Carling stared at the monster crouching over her. His face blurred from the tears that had filled her eyes that she refused to shed. His feral gaze tracked every telltale flicker on her face. He knelt over her prone body, his knees on either side of her hips. His bones were all wrong, in his face, across his wide chest, in the sinewy muscular arms. He looked more lion than eagle in this half shift. She could feel his claws against her jugular as he pinned her by the throat. He had driven the claws of his other hand deep into the mattress beside her head.
The monster’s powerful body vibrated with violent tension, but while he held her in an unbreakable grip, the heel of his hand pressing down on her collarbone, he hadn’t caused her so much as a paper cut.
When Tiago had been like this, he had gutted himself for his mate.
She had done this to Rune. They had done it to each other.
She stroked his strange, beautiful half-lion face, and he snapped at her. His strong white fangs closed around her hand. He could have crushed every bone in her hand in his powerful jaws, but he held her so gently, those sharp fangs would not have cracked an eggshell.
“You know very well I’m not lying to you,” she said to him. She had no idea how she kept her voice calm. “We have been on a weird, wonderful journey together. And I am privileged that you chose to stay and experience it with me, but you must leave, Rune.”
Do not presume to tell me what I can and cannot do, the gryphon whispered in her head. I have not given you the right to send me away.
I have not given you the right to stay, Carling said, very softly.
An infuriated growl ripped out of him. With a snap of his head, he gave her hand a quick hard shake in reprimand. Tough shit. I’m not your servant that you can dismiss when things don’t suit you. I’m your lover, Carling.
“And I’m still dying,” she said. “I promise you that I will fight and look for a cure until the very last moment I can, but the fact remains, I still might die.”
His gaze was fiercely determined. I get to share this part of the journey with you too. I get to fight for your life too. I get to tell you what I think about it, and how I feel. And if it ever comes to that, I get to hold you at the end and share every last precious moment with you.
To hold on to him and never let go, no matter what. The thought was so beautiful and terrible, and it caused such a huge swell of feeling in her, she closed her eyes. Two tears slipped away. Once the dam in her emotions cracked, there was no stopping the leaks. Cry me a river.
It always happened, by the river.
She felt the rigid tension in his body soften. His jaws loosened and he let go of her hand, and the pressure at her throat eased. He stroked her temples, wiping the tears away gently with the backs of his fingers.
She twisted at the hips, slipped a knee between them, and rolled to heave him off her. He landed with a crash on the floor against the closet door. She leaped off the bed and strode for the living room. “We fucked,” she said between her teeth. “That’s all. It was a lot of fun and a nice diversion, but you need to get over it and move on.”
Sure he should, just like she had moved on so easily every time she had encountered him. All she had gotten was one kiss, one promise from him back in the distant mist of her youth, and she had never let anyone kiss her again. Not for thousands of years, past all logic or reason. Even when she had moved on in every other aspect of her life, she had held on to that one thing, because he had once looked into her eyes and said to her, I am waiting for you with everything I am. Now, no matter how she wanted to, she should not let him stay.
A freight train hit her in the back. It sent her into the wall in front of her with such force she cried out. Before she could react in any other way, Rune had yanked her hands over her head, holding her by the wrists as he kicked her feet apart. He pinned her body against the wall with the hard length of his own, his feet braced between hers, and just like that he had her caged, using only leverage, and his superior speed and strength. His pulse beat pounded against her senses like a sledgehammer, and the blaze of his heat surrounded her.
Shocked arousal roared through her. It pooled between her legs in a liquid gush. She looked up at his hands shackling her wrists and fought as hard as she could to get free. No matter how she struggled, she couldn’t budge him.
As long as her mouth wasn’t covered, she was not helpless. She could whisper a spell that would at least freeze him temporarily, if she didn’t choose something more offensive that might cause actual injury.
And he knew it. He remembered how angry she had been when he had pinned her down, and so he caged her but he left her a way out. The realization that he took such care with her, even in his frenzy, even after she had been so violent with him, pounded in her head. She opened her hands wide to push at the air, as she strained to find the strength of will to whisper the spell that would stop him for those few critical moments while she slipped away. The words were gone, her mind a blank. The sirocco had taken them away.