“Better?” Addy asked quietly.
He kissed the top of her head. How did she do this to him? “Yes.”
She straightened the front of his shirt, her touch as soft as her voice. “Cole taught me that, too. When I first got home, I had such nightmares and they’d stay with me during the day.” Her gaze skirted his. “I used to think I could hide from them.”
He understood that. He tipped her chin up, needing to see her eyes. “And?”
Her smile shook with the strength of the memory. “Cole would find me wherever I was, take me in his arms, and then he’d just hug me until the demons went away.”
Like she’d found him. “Guess that means I’ll have to try harder to be civil to his ass in the future.”
She sniffed and traced a pattern in his chest hair. “I’d appreciate it.”
They stood that way for a few minutes longer. He holding her, she holding him, the two of them together, building their own world amid the backdrop of the gurgling stream and the singing birds. Their own strength. His beast rumbled its contentment. Turning his head, Isaiah pressed a kiss to her hair. His sweets.
Gradually tension slipped into Addy’s muscles. Her hand flattened against his chest. Her scent changed. He held her, waiting for whatever it was.
“Were there other women Reapers?”
She was jealous.
“Everyone taken was male.”
Her fingers rubbed against his shoulder. “But you had women.”
He kept his arms around her, battling the growing tension in her the only way he knew. “Women were forbidden to us.”
She rested her forehead against his chest. “Blade says Reapers are very attractive to human women.”
“Blade says too damn much.”
She went silent, but the tension grew. He wanted the peace back.
“What are you asking me, Addy?”
“You know.”
Son of a bitch. “No, I don’t. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t guess well.”
The rubbing stopped. So did her breathing. He waited. So did his beast. Finally she turned her face to the side and whispered, “I fell into your bed so easily. Was I just one in a long line of women falling there?”
How was he supposed to answer that and keep his pride? Tell her she was the third woman with whom he’d had sex and the only one to whom he’d made love? Did he really want to look that much of a fool?
“Hesitation is never good.” She tried to take a step back. He didn’t allow it. They’d come too far together for running away. And worrying about his pride, he realized.
“Yeah, but probably not for the reasons you’re imagining.” The broken breath might have been a sob. Hell, he wasn’t interested in other women. What was the point of faking it?
“We were forbidden contact with women.”
“But you were with me.”
“Yes.”
He could actually feel the blush heating her cheeks. “You knew what to do with me.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve probably been with a hundred women.”
“No.”
“Fifty?”
“No.”
She cut him a glance from beneath her lashes. “Ten?”
“Goddamn it.” She jumped. He gritted his teeth. “Before you, I had two women, and they used their mouths.”
Naturally, she looked up then. A mixture of shock, relief, and—son of a bitch—fascination filled her expression. “I could use my mouth?”
Ah, hell. His cock went hard in a rush. Fisting his fingers in her hair, he lifted her mouth to his, kissing her hard and deep before admitting, “Anytime you want.”
He expected her to back off. Her gaze didn’t leave his as he straightened. Little by little, the tension within her lessened. A small smile hovered on her lips.
“You were a virgin.”
Shit. This time he was the one to let go and she was the one to hang on.
“So were you,” he growled.
Her smile broadened, with pleasure, he realized. “Yes, I was.”
He let her pull him back. “You didn’t seem to mind.”
She grabbed his hand and tucked it around her back. “I didn’t think it could have been more special, but I was wrong.”
She wasn’t disappointed. He went back to hugging her. “But?”
“Knowing I’m the only one who knows you that way.” She snuggled closer and kissed his chest. “That just makes it perfect.”
Yeah, it did. Holding her mouth to his skin, he hummed his agreement. “It was perfect.”
She gave a nip that set his senses aflame. “Are you talking about my jealousy, or the first time we made love?”
He smiled. “Both.”
“I should warn you that I’m not very calm about you being with anyone else.”
“Good, then you’ll understand when I tell you I don’t like you being friendly with Blade?”
“Blade? But he’s harmless.”
He stored that away to tell Blade. Sometime when he was being more arrogant than usual. “Harmless or not, the beast wants to rip his heart out when you smile at him.”
She blinked and leaned back. “That’s pretty violent.”
“It’s always violent.”
“I don’t think my beast is as mean as yours.”
“Maybe.” But he’d never heard of a kind and benevolent beast. “Or maybe it just hasn’t made itself known.”
She frowned at him. “Maybe I have a nice beast.”
He didn’t have the heart to take the delusion away from her.
She pursed her lips. “I think I’ll call it Jessica.”
She was going to give her beast a name?
“What do you call yours?”
“The beast.”
Leaning back against his hands, she shook her head at him. “You haven’t even tried to get along with it, have you?”
She had no idea what she was talking about. “Not really.”
“No wonder you’re fighting all the time.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it fighting. More of an armed truce that kept falling apart.”
“What happens when it falls apart?”
“If the beast wins, then I change.”
“That’s the only time you change?”
“Yes. High emotions seem to give it the upper hand.”
“Can you control it?”
“To some degree.”
She frowned at him. “Show me.”
“I’m not a damn side show.”
“I never thought you were, but it’s only logical that I’m curious. You say I’m changed. I need to know what that means.”
“I can only change when I’m mad.”
“You can’t control it?”
“I told you no.”
“Then how, I mean why . . .” She pushed her hair out of her face. “Why did they even create you?”
“To kill.”
“Who?”
“Whomever they wanted dead.”
“If you can’t change at will, how could they even know you could do what they wanted? I mean—”
“The beast likes to kill.”
She blinked. “Oh.”
“Exactly.”
Isaiah couldn’t blame Addy for her withdrawal. He couldn’t blame her for her questions. He just didn’t have the answers she required.
Blade’s soft call slid beneath the breeze, rustling the leaves.
Addy turned her head and listened. “Blade’s calling.”
“You’ve definitely got Reaper ears.”
She touched her ear. “I do?”
Nodding, he motioned toward the campsite. “A human would never have heard that.”
Stepping back, he held out his hand. Water dripped from his hair in a cold trickle down his back as she took his hand in hers and turned it over. She ran her index finger down the center to his wrist, coming to a halt at his pulse. She held it there a second before meeting his gaze with hers.
&nbs
p; “Your hands were shredded.”
“Excuse me?”
She licked her lips. “I didn’t wake up until yesterday. A lot of the damage had healed. It looked weird,” she told him, as if he didn’t know. “Like open wounds without the blood.”
He knew that stage. It wasn’t something he’d ever wanted her to witness. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want you to understand something.” Squeezing his hand, she whispered, “I watched you become whole again after I thought I’d lost you. It was a miracle.” Stretching her hand flat over his, she pressed the other against the back, balancing him in the heat and strength of her touch. “Even though this doesn’t feel real to me, and if I hadn’t seen that, I’d be telling you now that you’re insane—”
“I am.”
She shook her head. “No! Awful things were done to you and maybe like the men who came back from the War, some of the memories stay and haunt you, but you’re not crazy.”
“You don’t know what goes on inside my head.”
“You’re not in mine.”
She let go of his hand. Again, he expected her to step back. And again she didn’t. “My beast likes yours.”
He blinked.
“And I like you, and I’m sure if there ever comes a time when this seems real, I’m going to be very mad at someone. But right now, I can’t see it as all bad. The beast brought you back to me.”
She smiled and stood on tiptoe to kiss him softly. “And for the first time in thirteen years, I don’t miss my worry stone.”
As her lips met his, he thought with satisfaction, Because you have me.
18
WHEN THEY GOT BACK TO THE CAMPSITE, BLADE WAS nowhere in sight. The hairs on the back of Addy’s neck stood on end even before Isaiah held up a hand for caution. She looked around, saw nothing out of the ordinary, but still she knew, just knew, something was amiss. Where was Blade? Deep inside there was a stirring, the feeling of something evil coming to life. Her beast? This wasn’t the time for them to be introduced. She took a step backward, against a tree. The breeze kicked up. With it came the scent of blood and . . . others. Something had happened to Blade.
Isaiah caught her arm and yanked her to him. Pressing a hard kiss on her lips, he shoved her back the way they’d come. “Run.”
She went as quickly and as quietly as she could, her heart thundering in her ears, her breath catching in her chest. Reapers. Reapers were here. Images of giant wolves with bloody jaws drove her forward. No. Dear Lord, no. Run! They needed to run.
She stumbled as something unfurled inside, stretching and coming to life. Something alien and new brushed her awareness. She leaned against the tree, gasping for breath.
“Isaiah?” She turned around, expecting him to be right there. He wasn’t. He’d told her to run. And like a coward, she had. But he’d stayed and fought. For her. From inside, there came a whisper. Isaiah.
Another brush along her mind. Her beast? She waited for the violence that Isaiah said went hand and hand with the beast, but all she felt was a sharpening of her senses. Isaiah had stayed behind to fight the Reapers. She had to go back.
That something inside growled.
No.
She had to either go backward or go forward. Ahead was a fork in the trail. The branch to the right went to the lake. She knew there were no Reapers at the lake. They’d just come from there. She started down that trail.
The No was sharp and immediate. She was stopped so fast, she lost her balance. When she tried to continue, she couldn’t. In her mind the beast paced impatiently. No.
She reached for her worry stone, forgetting it wasn’t there. Fear pushed her toward the lake. The beast pushed her up the mountain. Her hand slipped through her shredded pocket, finding nothing but air. What should she do?
Normally the question would have paralyzed her while she struggled with a decision, but this time there was an answer. A mental push to go up.
“All right,” she whispered, “I’m going.”
The beast grumbled its satisfaction with her obedience. Her skirts tangled around her legs, slowing her down. She had a mental image from her beast of tearing them off.
“No.” She couldn’t go naked, she just couldn’t. Her beast was quite ruthless in its logic. It didn’t speak in words, but she definitely got the impression that if she couldn’t move freely, she would be dead. The beast was very good with images and emotions.
She couldn’t do it. “I’m sorry.”
The beast snarled its displeasure.
It was easier to climb the mountain than it should have been. Her legs seemed to eat up the distance with unnatural speed. The waist of her skirt cut into her skin. Her blouse was too tight at the neck, too binding at the wrists, irritating at her shoulders. Her hands and toes tingled. An ache grew in her gums. Her muscles twitched until she couldn’t stand it. Ducking into the shadows of a pine tree, she took off her blouse, her skirt, and her petticoats, leaving on just her camisole and pantaloons. The beast wanted them gone, too, but she couldn’t take them off.
“Twenty-some years of modesty don’t disappear just because one develops a beast,” she informed the disgruntled being in a harsh whisper as she balled up the clothes.
She stepped back onto the trail. An image of the clothes falling over the ledge flooded her mind. She looked at the bundle in her hand. The beast growled a warning. The clothes would leave a scent. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Stepping carefully, she made her way off the trail and hurled them over the edge. They didn’t go out as far she wanted. One of the petticoats caught on a rock a few feet down, but the rest floated to the ground far below. She turned away. The beast growled.
“Oh my God, you are a nag.”
Finding a long stick, she lay down and, reaching over the edge, poked the petticoat free. It floated down with the rest.
“Happy now?”
The beast didn’t answer. She tightened her grip on the stick, squeezing tightly to still the panic. She didn’t have a gun. She didn’t have Cole, or her other cousins. She didn’t have Isaiah. She’d learned how to survive captivity. She knew how to survive rumors and speculation. She didn’t know how to survive being hunted by Reapers. She listened. There was nothing anywhere. Even the birds had stopped singing. She hefted the stick. They knew what she knew. Death was about.
She searched inside for the beast. There was no sensation of anything other than her own fears, her own insecurities, her own doubts. Tightening her grip on the stick, she borrowed one of Isaiah’s favorite curses. “Shit. You picked a lousy time to go silent.”
She continued going up because it was only logical and that was the direction the beast wanted her to go. Of course, that might mean she was attributing a level of intelligence to the beast that might not be there, but then again, it had told her to throw her clothes away. So it had to think about something. Even if it wasn’t talking about it.
The trail up took a turn to the right. She followed it. Like a lamb to the slaughter, she thought. It ended at an outcropping. She crept to the edge and looked down. It took her a minute to get her bearings, but below, she realized, was the campsite. The rocks that looked so imposing down there were insubstantial from here. She could see the pond. She could see the trail leading away from the lean-to. She pressed her hands flat on the rock. She could see trouble.
Three wolves wove through the trees. From the trajectory of their path, they’d come from the pond. She gave her beast—no wolf she realized watching the Reapers coming up the path—a mental pat. Had she been at the stream, they surely would have captured her. They stopped at the fork of the trail. Two looked up. She didn’t move, didn’t breathe while they appeared to communicate with each other. As one, they continued forward.
She rested her head against the hard rock. They knew where she was, they just weren’t interested in her right now. The wolf/beast growled. Her head snapped up. Isaiah! They were hunting Isaiah. She dug her nails into the ground. Rock, she realize
d as they grated loudly. She was digging her nails into rock. When she looked down, her hands were not her own. Instead of the small, pink, carefully tended nails she was used to seeing, she had round, wicked-looking claws that stretched from hands still feminine but larger, and more sinewy. Claws strong enough to gouge into shale.
Panic seared through her. She reached for her worry stone. It wasn’t fair, but her beast was calm, confident, ready to fight.
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
Her beast snarled and scented the wind. Isaiah. She was looking for Isaiah. So were the Reapers below, she realized. Three against one. Those weren’t good odds. Isaiah was a good fighter, but maybe they were, too. Her beast snarled again and urged her away from the edge. She resisted the overwhelming urge, studying the ground below, making a mental map of the area. The beast tugged at her.
“Hush,” she whispered. “We might need to know this.”
Surprisingly, she thought she felt a sense of agreement. She stood, brushing the dirt from her hands. Her claws clacked together. Inside, horror and panic began. What was she becoming? A primitive thought broke into her panic as she studied the wicked curves.
Weapons.
She held up her hands and looked at them with new eyes. The claws were a good two and a half inches long, thick and strong. They would do damage. Some of that sense of helpless panic left. She turned her hand over. In some ways, they were even better than knives. She couldn’t drop them.
The beast growled her approval, or impatience, Addy wasn’t sure. But she agreed. They had to get moving. The wolves below thought she was hiding up here. Thought they could get to her at their leisure. They thought wrong. She curled her claws into her palms. The days when she waited for rescue were gone. She started back down the trail. A No flashed into her mind so strongly, it was like walking into a wall. She began to get a sense of why Isaiah was so frustrated with his beast. If they always worked off reaction rather than forethought, it could be a problem.
Inside her shoes, her toes ached and her gums continued to itch. More change? She looked at her hands and looked at her feet. There was no way she could sprout claws on her feet inside her shoes, but if she went barefoot, they’d be torn up.
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