The vulnerability in his tone made me want to look away, but I didn’t. Partly because his eyes were following his fingers, and partly because I couldn’t look away from his face. The lack of lines between his brows and the grin told me he was completely at ease with saying such a thing to me, and that he didn’t expect an answer. That relaxed me in a way I hadn’t expected.
“Well, it’s nice to be a natural at something, considering my fighting skills suck as bad as my grasp of Icelandic.” I took a breath. “You think I’m safely through it, then? No risk of insanity?”
“Quite safe.”
Fingers splayed across my hip, he went tense and suddenly sat up. Dread filled me as I realized I hadn’t even thought to cover my birthmark.
“What is this?” he asked in a mystified tone.
My hand went to cover it, but he caught it, stopping me.
“Nothing. Just a birthmark.” I tried to make the words sound light but panic crept into them.
He leaned over me, getting a closer look.
“No, it is more than that.”
Gentle fingers traced over it, making me both want to cry and scream. No one ever touched it. Hell, no one ever wanted to. I froze, terrified of what he would say next. The silent perusal stretched on far too long.
“Some call it a port wine stain, but really, it’s just a birthmark. Not a rash or anything. You can’t catch it,” I said.
He shook his head. “This is the Sowilo rune. You are marked, Sonya.”
Chills worked their way through me. “Marked?”
The gentle touch of his fingers over the mark almost seemed to burn. I pulled away, sinking deeper into the grass, but he didn’t notice.
“It means something, the Sowilo showing up as a birthmark. I cannot remember what exactly, but this coupled with the fact both of your parents descended from old bloodlines is not a coincidence. There is a book in my office back at the university that might tell us more. I will have to get it. I wonder if this is what Vidar wanted to talk to me about? But how could he know…”
It took a moment for his words to sink in. He wasn’t fearful or disgusted by my mark, he was fascinated by it. The two other guys I had got naked with in my life both thought it was weird, or ugly, a flaw to be covered.
“Means something?” I asked.
Taking me back into his arms, he pulled me close. “Yes, but I cannot remember what right now. It is something from an ancient text. All in time. Vidar will be here soon enough. Hmmm…”
He nuzzled my hair.
“Must be the endorphins from the fantastic sex making my mind foggy.”
I couldn’t argue there. As the fear of his disgust or rejection over my birthmark faded, the high of the endorphins kicked back in, leaving me feeling as though I floated in a sea of pleasure. This man was so amazing on so many levels that I wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t a dream. But then, I had become an entirely different species to find him. Despite all I had been through, if Ty was a dream, I didn’t ever want to wake up.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ty
The light pouring through the sunrise-style window on the wall beside the tub caused red and blue to dance across the bubbles of Sonya’s bath. Her gaze was cast out over the view of the back gardens with the lake stretching out beyond it. Soap bubbles teased her chin as she repositioned within the claw-foot bathtub that sat in my loft. The image of her blurred, then disappeared. I wiped the steam from the glass shower walls yet again, desperate to watch her a little longer. For at least the fifth time that afternoon, I was tempted to go to her and ravish her again. But after last night’s amazing sex and the marathon session this morning, I did not want her thinking that was all she was to me.
So I forced myself to stay put, rinse the shampoo from my hair, and be content with the memory of our multiple sex sessions. And oh what memories they were. This morning proved that she already possessed a varúlfur’s amazing endurance. But it was more than endurance. It was like we were synched.
The harsh ring of an ancient rotary-style phone cut through the quiet of the loft. My cell ringtone. I shut the shower off, grabbed a towel to dry the side of my face, and picked up the phone. It was the police getting impatient about my statement regarding the truck bombing. I promised the man on the other end of the phone that I would be in within the hour. I could not have them getting suspicious that I might seek out my own justice, especially since I would. I toweled off, ran a comb through my hair, and pulled on a pair of boxers and shorts.
My eyes drank Sonya in without the steamed up wall between us. The bubbles were enough to make me ache. My tongue slid out and ran along my upper lip, dipping between my fangs.
“Damn, woman, you look fine.”
I shook my head, grabbed the towel off the leather chaise, and held it out to her. “As much as I would love to spend the entire day making love to you, I have to go to the police station. How do you feel about a ride on my Harley?”
For a moment, her eyes widened, a vulnerable and touched look came over her, but it disappeared too quick, as though she were trying to hide it. Grinning, she rose from the water and stood there a moment with suds rolling down her body. I cursed softly in Icelandic and took a step closer. Just before the towel I held could slip from my hands, she grabbed it from me. Very slowly, she wrapped it around her body and tucked the end between her breasts.
“I’d love to go for a ride with you,” she said, making it sound deliciously dirty.
Groaning, I grabbed hold of her hips and pulled her to me. We melted together for an intense moment. Long before I was ready, I forced myself to draw back, knowing if I did not, I would not make it to the police station yet again. The look of desire and almost pain in her eyes made me feel a little less desperate for not wanting to let her go.
“Damn lögreglu. I really did not want to leave this room today,” I said as my fingers ran along the edge of her towel.
She laughed and turned away. “Best get it over with. Besides, I’d like to see this book you have. Maybe we can stop by your office,” she said as she began to towel off.
Now there was an idea. I had been itching to reread that book ever since I saw her mark. It bugged me that I could not remember much about the legend, but then it was hundreds of years old and was scarcely told anymore. The book had sat on my shelf in my office for the better part of a decade. Despite my beliefs that Raul was a raging idiot, I could not pretend her having that mark was coincidence. He might not have chosen her because of it, but someone more calculating might have pushed him in her direction. Just before she got her shorts to her hips, my hand brushed across her birthmark.
“Sure thing,” I whispered in a thoughtful voice.
She rose up on her toes, full lips reaching for me. I bent and kissed her, long and sweet. So I didn’t lose control and tackle her, I kept my fingers tucked into the belt loops of my shorts. The clean scent of soap and shampoo mingled with her spicy scent in a heady concoction that almost made me lose control. Breath coming in short gasps, I spun away, grabbed my T-shirt, and pulled it on. Sonya made an appreciative sound as I walked away.
How was it I had become so good at controlling all of my emotions except for those involving her? We would be lucky if we made the ride to town in one shot without having to pull over.
The second I pulled up to the single-story, red brick building, Sonya began to breathe harder. Thanks to my varúlfur hearing I could hear it despite my helmet. In a heartbeat, she was off the bike. She all but tore her helmet off. Her eyes darted from the police cruisers parked out front, to the hint of razor wire around the corner, and back to the road we had pulled off of. I killed the ignition and got off the bike. She jumped when I laid my hand on her arm.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
She shook her head and swallowed hard before answering. “I don’t like police stations.”
I moved my hand to rest on top of hers, which gripped her helmet so tight it flexed beneath her fingers.
/> “Because of your dad?” I asked.
A few measured breaths later she answered. “Yeah. I was just a kid when he was arrested for murder. Too many prison visits when I was little.”
Gently, I peeled her hand from her helmet, draped it over one of the bike’s mirrors, and wove my fingers through hers. She gripped my hand as if it were a lifeline.
“I am sorry, I cannot imagine how hard that had to be,” I said. Not to mention the fact that she had only recently found out her dad had not killed a man in a drug deal gone bad, but had killed him to save her from being kidnapped.
She shrugged. “It was what it was. I wish I had trusted that he was the man I had always thought he was, and not the one the police made him out to be.”
I glanced around us, eyes going from the parking lot to the road, then back to her. No one was around. I did not want to leave her here alone, but I could not expect her to go inside with me either.
“I’ll be fine here. If anyone at all pulls into the parking lot I’ll come inside,” she said.
“If you even smell someone strange—”
She stopped my words with a quick kiss. “I’ll come right in.”
I drew in a long breath, considering my words carefully. “I know you can handle yourself. It is not that. Even with Lars and the others out looking for who did this, I still worry. The truck bombing makes me worry about how far they are willing to go.”
“Not as far as I’m willing to go to stay by your side,” she said.
The level of conviction in her words thrilled me for more than one reason and made me smile. Nodding, I rose from the bike and stared at her a moment before leaving. Those brown eyes, so full of confidence, stared at me from behind a half curtain of her ebony hair. If it came to a fight she would be in trouble. A few weeks of training to fight was not enough for someone who had no natural inclination or desire to do so. I hated the way my chest tightened at the thought of anything happening to her. A bad feeling tried to tug at me, but I wrote it off as an overprotective instinct resulting from having mated with her so recently. I would only be gone a few minutes.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sonya
The quick, aggressive stride he took to the police station almost made me feel sorry for the officer who would have to take his statement. Part of me wanted to follow him while another cringed at the thought of walking through those doors. Memories of seeing my dad in a sterile visiting room with tables and attached stools that were bolted to the concrete floor quickly made me look away. Even if I were being chased I wasn’t sure I could go in there. It wasn’t the same as a prison, I knew, but it was associated closely enough to bring panic to the surface.
More to look away from the station than out of any real suspicion, I checked the parking lot and the street behind me. Nothing, not even traffic. It hit me that someone might not approach by car, but by foot. Birds sang from within the trees that lined the sidewalk and framed a green space that went around the side of the building. I gravitated toward it to get away from some of the city smells. Sunlight found its way through the yellow and green leaves of the many trees to dapple the sidewalk. As soon as I could, I stepped from the concrete onto the soft cushion of shortly trimmed green grass. The energy of living things worked like an instant balm on my nerves. While the feeling was still a little weird, I would take what I could get right now.
The sidewalk kept going, turning into a wider pathway that cut between the greenspace on the side of the police station and a grouping of buildings. From one of those buildings wafted the aroma of baking dough, cheese, and spices. It didn’t quite drown out the asphalt and exhaust scents, but it helped. The cut grass beneath my feet and swaying leaves overhead helped far more. I leaned against the trunk of a small maple to wait. More to keep Ty’s scent close than out of any need to block out the breeze, I pulled his brown flannel close, burying my nose in the collar.
Minutes ticked by and though a bit of traffic moved along the road, no one pulled in to either the police station or the brick buildings next door. Something unsettling stirred deep in my stomach, awakening both urgency and what I could only associate with a motherly type of instinct. One of my own was close, someone newly bitten. The certainty with which I knew that bugged me. I raised my nose into the breeze and breathed deep. A very slight musk mingled with an aloe-scented soap drifted to me. Along with it came a sniffling sound from around the corner. On a picnic table beneath two pine trees hunched a figure in a gray hoodie. From this distance I couldn’t make out any more. But I knew all I needed to know. They were a new varúlfur and they might need help. I had to do what I could, however little it might be.
Maybe Candice had run away from Hemlock Hollow. I thought she would have called me, but I couldn’t be sure. If it was Candice, I had to talk to her. The full moon was tomorrow and my instincts told me she shouldn’t face it alone. Hell, even if it wasn’t her, I had to talk to this person. I glanced back at the police station. This constituted as smelling someone strange, but not someone Ty had been worried about. The instinct deep inside pulled harder at me until I finally took a step in the person’s direction. With a great amount of effort, I stilled my feet and concentrated on the reason for the instinct. Letting instincts of any kind control me weren’t an option anymore.
Sympathy weighed heavy in me, along with a desire to make sure no one went through the verða alone, or with someone who had forced it on them. All in all, the reasons behind the instinct didn’t seem like anything bad, certainly not anything to fight against. As a precaution, I checked the air once more. When I didn’t smell anyone else besides the person on the bench, I started in their direction. They didn’t look up until I was almost next to them.
The wide, bloodshot eyes of a young man who couldn’t have been more than twenty shot up to me. Shine that was part tears and part predator in transition made his green eyes almost translucent looking. Not Candice, then, but still someone who needed me.
Trying to look friendly, I smiled. “You look like you could use someone to talk to.”
His eyes traveled across my body, halting at my cleavage. I didn’t take it personally. The guy was barely out of his teens, and he had to deal with raging varúlfur emotions on top of that.
“Do I?” he asked, a note of humor in a voice that was thick from crying.
“Mind if I sit?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Be my guest.”
Giving him as much space as possible, I sat down on the far end of the wooden bench. I decided to go with the direct approach. “You’ve been bitten.”
He sat up straight and pushed his hoodie back. Spiky black hair tipped in bright red held my gaze for a moment until I noticed the jagged pink scar on his neck. Whoever had bit him had been almost cruel, like it was an act of anger and not a decision to make a new varúlfur.
“How did you know?” he asked as he leaned away from me a bit.
Best to take it slow considering his darting eyes and shaking limbs. “Because it happened to me too.”
Brows pulling tightly together, his eyes filled with moisture. “You seem nice. I didn’t want to do this.”
He shook his head, then buried it in his hands. Horrible deep sobs tore from him, turning into thick, messy crying. Scooting closer, I put an arm around his shoulders.
“It isn’t as bad as you might think. There are people who will help you through the transition. Everything will be okay,” I told him.
The sobs became louder, as if my words had made him feel worse. Something settled over my mouth, a cloth of some kind. For a second I smelled an odd mixture of sweet and fruity, then the fruity part of that scent began to burn. The young man beside me scurried to his feet and moved away. If it wasn’t him, then who held a cloth to my mouth? I tried to pull away and found myself against something solid, a hand pressing the cloth tighter over my mouth and nose. Attached to that hand was the muscled arm of a man spattered with dark hairs. The harder I fought, the more I breathed in the toxic, burni
ng scents of the wet cloth. My muscles responded slowly to my commands to fight, my strength ebbing away with each breath. My claws extended, but a second after they sank into the arm of the person holding me, my vision went black.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sonya
Wrists bound behind me and legs trussed up to them like I was going to be cooked over a fire, I woke in the back of an SUV. Nothing covered my mouth but I held my tongue anyway. It wasn’t easy with all the curse words streaming through my head. Tucked into that small spot behind the seats intended for cargo, I couldn’t see much. Forward motion and road noise told me we were on the move, seriously breaking the speed limit from the sound of the engine. The darkly tinted windows didn’t allow me to see out at this angle. The scents of pine and earth in the carpet didn’t tell me anything either, but the sound of two men breathing and another talking did. I recognized the voice but couldn’t put a name to it.
“—not a good idea. If she’s this leitar you think she is, won’t she kill us all when she wakes up?” asked one tremoring voice.
“No, you idiot. The leitar is the one who finds those that have been bitten and are about to lose their shit. They try to help them, save them from themselves. The reaper is the fighter, the killer. Besides, I don’t even think she’s shifted yet. We’ve got nothing to fear from this one,” said another voice, a familiar one.
“Aren’t you worried about Ayra after her power awakens?”
A loud smack—like flesh against the back of someone’s head—sounded. “No. She’s too afraid of her brother to give us any shit.”
None of them smelled like Raul, but that didn’t mean they weren’t from his pack. I knew I would know him by smell, and that was a bit disturbing, yes, but I was getting used to disturbing. The whole hog-tying thing told me they probably weren’t from his pack. Even Raul wasn’t stupid enough to stoop to a tactic he knew would piss me off beyond repair. Which meant they were from the Arnoddr pack, who really didn’t want me spoiling the whole arranged marriage thing. I wasn’t sure if they much cared whether or not I made it in one piece. Shit.
Bitten & Beholden (Children of Fenrir Book 2) Page 24
