The Dark-Hunters (144 page)

Clenching his fist, he pushed himself away from the window and headed to the front door of the cabin.

Zarek pounded fiercely on it. “Let me in,” he demanded.

A tall blond man opened the door. He wore a black leather motorcycle jacket with red Celtic scrollwork on it and a pair of black leather pants. His dark brown eyes were scornful and held an extremely distasteful look on his handsome face. “No one wants you here, Zarek.”

The blond tried to close the door.

Zarek braced one hand against the doorframe and the other against the door so that he could keep the man from shutting him out. “Damn you, Celt. Let me in.”

The Celt stepped back as Acheron came forward to block Zarek’s way. “What do you want, Z?”

Zarek’s face was anguished as he met Acheron’s gaze. “I want to come in.” He hesitated and when he spoke his next words, his eyes were bright with humiliation and need. “Please, Acheron. Please let me in.”

There were no emotions on Acheron’s face. Not one.

“You’re not welcome here, Z. You’ll never be welcome among us.”

He closed the door.

Zarek pounded against the wood and cursed. “Damn you, Acheron! Damn all of you!” Then he kicked the door and tried the knob again. “Why won’t you just kill me, you bastard! Why?”

This time when Zarek spoke, the anger was gone from his voice. It was hollow and needful, aching, and it affected her even more than when he’d asked to die. “Let me in, Ash, I swear I’ll behave. I swear it. Please don’t leave me out here alone. I don’t want to be cold anymore. Please!”

Tears fell down Astrid’s face as she watched Zarek beating against the door, demanding they open it.

No one came.

The laughter continued inside as if he didn’t exist.

In that moment, Astrid fully understood the desolate isolation he felt. The loneliness and abandonment.

“Fuck all of you!” Zarek roared. “I don’t need any of you. I don’t need anything.”

Finally, Zarek threw his back against the door and then slid down to kneel in the midst of the cold, swirling winds. His hair and eyelashes were white and frozen from the snow, his exposed skin red.

He closed his eyes as if the sound of their merriment was more than he could take. “I don’t need anything or anyone,” he whispered.

And then everything in the dream changed. The cabin shifted form until it became her temporary house in Alaska.

There were no more Dark-Hunters in his dream. No more storm. It was a perfect, peaceful night.

“Astrid.” He breathed her name like a gentle prayer. “I wish I could be with you.”

She couldn’t move as she heard those softly spoken words. He’d never said her name before and the sound of it on his lips was like a melodic song.

He looked up at the dark sky where a million stars twinkled through the clouds. “‘I wonder,’” he said quietly, quoting again from
The Little Prince,
“‘whether the stars are set alight in heaven so that one day each one of us may find his own.’”

Zarek swallowed and folded his muscular arms around his legs as he continued to watch the heavens. “I have found my star. She is beauty and grace. Elegance and goodness. My laughter in winter. She is courageous and strong. Bold and tempting. Unlike any other in all the universe, and I cannot touch her. I dare not even try.”

Astrid couldn’t breathe as he spoke so poetically. She’d never really thought about the fact that her name meant “star” in Greek.

But Zarek had.

Surely no killer could have such beauty inside him?

“Astrid or Aphrodite,” he said softly, “she is my Circe. Only instead of changing a man into an animal she has made the animal human.”

Then anger descended on him and he kicked at the snow before him. He laughed bitterly. “I am such a fucking idiot, wanting a star I can’t have.”

He looked up wistfully. “But then, all stars are beyond human reach and I’m not even human.”

Zarek buried his head against his arms and wept.

Astrid couldn’t stand it anymore. She wanted out of this dream, but without M’Adoc’s help, she couldn’t rouse herself from sleep.

All she could do was watch Zarek. Watch his anguish and grief that cut through her like glycerin on glass.

He was so strong in life. An iron forge that could withstand any blow. One who lashed out at other people to keep them away from him.

It was only in his dreams that she saw what was inside him. The vulnerability.

Only here that she truly understood the man he dared not show to anyone.

The tender heart that was hurt by their scorn.

Astrid wanted to ease his suffering. She wanted to take him by the hand and show him a world where he wasn’t locked outside. Show him what it was like to reach out to someone and not be knocked away.

Not once in all the centuries she had judged had Astrid felt this way about anyone. Zarek touched a part of her that she didn’t even know existed.

Most of all, he touched her heart. A heart she had feared was no longer functioning.

But it beat for him.

She couldn’t just stand here, watching him ache in his solitude.

Before she could think better of it, she flashed herself into her empty cabin and opened the door …

Zarek’s heart stopped beating as he looked up and saw the face of heaven. No, she wasn’t heaven.

She was better. So much better.

Never in this dream had anyone opened the door once he’d been shut out.

But Astrid had.

She stood in the doorway, her face gentle. Her pale blue eyes were no longer blind. They were hot and welcoming. “Come inside, Zarek. Let me warm you.”

Before he could stop himself, he stood up and took her outstretched hand. It was something he would never have done in real life. Only in a dream would he have dared to touch her.

Her skin was so warm that it burned him.

She pulled him into her arms and held him close. Zarek shook at the novelty of a hug, at the sensation of her breasts against his chest. Her breath on his frozen skin.

So this is what a hug felt like. Hot. Soothing. Miraculous.

His human contact had been so limited in his lifetime that all he could do was close his eyes and just feel the warmth of her body surrounding his.

The softness of her.

He inhaled her warm, sweet scent and reveled in the newfound emotions that tore through him.

Was this acceptance?

Was this nirvana?

He didn’t know for sure. But for once, he didn’t want to wake up from this dream.

Suddenly a warm blanket was wrapped around his shoulders. Her arms still held him tight.

Zarek cupped her face in his hand and pressed his cheek to hers. Oh, the feeling of her flesh touching his …

She was so soft.

He’d never imagined anyone being soft like this. So tender and inviting.

The warmth of her cheek on his took the stinging burn of the cold away. It crept through his body until he thawed completely out. Even his heart that had been encased by ice for centuries.

Astrid trembled at the sensation of Zarek’s prickly cheek against hers. Of his breath falling gently against her skin.

His unexpected tenderness tore through her.

She’d seen enough of his life to know gentleness was not something he had experience with and yet he held her so carefully.

“You’re so warm,” he breathed in her ear. His hot breath tickled her neck, and sent chills all over her.

He pulled back and stared at her as if she were unspeakably precious to him. He brushed the back of his knuckles against her jaw. His eyes were so dark and tormented while he stared at her, as if unable to believe she was with him.

His gaze uncertain, he touched her lips with the tip of his forefinger. “I’ve never kissed anyone before.”

His confession stunned her. How could a man so handsome have never kissed?

Fire sparked in his eyes. “I want to taste you, Astrid. I want to feel you hot and wet under me. To look into your eyes while I fuck you.”

She shivered at his crudeness. It was what she expected from the conscious Zarek, but she refused to take that from this one.

She knew him better than that.

What he suggested now was forbidden. She wasn’t allowed to ever cross the physical line with her charges.

The only one who had ever tempted her to break that rule had been Miles. But she had met that temptation and wisely kept herself away from him.

With Zarek it wasn’t so easy. Something about this man touched her in a way that nothing had before.

Looking up into his tormented black eyes, she saw his wounded heart …

He’d never known kindness.

Never known the warmth of a loving touch.

She couldn’t explain it, but she wanted to be his first and she wanted him to be hers. She wanted to hold him and show him what it was like to be welcomed by someone.

If you do this you could lose your job as a judge.

It was all she’d ever wanted to be.

If she didn’t do this, Zarek could lose his life. If she reached out to him now, maybe she could teach him that it was okay to trust someone.

Maybe she could touch the poet inside him and show him a world where he would be free to allow other people to see his gentler side. Show him that it was okay to befriend others.

She finally understood what Acheron had meant.

But how could she save Zarek? He had turned on the people whom he’d been sent to protect and had killed them.

She needed proof that he would never do that again.

Could she find it?

She had to. There was no choice. The last thing she wanted was to see him hurt anymore.

She would defend this man no matter what.

“I won’t fuck you, Zarek,” she whispered. “Ever. But I will make love with you.”

He looked puzzled and unsure. “I’ve never made love to anyone.”

She lifted his cold hand up to her lips and kissed his fingers. “If you want to learn, come with me.”

Zarek couldn’t breathe as she withdrew from him. His head spun with strange, alien feelings and emotions. He was afraid of what she offered him.

If she touched him, would it change him?

He didn’t expect kindness from her or anyone. A pitiful and horrifyingly scarred slave, he’d died a virgin and as a Dark-Hunter had only screwed women on rare occasions. Not once in two thousand years had he ever stared into a lover’s eyes while he took her. Never had he allowed one to hold or even touch him.

Should he follow Astrid, all that would change.

In his dream, she had her eyesight and could see him …

He would be tamed. For the first time in his life, he would have a tie to someone. Physical. Emotional.

Even though this was a dream, it would change him toward her forever because this was what he wanted deep down inside, buried in a place where he dared not look. Buried in a heart that had been crushed by cruelty.

“Zarek?”

He looked up to see her standing in the doorway of her bedroom. Her long blond hair fanned out around her shoulders and she wore nothing except a thin cotton button-down shirt. Her long legs were bare, inviting.

The light behind her showed through the thin fabric, outlining every precious curve of her body …

Zarek swallowed. If he did this, Astrid alone would be unique to him in all the world. She would be his.

He would be hers.

He would be tamed.

It’s only a dream …

But even in his dreams no one had ever tamed him.

Until now.

His heart hammering, he went to her and scooped her up in his arms. No, he wouldn’t be tamed. Not by this and not by her. But she would be his in this dream.

All
his.

Astrid trembled at the fierce, determined look on Zarek’s face as he carried her to the bed. Hunger blazed in his obsidian eyes. She had a strange feeling that Zarek might be right after all.

A man this wild would never make love to a woman.

The saner part of her told her to pull away from him. To stop this before it was too late.

But another part of her refused. This would tell her the true mettle of the man.

He laid her down on the bed and brushed her lips with his fingertips as if he were memorizing them. Savoring them. Then he gently parted her lips and covered them with his.

Astrid was completely unprepared for the passion of his kiss. The ferocity of it. It was both rough and tender. Demanding. Hot. Sweet. He growled fiercely as his tongue brushed against hers, tasting her before he explored every inch of her mouth.

For a man who had never kissed before, he was incredible. She shivered as he tasted her palate, as his tongue swept through her with spears of pleasure.

She buried her hands in his soft hair and moaned as he licked and nibbled until she was nearly unconscious from the ecstasy of it. She’d never known anything like this.

Anything like Zarek.

It had been a long time since she’d kissed a man, and never had any man tasted better than him. She was scared now. Not just of him, but of herself.

No man had ever touched her. She’d never breached her oath to not touch her charge.

Zarek’s touch could cost her everything and yet she couldn’t find it within herself to push him away.

For once in her life, she wanted something for herself. She wanted to touch the unreachable. To give Zarek something special. A rare moment of peace with someone who wanted to be with him.

No one else would appreciate this as much as he would.

Only he would understand …

Zarek pulled back from her to unbutton her shirt. But what he wanted to do was rip it from her. He wanted to lose himself inside her, crush her to him as he possessed her with all the furious passion he felt.

But even in his dream, he wouldn’t treat her that way.

For some strange reason he wanted to be tender with her. He wanted to have sex with her like a man, not a wild animal.

He didn’t want to pound himself furiously against her, seeking a passing moment of pleasure. He wanted this night to last. Wanted to spend the whole of it holding her.

For once in his life, he wanted someone to treat him as if he mattered. As if she cared for him.