The Dark-Hunters (154 page)

Then she did the most unexpected thing of all. She walked into his arms and hugged him. Her laughter brought her body into contact with his, setting fire to him.

It reminded him so much of his dream …

She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him close.

No one had ever held him like this. He didn’t know if he should embrace her or shove her away.

In the end, he found himself placing his arms awkwardly around her. She felt just as she had in his dream. Every bit as wonderful.

He hated that most of all.

She gave him a tight squeeze. “I’m so glad Acheron sent me to you.”

“Why?”

“Because I like you, Zarek, and I think anyone other than me would have killed you by now.”

Even more suspicious of her than before, he released her and stepped back. “Why do you care what happens to me? You’ve been inside me; tell me honestly I didn’t scare you.”

She sighed. “Honestly, yes. You do scare me, but by the same token, I’ve seen goodness in you, too.”

“And the village I showed you in my dreams? The one I destroyed.”

She furrowed her brow. “It was broken and fragmented. It didn’t feel like a memory to me, it felt like something else.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I think there’s more to what happened than you recall.”

He shook his head. How could she have faith in him when he didn’t have any in himself? “You really are blind, aren’t you?”

“No. I see you, Zarek. In a way I think no one ever has before.”

“I assure you, princess, if you saw the real me, you’d run for cover,” he scoffed.

“Only if I knew you’d be waiting under that cover for me.”

He was floored by what she said.

She didn’t mean it.

It was another game. Another test.

No one had ever wanted him. Not his mother, not his father. Not his owners. He didn’t even want to be with himself.

So how could she?

Zarek paused as he felt a psychic tremor run through him. “Thanatos is coming.”

Her eyes widened in fear. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He pulled her toward the snowmachine. It would be dawn before long.

He would be trapped, but Thanatos …

The Daimon would be able to walk in daylight.

Zarek wrapped his arms around Astrid. He should leave her here for what she’d done to him, hand her over to Thanatos to see if she would buy him more time to escape. Yet he had this crazy idea of protecting her.

No, it wasn’t an idea. It was a yearning he had to keep her safe.

Resigned to his stupidity, he started the snowmachine and headed it toward his property.

Astrid took a deep breath as they resumed their trip. She had violated more rules than she cared to think about.

And yet as she felt Zarek surrounding her, she knew it was worth it. She had to save him.

No matter what it took.

She’d never felt so determined. Or more sure of herself. He gave her a confidence and strength she had never known.

He needed her. In spite of what he said or even thought. He needed her in a way that was painful.

The man had no one else in the world. And for some reason she couldn’t understand, she wanted to be the one person he relied on. The one person who could tame him.

He drove them for almost an hour before they stopped again.

“Where are we?” she asked as he climbed off the snowmachine.

“My cabin.”

“Is it safe?”

“Not a bit. And it looks like all hell broke loose here.”

Zarek stood in stunned disbelief as he looked around. There was still blood on the snow, but from whom, he couldn’t tell.

The sight tore through him as reality came crashing home.

A Dark-Hunter had died here.

His kind didn’t die often and he felt a peculiar ache for the man who had died tonight. It wasn’t right.

It wasn’t fair.

If anyone should have paid that price, it should have been him. He should have been here to confront Thanatos.

The thought of an innocent man being turned into a Shade made him want Artemis’s blood.

And where the hell was Acheron? For someone who was supposedly willing to put his ass on the line for the Dark-Hunters, the Atlantean was amazingly absent.

Curling his lip, he went back to the snowmachine.

“C’mon,” he said. “We have a lot to do.”

He walked off and left her to find her own way.

“I need your help, Zarek. I need you to tell me where things are so I don’t walk into anything.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to remind her of the fact that she’d claimed she could watch after herself. Then his memories surged and he remembered what it was like to only see shadows.

To walk into things because he couldn’t see them.

He didn’t want to touch her anymore.

He hated the very thought of it because every time he felt her, he craved more of her.

Against his will, he found himself taking her hand into his. “C’mon, princess.”

Astrid bit back her smile. His tone was harsh and yet she felt a small victory inside her heart. Not to mention the fact that he had stopped using “princess” as an insult. She didn’t think he even realized that now when he called her that, his voice softened ever so slightly.

Sometime during their dreams, the insult he’d used to keep her at a distance had become an endearment.

Zarek led her into his cabin.

“Stand here,” he said, placing her to the left just inside the doorway.

She heard him rustling around to her right. While he was busy, she brushed her hand against the wall to feel her way over to him. What she found there surprised her.

Frowning, she ran her hand over the deep dips and planes of the wall. It was an incredible tactile sensation. Intricate. Complex. But what she touched was so large that she couldn’t quite understand what it represented.

As she followed the design with her hand she realized it covered the entire wall.

“What is this?” she asked.

“A beach scene,” he said distractedly.

She arched a brow. “A beach scene is carved into your wall?”

“I get bored, okay?” he snapped. “So I carve things. Sometimes in the summer, I run out of wood and I carve the walls and shelves.”

Just like the wolf he’d sculpted in her house.

Astrid stumbled over something as she reached for the next wall. Several things fell, scattering over her feet.

Zarek cursed. “I thought I told you to stay put.”

“I’m sorry.” She bent down to pick the things up to find that they were carved wooden animals.

There seemed to be dozens of them.

She was stunned by the intricacy of each piece as she ran her fingers over them, picking them up from the floor. “Did you do all these?”

He didn’t answer as he snatched them up and piled them back.

“Zarek,” she said, her tone stern, “talk to me.”

“And say what? Yes, I carved the damned things. I usually do three or four of them a night. So what?”

“Then there should be more of them. Where are the others?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice a little less hostile. “I take some into town and give them away and the rest I burn whenever the generators go out.”

“Don’t they mean anything to you?”

“No. Nothing means shit to me.”

“Nothing?”

Zarek paused as he looked at her kneeling beside him. Her cheeks were chafed, the skin no longer soft and protected as it had been when he first awoke in her cabin. She stared over his shoulder, but he knew it was because she wasn’t quite sure where he was.

Her lips were slightly parted, her hair mussed.

In his mind he could see her in his arms, feel her skin sliding against his. And in that moment, he made a startling discovery.

He did care about something.

Her.

Even though she had lied to him and tricked him, he didn’t want her hurt. He didn’t want to see her delicate skin damaged by the extreme weather.

She should be sheltered from such harshness.

How he hated himself for that weakness.

“No, princess,” he whispered, the lie catching in his throat. “I don’t care about anything.”

She reached out then so that she could touch his face. “Is that lie for your benefit or mine?”

“Who says it’s a lie?”

“I do, Zarek. For a man who doesn’t care, you’ve made a great effort to make sure I’m safe.” She smiled at him. “I do know you, Prince Charming. I really do see what’s inside you.”

“You’re blind.”

She shook her head. “I’m not nearly as blind as you are.”

Then she did the most unexpected thing of all. She leaned forward and captured his lips with hers.

Something inside him shattered at the contact, at the sensation of her moist, sweet lips. Of her tongue sweeping against his.

This wasn’t a dream.

This was real.

And it was wonderful. As good as she had tasted before, it was so much better now.

He crushed her to him, taking control of the kiss. He wanted to devour her. To take her right now on the floor until his hard-on was spent and sated.

But if his dreams were any indication, it would take more than a single act of sex to ease the fire in his groin.

He could love this woman all night long and still be begging for more when the morning came.

Astrid couldn’t breathe from the fierceness of his kiss. The heat of his body set fire to her own.

He was truly wild, her warrior.

He slid his cool hand under her shirt until he could cup her breast. She shivered as his fingers pushed the lace of her bra aside so that he could run his palm against her swollen nipple.

She’d never allowed anyone to handle her like this. But then, she’d done a lot of things with him that she had never done before.

All her life, she’d been circumspect and proper. The kind of woman who lived by the rules and who never sought to break or even bend them.

Zarek freed something within her. Something wild and wonderful.

Something unexpected.

He pulled back from her lips as his hand moved lower, over her belly, down toward her waistband.

She trembled as he unbuttoned her pants, then slid her zipper down. In their dream, there was still some protection of it not being real. Of everything being a dream.

Tonight that barrier was gone. Once he touched her in this realm, there was no going back.

What the heck? There was no going back for her anyway. She would never be the same.

“Would you let me screw you on my floor, princess?” he asked, his voice ragged and deep with hunger.

“No, Zarek,” she breathed. “But you can make love to me anywhere you want to.”

She took his hand in hers and slid it down her pants, into her cotton panties.

Zarek’s breathing was ragged as she opened her legs in invitation. He stared at her lying on his floor. Her crumpled shirt was pulled up, showing off her rounded stomach while his hand was stark against the light pink cotton of her underwear. Tiny tufts of her hair peeked out from under the waistband as he massaged her mound gently.

She unzipped his pants, spilling his erection out. He couldn’t move as she took him into her warm hands.

His body on fire, he slid his hand down through the moist curls at the juncture of her thighs so that he could touch her intimately while she stroked him.

She was so wet already, her nether lips swollen, begging for more. Her hands massaged him, causing him to harden to the point of pain.

He slid his fingers over her cleft, delighting in the sound of her murmured pleasure.

He dipped his head to her breast, to toy with her nipple. He sucked and teased, taking his time tasting her.

Wanting more of her, he went to slide his fingers into her, only to touch something that stunned him. Something that hadn’t been there in the dream.

He went cold.

Pulling back, he frowned as he felt her hymen under his probing fingers. “You’re a virgin?”

“Yes.”

He cursed and moved away from her.

“You’re a virgin,” he repeated. “How the hell can you be a virgin?”

“Easy. I’ve never slept with a man before.”

“But my dreams…”

“Those were dreams, Zarek. That wasn’t really my body.”

His vision turned dark. Unwarranted jealousy gnawed at him. His little nymph had found one hell of a loophole. “So how many men have you fucked in their sleep?”

“You bastard!” she snapped, rising up into a sitting position on the floor. “If I could find your face, I would slap you for that!”

Angry, she straightened her clothes and moved away from him. Her cheeks were flushed, her hands trembling, as she continued to curse both of them under her breath.

It was then he knew.

She wouldn’t be this angry at them if she were guilty of what he’d said.

She’d never been with another man.

Only him.

That knowledge floored him.

He couldn’t begin to understand why she would offer him something she hadn’t offered to anyone else.

It didn’t make sense in his world.

“Why do you want to be with me?”

She paused as she dressed and glared in his direction. “I have no idea. You are surly. Rude. Obnoxious. I have never in my life seen anyone more ill-mannered and … and … aggravating. You have no respect for anyone, not even yourself. All you can do is pick, pick, pick. You don’t even know how to be happy.”

Astrid opened her mouth to continue, then stopped as she became aware of the tone of Zarek’s voice when he had posed his question to her.

It had been gently searching. Not accusatory.

Most of all, it had come from deep inside him.

And so she answered it from her heart. “You want to know the truth, Zarek? I want to be with you because there’s something about you that makes me hot and shivery. Whenever I feel you near me, I want to reach out and touch you. To slide you into me so that I can hold you close and tell you that everything is all right. That I’m not going to let anyone else hurt you.”

“I’m not a child,” he said angrily.

Astrid reached out through the darkness and found his hand on the floor in front of her. She took it into hers and held it tight. “No, you’re not a child. You never were. Children are supposed to be protected and cared for. You had no one to hold you when you cried. No one ever soothed you. They never told you stories or made you laugh when you were sad.”