for wear. Some of his usual cheer was a little dimmed.
But before Emin could say anything about it, a man stepped out of the woods.
"AJ?" he called and Anton reflexively put himself between AJ and the man.
"Dad?" AJ stepped around Anton.
"What is this?" Brett Constance called to her. "You're going somewhere?"