Hunted Warrior (9 page)

“I only want what you know, including what you knew about those Pendray assassins.”

“Which could be discussed right here, right now.” She crossed her arms over breasts outlined by her thin, dusty purple shirt. One sleeve was torn off. One forefinger with a ragged nail tapped her annoyance. She was beginning to lose some of her icy, unreadable quality. “There's no need to take me back to some Tigony prison.”

“It wasn't a prison.”

“So I was free to go whenever I wanted?”

Mal grimaced in silent reply.

She leaned near, almost nose to nose, which meant she was once again closer to him than people ever dared. The title he wore was as much armor and barbed defenses as it was an honor.

He looked right down that filmy purple top and raised an eyebrow. “The last time you wanted to argue, you were straddling me. Let's pick up from there.”

“Do you hear me, Giva? I need you because time is weaving us together. I won't bother telling you any more than that, because you won't listen. You know I've suffered worse than you could ever inflict. You won't get answers that way. As for your stronghold, I was free to go whenever I wanted. I proved that. The same held true with Aster. I am no one's prisoner and no one's pet.”

Slowly, drawn to her softness, drawn to
her
, he lifted his good arm and brushed his thumb across a streak of chalky mica on her cheek. “That's right,” he whispered. “You're Avyi.”

She pulled back as if his touch were a brand rather than skin on skin. Within seconds, she had pushed away from him, shouldered the quiver and her pack of supplies, and stood facing the east. “It's a long walk to the village. We're vulnerable out in the open.”

“That's the plan, foreseer of great and terrible things?”

She scowled. “You tell me, Giva. Do you remember the choices?”

“Florence . . . or dragging your skinny ass back to Greece.”

For a moment, she appeared genuinely confused. “My . . . ?”

“Your skinny ass and your crazy hair and your unnerving cat's eyes. All of you. Back to Greece.”

“We've already taken that option off the table.”

He liked seeing her so ruffled. “Have we?”

“Yes.”

“You know, the Aegean is beautiful this time of year.”

“I remember thinking the same thing as I left it.”

“You are my responsibility, whether you're a threat or an asset. That,” he said, nodding to the quiver, “was a coincidence or a trick.”

“You saw me find the arrows.”

“I didn't see when you might have planted them.”

She muttered something under her breath in a language he didn't understand. Garnis? If that was even her clan. All he had were stories. Why would she suddenly tell the truth, when months of captivity had yielded nothing?

“And predicting the future based on a dead man's final, what, thoughts? I can't believe that either. For all I know . . .” His skin, baking under the rising sun as they began walking, suddenly went cold. Grabbing her entire delicate jaw in one palm, he forced her to look at him. She didn't meet his eyes. “For all I know, you knew about those Pendray.”

“I saved your life.”

“I have you and three dead Pendray. That's where this begins and ends.”

She swept a boot heel behind his left knee and yanked, catching just the right spot. Mal sprawled onto the ground. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her down with him. The quiver slipped from its place at her back.

He rolled. He was on top of her. They both stilled.

Mal's shoulder hurt, but he wasn't blind or dead or an idiot. He was stretched atop a confounding woman who looked up at him with eyes that were so perfectly gold and green, so wide, so chillingly distant. He got the impression that he could've taken her apart, limb by limb, and the same distance would've remained in her eyes.

Only a moment ago, she'd been teasing him. That was gone. Unfortunately, so was what should've been gratitude for what she had done to heal him. She could've left, letting him bleed, taking the quiver and sword without a backward glance. He should've been grateful, but more disturbingly, he wanted that brief moment when she'd opened up enough to try making a joke or two. He got the impression that was a rare effort.

With his elbow bracketing her face, he stared into those mesmerizing eyes. “You are a fraud. You come from some family of frauds.”

She struggled and cursed, fighting until a sharp blow to his temple made him grunt.

“You're not getting away that easily,” he growled.

“I only struck your temple. I could use my knuckles against your shoulder.” She sneered. “That would take the fight out of you Dragon-damned quick.”

“And you accused me of making threats I can't go through with.” She didn't retaliate. She simply licked her lower lip. Mal couldn't have looked away had his life depended on it. Instead, he decided on a different tactic—one that needed to happen if he were to retain his sanity. “Kiss me, Avyi.”

Mal ignored the lingering pain in his shoulder in order to grasp both of her hands. He pinned them above her head and took the kiss he wanted. It was heated and heady once again, but with a different flavor. They were celebrating; they were at war. She was driving him mad with frustration and indecision that felt like weakness. He wouldn't stand for it.

Avyi growled and fought his hold, but she didn't squirm away from his questing mouth. He needed her taste. With lips and tongue, he forced his way in. But that was all he needed to force. She met his tongue with every heavy pulse of blood in his veins as their duel was dictated by body and breath. Somewhere in the haze of that passion, Mal felt her hands relax. He dared release her. She gratified him by wrapping slender, deceptively strong arms around his neck, pulling him closer.

He was taken by surprise at how swiftly he was hard and aching. In less than a day, this maddening woman had proven that he could be stripped of the fundamentals of his character. He was a man who held on to control. Now his control was slipping. He thrust his hips, rocking their bodies together on the rough ground. They were even rougher. Take and take, with so little give.

He molded his palm over her breast. Such softness to be found there. Such temptation.

Avyi twisted at the waist and slipped from beneath him. He had been looking down at her pale, elfin face. Now he was staring at pearl-white shale. His hands were empty. His lips were slack, then tightened with anger.

“You don't touch me,” she said bluntly, edging away from him. “You don't.”

He stood to his full height, propelled by his flush of enraged frustration. “Then what the Dragon damn was that?”

“A mistake. I've made many since meeting you.”

Without wasted motion, she hefted the Dragon-forged sword and held it in what looked to be a practiced two-handed grip. She turned her back. On him. The Honorable Giva. He had nearly given up trying to remember a time when anyone had treated him with such disregard.
Nearly
.

He ducked under her weak side—the left, where her elbow wasn't raised to the same ready angle. Two seconds and two swift moves later, he held the sword. They were face to face, body to body, breathing hard. He loomed a full head taller. He would only have to tip his chin toward his chest in order to kiss her crown. He realized that her view was very different. She would be staring at the hollow between his collarbones. She could lean forward a few scant inches and kiss his bare skin.

He tipped her chin up to meet his gaze. His eyes were filled with challenge.

“Have you made your choice,
Giva
?”

Hefting the sword, stifling every emotion but self-preservation—in all forms—he was the one to turn his back. “We should move.”

*  *  *

The sudden coldness of the Giva's mood was no surprise to Avyi. How often had her wishes been met with disdain, anger, or even cruelty? Coldness was practically a relief, for its change of pace. She couldn't explain why she had acted as she had, either in kissing him or in ending the kiss. Too much. That's all she knew.
Too much.
Now he was walking, but his posture and expression were as hard as marble.

So often, she had been offered trust, friendship, or affection, only to have them jerked away for reasons beyond her comprehension. She was idiot enough to keep trying. Like a woman encased in ice, knowing the thaw would bring the paralyzing sting of pins and needles under her skin, she stepped without fail toward a source of potential warmth. Only, that warmth was always fire. Burning. Forcing her to shy away again.

While Malnefoley had slept, she'd resisted the impulse to curl up against his body rather than away from it. He was tempting. How much nicer would it have been to spend the night wrapped in his sure embrace than held by the chilly earth? How much more dangerous?

She wanted to like him.

She was an idiot.

In a mere matter of minutes, it became harder to think of him by his given name. He was back to being the Giva, standing tall, holding an intimidating sword that made him appear even more magnificent. Although bare-chested, he seemed to wear a cloak of arrogance only true leaders could shoulder—a leader who wasn't willing to consider anything but his own stubborn opinion.

He was no longer the man whose lifeblood had pulsed beneath her fingers as she'd guided him in the use of his gift. He wasn't the man who had kissed her with such intimidating passion. And he certainly wasn't the man who, without fanfare, had quietly given her a name she didn't want to relinquish. If he kept behaving this way, he would ruin the name for her, essentially taking it from her. She wouldn't want to be Avyi anymore, just as she wasn't the Pet or Girl anymore.

With deliberate footfalls, she once again walked alongside him. Cautious moves. The better to become invisible when those who saw her were more likely to beat her than talk to her.

“You are . . .” He broke off and shook his head. Strands of straight, bronze hair tumbled over his forehead.

“What?”

“Infuriating.”

Avyi hefted the quiver. Some statements didn't merit notice. Some actions were better left to the past. But how could she forget what they had done when her gift insisted there was even more to come?

That was the future. For all the years she'd practically lived there, she needed to stay in the present with this man if she was going to have any chance of bending him to her needs—and fulfilling what her gift insisted would be their sensual fate.

“The job isn't done. More will come for you. The dam has burst. Your enemies will jump from the shadows and they'll
all
come for you.”

Malnefoley walked ahead of her with supreme confidence, as if he knew she always would follow.

The clear blue sky blazed off the perfect, taut skin of his back, which was naturally tan in the way of the Dragon Kings.
Most
Dragon Kings. She was as pale as sun-bleached sand and always had been. Malnefoley, though . . . And yes, she thought of his given name when admiring his body. Then, he was more man than symbol. Every muscle flexed as he strode across the wind-whipped plains. A sheen of sweat gathered to trickle down his spine. The belt she'd used to fasten his bandages reminded her of the straps Cage warriors wore to secure plates of leather and metal armor.

She didn't trust him. With strength like Malnefoley's came conceit and pride, and Avyi had never believed that the powerful could be just. The dominant influences in her life had been too cruel for that to be true. Unwillingly, she forced herself to put Malnefoley of Tigony in that category.

Let him think what he wanted about how the next few days would proceed. She only focused on the next few hours. She needed a means of getting to Italy. That would be much easier with a tall, overbearing man who carried a beast of a sword.

At least she knew that Florence was her next stop. Beyond finding anything in the maze, she'd been at a loss as to where to go next. Her gift was mercurial, playing hide-and-seek like the carefree child she'd never been.

“Deny what you will,” she called after him. “Along one path, you stood beneath the dome of the Florence Cathedral.” Goose bumps climbed her nape when she stared the truth of her gift in the face. “Along the path back to Greece . . . you have no future. You will be murdered, whispering the name Pollakioh with your last breath.”

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