Wild Instinct (21 page)

His eyes met hers. She wanted to drop the curtain back, to block his gaze. She couldn’t. He stood there staring, as if he couldn’t break the connection, either.

She didn’t want to be alive. She didn’t want to sit with him, be with him.

His voice or hers? The answer when it came was shocking in its abruptness. Hers. She clutched the window jamb. She did want to be alive. She did want to be with Daire. Because he was so scary. Because he was so big. Because with him, there was no way anything bad could happen to her. Because he knew her in ways no one else did. Because he was telepathic. Because he’d touched her daughter’s mind. Because her daughter had not died without knowing someone’s touch. She sobbed, biting her knuckle. Her knees crumpled. She slid down the wall. Because she owed him for that.

The door creaked open. Arms came around her. She didn’t need to ask whose. Only Daire could move that fast. Only Daire cared that much. Because he was wolf. Like the men who’d raped her.

He turned her into his chest as he knelt beside her. “Not like them.”

His scent smoothed over her. Clean and earthy with a touch of musk. It’d been her talisman as the pain had raged. As she had raged, fighting for life and then fighting for death to be with her baby, but he hadn’t let her go. She hit his shoulder as the sense of loss rolled over her again.

The sob caught in her throat, choked her.

“Why?” Why wouldn’t he let her go? Why did he make her stay?

She felt the brush of his lips over her hair. “Because I need you.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know.” His finger under her chin lifted her face. “But I’ve waited centuries for the chance.”

“OH, God.”

He was telling the truth. He saw her as his mate. “It can’t be me.” She was broken, scarred, incapable of loving, barely able to live.

His gaze didn’t flinch from hers. “It can’t be anyone else.”

“Of course it can. They wouldn’t have raped me if there can’t be more than one; they wouldn’t have come hunting me.” There was a flicker in the energy blending with hers. “What?”

He didn’t answer, just rubbed his thumb along her cheekbone. “Oh, my God, they didn’t come for me.”

“You would have been a bonus.”

“Sarah Anne.”

Again that fluctuation in his energy that she was recognizing meant a negation. That left only three others. She remembered the wolf that had gone after Megan. There had been such determination in his eyes. Such hatred.

Oh, no.
“Megan. They want Megan.”

“They won’t get her.”

“Why?”

“There’s a legend among the wolves about a child who will be of two worlds. A child of power.”

She shook her head. “Megan can’t even change.”

“Her power is not that of a wolf. That’s what scares them.”

“But they tried to kill her.”

“Some believe the child can be used. Others believe she’ll be the downfall of all pack. The legend is why wolves have no tolerance for telepaths.”

“You’re a telepath.” It was strange to say that out loud.

“Yes.”

It was stranger to hear him agree as if that had no import. But he’d just told her that wolves didn’t tolerate telepaths, which meant he had not been tolerated. If anyone knew. “Did people try to kill you?”

“No one succeeded.”

Which wasn’t an answer. Teri rubbed her fingers across her scars. “It’s just a legend.”

“A very old legend.”

“That some believe.” She looked up. “Do you?”

His gaze didn’t flinch from hers. “No.”

There was no ripple in his energy.

“I believe you.”

“I cannot lie to you.”

“So you keep telling me.”

The corners of his mouth twitched. “In the hope that you’ll eventually believe.”

Because he didn’t want her to know he could? Her head began to ache. She leaned against his chest as the weariness rose with the pain. “Will I ever get better?”

“You almost are.”

“It’s only been a few days!”

His palm curved over her shoulder. “Then why are you complaining?”

“I’m not.” But she was wondering. If he could do so much, why couldn’t he have done the thing that mattered? Why couldn’t he have saved her child? The question stuck in her throat.

“You’re tired.”

“Yes.” She suddenly was.

“You shouldn’t have gotten out of bed.”

“I had to.”

He lifted her. “Had to?”

There was no way to explain the waves of energy that had rolled over her, angry, relentless, chaos in need of order. How hard it had been to disassemble it. “Yes.”

Her stomach rumbled as he laid her on the bed. She blushed. He smiled. “You’re hungry.”

She was a doctor for all that she’d been a patient of late. “More signs of healing.”

His hand slid under her T-shirt, covering the scars. With his head tilted down she could see the beauty of his face without the distraction of the scars. He was a very handsome man. A tingle of awareness went down her spine. He went to lift her shirt. She caught it in her hands.

“What?”

What was she supposed to say? That she didn’t want him to see how ugly they were after all this time? She let go. The hem rose. Her stomach sank. She closed her eyes. “Nothing.”

His hands slid up her sides, encompassing her rib cage. He had such big hands.

“Are you shy, seelie?”

The question was followed by the touch of his lips. Since Teri didn’t want to answer such a leading question, she opted for one of her own. “What’s seelie mean?”

“The one who holds my heart.”

She wished she’d kept her mouth shut. “Oh.”

Another kiss. A tightening of his hands. “You don’t think you hold my heart?”

“I think you don’t know me well enough to even say I hold your big toe.”

“That, my seelie, is the difference between human and wolf. A wolf is born with the knowledge he lives for his mate.”

“Even when she’s not there?”

“Yes.”

She opened her eyes and looked down between her breasts to meet his gaze. “That’s so sad.”

“Until the mate is found, yes, but then”—he lifted her to the press of his mouth—“ the waiting is as nothing compared to the joy of discovery.”

“I don’t feel that joy.”

“I know.” He kissed his way up the underside of her breast in light, airy caresses. It was purely a sexual gesture, so why did she feel so cherished?

“I may never,” she gasped.

“You’re my mate. There is no option for either of us.”

“I’m human. Maybe I don’t play by the same rules.”

His tongue curled around the tip of her breast. Fire shot through her body.

“I’m adjusting to that.”

He was adjusting? She leveraged her way up to her elbows. “I’m the one who’s been shanghaied into a life I didn’t ask for.”

“And suffered for it.” His lips brushed the upper curve of her breast in a kiss of fire.

How could she want him so when everything was so wrong? How could she want him when he wasn’t even human?

“Is that what you want me to understand, Teri?” Another kiss, this time in the hollow of her throat. Her pulse took off. “That you have suffered for being my mate?”

Was it? “Yes.” She wanted it to be yes, but he hadn’t been the one who had hurt her. He’d been the one who’d held her, fought for her. Protected her. “No.”

He loomed above her. “Which is it?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

His face was so austere without the softness of his hair falling about it. He had beautiful hair, thick and wavy. Hair of which any woman would be jealous, and when it was loose it made him appear . . . human.

“If I could go back in time, I would have been there the night the rogues attacked.”

She knew what the red lights seeming to burn in his eyes meant. Rage.

She remembered that night. How the door had splintered as if made of toothpicks, the noise, the chaos. She’d flicked on the light and the men had poured into the room with lazy grace that just enhanced the evil of their purpose. She hadn’t known how to kill a werewolf then. She’d stalled, worried about conserving bullets rather than inflicting maximum damage. And they’d taken over. Been so strong. Tossed her about as if she were no more substantial than a cotton ball. She’d felt so helpless, then and after. Bits and pieces of their expressions flashed in her mind, falling over one another in such rapid succession, she wasn’t sure she could identify any one of them.

Daire interrupted her thoughts. “You don’t need to.”

She blinked. “Yes, I do.” Because one day, she would find them.

His hand cupped her cheek. “I have their faces now. I will find them.”

And kill them.

The knowledge should have appalled her, but it didn’t. Someone had to pay for that night. Someone had to make sure it didn’t happen again to someone else. But it didn’t have to be Daire. Those men had been so strong. And there were four while he was just one. She would die if she lost him. He was the one constant in her world now.

The knowledge came out of nowhere, shocking. Comforting? Oh, God, she didn’t know who she was anymore. Reaching up, she yanked the rawhide tie from Daire’s hair, removing the warrior. He didn’t flinch, just stared at her as his hair fell forward, covering her, shielding her in darkness, but not from him. She would never escape from him.

She bit her lips. It didn’t help. She couldn’t suppress the sobs. They pushed up and out. Daire leaned down. The darkness grew deeper. “What is it, seelie?

What did it matter if she told him? “I used to love the night, the sounds, the scents.”

A sob broke off the rest.

“But?” he prodded.

“But I hate it now. It reeks of
them
.”

There was a long pause. The tips of his fingers pressed delicately along her cheekbones. She felt the warmth of his lips on her temple, the probe of his energy at the edge of her consciousness.

“I could give you back the night.”

She shook her head. “Sex with you won’t make me forget.”

His body jerked along hers. Had she finally succeeded in shocking him? Before all this she’d been a confident, outspoken woman. Nothing like the coward she was now. She looped her arms around his neck. He smelled so good. She buried her face in his throat. “But I wish it were possible.”

His fingers pressed just a little bit harder. Her mind felt full, too full. She lost her train of thought.

“I can take away the memory.”

She blinked. She could just make out that fiery glow that transformed his eyes when he was angry or under stress.

“It will be as if it never happened. No rape. No attack. No losing of the night.”

It was so tempting. “Can you really do that?”

His lips moved to her forehead. “Yes.”

The warmth of the kiss sank through the coldness, spreading through the chill, replacing it with heat. Sexual yet . . . healing.

It got harder to concentrate. A haze slipped over the past, taking away the pain, the knowledge. Taking away—

She grabbed his wrist. “Stop it.”

“Shh.”

“No! You can’t.”

“There’s no need for you to have the pain of memories better forgotten.”

She held his wrist. “I don’t want to forget
her
.”

He froze. The haze wavered. “Her?”

“My daughter.” Tears wet her lashes. “I can’t forget without forgetting her.”

“No.”

That was a very cautious no. “She deserves to be remembered.”

“I will hold her for you.”

It wasn’t enough. If she couldn’t forget, then there was something she needed to know to heal. “Could you share her with me? I need to know what she was like.”

“It will only build your sense of loss.”

She doubled her hands into fists and pressed them against his chest. If he couldn’t give her this, she didn’t want anything. The spot between her neck and shoulder burned. “She was my daughter. No one should know more about her than me. No one.”

Such a soft whisper to hold such fierceness, Daire thought. But his little human was very passionate about everything she cared about, and she was right. No one should know more about her child than she.

“Open your mind.”

She blinked. “I don’t know how.”

He could do it for her. Stroking the hair off her face, he brushed his lips over her lashes. Instinct closed her eyes. A mother’s need kept them closed. He could feel her struggle to open her mind, wanting it so desperately she was blocking success. Emotion poured from her to him. His heart twisted in his chest. So much pain in his seelie’s life. So much unfulfilled want.

“Just relax and let yourself float. This is my gift to you. You don’t have to do anything but let me give it to you.”