Storm's Heart (Elder Races #2)(68)

I love him, she confessed to Rune in a small voice. As she did so, she admitted it for the first time to herself. Her arms and legs clenched on Tiago, and she held on to him with all her strength. She started to shake. She felt like she was coming apart at the seams.

Tiago swore, wrapped his arms around her and held her in a tight, bruising hold. “Okay,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Don’t shake like that, damn it. It’s okay. Just tell me what happened. What went wrong?”

I just wanted a little time.

Rune’s harsh mental voice gentled. If you love him, then let him go, honey. You can’t live his life, and the Dark Fae will never let a Wyr share your throne.

She nodded but couldn’t trust herself to speak for a few moments.

Tiago’s head moved under her hands, his face turning toward her. “Faerie?”

Let him go, honey.

She dug deep inside, grabbed hold of her spine and straightened it. She forced her arms and legs to unlock. “Let me up.”

He pulled back and frowned at her. She looked pallid to his sharp gaze, the layered black ends of her hair disheveled. Moments before she had looked rosy, flushed with desire. Now she looked like she was grieving. Those lovely enormous eyes of hers were dilated and depthless. He said in a quiet voice, “I don’t think I should do that.”

She looked at him steadily. “Please let me stand up now, Tiago.”

His face clenched. He picked her up as he stood then let her slide down his torso, deliberately letting her feel the hard bulge of his erection, until her feet touched the floor. He watched the graceful slim line of her throat as she swallowed hard. She tried to pull away, but he took her by the elbows and held her to him. Every time he let her go something bad happened. He wasn’t making that mistake again in a hurry. “Now,” he said. “Explain what’s wrong.”

She put her hands on his chest and spread her fingers. There was not a spare ounce of flesh on him. He was all muscle, tendon and bone, his body carved out of an unimaginably long life spent fighting. She looked at her hands because it was easier than looking at his tight, concerned face.

She realized something that she had been picking up subliminally for a while. Dance music still pounded through the walls, but she heard nothing underneath it, no footsteps, clinking glasses, shouts of laughter, or any other sounds that normally filled a crowded bar. Aryal and Rune must have promised compensation to the bar owner and cleared the building, which was a measure of their sharp concern. The other sentinels would take watch and wait, guarding them and keeping everyone else away, because if Tiago was mating with her, right now he could be a danger to anyone else but her.

She wanted to say so many things to him.

Starting with I love you. Don’t say it.

“You said you’re not leaving,” she said.

He stood unmoving under her hands, as steady and adamant as bedrock. “I’m not.”

I need you. Bite it back.

“But you will,” she told his chest. “You have to. You won’t be able to help it.”

“I’ll stay,” said the thunderbird as lightning flared outside. “And no Power on Earth can change that.”

The intolerable pressure was building back in her chest. It goaded her on. “Dragos will call you,” she said, her voice brittle. “And you’ll fly back to him like a hawk to his wrist. Or another conflict will start somewhere in the world, and you’ll take off to go to war. That’s what you do, Tiago. You always take off. That’s who you are.”

He looked at her, breathing heavily, and said nothing. Pain blinded her.

She had not meant to tell him, but that pressure shoved the words out of her. “I am going to have to marry.” The words blazed like meteorites between them. “I need to start looking for a husband right away.”

His eyes flashed completely white. He enunciated, “Like hell.”

Her stomach roiled. She had known this was going to be hard. It was so much harder than she imagined. “He has to be.” She had to stop for air because he hadn’t moved an inch but his tremendous body clenched into a weapon and his Power turned violent and heavy, a pressing weight in the storeroom. He looked murderous. “He’s got to be Powerful and have influence—”

He moved faster than thought. He picked her up, whirled and slammed her back against the wall. She froze in shock. He shouted at her, “Like hell!”

She hit him. She couldn’t help herself. She punched him in the chest. “And he’s got to want the throne but not be able to get it by himself—”

Fury rampaged over his face. He sounded like a mortally wounded animal as he roared at her. “Nobody else can have you because you’re mine!”

Dignity, sophistication, civility, they were meaningless strings of syllables in this place of raw emotion. She shouted back, “I can’t be yours, and somebody’s got to hang around so they can keep me alive!”

“Shut the hell up,” he said, his voice savage. His features had reformed. He was a monstrous, merciless freak of nature, and she wanted him so badly she thought it would tear her to pieces from the inside.

She kept hitting him, the wild blows falling blind. “Will you get out of here, you son of a bitch? Go back to your life!”

She slapped him. She did everything she could think of to cause offense and drive him away. He took everything she dished out without a single flinch. He shook her once, a short, controlled snap of the wrist that rattled her torso, and he jerked her to him, his white eyes scorching. Then the monster’s mouth slammed down over hers, and he devoured her, heart and soul.