The Archer (The Blood Realm Series Book 3)

by Jennifer Blackstream

  “There are stories of female archers who actually cut off their breast to avoid letting it interfere with their shot.”

  She spoke just as he was releasing his arrow, firing a macabre image into his brain as surely as if it had been a feathered projectile. The shot went wide, sailing into a cypress and sinking into the trunk with a depressing thud.

  He pressed his lips together and glanced at his wife. “You did that on purpose.”

  Marian shrugged, the rise and fall of her breasts calling to his eyes. “Maybe.”

  Robin dove for her. He didn’t think about it, didn’t plan it, didn’t give himself even a second to strategize about where to hit her, what angle would be best. She knew him too well, would expect it, so speed was all he had.

  And a hellhound was pretty damn fast.

  She was twisting before he hit her, but his height gave him the edge he needed. His fingers closed around her ankle and, as she tried to spring away from him, he tightened his grip and jerked her against him while he was still in midair, his body arcing in a leap from the broad rock to the grassy meadow below.

  A laugh bubbled from her throat as he managed to get another arm around her legs and he couldn’t help the grin that spread over his lips. She had the most amazing laugh. It was a sound he’d never thought to hear from her, and he treasured each one for the gift it was. His huntress was happy, and he knew he’d played a part in that.

  His back hit the ground first. He was still holding her legs and he struggled to find a balance between not hurting her, and not loosening his grip enough for her to slip away. She caught herself on her hands, tried to use them for leverage to crawl away from him, but her pants gave him something to hold onto, and he pulled her down hand over hand.

  As her breasts passed over his face, he leaned up, licked one brown nipple. The skin responded instantly, hardening to a tight bud. Marian gasped, then softened against him, spreading her fingers over the sides of his face as he continued to slide her down his body. He let his eyes drift closed as she smoothed his hair behind his ears. They’d been married for six months, but her touch was still new, still exciting. Her lips slid over his and he parted them, inviting her to deepen the kiss.

  She tasted of heat. It was hard to describe, like tasting a color, a deep, crimson red that burned you just to look at it. Not cinnamon, but something hotter, something that bit him, promised an edge of pain to the pleasure it offered. He chased that flavor, his mind reeling, the world spinning, narrowing, until there was nothing but him and Marian, nothing but the maddening slide of her naked breasts against his shirt, a reminder of the wretched piece of clothing that still separated them.

  He needed to feel skin against skin, and by all that was holy, how had they ended up wearing opposing articles of clothing so that each was only half bare and those bare halves didn’t line up? It was poor planning, that’s what it was, and there was no excuse for it.

  As soon as his fingers closed around the edges of his shirt, ready to rip it off and damn the buttons, he realized his mistake. Cool air bathed his face in a rude awakening as Marian bolted, pushing off against his chest with enough force to knock the air from his lungs. She laughed again as she ran and Robin sat up just in time to see the flash of her red hair before she vanished into the trees. Adrenaline flooded his veins in a scalding rush, his muscles hurling him off the ground and into a run.

  The hunt was on.

  He left their bows and arrows lying on the ground where they’d dropped them. Few in this forest wouldn’t know who they belonged to, and if anyone were so foolish as to try to take them, well, that would just give him a fun outing to take Marian on tomorrow night. Taking them with him would be pointless since he didn’t intend to shoot his wife—and he certainly wanted his hands free when he caught her.

  His hands tingled, already imagining the weight of her breasts, the slide of her nipples against his palms. Half a year she’d been in his bed, and yet every night felt like the first time.

  And every night, that vixen ran from him.

  Or after him.

  His grin broadened.

  Energy rolled over his fingertips as he readied his power, alert for any sign of his wife. She would be caught up in the thrill of the chase, enough that he might be able to snare her senses with a glamour. She would expect it of course, but then, what was life without challenge?

  There. A flash of red hair, pale skin. He raised the image he’d prepared in his mind then hurled it into the air, letting the energy flow down his arms, snap outward like the crack of a long whip.

  A barguest exploded from the bushes in front of her, bolted across her path. It didn’t look at her, didn’t attack her, that would be too obvious. Instead, the great yowling black dog—cousin to the hellhound—was chasing a bloodied leprechaun. The cobbler shouted indignantly as it skirted the ground, winking in and out of sight as it tried to escape the glistening teeth of the beast behind him.

  Marian slowed, hesitation stealing her speed, her brain trying to make a snap decision. Was it a glamour or was it real? If it was real, should she intercede? Should she help? Good and evil were such grey areas in the world of the fey, who was to say the barguest wasn’t justified in its pursuit of the leprechaun?

  He could see the moment she realized it was a glamour, see the way her nose twitched. Marian belonged to the Wild Hunt, and now that she had claimed that heritage, and was no longer fighting to be human, she had finally attained full access to her senses. If she tried hard enough to break it, even his glamour couldn’t fool her.

  But she had to try hard enough. And for that, she had to concentrate. Which was hard to do when running full speed.

  This time when he got his arms around her, he held her with her back against his chest. Marian laughed again, squirmed to break his hold. Desire spiked inside him, made his breath louder in his ears, his heartbeat a chest-bruising force. He nuzzled her hair out of his way as best he could, dug until the slope of her neck was bared to the moonlight. He ducked his head down—and bit her.

  The give of her tender flesh between his teeth was a welcome pressure, a primal grip that held her prisoner in his arms more surely than his arms ever could. She gasped, her head falling back, her body going limp in his arms. Her arousal burnt fever-hot beneath her skin, coaxing his own carnal appetite to a stomach-clenching urgency.

  He closed his teeth a little more, tasting the salt of her sweat, drawing another fiery moan from her lips. She fell to all fours in front of him and he followed her down, not releasing her neck. Lush green grass and damp soil provided a cushion for his knees as he knelt over her. His fingers trailed down her body, lightly cupping her curves as he slid his hands to the fastening of her trousers, made short work of the laces keeping him from making her his all over again.

  She didn’t fight him now, every shift of her hips an attempt to make it easier for him to slide the material down her smooth thighs, a sharp inhale jerked from her lungs when all of her bare skin was finally free of the cursed trappings.

  Tonight, he didn’t let go yet. He kept her flesh in his teeth, kept up the delicious pressure that melted her resistance so completely. He slipped one hand between her legs, dipping his fingers inside her. Wet heat engulfed them, and he groaned against her skin, almost losing his grip. All thought of tormenting her, teasing her, flew from his mind, chased away by the ferocious need to claim her. His hips rocked of their own accord, his body fighting to replace his fingers with his cock, to get as deep inside of her as he could, lose himself in the madness that only came with possession. He of her, and her of him.

  Marian was pressing back against him now, the sounds pouring from her throat threatening his tenuous grasp on his control. Her hips were in his hands, his fingers pressing in with bruising force. He slid the hot length of himself between her thighs, relishing the hiss of her inhale when he sheathed himself in all that wonderful, mind-melting heat. Only when he was inside her, when she was thrusting back against him with those jerky, su
bconscious thrusts that told him she wanted him as badly as he wanted her, did he release her skin.

  A very small part of his mind noted the blood on her skin, the lines where his teeth had broken through. As soon as he let go, the blood welling up in ruby droplets turned black, liquid thinning into a mist. Shadow welled up in the wounds, shifting around like fog disturbed by a bird. It was gone in the blink of an eye, as though it had never been there, and her flesh was smooth and unbroken.

  It was very hard to really hurt a hellhound.

  “My love,” he rasped, sliding his body out of hers with such slowness that it took the breath from his lungs. “Have I told you…how very grateful I am…that you are on my side?”

  “That…will change….if you stop.”

  He grinned then, a masculine satisfaction welling up inside him at the desperation thinning her voice. He thrust inside her, hard, relishing the hum that vibrated her chest. Again and again, he rocked against her, bare skin hitting bare skin with every thrust. Their rhythm shifted, each one reacting to the other until they moved together in tandem. The shining edge of pleasure loomed before him, sharp and filled with wicked promise. He grunted, bowed his body over hers to reach one hand beneath her.

  The weight of her breast against his palm heated his blood several degrees, threatened to boil him alive. He gritted his teeth, holding back, forcing himself not to cast himself over the edge, not yet. He took her nipple between his finger and thumb rolled it back and forth, appreciating the velvet, puckered skin. Pinched her.

  Marian screamed, her arms flexing, throwing her body up. He followed her, bending her back in a dance of sleek, pale lines. He dropped his face to her neck again, licked the shell of her ear, nipped at her lobe. She thrashed against him and he let go, followed her into that abyss of pleasure that sucked every speck of energy from his body, spun him into darkness, and left him lying on the ground with Marian cradled against him, boneless and utterly satisfied.

  “Marian?” he whispered, when he’d got enough breath to talk.

  “Mmm?”

  “Are you always going to run? From me or after me? I mean, when—”

  “Yes.”

  Robin smiled and hugged her as tightly as he could. “Good.”

  Epilogue

  “They will pay. All of them will pay.”

  Mac shoved at a spindly, brittle tree branch that barred his way, snarling when it refused to yield. The forest had turned against him, just like his people. Every twig stabbed at him, every trunk loomed in his path, thick leaves blocking the moonlight, leaving him fumbling around in the dark. The bruises that marred his body made every step more difficult than it should have been, every physical pain a reminder of a grasping hand pulling him from his horse, a tug at the rope binding him—

  He shouted, a raw, ragged sound, and gripped the wood at the base of the offending limb, tearing it back and forth with all the strength he had left in his body until a satisfying crack broke the still night air. The broken limb hung in his grip and he threw it violently to the side before continuing his march back to his home.

  “I had him.” He looked down at his hands. He’d removed the claws and the blood before going into the village, but if he looked at them now, he could still see the curved iron, feel the tackiness of the sidhe’s blood. “I had him weak and bleeding, ready to suffer for his crimes.” Another branch reached out to slap him, striking him across the face with a fistful of leaves and leaving tiny scratches in its wake. Mac screamed and snatched a handful of the offending greenery from its branch, stopped walking to shred them into tiny pieces, wishing he could do the same to Robin Hood and every man and woman who had helped him escape this night.

  “Grab him!”

  “Get him off the horse!”

  “Hold him!”

  The voices echoed in his head, accompanying the memory of the mob rushing out of the forest to surround his horse, bows and arrows trained on him, torches flaring to life in a circle of flames. Hands on his arms and legs, pulling him down, binding him with rope as he bellowed his rage into their anonymous, hooded faces.

  “I will figure out who they were,” he rasped, “and I will find them all. I will make them pay.”

  His people. The people he served, protected, fought to save from the fickle whims of the fey. They had turned on him, surrounded him on the road after he left Robin behind. He had left to prove the sidhe wrong, prove that his people saw him for the protector he was and not the madman Robin claimed him to be.

  It had been Robin’s doing. He knew it. He had poisoned the people against him, paid for their loyalty with stolen gold. The fury inside him climbed higher, threatening to spill out his mouth in an unholy howl. He pivoted, changed direction to go to the pit instead of straight to his cabin.

  He will not be there. He is gone. Or maybe he isn’t. Maybe the wolves were not worthless tonight, maybe they held him here, kept away those who would have—

  The pit yawned before him like the mouth of a great beast, and Mac didn’t need to look inside to know it was empty. The iron grate that should have covered it lay at an angle, slanting into the pit to form a perfect staircase. The wolves were nowhere to be seen.

  Mac approached the pit one shaking footstep at a time, needing to look inside even though he knew there was no possibility that his prisoner was still there. The sight of the pit’s floor, bare of any living thing, sliced through him like a fire-heated blade.

  His head fell back, mouth opening to loose a scream at the sky, a sound of pure rage. He was making himself a target, alerting any manner of creature that may be lurking near of his presence, but he didn’t care. Let them come. Fey blood was just the thing he needed to wash away the remains of this night.

  Nothing stopped him on his rampage back to his cabin, no goblin coming for its pound of flesh, or siren singing for his soul. Adrenaline soaked his veins, filled him with the need to destroy something, to make something or someone pay for the disaster this night had become.

  It took him three tries to open his door, to convince his body to grasp the handle and turn it without ripping it off or smashing his way through the wood. He couldn’t hear anything over the rush of his own blood, and it wasn’t until he’d stumbled into a room that should have been dark and blessedly quiet, that he realized something was wrong.

  There was a fire crackling in the hearth. Cheery flames were licking at a pile of logs that looked to have been burning for at least an hour. The blankets had been dragged from his bed and now lay in a thick pile in front of the flames, couching the two wolves who should have been guarding the pit. They lay curled in a pile of fur, their chests rising and falling with the slow, steady rhythm of deep sleep. Their legs were dressed in clean bandages and even from here Mac could smell the thick herbal poultices pressed into the wounds beneath the gauze.

  The urge to scream at them, to grab their sleeping bodies and hurl them out into the cold night to sleep like the worthless dogs they were tingled in his muscles, but he neither moved nor spoke. Even through the chaos in his tormented mind, one cold, hard fact remained. The wolves could not have made that fire.

  “Good evening, Sheriff Mac Tyre.”

  The voice was cool, a subtle breeze that slid through the heat of the room to send a chill down Mac’s spine. His hands dropped to his sides, but he had no weapon. His dagger had been taken from him, ripped from its sheath by one of the masked traitors. Renewed anger chased away the fear and he faced the direction of the voice with his spine straight, fingers curled. A chuckle fluttered up his chest, spilled from his lips. He would tear the intruder apart with his bare hands.

  Even when he faced the direction of the voice, it took him a moment to see the speaker. He stepped out of the corner, shadows trailing behind him, stirred by the hem of his black cloak. His footsteps were silent, his tall frame moving with eerie grace. Firelight played over pale features, lighting up the blue eyes that watched him with the steady intensity of a bird of prey. A lock of white-blond hair
shifted within the hood of the cloak as the man tilted his head.

  “My dear sheriff, you do not look well.” His voice was the same soothing tone it had been a moment ago. “Do sit down by the fire. Warm yourself.”

  “It is a dead man you are for entering my home without permission.” Mac took an unsteady step forward, ready to wake the worthless wolves if he needed to.

  A strange smile pulled at the stranger’s mouth and for just a second Mac swore he saw a hint of fangs. Mac paused. Fangs. Vampire? Were there vampires here? He raised his hands to his temples, pressing against them to try and ease the throbbing headaches threatening to split his skull. He had to think. He was missing something, something important.

  “It pains me to see you this way,” the stranger said, a disapproving set to his jaw. “And it would be best for our conversation if you were thinking with a clear head.”

  There was movement, a flutter of blond hair. The glint of a silver blade. Mac instinctively drew back, his eyes struggling to process the world around him. One minute the vampire was standing before him, shrouded in endless black waves. Then the creature vanished all together. Something pulled hard against his neck, followed by the faint hiss of severed leather. The pressure vanished. He instinctively grabbed for the iron medallion, his source of protection.

  It was gone.

  Mac hissed and stumbled back. Black fabric skirted around the stranger's legs as he towered next to the fireplace, looking for all the world like he hadn’t moved. He held Mac's medallion in front of the firelight, the necklace's leather twine wrapped around his black-gloved fist, metal swaying back and forth like a pendulum.

  “I understand the desire to protect yourself against the tricks of your enemy, sheriff, but really, you must weigh the benefit against the cost.” He cupped the metal in the palm of his hand, looking from it to Mac. “It pains me to see what wearing that little piece of jewelry has done to you. You are a better man than this.”

  “The iron.” Mac whispered the word without thinking, staring as the stranger tucked it into some hidden pocket beneath his cloak. “I’d forgotten…”