Obsession Untamed (Feral Warriors #2)(86)

The bird-woman inclined her head and held out her own.

Delaney took it, gently curling her fingers around the soft feathers. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Unblinking birdlike eyes watched her, then slowly lit. A smile formed on her not-quite-human-looking mouth. “I’m happy to make your acquaintance, Delaney. I wish you and Tighe much happiness.”

“Thanks, but…” The words caught in her throat. “We’re…only a temporary item.”

Pink’s expression clouded. “Tighe’s a good man.”

Delaney was horrified to feel tears pricking her eyes. “I know. It’s just…” She smiled unhappily. “I’m human.”

Without warning, Tighe swept her back into his arms. She forced a laugh, trying to make up for the damper she’d thrown on the mood, even as misery burned in her chest, and her eyes filled with tears.

“We need to have a talk. Now.” As he swung her toward the stairs, he called back to Kara. “Send the Shaman up when he gets here.”

“How about I call you first to make sure you’re not…busy?”

“Talk, Kara. I said we’re going to have a talk.”

But he said nothing until Delaney was sitting in the middle of his bed and he’d paced the room a good seven times before finally swinging to face her, his body and expression as fierce and rigid as a man going into battle.

“I don’t give a damn that you’re human. I want you to stay.”

“Tighe…it’s impossible.” She swiped at the tears running down her cheeks, but more just followed. “I have to go back. I can’t stay here.”

His expression turned almost hostile. “Why not?” In his eyes an emotion flared. Pain.

“Oh, Tighe.” Delaney climbed off the bed and went to him, sliding her arms around his rigid body as she pressed her damp cheek to his chest. “It’s not that I don’t love you, because I do. But I don’t belong in this world. You know that. I can’t stay.”

Tighe gripped her shoulders and pulled her away from him. The desperation in his eyes nearly crushed her heart.

“I’ll make you happy, D. I swear it. You can carry all the guns you want, and all my knives. You can come draden hunting with me anytime, or you can stay here with Kara and Pink. Whatever you want.”

“Tighe, you’re not thinking this all the way through.”

His hands caressed her shoulders. “I know I’m being unfair in asking you to give up everything for me. I have no right, brown eyes, no right. But I need you.”

“It’s because you bound yourself to me. You shouldn’t have done it.”

He squeezed her almost painfully. “Do you think that’s what this is? The bond? You’re wrong, Delaney. I was already in love with you.” His voice rose, his words turning angry. “This isn’t the ritual speaking, dammit, this is my heart!”

His anger tore at her. His pain twisted inside her, merging with her own until she was almost doubled over from the onslaught.

“It’s your heart, Tighe, for now. But you’re not seeing the big picture. If you keep me here, you’ll be tying yourself to a woman you won’t want in twenty years. Maybe far, far sooner.”

He looked at her as if he was ready to draw swords and fight it out. “I’ll always want you.”

“No. You won’t. Think, Tighe! I won’t stay this way. In forty years, I’ll have gray hair and wrinkles. My figure will be gone. I’ll be an old woman.”

With a snarl, he gripped her face. “And I’ll have fangs. And orange eyes every time I look at you, because I’ll always want you. Always.”

The fight went out of him, his face crumbling into a mask of aching tenderness as he slid his palms over her jaw, cradling her face with infinite tenderness.

“Don’t you understand?” His words were soft as silk, yet woven with a thread of desperation that tore at her heart. “I’m going to use your own words back at you, D, because they healed my soul. When I look into your eyes, I see you. I will always see you, no matter what changes time makes to the body you’re in.”

Her tears turned slowly to sobs as she slid her hands over his and held him as he held her, wanting to believe. But she couldn’t.

“You think that now. But…”

“Don’t doubt me, D,” he snarled. But his thumbs were feather-soft as they stroked her skin. “If you live longer than most humans, I’ll still only have, at most, another seventy years with you. That’s a blink of an eye in my life. For six hundred years I’ve made love with women. Most young-looking, I admit. Most beautiful. Scores of women, D.”

“Is this supposed to be making me feel better?” She tried to laugh, but it caught in her throat, tangling with her tears.

“Other than those few short years with Gretchen, not a single one has ever touched my heart. Until you. Beauty is meaningless without love, D. I know this.” His hands were beginning to tremble. “It’s lust. Little more than scratching an itch. But it’s not that way with you. From the moment I first saw you, it hasn’t been that way with you. It’s you I want to spend the next seventy years with, not your br**sts. Not your skin. You, D. Your heart. Your soul.”

He bent until his gaze was nearly at a level with hers, his eyes as certain as the sunrise. His love poured into her through his gaze and rushed into her through that warm connection between their hearts, filling her. Lifting her.