by Naima Simone
Trembling, she released her death grip on the covers and reached toward the lamp. But a jerk on the chain brought no result. Panic stole up her throat, crafty and with malicious joy. Suddenly she was transported back in time, had returned to her bedroom at home, fumbling with the lamp next to her bed, desperate to have light wash throughout the room. But no matter how many times she flipped the switch the room remained dark. Later she discovered Kyle had deliberately unplugged the lamp, using her fear to torment her.
A mewl like a wounded creature escaped her and the sound horrified and humiliated her. It had been three years since the crash, damn it! Children were afraid of the dark, not twenty-eight-year-old women.
But the scolding didn’t take away the tremors that shook her body. Or the heart-numbing terror that had her gaze darting around the room as if she was a cornered animal. Again she whimpered. To contain the next shameful moan, she sank her teeth into her bottom lip, threw back the covers and swung her legs over the edge of the mattress.
Biting her lip didn’t help. The panicked sounds were a continuous stream from her throat as she pushed off the bed and stumbled several feet in the direction of the bedroom door. Her knee struck a solid, heavy object she assumed was the dresser. Tamar cried out, the pain jolting up her leg, adding to the frantic pounding of her heart.
A deafening crash rang out in the room.
She shrank back against the wall, her arms cradling her head.
“Tamar?”
The familiar voice tore another cry from her. Relief leaked past the consuming grip of fear, but not enough to loosen her vocal cords so she could call out to Nicolai. All she could manage was another mortifying whimper.
It was enough.
One moment she huddled beside the dresser and in the next Nicolai’s hands grasped her upper arms. He dragged her close before wheeling around and shoving her behind him. She panted, her forehead pressed to his warm, hard back, her fingers curled into fists against his waist.
The part of her that had survived a plane crash and abusive ex-boyfriend ordered her to stand up straight and get herself together. She wasn’t this weak cowering woman hiding behind Nicolai. But the primal creature in her had taken over—the primitive part that believed in order to live she must scramble to the cover of the strongest for protection.
“What’s wrong?” he barked. “Who’s here?”
She shook her head, opened her mouth to speak. When only a hoarse moan emerged, she snapped her lips closed, swallowed and tried again.
“The light,” she croaked.
The tension slowly bled from his large frame.
Tamar waited. Braced herself for the exasperated sigh. The you-got-to-be-kidding-me snarl or the don’t-be-fucking-ridiculous ridicule. She’d heard it so often from Kyle it could have been his mantra.
But unlike her ex, if Nicolai condemned her as absurd or silly, she would be an emotional Humpty Dumpty crushed into so many pieces she wouldn’t be able to put them back together again.
“The power went out with the storm,” he said gently.
As if to underscore his explanation, thunder boomed outside the window.
You know what thunder is, her mother’s voice whispered inside her head. It’s God and the angels bowling. When there’s lightning, God’s made a strike.
It was too much.
The phobic terror of the dark. Memories of Kyle and his cruelty. Nicolai rushing to her rescue.
She broke.
Tears scalded her eyelids then streamed down her cheeks in hot trails. Sobs rose up out of her soul and clawed past the blockade of pride to pour out in harsh, racking coughs.
“Oh sweetheart.”
Strong arms clamped around her, pulled her to a wide, naked chest. Her cheek stuck to his skin, her tears the glue that bonded them. Over her cries she caught the soothing murmurs he crooned. A hand that could easily frame her head smoothed down her hair and a tender kiss ghosted across her forehead.
Tamar didn’t protest when Nicolai swept her up in his arms, cradled her in his embrace and carried her from the room. Nor did she utter a word when he settled her next to him on the living room floor. Weak moonlight streamed into the room through the windows, alleviating the dense blackness of the cabin. He retrieved the match and flint box from beside the fireplace and, with expert hands, removed the screen, lit the logs and replaced the mesh covering.
The orange flames crackled and leapt, hungrily eating the wood. Heat licked the air and soon penetrated and thawed the ice that had formed beneath her skin when she’d woken in complete darkness. She shivered and Nicolai frowned before rising from the floor in a single breath-stealing display of strength and agility. Her gaze followed as he glided soundlessly across the floor to a closet. He pulled the door open and several moments later returned to her, arms piled with blankets, sheets and pillows.
He flipped open one cover and draped it over her shoulders like a shawl. Then he prepared a thick pallet on the floor. The firelight played over him as he carried out the task. Except for a low-riding pair of black cotton drawstring pants, he was left bare to her fascinated gaze. The fire cast a reddish hue over his golden skin, emphasizing the wide breadth of his shoulders, delineating the tight muscles of his abdomen. And when he hunkered down to tuck the corners of the sheet beneath the covers… Oh good God. His hard thighs bunched under the thin material of his pants…and his ass…
She closed her eyes, shutting out the temptation his beautiful body presented. Desire lapped at her like the flames nibbling on the logs in the fireplace. The heat that sparked and flickered to life inside her stomach couldn’t be attributed to any man-made fire. She trembled, opened her eyes.
Nicolai stared at her.
Frozen, he kept his weight balanced on the balls of his feet and his arms resting on his thighs. His lavender eyes burned, studying her as if he was aware of the passion that wended through her veins, leaving a molten path in its wake.
Then his nostrils flared slightly, his chest rose on an almost imperceptible breath and Tamar’s gut coiled, perspiration broke out on her palms.
He did know. He could smell her arousal.
Several long, silent moments stretched between them.
Common sense urged her to look away from his unblinking contemplative gaze. But she couldn’t. Or wouldn’t.
He was the first to break the connection. With a sinuous grace that reminded her of the beast that lurked beneath the skin of the man, he prowled over the pallet and sank beside her. Always before he’d respected her personal space—a deliberate gap separating them.
Tonight he didn’t allow it.
Tonight he pressed to her from thigh to hip, his arm a solid weight against her shoulder. When she inhaled it was his scent she breathed—sweet wind and wild heather. They’d only been this close in her dreams but the intimacy was…natural. She didn’t feel crowded.
She was protected. Even if it was just for tonight, she cautiously lowered her guard, allowed him in.
A peek down at the front of his pants revealed she was wanted too. Knowing how that thick, rigid length would stretch and burn her deep inside until she molded to fit his cock perfectly…how it would shuttle in and out with slow, rolling thrusts of his hips…how that perfect, muscular ass would contract and release under her palms…
She shifted, drew her legs up to her chest and held on for dear life.
Next to her Nicolai’s breathing deepened. Once again, he was smelling her desire for him, tasting it in the air.
By all rights, mortification should be burning her up, not lust.
Somebody should explain that to her body. Maybe write a letter because her creaming sex wasn’t getting the memo.
As the quiet enveloped them in its snug cocoon, Tamar could imagine they were in a fantasy—alone, safe from danger and phobias. The weight of his unspoken questions hung between them and, for once, she wasn’t defensive or ashamed about admitting her weaknesses.
“I’m afraid of the dark,” she con
fessed into the silence. “I know it’s silly—”
A dismissive wave of his hand cut her off. “Never apologize for how you feel,” he said. “Can you tell me why?”
“Three years ago I was in a plane crash.”
Nicolai nodded, telling her without words he knew of the incident that had forever altered her life.
“I was flying to California for a mini-summer vacation and the plane encountered turbulent weather over the Sierra Nevada. It was to be a sky-diving trip. My first.” She shook her head, smiled but wasn’t the least bit amused. “Ironic, really, since the thought of flying now scares the shit out of me. Anyway, the plane was small, chartered. I was the only survivor out of fourteen people…including the pilots. When I woke up it was pitch black and my entire left side was pinned to my seat by a sheet of steel. I thought I was in hell. It was dark, hot and I could smell my flesh burning…” She swallowed convulsively several times as the memory threatened to drag her under.
A warm touch on her knee anchored her to the present.
She glanced down and the sight of his long-fingered capable hand lent her the strength to continue. Bit by bit, she lowered her legs, crossed them. And held onto him.
“Somehow I slid from under the sheet, and learned later I had left the entire upper dermis of my skin with it. But I got out of the plane, climbing over the bodies of the other passengers.” A tremor quaked through her as she recalled the horror of her fingers and feet digging into charred and mutilated flesh as she scrambled over the corpses, sometimes using their dead weight as purchase to escape the burning wreckage.
“I don’t remember much after that,” she whispered. “I only knew darkness for so long—first at the crash site and then in the hospital where they kept me in a medicated coma. Sometimes I would surface, but I still couldn’t focus, couldn’t see anything…couldn’t move. I was trapped, a prisoner in my own body. That’s when I started dreaming about you.”
Nicolai started next to her, surprised.
“Three years?” he asked, his voice a rough rasp. “You dreamed about me for three years?”
She nodded. Opened her mouth then snapped it closed. You already got one foot in. Might as well jump in deep shit with both of them.
“I would see you fighting. Sometimes you had a sword, other times you fought with your hands and legs like some kind of martial arts. But never as a hippogryph,” she said, shaking her head. “Always bare-chested, with wings.”Tamar lowered her lashes as longing rose in her throat, clogged her air passage. “As a matter of fact, I called you my winged warrior.”
“Sweetheart,” he murmured.
“You saved me,” she blurted. “You were the reason I didn’t lose my sanity while in the hospital. I didn’t mind going into the dark because I knew you would be there. Yes, you were a figment of my imagination, but as foolish as it sounds, you helped me get through the worst period of my life. Even after I started to heal enough for them to bring me out of the coma for good and my days were filled with pain and depression, I could endure it.” She paused and dipped her head when she made the final, soul-baring admission. “All because I knew when I closed my eyes at night you would be there. Waiting for me.”
“I didn’t know,” he said, lifting a hand to her face and cupping it.
The hardened, calloused palm was a delicious abrasion over her skin. It reminded her of the great power he wielded. She closed her eyes and rubbed against him like a cat. She needed his touch to bare the next ugly chapter of her story.
“Even with…” She squeezed her eyelids tighter and forced the name past her lips. “Kyle…I didn’t break. I envied your strength, wanted your strength. It just took me a while to believe I could have it.”
“Kyle?” he asked. Though his touch remained gentle, tension invaded his voice. Beside her, his body stilled as if preparing to pounce on an unseen threat. “Is he the one who hurt you?”
Tamar nodded. “He was my fiancé,” she explained. “Before the crash he was kind, attentive, made me laugh. He worked as an investment banker and had a great future in front of him—we had a great future. But after the accident…”
The memories crowded in and terrible, hurtful images flashed in front of her eyes. But then the fingers that had covered her face clasped her hand. She opened her eyes and stared down. Nicolai laced their fingers together in an unbreakable bond. She concentrated on the show of support and shoved past the dark thoughts.
“After the accident, he changed. He went from the fun-loving guy I planned on spending my life with to this…this monster. It wasn’t sudden, but gradual. A sharp word or back-handed insult became an angry tirade or a thrown glass. He separated me from my friends, cut me off from the world. Eventually his behavior escalated to full-out abuse. Punches, slaps and kicks to my upper body and lower back so he wouldn’t leave marks my physical therapist might notice and report. He’d shove me to the floor and leave me there for hours. Once—” The sob rose out of nowhere, a cry of humiliation, anger and shame. But as if she’d lanced a wound, the bad blood flowed out of her and she couldn’t hold it back any longer. “Once he knocked me down, took my walker from the room so I couldn’t get up and left me. I-I couldn’t even make it to the bathroom. I-I—”
Mortification choked her and Tamar ducked her head. But Nicolai wouldn’t allow her gesture of shame. He placed a bent knuckle under her chin and forced her head up. Amethyst fire burned in his eyes, searing her with its intensity. “You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he growled, the words almost unrecognizable over the loud rumble emerging from his throat and chest. “He is the one that doesn’t have any honor. To prey on the defenseless, especially women, makes him less than a man. And makes you a survivor. A warrior.” He bumped her chin higher. “Wings or not.” He crushed his mouth to hers in an abrupt, hard kiss that was over before she had time to register his lips had been there. “Now continue.”
She stared up at him, stunned. The kiss was their first sexual contact outside their dreams. With trembling fingers, Tamar brushed her fingertips over her mouth, still tingling with the bruising pressure of his lips.
Then his words penetrated her shock. A warrior? Her? A warm glow that had nothing to do with the blazing fire kindled and spread from her chest to each limb.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He nodded and removed his touch from her chin.
“After Kyle found me, he berated me, calling me a filthy invalid, worthless, stupid and pathetic. If I’d been whole, healthy, I like to think I wouldn’t have put up with his abuse, that I would’ve been too strong to ever accept his behavior. I tell myself that anyway. In hindsight, I wonder why I didn’t tell my doctor or therapist. Maybe they could have helped.” The question plagued her often. “But I was so ashamed, so humiliated and scared of Kyle. And what if they didn’t believe me? Kyle assured me time and again no one would. He had complete control of not just my home, my body and finances, but my mind too.” She shook her head. “The physical abuse was bad, but the verbal and emotional damage he inflicted… In a real sense they were tougher to suffer because, in my mind, there was some truth in his words. I think that’s why it took me so long to finally say no more.”
“What made you decide?”
Tamar relayed the story of how she had awakened to Kyle beating her. Another growl rolled out of Nico and his body trembled with fury. His rage on her behalf was another healing salve to the wounds of her past.
“The change in him was so insidious, I never saw it coming. Was this monster there all along and I just never noticed? I don’t know, never did figure it out, because I can honestly say there weren’t any signs that pointed toward the terrible rage he kept bottled up inside him. Once in the middle of a rant he told me he hadn’t signed on for marrying a cripple, that I had ruined his life. I think he felt betrayed and trapped and blamed me.”
“Then he could have walked away,” Nicolai said, murder in his voice. “He still would have been a dick, but not an abusive one.”
/>
Tamar nodded. “I agree,” she said. “I’m not making excuses for him. But when things don’t make sense it’s human nature to try to find logic in the illogical. I guess it’s more bearable than believing I was almost stupid enough to marry a sadistic bastard who got off on power and making other people suffer.” She shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. “It’s why I ran from you.” Her burst of laughter was brittle in her own ears. “Y’know, my so-called escape attempt. My choice was taken away and I panicked. I know what it’s like to be caged like an animal, dependent on my jailer. I want life on my terms, not someone else’s. For two years my every movement, thought and word was determined by someone else. And for those two years I craved my independence and the life I’d taken for granted. After a long, hard battle, I had it back, and then you showed up, telling me I had to chuck it all and depend on another person again. Trust”—she held her palms up, studied them as if she could find the elusive emotion there—“it’s…hard for me. Even knowing you want to protect me from an untimely, painful death…it’s hard.”
Nicolai turned his head away, muttering under his breath.
“What did you say?” she asked, narrowing her eyes on his harsh profile. When he remained silent, the reflexive tic in his jaw her only answer, Tamar pressed, “Because it sounded like, ‘that motherfucker better hope I don’t find him’.”
More silence.
“Nicolai?”
His head cranked back in her direction and his glare sucked the breath from her lungs. “I said,” he gritted through clenched teeth, “that motherfucker better hope I don’t find him because I intend to fucking gut him like a fucking fish.”
She blinked. Stared. Blinked again.
The chuckle bubbled up and erupted before she could contain it. Damn, she didn’t want to laugh, but it felt good. She cut a glance up at him then tumbled to the side, laughter bursting from her in great guffaws that had her side aching and her eyes stinging with tears.
