Passion Untamed (4 page)

Skye rose from her private sanctuary in the dagger fields and brushed off her soft knit dress, her pulse finally back to normal—or as close to normal as it was likely to get with the Feral strapped to her bed. She had to get back to him. As much as she dreaded facing those hate-filled black eyes, she needed to make certain all her creatures were okay—the ones who walked on four feet and the very large, very masculine shape-shifter who at present walked on two.

Her stomach clenched. Midnight was not far away.

She retraced her path, dodging puddles and dripping stone, the rock cool beneath her bare feet. In the distance she heard the sounds of voices as the sorcerers prepared the evening ritu
als and the women of the cavern readied the evening meal. At one time, she would have helped them. But not anymore. She was no longer one of them.

She alone still possessed a soul.

Her stomach growled. It had been two days since she’d last eaten. But as she turned a corner in the rock and spied Birik talking to one of his sentinels, her appetite fled.

Birik was striking in his way, with his fawn-colored skin, long white hair, and cruel green eyes, his body as lean and quick as the thorn whip he’d used on her as a child. Curled around his neck and draped over one shoulder was a large black rat snake. Two gray-and-copper corn snakes slithered around his feet.

She didn’t mind the snakes. She was drawn to all creatures. But the man was another matter. If she could do anything to avoid him, she would, but there was no other way back to her room from here. So she averted her gaze as she approached where he stood, seeking to avoid his notice as she always did. But as she tried to pass, stepping around his snakes, he grabbed her arm, his cruel fingers digging into her flesh and pulling her to a stop.

Fear shivered up her spine.

Birik released her only to lift those thin, brutish fingers to her cheek, making her swallow hard. The brush of his fingers was unnaturally gentle, doing nothing to quell the speeding of her pulse. His gentleness always scared her more than his
casual cruelty. Skye held perfectly still, knowing better than to let him see her fear.

“You did well, enchantress.” His eyes glittered with excitement. “The power was more than I’d hoped for, and you’ve yet to ride him.”

She didn’t ask how he knew she hadn’t mated with the Feral since bringing him into the cavern. Birik always knew more than he should. “He’s not ready to be mounted.”

Birik laughed. “He’s male, and clearly drawn to you. A few strokes of your hand or tongue, and I guarantee he’ll be ready.”

Skye swallowed again, nodding. There was no use arguing. Birik neither understood nor cared that the Feral’s hatred of his captivity and his captor made him fight the attraction, or that she’d succeed far better if the man, like any creature in captivity, were given a few days to calm to her touch.

The Mage who’d been her master, teacher, and tormentor since she was eight grabbed her jaw, squeezing until she thought he might break the bones in her face, hurting her until the tears she struggled to hold back clouded her vision.

“Don’t fail me, Skye. You won’t like the consequences.”

Apprehension fluttered in her stomach. She knew the consequences all too well. “I won’t fail you.”

The moment Birik released her, she hurried past him, descending the ancient stairs carved into the rock as she fled to the relative safety
of the prison cell that had become her bedroom when she was eight. She’d fought Birik back then. Bitterly. He’d taken everything from her, all comfort, all warmth. And when that still hadn’t forced her compliance, he’d hurt her, terribly, over and over and over again until he’d finally broken her will.

Giving up hadn’t been easy. It had never been in her nature to acquiesce. But the pain had become more than she could stand. And she’d finally understood there was nothing more that she could do but accept her fate.

As she neared the door to her chamber, she thought of the beautiful man trapped inside. And what she had to do. Her fist pressed against the harsh ache of guilt lodged beneath her breastbone. She wasn’t the only one who suffered because of Birik’s control over her. If she wanted to keep the Feral alive, she had little choice but to make him suffer more.

She reached her room to find him as she’d left him, chained and furious. A man chained and naked as he was should look helpless. But dark, angry eyes speared her as danger rolled off him, filling the very air of the room. He was the most powerful, most unsettling, male she’d ever encountered. Just being in the same room with him sent her pulse pounding in a way that had only a little to do with fear.

A thrill of energy rolled across her skin, drawing her eyes to the orbs. Birik had drained them while she was gone, yet already they were begin
ning to glow again. Lust shimmered in the air. Hers, certainly.

Did he feel it, too? There was so much fury in his eyes, it was difficult to say. But then her gaze traveled the length of his hard, muscular body, coming to rest on the arousal standing straight up from his groin, long and thick and rigid.

Oh, he felt it, all right. And wasn’t the least bit happy about it.

“Free me,”
the man growled between clenched teeth as he watched her with a predator’s stillness.

Skye went to where the animals awaited, greeting them silently as they greeted her, running her hands down the neck of the doe and bending to let the sweet creature nuzzle her cheek as Faithful always did. Sharp grief pierced her heart at the thought of this deer’s future.

“If I could free you, I would.” She’d free them all, herself included. But freedom from Birik was impossible. She’d tried. Over and over she’d tried until Birik made certain she would never try again.

With a last stroke of the doe’s soft coat, she crossed back and closed the steel door to the room, a door Birik had installed years ago to keep her in. She rarely bothered to close it anymore. It had never kept anyone out. But she closed it now, needing no audience for what she must do.

With a deep breath that did little to calm her, she moved slowly toward the cold slab of rock
that had acted as her bed for so many years. The Feral’s black eyes watched her every step of the way. As she drew near, she couldn’t find the courage to meet the anger in his eyes and looked away, letting her gaze wander over his powerful male body instead. He was truly magnificent. Mage males tended toward slim physiques and few overt muscles. Not so the Ferals.

This one in particular was a sight to behold. His skin was a beautiful shade of bronze, his chest broad and muscular, adorned with a thick, intriguing tattoo—an intricate interweaving of curves and lines. Around one of the thickly muscled arms chained above his head curved a golden armband. At one end, the head of a panther stared out at her, its eyes twinkling with emeralds. She knew the armband could not be removed except by the wearer himself.

Birik had tried.

With a deep breath, she forced herself to meet that dark, angry gaze.

The moment she did, he growled at her.
“Free me.”

“I can’t.” Her breath caught, her pulse fluttering as she felt the pull of those eyes. She had the oddest sensation that if she wasn’t careful, she’d find herself tumbling into those black depths, becoming the captive instead of the captor.

Lifting her hand, she reached for him, sliding her palm across his warm, granite chest, tracing his tattoo, feeling the ripple of hard muscle against her skin. Desire arced through her body.
His masculine scent rose up to meet her on a rush of dark, carnal pleasure.

The animal inside him, pacing angrily, turned its head toward her in greeting.

“Don’t touch me,”
the man snarled.

“I have no choice.” She stared into those furious eyes, forcing herself to hold his gaze. “Hear me, Feral. Your only chance at survival is to cooperate with me. If you fail to prove useful, Birik will destroy you. And I don’t want that.”

A muscle in his jaw leaped. “Then let me go.”

“I can’t.” Her palm slid down to his abdomen to brush the edge of the thatch of hair springing up around his root. His muscles tightened, quivering beneath her touch. “Let me mount you, warrior.”

“
Never
.” But his erection twitched, jerking. His will denied what his body craved.

What both their bodies craved. She knew he remembered as well as she did what it had been like, that slide of flesh within flesh. The pleasure…
good Mother,
the pleasure. She hadn’t realized it could be like that. Her body had been breached more times than she could count, yet sex had never brought her anything but discomfort or pain.

Until this man walked into her life. From the moment she first saw him, her body had throbbed almost continuously, pulsing and contracting with desire, dampening her thighs. Now that passion, that power arced through the room, thickening.

The sound of a vicious animal rumbled from the Feral’s throat. “That hand gets any closer to my shaft and I’ll rip your head from your shoulders.”

Skye released a sigh. “I don’t want to force you.”

“Then don’t,” he snapped.

“You don’t understand!” If only she had the time to back off and let him calm beneath her touch for a few days. But Birik had never been a patient man. And she sensed the anger ran deep in this Feral. A few days, or even weeks, might not be enough.

“I understand all I need to,” he snarled.

But he didn’t. Not at all. She had no choice but to raise the passion between them in whatever way she must. Skye dipped her head to his chest, kissing his warm skin. He smelled of night forests, wild and untamed. Darting her tongue out, she tasted him, as pleased by his taste as by his scent. Everything about him made her want him more.

Moving a step to the side, she pressed her mouth to his abdomen, then to his hip bone, scenting the faint musk of his erection.

She lifted her head and looked at him, her breathing uneven, her eyes growing heavy with desire. “Can I kiss you there?”

“No.”

She continued to his broad, rock-hard thigh, kissing, licking.

“Witch.”
His growl was still one of furious warning, but beneath the anger, passion vibrated.

“I want you inside me, warrior,” she said huskily. “Just as you want me. Your body longs to press deep within mine.”

“I don’t want you. I never want you.”

“You wanted me before. In the woods.”

“That was before I knew what you were.”

She sighed. He’d thought she was human. Birik had given her the ability to hide the copper rings around her irises for just that purpose.

Something had happened when they’d kissed yesterday. A strange sexual energy had passed between them, bonding them in some indefinable way. All night her body had wept for release, a release only he could give her. She’d woken knowing he’d come back to her.

And he had.

Unfortunately, Birik’s orders had been as clear and sharp as a piece of cut glass. When the Feral returned, she must capture him.

And she had.

Skye curled her fingers around his leg, caressing his inner thigh as she stood beside the stone where he was pinned, letting her fingers slide almost to his groin. “Let me touch you, warrior.”

“No.”

Stubborn man. He needed more time. If she forced him now, so violently against his will, his hatred would only grow stronger and more impossible to breach. She’d never calm him, never get him to accept his place here. And he must accept it.

She couldn’t give up.

The alternative meant his destruction.

Fury clouded Paenther’s mind, rage blurred his vision. His body burned to slake its need on the
witch whose soft hands stroked his thigh, whose softer lips laid kisses on his hip, seducing. Tormenting.

He fought the attraction, struggled to feel nothing as he had so many times in the past. But, as in the past, his body had a will of its own.

How many times had Ancreta come to him as he’d lain chained in that cellar? How many times had she taken him into her mouth and sucked him hard? He could still feel the torment of those golden curls tumbling over his hips as he fought the arousal and lost. Every time, he’d lost.

She’d lift those miles of skirts to her waist and straddle him, cruel laughter in her eyes that he’d fought her, and she’d won yet again. He’d buck and try to throw her off, but she’d clamp that surprisingly strong hand around his shaft and squeeze him until he quit bucking, then guide him into her hole, taking him inside.

Hatred ran like blood through his memory. Gregor would invariably join them. As Ancreta rode him, as he fought to withhold his seed, Gregor would grab his head and begin chanting, digging his fingernails into the flesh of his skull until blood ran down his temples and through his hair. And as Paenther lost the battle, coming in a hot rush of pleasure and fury, his mind wrenched open, Gregor would delve into his mind and rip at the animal spirit that had only recently joined him, trying to remove him, to steal him, the pain beyond anything Paenther had ever endured before, or since.

And he hated.

Lost in the memory, he barely distinguished between the blond Ancreta of his nightmares and the dark-haired witch with the blue eyes whose hands even now slid over his body, one over his arm, the other trailing up his hip, the fingers tangling in the hair at the base of his shaft.

A growl rumbled in his throat, his mind a haze of fury and memory. As her soft hand closed around his shaft, he turned feral, his fangs and claws unsheathing. He attacked her in the only way left to him, striking at the arm that had ventured too close to his mouth.

His animal’s fangs sank into her forearm, ripping off a thick hunk of her flesh. Warm blood drenched his mouth. Raw satisfaction burned through the haze of his anger as he watched her jerk away, her face ashen. He spit the flesh onto the floor.
Witch.
If he were loose, he’d kill her. He’d shift into his panther form and rip open her throat, then eat out her heart.

He snarled, waiting for her retribution, tensing for the pain she’d deal, and not caring. But the witch only stumbled backward, holding the wounded arm in front of her, the blood flowing steadily down the front of her dress. She backed up until she reached the far wall, then sank to the floor beside the doe, cradling her injury.