Obsession Untamed (Feral Warriors #2)(55)

Fast healers. Immortals. No wonder no one seemed the least bit bothered about all the blood.

A shiver ripped through her, but she placed her hands in his.

Kougar began to chant something in a language she couldn’t even identify. As he chanted, he walked slowly around the circle, dribbling the collected blood onto the floor.

Three times, he circled them before throwing the remaining blood into one of the fires. The flame rose, spitting, then died back to the size of the others.

“It’s time,” Kougar said, his voice almost hushed.

Tighe released her hands. The chanting had done something, something she couldn’t see but could feel. Like a tingling in her blood and a heaviness in the air.

Tighe lifted his hands to frame her face. “Listen to me, brown eyes, because this is important. I need you to look into my eyes and not look away.”

“It would help if I could see your eyes.”

“No. It wouldn’t. It may feel like I’m trying to get into your mind again, but don’t let me in this time, do you understand? You have to fight it.”

His words were doing nothing to calm her. Fight it, why? Because if she didn’t, the tiger would spring again? She was actually kind of curious about his tiger spirit; but his intensity told her this was nothing to mess with, whatever it was.

“Okay,” she murmured.

“Look into my eyes, D.”

As she stared into his sunglasses, the chanting started up around them, all the men joining in, a deep, low rumble entering her bloodstream like the pounding of ancient drums.

Tighe’s warmth brushed across her mind as it had that night in her apartment when she’d first met him. Like that night, she felt the stroke deep and low inside her. Oh, hell.

Again, that warmth stroked her, making her catch her breath as the heat built between her legs. Over and over, that invisible touch brushed her, driving her until she was hot, and gasping.

“Tighe.” If he didn’t stop, she was going to come. Right here. In front of everyone. “Tighe, stop.”

“Don’t move.”

Oh, God, it was too late. Her body was out of control, the rocket launched. She was gasping, rocking against him, moaning.

Oh, shit.

Tighe held Delaney as she screamed her release, her face a mask of passion. She was beautiful. Glorious.

His.

But he wasn’t hers.

He shook from the hard thread of control that kept him from freeing himself and burying himself deep inside her, joining her, binding himself to her as the magic bound her to him.

A thing he couldn’t do. Couldn’t do.

As her climax peaked, the power rushed out of him like a storm, and into her, making her cry out a second time with as much pleasure as the first.

She was his, now. Bound to him. Her loyalty and fidelity unbreakable.

His.

But the rush of pleasure, of power, went only one way, leaving a deep, hollow void inside him. An emptiness he hadn’t anticipated.

He’d done the right thing. The only thing.

She clung to him with shaking hands as her body quaked from the force of the twin storms. Dark lashes swept up, revealing eyes shimmering with disbelief and bright with dismay. Slowly, she straightened, her cheeks staining with color even as her gaze hardened, raking the Ferals as if daring them to comment.

Her gaze swung back to him, the pleasure gone from her eyes. The bitter taste of her embarrassment streaked across his tongue along with a healthy dose of anger.

“It’s done,” he told her quietly.

Her eyes narrowed. “You did that on purpose.”

“Sexual release opens the body and mind.”

“What about you?” Her gaze dipped to the front of his pants. “You didn’t get off?”

“No.”

Her expression turned brittle. “You didn’t marry me, did you? I married you, but you didn’t marry me.”

She was too sharp, by half.

“I did what I had to do to keep you alive.”

And to keep them from being stuck with one another for the rest of her life.

Deep inside him, the tiger howled with fury.

Damn him.

As Tighe stepped down from the pedestal, Delaney remembered the words someone had spoken as she’d lain on a sofa soaking in her own blood.

If he binds her to him, she can’t betray him. Or us.

Binds her. Not marries her. Not promises to love, honor, and cherish her. But binds her. Like a slave. Was that it? Was that what she would be to him? A slave?

Or worse. What if she was nothing to him? A castoff. A useless, cast-off human.

Tighe held out his hand to her, to help her down, but she just stared at him, knowing she wasn’t masking her anger nearly as well as she wanted to.

“D.” The word pulsed with regret. With pity.

She turned away from him, hating that he knew she was so much more than mad. This sucked. It sucked. All she’d ever wanted was to do her job, and now she couldn’t even do that. She was locked in a marriage that wasn’t even a marriage.

A binding.

His hand cupped her shoulder. “Delaney.”

Pain shot through her head, out of nowhere, arching her back as her jaw dropped open. Her sight disappeared as a screen rose in her head. A house. On fire.

She felt Tighe snatch back his hand with a groan. “I forgot about your injuries.”