Saved by a Bear (Legends of Black Salmon Falls Book 2)

by Lauren Lively

  “I’m going for a walk.” She didn’t look back.

  She didn’t go straight up the hill. That would be too obvious. She walked along the base of the Divide until a pile of rocks hid her from her friends’ view. Then and only then did she veer off and strike out for the mountain.

  The farther she walked, the faster her heart beat. The physical exertion of climbing the slope didn’t faze her at all. She’d run up steeper mountains than this many times, but the memory of Piwaka kept her moving with a shiver of excitement. Would she meet him again somewhere between the trees?

  What was she doing, coming up here to look for him like a giddy schoolgirl? Maybe he didn’t feel the same way about her. Maybe he didn’t think about her at all. He might laugh in her face if he met her coming to look for him.

  She shook those doubts out of her head. She couldn’t rest until she found out for certain if her fevered vision had any basis in reality. Had she imagined the magnetic charge passing between them? Was he something special, something she’d searched for her whole life and only just wakened to find, or was he just a charming man with a persuasive way of talking to people? She had to find out. She wouldn’t go back until she put this demon to rest. If he laughed her down the mountain, at least she’d know she imagined the whole thing.

  She came back to the same tree, but she didn’t climb it. She ought to go back before he spotted her. She walked away from the tree, but she didn’t go down the mountain. She headed for the big rock where the Avitras pitched their camp. A ways down the hill from the rock, she scaled another tree. To her surprise, not one Avitras remained on the rock. It was completely deserted. The Avitras had retreated into their own territory. There would be no negotiation with them for a long time, if ever.

  Her heart pounded in her head. What would the other Alphas do when they found out? She swung around the tree trunk to climb down, but at that moment, a gust of wind shook the treetop. The trunk swayed, and a winged creature swooped at Aimee’s face. She threw up her arm to protect herself, but when she looked again, she found Piwaka balanced on the branch in front of her. “Were you looking for me?”

  Aimee stared at him. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to find out if you were looking for me,” he replied.

  She pointed toward the rock. “There’s no one here. I thought you were gone. Where are all the Avitras?”

  “We aren’t gone. We camp in trees, not on the ground.” He pointed to the forest beyond the rock. “We’re camped over there.” He squatted on the branch, and the feathers along the sides of his arms and down his legs lay down flat. “I’m glad you’re here, because I want you to carry a message to your friends down there.”

  Aimee frowned. “What is it?”

  “Aquilla wants to talk to the other Alphas,” he told her. “Not about peace, you understand. He wants to discuss the disposition of the borders. It seems there’s some confusion about where Avitras territory ends and Ursidrean territory begins. He thinks there may be discrepancies with the other borders as well. This may be what’s causing all these wars.”

  “And you believe that?” Aimee shot back.

  He cocked his head and blinked at her with his big iridescent eyes. “I’m surprised at you. I thought you were more astute than that.”

  “Than what?” she asked. “More astute than thinking Aquilla would concoct this pathetic excuse to lure the other Alphas into some mock negotiation over the borders? I wouldn’t stoop so low as to carry that message back to them. I’ll tell them Aquilla is trying to manipulate the borders, and he wants to draw them into some kind of trap with this invitation to talk?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “You’ve been listening to your friend Anna too much—excuse me, your cousin—and her mate Menlo. Aquilla is not trying to draw anyone into a trap.”

  “How can I be sure of that?” she asked. “Why should I carry a message from him when he’s trying to subvert our peace process with his ridiculous demands?”

  “Because, Aimee,” Piwaka replied, “I am the one who suggested this discussion to him. Do you think he could come up with something like this on his own? This is the best way I could convince him to enter into a rational dialogue with the other Alphas. You have to admit there is some misunderstanding about the location of this border. It only makes sense that, after generations of hostility, other discrepancies exist on the other borders as well. If the other Alphas don’t address them now, they are bound to stumble into another conflict later in spite of any peace negotiation.”

  She stared at him. “You....you suggested it?”

  “Of course I did,” he told her. “I told you I would play on Aquilla’s need to remain sovereign within his own faction to bring him to the negotiation. Did you think I was just talking to hear my own voice? I wouldn’t say I was going to do it unless I planned to follow it through.”

  She lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry for doubting you. I should have known you would come up with something like this.”

  “If I hadn’t,” he went on, “Aquilla would have ordered all the Guard back to our villages. He never would have talked to the other Alphas about anything. He never would have shown his face to them again except in war.”

  She stole a glance at him. “Is that what you came here to tell me—that you want me to carry the message?”

  He nodded. “I told you I consider you instrumental in sealing this peace process. You’re the only one who could carry the message.”

  “What makes you say that?” she asked. “Any of the others could carry it.”

  He studied her with his intense flickering eyes. “And which of the others would come up here to talk to me—or any other Avitras—to get the message to carry it? None of them. Only you would come up here.”

  “The only reason I came up here....” she began, but she didn’t finish.

  He waited and watched her. “Did you come up here looking for me?”

  She took a deep breath. “Yes.”

  “Did you come because of what I said about you aiding the negotiation?” he asked.

  “No,” she replied.

  A hint of uncertainty flashed across his face and disappeared just as fast. “Did one of the Alphas send you up here to find me?”

  She snorted. “No. None of the Alphas knows I’m having anything to do with you.”

  He frowned. “Then why did you come?”

  “To see you, of course,” she blurted out. “You know that.”

  His eyes flew open. Then he regained his composure and settled lower on the branch. He inched closer to her. “I thought we would be able to talk to each other.”

  “We are talking to each other,” she told him. “What else would we be doing?”

  He studied her. “For someone who came up here to see me, you don’t seem very happy about it.”

  Her anger flared. “What are you doing to me? I didn’t come along on this trip to find a mate.”

  “No one ever said you did,” he replied.

  She waved her hand. “Then why do you keep looking at me like that?”

  “Like what?” he asked.

  She pointed at him. “Like that. You keep looking at me like... like you can see right through me. You keep looking at me like I’m not even there.”

  “Oh, you’re there, all right,” he returned. “You are very there. There’s no doubt about that.”

  “You know what I mean,” she shot back. “You keep looking at me like the person everyone thinks is there, isn’t there, and the person you think is there, no one else knows is there.” She glared at him. “I know it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Oh, it makes perfect sense,” he replied. “What else do I do by looking at you?”

  Her words tumbled out of her. “It isn’t just everybody else. You keep looking at me like the person I think I am isn’t there, and the person you think is there, I didn’t know was there.”

  He listened to all that gibberish with a perfectly straight face. “But it w
as there. The person I think is there, is there. You might not have known it was there, but it was, and now you can’t hide from it. Or rather, I should say, you can’t deny that she is there. Is that about the size of it?”

  Her eyes flashed. “How can you be so nonchalant about this? This is my...my soul we’re talking about. How can you say what I don’t think is there, is there, and what I think is there, isn’t there? Confound you, will you stop looking at me like that?”

  He didn’t answer, and he stopped looking at her like that. In a heartbeat, he sailed across the branch and kissed her. She didn’t even hear the rustle of his feathers. Her mind exploded, and the rest of her world crumbled at the seams.

  Chapter 8

  His lips dallied on hers. A thousand possible outcomes crowded into her mind. What should she do? Should she sit still and wait for him to finish? Then she could make some intelligible remark and beat a hasty retreat. She could return to the Ursidrean camp and pretend this never happened.

  Then all of a sudden, unbidden, a silhouette rose against the bright background of her mind. A blinding white landscape set off the indistinct outline of a woman. The light hid her features, but she stood tall and straight in the center of a perfectly flat white landscape. The horizon surrounded her in a perfect circle in all directions, and she could see everything around her to the limit of the sky.

  That woman’s destiny rested in the palm of her own hand. She had only to whisper her desire to the universe for it to appear at her bidding. She radiated power from her core to the wide expanse around her, a power so bright and true it cast no shadow. This was the vision she’d seen in Piwaka’s eyes. That woman was her, and radiant power welled up within her to dominate her own world. She had only to grasp it, to own it, to claim it, and it would be hers for the asking.

  Did she dare become that woman? His lips never gave her a chance to question. The power surged up from the bottoms of her feet, through her blood and bones, and over her head. The tidal wave. It smashed her old self, her nonexistent self, to smithereens. She closed her eyes against it. She couldn’t think anymore. She couldn’t decide anything. The wave carried her away, toward him.

  Unstoppable passion threw her at him. Her weight knocked him off balance. If he hadn’t caught her, they would have fallen out of the tree. She consumed his mouth, and he met her with equal force in a desperate, ravenous kiss. They clawed at each other’s clothes, and at their own, in a race to tear away the barriers between them. Nothing remained of the woman Aimee used to be. She no longer cared who she would be or what she would do or what her cousins and friends would say when this was all over. The dry, lifeless husk of her old self was gone for good.

  Piwaka held her against his chest, and her legs caught him around the waist, but their combined weight couldn’t balance on the narrow branch. They teetered. Aimee closed her eyes. She would die in his arms rather than return to her old, hollow self. She held him with all her might, and they tumbled off the branch.

  The air hit Aimee’s cheeks, and her hair tussled in the breeze. They fell through the air. Then her eyes popped open. Her hair fell forward over her eyes, not upward away from her face. They were rising, not falling. The treetops sailed downward, out of sight. He was flying with her up through the canopy into higher treetops, and her arms and lips and legs remained locked around him for better of for worse. She sought out the bottomless pools of his eyes, with their iridescent margins streaked with microscopic fibers, and all her cares and worries vanished.

  Piwaka floated beyond the last branches into the sky. Where would he take her, with her whole self wrapped around him? Before she could wonder, he descended again. His feathers tilted downward, and the air rustled off them in soft murmurs. His hips moved under her legs, and he extended his feet to land.

  Her gaze never wavered from his eyes. She would never doubt him again. Wherever her took her, she would go with a glad heart. Something hard dug into her back, and he laid her against an inclined surface. A bed of soft vegetation formed a bowl under her, with tree trunks rising on all sides. Those trunks joined together into a single tree. The tree must have snapped off in a storm, and several trunks sprouted from the site of the break. Treetops swayed across the sky, and moving air whispered through the branches. Creatures scuttled and chattered in the distance. She was a long way from the ground.

  This was the Avitras world, in the canopy beyond the reach of solid ground, where your feet never touched the forest floor. The Avitras lived their whole lives up here. Most never laid eyes on the ground, much less walked on it.

  How did Piwaka know about this place to bring her here? Those questions belonging to her rational mind, the part she put away on a shelf for good. She wouldn’t answer those questions. She would swim in the ocean of his eyes and the commotion of his touch. Nothing else mattered.

  His hands on her brought her back to her senses. He lifted the corner of her leather jacket and peeled it back to reveal her milk-white skin. The air pricked her skin, and it tightened and stood to attention. Then he lifted back the other side of the jacket. Those clothes formed an armor over her skin to keep the eruption of passion buried where no one could see it.

  Every nerve shrieked to heaven. How long had she worn those clothes, the rough furs of the Lycaon? She always thought they were comfortable, but now, at the touch of Piwaka’s hand, they grated on her nerves. When did she become sensitive? She was always the tough one, the reserved one.

  Piwaka loomed over her with the sky outlining the feathers behind his head. His eyes flashed, and the sun shimmered on his feathers. His shoulders jutted out from his chest in sharp angles, and his muscles flexed in fine chiseled lines. His face bore none of the wear and tear of age. He wore his experience with strength and power.

  Aimee gazed up at him with wide eyes. No man ever struck her with such a sense of awe and wonder. What was he? Who was he? What had he seen and done in his life? She knew nothing about him, yet she could delve into every recess of his soul and never lose interest. What drove him? What brought him to her like this? What attracted him to a woman like her?

  The rush of wind through the trees broke the silence. This belonged to the Avitras alone. The other factions dwelt on the ground, far removed from the rare air of the canopy. Anna never connected with the Avitras, or she wouldn’t have run off with Menlo the way she did. None of the others except Penelope Ann fully assimilated into the Avitras and made their ways their own.

  What secrets remained hidden in the vast forests beyond the border? Those secrets hovered in Piwaka’s eyes, and his eyes traveled down to the white triangle of skin between the lapels of her jacket. He peeled away the years, the crumbling remnant of a thousand useless inhibitions, and the weight of crushing fear and doubt, along with her clothes. She floated on a cushion of cloud that protected her newborn skin from the rough bark and twigs underneath her. The keen breeze and Piwaka’s hands on her skin welcomed her back to life. Her jacket fell away, her shirt underneath, and then her pants and boots until she lay naked on her back for him to see. Her warrior persona dropped away with them to reveal soft female flesh.

  Piwaka’s feathers shifted in the wind. Was he flying, up there above her? Was he hovering over her on drafts of air? She could believe his feet never touched the ground. He was too rare for that. He descended to her from atmospheric heights to lift her out of her misery to joy and contentment. He belonged to some heavenly species beyond mortal reach.

  He drew closer, and smoldering power radiated off him. He took her in his arms, and the heavenly aura erupted in flames. He was no untouchable spirit from on high. His passion met hers in matched ferocity, and they exploded together in fiery bursts of heat and desire.

  He slid his arms under her, and she enclosed him in her arms and legs again. His legs supported her from below, and in a heartbeat, he was inside her. Aimee couldn’t tell the moment it happened. She was one with him from her eyes down to her toes. Their bodies only expressed the reality already accomplished
through their gaze and their kiss and their touch.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Aimee caught sight of the tree trunks gliding past her. Nothing could surprise her now, not even the realization she was moving through the air in a primal embrace with him. They tumbled over and over in the air, and trees sailed around her in every direction. One minute she was under him and he penetrated into the center of her being with powerful thrusts. The next minute, he fell under her weight, and she bore down on top of him with all her might.

  Was this the way the Avitras made love, in mid-air? They didn’t need beds, and they shunned the ground. They could fly, so why not this coupling flight? The Aqinas lived in water. The Avitras lived in the air, and everything they did, they did in the air.

  Birds did it in the air. Some engaged in elaborate mating flights. Male and female fluttered around each other in mid-flight for hours until, at long last, they bumped into each other for a split second and transferred the male’s sperm to the female. Then they flew away, and that was the end of that.

  Her time with Piwaka wouldn’t be like that. Her body throbbed with insatiable desire for his body. She inhaled him deeper into her, ever deeper, as deep as she could, but she could never get enough of him.

  Every move she made to bring him closer, to consume him, he answered with greater desire of his own. He consumed her with the insatiable hunger. His passion destroyed the measured rationality that made him such an asset to Aquilla. The power of his desire astonished even Aimee, until she found herself locked in carnal oneness with a man she’d never seen before. Buried physical desire annihilated the old Piwaka the same way it did Aimee, leaving another vision of him, the avatar standing in the white expanse of pure authenticity. The two souls met in that landscape. They met, they merged, they embraced, and they became one. Their two old selves ceased to exist, and left two bright beings standing in their place, side by side for the first time.

  Aimee fell down toward the ground, while Piwaka’s feathers caught him and held him aloft. His shaft slid out of her. The air chilled the film of juice on her thighs and made her suck her breath through her teeth. Then he caught her again and she stopped falling. He supported her, and her weight pulled him down beneath her. His shaft slid back into her, and its heat filled her up. Nothing could disturb her contentment as long as he was there, inside her, with her flesh enfolding him on all sides. Then she rolled around below him, and gravity tore her away from him.