Mamna knew two things. He did not make idle threats.
And the last time she’d seen him this angry, he had set a mountain on fire.
…
“You baby him too much.”
With bare feet propped against the wall, Hunter sat at the table, his long, sun-streaked hair, still damp from a shower, grazing his shoulders. As she moved about the small cabin, restlessly tidying, his eyes followed her.
Airie did not know what to make of his scrutiny. Her presence bothered him, more so than usual, and the knowledge left her feeling awkward and too aware of his presence. She knew he disliked her for what he believed her to be, but the look in his eyes this evening was more complex than usual.
It was as if he wanted something he could not—or should not—have.
He had also been staring at Scratch most of the evening, but his face when he did so was easier for her to read. He worried that she would not be able to look after a little boy on her own.
So far, she had proven him right. It did not help that Scratch was not a normal child. As much as she did not want to see it, she knew he was not.
But normal or not, he was still a child.
“He is a baby,” she pointed out. She tucked the blankets around Scratch as he lay on the small cot and stroked a gentle knuckle along his cheek. The steady light from the oil lamp on the table gave his skin a soft, golden glow. In sleep, he looked so innocent. Her heart constricted with residual panic at the thought that she might have lost him. Hunter was right to worry about her ability to care for him. “I would never have imagined a little boy could disappear so quickly. I’ll have to find work that allows me to keep him close, at least for the next few years.”
Hunter’s feet hit the floorboards. “You should think about finding a family for him. There’s always some homesteader in the north needing a boy to help out with manual labor.”
In her head Airie knew he was right, but her heart told her differently. She could not give Scratch up now. They were both alone in the world. They were both different, and they needed each other. She’d already fallen in love with him. How could she abandon someone she loved and who needed her?
She did not respond to Hunter’s words or look at him. She did not want to talk about this, or her concerns. Instead she said, “We should give him a proper name. We can’t call him Scratch forever.”
“Airie.” He sounded tired, resigned, but not unsympathetic. “Let someone else give him a name. You saved his life. Now give him a chance to have one worth living. Give yourself one, too. It won’t be easy to look after a little boy while trying to start out. It won’t be easy for him either. Not if you baby him all the time.”
It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “Caring for him isn’t babying him.”
Hunter’s lips curved into one of those brief smiles. It transformed his face, making him seem less intense. The odd, troubled expression he’d worn all evening disappeared.
“I had seven older sisters. Believe me, I know babying when I see it.”
“Seven?” This was the first real bit of personal information he had shared with her, and Airie seized it, her annoyance with him vanishing in an instant. This explained why he was good at braiding hair. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like, growing up with so many sisters. You’re very lucky. Where are they now? Do you see them often?”
“I haven’t seen them in years.” He ran his fingertips over the table’s surface as if polishing the worn wood with them. Airie held her breath, hoping he would reveal more. “One of them is dead. I don’t know about the others.” He looked up at her, catching her off guard with his next words. “Who were you speaking with when I rode into the canyon this afternoon?”
Understanding, followed by sympathy, overcame surprise. He was trying to distract her because he did not want to talk about his sisters anymore, especially the one who had died. His face when he’d mentioned her said it all.
Airie thought it best if she didn’t know for certain what had happened to that particular sister. The possibilities were too ugly and might explain why he had taken such an immediate and intense dislike to her.
Aside, of course, from the fact that he insisted she had tried to rob him.
She debated the value of honesty in her response to his question. It might make him think more kindly of her to know that a goddess had spoken to her without horror or fear. The goddess had told her she would have to earn the respect of the immortals, so making an effort to earn Hunter’s respect as well would do her no harm. He had been good to her when she’d thought Scratch was missing. It was possible they might even become friends.
Her cheeks warmed. She remembered the way she had thrown herself into his arms. Her temper was not the only thing her mother often said she needed to learn to control. She had always been too impulsive.
But he had not pushed her away. Perhaps that explained the strange way he watched her this evening. He worried she expected too much from him.
The possibility that she might disconcerted her.
“I wanted to show Scratch that rain is nothing to fear,” she said. “My mother taught me it means the goddesses are thinking of us—that it is their offering to us, because it brings life. When it started to rain I called out to them, hoping they might hear me, and when I did, a goddess responded.”
“I see.”
The quiet, thoughtful statement reminded her of the few times she’d been questioned by her mother with regard to her activities when collecting alms—as if he wanted to believe her and was going to pretend that he did, although they both knew better.
Wind pattered against the walls and Scratch sighed in his sleep.
“I’m telling the truth.”
“I know you believe you are,” Hunter replied. “But what you saw was an illusion. The goddesses are gone.”
He had once called her a spawn. Now he called her a liar, and worse, he thought her naive. That hurt almost as much. “This was no illusion.”
“This is the second one to approach you. Demons are shapeshifters, Airie. They can take on mortal form. It is one more way they prey on women—by appearing to you in a form that makes you susceptible to deceit.” He got to his feet and the room grew very small. “Promise me the next time one of these goddesses appears to you, you’ll call for me.” He moved closer, his eyes penetrating in the lamplight. “Promise me you won’t talk to them without my permission.”
The audacity of the request burned within her. She did not need his permission to speak. “How could I make such a promise? How could you expect me to?”
He looked at her as if choosing his words. “I came across the remains of a small wagon train today. One or more demons attacked it. There were no survivors.”
Pain sliced through her. This explained why he’d been so out of sorts and distracted all evening. She was half demon and therefore served as an unpleasant reminder to him.
She did not feel half demon. She felt one hundred percent Airie. “Do you blame me for what happened?”
He stared at the sleeping child for a long time before looking at her. When he did, he was blunt.
“No. But others would have. Try to understand why I don’t want anyone to find out what you are, Airie. People in Freetown won’t welcome you. Not if they know.” She could tell it pained him to say it, but that he felt it was for her own good to hear. “And now that a demon has seen you, you aren’t safe from them either. I could take you up north. You’d be well out of demon territory there.”
“You think those people in the wagon train were killed by the demon I allowed to escape,” she guessed, and saw by the way his eyes flickered from hers that he did. The possibility that she was to blame for those deaths sickened her. She’d wanted to help Hunter. She had given no thought as to what her revulsion for killing anything might mean to others. Her fingers curled in the front of her dress, creasing the fabric. “You must hate me.”
“No. What happened to them had nothing to do with you. They
were killed by ignorance, greed, and stupidity.” He sighed, then spoke to himself, his frustration evident. “You are nothing like what I expected.”
“What did you expect?” she demanded. He had never told her why he had been on the mountain, and she was uncertain whether she wanted to know. She wished she could take back the question. There had been enough honesty between them for one night.
He reached for her hand. His touch was not unwelcome so much as bewildering. She did not know how to interpret the small gesture. The slight squeeze of his fingers on hers brought back the awkwardness she’d experienced all evening as he pretended not to watch her.
“I expected a thief.” He picked up the lantern with his other hand. “Come outside so we can talk without waking the boy.”
He drew her with him, and hanging the lantern from a hook on one of the verandah’s pillars, created a warm cocoon of light that enshrouded them between the thick layers of night shadows. He sat on the top step and she sat down beside him, smoothing her skirt neatly beneath her.
He continued to hold her hand, brushing the backs of her fingers with his thumb as if distracted by the feel of her skin. She wondered if she should withdraw her palm from his but decided against it, liking the sensations he created.
“I’m not a thief,” she reminded him, breaking the silence between them.
“While you may not think so, there are others who would disagree. They live in Freetown.” He laced his fingers through hers before resting their joined hands against his thigh, pulling her closer to him so that their shoulders touched. He seemed unbothered by the intimacy so Airie relaxed, ever so slightly, against him.
“How can people living in a town with priestesses have forgotten the goddesses and the alms that are theirs?” she asked him. Her mother would not have allowed people to forget. “Anyone who enters the mountain is expected to leave offerings.”
“They aren’t called offerings if you take them by force,” Hunter observed, his tone dry. “They’re called loot.”
She refused to admit his point was valid. “They could also be called the price of a lesson learned.”
He shrugged. “Fair enough. Let’s call them that. But if you go ahead with your plan to settle in Freetown, you will find there are a few lessons for you to learn as well. And I doubt if you’ll like their price.”
“I don’t understand.” She tried to put more distance between them, but he slung one arm around her shoulders so she had to tilt her head to the side to avoid pressing her cheek into his chin.
“Do you know what sort of life women lead in Freetown?” he asked. His voice took on a quality difficult for her to define. “Did your mother teach you nothing of men?”
“I would think I’ve proved to you that I can defend myself.”
She felt the rumble of a laugh build from deep in his chest. “In some ways I’m sure you can. In others, I’m not as positive.”
His arm slid from her shoulders to encircle her waist, and he bent his head. He meant to kiss her. Her palms came to rest on the thick cotton front of his shirt, although she didn’t push him away.
His lips found hers.
She remained motionless beneath the gentle caresses that rained lightly at first, and demanded nothing from her. The heel of his hand began to move in slow circles, rubbing the small of her back, but again, demanding nothing.
The scent of freshly laundered clothing that had been dried in the desert sun lingered around him. She breathed deeply, remembering how kind he had been to her that day, and she closed her eyes. The tip of his tongue brushed her mouth, and her lips parted slightly. She tilted her head back, relaxing against the strength of his arm as he cradled her. His other hand found her hip. Kisses, not so light now, trailed along her jaw before dipping lower. She sighed, the roughness of his unshaven cheek teasing the delicate skin of her throat, sparking a sense of restlessness in her that she did not know how to resolve. She wanted to touch him too, to kiss him in return, but she also wanted to stay just as she was. She liked what he did to her.
He lifted her onto his knees. “Put your arms around me,” he said. “The way you did this afternoon.”
She opened her eyes. It took her a few moments to understand what he referred to. At the time she had been so afraid for Scratch she hadn’t thought about what she was doing. She’d merely reacted with profound relief to Hunter’s arrival.
But she remembered the way she had felt at the time. All her worries had dissolved. She had trusted him to find Scratch, and he had. He had made her feel cared for and protected.
“I never thanked you,” she said, dismayed.
Again, a slow rumble of laughter that never quite escaped shook through him. He found her amusing. “You can thank me now.”
His eyes challenged her. Airie had a sudden awareness that an imbalance existed between them, and that she was obligated to him in some way. She had never gotten the impression that he wanted her to be obligated to him before. He had refused her thanks several times. Until now, he’d seemed to want to be left alone. She did not know what had changed in him, but something had.
She nestled sideways between his thighs and slid her arms around his neck, pressing her face into his collar. With great daring, she touched her lips to the skin at the base of his throat and felt tightly tensed muscles flinch beneath the light caress in response. It indicated to her that she wasn’t completely at his mercy.
Emboldened, she tasted him with the tip of her tongue. His rumble of laughter became a low purr of surprise.
“Thank you,” she said, tipping her chin to look at him.
The wick in the lantern sputtered above their heads, sending its smoking flame dancing. He sifted his fingers through her hair, then held her head in his fingertips.
“That was nice enough,” he admitted. His eyes smoldered with heat. “But I’m sure you can do better.”
His lips again found hers, although this time, they weren’t as gentle and demanded more. One of his hands cupped her head. The other traced its way down the side of her breast. She gasped as his touch lingered, lifting its weight in his palm. Her restless tongue met his.
In the back of her mind, a cautious voice warned that this was how a demon had played with her. Another, more adventurous one urged her to enjoy the sensations that the touch and the taste of him aroused in her.
She returned his kiss, clumsily at first and then with more passion. Her hands grew impatient, and she fumbled with the buttons on the front of his shirt until she was able to ease them inside. She traced raised welts crisscrossing his ribs with her thumbs, and she frowned.
“Demons,” he said in response to her touch, as if that one-word explanation should be enough.
It was not.
“Why do you do this to yourself?” she asked, her palms resting flat on his bare skin. “You can’t rid the world of them single-handedly. They are too many, while you are one man. Who is to say that, sooner or later, they won’t come for you?”
Sighing, he raised his head and looked up at the night sky, but he didn’t release her. Instead, he trapped her hands with his elbows so she couldn’t withdraw them from his shirtfront.
“They don’t belong to this world,” he said, “and I will do what I can to drive them back to wherever they came from. They won’t come for me because they would have to cooperate in order to do so, and they have no more love for one another than they do for mortal men. They think only of pleasure.”
Was that why she enjoyed Hunter’s touch? Was it the demon in her, seeking pleasure?
He straightened her clothing. She had not noticed he’d begun to undress her.
“The goddess told me I would have to make this world mine,” she said. “Do you think that means I don’t belong here any more than demons do?”
He took so long to reply that hurt wrenched her heart. “Your mother had a lot of faith in you. She worked hard to prepare you for life on this world. I would have to say the real question is where do you belong?” He ea
sed her from between his thighs and onto the step beside him and buttoned his shirt. “You know nothing of men, Airie.” He shot her a soft, rueful smile. “Although a few more minutes of this and you’d have learned far more than I’d intended.” His smile faded. He lifted a handful of her hair and touched it to his lips before letting it slide through his fingers. “Freetown is not the place for you. Let me take you north.”
Her mother might have had faith in her, but it seemed Hunter did not. She felt betrayed, which was foolish. A few light kisses held little meaning. He was correct. She knew nothing of men.
Not this one, at least.
“My mother is buried on the mountain,” she replied, quiet but firm. “If I go anywhere I’ll go back to be near her, but not until I have at least tried to make a place for myself in Freetown. She did not raise me to choose a path because of its ease.”
He started to argue. His mouth opened, then closed, whatever he’d been about to say forgotten as he stared over her shoulder at something in the distance.
Airie turned to see what had caught his attention. An orange glow lit up the night.
The sky over Freetown was on fire.
Chapter Eleven
A small group of northerners had made it through the desert to Freetown unmolested by demons, and they wanted to celebrate in Blade’s saloon.
Blade eyed them from his position behind the bar. Godseekers. Six of them, all drunk. Only one of them was an assassin, and he made up the seventh in their party. He did not associate with the others. He sat off to one side, drinking little, absorbing as much from his surroundings as he could. He wore his sandy blond hair overly long so that it hung in his eyes.
No one else would have known him for a Godseeker assassin. Blade, however, had spotted the weapon he wore tucked into the collar of his shirt when he’d bent over to adjust a knife in his boot. That inability to conceal small details meant he was not experienced.
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