Blood Warrior

been already. An Indranan, though? I guess stranger things have happened.” She sobered briefly. “Just . . . don’t you dare get yourself killed. It’s eerie, Tallis. You’ve returned like Vallen did, in the company of a stunning woman from another clan. Then he was killed. This brother of hers is likely to pursue you both to the edge of the Chasm itself. Have you wandered so long that you’re resigned to such a harsh fate?”

“Yes, I’ve been on the run,” he said quietly, full of emotion he hadn’t meant to express. Kavya was right when she’d said his people were not the kind to hide their feelings, especially among family. It was the heart of their gift. “Is this where I belong? Am I a part of this clan? Am I an ally to our Giva, or a villain for my deeds? Ask me any of those questions and I couldn’t answer.”

Rill nodded. Her eyes softened, and for a moment, she appeared less careworn. “You were dubbed the Heretic when you left. Prove them wrong. What do you believe in, Tallis?”

“Kavya’s goodness.”

“And if this isn’t home, where might it be?”

Tallis swallowed. He was growing more calm with each question, although his heart still beat with the rhythm of a man running a flat-out sprint. “With her.”

“Then who are you?”

“Hers.”

“You’d better tell her all of that after your claiming.” Rill made a shooing motion. “You’re acknowledged, brother of mine. Don’t stand here wasting any more time.”

After a brief kiss to his sister’s cool cheek, he returned to the guest bedroom. He wanted to sprint, so that the motion of his body matched the eager, hopeful throb of his heart. That hope tunneled down deeper, until he felt it quivering in every cell. That certainty. His faith was Kavya. His home was with Kavya.

She hadn’t moved from her place on the bed. Looking up from intertwined fingers, she showed him eyes as full of hope as was his chest. He crossed the room in three strides and stopped at the side of the bed.

“What did she say?” Kavya asked, more uncertain than he would’ve expected. “Your family’s opinion about this means a lot to me.”

“Why?”

“Because they mean a lot to you.”

He fisted his hands. Patience? Calm? Did he have any left? She was naked and kneeling on the mattress. The part of him that was deeper than Tallis of Pendray wanted to be set free. He swallowed, then blew out a tight breath. “Rill acknowledged us.”

For a flaring second, Kavya beamed. Only when he stripped his cargos once again did her unspoken happiness transform into outright hunger.

“I could lie on my stomach,” she said with a dark taunt. “Lie there passively.”

“You could.”

“I could get into position on all fours. Make it easy on you.”

Tallis’s head was going to explode. “You could.”

“But we don’t want that.”

He inhaled, feeling the flare of his nostrils. He pictured a bull taking a breath before its bloodlust charge.

She pushed up onto her knees on the mattress. Leaning forward no more than a few inches, she dipped her tongue in the hollow at the base of his throat. “You want me to fight, Tallis. I’ve never been a fighter, but I am with you.”

“For me.”

“And for myself. I’ve survived so much, but I never gave myself credit. I don’t know why.” She lifted her arms in a provocative pose before flipping long, lustrous hair back over her shoulders. Her tight nipples mocked his self-control. “That ends now. I give myself credit for keeping up with you.”

“You’re asking for it. Something holy and dangerous and—” He gritted his teeth. He was seeing Kavya and he was seeing red.

She took his fists in her palms, then kissed the back of each. “Do you love me, Tallis? Not the animal want. Not some need for revenge. Love. If this is for all time, I need to know.”

He closed his eyes against a flush of dizziness. Forcing words into the air was as difficult as sawing off a limb. He was slipping away, becoming his other self, but he held on for his woman.

“Yes,” he said with utter certainty.

“Then do your worst. Your best. I know you won’t do a thing to me that I don’t want.” She touched her lips to each fist once again, then lifted her eyes like a supplicant, not a goddess. That she might be both for him was just as arousing as the idea that he could be man and beast. For her. “So I won’t lie here, Tallis. Toss me down, like you threatened. Show me what it is to be claimed by a Pendray.”

Tallis grabbed a fistful of her thick, dark hair and twisted. She cried out. Her head jerked back until he’d turned her upper body, her throat arched toward the ceiling. The crown of her head pressed against his chest. He placed the sweetest, softest kiss on her forehead.

Then he threw her down against the mattress. She kicked the covers, scrambling toward the headboard, but Tallis caught her ankle and hauled her down the bed. He yanked her hips up. The woman who’d been so calm and artificial on that distant altar was spitting mad, with a violent passion that flowed between them like fire meeting barrel after barrel of gasoline.

Kneeling behind her, Tallis flashed back to the last time he’d held her in this position, with his hands taut at her hips. He’d been so tempted. Bite her. Claim her.

This was different.

This is forever.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Please, Tallis.”

On some level he’d been waiting for those words. He’d wanted her permission and her desire—proof in one word.

He aligned his hips with hers and drove deep. They moved together with the trust of two people deeply committed and thrown over to the abandonment of that commitment. Kavya still fought, with gasps and foul words that stoked him hotter, higher. She reared back to meet him with the same force of his thrusts. Sweat slicked the coppery skin of her back. She looked over her shoulder. Amber eyes glowed fiercely. She was a woman in the midst of a fight for the rest of her life. In so many ways, that was true. Those eyes flared wide. Her body tightened as her breath ratcheted toward release.

Tallis wanted them to go over together. United.

Hips suddenly, achingly still, he bent low. “I’m claiming you, Kavya,” he rasped against her nape.

He sank his teeth into her and tightened his arms around her body, holding them both steady with the strength of his abs and thighs. She cried out. Reflex made her shake. She grabbed his nearest hand and bit down as well, slaking her frustration and perhaps the last need to resist. Tallis gloried in that poised moment of shared danger and beauty. They were bound together in pain, in the giving and receiving of it, with the anticipation of pleasure on the horizon. They moved together in a dance few else would understand. Fierce. Beautiful. Filled with the trust he wouldn’t give another woman.

For the rest of his life.

Sensation gathered in his balls and intensified as he resumed his relentless rhythm. He bit as hard as he dared, which at that moment was as hard as he could. Kavya’s moan sank into the pad of his thumb just before she released him from her fearsome teeth. She arched, shuddered, and screamed. Her clenching sheath welcomed his cock one last time as he drove home. Tallis spent his passion and staked his claim with a furious, mindless growl against the back of her neck.

—

Kavya lay sprawled on her stomach, with Tallis layered over her. She should have felt crushed, abused, exhausted. Instead she smiled against the pillow and took her first calm breath since they’d taken off their clothes for bed.

She’d never been an impetuous woman. She’d grown up knowing that caution meant invisibility, and invisibility meant safety. There, on that night, she’d made one of the most impetuous choices of her life.

She’d never felt safer.

Perhaps that was because a very satisfied berserker with muscles to spare and who possessed not one but