by Pam Godwin
I kissed his beautiful mouth, pouring every ounce of appreciation into the press of our lips. “I owe you my life.”
Pulling back, I searched the shadows cast across his face. He looked tired, thinner, his eyes bruised and heavy-lidded.
“Have you eaten?” I stroked his sunken cheek.
“I cooked some of the owl meat, but I need…” He met my gaze. “I need blood, and you’re too weak—”
“You never take much. I won’t miss it.”
With a groan, he rolled me to my back and pressed his nose against my neck, his hand wandering over my chest. “I can’t feed without fucking you, Dawn. You need to rest.”
The hard length of his cock pulsed against my hip, and I wanted him inside me with a desperation that shocked me. I was too exhausted to do anything but sleep, but that didn’t stop me from hooking a thigh over his hip and pulling his heavy body on top of me.
You don’t trust me, and we’ll talk about that.
I hadn’t trusted him, but every moment I spent with him disintegrated more of that wall I’d held between us. He could’ve left me on the frozen river. He could’ve bitten me while I slept. Instead, he’d proven his loyalty a thousand times over.
“I trust you.” With my hands framing the masculine angles of his jaw, I wrapped my legs around his hard ass and arched against his erection. “I’m yours.”
That was all the encouragement he needed. Bathed in the warmth of firelight, he fucked me with aching tenderness, sank his fangs in my throat, and brought us to orgasm softly and thoroughly. Then he fed me roasted owl meat and forced me to drink another cup of tea. Belly full and heart at peace, I followed him into a deep sleep.
Hours later, I woke in darkness. The fire had smoldered into embers, and a chill settled through the cabin. With my nude backside exposed to the frosty air, I lay sprawled over his chest, staring at the glowing remnants of wood and listening to the rapid beat of his heart. It wasn’t an amplified sound of his veins, but the pace was too erratic, the muscles beneath me too tense.
I lifted my head to see his face, and my nose came within inches of glinting steel. My pulse detonated as I stared at the long-pointed blade angled beneath his throat.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
My stomach hardened with dread as I met Salem’s wide eyes. His fangs were bared, his throat jogging against the press of lethal steel. No glowing veins, but someone stood behind me, holding a fucking sword. Could it be…?
Heart pounding, I slowly lifted my head and followed the edge of the blade toward the handle, the Celtic engraving on the hilt, huge freckled hand, red-leathered sleeve of a coat…
“Da!” I jumped up, overcome with relief.
“Put some fecking clothes on.” Roark’s jade eyes stayed on Salem, his fangs elongated and sword arm stiff and unyielding as he held the sharp tip beneath Salem’s jaw.
“Lower the steel, Da.” I slapped my hands over my chest and groin, my cheeks flushing with heat. “Salem isn’t a threat.”
Spinning toward my clothes, I collided with a brick chest. Arms came around me, wrapping me in a fur blanket and the familiar scent of hickory.
“Dad!” I stared up at Jesse’s copper eyes, yanking my arms from the pelts to hug him as tightly as he hugged me. “Tell Roark to lower the sword. Salem saved my life.” I pulled back. “Where’s Michio?”
“North of here, hunting for you.” The deep voice came from the dark silhouette behind Jesse.
The brown eyes, broad shoulders, and mocha skin of my best friend sent me hurtling from Jesse’s arms and into Eddie’s.
“You made it.” I draped the furs around my body and held his beautiful face in my hands. “The women? Did they—?”
“All safe back at camp.” He leaned down and planted a wet kiss on my cheek.
A low growl rumbled from the floor behind me. “Get your fucking mouth off her.” Salem lay nude and dangerously pissed off with his neck arched beneath the sword.
“Da, release him!” I grabbed our clothes from the table and darted to Salem’s side, shouting over my shoulder. “Turn your backs so we can dress.”
“Not taking me eyes off the fecking hybrid.” Roark’s voice grew rougher, angrier. “Wha’ in the bloody hell were ye doing all cozied up with me naked daughter?” he roared, pushing on the sword and producing a trickle of blood on Salem’s neck.
Heat exploded through my body in waves of fury. Before my brain could catch up, I was crouched over Salem’s chest and hissing at the man who raised me.
“Jaysus ballsac!” Roark stepped back, eyes bulging and locked on my mouth.
Then Jesse was there, hands gripping my jaw and throat with a fanged scowl on his face as he glared at my teeth. He turned that scowl toward Salem, who rolled from beneath me with lightning-fast reflexes. In the next breath, I was ripped from Jesse’s grip and shoved behind Salem’s flexing frame.
The air crackled with dry heat and tension as Eddie and Jesse stood in a face-off with Salem, boots planted and arrows nocked and trained on Salem’s head. Roark raised the sword, his eyes possessed with emerald fire.
“He’s not a hybrid, and if you harm him, I will never forgive you.” I shoved at Salem’s arm, stepping around him and adjusting the furs on my body. “If you kill him, I will follow him into hell. Lower your fucking weapons!”
Jaws clenched and throats bobbing, each man eased his weapon to the floor.
“Explain the fangs and lack of clothes, lass, before I go off me bloody nut.” Roark pinned me with a look that would normally make my knees wobble.
“After I’m dressed.” I turned away and dropped the furs, which prompted a snarled Irish curse and the shuffle of multiple boots.
Salem snagged my clothes from the floor and thrust a finger at someone behind me. “Turn around!”
“I don’t trust you.” Eddie’s voice strained with tension.
I grabbed Salem’s arm before he did something stupid and spoke with my back to Eddie. “I trust Salem with the lives of every person in this room. Give me some privacy.”
“You’ve never needed privacy before,” Eddie said, his tone laced with suspicion.
Salem’s arm went rigid beneath my hand. Damn jealous man.
I tightened my hold. “I need it now, Eddie. Turn around.”
The chill in the room stood still for an eternal moment before the creak of boots sounded Eddie’s capitulation.
Salem held my gaze as we pulled on our pants. When I reached for the bandana to secure my breasts, he yanked it out of my hands.
“You’re not wearing that ridiculous scrap of nothing,” he whispered.
He shoved his wool sweater over my head. I pushed my arms through the sleeves and breathed in the masculine scent wafting from the soft fleece. I might never take this sweater off. Especially if it meant he had to go shirtless.
Trailing a finger down the ridges of his chest, I felt the tension coiling beneath his skin. He was unusually quiet. No doubt preparing for the impending conversation about his mother and the intimacy of our relationship.
You’re asking me to enter the domain of the great warriors after I deflowered their precious daughter? They’ll castrate me.
“You still have your balls,” I mouthed, grinned, and poked his abs.
He didn’t smile back, his expression fierce as his attention returned to the men behind me.
I stole a greedy glance at his powerful legs and cock encased in black leather, his deliciously nude V-shaped torso, and the noctilucent glow of his twilight eyes. Then I shifted toward the rest of the room.
Salem threw more wood on the fire as I stalled for another few seconds. Eddie leaned over the table with his back to me, hands planted on the wood surface and head lowered. He wore his usual fitted leather from neck to boots. His black hair was clipped close to his perfectly-round skull, his shoulders broad and rigid. I wanted to rub his back and promise him he had nothing to worry about.
A few feet from him, Jesse and Roark stood shoulder to shoulder, their heads bo
wed together and facing away from me as they whispered in tones too low for my ears. Jesse crossed his arms, stretching the seams across the back of his black leather jacket. Roark was taller and broader than Jesse, and always so damn imposing in his red leather duster that bulged on the side where his scabbard hung. The sight of them together was enough to make any man or hybrid tremble, let alone a daughter about to spill confessions about sex and bloodlust.
I gulped, cleared my throat. “You can turn around.”
Eddie swept forward first. “What happened to Jeremy?”
I rubbed a hand over my mouth and shut my eyes against a spike of grief. “He didn’t make it.” When I opened my eyes, I gestured them toward the fire Salem had stoked to life. “I’ll start at the beginning, but maybe we should wait for Michio.” I looked at my fathers. “Can you sense how far away he is?”
Jesse glowered at Salem then narrowed his eyes at me. Evidently, he didn’t want Salem to know he, Roark, and Michio shared an unexplainable connection that allowed them to sense one another’s auras and pinpoint their locations. It wasn’t common knowledge, but it wasn’t a secret either.
“C’mere.” Roark dragged me against his chest and buried his nose in my hair. “I’ve been a bleedin’ header with worry.”
“Effin’ and blindin’ nonstop, were ya?” I laid on the Irish accent, grinning up at him.
“Aye.” He cupped my face, his eyes gentle and brimming with love. “Jesse threatened to give me a bocky leg if I didn’t pull me shite together.”
“I’m sorry, Da. I have so much to tell you.”
“Eddie. Go retrieve Michio.” Roark released me and lowered to the floor beside the fire, propping an elbow on his bent knee. “He’s a thirty minute hike northwest.”
Eddie’s nostrils flared, his gaze aiming daggers at Salem. Then he pivoted in an angry swirl of leather and stormed out of the cabin.
“Your BFF doesn’t like me.” Salem tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, his mouth twisted in an impish smirk.
Refusing to encourage adolescent rivalry, I disregarded the comment and sat on the rug facing Roark. “Is Michio alone?”
His sharp green eyes ticked between Salem and me, narrowing into distrustful slits as Salem lowered beside me with an arm across my lap and not a sliver of space between us.
“Doc’s with Link and Hunter.” Roark brushed a blond dreadlock from his scruffy face.
I nodded, relieved. Link and Hunter were two of my fathers’ closest friends.
“Start talking.” Jesse sat against the wall beside the hearth and stretched a leg out behind Roark.
“Right.” Roark gave me the full force of his Irish glare. “Start with the part when ye lost your thick-as-a-plank mind and legged it from the protection of your soldiers, making a holy show of yourself.”
Oh boy. I sucked in a strengthening breath and plunged into the events of the past two weeks. Jeremy’s decapitation, the prison in the mansion, the hybrid children, the regular meals, and our baffling freedom. I skipped over the sex and biting, as well as Salem’s stalking and background, fully aware I was only delaying the inevitable.
“Did he force ye?” Roark asked, quiet and deadly, and nodded at the fresh bite mark on my neck.
“No.” My voice hitched. “Of course not.”
Roark pointed a look loaded with malice and fangs at Salem. “When, exactly, did ye shag our daughter?”
“Da!” My spine snapped straight. “Stop it.”
“They were locked in a cell together for ten days.” Jesse stared at the fist he held against his bent leg, his eyes stark and unblinking. “You know when it happened, Roark.”
“Girl meets boy,” Roark muttered, “and all rational thought flies out the fecking window.”
My hackles raised. “It’s not what—”
Salem clutched my thigh and met their eyes. “Dawn and I had sex on the tenth day.”
A tide of red crawled up Jesse’s neck, and he lurched to stand. Roark caught his hand and pulled him back to the floor.
“Our captors released us right after we, um…” I gestured between Salem and me. Yeah. Awkward.
“Wha’ triggered the fangs?” Roark released Jesse’s hand to grip his knee. “Was it…?”
When we had sex? When I came all over Salem’s cock? When he bit me and fucked me into oblivion?
“Evie should be here.” Jesse laced his fingers behind his neck and lowered his head, his voice grim. “She’d know what to say, how to handle this.”
I met Roark’s anguished eyes and swallowed around the lump in my throat.
The discomfort in the cabin became a big hairy presence, as if all their pain grew legs and bristled with arrows and we were watching it stagger between us, vomit blood, and crash to the floor in a fit of convulsions.
The silence became unbearable, but I couldn’t find my voice.
“The first time I bit her…” Salem linked our fingers together. “She grew fangs.”
“The first time?” Jesse cut his copper eyes at Salem, his mouth pinned in a murderous line.
“Dad.” I bent across Salem’s lap, blocking Jesse’s line of sight. “His bloodlust works the same as yours, okay? It’s keyed off from exertion, loss of blood, and…sex. Except one difference. His…uh, partners never turn, never grow fangs. I’m the only one.”
Jesse and Roark shared a look I couldn’t interpret. A moment later, their profiles swiveled toward the wall behind me.
“What is it?” I glanced over my shoulder and returned to them. “Is Michio here?”
“Soon.” Jesse sat back and raked his fingers through the streaks of gray at his temples. Then he squinted at Salem. “You have fangs but you’re not a hybrid. When you bite, it’s sexual. You move like us. I assume you heal like us.”
Salem nodded.
Roark stroked his trim beard, the dusting of silver along his jaw shimmering in the firelight. “Who’s your ma, lad?”
My breath caught in my throat. They know. Hell, all the clues were there. Salem was the right age to be Elaine’s son. He had traits that could’ve only been passed down from Michio’s bite. And while I didn’t know what Elaine looked like, Roark and Jesse had watched her transform from nymph to human to evil bitch.
“You already know.” I glared at Roark. “Why are you making him say—”
“Elaine.” Salem squared his shoulders and faced my fathers head on. “I’m Salem of Elaine.”
Grooves formed in Jesse’s forehead, his lips curving down as he studied Salem’s face. “Your father is Tallis.”
Salem’s head jerked back, brows arched. “How did you know?”
I tried to look at Salem through Jesse’s eyes, but I didn’t see the swarthy Australian man I’d heard so much about.
“You have his bulky stature.” Jesse braced elbows on his knees, head cocked as he regarded Salem. “The shape of your nose. The way your mouth rests in a smirk.” His lips twitched with a small, private smile as he took in Salem’s jaw and torso. “The bastard couldn’t grow hair on his face or chest. I used to give him hell for that.”
My chest swelled, and I tightened my grip on Salem’s hand.
“He got Tallis’ cocky arrogance, too, yeah?” Roark rested a hand on Jesse’s nape and gave it a squeeze. “Our Aussie boyo would’ve been delira and excira to know he had a son.”
When Salem gave me a confused look, I said, “Delighted and excited. Your dad would’ve been happy—”
“Where is she?” Jesse’s voice whipped through the cabin.
“She’s dead.” The silver in Salem’s eyes burned white-hot. “I killed her eight years ago.”
Roark flinched. Jesse dragged a hand down his face. Then they both leapt to their feet, eyes on the door.
Michio. My stomach knotted with excitement and dread as I rose with Salem at my side. I was dying to see Michio. I was also about to dig up vivid memories of his rapist. We were all thinking it, postures straight and breaths held as the handle on the door turned.
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It swung open as he reached it, and Michio strode in, bringing with him a gust of brutal cold before he shut the door. The others weren’t with him, but I wasn’t surprised. He’d probably run like the speed of light as the words left Eddie’s mouth.
He scanned the room, and when his dark eyes connected with mine, deep creases faded from his face.
“Dad.” My legs burned to go to him, but Salem’s grip on my waist kept me in place.
As Michio moved to close the distance, Roark stopped him with a hand on his neck and spoke low in his ear. His Japanese heritage radiated from his brown eyes as they tapered, sharpened, flickered from Jesse to me and locked on Salem. Roark’s hand tightened around his throat, lips moving at his ear.
I knew when Roark reached the part about Elaine. Michio’s face contorted, his fangs extended, and shadows churned in his eyes as he glared at Salem.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The agony scoring Michio’s face produced a simmering burn in my chest—a burn that spread to my throat as his jaw worked in a threatening way. His shoulder bag dropped to the floor. His cheekbones sharpened, and his haunted eyes regained focus, zeroing in on Salem.
Roark cupped Michio’s cheek, touched their heads together, and continued to whisper at his ear.
The few times Michio had spoken about Elaine, it’d been clear his biggest torment was self-imposed guilt. My mother had been imprisoned at Hoover Dam, alone, pregnant, and just down the hall while Elaine had her despicable way with every part of him. Though he’d been raped mentally and physically, he felt like he’d betrayed my mother. Over the years, Roark had become his therapist as much as his lover, but despite Roark’s wisdom and support, we all knew Michio still fought demons.
Right now, he seemed ready to fight a demon in the flesh.
“You look like her.” He glared at Salem.
“He’s not her.” I stepped in front of Salem in a show of conviction.
I would never put my back to a man I didn’t trust, and Michio knew that. But the angry creases in his expression told me he didn’t like it. At. All.
