Passion Untamed (Feral Warriors #3)(4)

"Is it not an astonishing feeling to shift, my friend?" Vhyper asked. "The rapture. The utter feeling of well-being."

"It is a fine feeling, Vhyper," Paenther said. The others had told him to expect as much. But for him, the shift had brought only pain. A pain to match the rage Ancreta had burned into his soul. The witch might be dead, but he feared her legacy would torment him until the very end of his immortal existence.

His hatred of all things Mage would endure through eternity.

Chapter One

Paenther floated, his mind in a sensual fog trapped somewhere between dream and reality. Remembering...

She held out her hand to him, an ethereal beauty with short, dark hair and soft eyes the color of a summer sky. Eyes that smoldered with passion as she led him behind the building, through the parking lot, and up the steep, heavily wooded hill behind the Market deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western Virginia.

He didn't even know her name.

Beyond the sight of prying eyes, he pulled her to a stop and kissed her, passion exploding as he pressed her against the nearest tree, desperate to be inside her. The deep rumble of a truck sounded in the distance. She kissed him back frantically, as if she feared they didn't have much time. The feel of her hand on his zipper made his blood pound. The touch of her fingers along the length of his bare flesh nearly stopped his heart.

Gentleness and care be damned, he needed her now. Shoving his hand beneath her dress, he found her bare and ready. His finger probed her depths, and she forced him deeper, whimpering with desire.

Yanking her dress up to her waist, he lifted her, positioning her sheath to his height. As she wrapped her bare thighs around his waist, he pushed inside her, filling her in a single, perfect thrust.

Heaven. Nothing in his life had ever felt more right. Within moments, her release broke over her with a cry, her inner muscles contracting hard around him, driving him over the edge.

"Look at me," she cried.

And he did, staring into eyes suddenly encircled by shiny copper rings.

The eyes of a Mage.

Paenther fought his way back to consciousness like a man hacking a path through a fog-shrouded jungle. Little by little, he parted the misty enchantment that encased his brain, impressions flying at him through his senses. Cold, rough stone dug into the bare flesh of his back as he lay with his arms pulled taut above his head. He flexed his muscles and tried to move, but harsh metal bit into his wrists as the sound of chains clanked against the rock.

Icy disbelief clawed through his mind. His pulse began to race.

He was chained. Naked.

Finally, finally, his vision tore free of the enchantment. His eyes snapped open, and he stared around him at the unlikely sight. He was alone.

In a cave.

High above him, dozens of daggerlike stalactites dripped from the roof. Floating around them were small flames encased in luminescent bubbles. A sight he hadn't seen since Ancreta's dungeon. A sight that filled him with cold dread.

Mage lightwicks.

He fought against his bonds in furious desperation as he struggled to remember what had happened.

The beauty. Innocence and wisdom shining from eyes the color of a summer sky. He'd buried himself inside her and found a passion and release more intense, more incredible, than any he'd ever known. Until, at that moment of raging perfection, she'd revealed herself to be Mage, and he'd felt the net of enchantment snare his mind.

The memory stopped his breath, cramping his guts. For the second time in his life, he'd been captured by a Mage witch.

Fury charged through his body, a yell of denial roaring through his head as he struggled to free himself.

This couldn't be happening. He had not fallen into another Mage trap! He'd barely survived the first one.

Goddess, he had to get out of here.

He studied his cage with a strafing gaze. It appeared to be a room, an uneven room roughly fifteen feet by fifteen feet, with a steel door that had been left open. Through the doorway, he glimpsed more stone, telling him he was probably in one of the extensive caverns that riddled the Blue Ridge. The air was damp and cool, but he barely felt the chill through the rage boiling his blood.

The rock slab beneath him appeared to be high off the ground yet attached to the wall like some kind of wide, natural shelf. The wall curved just enough to shield him from the mineral-laden water dripping from the stalactites into the puddles on the floor.

As he tipped his head back to look behind him, he caught the odd sight of a showerhead sticking out of the rock. Plumbing? Was this actually the Mage stronghold, then, and not simply a prison?

He turned to look in the other direction behind him, and froze. Hanging from wooden hangers, from a single peg on the wall, were three softly colored dresses in a shapeless, long-sleeved style he recognized all too well. Hers.

Fury ripped through his mind as he remembered, in painful clarity, lifting the hem of one of those soft, worn dresses and sliding his hand beneath to encounter only warm flesh and damp heat. A heat the witch had invited him to drive himself into. He had, and it was an act he'd regret for the rest of his life.

He wondered just how long that would be, now.

Ice congealed in his heart. His only reason for being in these mountains at all was to find Vhyper. Something had happened to his friend during a ritual a few weeks ago. He'd been cut by the Daemon blade, as they all had. But unlike the rest of them, Vhyper had changed. Some of the Ferals thought the evil in the blade had stolen his soul.