“Touch yourself,” he panted. “Just like you would if you were alone. I want to see it.”
She groaned with embarrassment, aware that her cheeks were flushed bright red, but her hand went eagerly between her legs. She stroked her aching clit, and in less time than she thought possible, she was exploding like a night sky full of firecrackers. The pleasure took her body almost savagely, and she knew that she was tightening around him, thrashing against him.
Mads growled and thrust into her even harder, and when he spilled in her, his hands tightened on her hips until she was sure he had left bruises. After a long moment, he eased out of her carefully, bringing her to lie by his side.
Tara felt as if she was boneless. All of the energy had gone out of her, and after a long moment, she pressed her face to Mads' broad chest. She clung to him, and when the tears came, she only shook her head when he asked her what was wrong.
The sobs shook her shoulders, and she felt as helpless as she had when pleasure was wracking her body. Her climax was so immense that she could barely keep her emotions under control, and now they bubbled up, spilling out of her. She cried out all of the grief and the pain that she felt she had hidden for the past year, and Mads only stroked her hair and muttered comforting things in her ear.
It felt like she had been crying for hours, but then she finally pulled away, wiping at her eyes.
“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry...” she began, but Mads touched her hand gently.
“It's fine,” he said softly. “I want you to have what you need, and just then, you needed to cry.”
He held her for a long moment, and then he rose to go to the bathroom. He came back with a dampened cloth, and when she nodded, he cleaned her face and her body. The warm wetness of the towel and his soft words of love and comfort made her drowsy.
Tara stretched out on the bed and watched him move through the room, smiling at his strength and his grace.
There was nothing in this room that could hurt them. She knew it, and she clung to it. She knew that the next day, they would go to find their child, and that there would be danger in front of them. She knew that there was a chance that she and Mads would end up dead. Her heart hurt when she thought of Fen, and how alone he must be without her, but that was for tomorrow.
Tonight, there was nothing else that they could do, and when he came back to the bed, she reached for him.
“We will find him,” Mads said, but he stilled at her sad look.
“Don't,” she said. “Don't promise me things that you can't know. Never lie to me again, Mads.”
After a long moment, he nodded. She understood why he had lied before, even if she had not entirely forgiven him, and now he looked at her with perfect seriousness in his blue eyes.
“I will never lie to you again,” he swore, “not in all our lives together, and I hope you allow me to stay with you. Even if you do not, I would rather die than lie to you again.”
She looked in his face, and she felt in her heart that he was telling the truth.
Mutely, she reached for him and he settled in her arms
Tara fell asleep almost immediately, and her dreams were dark things. She had lost both Fen and Mads, and she couldn't find them. She rose in the night, and Mads was there to lull her to sleep again.
In the morning, they rose, and though she lingered in the doorway of the homely little room, she left it without a glance back.
Her path lay in front of her, not behind, and she took Mads' hand firmly in her own.
“Are you all right?” he asked, locking the door behind them.
Tara thought about the question seriously and honestly, and finally, she nodded.
“I will be when we find our son,” she said, and he looked startled.
“I want us to be together. I want us to be a family.”
Mads swept her up in a hug that was fierce and relieved, and she hugged him back just as hard.
“Thank you,” he whispered, and she knew they were ready to take on anything the world threw at them.
TO BE CONTINUED IN BOOK FIVE: To Soar with Eagles - Volume 5
***
To Soar with Eagles
***
When Mads and Tara checked into the hotel room for the night, there was an angel waiting for them.
Tara froze with dismay, but Mads, battle-trained since he was a young teen, had no such issue. He leaped as a man and came down as a wolf, and his lunge pinned the angel to the floor.
“Stop!” Tara cried, running into the room. She closed the door behind her, hearing it lock automatically, and she came as close to the pair on the floor as she dared.
Mads in his wolf form was enormous, and if she did not know how he loved her, she would have been terrified. As it was, his large teeth were poised just a hairsbreadth away from the angel's throat, and though even a torn throat wouldn't kill him, the sword that Mads carried would.
It was that weapon that Tara and Mads had discovered together, and Tara could tell that Mads wanted it very badly just then.
“Let him up,” she said, and after a long moment, Mads complied. He leaped off of the angel, turning back into a man, but now he could pick up his sword. Only a fool would have thought that he was less dangerous than the wolf he had been, and Tara stepped between them for safekeeping.
“Hello, Lukas,” she said softly, and though she was speaking to the angel who had allowed her son to be taken from her, her voice stayed level.
Lukas was in his full angelic form, that of a naked young man wearing a white linen kilt, and his white wings threatened to overwhelm the room. His body was flawless and unscarred, and when she looked him full in the face, Tara could always feel a part of her gasp at his beauty. His deep gray eyes were sad when he looked at her, and for a moment, he looked as if he wanted to take her hand. The moment passed, and he inclined his head instead.
“Thank you for the rescue, Tara. I knew my reception would not be very warm.”
“I may not be as merciful as you want me to be,” she said warningly. “You took my son, or you allowed him to be taken. Unless you tell me something that I want to hear very much, I am going to let him do anything he wants to you.”
Lukas' smile was fleeting, and he nodded. “I am sorry for what happened to your son, but I swear to you, he will be safe.”
“Swear to what?” demanded Tara, her temper fraying. “Swear to your brothers, the angels who took him? Swear to the lies you told me for the past year to get close to me?”
“I never lied,” Lukas protested. “I cared for you, and for Fen as well.”
Mads growled to hear his son's name on the angel's tongue, and Tara laid her hand on his shoulder to calm him.
“Then why did you give him to your brothers?”
Though Lukas was beautiful and kind, the other angels, the ones who had hunted Mads' people for generations, were scarred and cruel. She had met Mads when one broke down her door, searching for the book that was now nestled in her deepest pocket. The book allowed her to open doors and release bindings, and she knew that they were looking for it still. The angels who hunted her had finally taken her young son instead, and now she knew that she would burn down the world to get him back.
“It had to be done,” Lukas said, and there was a certainty to his voice that sent a shiver down Tara's spine. Once, he had told her that he had been the guardian of prophecy, and she wondered what he saw ahead for her and Mads and Fen.
“I'm getting pretty tired of you,” Mads said. “It sounds like you're talking a lot, but that you are saying very little.”
Tara nodded her head in agreement. Lukas had helped her the entire time that she had been pregnant and hiding from both Mads' people and the other angels, but that wouldn't protect him if her son ended up hurt.
“All I can tell you is that this is the way that things are meant to be,” Lukas said, and Tara could tell that he felt miserable about it.
“Is that what you came to tell us?” she asked gently. “It's what you t
old us before.”
“No, I came to help.” Lukas glanced at Mads. “You are strong enough to fight your way in, but no one is strong enough to fight their way out of the Aerie. You need me to get you inside.”
“What, and have you spring the alarm on us?” Mads growled. “Not likely.”
“If he wanted us captured, he could have told his brothers about us at any point,” Tara pointed out. “Let's here what he has to say.”
Lukas explained the Aerie to them. It was the place where the fallen angels nested. Their lives were cold and empty, but still they sought companionship, and the closest thing that they had to a settlement was a spot deep in the Rocky Mountains, where they saw each other when they were not out in the world.
“There has never been someone not of our blood who found this place,” Lukas said softly. “Your son will be the first. You and your lover will be the second and the third.”
Tara stirred uneasily at that, but Lukas's gentle smile filled her with a hope that she would see her child again and soon.
“Nothing without wings can get you into the Aerie,” he said firmly. “I will take you up there, both of you.”
“And how do we get down again?” asked Mads, and Lukas' smile remained unchanged.
“You will not need my help,” he said confidently, “but if you do, I will be there.”
Mads growled uneasily about it, but he could not disagree. They had come to the Rockies just the day previously, and though they could see the peak that held the Aerie, there was no way to come close to it.
“Go to sleep,” Lukas said, climbing up on their window. “I will come for you at dawn.”
He lofted himself out of the window with nothing more than that, and when Tara came to close it, there was not a single hint of him in the sky or on the ground.
“Do you trust him?” Mads asked, and she shrugged helplessly.
“In the past, I trusted him because there was no one else, but I think I do. Three in One led me to him, and though I would never guess what kind of game she was playing, I don't think that he means us harm.”
“He and his kind made my family's life a living hell,” said Mads, his voice flat. “I once saw them burn down a house with an old mated pair inside, Grel and Ida. It was terrible.”
Werewolves, Mads' people, had been hunted by the angels for thousands of years. Tara knew about his grief over those he could not protect, and she knew that there were seven tattoos over his heart, one for each of the people he had loved who had been taken from him by the angels.
“He's different,” Tara said, and Mads snorted.
“Why, because of his pretty face? They say that the devil was beautiful too, Tara.”
“Yes, and they also say that wolves eat young girls in red capes who go skipping into the dark woods alone. Do you do that, Mads?”
For a moment, it looked as if Mads wanted a fight, but then his temper dissolved into a rueful grin.
“I told you to trust me, and that means that I should trust you as well. I don't like him, and all I know about him is that he's the bastard who took my lover and my child away from me. Still and all, he's protected you as well as he could, and that means something.”
Tara hesitated, chewing on her thumbnail. “Do you think we'll get Fen back?” she asked softly. The whole time they had been on the road, she had strung so tight she couldn't even think of coming to the Aerie. Now that she could, fear threatened to overthrow her spirit, and she reached for Mads instinctively.
“I know we will,” Mads said. “Even If I have to cut down every angel in there, we will get our son back, my love.”
She allowed Mads to gather her up in his arms, and she simply shivered for what felt like a very long time. She had cried herself out the night that her son was taken, and now all that was left was a kind of empty resolve. She knew that panic would fill that emptiness if she let it, and so she cast her mind around for something else, for anything else that could fill it up.
“So are you the big bad wolf who ate Little Red Riding Hood?” she asked, teasingly. It was easier to concentrate on the man with her than to think about the future, and it was better to talk with him than to fall down into a pile of sobs and shudders.
Mads pulled back with a sly smile on his face and quirked his eyebrow.
“That was someone else,” he said with a grin. “Maybe a second cousin or an uncle or something like that. There's nothing so bad or big about me.”
Tara let her eyes trace down Mads' chest to land squarely on the place between his legs, and he laughed in surprise.
“Do you know the story of Little Red Riding Hood? Not the one that everyone tells, the real one?” he asked suddenly, and she was aware of a smokiness in his eyes, of the desire that could spring up between the two of them so very easily.
“I did my grad work on languages, not stories,” she said, and he shook his head in mock-disappointment.
“What kind of wolf-wife doesn't know the story of Little Red Riding Hood?” he said, lying back in the bed. When she moved to join him, he gestured that she should stay right where she was.
“Tell me then,” she said, and a spool of tension unwound in her stomach when she saw him spread out luxuriously on the bed, his muscled frame relaxed and that glint of desire in his bright blue eyes.
“Well, it goes like you think it does until close to the end. Red has stopped to pick flowers, allowing the wolf to get to her grandmother's house before she can, and he's eaten her grandmother in one big bite.”
“What a greedy fellow,” Tara murmured, and Mads winked at her.
“We're known for it, I'm afraid. But listen. When Red comes to the cottage, the wolf is hiding in her grandmother's bed. When Red says she's cold, he tells her to climb in with him. To avoid dirtying the bed, she must remove her clothes.”
“Oh, very sensible,” said Tara sarcastically. “I suppose I need to strip before I get into bed?”
“Well, I'm sure that the hotel staff would be grateful. With every piece of clothing Red removes, she asks what she should do with it. The wolf tells her, 'throw it in the fire, you won't need it anymore.'”
At Tara's blush, Mads grinned.
“That's a strange thing for a grandmother to say, isn't it?” he asked softly. “If her grandmother said that to her, Red should have been frightened or confused. What I think is that Red knew exactly who was in the bed, and I think she was....”
“Fascinated,” Tara finished, her voice just a little breathy.
They stood in silence for a moment, and Tara's hands slipped to hem of her shirt.
“What should I do with my blouse?” she asked, her throat dry, and Mads' soft laugh turned her knees to water.
“Well, just put it away. You don't need it any more.”
She pulled the shirt over her head, exposing her bare skin to the room. It was a little chilly, raising gooseflesh on her body, and she wrapped her arms around herself shyly. It was strange to feel shy in front of this man, but when he was watching with an expression of pure greed on his face, she couldn't help it.
“What... what about my bra?”
“Put it away, dear, you don't need it anymore.”
Tara unclipped her bra and tugged it off. Her breasts were fuller after she had given birth, and sometimes, their weight surprised her still. She felt Mads' eyes on them, and when she glanced up, she saw him lick his lips.
Slowly, piece by piece, she removed her clothing. Soon, she stood naked in front of him. He lay on his back fully-clothed, and she saw him pass his hand along the erection that was obvious through his jeans. There was something so lazy and so predatory about the way he looked at her that she felt a stab of excitement in her belly, and from the way he smiled, he could see it as well.
“Well, what now?” she asked, a hint of nervousness in her voice.
“Well, now you should come to bed.”
Tara moved toward the bed, intending to sit down next to him, but she gasped when she felt his strong hands
close around her shoulders and wrestle her to the mattress. His speed and strength were immense, and in a heartbeat, she found herself pinned underneath him. One of his thighs was pressed between hers, and she drew a hard breath when she felt the rough denim rub against her most sensitive parts. She knew she was getting his jeans wet, and she didn't care.
“This is a beautiful thing, now,” he whispered. “Look at what a gorgeous naked girl I have in my bed, so bare and lovely. What do you think wolves do to girls like you?”
Tara shook her head, running her fingers along his muscled sides. Even though they had been apart for a year, she still remembered how he felt under her hands and how much she loved touching him.
“Well, silly thing, we eat them.”
That was all the warning he cared to give before his lips crashed down on hers, and if she had any idea that she wanted to resist, they were driven out of her head by the intense wave of pleasure that rose up in in her. There was something primitive and vital about the way he was kissing her. There were no barriers between them, nothing that separated them at all, and now she could feel the savagery that would always be a part of him.
The beast was as much a part of him as the man, and she could feel it close now in Mads' hunger, in his deep desire for her, in the way his teeth went to her neck and her shoulders, marking her for any who had eyes to see.
He growled against her flesh, rising up shivers of ecstasy, and she found herself purring in response.
“Do women of your kind lie down so easily for you?” she asked softly, reaching up to stroke his shoulder.
It took him a moment to answer her, but when he did, it was with a smile.
“They don't,” he admitted. “They fight. They claw and they bite, and in the end they decide whether they are going to stop fighting or not.”
Hunting Hearts II (Trilogy Bundle) (Werewolf Romance - Paranormal Romance) Page 3
