Even if she is your One, she’s sick. And she’s the king’s daughter. It won’t make a difference.
Yeah. There was that. And the fact that honor and duty came first with him, no matter what.
Though it nearly killed him, he forced himself to let go of her hair, and in the process brushed her shoulder with the slightest touch. In sleep, she groaned and inched his way, as if searching for more contact. And before he knew it, her beautiful backside came into full contact with his hips, and the erection he’d been trying so hard to keep in check grew rock hard.
The blood rushed out of his head with a screaming roar and went due south.
Take her. Now. Find out, right here.
His cock wedged its way into the crease of her behind as if it had a mind of its own, where it pulsed and pounded and begged for release. A moan slipped from her lips, a mindless act of approval. His lust for her grew to explosive levels. He slid one of his arms around her belly and tugged her back to his bare chest. It was all he could do not to tear off her jeans, flip her to her stomach, lift her hips and plunge hard and deep to discover just what it was about her that left him in such a frenzy.
And oh, he was ready. He wanted. Needed. But just as he shifted to turn her, her scent drifted into his nose, that sweet and familiar combination traveling through every nerve in his body and all the way into his soul.
Where, oddly, it calmed him. The way it had in her little house. Enough that his brain kicked into gear and common sense came flooding back. His cock still jerked with a rabid desire to explode inside her, but he found he could control the urge. That he could lie here next to her and enjoy the warmth of her body against his without the burning need to overpower and take what he wanted by force.
He wanted her to come to him as she had in her house.
His heart rate slowed. He closed his eyes and drew in long, deep breaths, more tired than he remembered being in…ages. And that’s when he heard the voice. Again.
She’s the One.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Casey knew she wasn’t alone even before her eyes drifted open. The rhythmic breathing at her back was a dead giveaway. As was the hard arousal nestled against her backside.
Any normal woman would have panicked, especially considering the circumstances. But she wasn’t normal—not anymore—and even before she looked she knew it was Theron up tight against her back. His dark, spicy scent flooded her senses. In the stillness, the solid weight of his arm across her hip became as real as her pulse pounding in her brain.
What the hell was he doing in her bed?
Carefully, so as not to wake him, she rolled to her back. The movement made his arm slide across her belly, sending sparks along her nerve endings. She sat up slowly and reached for his hand to free herself from his gasp, only to falter when their fingers touched.
A jolt of electricity shimmied through her. The room spun. And suddenly she wasn’t in a bedroom anymore, but in a dark and cold forest, surrounded by the undeniable sights and smells of death.
She gasped. Turned a slow circle. Wondered how she’d gotten here and where Theron had gone. Cannons exploded behind her, the loud sounds making her jump and whip around. Dried leaves crunched beneath her feet. Shouts and curses and bloodcurdling screams came from far off in the distance.
Dear God, she was in the middle of a war zone. Her adrenaline spiked. She looked right and left as her heart kicked up to rival the roar of a 747 on takeoff. Where was Theron?
Gunfire echoed. Followed by a voice Casey knew intimately, booming from the trees no more than twenty yards away.
“Patéras!”
Without questioning her common sense, Casey tore off in that direction. Then pulled up short when she reached the small clearing and the scene laid out before her.
Two daemons lay mauled and incapacitated on the hard earth near a small bubbling brook. Fresh blood oozed from their wounds to run down their grotesque faces, staining the ground with the vileness in their veins. A man—the one from Casey’s dream the night she’d met Theron—lay on the ground mere feet away. More blood gushed from a gaping wound in his chest, his eyes and mouth open as if he was in shock. Across the small stream, a boy who looked no more than fourteen, wearing a ratty gray coat, stood slack-jawed, with eyes as wide as saucers. In his arms he cradled a smoking rifle.
Theron bolted through the trees at Casey’s right and dropped to the ground beside the older man, his own features twisted in disbelief. “Patéras. No.”
“Theron,” the man gasped, reaching a shaky, bloody hand up to grip Theron’s shirt. “You must finish them.”
“I will. I…Patéras.” He placed both hands over the wound in the other man’s chest. “We have to get you back. Now. We—”
“Ochi,” the older man barked in a weak voice.
Theron’s muscles froze as if he hadn’t heard right.