Tara looked thoughtful at that, and Mads frowned.
“You understand that I'm with you, yes?” he asked. “I don't think of anyone else, I don't want anyone else, whether they are of my kind or not.”
“Oh no, that's not what I was thinking at all,” she said.
When Mads started to ask her another question, she decided that they had been too serious too long, and gave him a hard shove.
There was no way that she would have budged him at all if he had been expecting it, and by the time he recovered, she was squirming halfway off of the bed. He had to grab at her legs, and he got a hefty kick in the side for his pains.
His growl was a mix of hunger and delight, and when he grabbed for her again, he pinned her. In response, she ran her nails hard up his back, and though he yelped, he showed no signs of letting her go.
“Do you want to fight, little warrior?” he asked softly “Do you want to make me work for it?”
“Yes,” she whispered with a grin, and she wrenched one wrist from his grasp. The very small amount of martial arts training she had had in her childhood came back to her, and she twisted and fought him. She knew she couldn't hurt him, but there was a rawness to the way that they grabbed at each other that drew the pleasure to her skin and made her long for more.
“Tighter,” she whispered, “hold me tighter, damn you....”
He moaned, and he pinned her hard again. She could feel his cock through his jeans, tell how very much he wanted her, and it drove her out of her mind with desire. She knew how easy it would be to lie still, to give him what they both so desperately craved, but some part of her couldn't, wouldn't. There was nothing in her that wanted to submit to him just that moment. She wanted him to take it, and so she struggled and squirmed until finally she knew she was soaking wet with desire, and the cries escaping her only wanted, wanted, wanted...
Finally, he pressed her to the bed, and with one gesture, he raised her hips up high. In another life, she would have been embarrassed at being in that position, but where she was at right then, she wouldn't have cared if everyone in the hotel was watching.
Tara felt Mads fumble with his pants, and for a single heartrending moment, she wondered if he was going to tease her.
“No, no, now please, Mads, please now!”
He stroked his hard cock twice along her sopping slit, and then he plunged into her so deeply that she groaned. For a moment, he waited, stroking her sweating back. He didn't move until she whimpered for more and pushed her hips back, and then he grasped her by the hips and thrust.
There was nothing refined about it, nothing soft or gentle. This was something raw that called to her in a way that it never had before, and all she could do was cling to the sheets.
She didn't realize that she was calling out until her throat was sore, and then she buried her face in the mattress. Tara realized that Mads was talking, saying sweet things, filthy things, and there was something about the way that he was moaning that made her wild.
This was more than just sex, it was mating, and she realized with a half-delirious pleasure that she would give anything for this man. He belonged to her just like she belonged to him, and when the deep tremors of pleasure started in her body, she called his name, aching with every part of her. She needed him, there was no getting away from it or hiding from it.
Her climax hit her low and fast. It was intense, like a bolt of lightening from the sky, and the speed of it and the ferocity of it left her raw and shaking on the ground. She went limp, but his hands held her up, and she realized that there was a pleasure in this as well. His thrusts were hard and fast, and the feel of his body striking hers sent aftershocks of pleasure through her.
He spilled into her with a muffled roar, and after pulling out of her, he grabbed her and held her close. His whole body shook, and for a moment, Tara was alarmed. Had she done something wrong? Had something in the act hurt him?
“Mads?”
“Never leave me again,” he said hoarsely. “I couldn't survive it. The only reason I did the first time was because there was a war to fight. If you left me again, if you took our son away from me, I couldn't stand it. Please, Tara, if you love me, please love me....”
“Oh god, Mads,” she whispered.
Tara held him close, kissing him over and over again. Slowly his grip on her loosened, and he rolled away.
“Mads?”
“You will do what you need to do,” he said softly. “I've always known that about you, and I have always loved that about you as well. I understand that there are things that you want and things that you need, and that I... I may not be them.”
“But—”
“Light above, woman, let me finish, will you?” He grinned at her half-heartedly, and he waited until she nodded to continue.
“I want to be the one who sees you every night, who makes you make sounds that shake down the house. The thought of anyone else being in that place kills me. I would understand if I wasn't what you wanted, but Tara, I want to be.”
His eyes grew very bright, like they were when he was a wolf, and he took her hand. Given that she was naked and that they had just done what they did, it should have been ludicrous, but instead it was an act of tenderness and intimacy that made her heart ache.
“Tara, stay with me. No matter what happens, stay with me.”
Biting her lip, she nodded. “I will,” she said, truth throbbing in her every word. “I will, for as long as I can.”
Relief flooded his face, and he swept her up in his arms again.
“Thank you,” he murmured, and she hugged him back just as fiercely.
Still, there was a part of her that remembered a year on the run, and she wondered.
***
Kalle, Mads' brother, was waiting for them at the edge of the forest the next day. His sly glance told Tara that he guessed everything that they had done the night before, but when his big brother approached, he was wisely silent.
“Are you sure?” Kalle asked, when Mads handed him the sword, and Mads nodded.
“It's the only thing made that could ever kill an angel,” he said. “I'll be damned if I'll walk it into their home without an army at my back.”
Kalle looked like he wanted to argue, but he shook his head.
“Be well, brother, and I'll keep a place for you at home.”
Mads looked amused, and he cuffed his younger brother on the shoulder. Kalle was shorter and lighter, but beyond that, they were similar enough that it made Tara's heart ache. When Kalle turned to her, she trembled, wondering what he must think, but he drew into a hug that at once felt safe and brotherly.
“Take good care of this idiot,” he said cheerfully. “He gets lost the moment he steps off of pack lands.”
“I'll do my best,” she agreed, and with Mads, she watched as Kalle drove away.
“Are you afraid?” Mads asked, turning to Tara.
“Very much so,” she said, “but that will never stop me.”
“I love you,” he said, promise and reassurance both.
She started to respond, but there was the heavy beat of wings in the air, and Lukas appeared.
“Are you ready?” he asked softly, and Tara nodded.
“How're we going to do this?” Mads asked. “Will you carry us one at a time or do we hook you up to a basket like a hot-air balloon?”
If Lukas was offended by Mads' flippancy, he gave no sign.
“No, here, allow me.”
With no more warning than that, he tucked one of them under each arm, and those powerful wings lifted them straight off of the ground.
Mads swore, and even Tara, who had traveled in Lukas' arms more than once, gasped with the feeling of it.
Angels flew like no other thing in the world, soaring higher and diving more sharply, and when the Aerie came into sight, it was easy to see why it had been chosen as their home. It was a tall narrow peak that was utterly inaccessible except for from the air, and the entrance to the place was a stra
ight drop down a narrow passage of pure rock.
When Lukas alighted, he set them both down easily, Mads growling angrily to himself and Tara shaking from their dizzying descent.
“Everything will be well,” Lukas said, and when he spoke in those soft tones, she could almost believe him.
“Where is my son?” she asked, and he nodded.
Lukas cupped his hands together, and when he parted them, there was a small globe of green light. It bobbed in the air for a moment, and then it floated over to Tara. There was something peaceful about it, friendly, but Mads snorted.
“It's a will-o-the-wisp,” he said in disgust. “They use them to lure foolish cubs off into the forests.”
Lukas looked sorrowful, but he did not deny it.
“This will help you get to your child,” he said. “Follow it. It may take you past angels, and it will not protect you, but it can guide you.”
“And you?” Tara asked. She didn't know what part Lukas had to play in what was to come, but in her very bones, she could sense no betrayal from him.
“I have my own role to play.”
He stepped close and dropped a chaste kiss on Tara's head. She felt Mads tense next to her, but with the next moment, the angel was gone, lofting himself up the shaft again.
“You care about him,” Mads observed, and Tara nodded.
“He protected me, he guided me.”
“And now he leads us God knows where,” Mads said, looking mistrustfully at the light.
“I am following the light,” Tara retorted. “I choose to do this. I want you to come with me, but if you cannot....”
Mads growled at the idea of leaving her alone in the mountain, and with a grin, she started following the glowing globe
It was not as dark in the caverns as she feared. The Aerie was composed of a series of tall, narrow tunnels that were carved into the rock, and at various intervals, the corridors were lit with the same green light that led them. For a moment, Tara wondered why the angels, who were winged and flew like no creature born, would choose to nest in a place that was so similar to being underground. It didn't make any sense until she thought about the burned and scarred wrecks that most angels were. Lukas was curiously beautiful and pure, and whenever she asked about his brothers' terrifying faces, he had only grown silent.
“We are very proud,” he had said finally. “Pain and pride mixed makes monsters.”
It was pride that kept them in the dark, and she wondered if it was pride that had given them those terrible scars in the first place.
Mads paced by her side, uneasy in the darkness, and the silence threatened to swallow them whole. Once or twice, they had to uneasily thread themselves around tunnels straight down, and sometimes, tunnels leading up gaped over their heads. It made sense, Tara realized, when the things who used the tunnels were winged. The glowing light never led them to any spot where they might be injured, but only bobbed slightly ahead.
They walked and walked deeper into the mountain, and Tara's nerves were stretched to the breaking point when at last, they were discovered.
It was a pair of angels who found them, and they flew up and out of a tunnel right in front of them.
By the green glow, she could see them, one larger than the other, both with faces that were dry and scarred past human recognition. They uttered shrieks like eagles, and as one, they dove for them, claw-like hands grasping.
Mads roared with rage and, shoving Tara behind him, he lunged at the two as a wolf. They were fast, but he was strong, and he wrenched one around by the arm before spinning back around to snarl at the other.
Tara hesitated, but then his electric blue eyes met hers for a heartbeat, and she could read the message there as easily as if he had shouted it.
Run and find Fen, run.
Fighting every instinct inside her, she did as he commanded, and while he fought the two angels that he had no hope of killing, she left him behind. She edged her way around the tunnel that the angels had risen from and took off running. As if sensing her plight, the little ball of light matched her speed, staying just in front of her and guiding her way.
She missed falling into a tunnel twice, and when she heard a rustling close by, she hid the ball of light with her hands and waited dead still until it had passed.
She ran for so long that her breath was ragged in her lungs, but finally, finally, the light brought her to a small chamber with no door. It was only a hollow place in the stone, barely bigger than her kitchen in her apartment, but the light stopped and hovered, and when she looked around the corner warily, she saw, of all things, a cradle.
Her heart leaping in her chest, she sprinted to the cradle's side, and when she saw her son inside, tears immediately sprang to her eyes.
“Oh, Fen,” she whispered. “Oh Fen, my dear...”
For all that he had been missing for days, her son seemed no worse for the wear. He was clean, he had been fed, and when she scooped him out of the cradle, he fussed for a moment and then settled as if she had always been there.
For a long moment, she simply clutched him to her, unable to believe that he was warm in her arms and safe.
“Someone took good care of you,” she murmured, and she froze when she heard a scraping in the hall behind her and the unmistakable rustle of enormous wings.
“That someone was me.”
With dread, Tara turned around, and she found herself facing a tall angel with chestnut hair and Lukas' gray eyes.
Like Lukas, his features were perfectly even, and there was an untouched quality to his skin that made him look as if he were made of marble. His features were sterner than Lukas', narrower, and there was something cold about him.
“Who... who are you?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“When there is anyone around who cares to speak it, they call me Anders. The more important question is who you are.”
“Who I am?”
“Yes,” he said, and there was such a pleasantly reasonable tone to his voice that she found herself drawing closer.
“Who are you to open the way for the wolf king to murder us? Who are you to come into this sacred place?”
She drew away, afraid, but he followed her, and his long thin hand wrapped around her wrist, pulling her close. He was inhumanly tall, and when his wings snapped with his anger, they stirred up a cold wind that made her instinctively cover Fen with her body.
“Little human woman, you have walked into the last place on earth where you are welcome. Is it not enough that you have everything else, isn't it enough that you and those wretched wolves were loved more?”
“More?”
She stared at the angel as he visibly put himself back together bit by bit. When he looked up again, his face was calm, with no hint of the rage that she knew was boiling right underneath the surface.
“You were loved more, and you were loved best,” he said, and a deep tremor shook her spine. He was talking about a war that had happened long before any kind of human memory, when the wolves had hunted with the angels, led by a king known as Fenrisulfir.
“Little daughter of men, let me tell you a story, and if you live, perhaps you can tell it to your half-wolf child.”
She thought he might let her go, but his grip remained the same, and his face took on a gentle light, like a teacher instructing a beloved pupil.
“Once there were the wolves, and the men, and the angels, and they lived and worked on the earth. The men and the wolves were mortal and they were loved, and the angels envied it. They wanted the love of the one who made them, and they saw that it was given to the wolves and the men while they, perfect and first-born, were left alone. It drove some of them quite mad, and it drove others to seek a final destruction. Some, however, found themselves in a state of fury so strong that their souls became a battleground. They went to war with each other, the angels who wanted to be loved more, and the ones who adhered to the perfect plan that had been set in front of them. The ones who wished to be loved... lost,
and those who obeyed were lifted up, never to be seen again.”
“You're... you're fallen,” she whispered.
“No!”
The shout echoed throughout the caverns and bounced down the halls. It was so loud that Fen started to wail, and if her baby hadn't been in her arms, she would have covered her ears with her hands.
“Not fallen,” he said more quietly. “Forgotten, banished.”
“Your faces,” she said softly.
“Reminders of a war we could never win.”
He touched his own face gently.
“I gave more blows than I received. I was the strongest of them all.”
He shook his head.
“Here ends the lesson, little daughter of men. And now you will come with me, and perhaps we will bring this story of ours to a close, after all these years.”
“A close?” she stuttered.
He maintained an iron grip on her wrist, and when he started pulling her along, she was forced to follow. He was slow enough that she did not fall, and she clung on to Fen for dear life.
“This whole sad play, this entire war. You are the opener that was promised.
“What am I supposed to open?” she asked, hoping he would stop, hoping he would release her, but he was relentless. He pulled, and she had the certainty that if she didn't move, he would simply wrench her arm from its socket.
“We have allies,” he said. “Ones who wait beyond. The ones who are truly fallen. They have turned a lifetime of waiting and rage into a hate so sharp it could cut the sky. They are waiting for a way to be opened.”
“You think I can....”
“I know you can,” he said smoothly. “I know all about you, little daughter of man. I know of you, and the wolf king who would kill and die to protect you. I know, because I was told.”
“Told... you mean Lukas...”
“Yes, Lukas. Lukas, who never chose. Lukas, who refused to fight until the very last.”
Tara thought about Lukas, and his gentle words, and she felt at tide of crimson rage like she never had wash over her. She had never understood the idea of wanting to kill another person before, but now she did. Now she saw how Mads could ruthlessly slaughter everything that threatened his family and his loved ones, because it was a betrayal of everything that should be sacred to these winged beings.
Hunting Hearts II (Trilogy Bundle) (Werewolf Romance - Paranormal Romance) Page 4
