CHAPTER 12
Explosions were odd, Lexi thought, odd like the dreams. Not quite real until the silence crashed in upon itself. She pushed to her knees and spit plaster dust from her mouth. The smell in the air was acrid with the stink of burnt oil. Smoke swirled like shredding cotton. Whatever the explosion was, the purpose was concussion and not incineration; there was no fire.
Lexi heard Marge calling to Robbie, saw him crawling in the woman’s direction. A large feral cat was streaking through an open door that hung on shattered hinges. The animal was alarming, and Lexi remembered how Arsen had shifted into a tabby cat. She wasn’t sure if this was an enemy or not. She pushed to her feet, picked up a black fireplace tool. Held it defensively while the air vibrated in heated, choking waves.
The yellow cat screeched to a halt. The animal’s lips pulled back, sharp fangs clear as it crouched. Marge remained on the floor. The pressure in the room increased. The cat lunged. Lexi swung the heavy tool in her hands—until it slammed violently to a halt.
Christan was gripping the iron poker, prying her fingers up one by one.
The cat had disappeared.
“It was going toward Marge,” Lexi said, her muscles still cramped with pain. From the look in Christan’s eyes, she needed to defend her actions.
“It was a damn feral cat,” he ground out. “Do you think you scared him?”
“It ran away, didn’t it?”
“And you’d know all about running.”
Christan’s voice was rough with aggression, his face sinfully beautiful. Every muscle in his body was hard, impressive and too damn overpowering as he tossed the iron poker aside. Lexi didn’t want to think about it. Couldn’t avoid the thinking, not with the heat that rolled her way. His eyes were cold and yet they burned. Scorched. His anger erupted from deep in the past and she didn’t care if they were fighting about the cat or something else, she just wanted to provoke him. Push him. Get him to move as far away from her as possible.
“Screw you, Christan,” she said. “You think you can just walk in here and start assuming things because of some damn past life? Do not ever assume things about me.”
It took a beat. And then heat exploded and he reached down, his hand fisting in the material of her yellow shirt. He dragged her toward him with heavy strength, impulsive, and the memory hit her like a body blow. There was no touch like his touch. His words were seared into her mind and oh, god, the images were there, the firelight on bronzed male skin, the way his hands had stroked, his mouth, hot and aggressive, needing, wanting. He’d held her on the edge, trembling while she waited for him to pull her back. Even now, with his hand fisted into her shirt, he held her. Then his fingers unclenched.
“I know you, and I do not assume.” His mouth curved. It was not a smile, and that single act of rejection filled her with such devastation, she picked up a piece of broken plaster and threw it in his direction.
Christan twisted and looked at her with cold amusement—the insane harpy with hair wild and streaming. Lexi saw the image of herself mirrored in his eyes and he was so damn, just so damn arrogant. He’d always been like that, accusing her of things and never listening to the vital answers she’d been trying to give. His bladed face was so starkly male it was perfection, carved by a master’s hand until even the stone began to weep. The mystery of him had always ruined her, kept her tongue-tied and helpless and furious. She reached for something else to throw.
Whatever it was, the object was ineffective, bouncing off his shoulder and falling to the floor. Lexi’s pulse raced tight in her throat when Christan lifted his hand. She knew he was on the edge, would put her on the ground again. She didn’t think she could endure that dark emptiness if he did. Frantically, she dragged a broken chair between them. Christan’s hand moved. The chair went flying to the side, splintering into pieces.
The sound broke the spell that kept her tongue-tied. “What the hell did you do to me in the rocks?”
“Nothing you haven’t asked for.” The words were as sharp as the glass on the floor. Lexi realized she was leaning toward him, drawn to his dark sun. When he straightened, she recognized the stance, knew the kind of man he was. It should have alarmed her but didn’t. Everything should have alarmed her, but they were lost, now, in a great angry sea with no land in sight, drowning in the last of what they once were.
“What did I ever do to you?” Her breath was coming in jerky gasps. “Why are we even here when you hate me so much?”
“Why do you pretend you don’t remember?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Like hell you don’t.” His jaw was so rigid the muscle bunched. “I felt your fear when we caught you in the rocks. I heard your lies.”
His voice cut deep into the softness of her core and she nearly cried out until she felt him—realized he was not limited to throwing one words into her mind but could insert himself as well. His psychic presence burned past her inner shields and Lexi knew he was probing into her deepest fears.
His energy was unyielding. In a panic, she struggled for the protective tactics she’d taught herself as a child, the white walls she tried to erect, realized those walls might not be strong enough to keep him out.
“Get out!” she screamed, but his response was to stab deeper into her most guarded thoughts. When she stared at the stars. When she ached with the sense of having lost something so vital she couldn’t breathe.
“Don’t,” she hissed, but Christan was moving toward her, hard and focused. He was perfection, intensity. She was powerless, caught in his fierce gravity, pulling her deep into the places where she shouldn’t go. Heaviness took over her legs. Emotions that were gossamer, full of hunger—he was ripping them to shreds.
Lexi struck out wildly, trying to push him away. Her hand connected with his face. He twisted to the side before she did much damage, but blood still pooled near his mouth. She watched as he swiped away the red smear with his tongue—a suggestive movement, reminding her of a predatory lion that matched the white-hot images he was forcing into her mind.
Wild. Feral. A mystery older than time. Pain. Death. A man who raced across a thousand deserts, alone and reveling in the isolation, covered in the red curtain of blood, what he was, would always be.
The images were crippling, the sensations far worse than any dreams. They revealed the emptiness of his life, taunting her with experiences she couldn’t remember, only feel in the deepest areas of her soul. Her heart was breaking. The images changed.
Passion. A feminine hand. Bronzed skin. The heat of the sun. The taste of wild oranges. A choked cry, an arched back. A deep male voice. A burning need.
Lexi staggered back. Tried to focus on what was coming, how they would ever get beyond whatever this was between them. He knew how to break a woman, in bed or out of it, and her lungs seized as she wondered how many lifetimes there had been—when he’d broken her, found her and broken her again.
He moved. The aggression was so fierce she knew he wouldn’t stop, not even see what he was doing to her. He had retreated to some dark place in the past and a wave of fear brought Lexi’s hands up in a protective gesture. She found the mental shield, pushed the white energy back against him, realizing too late that it wasn’t white at all but churning hot and angry in an explosion of red and black. It was an energy she’d felt before, when he’d slammed the one word into her mind, and it expanded now in a wave of uncontrolled fury.
Christan paused. His head tipped to one side, his expression curious before he slowly dropped to his knees. He swayed once, tried to gather himself. Those powerful hands were unsteady. His eyes were unfocused.
Dread gripped Lexi’s throat. “Oh god, oh god, oh god!”
Arsen appeared behind her, gripping her shoulders. She was going to faint, she knew it as she broke out in a cold sweat; Arsen bent her at the waist before he forced her to her knees.
“So, this is what it feels like.”
Christan’s mind was flat and empty. His telepathic voice sounded hollow. He’d been aware of her, fighting desperately, recognized her growing fear, and still he’d pushed into her mind. He hadn’t expected her to resist him, but she had and wasn’t it strange, now, as he lay sprawled on the floor staring up at the ceiling. Feeling his life thin out like a thread pulled at both ends. Strange, that she threw that one word back at him the way he’d thrown it at her.
She shouldn’t have been able to do it. She was too human to control the magic. But perhaps the magic responded in the way it was programmed to respond; he had aggravated the energy when he’d been probing her deepest fears. Perhaps he’d pulled it with him when she pushed him away. At least she hadn’t pushed the power at full strength. If she had, he’d be a pile of ash.
Robbie was bending over him, along with Arsen—yes, he sensed the cold anger that tested his second’s self-control. And he could hear her thoughts, feel her emotions. She was struggling to breathe. Marge was trying to calm her, but she was beyond that. He had ripped at the soft flesh of her deepest loss and he had no excuse. Never had he violated Gemma’s mind the way he’d done to her, and it was disturbing, the way he lost control.
Christan wanted to shift. Robbie was kneeling at his shoulder, pressing a hand to hold him steady. Christan heard him telepathically.
“You can’t shift, Christan. There might be broken bones or internal injuries.”
Christan’s breathing slowed, heart rate too, and the warmth pooling at his side told him he was bleeding. He must have fallen on the debris from the explosion, but he should be healing by now. He shouldn’t be lying here listening to the frantic beating of her heart as she watched him from across the room.
“Holy fuck, Lexi.” Arsen was walking toward her where she sat frozen in the chair. “Do not move, do not blink or I’ll put you down so hard on the floor you’ll never get up.”
“Arsen, she didn’t—”
“Not your time to speak, Marge.”
Robbie made a sharp sound of censure, then refocused on the calming pressure he was forcing into Christan’s mind. Christan didn’t think it was working. Every muscle in his body clenched with the need to shift.
“My apologies,” Arsen said to the older woman as he walked back to Christan’s side.
The bleeding hadn’t stopped. Robbie was applying pressure. Christan had been wounded many times before, but this was… different. Cold. A hidden pain, like a burning ember buried in the ash, waiting for the first puff of air. There was a thundering in his ears, a pounding in his temples. When the pain became incandescent Christan closed his eyes. He wanted to plunge over the dark abyss but found himself somewhere else. A place where the air was hot and dry, and the figure kneeling by his side was feminine. He heard the soft sound of her breathing. Cool fingers were tender as she washed blood from his skin. Her hair was pale, like a shaft of sunlight in winter, her eyes pure amber with a lion’s humor.
“Warrior… come back to me.”
Sunlight overhead, so dazzling all he saw was the cloud of her hair. She pressed something against his side and he flinched at the sting.
“Good. You’re alive enough to feel.”
He made an inarticulate sound, and she laughed. Kissed him. “You like that, warrior?”
So husky, that laugh. It brought him to a hard erection that throbbed to the point of pain.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she brushed her mouth against his throat. “You should have moved to the left like I expected.”
“You shot me?” She was deadly with her bow.
“You insisted.” She had taken him up on his dare. Usually it was he who penetrated her with piercing sensuality and no need for the bow. His hand fisted in her hair as he dragged her to his mouth.
“I remember, Gaia. I was teaching you to fight.”
“Yes.” She sat back on her heels and watched as he pushed up on his elbows. She was so innocent his heart clenched.
Not like Gemma. Not like the woman who stood with hate in her heart in the middle of a moonlit road. The woman he made into a mirror of himself.
Not like Lexi, who had put him on the floor. And he had deserved it.
Marge’s voice again. “Will you at least let me take her to the bedroom? She doesn’t need to watch this.”
“She caused it.” Arsen, snarling—an unusual sound.
No, I did. Christan pressed the knowledge into Arsen’s mind before he drifted into unconsciousness.