With the cat out of sight, Lily practically bounced on her toes. “Wow. That was incredible! That was just…amazing! I’ve never done anything like it, not even petting zoo style. Did you see what he let us do?” Now that it was gone, giddiness made her voice pitch high.
He reached out for her. “Come. I promised you the stars tonight.”
She pressed her hand into his without a qualm or a twinge of fear. She didn’t even have the attention to give it a second thought. “Have you done that before?” she asked. Joaquin had been so relaxed about it. He had to have known the effect he would have on the animal.
“In a manner of speaking. In many ways, I am like the wild animals.”
“In what ways?” she asked, overwhelmed with curiosity and the stolen pleasure of experiencing the cougar up close.
“Some day, I will tell you.” His tugs were gentle, keeping her close to him.
She caught fleeting glimpses of his smile as they walked and knew he’d enjoyed the mountain lion as well. Joaquin was unlike many of the men she knew, and worlds apart from the men she’d spent the last three years despising. He never hid his intentions around her; every move was a deliberate action. Like the gentle touch to her face. She’d known what he was going to do, even when her nerves screamed to run because she feared what her past had taught her to expect. He was the unexpected. She didn’t know when it had happened, but she was walking with him, her hand curled through his, relaxed, enjoying the darkness, a moment stolen out of time. She looked up, wondering how much further the clearing was he had told her about, when she realized, with the cougar, they must have been outside a lot longer than she’d guessed.
Watching where she was going once more, her hand in his, she asked him, “Why is it taking so long to get to the spot?” She wasn’t sure how long they had been walking, but it did seem they’d been out long enough to at least reach the garage. She thought she knew where it was in comparison to the house. Or thought she did. Now, she wasn’t so sure.
“My duty is to search the grounds every night for any signs of problems.”
“Have there been any problems?” She searched the shadows with him, instantly becoming more attentive, but couldn’t see more than a few feet into their thickest, no matter how hard she tried.
“No. I want to ensure that doesn’t change.” The pressure on her hand became a gentle squeeze. “Have no fear, lovely. We’re almost there.”
A few minutes later, she spotted the outline of the large frame garage where the bus and two of the cars used for general purposes were kept to her left. Beyond the garage and the drive winding through the trees to access it and the house, she spotted a sprawling clearing.
“Through there?” she asked, pointing. She hadn’t been outside and had no idea what the terrain looked like. This was all new to her.
He nodded and led her across to stand in the middle of the clearing where the trees literally opened up as if throwing their limbs wide to show off the night sky. Trees stood as clumped sentinels around the large clearing while late fall blooms lay lost in the weave and wave of the lush grasses.
This time, her awe was no less inspired, but certainly more reverent. Stars were tossed far and wide across the night sky. Black velvet sparkling with a timeless glitter.
“Beautiful,” she breathed, turning a slow circle to take it all in with her head angled up to see every twinkle, every shining diamond. “I can’t remember the last time I saw so many.”
“You should see them every night,” he told her. “You deserve every night, forever.”
Chapter Seven
Vibrant red hair swayed against her back as she tipped skyward to bask in the pearlescent shimmer of the night sky. Joaquin had never encountered anything as enchanting as her absolute enjoyment in these reawakening discoveries. The luminous glow of her skin bore the radiance of the stars she admired while her lips parted in wonderment, lost in the delight of the moment. Like the joy of a young child, her every expression and breath were innocent, entranced by the multitude of timeless stars and their brilliance.
For him, they held not even a little interest when he could watch her like this. Her hand slid from his so she could turn in slow circles, to find the wide open sky above the tips of the trees in the distance.
“That’s beautiful!” she breathed, awed. His gaze followed hers. The peaks of the mountains cut like giant carved arrow points into the sky. They were several miles away, yet couldn’t compare to her as she stood under the stars’ warmth. “Almost like you could reach out and touch them.” Filled with a quiet admiration, she continued to spin in small increments to take it all in.
He took an intentional step to create space between them before he followed through on his impulse and reached out for her. He knew how hard it was for her to have physical contact—he felt the tremors of fear every time he held her hand within his own. He still craved to feel her in his hold regardless, to caress the silken smoothness of her cheek, to find the alluring delicacy of her scent flowing through her hair, or her taste on his tongue.
He was aware enough to know what it was he ultimately longed for from her. A kiss. A kiss unlike any he’d tasted in centuries, unlike any he’d hungered for in his endless life. Desire, as a man desired for a woman.
There was no explanation, and he had no right to these new feelings. She was wounded. He was a walking wraith, no more than the shadows filling the boundaries of the clearing where they stood. He had no right to feel this desire, but not having the right didn’t sway his hunger for her, either.
There had been no one since Angelica’s death. There had been no one who had stirred his needs, made him burn with her nearness.
Yet, Lily did. He’d been drawn to her since the first sound of her voice. Not even Diego’s attacks had deterred him. Now, he awoke every sunset seeking her, needing to hear her voice, to feel the beat of her heart through the bond they shared. A bond he still had no explanation for. Every touch of their minds made it stronger, brought him closer.
He watched her now as she marveled at the clear breadth of the sky, or the way she sought to simply soak up the raw majesty of the mountains in the distance. Red hair shimmered in the moonlight with hints of gold and russet as it tumbled down her spine. She wore a plain black sweatshirt and jeans, the sweatshirt making the moon glow and stars lighten her features even more.
“I never thought I’d see this again,” she said without inflection, a cool, emotionless voice. It hid the reality of her feelings on the surface, or so she thought. There was no hiding from him. Not any longer.
Her tawny eyes drifted closed. “You’ve given me so much tonight.” When they opened again, she faced him, pushing her fingers into the front pockets of her jeans. “I can be the woman I am, starting tonight. I can see it now, I can see me. I can’t remember when I wasn’t terrified of everything, of every single touch. I don’t want to be like that any longer. I want to be me.”
He hated hearing the anguish in her words, her innocence savagely stripped in a way she never should have known. He stepped forward until there were only a few thin inches between them.
She raised her chin, allowing her gaze to rove over his entire face. Reaching out, she found one of his hands and held it cupped within hers. A shiver of awareness slid up his arm to curve over his shoulders until the hunger he’d been battling settled at the base of his neck. For a man who rarely felt any temperature other than what he created for himself, he felt flushed.
“This. Even this was impossible for me.”
“What do you feel?” He knew what he was feeling, but refused to let her know what her innocent discoveries were doing to him.
“I don’t feel fear. I don’t feel disgust. I feel…” The tawny orbs of her eyes found his once more and he wanted to fall into them. He’d never hated his not-living state as much as he did in that moment. “I feel kindness. I feel concern. I feel friendship.” Glancing down when she did, her thumb stroked him, as if cataloguing the unique texture
s of their combined touch. “I feel, Joaquin,” she finally said in a low voice, her eyes locked on their joined hands. “That is an incredible gift, and because of you, I am strong enough to embrace it again. Because of what you have shown me, what Tani and Diego and Houston have shown me, I can move forward again.”
She was killing him, so slowly, so wonderfully. Without thinking about what he was doing, he cupped her cheek again with his free hand and luminous watchful eyes shot up to his.
He knew without asking this time what she felt. There was surprise—it was in her gaze. There was a hint of wariness in the rapid pants slipping between her parted lips, but the outright fear and terror he had witnessed on the nights before had faded into a place where she could either control it, or dismiss it.
The gentle sway of the breeze through the trees created a timeless music. Chirps of the nighttime insects filled the swollen silence between them, the two of them lost for a breathless moment.
Creamy skin slid beneath his thumb when he grazed her cheek, the same as she had done to his hand. “You’re incredible. Beautiful.” The words were no less of a caress than his touch.
She blinked, breaking the connection, dropping those spell-spinning eyes to look down once more. “I’m not beautiful. I’m a wreck, Joaquin.”
“You’re wrong. I see courage and that makes you beautiful to me.” Holding her chin firmly, he raised her, making it impossible for her to avoid his gaze.
“I’m scarred,” she stated coldly, twisting out of his hand to expose them. Anger glittered now in her eyes. Anger and pain brightened by a thin veil of tears. He wanted to annihilate the men who’d caused those tears with an intensity that shocked him.
With a subtle touch, he traced the myriad of thin lines crisscrossing her jaw and down her neck with the tips of his fingers until he stopped at the top of her collar, right over her pulse. She didn’t move at all. If it had been possible, he knew he would have felt dizzy, touching the delicious pounding of her heartbeat beneath his fingers. There wasn’t an actual hunger prodding him. That had been relieved as soon as he’d awakened. Touching her now, right there in this secret moment stolen out of life, created something deeper within him, clawing at him to discover this new treasure. To make them complete.
He yanked his attention to the moment. He had vowed to Diego as part of his tentative allegiance to never take from her. He would never jeopardize his salvation, or hers. “I knew they were there, lovely. They matter little to me.”
She jerked away from his touch, but held his hand still in her own, gripping it painfully in emphasis, turning to avoid his stare. “I’m like this everywhere, Joaquin. There isn’t a part of me that isn’t scarred.”
“Do you really think they are all I see when I look at you?” he chastised her gently. Sliding his fingers into the wealth of her hair, he stopped her retreat. “I see them as much as I see the burning red of your hair, or the brightness in your eyes. They are nothing to fixate on, no more important to me than your own fingers.” He purposely caressed and curled around the hand holding his until she relaxed. “If I were covered with scars from my life, would it make me a different person than the one who is here now?”
“No!” She was quick to deny it, whipping up to pierce him with her total conviction.
“Then why do yours control who you are?”
Lashes lowered, hiding her thoughts.
He tilted her face again when her answer never came. “Lily, they don’t. They do not make you the person you are. Their meaning would have been no different than if I’d been dragged by the horses I trained.”
If her face could pale more in the bright starlight, it did. The heat and anger coursing through her blanched her features until the depth of pain she lived with daily was nothing but a glitter of hard diamonds reflected in her eyes. The first wave of her memories almost knocked him off his feet when the sudden release of the vile atrocities poured free of her restraints.
“I was belted down and sliced, Joaquin. Chained and whipped.” Black rage made her snarled words sharp, savage, cutting through the night like the emotional dagger they were meant to be. “I was raped, too many times to count. Needles, belts, knives, fists.” She ripped her head up, dislodging his hand completely, her mouth a twisted slash against the whiteness of her skin. “That is how they happened. I was a prisoner. A lab rat.”
“All because of this! Because I can talk to you with my mind.”
“I think that makes it a hell of lot worse than anything else concocted on this planet. I was forced to endure, not by accident.” A heavy silence fell with her rage, vibrating around them like a mirage heat wave in the air.
“That is what they freed you from?” Joaquin found he could barely speak, his entire being locked in shock under the weight of her truth. He stood, frozen, overwhelmed by the avalanche of her tortures.
His anger ripened as her pain, her assaults, crashed into him with no barriers, with no walls of preservation keeping her memories behind locked doors where she had been hiding them. Like the opening of Pandora’s box, everything surrounded him with a sudden impact without warning, without surcease. Images of blood, waves of screams that shook his mental stability. Every instance of pain was replayed in detail, every moment freed for him to witness with the steel control she’d wielded completely stripped. Tortures Joaquin hadn’t even thought still existed had been used on the woman before him. And she carried those memories with her every day.
“That, and more. So much more.” She whimpered, beaten once more from the inside out.
His life was forever changed because of what she’d held so deeply inside. He’d never had a clue, respecting Diego’s wishes to not pry, and not delving where he felt Lily wouldn’t appreciate the invasion. Being right wasn’t helping soothe his inability to strike out at those who had hurt her so savagely, when even he had never guessed the depths of her pains, hadn’t even been close to knowing the agony she’d lived through, lived with. And he felt powerless to help her in the way she needed to heal. There was no way he could avoid the boil of her fury as it rose up, suddenly free of her constraints, or the rise of his own anger with her explanation sitting like a giant venomous snake between them, ready to strike either of them. Now he knew why Diego had insisted their privacy be kept. Horrors like these demanded retribution. A punishment he would gladly pay back for her.
He’d been so focused on his own liberation, on his own goals, he’d arrogantly dismissed the kind of hell she’d seen. Helping her heal was one way he could help her. He wouldn’t stop offering his support, but the fact remained, it was a selfish means to an end. Now, when he knew the truth, he wanted to destroy those who had laid even one finger on her. The urge to find each and every one and slowly torture them for the cruelties she’d suffered made the retribution to the force that had attacked the cabin a simple night of practice. Now he knew what it was that tortured her every waking and sleeping moment, what he’d felt those nights when he was too far away to do more than give her his strength. A resurgence of a pain no person, man or woman, should ever be made to endure.
Slowly, she slackened, her hand gentling where she clutched him. He hadn’t even noticed the bite of her nails slicing into his skin with the pulsating flood of emotion surrounding them, shackling them together within the nightmare of her past. Lifting her free hand, she pressed it flat to his chest as though supporting herself against his frame, too tired to stand alone. Or maybe to push him away, but there wasn’t any force in it.
Without another word, he slipped his fingers into her hair again, releasing her hand to embrace her shoulders, tugging her into his body without an ounce of strength, the need subliminal. She didn’t resist his gentle urging. Her weight cradled willingly against his chest with her cheek pressed to him. He gave thanks she hadn’t looked up at him again. There was little doubt the fire of his anger was blazing in his gaze. It nearly consumed him, yet his hold was nothing less than tender, protective. Not a hint of his emotional battle was re
vealed in his stance, in his touch. If she had any idea how much he was hiding, she wouldn’t have been so acquiescent in his hold.
Several moments passed with her curved into his body, her heat rolling over him, and he soaked it up as though his body thirsted for it. Another new sensation he only wished he had the time to examine. He didn’t. Battling the influx of angers—his and hers—made it difficult to separate anything other than the immediate moment before him.
“You are stronger, Lily,” he affirmed in a raw whisper over her head. “You know you are free. Time. That is all you need.” With effort, he pushed away his own rages. There was little he could do about them. The important person stood like a gift within his embrace, seeking solace as much as he wanted to give it.
Dipping down, he pressed a single kiss to the crown of her head in comfort, freezing as soon as he touched her. A second of time raked over him, chilling him with the liberty he had taken. She said nothing, didn’t flinch, didn’t move. Painstakingly, he searched her thoughts and felt no paralyzing fear, no fury like what he’d experienced through her. She was relaxed, drifting through the moment.
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