by Black, Paula
‘One would scarcely believe this male and your husband were born of the same mother.’
The revelation seized Connal’s attention, sure as if the redhead had punched him in the gut. The spike of his heartbeat was a living thing in his throat as he fought to maintain his composure.
‘It’s not so unusual for littermates sired by different fathers. Think of Brandr and Rún. One could not imagine two more different males.’
‘True, sister. It was no secret the King and his lady shared their bed with his félag, Vise. MacTire clearly favours that warrior’s fair features.’
‘Exactly so.’ The blonde, Aoife, circled Connal’s shackled form, devouring every inch of his chiseled body with openly predatorial eyes. ‘While this one’s dark looks favour the King.’
The King. The warlord who ripped him from his home, claimed him as his blood, then collared him and left him for dead in the dog pits. Connal waited for the rage to boil up inside of him, but nothing came. Only numbness. It had been years since that male’s shadow darkened the arena’s stands.
Connal had no father.
‘Fortune favours you, Aoife, you lucky bitch. This one rivals your mate with his handsome brutality. Who would not want to be the juicy meat in that spitroast?’
‘Indeed, such a roast would be stuffed beyond capacity and duly tender.’ Aoife spoke dreamily, exhaling the words on a sigh. ‘But sadly, MacTire denies me the pleasures of his half twin in our bed. He refuses even to acknowledge the male as his Fostbrodir.’
‘And yet he bears the brand of félag?’ Confused, the woman, Cáit, reached up, and when the pads of her fingertips traced the brand of the wolf in the skin of Connal’s chest, the muscles flinched, recalling the agony of the white-hot iron and the blond male with eyes dark as midnight levelled upon him as the metal seared his flesh.
‘Yes. MacTire had him marked, purely for show, to satisfy the King, and the loose tongues in the longphort. Elatha forbid he be branded a coward.’
‘So he keeps his own Fostbrodir hidden down here like a dirty family secret, with none of the privileges of rank?’
Aoife released a frustrated sigh. ‘MacTire says that by denying me, he is protecting me from a savage animal, that such a beast cannot live free, let alone lay with nobility.’
Her fingers marked a path across his flesh, flushed gold over a strain of muscle that twitched as she passed over it, letting her hands explore the predator bulk of power chained up in the body of a slave. And though the scrutiny was enforced, this female's touch was so very soft, and his starved body responded, true to his animal nature.
‘I say MacTire is jealous. Who is to say, if the two had stood in Contest, it would not have been this glorious brute that claimed me?’
Her warm fingers wrapped around his substantial girth and a low growl escaped from deep in his throat. His body hardened in her grip. She made a sound, somewhere between a coy laugh and a whimper, dilated eyes lifting from where they were fixated, between his legs, to find his averted gaze. ‘And then I might have them both in my bed.’
‘You would take such a risk? Look at his eyes, sister ... steel, silver lightning over calm waters. So very terribly cold.’
‘They say the King’s plan worked too well, that in trying to save his son, he created a monster.’ Aoife spoke the words, breathless, against the stubble of his jaw, as though challenging him to deny his own nature.
His pale irises remained impassive, locked-down windows on the tempest of emotions warring inside of him, though her beauty hurt to look upon it. Seen only ever from a distance, from the filth and stench of the arena's sands, up close she was too much, too radiant. She smelled of the ocean, of freedom. Rigid as iron, Connal felt his muscles twitch, rippling beneath his skin with the force of his restraint. The curl of her fist, grasping the hard length of his shaft, ripped the breath from his lungs, primal instincts roaring to life, riding his body with a violence that rivaled the heat of battle, kicking hard in her grip, the growl that escaped his own throat was a foreign sound, more animal than man.
‘You truly believe him to be wild?’ Cáit’s hand strayed to the flush blooming at her throat, lips parted, unable to tear her eyes from the sight of her sister’s boldness in reining the beast by his manhood.
‘I believe there is no male that cannot be tamed betwixt the thighs of a powerful female. MacTire may deny the sharing of his bed. That is not to say I cannot take this male into my own. Let us see if I cannot melt the ice.’ Her fingers possessed the girth of his rigid shaft in a fist of twisting authority, working along the inches displayed before her in a proud column of thick hot flesh.
‘Guard!’ With the snap of her fingers, the ugly brute leapt to attention. ‘Have him bathed and brought to my private quarters.’
Cáit gasped, a hand shooting up to cover her mouth. ‘What will MacTire say?’
‘MacTire will never know.’
How sleep claimed her, she’d never know. It came as a pattern of sweeping caresses. A lullaby drawn in the raw, primeval scent of it, the heady musk and richness of its fur so familiar. It was him. Not blood and death ... only Connal.
‘Oh Connal ...’ Her head fell forward, throat constricting around a twisted knot of tears, face buried in the downy fur behind his ears, just breathing in the scent she knew, casting off the aroma of blood that tried to cling to everything and revelling in him. Finding the man inside and clutching him tight. ‘Please don’t die ...’ The darkness took her like that, head pillowed on the nape of a monster, heart synchronised to the drum of its life, trusting her nightmare would not kill her and pleading to anyone that would listen that she got her stalker back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Connal had no idea how long he had lain awake, cheek mashed into the rough concrete, staring off into the middle distance of his apartment through the bars of the cage. There was no sense of time passing in this windowless cellar, no dawn to follow the darkest hour. Time was measured only in splinted breaths as he strove to minimise movement. There was no cell in his body that was not battered and abused. He felt a thousand years old. The slightest movement triggered symphonies of pain. The bony prominences of his shoulder, hip and knee were ground raw against the unyieldingly cold surface and the chill in his body ran marrow-deep, a combination of profound blood loss and his near nakedness, that had him fighting the chatter of teeth and the shiver of flesh beneath the thin covering of the towel draped across his hips. But it wasn’t the hurt or the cold that kept him paralysed on the floor of that cage. Fact was, Connal was afraid, terrified that if he moved so much as a muscle, he would wake her. And then it would be over. He would trade an eternity of discomfort, if only they could stay, spellbound, like this, just a few moments longer.
Time, it seemed, was not the only thing that stood still in this subterranean bunker. Reality had also been suspended, for he woke from vivid dreams, his ravaged body aching and aroused, to find himself blanketed in the familiarity of her scent. Like a living, breathing backpack, she was fused along the curved length of his spine. Her arms were locked around his neck as though clinging to him for support. Her face was buried in the stubbled hollow of his throat, glossy raven hair spilling over his exposed shoulder.
Maybe it was the fact he felt like he’d gone fifteen rounds with the Juggernaut love child of Godzilla and the Hulk. His body hadn’t taken such a beating in, well, ever, but it felt like the physical wounds had somehow poked at the cracks in the foundations of something altogether more than skin deep. He felt exposed, a vulnerability that had nothing to do with his nakedness or the fact that he’d woken with a massive hard-on and a head full of poisonous memories. Aoife. There was a can of worms. He stifled a groan. He needed to get drunk and fuck. Screw the lid back down on the jar of crap, stuff the spill of emotional excrement back into the cupboard and slam those doors good and shut. But something told him a bottle of the hard stuff and a knee-trembler down the back of some alley weren’t going to cut it. Some marks on your slat
e were drawn in indelible ink. All you could do was paint on layer after layer and hope to hell the whitewash didn’t just peel right off.
Ash. Somehow, she had found him down here, suffering. She knew what he was, yet she stayed. Yeah, she knows what you are, mate. But who you are, what you’re really capable of? Would she still be holding onto you if she knew everything? A wash of some raw emotion he could not name rose up in him and wrung itself into a tight clench in his chest. What had it cost her in courage, to confront her own terror, in order to help him? She had covered him, cleaned the blood off his skin, held him. Yes, and you are a selfish son of a bitch for letting her stay there. The knot behind his sternum tightened and caught in his throat. Her selflessness touched on the raw nerve of his own dogged self-reliance. He couldn't remember ever having being held like this. Unless that one curled grip of tiny fingers around his thumb counted.
Memories shot like muzzle flash, freeze frames of events even his dreams didn’t have the balls to re-visit in real time. Crusted, swollen lids squeezed shut on the shimmer that watered his vision, as though he could blink the emotion away, swallow it back down. It counted, but that didn’t mean the outcome of that one, brief contact had been any better than it was going to be with Ash. The sentence he served was a solitary one, and he was a grade A asshole to even consider dragging her into that cell with him.
A stirring at his back, a subtle change in the pattern of her breathing alerted him to the fact his timer had finally run down. Cracked lips parted and he croaked out the words he was loath to speak on a resigned exhale.
‘You’re awake.’ He waited, an eternity of dread-laden silence, for her whispered reply.
‘You're one of them.’
The accusation he’d been waiting for hung in the air, like a gallows. For reasons too raw to explore, he didn’t want Ash to see him like this, broken and bleeding on the floor, sliced open with all his dirty secrets exposed. ‘Yes.’
Neither of them moved. He was aware of her breath on his skin, could feel the flutter of her heartbeat between his shoulder blades, but his eyes never left their blurry focus point outside in the room, and her hands stayed firmly latched around the corded circle of his neck. If she let go, he would fall.
‘You didn't tell me.’
God. Her voice sounded so quiet, soft with resignation. He cared what she thought of him. She’d put her faith in him, at the club, to get her out of there. That trust had been there in her eyes when he held her on the dance floor. How would she look at him now, knowing he was the physical embodiment of her nightmares? There wasn’t a soul walking this earth who knew what he was and did not fear him. He wasn’t sure he could bear looking into her eyes to see that same fear staring back at him. The confession cracked from his lips in a broken whisper. ‘I didn't know how.’
Laughter then and it tore a little at him in its drowsy melody. ‘It’s quite easy. The words ‘Ash, I'm a giant wolf beast’ aren’t all that hard to say.’ She couldn’t decide if she was angry or hurt that he hadn’t let her in on the massive elephant she hadn’t known was in the room. Settling on both came hard as she shifted a little from the mattress of his spine. Fear should have taken precedence but she’d run through the entire spectrum of human emotion and was feeling pleasantly numb from her emotional exhaustion. She couldn’t stir up any fear.
Silence.
She was laughing at him. That was really, really bad. Dread dropped though his gut like an elevator. Mockery masking either contempt or fear, probably both. He wanted her to hold onto him so fucking badly, but when he opened his mouth, it was as though the barriers of his own defensiveness came slamming down between them.
‘Why are you still here Ash?’ He shifted, twisting his torso, breaking the lifeline before she had the chance to cast him adrift. Less painful that way. Still hurt like a mother. His body bloomed in sympathetic bursts of excruciating pain.
Her mouth took a few seconds to get out of its dropped-jaw shock and answer, brows raised in confused incredulity as she pushed up from her sudden sprawl on the concrete. Nah, he hadn’t really just turfed her off him. Right?
‘I got locked in.’ Short, sharp, she was still recovering from the cheek of him. No thanks, no nothing. Men!
‘Shit.’ Had he actually deluded himself into thinking she was caged up in here with a lethal, wounded animal of her own volition? ‘I’m sorry. You can go. You shouldn’t be here. I’ll give you the code for the door.’ Pathetic. He couldn’t even make it sound convincing in his own head. He was offering her an out. He owed her that, but there was a fist in his chest waiting to crush as soon as she snatched what he offered and ran. Don’t go.
‘You’ll give me the ...’ Ash scoffed and shock layered her every breath. From cute and injured and asleep into awake and douchebaggy. Was he actually asking her to leave?!! ‘I don’t want it. You can let me out yourself.’ A little smug, she dared him to move, to cross the stretching expanse of cellar and open the door. Fat chance. Like that was going to happen, it looked like breathing still hurt him. Ash watched him warily, waiting for another nudge to come. He wanted her to leave.
Of course. She was afraid to leave. Given the choice between the demons howling at her door, or the beat to shit wolf who could hardly draw breath without flinching, he was looking like the lesser evil. His ragged exhale spoke of defeat. ‘I can’t protect you.’
‘Protect me? You kinda needed me last night ...’
Shame burned in his throat and his eyes dropped to the pile of blood-stained towels in the corner. Her pity would be a blow too far. ‘I’m grateful for everything you did for me, Ash, but you shouldn’t have stayed. I could have seriously hurt you.’
‘But you didn’t.’ Her fingers curled around his bicep, squeezing her conviction into his skin as she watched the strongest man she knew crumple under the weight of his injuries, under the burden of what he was. ‘You’ve got a load of razor claws and teeth and not one touched me.’
He didn’t speak but the rasping rattle of his breathing hitched slightly, and she removed her fingers from his skin, teeth worrying her lower lip. It was a retreat, separating herself from him as he withdrew from her.
All words disappeared with that recession, folding into themselves and reforming into a silence so thick it smothered.
When not another breath could be sacrificed to the weighty tension, she broke it, gently, softly, coaxing the words into the air between them on a plaintive whisper. ‘I thought you were going to die, Connal.’
He dropped his forehead into his hands then, replaying the scene from her perspective, realising for the first time how bad it must have seemed. What was pain and dishonour to him, had been life or death to her. Callused fingers grazed her cheek, coaxing the dark-lashed sapphire of her eyes to meet the steely reassurance of his own. ‘My kind don’t die, Ash. I mean, we’re not immortal, but it takes more than flesh wounds to take us out.’
‘You lost so much blood.’ Even now, Ash could see it as it had been, pouring out too fast for her to stop it, congealing in swimming-pool puddles where his beast had been. She’d only ever seen so much blood one other time.
Her cheek took on a ghostly pallor beneath the pads of his fingers and he found himself wanting to comfort her. The corners of his mouth tugged into a crooked smile. ‘I’m weak, but I heal fast. I just need to feed.’
The way he said it ... Ash’s eyes narrowed and her brows took a trip so low they could have doubled as a moustache, her hands wheeled in front of her, drawing his gaze to follow the panicky movements.
‘Woah woah woah, no, Dude, I like you but don’t look at me like I’m breakfast. I am nobody’s snack pot.’
Had he flashed too much canine? Connal’s eyes lit up with amusement. ‘Contrary to popular fairytales, I don’t actually eat beautiful girls. Their panties get stuck in my teeth,’ he deadpanned.
Ahhh. The lightbulb pinged above her head, bright-lit with a dark revelation she chided herself on not thinking of before and with a hard s
wallow ... she offered her throat.
Christ. She tilted her head back, exposing the taut, slender curve of her neck and the submissive gesture tugged at the animal part of him. Dark eyes fixated a moment on the rhythmic thud of her pulse. He subtly adjusted the towel across his hips and clearing his throat, he rearranged his features into an expression of surprise.
‘What?!’ Her cheeks flamed as embarrassment set in and she flustered to cover up, lashes fanning down. ‘You told me they ... you ... bite.’
‘You have been reading way too much vampire lit, Ash. I have no interest in sucking your blood, thanks all the same.’ It was the truth. Of the many parts of her he craved to taste, her blood was not one. He could lick her raw, sink his teeth deep into that creamy flesh ...
‘But then, I don’t understand, why the biting?’
He held her gaze with a dark intensity, subconsciously stroking the tip of his tongue along the razor edge of his teeth. ‘The biting is a sexual thing, an act of intimacy, heightened sensual pleasure. Nature’s breeding incentive.’
‘And that’s a bad thing?’ Hurt flamed over her blush in a sharp spike. Well, that set her straight. He didn’t want to bite her. Didn’t want to share this ‘act of intimacy and heightened sensual pleasure’ with her.
‘No, not within our species,’ his brows set in a frown, ‘mutual biting is a natural instinct, a reflex during sex, ensures the mating pair don’t disengage too soon.’
‘Like when mating dogs get tied?’ Her lips were twitching, withheld amusement threatening laughter.
‘Something like that, yeah,’ he cut her a glare, ‘except humans react differently to the bite. The Eitr, a substance in our saliva, it acts like a drug. They can’t handle the intensity of the high. They go mad from it, it becomes an addiction, leaves them constantly craving the inhuman high.’
‘Those girls, at the club.’ Fawning, grovelling, sycophantic addicts.