She looked down at them. “I couldn’t find the key for them. I found the one for my collar.”
Collar.
His eyes snapped up to her throat. Settled on the scars that ringed it.
Gods.
The thought of her collared had his blood running hot, a fierce inferno sweeping through his veins, and it birthed a dark and terrible need to return to the area where she had been held, where some sick son of a bitch had set up a stage to sell her into slavery, and track down every single person associated with that twisted business.
He wanted to hunt them.
Needed it.
“What’s your name?” Her soft voice lured him up from his black thoughts, broke them apart to allow light to shine through.
She wasn’t there now.
She was here, safe and free.
With him.
She gave him an expectant look, those blue eyes pulling him back under her spell, making him forget what she had asked.
What was it about this bewitching, beautiful hellcat that had him so on edge around her, torn between a need to move closer to her and a need to distance himself?
“You do have a name?” She canted her head, causing her messy black hair to brush her dirty cheek.
Name.
Yes. He had one.
Hadn’t he told her it already?
Fuck, maybe he hadn’t. He had been so caught up in hers, and how it fitted her so beautifully, that he had forgotten to repay her courtesy by offering his own.
“Grey,” he said.
Husked if he was being honest.
It had come out murmured and intense, filled with emotion he didn’t quite understand but he knew was dangerous.
A touch of colour rose onto her cheeks as she looked down at her soup.
It was gone a second later, her pretty face shifting to a blankness that he found he didn’t like, because he didn’t want her to hide her feelings from him.
She set the cup down.
Didn’t look at him.
“Thanks for the soup, but I need to be going now.”
Those words left him cold.
She couldn’t go.
He had only just found her.
She reached her right hand up above her to grip the black wall of the cave, plastered his t-shirt to her curves with her left arm, and pulled herself up.
Her left leg buckled beneath her.
Grey was across the short distance between them in the blink of an eye and had caught her before she hit the ground.
“That was stupid,” he muttered, fury pounding in his veins at the thought she had been so desperate to get away from him that she had hurt herself, a darkness he liked as much as the thought of her leaving.
They mingled together, blurred and had a need flaring inside him, one that demanded he make her stay.
He eased her back down, trying to ignore how the feel of her soft bare skin against his lit him up inside.
She pressed warm palms against his bare chest and shoved hard as she growled and snarled at him, flashing her short fangs.
Grey pushed back against the instincts that gripped him, the ones that told him to exert his strength on her, to bend her to his will and make her submit to him.
It took all of his willpower, but he managed to force himself to release her, the fear he could feel flowing through her giving him the strength to go through with it, because he didn’t want to hurt her.
He didn’t want to frighten her.
He rose to his feet and took a step backwards, and then pushed himself to take another, and then a third and fourth, until his back was plastered against the rough wall of the cave and he was as far from her as he could get.
It was hard.
Gods, it was hard to stand at such a distance from her when his animal side roared with need the depth of which he had never experienced before.
It shook him.
He pressed his palms against the sharp rocks behind him and clawed at them, focused on the pain to ground himself and on her.
She shook as she clawed at her meagre cover of his black t-shirt, hands trembling violently as she desperately tried to keep herself covered, her heart a wild erratic thundering in his ears.
The urge to hunt and kill those responsible for her mental anguish returned full force, had him looking towards the mouth of the cave to his right and battling the powerful need to leave, to risk losing her in order to avenge her.
But, holy hell, he wasn’t sure he would be able to go on living if he returned to find her gone.
Grey closed his eyes, ground his molars together, and clenched his hands into fists that shook as he tried to tamp down the conflicting needs that were pulling him apart, and that terrifying urge to stake a claim on her.
She stilled on his senses, her eyes searing his bare chest, but her heartbeat was off the scale and the scent of her fear grew stronger.
Because he was frightening her, standing there fighting with himself, no doubt giving her the impression he wanted to do something to her that they would both regret.
He didn’t. He wouldn’t. He was stronger than that, and he would master this need that burned inside him, this hunger that raged out of control.
Because it frightened him too.
It wasn’t him.
Gods, what terrible beast had she awoken in him?
He sharply turned away from her, sank to his knees beside his pack and rifled through its contents, pulling his shit together as he did so, slowly shutting down his feelings one by one and mastering them, bringing them back under control. As he worked on finding her something to wear, focusing on the small task of making her feel more comfortable, the hunger began to abate and finally it weakened enough that he could reclaim control.
His hands stopped shaking.
He pulled out an item of clothing, his only spare, and offered it to her without looking at her.
She snatched it from his hand.
Grey averted his face, turning it towards his right, and kept his eyes closed, ignoring that whispered voice that told him to peek at her. That wasn’t him. He wasn’t that sort of male. The voice grew louder, telling him that she belonged to him now, she just didn’t know it yet and he needed to make her know it.
He needed to make her submit.
He ground his teeth again, clenching his jaw so hard they creaked under the pressure.
It wasn’t him.
“Shorts?” She sounded horrified, but her voice was still a sweet balm to his aching heart, soothed that part of himself he was finding hard to control, a new and terrifying part that had never existed before he had set eyes on her.
He shrugged as casually as he could manage. “I figured Hell might be a bit warm for my taste.”
She huffed, and he was glad to hear and to feel that she was calming again, becoming more at ease around him.
“Done.”
He wanted to look at her, but at the same time he didn’t, because he wasn’t sure he was strong enough to fight the strange urges that came over him whenever he so much as glanced at her.
They troubled him.
They had come on so quickly, strong and fierce, gripping him hard the second she had announced she was leaving.
Had there always been this darker side of himself inside him? Did it come from the fact he had spent his entire life alone, even when he had been surrounded by people? Was it because he had been shunned at every turn, treated with contempt by the very people he had fought to protect?
Or was it something about her that had him feeling this way?
He risked a glance at her.
She sat by the small fire, the warm glow playing across the subtle curves of her face and brightening her eyes as she fidgeted with the belt on the black cargo shorts, trying to tie it tighter around her slender waist.
Gods, he had thought her beautiful as a hellcat, but she had stolen his breath and roused something fierce inside him when she had shifted back and he had seen how much more beautiful she was
in her human form.
That something had only grown fiercer as she had spoken to him, passed time with him, told him a little about her past and revealed small details about herself without saying a word.
She lifted those striking blue eyes to meet his and then quickly dropped them again, a touch of innocence about the way she did it that had his heart pounding harder, blood rushing faster.
And that need rising again.
He tamped it back down, refusing to let it control him.
He wasn’t like that. He wasn’t the sort of male that could force a female to like him.
He stared at her hands, trying to focus on something other than her face to give himself a moment to pull himself back together.
It was a mistake.
Her black nails captured his attention and stirred wicked thoughts. They were long and sharp, made for raking down his back.
He swallowed hard.
This wasn’t him.
He was a male made for protecting others, and he would be that male with her.
He would protect her from himself.
“I can get you to the nearest portal.” Those words sounded hollow in his ears and his tiger side rebelled against them, snarled and snapped, paced in his heart and filled it with an urge to do the opposite, to keep Lyra here with him instead of setting her loose.
He would protect her in the only way he could.
He would take her to the nearest portal.
And he would never see her again.
CHAPTER 6
Grey was quiet. Too quiet.
He hadn’t struck Lyra as the talkative type, more the silent and brooding one, but he had at least said a few words to her, letting her see beyond the façade he maintained so well—the one that made it hard for her to get a clear picture of him.
He had frightened her in the cave when he had gone as still as a statue, clearly battling with himself about something. She had felt things about him loud and clear then, picking up a need in him that ran deep.
A need that was about her.
For a moment, a brief flash of time, she had thought he would succumb to it, but then he had given her clothes and surprised her by giving her as much privacy as he could rather than taking her dressing as a chance to look at her body. By the time she had donned the oversized shorts and t-shirt, he had been a different male, whatever urges that had come over him erased and gone.
Or at least suppressed.
Since they had left the cave over an hour ago, he hadn’t said a word.
Whenever she failed to contain a gasp or sharp intake of breath when her leg ached, he would glance at her, his ice-blue eyes asking whether she was alright, but he wouldn’t say a word. As soon as he saw she was fine, he went back to staring straight ahead, leading the way over the mountain.
He helped her from time to time, pulling her up steep rocks or assisting her down tricky sections of the narrow path where she might fall because of her leg.
Silent all the time.
Hell, it bothered her.
It shouldn’t, but for some reason, it did.
It struck her that she wanted to hear him speak, needed to be able to speak with him in return, because she was beginning to feel as if she was marching again, chained in a line with the other slaves. No one had said a word then, not even the bastards in charge of the procession. Every march had been done in silence, only the jangling chains breaking the quiet.
Like the chains that dangled from her heavy cuffs and clinked with each step she took.
Her throat tightened.
Pulse accelerated.
She stopped and squeezed her eyes shut against the onslaught of images, memories of the marches that blurred together, and then the cages, locked in them every time the group had rested at one of the camps.
She swallowed hard, lowered her head and clenched her fingers into tight trembling fists at her sides.
She wasn’t there now.
She wasn’t marching with other slaves, she was striding towards her freedom.
No. She was already free.
“Lyra?” Grey whispered, and she became aware of how close he was to her, his warmth surrounding her and that soothing but enticing scent of woods and earth, and summer rain filling her senses.
She shook her head, but she couldn’t find her voice to tell him that she was fine and he didn’t have to worry about her.
She felt the air shift, felt his need to touch her shoulder and his hand coming close to her, and then he stepped back instead, leaving her strangely cold inside and aching for him to have chosen the other route, the one where he would have placed his strong, large hand on her and held her.
Damn, this whole situation had messed her up.
She didn’t need a male. She didn’t want one. She certainly couldn’t bring herself to trust one again after what had happened to her.
Could she?
She opened her eyes and slowly lifted her head, skimming her gaze over Grey’s heavy black leather boots, up those long powerful legs encased in black fatigues, and across the delicious and tempting display of tight eight-pack abdominals and the broad slabs of his pectorals, to the strong line of his neck and his handsome face, with enticing full lips and those entrancing blue eyes.
Gods, she wanted to trust him.
But she couldn’t.
She didn’t need a male.
She had finally learned the lesson her mother and aunt had tried to teach her, first-hand experience driving it home that she couldn’t trust males. They wanted to subjugate her kind, wanted to turn her into a breeder for them, a slave to their every whim.
That wasn’t the life for her.
She was happy with the one she had forged for herself in her mountain home, far from the heat of Hell, a solitary existence that suited her and she loved.
“I’m fine now,” she murmured, lost in those glacial blue eyes that reminded her so much of home. “I just… the quiet… the walking… it made me think of… back then… when I was… caught… and whenever we moved location.”
His handsome face darkened, a storm gathering in his eyes, causing them to glow bright blue around his pupils, and then he drew down a slow breath and exhaled, and somehow pushed out all of the darkness with it.
Or pushed it all down inside him where it would continue to build until it became too much for him to contain.
“We can talk,” he said, and looked off to his left, down the steep path that wove down the side of the mountain to the valley below. He pointed to a place halfway across the valley basin. “It’s still a long walk to the village and another day to the portal from there. We can rest at the village… or here… if you’re tired.”
He struck her as a male who was always aware of others and their needs, and that tugged at the curious side of her.
“The village is fine,” she said, mostly because she wanted as much distance as possible between her and the slave camp, and she was aware it was still close, too close for comfort.
He started walking again, adjusting the pack on his back as he traversed a steep section of path.
He had good footing. Was he used to scaling mountains? The way he moved said that he was, and that he had spent a lot of time around mountains and knew the pitfalls to look for and how to move along the paths without causing any landslips.
It struck another chord in her, one that resonated and soothed her, and increased the small part of her that felt she could trust him.
“So, do you often come to Hell on your vacations?” She wasn’t sure why she had felt the need to ask him that in such a teasing manner. It was strange, completely the opposite of her usual straightforward manner.
Something about him made her want to tease him though.
Or was it something about her?
She wanted to feel more comfortable around him, and wanted him to feel comfortable around her. She wanted to feel closer to him, and not only because whenever she felt close to him the hell of her captivity felt further away, as i
f it was already a distant memory.
He laughed.
Sweet gods, it was warm and rich, sent a pleasant hot shiver down her spine and heated her skin.
“No. It’s my first time.” He glanced over his shoulder at her, the smile that tugged at his lips tugging at a part of her too. “I’m trying to help out my brother.”
“You have a brother?”
He nodded. “Two… but I’m not talking to one of them right now. I have a little sister too. Shit, she’s all grown up now though, off falling in love and finding her mate. The brother I’m here for, he did the same damn thing. Ran right into his fated one the night he escaped captivity.”
She stilled. “He was a captive?”
Grey stopped, turned back to her and nodded again. “Talon is strong though… a little like you. He’s shaking it off and getting on with his life now. I think having Sherry in it has helped him a lot… but he saw stuff in the place where he was held and it’s bugging him.”
“So you said you would look into it for him.” She stared at him as he rolled his shoulders in a casual shrug, as if the fact that he had come to Hell, to a place foreign and dangerous to him, for the sake of his brother was nothing.
“Can’t let curiosity kill that cat, I’m afraid. He’s my brother.”
He was more than that. She could see it in his eyes, in the love they held. They had lit up the moment he had started talking about his family. He loved them dearly, even the brother he apparently hated.
He was literally going to Hell and back for one of them.
Grey turned away from her and started walking again. “Since I had nothing keeping me at the pride anymore, I figured I would do a little travelling, and here I am.”
It was more than that.
She felt it in his words, in the meaning locked within them, and in him as he moved away from her. He was struggling. He was trying to act casual, to let something roll off his broad shoulders and not affect him, but it was. It was bothering him. Weighing him down.
He had nothing keeping him at the pride anymore.
The truth was, he didn’t want to be there.
He figured he would do a little travelling.
He was looking for the place where he wanted to be.
Treasured by a Tiger Page 6
