CHAPTER 4
Steaming water lapped at her bare breasts, rippling with each move Anais made. She washed on instinct, her focus elsewhere, around one hundred metres behind her in the main area of the cave.
With Loke.
Her fingers skimmed up and down her arms and she shivered from the light touch, a fuzzy memory of masculine fingers stroking her cheek with the same gentleness bubbling to the surface of her mind only to sink within the mire of her thoughts.
He confused her at every turn, muddled her feelings and stirred her thoughts, until she wasn’t sure what to make of him. He had snatched her from the battlefield, but not to enslave her or abuse her. He had done it to protect her. She firmly believed that. She had offended him enough times in the few hours they had been together to gather enough evidence to support his case. He wanted to protect her from whatever danger he had witnessed in a vision.
She had never met a species capable of seeing the future before.
It fascinated her.
He fascinated her.
When he had offered to allow her to bathe, she had expected him to be present while she used his thermal pools. She had expected him to stand sentinel and ensure she didn’t attempt to escape.
He had escorted her to the cavern, using a torch to light the way. When they had arrived, he had placed the torch into a holder near the pool, and had offered her a bar of what she imagined to be homemade soap, a small scrap of cloth, and a larger piece that looked like a rustic sort of towel. Watching him instruct her on his method of cleaning had been amusing, drawing a smile from her.
When he had caught it, he had muttered something in his strange tongue, his words holding a lyrical and soft quality, and had left her alone.
Anais had been stuck thinking about him ever since.
She had sat on the rock near the pool and washed herself using the small towel, soap and a pail of water. It all felt terribly Japanese to her. The thermal vents that heated the pool kept the room warm and moist, but the water she had used to wash the suds off onto the black ground had been cold. She had literally jumped into the pool.
The moment she had sunk beneath the water, letting it lap around her shoulders, her thoughts had turned to Loke, to wondering what he was doing while she bathed.
She leaned her back against one set of the stalagmites that enclosed the pool, cupped her hand and drew the water up over her arm and shoulder again, sighing as the heat of it soothed her weary bones but failed to settle her thoughts.
It felt as if everything Loke did waged war on her, confusing her feelings and weakening her defences.
He had healed her wound for her, not once looking at her body, had taken care of her, had fed her, and had allowed her to take his bed.
She hadn’t meant to sleep. She had meant to pretend to nod off, wait for him to settle into a deep sleep, and then investigate the cave and check out the mouth of it. She knew that Loke would have been angry with her if he had caught her, but she needed to get a good look at the outside world. She would have to try again later. She felt more relaxed now. Stress and too much good food had to have been the reason she had fallen asleep. Tonight she would make sure she didn’t eat as much, and would fight the lure of sleep so she could continue with her plan.
She stared ahead of her, watching the golden light from the torch set into the wall behind her as it danced across the black rocks, casting shifting shadows from the stalagmites across the wall on the opposite side of the cavern.
Anais ran her hand down her right arm and frowned as her fingers brushed the wound that darted across it. She turned her arm towards her and peered at it. There was little more than a faint scar. Magic. How had Loke healed it? She knew vampires had healing saliva and believed elves did too. Did dragons also have it, or was there magic in his breath?
A flash of him as a majestic blue dragon ran across her eyes and she let the memory wash over her, invading her heart and her mind. He had been beautiful. She hadn’t been afraid of him, not until he had grabbed her. She had been too entranced to fear him, but then she had been in his front paw and instinct had driven her to fight him.
Even though he had been holding her carefully.
He could have easily crushed her.
But he hadn’t wanted to hurt her.
Anais pushed him out of her mind and focused on bathing and planning. She needed to survey her surroundings, find out if there was anything she could use as a weapon in case she needed to fight, and pull her plan together so she could put it into action.
A tiny fragment of her heart hurt at the thought of breaking her vow to Loke. He had kept his, and she was planning to break hers. She wasn’t sure what that made her, but she couldn’t afford to think about it or let her feelings rule her. She needed to get away and get back to her team somehow.
Even when that small part of her still wanted to stay here, trusting that Loke would keep his other vow and would return her. It would be easier than trying to make her way back to the Third Realm when she didn’t know the topography of Hell or where she was in it.
She would need to draw Loke into telling her about the area.
She only hoped he wouldn’t grow suspicious of her.
Anais stood and let the water run off her. The air felt chilly on her damp skin, instantly sucking the heat from it. She stepped out of the pool, quickly dried off and dressed in her black combats and t-shirt. She would kill for a change of clothes, but she hadn’t spotted anything resembling a wardrobe in Loke’s cave. She had a suspicion he owned a pair of blue leather trousers and that was all.
Those trousers had disappeared when he had shifted.
Like magic.
She found herself stuck on that word. Archangel knew nothing about dragons except for their existence. It was entirely possible that they could use magic. The elves used something akin to it. They could teleport things and had telekinesis. Witches used magic. It wouldn’t surprise her if Loke could too.
Anais shoved her feet into her boots, picked up the wooden torch, and started back towards the cave mouth, following the black rock tunnel. It forked a short distance from the main cave and she glanced down the tunnel to her left, her steps slowing.
Loke had treasure.
Was it down that tunnel?
He had also warned her that he sometimes had unexpected visitors. The thought of running into something when she wasn’t armed sent a cold shiver tumbling down her spine and she turned away from the tunnel, unwilling to live up to the old adage of curiosity killing the cat.
Her steps slowed for a different reason as she entered the main area of the cave.
Loke stood with his gaze on the fire, skilfully running the edge of his knife over his cheek, scraping away dark blue stubble and leaving clean smooth skin behind. She watched him in silence, admiring his skill with the knife as he tipped his chin up and shaved his neck, never once cutting himself. Not even the tiniest of nicks.
She admired him for a different reason as he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, drawing her gaze there. Masculine. Everything about this man screamed masculine. He was powerful. Honed. Intelligent. Beautiful.
She shoved against those dangerous thoughts about him and scuffed her boot on the gritty black ground so he noticed her and stopped tempting her with something she shouldn’t want.
She couldn’t pretend that she was experiencing simple want born of not having been with a man for over a year. It was desire. Full-blown, no-holes-barred, deep and dangerous desire.
The sort of desire she had never experienced before.
He flicked her a glance, his dazzling jewel-blue eyes bright in the light from the fire, and then finished shaving. When he was done, he lowered the knife, twirled it in his palm and sheathed it in one fluid move.
She stared at it. “That’s a dangerous method of shaving.”
He shrugged perfect muscular bare shoulders. “There is no other method of grooming.”
She recalled him being astounded when she had spoken of electronic goods, but she hadn’t expected his limit of technology to be a knife. She hadn’t thought about the basic necessities of life at all. No shaver. Not even a razor.
Heavens, she could kill for a razor. If her plan failed or wasn’t viable and she had to stay in the cave, she was going to need at least a razor, some perfume or deodorant, toothpaste and a toothbrush. That was the bare minimum. A change of clothes was up there, but she could wash what she had.
She was damned if she was going to shave with a knife.
She eyed Loke. He probably wouldn’t let her near it anyway. It was clear that he used that one knife for everything. Shaving. Cutting his incredible blue hair. Cooking. Everything revolved around that knife.
It was obviously quite precious to him.
If she stole it, would he let her go in exchange for having it returned?
“It’s a nice knife.” She nodded towards it and his left hand came down, settling on the spiralling metal grip.
He drew it from the sheath and stared at it for long seconds, his handsome face turning pensive and his blue eyes filling with emotions she couldn’t decipher, ones he decoded for her when he spoke, his deep voice echoing around the cave.
“It was my father’s.”
“I can see it means a lot to you.” She hadn’t expected it to mean so much though or that just mentioning the knife would affect him so dramatically. He looked lost as he stared at it, and a little broken, no longer the strong and determined male he had been just a moment ago. “Have you lost your father?”
He nodded and his expression shifted, turning even more sorrowful. “I lost my mother at the same time. The dragon wars took them both when I was two hundred. My aunt too.”
Anais’s heart went out to him. She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to lose so many people who were close to him at the same time. It must have devastated him. She didn’t know whether two hundred was young or old for a dragon, but she guessed from his look that he had been young and that those two hundred years hadn’t been enough time with his parents.
“I lost my sister.” Those words slipped quietly from her lips, spoken from her heart to his, born of a need that seized control of her.
A need to connect with him and show him that he wasn’t alone in his pain.
They had both experienced loss.
He lifted his head and looked across at her, a softness in his eyes and his expression that touched her and felt dangerous. She looked away, unable to keep her gaze on him, because he was tearing down her defences again. Or maybe she was the one to blame. She had reached out to him after all. She fought the fierce gravity that tried to pull her to him and cursed herself for seeking a deeper connection with him. She didn’t want to get closer to him. She needed to focus on escaping.
Even though she felt certain it was more dangerous for her out there than it was in the cave with him.
“How?” he whispered and slowly sheathed the blade.
Anais focused on it, mentally cursing herself again for raising her sister’s death. She should have known he would ask about it and would want to know the particulars. It had been a long time since she had thought about it and even longer since she had spoken to anyone about what had happened, but it still hurt. The pain of grief was still raw even after all these years.
“I lost her nine years ago.” She kept her eyes on the blade sheathed against his left hip, afraid to look at him while she told him about her sister, letting him into her heart. She didn’t want to see how he would be looking at her. She didn’t want to see the sympathy in his rich blue eyes. She didn’t think she could bear it. “I never knew that she was a member of Archangel. I only found out after she had died. I didn’t even know the man she had married was a light fae. Christ, I had been so happy for her when she had brought him to meet me. They had been so in love.”
She closed her eyes and suppressed the sigh that wanted to leave her lips. Her sister really had been in love with him, the sort that rarely came around. True love. One that would have lasted forever. Literally in her case.
“They had a kid… a little girl.” Her throat closed and she swallowed hard, fighting the tears as she thought about Annabelle and how she was growing up in a world without her mother. “She was only a baby when Suzanne, my sister, was killed in an attack on their family home. Suzy’s husband’s enemies targeted her and the baby. He managed to save Annabelle, my niece… but my sister… the injuries… he couldn’t—”
She cut herself off as tears filled her eyes and she couldn’t breathe. Pain consumed her, tearing her heart to pieces all over again, so strong that it felt as if the attack had happened only yesterday. It had killed her when she had discovered what had happened to Suzy, and that they had almost lost Annabelle too.
She had been so angry with Aevys. She had blamed him for what had happened to her sister. He had come to her and explained, and she had wanted to hate him, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to feel that emotion towards him. He had been devastated by the loss of his mate. He had been broken.
And he had never recovered.
Whenever she visited him and Annabelle, he slowly gained a look, one that told her that seeing her pained him, even when it gave him pleasure too. He had told her once that she looked too much like Suzy. She didn’t want to hurt him, and she had told him so. She had even offered to meet with Annabelle elsewhere. He had refused, had hugged her, and told her that she was always welcome before confessing that he liked seeing her, because it reminded him of his mate.
Archangel constantly pressed her about him and she constantly lied and said she had no contact with him or her niece. She protected them. She had to, in honour of her sister’s memory, and for the sake of her niece and Aevys.
She wouldn’t let Archangel hurt them and she feared they would if they found them, shattering her fragile and carefully constructed image of the organisation that had become like family to her and was now her home.
“Anais?” Loke whispered softly and she lifted her head, a little gasp escaping her when she found him standing just inches from her, his handsome face etched with concern.
“Sorry… I was just thinking about Annabelle and Aevys.” She scrubbed her hands across her eyes and drew down a deep breath to steady herself.
“Do you still see them?” he said and she nodded.
“I pretend not to know where they live though.”
Loke’s deep blue eyebrows dipped low. “Why?”
Anais sighed. “Because of Archangel. They want to study him because he’s one of a rare breed of fae that they don’t have documented. Annabelle is just like him too.”
He backed off a step and his face darkened. “Study. It is a nice way of saying capturing, torturing and dissecting.”
She wanted to reassure him that Archangel wasn’t like that, but she couldn’t bring herself to lie to him again. Her earlier words to him still haunted her. She had been so quick to defend Archangel, spouting the lie without flinching, even when she knew they did bad things as well as good. They actively studied species and he was right, it did mean capturing them, holding them in cells, and often forcing them to reveal their abilities. She didn’t condone it, but she couldn’t pretend it didn’t happen.
Archangel were her family though. It was her home and it meant the world to her. She couldn’t stop herself from defending it, even when she knew deep in her heart that they did terrible things to some of the people they captured, and not all of those people were guilty of committing a crime against a human or good non-human. There was a shadier side of Archangel that many of their hunters didn’t know existed anymore, or perhaps they were like her and turned a blind eye to it because Archangel was the only family they had and the only place they could call home.
It was the only place where they belonged and fitted in, a part of something that made sense to them in a world that was no longer the one they had grown up in. She was sure many hunters felt as she did, as if Archangel was the only place for her now because she couldn’t turn back the clock and return to the time when she had been unaware of the dangerous fae and demons who shared her world.
It was a place where she could be with others like her, others whose eyes had been opened and whose heart beat with a need to protect the innocent and unsuspecting humans from the dangerous world around them.
The light from the fire faded and she glanced at it. The branches were black, nothing more than ash, threaded with glowing orange cracks. Loke looked there too and moved away from her. He gathered more wood from a stack against the side of the cave, placed it onto the dying fire, and crouched in front of it.
He leaned closer to the stack of wood, shut his eyes and frowned as he opened his mouth.
Shock rippled through her as he breathed fire.
It ceased and he raised his head, his eyes opening and locking on her. “You are surprised. Why?”
She shook herself and shrugged. “I just didn’t think you’d be able to do such a thing in your current form. Yesterday, you said you wouldn’t breathe fire… and I sort of figured that meant you couldn’t… not when you’re not a dragon.”
“You think strangely.” He sat back on his heels and prodded the fire with a stick, encouraging it to spread to the other branches. “There is no dragon and no man. There is only me. I am both. Both are one. I merely have two forms and I am comfortable with both. I do not think, feel or act any differently depending on my form. My mind and my heart remain the same. However… it is more difficult to breathe fire as I am now.”
Anais supposed that made sense, even when her mind rebelled against it. “Archangel teaches us to view the animal separately from the other form. The animal is always the more dangerous form.”
Loke’s lips curled into a smile that held no warmth. “From what you have told me, and what I know of your kind, it would appear the other form is the more dangerous one… the person and not the animal.”
Anais fell silent and sat down on the furs near the fire, on the opposite side of it to him. She couldn’t argue with him. Humans were dangerous. Animals tended to live in a sort of harmony with each other and their environment. People tried to control their environment and each other.
She frowned at her knees and then at Loke. “Your kind are no different though. You mentioned a war.”
“Wars.” He loosed a sigh and tossed the stick onto the fire, his blue eyes fixed on it as it caught and burned. The golden light played across his bare torso, highlighting his honed muscles with accents and shadows, and danced across his face as his expression turned pensive.
“That’s even worse then.” She didn’t flinch away when he raised intense eyes to meet hers. She weathered his dark look, not heeding the warning. She wasn’t going to sit in silence and let him make her species out to be the more dangerous one when his kind had gone to war many times. “Your species didn’t learn their lessons. Humans don’t either. We fight over everything.”
Loke shook his head, causing a slender thread of blue hair to fall down across his brow. He swept it back into place and ran his fingers through his hair. “Mortals fight over one thing. Land. The same as dragons. The wars did their work. Entire clans were wiped out. Our numbers are few now and our lands no longer crowded. Mortals will end up the same way if they are not careful.”
Anais couldn’t argue with that either. It was only a matter of time before humans unleashed Hell on Earth, killing vast numbers of the world’s population with weapons of mass destruction.
“So dragon numbers are low now?” She leaned back against the rough black wall of the cave and resisted looking off to her left towards the huge arched entrance to it. “How many dragons remain?”
Loke shrugged again. “I do not know. In my clan… perhaps no more than fifty when once there were over three hundred.”
“Does your clan live near here… in another cave?” Maybe a bigger one. She couldn’t imagine fifty people sharing a cave like Loke’s one.
He shook his head and shifted position. He sat on his backside, crossed his legs and leaned back, bracing his palms on the black ground and showing off his torso. Anais did her best to keep her eyes off him, but it was difficult. She didn’t want to appear rude, or as if she was avoiding looking at him. She also didn’t want to end up blatantly staring at his chest either, and she knew she would if she dared to look at him longer than a few seconds at a time.
“They live in the village. I have not been there in many weeks. I prefer it here.”
He looked around his cave and she had to wonder why he liked it here more than he did down in the village.
“How long have you lived here?” She took in the cave again. Sparse. Grim. Far from comfortable. The word village conjured images of homes, structures with roofs and furniture. Maybe even more modern conveniences.
Like a razor. Perfume. Clean clothes.
Loke tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling of the cave, his blue gaze distant.
She fought the urge to run her gaze over him while he was distracted and failed. Her eyes drifted down the strong line of his neck, lingering on his pronounced Adam’s apple again as he swallowed, and then wandered over the square slabs of his defined chest and down the thick ropes of his stomach. Eight pack. She had never seen a man with an eight pack before. She lost herself in counting each muscle, only stopping when she reached below his navel. A dusting of dark blue hair led down from it, into the tight waist of his rich blue leather trousers.
They were laced over the crotch.
Anais’s cheeks heated and a wave of desire crashed over her, ratcheting her temperature up and making her heart beat harder.
The intense sensation of Loke’s eyes on her caused the blush on her cheeks to darken and she dragged her eyes away, pinning them on the fire instead. She fought for her voice, needing to say something to dispel the tension in the air, the thick buzz of desire and passion that stemmed not only from her, but from him too.
“Eight centuries.” His deep voice curled around her, and her body reacted as if he was speaking low words of seduction rather than stating facts.
She heated inside, heart fluttering weakly against her chest, skin prickling with awareness and need, a yearning to feel his strong callused hands skimming over it and maybe pressing in a little to give her a glimpse of how powerful he was.
She coughed to clear her throat, battled her out of control emotions, and focused on what he had said, trying to use it to distract herself enough that she could rein in her desire.
Eight hundred years.
Anais raised her chin and looked across the fire at him.
There was heat in his eyes, but something else too, a feeling that struck a chord within her. Loneliness. He had lived in a cave, high in a mountain, for eight centuries, and he looked as if it had taken its toll on him, whether he knew it or not. He was lonely.
A dragon in his mountain.
But he was no longer alone.
She was here with him.
But for how long?