Ruthless Knight

by Liza Street

  “Oh, that’s very nice, isn’t it? How old are you?”

  “Thirty-one. You?”

  “If we don’t count the two centuries I was in the spell, then I’m four and twenty.”

  He snorted. “Practically a baby, then.”

  She waited, wondering if he’d purposefully maneuvered the conversation away from his paramour.

  “You sure you want to hear about this?” he asked after a long moment. “It’s not a fun story.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “Emily was her name. Em, I called her. She was a human who lived in the territory I grew up in. Alaska. Cold place, year-round. She knew about shifters, knew about our culture and customs.”

  Tamryn knotted her hands in her lap, waiting for the next part of the tale. Nolan stared off into the sky, and the fading pink and orange sunset played on his hard, handsome features.

  “She wanted me to mark her as my mate, but I wouldn’t do it,” Nolan said. “We were young. I wasn’t sure she was my mate, even. Sometimes I wonder if she could’ve been.”

  It almost sounded as if he were speaking to himself alone, and that Tamryn was eavesdropping on his thoughts. The faraway expression on his face made her heart clench.

  “One night in winter, we fought about the mate mark again. There was a snowstorm and I told her not to leave, but she wouldn’t listen. I should’ve made her listen to me. Those storms—you can go blind in them, lose your way even if you’re just walking a few feet. It happened to Em. I called her house an hour after she left, but her sister said she hadn’t come home. I went out to look for her. I found her. Half-buried in the snow.”

  “Was she...?” Tamryn couldn’t finish the question, because she already knew the answer.

  “Dead,” Nolan finished in a dull voice. “Yeah.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah. Me too,” he said bitterly.

  The frozen story in her mind contrasted with the orange light hitting the mountain face behind Nolan.

  “You know it wasn’t your fault, don’t you?” Tamryn asked.

  “I’ve been trying to tell myself that for years.”

  “Then maybe it’s time you listened to it for the truth it is.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “I mean this, Nolan. I am in earnest. You must accept that you could not have known what would happen.”

  “I grew up in Alaska. I had a pretty good fucking guess.”

  “Then you made a mistake. Forgiveness is hard. Especially when it’s ourselves who we need to forgive.”

  Scrubbing a hand over his face, Nolan said, “I suppose you’re right.”

  She knew she was right, but she’d pushed him enough on this tonight. He would believe her, or not, on his own schedule.

  It hurt her to see him hurting; his pain was hers.

  Looking at their rustic camp, Tamryn thought of how different it was from her pampered upbringing. She was uncomfortable and cold and she always seemed to be sitting on a stick that dug into her backside. Yet she would live like a nomad in the woods forever if it meant being with Nolan. She wouldn’t want to be in the finest castle without him.

  She loved him.

  The realization came upon her swiftly, but it didn’t feel like new information. The acknowledgment of the love was new, but the love had been there all along.

  But what to do with her realization? The responsible thing would be to ignore it. Find Charles. Marry him. Continue with her plan to collect her people and make dragonkind stronger than ever.

  Her eyes pricked with tears and she blinked them away. It wouldn’t do to continue this line of thought, not right now.

  She stood to go into her tent for the night. “Thank you for sharing your story with me. I know it couldn’t have been easy.”

  “I’m glad I did,” he said, rubbing his chest.

  She felt it, the ache in his heart, and she couldn’t help herself—she went to him and bent down to place a tender kiss against his cheek. He wrapped an arm around the back of her knees, holding her close for a moment before letting her go.

  Once in her tent, she inhaled and exhaled deeply, trying to quiet her mind. She loved Nolan, and if she examined the past few days, the feeling had been growing all along.

  She watched him through the opening of her unzipped tent flap as she crawled into her sleeping bag. He removed his shirt and started to take off his pants, as he had every night before shifting into his polar bear form.

  “Nolan,” she said, so quietly she wasn’t even sure she’d spoken aloud.

  He froze, his strong fingers on the buttons of his jeans. “Yeah?”

  “I want you in my tent tonight. With me.”

  She suspected she wanted it as much for herself as for him. He’d just bared his soul to her, telling her things that made him feel terrible about himself and his past. The result was raw sorrow and a need for comfort.

  He dropped to his knees and crawled into her tent. He barely fit inside, but she scooted over and lay on her side. He lay on his side, too, facing her.

  “What do you want?” he asked softly.

  She reached up and touched his face, tracing his blond eyebrows and running her hand over the scruff on his cheeks. When she traced his full lips, he sucked in a breath and she felt his hardness against her thigh.

  “I want to kiss you,” she said.

  No questions, no talking—he simply moved his face closer to hers until their lips touched. The barest, most fleeting of kisses. It was soft yet full of heat. Her eyes were closed so she could feel more of what he offered.

  “Tamryn,” he said, tugging her closer. His arms were a band of warmth and strength encasing her.

  This could be their last night together. She didn’t want to miss a single second with him. She wanted to hear every heartbeat, taste his pulse, give him pleasure.

  “I want everything,” she whispered.

  His hardness pressed harder into her thigh and a growl reverberated through his chest. “Tamryn, I don’t want to do anything that could hurt you.”

  “You mean my betrothal?”

  He nodded and closed his eyes, hiding the emotion.

  “He and I don’t know each other. I am certain he has enjoyed more than his share of paramours.” Gossip throughout the court had told her as much, although it had never bothered her. Despite the betrothal, she’d never felt she had a claim on him. “I don’t begrudge him those, and I certainly can’t imagine him begrudging me one night.”

  Her heart, Charles might begrudge her giving away. But one night? She didn’t believe he would care about one night.

  “I’m selfish enough,” Nolan said, capturing her lower lip in a hard, biting kiss before releasing it, “to give you everything you’re asking for, because it’s what I want, too.”

  “Good,” she said, sitting up and pulling off her shirt and bra.

  He helped her slide down her pants, running his palm along her skin as the fabric peeled away. She helped him with his, doing the same as he’d done to her, caressing his legs, listening to his swift inhale when she visited his inner thigh.

  “Just a minute,” he said, reaching for the tent flap.

  “What is it?”

  He rummaged around outside the tent, and she heard the sound of a zipper. He brought his arm back in holding a square wrapper. “This is a condom. If I put it on, it’ll keep you from getting pregnant.”

  “Oh,” she said as he tore open the wrapper and slid the condom over his length. “That’s a great invention.”

  “Do you want kids?” he asked, then quickly added, “Not now, of course, with me. But someday?”

  “I don’t know,” she murmured. “I’ve always thought I wouldn’t want to raise them like I was raised—in fear of the skin-hunters. I’m too scared for children.”

  He nodded. “Makes sense.”

  She didn’t want to talk about fear or skin-hunters anymore. She wanted Nolan. When she reached for him, he lay down beside h
er, half-covering her body with his own. Naked, they resumed their kiss. Her breasts were pushed against his chest, her nipples sensitive to the heat of his skin.

  His hardness was against her leg, but she knew a better place for it. Reaching for it, she held it in her hand. The skin was smooth. Warm, too. Nolan hissed and muttered a curse when she squeezed him, so she let him go immediately.

  “Did that hurt?”

  “Not at all. Felt too good.”

  Grinning to herself, she reached down and squeezed him again. He kissed her hard and pumped his hips so his member moved in her grip. That was what it would do inside of her. She wanted it. Her entire body was hot and full of need.

  “Can you...?” she asked, pointing his hardness between her legs.

  “You want my cock inside you?” he asked.

  Cock. Yes. She’d never used that word, but she knew what it meant. “I do.”

  “Might hurt you a little at first.” He reached between them to touch the place between her legs. His fingers slid in the slickness he found there. “You’re nice and wet, though, which will help.”

  He poised his cock at her entrance and pressed forward, just enough for her to sense his girth. There was no way he could fit inside of her.

  “I don’t know...” she said.

  “We can stop, anytime,” he said, kissing her cheek, her ear, her neck. “Do you want to stop?”

  “No,” she said. “Keep going.”

  He pressed inside slowly, his jaw tight as if it took effort. It gave her a chance to stretch to accommodate him. There was some pain, a burning ache that radiated from her core outward, but as he started to move back and forth, the burning faded and the ache sparked pleasure.

  “You okay?” he asked, pulling up to look at her face.

  She nodded up at him. “Yes. I’m better than okay.”

  Experimentally, she lifted her hips to meet one of his thrusts. He grinned and kissed her. He kept his movements slow until she began to speed him along with her own movements. Her pleasure heightened with each stroke, each caress of his hands on her arms, hair, breasts.

  She kissed him, again and again. With her kisses, she tried to show him how she felt. I love you. I ache for you. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to say goodbye.

  Her release came suddenly, fiercely, her entire body shaking with the desire he wrought both within and without. He tensed momentarily, his gaze locked on her face, before pumping within her a few more times and stopping suddenly. He threw his head forward and touched his teeth to her shoulder without biting down. He wanted to mark her, and she wanted the mark as well.

  “I’m yours,” he said. “Forever. Whatever happens next, I’m yours.”

  She wanted to make the same promise to him. But she couldn’t, not yet. Still, she opened her mouth to respond.

  “Shh,” he said, touching her lips. “It’s okay. Now, we sleep.”

  His eyes and his smile conveyed understanding, and she felt it, too, coming through his aura in a pulse of devotion. Could he feel it from her as well? It was as beautiful as it was temporary.

  Aching beauty.

  Her sense of duty said she should find Charles and marry him, continue the dragon line with another dragon.

  But her heart said something else altogether.

  As she curled against Nolan’s broad chest and watched the muscled expanse rise and fall with every one of his breaths, she wondered whether she would follow duty or follow her heart.

  Her heart would have to win, she decided as she drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Something had shifted. Nolan could sense it. The forest had felt safe and secluded last night when he and Tamryn had made love, and it had felt safe this morning when they made love again. But as they dressed and packed up the tent, a new tension grew in the wilderness.

  The path was too rocky and steep to easily navigate, so they couldn’t hold hands as they hiked. Nolan wanted to hold her hand, though. He wanted to touch her. Every now and then, he would brush against her so their arms gently knocked.

  Her lips were irresistible, her skin so touchable. He could get lost in her again and again...if only he felt safe. But a change had come over their idyllic journey.

  He puzzled over what could be the cause of the change. The night they’d spent in each other’s arms couldn’t be the cause of it. Perhaps it was that the sounds of the forest had changed now that they were climbing higher and higher up the mountain. And it didn’t help that the trees were spaced farther apart, leaving less cover for them.

  Whatever it was, Nolan didn’t like it.

  And he really fucking didn’t like that before the morning was over, they’d reach the spot on the map that Illary had shown them.

  “Why are you angry?” Tamryn asked.

  She was more perceptive than anyone he’d ever met. He wondered if it was a dragon thing, the same way he wondered about her smelling like clouds.

  Although she didn’t pause in her trekking, he could tell she was waiting for his response.

  “I’m mad that it’s over already,” he said. “We’re going to find your fiancé today.”

  They hadn’t even had a chance. Whatever this was, between them, had been over before it began.

  It had been over two fucking centuries ago. Before he was even born.

  If that wasn’t getting fucked by fate, he didn’t know what was.

  “Nolan.”

  His name. Her lips. Music.

  He grabbed her arm, spun her toward him. “We could go,” he said.

  She looked at him with a puzzled expression. “Where do you suggest we go?”

  “Home. Back to my territory.”

  “We have to find Charles,” Tamryn said.

  They should just leave the bastard up here to freeze, and then all of Nolan’s problems would be solved. Tamryn would be his and he could take her back to the RCC where he would build her a castle and they could live happily ever after. Like Guinevere and Lancelot. Or wait, had it not worked out for those two? He had no idea. And to be honest, he didn’t care.

  He just wanted Tamryn. Needed her. Now.

  His hands moved almost as if on their own volition, unbuckling the waist strap of her pack, shoving the heavy thing from her shoulders. It thudded to the ground and slid a couple of feet before resting against a sun-bleached pine stump. He would’ve worried he was being too violent in his frenzied fumbling with her pants and top, but she was yanking his shirt up, their arms tangling as they rushed to get each other undressed as fast as possible.

  Her kisses were sweetness and cinnamon candy. Her skin was fiery and soft, like melting silk.

  Their coupling was frantic. As soon as she was free of her pants, he took his cock in his hand and bent his knees so he could aim it at her pussy. Her panties were in the way.

  She panted as she said, “Nolan, I need you.”

  “Fucking underwear,” he said, tearing them to the side.

  And then he was sliding inside her perfect wet heat. She moaned and he bit back a curse of appreciation. This was real. This was what they needed. Always.

  Could they go their separate ways, back to a time when they hadn’t been lovers? Walk away from it and act like they were strangers?

  Fucking never.

  Lifting her up, he held her ass and she wrapped her legs around his waist. He stroked within her, faster and faster, every movement a promise. He would never forget. He would never let go. He might say goodbye with his mouth, but in his heart, he belonged to her forever.

  “Nolan,” she gasped. “Nolan, I’m close—”

  “Let go,” he said. “Come for me.”

  She let out a soft cry and tightened around him, her thighs gripping him, squeezing, her pussy rhythmically pulsing around his cock.

  You are mine, he thought, but he didn’t let the words leave his mouth.

  The mate mark. He could press his teeth against the tender flesh where her neck met her shoulder. Just the tinie
st bit of blood, a short-lived bruise. Immediate healing for a shifter like Tamryn. And she’d be his.

  He kissed the place, over and over, his mouth latched desperately. His balls tightened and the pressure built at the base of his spine—he was going to come, and come hard, and he wanted, so badly, to mark her as he did. But he pulled away from her neck as he emptied into her, rather than biting down.

  It took several moments for their breathing to return to normal, but they held each other the entire time. Finally, Tamryn lifted her head from his shoulder and looked up at him, her gaze bright with an unnamed emotion.

  “We should go,” she said.

  “Why?” The word came out scratchy, like something was caught in his throat. Maybe that something inside was the claws of his polar bear trying to rip forward and hold Tamryn in place.

  She closed her eyes. “It’s my duty.”

  Duty was like a dagger in the heart, in Nolan’s opinion.

  Only when he pulled out of her did he realize that he’d forgotten to put on a condom.

  “Shit, Tamryn, I’m so sorry...I forgot the condom.”

  Her eyes blazed as she looked up at him. “It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s my job—my duty—to protect you. I fucked up.”

  “I remembered it,” she said, “and I didn’t say anything. I’m terrified of having children to be raised in fear. But if this was our last time together, and a child came from our union, I would be glad.”

  He doubted Charles would feel the same way, but he couldn’t deny the pride he felt at her words. He was tempted to ask her if she wanted to have more sex so he could make sure his seed had the best chance of taking. But he wasn’t a total asshole.

  They dressed in silence, with Nolan mulling over the fantasy of having a kid with Tamryn. He wondered if it would be a daughter or a son, whether they’d have violet eyes or Red Hot candy hair like Tamryn had. Would the kid be a dragon or a polar bear?

  Once they had all their clothes back on, Tamryn shot him a shy smile. “You like the idea as much as I do.”

  “Yep.” He wasn’t gonna lie about it. But it made no sense to dwell on it, either. He shoved the thoughts aside and looked up the mountain. “We should go.”