A dull throb in the back of my head pulled my attention away from my nightmare. When I lifted my hand to touch it, I brushed against Wrath instead. My fingers fumbled over his cheek, then nose, and finally his mouth. A mouth made to make women beg for mercy.
When my fingers stilled, a smile curved the corners of his lips. I should stop touching him, but I couldn’t cease marveling over the fullness of his bottom lip and his stiff upper one. I certainly couldn’t stop the rush of memories flooding my mind as I recalled our kiss.
My body instinctively reacted to his. For a fraction of a second, I melted against him before recalling this man was my enemy and I had no idea where I was. Wherever it was, it had brought the darkness closer. I went to pull away, but his large hand settling on my hip stopped me.
“You were badly injured; you should rest,” he murmured.
I refused to acknowledge how the deep timbre of his voice created butterflies in my stomach.
I’m just having a physical reaction to the one fate decided I should breed with; it is nothing more than that.
Still, knowing this didn’t make it any easier to resist. My body wanted one thing, my brain another. Unfortunately, my brain had taken a bit of a battering earlier. Recalling that brought forth the memories of the battle with the calamuts and nuckals.
I barely suppressed a shudder when his fingers slid beneath my shirt. It was the stroke of those fingers against my skin, so assured and so brazen, that finally caused my brain to kickstart my traitorous body.
Pushing against whatever he had me wrapped in, I almost screamed in frustration when I found myself tangled in the warm material. Then my legs kicked free, and I shoved it off me.
His chuckle did nothing to ease my foul mood as I launched to my feet and spun to take in the cavern where we’d slept. I was used to darkness, and my vision was fantastic, but with no light filtering in here, I couldn’t make out anything. I only knew it was a cavern because of the rock beneath my bare feet and the hollow feel of it around me.
“What’s with the dreams, Bale?” he inquired.
My breath caught in my chest, and for a second, I found it impossible to breathe. I wasn’t so delusional as to deny a part of me hadn’t suspected he was connecting with me in some way, but to hear it confirmed was like a kick in the crotch. Those dreams where I’d allowed myself to accept more and more of his touches, his kisses….
I shut the memories down as heat crept up my neck and toward my cheeks. I didn’t blush. Ineverblushed, and I wasn’t about to start now. But, for the first time in my life, I was mortified. HeknewI’d dreamed of him; heknewexactly how far those dreams had gone and how much my willpower faded over time.
“Stay out of my head!” I snapped.
“You pull me in.”
“I don’t have the power for that. You’re the one doing it.”
“I am,” he admitted. “My ability has mutated when it comes to you, andonlyyou, but you draw me in. So, what is with the dreams? What is that pit? And why do you see the same thing over and over?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on now. I saved you from falling in tonight. You can tell me what it is I’m saving you from.”
“I don’t know what the darkness is. I just know it’s coming, and it’s getting closer.”
“How long have you been dreaming about it?”
“My whole life. Where are my friends?” I demanded to change the subject.
He released a snort of amusement. “I don’t give a fuck where your friends are.”
“Do you know if they survived?”
“I didn’t bother to look for them while savingyourlife.”
That reminder rankled. The fangs I usually kept retracted tingled with their impulse to tear into him. The only problem was, I didn’t know if I wanted to bite him because I was annoyed or if my body was seeking to claim my Chosen. Either way, I couldnotmark this man.
“Where am I?” I hissed.
“My home.”
I listened to him moving in the dark and rising from the floor. Did he want to kill me as much as I did him? We were enemies; it was what we were supposed to do, but he hadn’t taken the opportunity to end me. Instead, he’d come back, saved me from the calamuts and nuckals, and brought me here.
Chosen or not, why would he do such a thing?
