Blood Warrior

“What?” He half grunted the question.

“This. Us. A moment like this when we’re not fighting anyone and we’re actually . . . serene. Good things don’t last.” They were hot and sticky, but Kavya wouldn’t have let go even if he gave her the opportunity.

“You need to know what a good thing is before you can figure out it won’t last,” he said. “This, goddess, this is a very good thing. Now do me a favor?”

“Hm?”

He smiled in that antagonistic, endearing way she was beginning to relish more than hate. “Question time’s done. Be quiet. Be still. The sun’s on your face. A man is holding you as if you’re the last piece of driftwood in an endless ocean. I’m that tired, and you’re that nice to hold.”

Long years of panic and habit screamed that sleep should be easy. But even there, feeling more protected than she had in years, she couldn’t.

“Kavya?” His voice was thick with the drug of fatigue. “You’ll be here when I wake?”

She kissed his lips, which smelled and tasted of her own body. Wholly erotic. “Yes, I’ll be here.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

If Tallis had slept, he’d done so in quick snatches like chasing birds, clutching a few feathers, and watching them circle back into the sky.

He jerked awake, but his body stayed still except for the flutter of his eyelids. The colors of the piercing blue sky flickered between his lashes.

The plane. The crash. The cornstalks and his seax at his hip.

Kavya.

The strange contortion of his body registered next. He had shifted again. Kavya was curled into him, her spine curved to make the letter C. Her head was tucked beneath his chin and her knees were drawn up to his hips. One foot negligently draped over his thigh. He still lay on his back, mostly, but he’d managed to encircle her with both arms. In the heat, she’d kicked free of silk from the hip down, exposing lush bronze skin.

The sole of Kavya’s foot was blistered, her socks and slippers victim of the elements. Slices stepped like ladder rungs up her arms and down her legs—the physical trauma of flight after flight. That he was only noticing now set a strange current to work inside of Tallis. He should’ve noticed. And that set off an argument. Why was it his obligation to notice? She’d been proselytizing for years before his arrival. She didn’t need a keeper.

He didn’t want to be her keeper. With his arms filled with the soft, voluptuous heat of a woman’s body, he wanted to be her lover.

He’d given her pleasure. He’d shown her the explosions of light that came with sexual release. The triumph was his. No other man would claim to be her first. That meant he would claim her virginity, too. In Tallis’s mind, it was a given. They would be lovers in all ways. Holding that firmly in mind had been the difference between tasting her feminine sweetness and burying his prick within her willing body. They’d been too tired. Too edgy. And he hadn’t trusted himself to be gentle. He wanted their first time to live up to the adventures they’d already shared, but he didn’t want to scare her. Dragon damn, he didn’t want to hurt her.

He wanted to make her gasp his name.

Just the thought aroused him. Eyes open. Hands tightening. Cock ready.

As a youth, so serious and proud of his intellect, he’d wanted to be Sath or Indranan—Dragon Kings whose minds ruled the day. He was beginning to see what a blessing his fury could be. There was no one stalking around the corner to take it from him, manipulate it, keep him from sleeping out of fear it would be used against him.

So, enough of that. He was a Pendray. He harbored a nasty beast down deep where most men stored ugly things. Fantasies about inflicting pain. Fantasies about rape and murder and theft and running away, because cowardice was just as ugly, just as worthy of concealing. Those uncivil fantasies glimmered like a distant mirage —moments where the mind took a backseat to very old instinct.

He opened his eyes fully. The sun had dipped toward the western horizon. Maybe three hours of daylight left. He stared. He didn’t blink. He felt a part of himself open to that dare, man against nature against beast. At his best moments, he was all three.

The beastly little bastard inside him wanted what it always did. Food. Fighting. Fucking. The order didn’t matter.

What did Tallis want?

I want to go home.

“Do you want to think about something else instead?” Kavya spoke directly against his throat.

“I thought you were sleeping.”

“No.”

“Lying here being bored?”

“Just resting.”

“Wait, think of something else,” he said. “What did you mean by that?”

Her gaze fixed on his. Wide. Unblinking. Did she see a fool? A killer? A lunatic?

What Tallis wanted, apparently, was for her to see someone else entirely, because he wanted her to see him as a good man. With his hand moving up and down her arm, then slipping lower to caress the span of her ribs, he wasn’t a good man at all. The beast’s dark thoughts spilled into his rational consciousness, twining sex and violence and tenderness with the image of Kavya—her splendor while nude and aroused. To see that would be a blessing unlike any he’d known because, unlike his visions of the Sun, Kavya would be real.

“Don’t worry. I wasn’t poking around in your mind. But like I said before, sometimes you feel things so strongly. Just now, you thought something sad and shocking. That’s all I know. So . . . I’m hoping it had nothing to do with waking here with me.”

Tallis exhaled. She phrased it in such a way as to leave the door open. He could explain, or he could move on. He wasn’t ready to explain. The raw impulse of wanting to return to Scotland wasn’t new, but he hadn’t felt its visceral punch so strongly before.

“Nothing at all. What about you? If you didn’t sleep, how did you occupy your time?”

She stretched. Was she purposefully pressing her high, firm breasts against his side? “I’ve been remembering what you did to me. I don’t want to wait until we get to a hotel. You need what I had. It would work some of the tension out of your body. You’re strung so tightly.”

“If I said I feel stiff, I’d have to admit to the shame of making an unbearably bad pun.”

She was beautiful when she frowned. Not serious. Not scolding, even. Just more inquisitive than usual. “Pun?”

“I’m stiff, Kavya. My prick. I woke up with you lying curled into me and I got ideas. Very quickly.”

“About us, no matter the sadness I felt.”

“Forget that. I’ve been honest about my desires from the moment I knew them myself. What I gave you was a prelude. You’re curious about me and even more curious about sex.” He tapped his temple. “I’ve got no psychic weapons up here to mess with your mind.”

“I know. I want to reciprocate. Here.”

Tallis grinned as if she’d made another teasing jest, but her expression revealed that same frowning inquisitiveness. “Wait,” he said. “You’re serious.”

“I am.”

Speaking bluntly, he wanted to test her resolve. “With your mouth or your hand?”

She inhaled, eyes so wide that he could see a ring of white around her amber irises. “My hand. Easier for you to guide me.”