She cried out as something cut across her back in a fiery line of pain. The creature had claws, fully out, and slashed her again across her back. She was bleeding, her blood mingling with that of the uncounted dead.
The pain was unbearable, the creature had slashed across muscle, down to bone. She slipped, fell to one knee. The creature’s claws snapped over her head.
The man with the sword was striding forward, eyes still fixed on the monster behind her, face hard, determined. He’d been caught by the monster, too, some time ago. A broad white scar ran down the side of his face, gleaming in the gathering darkness.
Leathery ropes wrapped around her torso, squeezing so tightly she could barely breathe. She was lifted from the earth, her body dripping blood.
They weren’t leathery ropes, they were fingers, their grip tightening so hard she felt a rib crack. She looked up, into blood red eyes, a cruel mouth with sharp teeth. The mouth was smiling.
He had her. It was over. This was how her life would end—in pieces at the bottom of a lake of blood, dying cold and alone.
She turned for a last look at the last human she’d see. The man with the sword was running, slashing at the monster’s legs.
The monster laughed. She struggled desperately in his cruel grip, trying to free herself.
“Grace!” The man screamed. “Grace!”
She tried to call to him but there was no breath in her, the world was fading…
“Grace!”
She couldn’t breathe…
“Grace, wake up!”
She came awake on a shuddering gasp, trembling and shaking, flailing madly, as if she’d been underwater and crested the surface an instant before drowning.
Two strong arms were around her, pinning her. Oh God! He was going to kill her! She struggled, twisting wildly, but there was nothing she could do against this kind of strength. She was going to die…
“Grace, Grace, love, look at me.”
That deep voice. Not cruel, not insane. A voice she knew…
Her eyes opened and she stilled, panting, staring into steady brown eyes. A soft brush of lips across her forehead. “It’s all right. You’re safe. You had a nightmare.”
Only one word penetrated. Safe. She was safe. No drowning in blood, no horrible monster with claws gripping her. No dead bodies.
She blinked, tears springing to her eyes.
Except, of course, there was a dead body. Harold’s. It all came back, rushing in like a river whose dam had broken. The four men gunning for Drake, using her as bait. Harold’s head exploding off his shoulders, what was left of his body falling loosely to the ground like an empty sack, all the goodness and humor in him, vanished like a light being snuffed.
The monster in her dreams wasn’t real, but the monsters loose in the world were, something her unconscious had recognized. One of those monsters had killed her friend, a man known, even in the art world—a cutthroat business if ever there was one—for his gentleness and generosity. A man who had truly loved art, who had never harmed anyone, had been wiped off the face of the earth by one of the monsters who inhabited it.
She’d been strong and had tucked her grief away, shoving it into a dark corner, but now it all came rushing back. The nightmare had robbed her of her usual resilience, sapping her strength. Grief welled up, fierce and unstoppable.
She turned her head into Drake’s shoulder, inhaling his scent, sensing his strength around her like a coat of armor, clinging to it desperately. She shuddered with her sadness and pain at the loss of Harold. Her horror of the violence at the gallery. The loss of her own life, cut off abruptly; the loss of her home. It all came tumbling out in an upwelling of sorrow that she tried to breathe down, heart pounding, trembling.
“Let it out, duschka,” a deep voice said in her ear. “Cry. I’m here to catch you.”
It was all she needed. With a wild moan, she buried her head against him and let go. She wept out her grief and her rage, her sorrow and her desperation. She wept for Harold, for the violence that was still stalking her, for the loss of her freedom. While she was at it, she wept for her mother’s immense sadness at being abandoned by her father, and for her own inability to find a place in the world that felt right. She wept for sorrows past, present and future.
She wept until there were no more tears, until she ran out of breath, until her throat ached with sadness. And then she wept some more. Grace had no idea so many tears were in her, and it was only when no more came that she subsided against Drake’s wet, bare shoulder, eyes closed, dazed with the force of the tempest that had passed through her.
He’d held her all through it, without moving a muscle except for the slow beat of his heart, giving her the animal comfort of his body. She lay against him, spent, listening to his strong, steady heartbeat, feeling his even breath ruffle the hair on the top of her head. One huge hand covered the back of her head and one arm was around her waist, holding her just tightly enough to give comfort, without making her feel restrained.
Her eyes were swollen, her throat ached. She lay heavily against him, as if her skin could melt into his.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered in a soggy voice.
His hands tightened briefly. “Don’t apologize, duschka.” She had no idea what duschka meant, but the tone made it unmistakably an endearment. “You can cry all you want. It is a world made for crying. You lost your friend.”
She rolled her forehead against his shoulder. It was like rubbing it against a warm rock. “Yes,” she said simply. “I lost Harold. I miss him so much.”
“I know you do.” He nodded. “And you lost your paintings in your home. Your beautiful paintings in the gallery. They’ll be gone by now.”
It was what she’d suspected. “Yes.”
“And you lost even more than your friend and your paintings. It is no wonder you cry.”
They were both silent, because the last thing she’d lost was her life, the life she’d known.
Grace was held so tightly against Drake, felt so surrounded by him, by his utter physicality in the here and now, that her old life felt far away.
Her entire system had quietened, the crying jag like a violent tropical storm that then moved on, leaving behind silence and calm. Her breathing slowed, quieted. During the jag, she’d focused on the hot ball of grief and sadness in her chest, but now outside sensations seeped in.
The warmth of his body, like a huge heater under the covers, the feeling of being utterly surrounded by strength, the slow thud of his heart against her breast. She shifted slightly, and her hip came up against his erection, huge and ready, as always.
An electric current swept through her body at the feel of him as he surged against her at her lightest touch. She’d just cried her heart out, and yet her body was already preparing for him, softening, becoming wetter…
She lifted her head to look at him. Drake’s face was so solemn, strong features still as he watched her. As always, he made no effort to charm her. He never used words to seduce her. He was a man of action and he showed what he felt by actions, not words.
Each feature was fascinating. The dark, hooded eyes that seemed to see so much. The full, sensual mouth. The high cheekbones and beard-roughened jawline. Features becoming so dear, so…
So familiar?
Grace cocked her head, blinking. How could…? She stopped breathing for a moment, overwhelmed.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, cupping his face with her hand. How had she missed it? Why hadn’t she recognized him? She felt her eyes go wide.
He brushed his lips across the ball of her shoulder. “What is it, duschka?” he murmured.
“It—it’s you.” Grace ran her finger over his features, tracing the dark wings of his eyebrows, the slight lines fanning out from his eyes, easing down the straight bridge of his nose. Why hadn’t she seen this before?
“You’re the man of my dreams,” she whispered, then stopped, heat rushing to her face. “I mean—I dream about you, Drake. I’ve be
en dreaming about you for over a year now. They’re more nightmares than dreams, actually. Danger and violence, always. And always safety provided by a man. I’ve tried to paint his face but I’ve never come closer than a generic look because I never remember his face when I wake up from the nightmares. But…he’s you. Somehow, Drake, he is you. The man who saves me. Now that I can see it, it’s so clear. I have been dreaming of you.” She ran the back of a knuckle down the left side of his face. “Except…in my dreams, the man who saves me always has a big white scar here. As you must know, because you’ve bought five of those portraits.” She frowned. “I haven’t seen them hung in your study, though.”
“No.” Drake shook his head slowly. “They were too…personal. They’re in a vault, where only I can see them. Because I recognized myself right away.”
Grace shook her head, amazed. “How could you? How could you recognize yourself when I didn’t? I only now realized that I was painting and drawing variations on you. Each portrait was different, because I never saw your features clearly. The only things they had in common were dark hair and dark eyes and a—a strong look. But each portrait was different.”
He took her hand and placed it against his left cheek. “How could I not recognize myself? Each portrait was the same,” he protested. “Each man in the paintings had a long white scar on the left side of his face.”
He pressed her index finger into the flesh of his left cheek. “Feel, duschka. Feel what is underneath the skin.” At first Grace didn’t know what he was talking about, but then she could feel it—a line underneath the skin, following the scar of her dream saviour. “I had the best plastic surgeon in the world, but even the best plastic surgery only heals the skin. My scar ran deep and the surgeon couldn’t repair all the tissues underneath.”
She watched him, fingers on his skin, running the pad of her index finger up and down his face. The hidden scar was there, from his temple down to his chin, exactly as in her dreams.
“This is impossible,” she whispered.
“Yes, it is,” he said simply. “And yet, impossible or not, it is so.”
Grace’s head swam. She was such a…a prosaic person. She didn’t do shrinks or self-help books or group therapy. She didn’t believe in ghosts or past lives or angels. She led a quiet life, painting and reading, mainly in her own apartment, almost always alone. All she’d ever wanted was to paint and be left alone.
She’d never had a feeling of destiny or of great things in store for her. Fate had never been a factor in her life.
But here it was. Inexplicable and otherworldly.
She’d dreamed, over and over again, of this man. A man she’d never met, never even thought to meet. Somehow she’d known him, known that they were fated to be together.
Goose pimples ran up her forearms and the hair on the nape of her neck rose. She felt an inner trembling, as if she were in a frozen wasteland instead of in a warm, comfortable bed with a fire blazing in the hearth.
The chill went deep, to her core. Her icy hands shook.
She’d been touched by something she had no words for. She knew only that it was big, tapping into something that she now realized was the energy that ran the world.
At that moment, in an act of total surrender, Grace gave herself over to her destiny. She was somehow meant to be with this man.
Drake. Drake was her destiny.
“It was you,” she whispered. “Always you.”
“Yes, duschka,” he said quietly, face sober. “We are somehow linked. I don’t know how and I don’t know why, but I knew there was a connection the first time I saw your portrait of a man I recognized as myself.” He ran his hands along her side, as if shaping her. His eyes searched hers. “I knew you were important to me, but I stayed away from you for a full year. I knew I couldn’t share my life with a woman, it was much too dangerous. So I stayed away. But I couldn’t stay away completely. I was there every time you came to the gallery.”
His head shook slowly, eyes never leaving hers. He shifted her until she was on top of him, opening her legs with his until her knees flanked his sides. He was hugely erect, hard and hot. With a soft touch, he reached down to open her until the lips of her sex rode him.
The deep voice grew even more deep, the timbre rougher, the accent stronger.
“It was like you were giving me life, duschka. Your paintings, the way you talked, moved. Your very existence. There was no way I could do without seeing you, after that first time.”
He was moving his hips under her, a slow surge up and down, rubbing his penis along the oh-so-sensitive lips of her sex. Her tissues were so sensitive she could feel everything about him—the large, bulbous tip, the smooth, thick column, the dark wiry hairs at the base. She felt it all as he moved himself slowly along her. A ball of heat rose from between her legs, banishing the chill she’d felt, banishing even the thought of cold.
His eyes were so dark, so deep. She couldn’t look away from them. She was trapped by those dark eyes, those strong hands holding her hips, the powerful body moving sensuously beneath her. She was trapped, with no desire to escape.
“The first time I saw your work, I was in a car. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I got out and doubled back to the gallery, thinking to buy a few paintings, not having any idea who the artist was and not caring. And then—and then you walked in. You brought in sunlight and beauty, duschka. I could barely keep my eyes off you, but I knew I had to, for your sake.”
His voice was tuning in and out, she was finding it hard to follow him through the blossoming heat and wetness between her legs.
She looked down, mesmerized by the sight of his penis emerging from between her thighs. The enormous head, a dark plum color, already weeping at the tip, appeared, followed by the massive shaft. The semen showed how excited he was, though there was no sense of him losing control. His movements were regular, calculated for maximum stimulation. Oh God, he’d positioned himself so that each stroke rubbed against her clitoris in a long, slow, lingering slide that made her skin prickle and her vagina clench. They weren’t even technically making love and she was a hair’s breadth from a climax.
Those dark eyes were burning. “Bend down to me,” he growled. “Give me your breast.”
It didn’t occur to her to do anything but obey. She didn’t even have to exert any effort, those huge hands on her sides just brought her to him, held her still for him.
His mouth on her burned. He nibbled at her breast for a moment, then opened his mouth to suckle at her nipple in long, liquid pulls. She felt the pulls down to her loins, clenching in time to his mouth.
She drew in a shuddering breath, completely concentrating on what was happening between her legs, held up by his hands because her muscles had turned to water.
He suckled hard and her inner muscles clamped down on his penis. She was so wet and slick his back and forth movements made little sucking noises in the quiet of the room. He swelled even larger under her. Grace braced herself on his iron biceps, head down, hair forming a little curtain of privacy around them as she shook.
His movements speeded up, not so controlled now, his hands pulling her down on him. The sensations magnified, ballooning with heat and friction, Drake moving so fast the huge bed beat hard against the wall.
Grace began that long freefall into orgasm, like jumping out of an airplane, stomach swooping with the absence of gravity. Usually, it lasted only a second before she climaxed, but there was something about this that prolonged it, kept her hovering on the edge for long minutes, as she hung above him, shaking, barely breathing…
Her entire body went ballistic, shaking, shuddering as an electric line of pleasure ran from the top of her head to her toes, centering on her loins, where she clenched strongly around Drake’s penis.
It set him off, too. With a low moan, he bucked strongly under her, swelled, and started spurting all over his stomach, a hard shudder accompanying each spurt. His teeth were clenched, hands hard at her hips, groaning as hi
s hips moved wildly under her, completely out of control.
He was sweating all over, the short dark hair turning black with sweat. His head fell back against the pillows, strong neck arched, eyes slitted with pleasure, jaw muscles bunching. He looked in pain, but if he felt anything like what Grace had felt, it wasn’t pain. It was pleasure on an almost unimaginable scale.
Grace collapsed onto Drake’s chest, panting, wiped out, still shaking with the force of the orgasm. They lay there a moment, breathing heavily, eyes closed, creatures of their bodies.
After a moment, Drake’s arms went around her, one big hand cradling the back of her head, the other wrapped around her waist, the way he always held her. She was surrounded by hard man, utterly safe.
Feeling safe was a mistake. Intellectually, she knew that. There was nothing safe about the situation at all. Hard men were gunning for Drake and, by extension, for her. Drake himself was an extremely dangerous man, not at all the kind of man you thought of as “safe.”
And yet she’d never felt safer in her life than right now, because she knew beyond a shadow of doubt that he would fight to the death for her.
There had never been anyone to defend her, ever. Her father had skipped out with all the family’s money when she was nine years old, and even before that, he hadn’t been much of a father. Her mother had been wrapped up in her father and, after his abandonment, in her own misery, with no time or thought to her daughter. There had been no aunts or uncles or cousins to form a loving layer of protection around her.
Grace had never had a protective boyfriend. Her lovers had been few and far between and the affairs never lasted more than a couple of weeks, often less. She’d been a passing fancy in their lives. By some twisted turn of fate or maybe by some twist in her psyche, the men she’d been with had been obsessed with their careers or their bank accounts, or often, both. Grace Larsen never figured very highly in their lives. She was there and then she wasn’t, and they didn’t much notice the difference.
The closest she’d felt to being special to someone had been with Harold. It had been a lovely feeling, but knowing that this charming, elderly man had her best interests at heart in the art world wasn’t the same as having someone as strong as Drake solidly on her side in all things.
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