Legendary Beast

by Barbara J. Hancock

  His face was a handsome tragedy of scars and resignation.

  “We were connected again, you and I. I felt the ruby’s power flow through us. And then it was gone,” Lev said. He stepped away from the ravine’s edge. Madeline backed away in time with his approach. When he noted her retreat, he stopped. His hands fisted as if he was dealing with some inner frustration he couldn’t help displaying. “I join you in rejecting the connection, but experiencing it and then losing it again? I find I would rather have fallen onto the rocks.”

  She didn’t reply. She couldn’t. Her lips were numb. Her body was a hollowed-out husk. When the ruby’s light had gone out, it had taken a part of her with it into the dark.

  Lev closed his eyes. He stood, stiffly, obviously holding himself together while maintaining his distance from her. He seemed to accept the necessity of their separation even as he endured the discomfort of their discord.

  Madeline swallowed. She, too, felt less now. Less herself. Less powerful. One third of a whole. But the hollow inside her chest didn’t help her to trust the white wolf. If he was part of their triumvirate, then she would walk alone.

  Lev’s eyes suddenly opened again. His chin lifted, and his body flowed easily and quickly into movement. One second he stood stiffly, and the next he burst into a running leap that took him away from her and into the trees behind them. He disappeared and Madeline let him go without protest, even though her hollowed chest might have echoed his earlier howl.

  She slumped as the tension left her body. Her sword arm fell, and the tip of the Romanov blade stabbed the ground. The sun was sinking in the sky. Its crimson glow cruelly lit up the ruby, making it wink in the dying light. She wouldn’t go on without him. They hadn’t brought any supplies with them as they’d fled, but she would set up a rough camp with whatever she could find.

  She would prepare. Either Lev or the white wolf would return, of that she was certain, and she would need to brace herself for one or the other...or both.

  * * *

  He had been fully joined with her again. He’d felt her heartbeat. He’d tasted the mountain air in her gasp, and he’d felt the river’s moisture on her skin. Madeline didn’t understand. She didn’t remember the true nature of the connection’s power. She didn’t realize all the sensations she was experiencing weren’t merely her own.

  Sweet torture, dear God, because he did.

  It wasn’t his desire for her that caused him to run into the forest. It was hers for him. He was left with no doubt that she hungered for his lips and thrilled at his hardness and longed to soothe his pain.

  But he’d also experienced her fear and distrust of his shift.

  She feared the monstrous white wolf.

  She might desire him, but her fear of the wolf overpowered and negated everything else.

  Because he and the white wolf were the same.

  Chapter 11

  Madeline hiked for a half hour before she used young evergreen saplings and several weathered fallen limbs to weave a makeshift shelter. She didn’t want to camp in the open air next to the ravine, and a buffer from the cold air coming up off the river seemed wise. There was no way to hide from the Volkhvy if they were determined to find her, but she could at least try to make it a challenge for them. She chose a level spot where fresh-cut bows could be spread for bedding. The sharp, pleasant scent of spruce sap filled the air as she worked.

  She had no blankets and only the clothes on her back, but she managed to dig a shallow fire pit with a jagged stone and kindle a fire with a piece of flint against the edge of her sword. By the time she achieved a spark, the ember she created with a bundle of dried twigs around dead spruce needles was the only light. It glowed in her hands as she nursed it hotter with gentle puffs from her lips before she placed it on the dried wood she’d already gathered. She lined the pit with more stones to absorb and radiate the tiny fire’s heat.

  Nearby, a small trickle of water came out of a rocky outcropping. The spring formed a stream flowing delicately but persistently toward the river at the bottom of the ravine. The water was icy cold and refreshing. After she drank her fill, she used it to wash the sap from her hands and face.

  Once she had done everything she could with the materials she had at hand, Madeline was forced to sit quietly as her stomach clenched with hunger and the night closed in around her. She couldn’t search for food in the dark. That would have to wait until morning. It had been a mistake to leave their packs behind in the sudden rush to escape the wolves.

  All alone in the hush of the woods, Madeline missed her charcoal pencils and sketchbook more than granola.

  But for the first time, it wasn’t the white wolf her fingers itched to draw.

  She leaned back against the makeshift evergreen bedding and closed her eyes. She could still see the flames dancing on her lids, but she also saw Lev Romanov leaping over the ravine. She imagined the scene as if she’d been watching rather than being carried in his arms. His clothes had been shredded by the incredible effort of his jump. Not only the first leap, but also every leap after that, across the disintegrating boards. She and the sword had helped him. The power the sword channeled from the Ether had been like fuel, but he’d also come as close as he could to shifting without actually becoming the white wolf.

  What had prevented him from shifting all the way?

  One day, she would sketch him as he had been at the edge of the ravine. His near shift was emblazoned behind her eyes every time they closed. But the image she remembered resulted in a very different reaction than the one she’d had to the white wolf.

  In that moment, Lev had been glorious, filled with power for heroic purpose.

  His arms had stayed tight around her. He’d taken her to solid ground before he released her. And yet, even then he’d remained in his human form. Was he human still, or had he shifted since he left her by the ravine? She hadn’t heard any distant thunder or felt the earth quaking. The Romanovs had been enhanced and changed by Queen Vasilisa. It was Ether’s energy in their very bones and blood that made the shift possible, and that power, when released, caused the world to shake.

  Madeline had seen the white wolf become a man. She could imagine the opposite transition all too well. She waited by the fire, not for the night to end, but for Lev to return to her.

  He would be back.

  She just wasn’t sure which form would appear from the dark forest around her. That she should anticipate one and dread the other was a new and sudden weakness she had to face.

  But it was Lev’s arms she could still imagine wrapped around her. It was Lev’s intense, hungry gaze she could still feel on her lips, and it was his mouth she longed to taste.

  * * *

  Madeline didn’t doze. She blamed the mesmerizing fire and exhaustion for her missing the exact moment when she was no longer alone. Only a sudden rush of cold washing over her skin stirred her. Gooseflesh rose on her arms and chest in spite of the fire, and she scrambled to her feet.

  A sliver of moon had risen. Enough to join the firelight in illuminating the glistening water and the man who leaned down to drink from the spring as she had done earlier in the evening. He’d already splashed water on his face and chest. His hair was damp, and it glistened with a golden fire-lit sheen. He held the wet, torn remains of his shirt in his hand. He must have used it to wash off with the icy water. What was left of his shredded pants hung low on his lean hips. When he turned at her approach, his eyes were unusually dark in the night shadows. The blue was hidden.

  His thoughts should be hidden, too.

  But as Madeline stepped toward the bare-chested man who silently watched her, it wasn’t only the shock of the cold water she felt. He hungrily soaked up her presence as she did his, and it wasn’t merely the track of his gaze from her head to her feet and back again that revealed his hunger for her. His heightened senses absorbed as many details of her as he could—the scent of spruce on her fingers, the nails she had torn when she’d made the fire pit, the pinch
of fatigue around her eyes.

  But her senses were suddenly heightened as well.

  The desire coiling low in her abdomen turned her to fire because it was doubled. She experienced his hunger for her as she hungered for him.

  He didn’t merely see her. He felt her—the hollow in her stomach, the ache in her heart, the physical need to touch him rising to claim her. Madeline stumbled. She halted in midstep to avoid a fall. His longing was almost too much to experience as his heat combined with hers. His ache and her need collided so powerfully, her body shook from sensory overload.

  The ruby didn’t glow. She’d left the sword back by the shelter. Firelight flickered over a dull and dead gem.

  Yet, unlike the ruby, she and Lev were very much alive.

  Lev looked at her, and she felt his desire for her burn in the pit of her belly. It joined her own to burgeon into a truth she couldn’t ignore: she wanted him. She didn’t want to simply remember the taste of his lips. She wanted to taste them again, here and now. And she couldn’t hide it from him any more than he could hide his desire to taste hers. They were connected. Somehow, in spite of the ruby’s dormancy and her rejection of its power, they were still connected.

  “I would spare you this if I could,” Lev said hoarsely. His ruined shirt fell from his fingers to land at the ground at his feet, forgotten. “No one should be tied to a monster for eternity. I feel your fear of the white wolf. It turns my soul to ice. And yet there’s fire, too.” He took up the movement she had abandoned, stepping toward her as he continued to speak, rough and low. His voice was another revelation of the raw emotions running through them both. “You look at my mouth and I feel the burn of your tongue on my lips. There is pleasure in the wanting. And pain.”

  Madeline didn’t back away. Her heartbeat raced. Her breath came in shallow gasps from lips that tingled with possibilities. The leap must have done this. The sword had come to life, and now they were sensing more than they should of each other’s thoughts and desires. The effect would fade as the glow of the ruby had faded. Surely. Eventually.

  Tonight was an anomaly.

  They were caught in an afterglow of power that bound them together, even though they were destined to part.

  She should turn away. She should go back to the fire and keep distance between them until their connection faded.

  Lev came to a stop. His body was so close to hers that the wild scent of mineral-rich spring water and rich woodsy earth and evergreen enveloped her.

  It was her scent, too.

  As if synchronized, they both breathed in and out at the same time in a shared, sensual appreciation of the natural Carpathian cologne that clung to them both.

  Neither of them closed the slight gap between their bodies. She didn’t reach for him. Lev didn’t reach for her. Her fear of the white wolf wasn’t a secret. He had seen it in her sketches, but now he must have felt it. His pause acknowledged her fear and honored it. He wouldn’t touch her. He wouldn’t give her the taste he knew she craved because he also felt her fear. It made his spine shiver and then it settled, metallic and heavy as a knot in his throat that could never seem to be swallowed away.

  “I’m afraid of the white wolf,” Madeline said. It was an unnecessary confession, but one she was compelled to make out loud. “He is savage and dangerous and more furious than any other creature I’ve ever seen.”

  Lev still didn’t move, but his powerful body trembled with the will he exerted to hold himself in place. He didn’t avoid her eyes. He met her gaze without blinking.

  “I am savage and dangerous and more furious than any other creature you’ve seen,” he whispered. It wasn’t a confession. It was a reminder. He was the wolf she feared in human form. Scarred, trembling and beautiful, but yes, savage and dangerous. They shared her fear in their throats and his fury in their chests, but lower, they shared a heat that couldn’t be ignored.

  “I know,” Madeline acknowledged.

  Their connection, however long it lasted, ensured that she couldn’t fool herself into thinking she desired an ordinary man. A legendary beast faced her. And she ached to taste him again for the first time.

  She could no longer remain still. Her hand lifted toward his face almost of its own volition. But he felt her decision and leaned toward her at the same time. His cheek met her tentative palm. Her fingers shook, tickling his skin and causing shivers of response to flow through him and through her.

  He wanted more. She wanted more. But they both enjoyed the first whisper-soft caress. Her hand wouldn’t harden against his face. It was as if she tried to reach out to touch fire, and every instinct warned her to pull away. Of course it wasn’t safe to touch him, any more than it would be safe to plunge her hand into flames.

  But she was very cold, and the heat called to her with a siren’s song she couldn’t resist.

  She caressed Lev. She explored the different textures between where his cheek was smooth and where scars roughened his skin. His beard crinkled with waves of gold against her tentative touch.

  The ruby was dead, but they were enveloped in the firelight’s warm glow in place of the ruby’s scarlet light, and the connection the sword had caused between them hadn’t fully faded away. Not yet. She wanted to play in the flames for a little while before she had to face the morning.

  His eyelids had nearly closed when she touched him. Now they lifted and his intense eyes met hers. She would get burned. It wasn’t safe to kiss a man with a savage heart. His jaw was hard beneath her fingers as she explored his beard. He was holding himself in check...barely. Just barely. The ferocity of the white wolf was a part of him. She suddenly tried to memorize how Lev looked in this moment, trembling on the second precipice that day. They were going to leap together again. And he was every wolf sketch she’d created—the howls, the hunger, the supernatural power—only as a man.

  She would remember and sketch him like this with the wolf in his eyes and her hand on his face.

  “I don’t even care that this will make it harder. All I’ve known is hard for too long. I’ll have one more kiss to last me forever,” Lev said.

  His arms came around her and pulled her against his warm, granite chest. Madeline offered no resistance. She allowed him to take her. Her soft, full breasts flattened against him and she gasped at the pleasure that arced from her tight nipples to the throbbing pulse point between her thighs.

  “One kiss,” she said on a sigh.

  She couldn’t separate where her heat ended and his began, even before his mouth descended to find hers. He quested to find her in the shadows. His open lips sought hers; his warm breath tickled her skin along her cheek. He breathed her in. Allowed her time to anticipate. There was no rush. His movements were slow and sultry. When his mouth finally settled on hers, he savored her lower lip with a suckling taste. Her knees buckled and she cried out when he teased the lip he’d suckled with his moist tongue.

  His powerful arms held her up. He didn’t let her fall. They leaped the second precipice together, risking a much more dangerous ravine than they’d risked before. What were rocks and rushing rivers to a long-lost love? One that could never be found? They were merely seeking pleasure to salve the pain.

  But, oh, to be tempted and tasted once more. Just once more.

  Madeline couldn’t breathe. He didn’t crush her too tightly. In fact, he held her so gently his hard, muscular body was an enticing contrast to the whisper-soft caress of his hands on her back. His fingers spread heat along her spine, kneading and stroking. He didn’t lift her shirt. There was cotton between his hands and her skin. And yet he still stole her breath.

  Simply standing. Simply holding her.

  He devoured her, but with tender, seeking kisses. It was his tenderness that slayed, that conquered, that made her beg for more.

  Their connection might have helped him to interpret her gasps and moans.

  But it was her bold, thrusting tongue meeting his and plunging hungrily into the hot depths of his mouth that made him g
rowl and finally, finally crush her against him. Now, as she plundered the silken hollow of his mouth, his hands pressed harder and pulled her tighter. She wrapped her arms around his neck, plunging her fingers into his damp hair and taking fistfuls of wet waves to hold him for her sensual exploration of the rough and smooth textures she sought with her tongue.

  Now Lev gasped for air. He moaned and fell back against a tree for support. He took her with him, and the tree shook as it caught them both. Madeline gloried in the idea that she had caused him to go weak in the knees. Now she leaned over him as he took her weight against him. Only the tips of her toes brushed the ground. And his chest was no longer the hardest thing about him. The front of his pants bulged with a hot, curving erection. She didn’t shy away from the results of her hungry kisses. She pressed against the bulge and cried out her approval when he helped her by lifting her bottom and encouraging her to spread her legs so that she could settle her heated core on him. They were fully clothed.

  Madeline’s hips matched the hungry movements of her thrusting tongue. No matter how badly she wanted to rip aside their clothing to match the connection they temporarily shared with their bodies, she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. But the clothing didn’t stop Lev from sensing her need. He held her bottom with one hand. He stroked between her legs with the other. He found the spot where she needed his touch the most. She cried out as he rubbed with the perfect rhythm.

  “I remember your heat. Your sweet, tight heat,” Lev moaned into her mouth between deep, sucking kisses. The heat and friction of his strong fingers pleasured her to a sudden, fierce spasm of release. Only Lev’s muscular arm kept her from dissolving to the ground as her body tensed. The arc of her orgasm carried her higher than she’d yet been that day, over and across the abyss that separated them. Then he held her, both arms coming around her as her body shook.