by Sue Wilder
“What did I ever do to you?” Her breath was coming in jerky gasps. “Why are we even here when you hate me so much?”
“Why do you pretend you don’t remember?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Like hell you don’t.” His jaw was so rigid the muscle bunched. “I felt your fear when we caught you in the rocks. I heard your lies.”
His voice cut deep into the softness of her core and she nearly cried out until she felt him—realized he was not limited to throwing one words into her mind but could insert himself as well. His psychic presence burned past her inner shields and Lexi knew he was probing into her deepest fears.
His energy was unyielding. In a panic, she struggled for the protective tactics she’d taught herself as a child, the white walls she tried to erect, realized those walls might not be strong enough to keep him out.
“Get out!” she screamed, but his response was to stab deeper into her most guarded thoughts. When she stared at the stars. When she ached with the sense of having lost something so vital she couldn’t breathe.
“Don’t,” she hissed, but Christan was moving toward her, hard and focused. He was perfection, intensity. She was powerless, caught in his fierce gravity, pulling her deep into the places where she shouldn’t go. Heaviness took over her legs. Emotions that were gossamer, full of hunger—he was ripping them to shreds.
Lexi struck out wildly, trying to push him away. Her hand connected with his face. He twisted to the side before she did much damage, but blood still pooled near his mouth. She watched as he swiped away the red smear with his tongue—a suggestive movement, reminding her of a predatory lion that matched the white-hot images he was forcing into her mind.
Wild. Feral. A mystery older than time. Pain. Death. A man who raced across a thousand deserts, alone and reveling in the isolation, covered in the red curtain of blood, what he was, would always be.
The images were crippling, the sensations far worse than any dreams. They revealed the emptiness of his life, taunting her with experiences she couldn’t remember, only feel in the deepest areas of her soul. Her heart was breaking. The images changed.
Passion. A feminine hand. Bronzed skin. The heat of the sun. The taste of wild oranges. A choked cry, an arched back. A deep male voice. A burning need.
Lexi staggered back. Tried to focus on what was coming, how they would ever get beyond whatever this was between them. He knew how to break a woman, in bed or out of it, and her lungs seized as she wondered how many lifetimes there had been—when he’d broken her, found her and broken her again.
He moved. The aggression was so fierce she knew he wouldn’t stop, not even see what he was doing to her. He had retreated to some dark place in the past and a wave of fear brought Lexi’s hands up in a protective gesture. She found the mental shield, pushed the white energy back against him, realizing too late that it wasn’t white at all but churning hot and angry in an explosion of red and black. It was an energy she’d felt before, when he’d slammed the one word into her mind, and it expanded now in a wave of uncontrolled fury.
Christan paused. His head tipped to one side, his expression curious before he slowly dropped to his knees. He swayed once, tried to gather himself. Those powerful hands were unsteady. His eyes were unfocused.
Dread gripped Lexi’s throat. “Oh god, oh god, oh god!”
Arsen appeared behind her, gripping her shoulders. She was going to faint, she knew it as she broke out in a cold sweat; Arsen bent her at the waist before he forced her to her knees.
“So, this is what it feels like.”
Christan’s mind was flat and empty. His telepathic voice sounded hollow. He’d been aware of her, fighting desperately, recognized her growing fear, and still he’d pushed into her mind. He hadn’t expected her to resist him, but she had and wasn’t it strange, now, as he lay sprawled on the floor staring up at the ceiling. Feeling his life thin out like a thread pulled at both ends. Strange, that she threw that one word back at him the way he’d thrown it at her.
She shouldn’t have been able to do it. She was too human to control the magic. But perhaps the magic responded in the way it was programmed to respond; he had aggravated the energy when he’d been probing her deepest fears. Perhaps he’d pulled it with him when she pushed him away. At least she hadn’t pushed the power at full strength. If she had, he’d be a pile of ash.
Robbie was bending over him, along with Arsen—yes, he sensed the cold anger that tested his second’s self-control. And he could hear her thoughts, feel her emotions. She was struggling to breathe. Marge was trying to calm her, but she was beyond that. He had ripped at the soft flesh of her deepest loss and he had no excuse. Never had he violated Gemma’s mind the way he’d done to her, and it was disturbing, the way he lost control.
Christan wanted to shift. Robbie was kneeling at his shoulder, pressing a hand to hold him steady. Christan heard him telepathically.
“You can’t shift, Christan. There might be broken bones or internal injuries.”
Christan’s breathing slowed, heart rate too, and the warmth pooling at his side told him he was bleeding. He must have fallen on the debris from the explosion, but he should be healing by now. He shouldn’t be lying here listening to the frantic beating of her heart as she watched him from across the room.
“Holy fuck, Lexi.” Arsen was walking toward her where she sat frozen in the chair. “Do not move, do not blink or I’ll put you down so hard on the floor you’ll never get up.”
“Arsen, she didn’t—”
“Not your time to speak, Marge.”
Robbie made a sharp sound of censure, then refocused on the calming pressure he was forcing into Christan’s mind. Christan didn’t think it was working. Every muscle in his body clenched with the need to shift.
“My apologies,” Arsen said to the older woman as he walked back to Christan’s side.
The bleeding hadn’t stopped. Robbie was applying pressure. Christan had been wounded many times before, but this was… different. Cold. A hidden pain, like a burning ember buried in the ash, waiting for the first puff of air. There was a thundering in his ears, a pounding in his temples. When the pain became incandescent Christan closed his eyes. He wanted to plunge over the dark abyss but found himself somewhere else. A place where the air was hot and dry, and the figure kneeling by his side was feminine. He heard the soft sound of her breathing. Cool fingers were tender as she washed blood from his skin. Her hair was pale, like a shaft of sunlight in winter, her eyes pure amber with a lion’s humor.
“Warrior… come back to me.”
Sunlight overhead, so dazzling all he saw was the cloud of her hair. She pressed something against his side and he flinched at the sting.
“Good. You’re alive enough to feel.”
He made an inarticulate sound, and she laughed. Kissed him. “You like that, warrior?”
So husky, that laugh. It brought him to a hard erection that throbbed to the point of pain.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she brushed her mouth against his throat. “You should have moved to the left like I expected.”
“You shot me?” She was deadly with her bow.
“You insisted.” She had taken him up on his dare. Usually it was he who penetrated her with piercing sensuality and no need for the bow. His hand fisted in her hair as he dragged her to his mouth.
“I remember, Gaia. I was teaching you to fight.”
“Yes.” She sat back on her heels and watched as he pushed up on his elbows. She was so innocent his heart clenched.
Not like Gemma. Not like the woman who stood with hate in her heart in the middle of a moonlit road. The woman he made into a mirror of himself.
Not like Lexi, who had put him on the floor. And he had deserved it.
Marge’s voice again. “Will you at least let me take her to the bedroom? She doesn’t need to watch this.”
“She caused it.” Arsen, snarling—an unusual sound.
No, I did.
Christan pressed the knowledge into Arsen’s mind before he drifted into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 13
“I have to leave. They won’t let me leave, will they? Not while he’s hurt and I did it.”
“Lexi, calm down. Breathe.” Marge guided Lexi toward the bed, then went back to close the door. “If you hyperventilate I’ll have to get a paper bag.”
“What did I do, Marge? What the hell did I do?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve never seen anything like it. Christan is—I thought he was invincible, but Robbie will bring him back.”
Lexi wasn’t as confident. She pushed agitated fingers through her hair, forcing herself to think.
“What was that explosion?”
“Harassment. An attack would be obvious by now. I don’t think they’ll be back.”
“Unless they realize Christan’s lying on the floor because I did something to him.”
“Lexi,” Marge cautioned, remaining calm. “Arsen has called in other warriors. Robbie says if they shift they’ll be here in half an hour.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me before we left the room. Didn’t you see me pause?”
Lexi hadn’t seen anything except Christan, unmoving on the floor, and the anger on Arsen’s face. Yes, she had seen that anger. It frightened her. Unable to remain sitting, she began to pace from the bed to the window and back again. Marge remained silent. Lexi realized there were bits of white plaster in Marge’s hair and blood on her face.
“You’re hurt.”
“A small cut. Robbie will tend to it.” Marge smiled, and the connection to her warrior was obvious. It ripped at a place inside Lexi that was viciously tender. She gripped her hands together to keep them from shaking.
“If you want to go to Robbie, please go. I won’t try to leave.”
“I know that. You aren’t a coward, even when you’re terrified.”
“He was so angry.” Lexi wrapped her arms against her waist, working through the events. The disbelief in Christan’s eyes. His pallor and the amount of blood on the floor. The seconds she stared at his chest willing him to take the next breath. “I wasn’t trying to hurt him. He was in my mind and I wanted to push him out.”
“Arsen will see that. Robbie already knows whatever you did, you were only protecting yourself.”
“I thought he was dead when Robbie was bending over him.”
“Robbie was talking to Christan telepathically,” Marge said. “Warriors will shift instinctively when they’re wounded, but it can kill them.” She pulled Lexi close for a fierce hug before stepping back and moving into a take-charge mode. “I’ll find out what’s happening. Do you need anything?”
Lexi said no, her eyes bleak. With a nod Marge left and closed the door behind her. Through the window, Lexi caught the flash of movement, and moments later she heard strong male voices, along with booted feet crunching across a littered floor. Then the scrape of chairs being righted, and the sound of a table moved. Lexi wanted to reach for the imprints that were settling in the other room, but she was afraid of what the earth might reveal.
They left her alone, even Marge, and when the door opened an hour later, it was Arsen who walked into the room. Gone was the surfer boy persona, throwing twigs into a fire. This man was hard with the experience of centuries in his eyes. He’d bled and fought at Christan’s side and he would not be swayed against a purpose he judged as right. No matter who was at fault. Lexi stood at the window and watched him approach with that same lethal intensity they all wore like second skins. She didn’t doubt Arsen’s loyalty, nor Robbie’s, or any of the men still moving around on the other side of the wall.
“How is he?”
“Alive.”
Lexi’s knees trembled, but she remained straight with her back to the light. The anger on Arsen’s face told her she hadn’t been forgiven. “What do I need to do?”
“For what?”
“So you won’t look at me like that.”
Arsen turned away and prowled with a restless energy. “I’m angry right now. This is my fault. It was too soon, but I thought he had enough time out of the Void. I thought you—”
“I’m sorry,” she interrupted. The tiny cuts on her hands burned as she rubbed her palms against her jeans. She rubbed harder.
“It was my miscalculation,” Arsen was saying. “I underestimated the effect Kace would have—"
“Stop.” She waited until he looked at her. “I can’t be around him, you see that now. You have to let me go back to Rock Cove.”
“No can do, Slick. You aren’t going anywhere.”
“Give me a break, Arsen.” She couldn’t call him Bucko, not now, not after what she’d done. Maybe not ever.
“No one blames you,” he said.
“You don’t need to. It was stupid personal fight in the middle of an attack and I left him vulnerable, all of you—”
“He’s safe, Slick. That flash-bang was a diversion. This area is secure.”
“It was still unforgivable.” Lexi walked to the bed, perched on the edge. After a moment Arsen joined her, his weight dipping the mattress. He reached over and took her hand, studied the new memory lines. Dread lay heavy in her throat.
“It’s Christan, isn’t it?” she asked. “I seriously hurt him, didn’t I?”
“He’ll be all right.”
“We hurt each other, Arsen. I don’t understand why, but it will only get worse.”
“I still can’t let you leave.”
Arsen pulled out his phone, manipulated the screen and then held it out to her. There were photos. Lexi frowned as she tried to make sense of them, scrolling with dawning recognition. Her cottage, trashed. The door torn from the hinges. Her bedroom, her sanctuary, grotesquely ruined. The linen headboard—it took a minute to realize it was a cat nailed upside down. Blood dripped and pooled on the pillow where she laid her head, and with increasing horror she recognized the cat—little more than a kitten. He lived in the woods behind the cottage, feral but always eager for the food she left out, gaining confidence until the day he curled in her lap. A sob choked in her throat.
Arsen gently took the phone from her hand. “We’re already cleaning it up. In a month or two you’ll have a whole new interior from the studs up. Everything will be fresh.”
“Will it look the same?” She scrubbed the tears from her face. Angry. So… angry, for the cat that was not a kitten but still trusted too much.
“The important things will be there.”
“Do you even know what they are?”
He probably did; he’d been watching long enough. But things were not memories and she could never get those moments back no matter how hard she squeezed the bits of glass, stroked the driftwood. They were as ephemeral as an email account that remained open even though it never received mail.
“Who did it—do you know?”
“Not yet. But we will.”
“They killed a helpless cat.”
“And they’ll do the same to you.” Arsen took her hand again, stroking as much for her comfort as his own. “Your personal possessions are being packed up as we speak. Your cottage will be secured until you want it again.”
“I have a business to run, clients who expect information on their locations.”
“We already have your laptop. Ethan ran remote security scans and changed the tracking programs, so all your emails and internet searches will originate from Rock Cove. You’ll have a private cabin at our compound in the Wallowa Mountains. It’s not far from here.” He moved slightly. “No one will find you, Slick. You’ll be safe there. From everyone. You can recover from this.”
She looked into that surfer’s face and realized she’d never had a friend like him in her entire life. His eyes were such a deep, clear blue, rimmed with the faintest shards of silver and gold—and she’d never bothered to look until now. Guilt filled her, for her self-absorption. She would do nothing to cause him problems.
She needed him to forgiv
e her.
“Tell me how to make this right.”
“I can’t, because I don’t know,” he said.
Lexi took a deep breath. “Then help me.”
“With what?”
“Teach me things. If I can’t go home, then I have to learn how to fight. How to hold off Christan’s mind games.”
“Teaching you to fight is no problem.”
“And the mind defense is?”
“Lexi.” Arsen hesitated. “Trust is a hard thing to reacquire, and we’re immortals. Our idea of trust differs from yours.”
“Christan invaded my mind. He put that one word there, and he read my thoughts.”
“Listen very carefully,” Arsen said. “Christan can take any memory he wants and put something else in its place, create nightmares that can’t compare to what you’ve already experienced—I’ve watched him do it, and you don’t want that kind of power in your head, not if he intends to use it.”
Unnerved, Lexi waited to hear what else Arsen had to say. “Christan told us what he did, that he was in your mind, provoking you. In all honesty, I’ve never seen him be as reckless as he’s been these past two days.” Arsen studied her face. “But whatever this is, you have to get past it. You are bonded mates, and what happened an hour ago, when you used that one word against him? That shouldn’t have been possible.”
She shivered, and it was evident in her voice. “I wasn’t trying to hurt him, Arsen, but I did and it proves why I can’t trust him in my mind, not ever.”
“I understand. But they trashed your cottage and they’ll do it again, only you’ll be the one nailed to the bed.” Lexi started to cry and Arsen put his arm around her, pulled her against his side. “I’m not trying to frighten you, but Christan may be the only one who can protect you.”
“I trust no one, Arsen.” Lexi wiped the moisture from her cheek as she straightened away. “And what I need to know is whether you’ll teach me how to defend myself or not. Because if you won’t, I’ll ask Robbie and he’ll do it because of Marge. You know he will, and you also know it would be more effective if you did it. So, do you have my back against him or not?”