Under His Wings

by Naima Simone

  Through her blurry gaze she noted Nicolai studying her, his expression caught between concern and anger. That sent her into another paroxysm of hilarity.

  “I’m sorry,” she wheezed, rubbing the heels of her palms over her eyes. Her breath hitched and she hiccupped. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “It’s just I wasn’t expecting that. There were a lot of ‘fuckers’ and ‘fucking’ in that sentence.” She giggled.

  The anger evaporated from his face, leaving a sheepish chagrin. And it was so endearing on his sharply hewn, patrician face, she reached up and traced the granite line of his jaw.

  “Sorry,” he said gruffly. “Most of my time is spent in the company of Lukas, Adon and Dorian. I’m not used to watching my mouth.”

  Her hilarity mellowed into a soft glow that set up base right in her heart. “No need to apologize.” She dropped her arm and reclaimed his hand. Whisking the pad of her thumb over his broad knuckles, she smiled. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “For?”

  “For wanting to defend me.” Her eyes met his and she didn’t duck her head or avoid his eagle-like scrutiny. “No one has done that for me since my mom died. It feels…nice.”

  “I would protect you with my life.” Truth rang in his solemn tone and she believed him. “You did the same for me, you know.”

  Tamar arched an eyebrow. “Protected you?”

  “Kept me.”

  She didn’t know how to respond to the bleak statement, but her heart wrenched for him. His austere, forbidding expression couldn’t completely hide the sorrow that darkened his eyes.

  “Tell me,” she said, leaving the invitation open and praying he would accept.

  The quiet stretched for long seconds. Nicolai stared down at their tangled fingers before shifting his gaze to the far wall. Tamar suspected he didn’t study the weathered wood or the gorgeous painting of an eagle in flight. What he saw went soul deep.

  “I hunt, fight and execute.” He stated the description of his job matter of factly and without apology. “By the time I begin to track, judgment has already been rendered. There is no discussion, no turning back. I am death—even if it means a former friend…or family.” His voice was no longer factual. Weariness had crept into his tone, weighed it down. “While my people are grateful for my existence, they’re uncomfortable with my presence. They realize as well as I do the day could arrive when I might have to judge their loved ones, maybe even them.”

  Tamar didn’t know how she’d missed it before—his loneliness. Since Nicolai had burst into her life, he’d appeared indestructible, like a comic book hero. That he experienced frailties such as loneliness and sorrow made him seem vulnerable…human.

  “It’s why I choose to live away from them, away from Patros. For their peace of mind as well as my own. It’s easier if I don’t have personal ties.”

  “It hurts you,” she whispered. “Each kill hurts you.”

  A brief hesitation, then a small nod. “Like a stain on my soul. Sometimes I wonder which execution will be the one that tips the scales and turns me into the hunted instead of the hunter.”

  Fear, acrid and sharp, flooded her mouth. No. A feral snarl leapt from the depths of her spirit. Someone as beautiful, as pure as him should not be destroyed. His head jerked around and he stared at her, his eyes shocked, rounded pools of purple so deep they appeared black.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed at her over-the-top reaction. Hell, they had officially met three days ago. Still the residue of terror and anger lingered within her chest. “You haven’t said anything that changes my mind. It’s not fair. And for the record, your people sound like a bunch of thankless ingrates.”

  A corner of his sensual mouth quirked before flattening into a grim line.

  “Choices, Tamar,” he reminded her. “I don’t regret my position or the weight of it. But don’t make me out to be a martyr. I made choices and one of those has left the blackest mark on my soul.”

  He disentangled his fingers from hers and returned them to his thighs. The loss of his touch left her bereft, alone. But she didn’t try to snatch his hand back. His frame had gone so rigid she feared one touch would snap him in two. A muscle pulsed along the taut ridge of his jaw. Nicolai didn’t desire her comfort.

  “I killed an innocent.”

  The bald statement blindsided her. He didn’t glance over to take in her reaction, but his fingers flexed over his black pants.

  “The Dimios cannot mate or have a family—it’s one of our laws. Imagine going into war and placing your loved ones in the front line of the cavalry to be slaughtered first. That’s what having a family would be for us. Easy targets for the enemy. So if we find our mate, we have the choice to abdicate. When I met Pria, that’s what I did. I didn’t regret the decision. Not that it mattered.”

  Bitterness, raw and ugly, dripped from his last sentence and Tamar braced herself for what she might hear next.

  “I should have known. I should have realized a simple title switch wouldn’t be enough. But I was selfish and pride blinded me. No harm would come to my family as long as I was there to protect them. Pria paid the price for my arrogance.”

  His voice took on that precise, clipped pitch again as if he were recounting someone else’s story from a text book and not his own personal history.

  “Months after I stepped down, another rogue went on a rampage. He cut such a bloody path through Eastern Europe my father had to contact the crones and pay them to create a mass hallucination that spelled people into believing a terrible plague had killed off nearly half their population. A Dimios hadn’t been selected to replace me yet so I volunteered to help Lukas hunt him. When Pria’s screams first reached me, I was in what is today’s Mongolia. I abandoned the hunt and flew back to Greece, but I was too late. Unknown to me or Lukas, the rogue had backtracked.”

  Tamar didn’t need to hear any more. She knew where this was headed.

  “Nicolai—”

  “He’d ripped her to pieces. Left what remained of her under the sun in the wheat fields near our home.” Steel entered his voice. “See, the last rogue I had executed had been his son. He’d left a message in blood—if he couldn’t get to me, he would destroy those I loved.”

  “Jesus.” His description of his wife’s death had been factual, but Tamar’s imagination filled in the blanks. Resa and her horrifying brutal murder at Evander’s hands flashed in her mind. If Pria’s death had been anything similar to Resa’s… She shivered. And Nicolai had been the one to find her? How did he bear it?

  “So you went back,” she said.

  “Yes. I resumed my role as Dimios.”

  “Did you find the one who did it?”

  The smile that curved his lips was cruel, blood-stained. “Yes.”

  That simple word summed it all up. That and the smile.

  “Good.” Brutal satisfaction filled her. His wife had been innocent, unable to fight back. Only a coward would have targeted her. “But why do you believe her blood is on your hands?”

  “I made the decision—”

  “Bullshit.”

  Yet again he stared at her as if she’d sprouted a second head. Which she found ironic considering he was the one who could shift into a half-eagle, half-horse beast. Ri-i-ight. She was the weird one.

  “What did you say?” he asked, deliberately enunciating each word.

  “Bull. Shit,” she reiterated just as carefully. “Pria knew what you were and what you did when she married you. Even though you’d resigned, she went into the relationship with her eyes open and accepted the risk just like you did. And neither of you are to blame for what happened. That’s squarely on the shoulders of the spineless piece of shit that preyed on a defenseless woman.”

  A heartbeat of silence passed.

  Then another.

  He continued to study her. And though it unnerved her, she refused to fidget under his unblinking inspection. Okay, so she could have stated her opinion with more tact. Damn. She was going to have
to apologize…

  “You do have a way with words,” he finally drawled. Amusement, not anger, colored his voice, softened the severe cut of his mouth. “Now it’s my turn to thank you.”

  Tamar ducked her head and scrubbed her palms over her thighs. Shyness was not in her genetic make-up and its appearance disconcerted the hell out of her.

  “Do you think…” she blurted.

  “Do I think what?” he pressed.

  After a moment where she called herself everything from needy to sappy, she forced the question out. “Do you think if I didn’t resemble Pria there would be this attraction between us?” She winced. “What I mean… Is your guilt the reason why you’re determined to protect me from Evander?”

  His touch, featherlight and tender, brushed her jaw, caressed the length of her throat before sweeping back up to trace her mouth. Her lashes fluttered then closed. She melted, dissolved into a puddle of butter right at his feet.

  “Open your eyes,” he said. Though wrapped in velvet, the order brooked no argument. When she obeyed, the fire had returned to his gaze and stoked the flames inside her higher. “I want you to see the truth in my eyes and never question this again.”

  She nodded, her lips parted on a soft pant.

  “Yes, you look like Pria.” His fingers drifted over the cleft in her chin, lingered on the dent that had been the butt of many jokes as a child. “But it wasn’t Pria I dreamed with these last six months. I didn’t see your face, Tamar. All I knew was your body, as familiar to me as my own now. I knew your arms that offered me comfort when I returned from fighting. I knew your body that beat back the loneliness and gave me pleasure and forgetfulness.”

  He smoothed a palm over her wild curls. But the fierce, hungry expression he wore made her feel as if her bane-of-my-existence hair were made of the finest spun gold.

  “In the past few days I’ve discovered you are brave, loyal, resourceful.” His mouth twisted and she thought of her botched escape attempt. “You are a warrior…beautiful and honorable. Lukas, Adon, Dorian and I…we’re protecting you because you are worthy and we can do nothing else.”

  Awe, pride and joy coalesced in her chest, gathered heat like a swirling supernova before exploding and cascading in a shower that rained throughout her body. Tears stung her eyes and she disobeyed Nicolai and squeezed them shut.

  Kyle hadn’t been the only abuser. She’d berated and belittled herself. Weak, ugly, scarred—those words had been the bat she’d used to beat her self-esteem. Kyle had screamed she would never find anyone who would want her. And she’d agreed with him. Who could possibly want her, a woman disfigured inside and out?

  She was afraid of the dark, refused to get on a plane, limped when tired and bore a road map of scars that covered half her body.

  He’d called her beautiful with a gentleness that made her sink her teeth into her bottom lip.

  Beautiful. Brave.

  A warrior.

  Her. A warrior.

  She lifted her lashes, met his hot gaze. In that stare she spied the truth he’d promised. And desire. Such desire her breath snagged in her throat.

  “Nicolai,” she whispered.

  “Nico,” he rasped, gripping a handful of her hair, still careful not to tug on her healing scalp. “You always call me Nico in our dreams. Say it for me here, now.”

  “Nico,” she murmured and turned her face into the palm that cradled her cheek. She placed a kiss there and delighted in the slight abrasion of the roughened skin over her lips.

  With a groan, he drew her head back and covered her mouth with his.

  Oh God. She shuddered. The wind-and-heather taste of him…the sensation of his firm, wide mouth crushed to hers…they were better than the dreams.

  He didn’t coax her into opening her lips—his wasn’t a hesitant first kiss. They’d been lovers for six months and he kissed her as a man who knew what his woman wanted, needed. His tongue thrust forward, capturing and claiming like the animal that lurked inside him. He swept the interior of her mouth, tangled with her tongue, inviting her to play.

  Accepting, she turned fully toward him, slid her hands up his shoulders, skipped to his cheeks and burrowed her fingers through his thick, golden curls. Silky and bright, they were the only soft thing about this warrior. The strands tickled her wrists, adding another sensory experience to the moment.

  Their tongues danced, dueled, mated. Desire and its ruthless twin, lust, flowed and surged through her blood stream. More… She moaned, licking the roof of his mouth. I need more. I’m burning up.

  A growl met her demand, the rumble pouring directly into her. Had she voiced the words aloud?

  But then his broad hands cupped her breasts through her top and she didn’t give a damn if she’d verbalized the request or texted it.

  He molded her flesh, squeezed it even as he continued to kiss her senseless. Before she’d considered her breasts average—not too small, but nothing to make a man fall down and worship at her feet. Yet as Nicolai lifted his head and stared down at her chest with lust stamped on his features, she believed herself perfect. His eyes blazed, his skin pulled taut over his cheekbones and his sensual lips were swollen and damp. No one could fake that hunger. He wanted her and the thought ratcheted her desire up another searing decimal.

  She arched into his touch, needing more pressure. As if he’d read her mind again, he cupped her breasts and whisked his thumbs over the nipples until she cried out.

  “Take it off,” she said. “Please.” She didn’t have to explain what she meant. Which was good because she didn’t have the words or the breath. Nicolai released her, grasped the bottom of her shirt and dragged it up her torso and over her head.

  Before she had time to lower her arms, he dipped his head and closed his lips over her nipple. Tamar cried out, fingers digging into his scalp, back bowing to pleasure so acute it bordered on the icy edge of pain.

  Not that he granted her any mercy.

  His tongue lashed and stabbed at the tip before suckling so hard and deep his cheeks hollowed. With each draw on her flesh a pulse of moisture escaped her sex and coated her folds, her inner thighs.

  She whispered incoherent things to him, pleading, praising…maybe demanding. Pleasure had transformed her into a babbling mess.

  Nicolai switched from one breast to the other, treating the second nipple to the same attention. His tongue swirled around the tautened peak, tugging on it, lapping like a huge feline before consuming it within the hot cavern of his mouth.

  “More?”

  “Yes,” she cried out.

  He deserted her breasts, lowered her to the blanket and trailed brief open-mouthed kisses down her belly. She shivered, moaning when his knuckles brushed over her skin as he drew her pants down her legs. It occurred to her that his sexy whisper had come from inside her head. His voice had stroked the walls of her mind. How had…

  “No!” she screamed. And splintered.

  Just one lick of his tongue and she came in a hard, brutal crack of ecstasy.

  “Fuck, that was sexy,” he snarled and curled his tongue around her clit, sucking the pulsing nub. Shattered by that abrupt cataclysm, Tamar wearily shoved at his head and shoulders. She needed a moment to recover. But Nicolai circled her wrists, gently but firmly pressed them prisoner to the floor beside her hips and nuzzled her clit. She shivered.

  “Again,” he murmured. “Slower.”

  She’d barely survived fast. Slow would kill her.

  He chuckled, low, husky and full of erotic promise. Had she said that aloud too? Damn, the mind-blowing orgasm must’ve loosened her lips. With sure, swift hands he swept her pants farther down her thighs and completely off.

  The first languorous stroke let her know she was in for a long, torturous ride. Her hips jerked as she tried to avoid the almost painful pleasure of his caress over flesh still sensitive from orgasm. In response, Nicolai wedged himself tighter between her thighs, his shoulders spreading her wide so her sex was exposed, open and vu
lnerable to his eyes and touch.

  “Easy,” he said softly and released one of her wrists to pet her sex, to soothe her. Her heart contracted then melted even as her body raged. She appreciated the sentiment but nothing could calm the fire consuming her from the inside out.

  “So beautiful,” he murmured and dipped his head. His fingers returned to her arm as the flat of his tongue separated her nether lips, tasting the liquid heat that flowed out of her—damn it—pussy. He groaned, the hum another luxurious sensation on top of many others. Her stomach clenched, went concave as he returned for a second pass. “Such sweet cream.”

  One second he was lazy, unhurried, as if he had nowhere to go, no orgasm to give. But in the next, he devoured her. Palming her ass, Nicolai hauled her hips in the air, bent to her pussy and ate her like a starving man at a $1.99 all-you-can-eat buffet.

  Lips, tongue, teeth—all came into play as he sucked her clit, licked her swollen lips and fucked her, thrusting deep with his tongue and fingers.

  Hands freed from his grasp, she gripped his hair, clutching him to her in case he had any bright ideas about leaving. Not that he seemed discontent between her thighs, driving her toward a release that would make the previous one feel like a ripple on the surface of a summer pond.

  Or a firecracker in the face of an atom bomb.

  On a snarl that would later shock and embarrass the hell out of her, she undulated her hips, circling and grinding, riding his mouth as she chased the orgasm that crackled just out of reach.

  Two long fingers plunged in and out of her quivering pussy while his oh-so-bad tongue stabbed and flicked her clit.

  “Nico,” she gasped. Shuddered. Cried out. Her back tightened and lightening sizzled up her spine, raced back down and imploded.

  When she returned to earth moments—eons—later, it amazed her she remained in one piece. She stared up at him, too dazed to move or speak. Pleasure buzzed through her, a hive of drunken bees.

  Quickly he leaned back, shoved the black pants down his hips and thighs. Rising to the balls of his feet, he pushed the soft material farther down and kicked it away, his usually sinuous, graceful movements jerky and hurried. He crawled over her on his hands and knees. The flames from the fireplace leapt in his violet eyes, emphasizing the fierce snarl on his lips, the harsh jut of his cheekbones. His body, honed by hundreds of years of battle, strained above her and the perfect marble-like column of his cock jutted out from between his rock-hard thighs.