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Her eyes narrowed, and she nudged Tighe. “Have I met him?”
“Hawke? He was the one who grabbed you at the Tidal Basin. ”
And the same one who’d pulled her to safety both times Tighe went ballistic. Would he rescue her a third time if she needed it? Not likely. Not against this crew.
As her gaze peppered the room, she caught sight of a woman standing on the far side, against one wall, in a gown that appeared to be a pastel version of her own ceremonial nightgown. Is the woman just another course on the menu, or does she belong here?
As their gazes caught, the blonde gave her a small, sympathetic smile. Nice. A moment of rapport between one entrée and the other.
Tighe nudged her shoulder. “If those thoughts of yours are happy, I’d hate to taste your dark ones. ”
Her gaze jerked to his. “You really can taste my emotions?”
His mouth pursed, and he nodded. “Really can. ”
“Do I taste scared?”
“Not exactly. If I had to guess, I’d say you’re thinking about what you’d do if you could get ahold of those knives in my room. Am I close?”
She lifted her brows on a rueful look. “No, but I like your idea better. ”
He nodded. “Always glad to help. ”
“I’m sure. ”
“Let’s get started, Kougar. ” The man who spoke was one of the larger of the bunch, his hair down to his shoulders in thick dark blond waves. Everything from the tone of his voice to his body language proclaimed him the leader. Was this Lyon, then? The one on the phone who’d been so against saving her?
Tighe led her to a low pedestal in the middle of the floor. “Stand here. ”
“Alone?” She stepped onto the round platform that was about the size of a coffee table and turned to him, noting they now stood eye to eye. “Isn’t it traditional for the bride and groom to stand together?”
“I’ll join you in a moment. Our rituals involve magic, of which I have to be a part. ”
As she stood self-consciously, the men formed a loose, wide circle around her. She kept turning, hating the feel of any of these men at her back.
The psychopath—was this Kougar?—walked toward Tighe with a bowl that looked like…Shit. It was either the top of a human skull or a first-rate replica. She’d bet money it was no fake.
Tighe held out his hand for the bowl, then stood there as the freak with the pale eyes pulled out a knife and cut him! Deep. Right through the center of his palm.
Delaney gasped in outrage and leaped off the pedestal.
Tighe shook his head sharply, frowning at her. “Go back, D. This is supposed to happen. ”
She glared at Kougar, then slowly turned and climbed back onto the platform. What would she have done if Tighe hadn’t stopped her? Would she really have gone after a hulk of a man with a six-inch blade in his hand?
Yeah. She would have. If she’d thought Tighe was being attacked, she would have. She nearly had.
As if she were trying to protect her mate.
Shit.
Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides as she watched Tighe squeeze his injured hand into a fist, letting the blood run into the bowl. When Tighe lowered his hand, Kougar turned to the man beside Tighe, her aristocratic savior, and cut his palm just as he had Tighe’s.
One by one, the men added their blood to the bowl in a ritual as barbaric as anything she’d ever seen. With the firelight flickering over the dark walls, the half-naked bodies and dripping blood, she could almost believe every step down to this place had taken her another thousand years into the past.
Chills rippled over her skin.
At last, Kougar handed the bowl to Lyon, cut his own palm, and added his blood to the mix. When he was done, he retrieved the bowl.
Tighe walked toward her, then stepped onto the pedestal in front of her. His expression was tight. Borderline angry.
Had she offended him by trying to come to his rescue? Undoubtedly. And in front of all his buddies. Big mistake.
“Sorry,” she said softly. “Gut reaction. ”
He didn’t say anything, just held his hands out to her. She started to lay her hands in his when she remembered he’d been cut. But as she looked at his palm, her eyes went wide. His flesh was blood-smeared, but whole.
Her gaze snapped to his.
“Fast healers,” he murmured. “Take my hands, D. ”
Fast healers. Immortals. No wonder no one seemed the least bit bothered about all the blood.
A shiver ripped through her, but she placed her hands in his.
Kougar began to chant something in a language she couldn’t even identify. As he chanted, he walked slowly around the circle, dribbling the collected blood onto the floor.
Three times, he circled them before throwing the remaining blood into one of the fires. The flame rose, spitting, then died back to the size of the others.
“It’s time,” Kougar said, his voice almost hushed.
Tighe released her hands. The chanting had done something, something she couldn’t see but could feel. Like a tingling in her blood and a heaviness in the air.
Tighe lifted his hands to frame her face. “Listen to me, brown eyes, because this is important. I need you to look into my eyes and not look away. ”
“It would help if I could see your eyes. ”
“No. It wouldn’t. It may feel like I’m trying to get into your mind again, but don’t let me in this time, do you understand? You have to fight it. ”
His words were doing nothing to calm her. Fight it, why? Because if she didn’t, the tiger would spring again? She was actually kind of curious about his tiger spirit; but his intensity told her this was nothing to mess with, whatever it was.
“Okay,” she murmured.
“Look into my eyes, D. ”
As she stared into his sunglasses, the chanting started up around them, all the men joining in, a deep, low rumble entering her bloodstream like the pounding of ancient drums.
Tighe’s warmth brushed across her mind as it had that night in her apartment when she’d first met him. Like that night, she felt the stroke deep and low inside her. Oh, hell.
Again, that warmth stroked her, making her catch her breath as the heat built between her legs. Over and over, that invisible touch brushed her, driving her until she was hot, and gasping.
“Tighe. ” If he didn’t stop, she was going to come. Right here. In front of everyone. “Tighe, stop. ”
“Don’t move. ”
Oh, God, it was too late. Her body was out of control, the rocket launched. She was gasping, rocking against him, moaning.
Oh, shit.
Tighe held Delaney as she screamed her release, her face a mask of passion. She was beautiful. Glorious.
His.
But he wasn’t hers.
He shook from the hard thread of control that kept him from freeing himself and burying himself deep inside her, joining her, binding himself to her as the magic bound her to him.
A thing he couldn’t do. Couldn’t do.
As her climax peaked, the power rushed out of him like a storm, and into her, making her cry out a second time with as much pleasure as the first.
She was his, now. Bound to him. Her loyalty and fidelity unbreakable.
His.
But the rush of pleasure, of power, went only one way, leaving a deep, hollow void inside him. An emptiness he hadn’t anticipated.
He’d done the right thing. The only thing.
She clung to him with shaking hands as her body quaked from the force of the twin storms. Dark lashes swept up, revealing eyes shimmering with disbelief and bright with dismay. Slowly, she straightened, her cheeks staining with color even as her gaze hardened, raking the Ferals as if daring them to comment.
Her gaze swung back to him, the pleasure gone from her eyes. The bitter taste of her embarrassm
ent streaked across his tongue along with a healthy dose of anger.
“It’s done,” he told her quietly.
Her eyes narrowed. “You did that on purpose. ”
“Sexual release opens the body and mind. ”
“What about you?” Her gaze dipped to the front of his pants. “You didn’t get off?”
“No. ”
Her expression turned brittle. “You didn’t marry me, did you? I married you, but you didn’t marry me. ”
She was too sharp, by half.
“I did what I had to do to keep you alive. ”
And to keep them from being stuck with one another for the rest of her life.
Deep inside him, the tiger howled with fury.
Damn him.
As Tighe stepped down from the pedestal, Delaney remembered the words someone had spoken as she’d lain on a sofa soaking in her own blood.
If he binds her to him, she can’t betray him. Or us.
Binds her. Not marries her. Not promises to love, honor, and cherish her. But binds her. Like a slave. Was that it? Was that what she would be to him? A slave?
Or worse. What if she was nothing to him? A castoff. A useless, cast-off human.
Tighe held out his hand to her, to help her down, but she just stared at him, knowing she wasn’t masking her anger nearly as well as she wanted to.
“D. ” The word pulsed with regret. With pity.
She turned away from him, hating that he knew she was so much more than mad. This sucked. It sucked. All she’d ever wanted was to do her job, and now she couldn’t even do that. She was locked in a marriage that wasn’t even a marriage.
A binding.
His hand cupped her shoulder. “Delaney. ”
Pain shot through her head, out of nowhere, arching her back as her jaw dropped open. Her sight disappeared as a screen rose in her head. A house. On fire.
She felt Tighe snatch back his hand with a groan. “I forgot about your injuries. ”
“Not…Tighe. ” Her hand shot out, reaching for him blindly. “Vision. ”
And then she was in his arms, cradled against his bare chest, his palm tight to her forehead. “Easy, sweetheart. Are you seeing it this time?”
“Yes. ”
“Good. I think. Better than the slide to nowhere, anyway. ”
The view was of the back of an old two-story house. Fire licked at the base from one end of the house to the other as if…
“He’s poured gasoline around it again,” Tighe said.
“Any identifiers?” one of the men asked. Hawke’s voice, she was almost certain.
“Nothing so far. You don’t recognize anything do you, D?”
“No. What do you mean…again?”
An old woman appeared in one of the upstairs windows, struggling to lift the window sash.
“This is the fourth time he’s done this in the past twelve hours. We found two of the houses, but too late. He was long gone. But we know he’s using flammables to trap his victims. ”
“I didn’t have the visions. ”
His arm tightened around her, pulling her even closer against his chest as if he’d shield her from this horror. “Oh you had them, you were just unconscious at the time. I was holding you. I saw them for you. ”
The old woman was making no progress with the window. It appeared to be stuck. She disappeared only to appear at a different window. Delaney could feel her terror in the frantic way she beat at the window frame, and in the screams barely filtering through the window.
While the clone watched, feeding on her fear.
The men’s conversation went on around her.
“He’s not feeding as well this way. ”
“Maybe he’s needing to feed more often to counteract the disintegration of his soul. ”
The fire was beginning to creep up the wood siding of the house. Delaney’s arms slid around Tighe’s waist as she buried her face in his chest. “I don’t want to see this. ”
Tighe’s hand caressed her head. “I can knock you out. ”
“No. ”
The woman finally threw a chair through the window, the glass shards sparkling like gold in the fire’s glow. Her screams for help tore through Delaney’s mind. She felt the strong arms around her tighten as if he, too, could barely stand to hear this.
“We’ve got it!” Another male voice. “Not that far from here. A Falls Church address. ”
Tighe brushed her hair with his hand. “I’ve got to go, brown eyes. I’ve got to try to stop him. ”
She nodded. “Help her. ”
“If I can. ” But they both knew by the time he got there, if no one else had come to her aid, it would be too late. “Let me knock you out. ”
“No. I can’t leave her. Besides, maybe I’ll see something. ”
She felt the press of his lips on her hair. “Lyon can knock you out as easily as I can. If you need help, ask him. ”
“I’ll stay with her,” said a woman’s voice. The blonde, no doubt.
He helped her sit on the pedestal before he released her. The rush of pain had her cradling her head in her arms. Through the old woman’s hoarse screams, she heard the sound of male feet pounding up the stairs. Then the soft brush of silk.
To her surprise, a gentle hand began to rub her back. A woman’s hand.
“I’m sure this isn’t helping at all, but it’s what my mom always did when I needed any kind of comforting. ”
“It helps. ”
“Good. I’m Kara, by the way. Lyon’s mate, as they put it. His wife. ”
The soft voice helped drown out the sound of the woman’s coughing cries, as they helped ground Delaney in the real world.
“As they put it?” she asked, struggling to force her mind anywhere but that fire. “Aren’t you one of them?”
“Technically. I thought I was human until about two weeks ago. ”
“Seriously?”