Desire Untamed (Feral Warriors #1)(8)

Kara lifted her gaze to his, meeting enigmatic amber eyes. "How do you do that? Are you some kind of healer? "

"It's just a skill."

She stared at him, really looked at him, her gaze skimming over the hard bones of an undeniably arresting face. His expression Remained cool, perhaps guarded, but his eyes had warmed considerably.

"What's your name?"

"Lyon."

"Is that your first name or your last?"

"My driver's license would say my last. But only humans use the first."

She looked away, a succession of chills snaking through her body before being snatched away, one after another, through the man's touch. Only humans. As if he wasn't one himself.

With a breath-stealing slam of understanding, she knew he wasn't. The things he could do… She dipped her forehead to rest on her updrawn knees. "I can't deal with this."

His thumb slid down her neck and back up again in a gentle and oddly sensual caress. "You can. Any woman with the courage and presence of mind to kill a draden the first time she sees one can handle a bit of truth."

Kara laughed, the sound more hysterical than humorous. "A bit of truth?" She raised her head to meet his gaze. "You're not crazy, are you? All that talk earlier of a different race… it's real."

"Yes."

"You're not human."

"No. Neither are you."

And somehow she knew that. She'd always known in some dark corner of her mind that she wasn't normal. Her cuts healed much too fast, and she never got sick. Had never, in twenty-seven years, even run a fever. Was that why her mother never let the doctors near her?

Had she known?

"What are we? Aliens?"

The man's smile, wide, crooked, and utterly charming, was so fleeting she almost missed it, but for an instant it transformed his face.

"We're Therians. A race similar to humans, but far less fragile. We don't age, and we heal most wounds quickly."

"So we're immortal?"

"To the humans, yes. Or virtually so. But we can die like any creatures. We just do it far less easily."

Questions crowded her mind as fear tried to clutch at her heart, but he held the emotion at bay with his touch.

"There's no need to be alarmed, little Radiant."

"Why do you call me Radiant?"

"You are the caller of the energies of the Earth. It's through you that your race renews its strength."

"I don't understand." She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. "I don't care. I don't want to be your Radiant."

The very thought that she was some kind of immortal chosen one was absurd. She was just Kara MacAllister, preschool teacher. A woman of average looks, average intelligence, average athletic ability. She was average in so many ways her picture ought to be inserted beside the word in the dictionary.

"I can't possibly be the one you're looking for. There's got to be a mistake."

She curled in on herself even tighter, inadvertently squeezing her injured hand. The wave of fresh pain brought tears to her eyes.

"I've got to heal that injury, Kara."

"It'll heal on its own."

"No. It won't. A wound from a draden is different. Let me see your hand." His thumb slid under her chin, and he tilted her face up to his. "I won't hurt you."

She believed him, though she figured he was probably forcing trust into her while he was taking the other emotions out. As she eased her hand away from her body, the pain exploded. Breath hissed into her mouth between clenched teeth.

Lyon took hold of her wrist and lifted her mangled hand to his mouth.

She looked at him in disbelief. "Kissing it is not going to make it feel better." No matter how much her preschoolers believed otherwise.

Her words seemed to amuse him. "I heal through my tongue."

"Your… ?" She gasped as her aching thumb slid into a cocoon of warm silk. His velvet tongue stroked her skin, stealing the pain, sending shivers of heat flowing into her blood.

Her eyes widened as she felt her body begin to melt. Her breath quickened with a desire that shouldn't be there. A desire she didn't want.

He watched her with sharp eyes as he released her thumb and took each finger into his mouth, one by one, healing the flesh, easing the hurt, ensnaring her in a web of restless need. Her fingers healed, he pulled the back of her hand to his mouth and stroked his warm tongue over the cuts until the only pain remaining was from the raw tears on her palm.

When he turned her hand and pressed her palm to his mouth, fire leaped deep inside her, a living ache centered low in her body, at her very core. An ache that built and grew with every stroke of his tongue.

"Lyon…"

Her breaths came in small gasps as the pressure between her legs built. She was racing toward….

No. This wasn't right. Her mother lay dead only a few feet away. She clamped her knees together, fighting the rising tide, and lost. The orgasm broke over her in a sudden rush, tightening her womb in spasms of hot joy. Wave after wave of glorious sensation ripped through her, release singing through her veins. The best…the absolute best….

With a shudder of pure perfection, she collapsed against the coffee table and met Lyon's shocked gaze.