Under His Wings (12 page)

“Even with…” She squeezed her eyelids tighter and forced the
name past her lips. “Kyle…I didn’t break. I envied your strength, wanted your
strength. It just took me a while to believe I could have it.”

“Kyle?” he asked. Though his touch remained gentle, tension
invaded his voice. Beside her, his body stilled as if preparing to pounce on an
unseen threat. “Is he the one who hurt you?”

Tamar nodded. “He was my fiancé,” she explained. “Before the
crash he was kind, attentive, made me laugh. He worked as an investment banker
and had a great future in front of him—
we
had a great future. But after the
accident…”

The memories crowded in and terrible, hurtful images flashed
in front of her eyes. But then the fingers that had covered her face clasped
her hand. She opened her eyes and stared down. Nicolai laced their fingers
together in an unbreakable bond. She concentrated on the show of support and
shoved past the dark thoughts.

“After the accident, he changed. He went from the fun-loving
guy I planned on spending my life with to this…this monster. It wasn’t sudden,
but gradual. A sharp word or back-handed insult became an angry tirade or a
thrown glass. He separated me from my friends, cut me off from the world.
Eventually his behavior escalated to full-out abuse. Punches, slaps and kicks
to my upper body and lower back so he wouldn’t leave marks my physical
therapist might notice and report. He’d shove me to the floor and leave me
there for hours. Once—” The sob rose out of nowhere, a cry of humiliation,
anger and shame. But as if she’d lanced a wound, the bad blood flowed out of
her and she couldn’t hold it back any longer. “Once he knocked me down, took my
walker from the room so I couldn’t get up and left me. I-I couldn’t even make
it to the bathroom. I-I—”

Mortification choked her and Tamar ducked her head. But
Nicolai wouldn’t allow her gesture of shame. He placed a bent knuckle under her
chin and forced her head up. Amethyst fire burned in his eyes, searing her with
its intensity. “You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he growled, the words
almost unrecognizable over the loud rumble emerging from his throat and chest.
“He is the one that doesn’t have any honor. To prey on the defenseless,
especially women, makes him less than a man. And makes you a survivor. A
warrior.” He bumped her chin higher. “Wings or not.” He crushed his mouth to
hers in an abrupt, hard kiss that was over before she had time to register his
lips had been there. “Now continue.”

She stared up at him, stunned. The kiss was their first
sexual contact outside their dreams. With trembling fingers, Tamar brushed her
fingertips over her mouth, still tingling with the bruising pressure of his
lips.

Then his words penetrated her shock. A warrior?
Her?
A warm glow that had nothing to do with the blazing fire kindled and spread
from her chest to each limb.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He nodded and removed his touch from her chin.

“After Kyle found me, he berated me, calling me a filthy
invalid, worthless, stupid and pathetic. If I’d been whole, healthy, I like to
think I wouldn’t have put up with his abuse, that I would’ve been too strong to
ever accept his behavior. I tell myself that anyway. In hindsight, I wonder why
I didn’t tell my doctor or therapist. Maybe they could have helped.” The
question plagued her often. “But I was so ashamed, so humiliated and scared of
Kyle. And what if they didn’t believe me? Kyle assured me time and again no one
would. He had complete control of not just my home, my body and finances, but
my mind too.” She shook her head. “The physical abuse was bad, but the verbal
and emotional damage he inflicted… In a real sense they were tougher to suffer
because, in my mind, there was some truth in his words. I think that’s why it
took me so long to finally say no more.”

“What made you decide?”

Tamar relayed the story of how she had awakened to Kyle
beating her. Another growl rolled out of Nico and his body trembled with fury.
His rage on her behalf was another healing salve to the wounds of her past.

“The change in him was so insidious, I never saw it coming.
Was this monster there all along and I just never noticed? I don’t know, never
did figure it out, because I can honestly say there weren’t any signs that
pointed toward the terrible rage he kept bottled up inside him. Once in the
middle of a rant he told me he hadn’t signed on for marrying a cripple, that I
had ruined his life. I think he felt betrayed and trapped and blamed me.”

“Then he could have walked away,” Nicolai said, murder in
his voice. “He still would have been a dick, but not an abusive one.”

Tamar nodded. “I agree,” she said. “I’m not making excuses
for him. But when things don’t make sense it’s human nature to try to find
logic in the illogical. I guess it’s more bearable than believing I was almost
stupid enough to marry a sadistic bastard who got off on power and making other
people suffer.” She shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. “It’s why I ran from
you.” Her burst of laughter was brittle in her own ears. “Y’know, my so-called
escape attempt. My choice was taken away and I panicked. I know what it’s like
to be caged like an animal, dependent on my jailer. I want life on my terms,
not someone else’s. For two years my every movement, thought and word was
determined by someone else. And for those two years I craved my independence
and the life I’d taken for granted. After a long, hard battle, I had it back, and
then you showed up, telling me I had to chuck it all and depend on another
person again. Trust”—she held her palms up, studied them as if she could find
the elusive emotion there—“it’s…hard for me. Even knowing you want to protect
me from an untimely, painful death…it’s hard.”

Nicolai turned his head away, muttering under his breath.

“What did you say?” she asked, narrowing her eyes on his
harsh profile. When he remained silent, the reflexive tic in his jaw her only
answer, Tamar pressed, “Because it sounded like, ‘that motherfucker better hope
I don’t find him’.”

More silence.

“Nicolai?”

His head cranked back in her direction and his glare sucked
the breath from her lungs. “I said,” he gritted through clenched teeth, “that
motherfucker better hope I don’t find him because I intend to fucking gut him
like a fucking fish.”

She blinked. Stared. Blinked again.

The chuckle bubbled up and erupted before she could contain
it. Damn, she didn’t want to laugh, but it felt good. She cut a glance up at
him then tumbled to the side, laughter bursting from her in great guffaws that
had her side aching and her eyes stinging with tears.

Through her blurry gaze she noted Nicolai studying her, his
expression caught between concern and anger. That sent her into another paroxysm
of hilarity.

“I’m sorry,” she wheezed, rubbing the heels of her palms
over her eyes. Her breath hitched and she hiccupped. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.
“It’s just I wasn’t expecting that. There were a lot of ‘fuckers’ and ‘fucking’
in that sentence.” She giggled.

The anger evaporated from his face, leaving a sheepish
chagrin. And it was so endearing on his sharply hewn, patrician face, she
reached up and traced the granite line of his jaw.

“Sorry,” he said gruffly. “Most of my time is spent in the
company of Lukas, Adon and Dorian. I’m not used to watching my mouth.”

Her hilarity mellowed into a soft glow that set up base
right in her heart. “No need to apologize.” She dropped her arm and reclaimed
his hand. Whisking the pad of her thumb over his broad knuckles, she smiled.
“Thank you,” she murmured.

“For?”

“For wanting to defend me.” Her eyes met his and she didn’t
duck her head or avoid his eagle-like scrutiny. “No one has done that for me
since my mom died. It feels…nice.”

“I would protect you with my life.” Truth rang in his solemn
tone and she believed him. “You did the same for me, you know.”

Tamar arched an eyebrow. “Protected you?”

“Kept me.”

She didn’t know how to respond to the bleak statement, but
her heart wrenched for him. His austere, forbidding expression couldn’t
completely hide the sorrow that darkened his eyes.

“Tell me,” she said, leaving the invitation open and praying
he would accept.

The quiet stretched for long seconds. Nicolai stared down at
their tangled fingers before shifting his gaze to the far wall. Tamar suspected
he didn’t study the weathered wood or the gorgeous painting of an eagle in
flight. What he saw went soul deep.

“I hunt, fight and execute.” He stated the description of
his job matter of factly and without apology. “By the time I begin to track,
judgment has already been rendered. There is no discussion, no turning back. I
am death—even if it means a former friend…or family.” His voice was no longer
factual. Weariness had crept into his tone, weighed it down. “While my people
are grateful for my existence, they’re uncomfortable with my presence. They
realize as well as I do the day could arrive when I might have to judge their
loved ones, maybe even them.”

Tamar didn’t know how she’d missed it before—his loneliness.
Since Nicolai had burst into her life, he’d appeared indestructible, like a
comic book hero. That he experienced frailties such as loneliness and sorrow
made him seem vulnerable…human.

“It’s why I choose to live away from them, away from Patros.
For their peace of mind as well as my own. It’s easier if I don’t have personal
ties.”

“It hurts you,” she whispered. “Each kill hurts you.”

A brief hesitation, then a small nod. “Like a stain on my
soul. Sometimes I wonder which execution will be the one that tips the scales
and turns me into the hunted instead of the hunter.”

Fear, acrid and sharp, flooded her mouth.
No
.
A feral snarl leapt from the depths of her spirit. Someone as beautiful, as
pure as him should not be destroyed. His head jerked around and he stared at
her, his eyes shocked, rounded pools of purple so deep they appeared black.

“I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed at her over-the-top
reaction. Hell, they had officially met three days ago. Still the residue of
terror and anger lingered within her chest. “You haven’t said anything that
changes my mind. It’s not fair. And for the record,
your people
sound
like a bunch of thankless ingrates.”

A corner of his sensual mouth quirked before flattening into
a grim line.

“Choices, Tamar,” he reminded her. “I don’t regret my
position or the weight of it. But don’t make me out to be a martyr. I made
choices and one of those has left the blackest mark on my soul.”

He disentangled his fingers from hers and returned them to
his thighs. The loss of his touch left her bereft, alone. But she didn’t try to
snatch his hand back. His frame had gone so rigid she feared one touch would
snap him in two. A muscle pulsed along the taut ridge of his jaw. Nicolai
didn’t desire her comfort.

“I killed an innocent.”

The bald statement blindsided her. He didn’t glance over to
take in her reaction, but his fingers flexed over his black pants.

“The
Dimios
cannot mate or have a family—it’s one of
our laws. Imagine going into war and placing your loved ones in the front line
of the cavalry to be slaughtered first. That’s what having a family would be
for us. Easy targets for the enemy. So if we find our mate, we have the choice
to abdicate. When I met Pria, that’s what I did. I didn’t regret the decision.
Not that it mattered.”

Bitterness, raw and ugly, dripped from his last sentence and
Tamar braced herself for what she might hear next.

“I should have known. I should have realized a simple title
switch wouldn’t be enough. But I was selfish and pride blinded me. No harm
would come to my family as long as I was there to protect them. Pria paid the
price for my arrogance.”

His voice took on that precise, clipped pitch again as if he
were recounting someone else’s story from a text book and not his own personal
history.

“Months after I stepped down, another rogue went on a
rampage. He cut such a bloody path through Eastern Europe my father had to
contact the crones and pay them to create a mass hallucination that spelled
people into believing a terrible plague had killed off nearly half their population.
A
Dimios
hadn’t been selected to replace me yet so I volunteered to help
Lukas hunt him. When Pria’s screams first reached me, I was in what is today’s
Mongolia. I abandoned the hunt and flew back to Greece, but I was too late.
Unknown to me or Lukas, the rogue had backtracked.”

Tamar didn’t need to hear any more. She knew where this was
headed.

“Nicolai—”

“He’d ripped her to pieces. Left what remained of her under
the sun in the wheat fields near our home.” Steel entered his voice. “See, the
last rogue I had executed had been his son. He’d left a message in blood—if he
couldn’t get to me, he would destroy those I loved.”

“Jesus.” His description of his wife’s death had been
factual, but Tamar’s imagination filled in the blanks. Resa and her horrifying
brutal murder at Evander’s hands flashed in her mind. If Pria’s death had been
anything similar to Resa’s… She shivered. And Nicolai had been the one to find
her? How did he bear it?

“So you went back,” she said.

“Yes. I resumed my role as
Dimios
.”

“Did you find the one who did it?”

The smile that curved his lips was cruel, blood-stained.
“Yes.”

That simple word summed it all up. That and the smile.

“Good.” Brutal satisfaction filled her. His wife had been
innocent, unable to fight back. Only a coward would have targeted her. “But why
do you believe her blood is on your hands?”

“I made the decision—”

“Bullshit.”

Yet again he stared at her as if she’d sprouted a second
head. Which she found ironic considering he was the one who could shift into a
half-eagle, half-horse beast.
Ri-i-ight.
She was the weird one.