Khal

 

 

F uck.

I thought I was good at faking. I’d sure as hells had plenty of practice over the years. But I’d been so into the moment, enjoying the feel of Lyrie, the closeness of skin on skin, her lithe limbs wrapped around me, that I’d damn near lost control.

Now my claws extended agonizingly from my clenched hands, my fangs gouging my lower lip as I fought the urge to plunge back into her sucking, warm welcome. To pound my seed into her, like I could brand her.

Claim her.

Damn, I wanted her so bad, the muscles in my neck corded as I forced back my partial shift. It’d been so long since I’d come inside a woman. Felt the hot eruption of our mixing juices, the ultimate satisfaction of filling her as I emptied myself.

But I’d reflexively jerked out of Lyrie at the last second, tossing my load into the dirt alongside us. Yet, for some reason, that felt totally wrong.

Which made no sense. For the last fifteen years, I’d fucked women the same way, pleasuring them, driving them to orgasm, but pulling out before I came. The technique had never failed me.

My claws retracted swiftly as my blood chilled, my heart seizing for a moment, then pounding at double speed: it felt wrong because I wasn’t fucking Lyrie.

It was more than that.

Shit, it was more than it had ever been.

When Lyrie said that she wanted more than just fucking, I’d been quick to cut her words short. I planned to get the Regime off our backs and simultaneously offer her some pleasure. Make up for what her dead husband so obviously had not provided. That was it. Full extent of my involvement.

But the second she was in my arms, I knew she wasn’t the only one who wanted more.

I dragged a hand across my face. Fuck, I’d known it before then. I’d known it when the guards darted me and pulled her from my cell and it’d felt like my chest would crack apart. But I’d pretended to myself that was the pain of the beatings.

And the moment I saw her in her beautiful shifted form, I’d been totally lost.

Now I wanted to know everything about her.

Who she was, and where she’d come from.

How she looked when she wasn’t scared and hurting. 

Whether her commanding, bad-ass attitude was the real Lyrie, or a disguise, hiding a different woman.

How her laughter sounded, and whether her cropped hair glinted in the sunlight.

I wanted to find out how she could be part-Felidaekin, yet have no idea of the fact.

I longed to see how beautiful she was in full flight, her magnificent wings unfurled against the aching blue sky.

I wanted to know how she’d feel beneath me in her part-cat form.

And I needed to know why the hells the Regime had it in for her, when there was a town full of Glian women they could choose from, no doubt a number of them—like Smithton’s pet nurse, Tina—more than willing.

At least, Tina had been willing until Hartlin ordered Spike to do her in cat form, to create the fetus the Regime demanded. Sick bastard. I’d had no choice but to give Hartlin my word then that I’d screw Lyrie, to save Spike from the toxic self-hatred that came with being a murderer.

But I’d broken my word.

Because I hadn’t fucked Lyrie.

I’d made love to her.

And that was all kinds of bad.

“Khal? Why didn’t you do it?”

I sat up abruptly, dislodging Lyrie from where she leaned on my chest, her eyes holding more questions than her words. The nylonium grated my skin as I shoved my legs into my pants. “There’s a damn good reason why,” I snarled, angling away to hide my flaming face. Hells, I felt like a teenager caught jerking one out in my bed.

Lyrie moved aside, pulling my shirt around her shoulders.

Instantly, I wanted to ask her not to dress, to let me revel in the sight of her for a little longer.

I clamped my lips together tighter than a shoal shell.

“Well? Do you care to explain?” Her icy expression made it clear she didn’t really intend to give me a choice.

“Not particularly. Look, it’s ancient history. Nothing personal.”

“Seems pretty fucking personal when it’s my life you’re putting at risk.” A flock of wints startled and flew out of the dark shadows as Lyrie’s sharp tone echoed off the rock.

Okay, so she had me there. Tension tightened my gut at the thought of my actions endangering her. Fuck, wasn’t that precisely what I was trying to avoid? “Look, you don’t need to get knocked up, we just need to buy time. Now you can shift into this sort of…griffin—” My loins stirred at the memory of her cat-form. Not pure Felidaekin, but a mix of lion and something more ancient, maybe a dragon, given the span of her magnificent, veined wings. “We’ll be able to find a way out of here. I can smell fresh air. Somewhere further down these tunnels, there must be an opening.”

“Let’s go find it, then. You can explain your…issue…on the way.” She shoved to her feet, her naked thighs level with my face.

I licked my lips, trying to contain the hunger that rose in me. “We can’t. You have to learn to control your shift, or it’ll take you when you can’t afford it to. It’s dangerous, until you establish dominance over the urge. In fact, how about we practice, now?”

She slammed her hands on to her hips. “So, you want me to put on a performance for you?” The pitch of her voice had changed, a tremulousness beneath the sneered words, and I knew the idea of shifting again scared her, but she was trying to hide the fear behind rage. “Here’s a new plan. How about you stop with this tough, mysterious beetric-shit and tell me your secret, since you’re so invested in mine?”

Even though she was mouthing off at me, her tone sharp and strident, I felt sorry for her. It was hard enough changing when you knew what to expect, when you’d spent your entire life anticipating it. I couldn’t even imagine how hard the discovery she was a shifter must’ve knocked her. “Well, it’s not like you’ve willingly shared your secret, is it?”

Her jaw twitched and I could pick up the faint sound of her teeth grinding as she scowled at me. “Give me yours, and I’ll give you one.”

What the hells, she had more secrets? I took a deep breath and stared at the floor. “I killed a woman.”

From the corner of my eye, I caught her shrug. “We all have. This is war, soldier.” Her words were hard, but when I glanced up her eyes glinted with what could be either anger or hidden tears.

Damn, I wished I could leave it there. Her easy acceptance. But I wasn’t about to lie to her. That was no way to start out. And man, I wanted this to be a start. Clean slate. I’d tell her it all, then she could run like hell.

Not that there was anywhere to run to, right now.

Acid churned in my throat, but I forced the words out, my lips twisting with distaste. “It wasn’t like that. This was before the war. Back on Aaidar.”

She stilled, her body absolutely motionless for a second, and I tensed. Because if she was about to do a runner, I was going to chase her.

Instead, she dropped to her knees alongside me. “Why did you kill her?”

“Accident.”

The tension fled her body, her shoulders softening. “Okay. But what does that have to do with you not following the Regime orders now? You know they’re going to test me as soon as they figure we’ve had time to do it. Then in a few days they’ll be checking if I’m pregnant. Why won’t you just fuck me like they want, and get it over with? One less thing we have to worry about, while we work on how the hells we’re getting out of here.”

“Because I don’t want to fuck you, Lyrie.” Holy crap, they weren’t the words I wanted. Sure, I was processing the notion in my head, but that didn’t mean I was anywhere near ready to share it. Not when I wasn’t entirely sure where Lyrie stood on the matter. Sure, she’d said she didn’t want only fucking, that left quite a bit of gray area for me to get lost in. What exactly did she want? She was damned hard to read, one moment almost pleading, the next demanding.

Plus, I was in the middle of telling her that I’d killed my girlfriend. Not exactly the moment for romantic disclosures.

Romantic? Where the hell had that thought come from? The guys would give me shit if they knew it even existed in my vocabulary.

Her mouth tightened, and she lifted one shoulder. “You don’t want to? Well, tough. As I recall, this relationship is on a needs basis, not wants.”

I shook my head and swallowed, my mouth as dry as if I’d sucked on an unripe cava pod. “I don’t want to fuck you, Lyrie, because I want more. I want to…get to know you. Properly. But I can’t do that.”

She chewed at her thumbnail, her brows drawn into a blonde V. “Maybe you can. Once we get out of here, we’ll see what—”

“No!” I snarled. “The woman I killed, she was my girlfriend. Long time ago, when we were kids.” Harsh laughter scraped my throat. “Well, she never got to be more than a kid, thanks to me. The truth is, I killed her because I couldn’t control my anger.” Damn, I was about to throw up, chasing the sour words with the vomit that churned my gut.

Lyrie shifted from her knees to sit, dust coating her bare legs. “Tell me. From the start.”

I blew out a long breath, fighting back the bile. Hells, I’d never told anyone the whole story. Not even Becka’s parents. “We met at college. Becka was a cool chick, popular with everyone. We hung out. Messed around. You know how it gets.” Or maybe she didn’t know. Lyrie didn’t strike me as someone who’d had much fun in her life.

“Anyway, after a while, things changed. We weren’t so good together, anymore. So, one day she says she has to tell me something. I didn’t want to hear it, and, like any teenage guy, I jumped on my skimmer, planning to hightail it out of there.”

Lyrie’s forehead was furrowed, but she remained silent. Which meant I had to keep talking.

I rubbed a hand across my jaw, hard enough to excuse my eyes watering. “Becka was hysterical and jumped right on the board behind me. I should’ve cut the engines and told her to get off. Instead, I gunned it, knowing how speed freaked her out.”

As I stared up, the rocky ceiling above us became a giant vidcom for the pictures my memory painted. Carnage. Skimmer parts spread across the road. Becka’s helmet rolling and rolling, as though it had a life of its own.

And her body. Bloodied. Broken. Bent into impossible angles.

I swallowed around the barbs the next words set in my throat. “She didn’t scream or yell. Just wrapped her arms around my waist and hung on for a moment. Kissed my cheek, then she made a grab for the stick. I lost control. The skimmer hit rocks, skidded and rolled. I killed her.”

Lyrie studied the dirt on her legs, one hand plucking at the hem of her shirt. Finally, she glanced up at me. “Did you love her?”

I shrugged. “Thought I did. But, like I said, I was young. It’s not like we felt any real…bond.”

Fuck. Bond. The word came out slow, stuck on my tongue like it didn’t dare creep into the gloom of our cave.

I lurched to my feet, hoping movement would loosen the sudden knot in my gut.

Bond.

Was that what made me feel differently about Lyrie?

No. Couldn’t be. Because the deepest conversation I’d had with her was about my long-dead girlfriend. Well, that, and a brief touch on her equally dead husband. Hardly a great set-up. In any case, the way I’d heard it talked about—and from what I’d witnessed with Herc and Leo—for those few who did find a bondmate, rather than just settle, like most Aaidarians, the bond formation was instant, obvious and undeniable from the first touch.

Lyrie and me, we didn’t have anything like that.

“Thing is, I knew Becka was working up to dumping me.” I rubbed a palm against my chest to ease the crushing weight of guilt, hating the bitter, trembling twist of my lips. “But hells, I sure took care of that, didn’t I?”

Lyrie’s green eyes locked to mine, and I wished she’d look away, give me a moment to get my thoughts straight. “We all have dead people in our past. Many we loved.” She lifted an eyebrow and spread the long, narrow fingers of one hand. “Some, not so much. But if they’re dead and we’re alive, we are automatically and irrevocably guilty. Whether it’s of murder, or of failing to save them. Or maybe of nothing worse than being the one who was lucky enough to survive a bomb blast. No matter the reason, there’s no escaping the blame. The guilt. Yet you have to learn to live with it. I don’t even want to put a number on the people who’ve died in my place, but I can name each of them. Their faces haunt me, even when I’m awake.”

Even as a mercenary, I wouldn’t claim people had died for me. Who the hells was Lyrie? “Why would—?”

Her palm sliced the air to stop my words, then she held up a rigid forefinger. “The one thing I can tell you is that wallowing in the guilt and allowing myself to curl up and die sure as fuck isn’t going to bring a single one of those people back. So, unless you’ve been celibate for the last decade, I can’t see why you’re letting such a useless emotion dictate what you have to do. Your refusal to fuck me the way it has to be done will kill both of us, and still you won’t bring Becka back.”

I raked my hands through my hair, wishing something would interrupt this damned conversation.

Nothing. The cave silent as a tomb, even the wints had stopped rustling. All holding their breath, waiting for my final admission.

“It’s wasn’t only Becka. She was pregnant. More than halfway through. I’d felt our cub kicking in her belly. My baby died, too.”

“Shit,” she hissed. “I’m sorry.” She stood, her stiff movement betraying pain from either her numerous injuries—though only the odd purplish yellow tinge marred her smooth skin—or a remnant of an ache from her first experience of shifting. “I guess I kind of understand, then.”

“I can’t fail another child.” My words came out flat, deader than a corpse.

Both arms wrapped around her narrow ribs, Lyrie hugged herself. “Okay. The deal was a secret for a secret.” Her words were so quiet my ears twitched to catch them. “Despite your observation the other day, I didn’t order my husband assassinated.”

I winced “Yeah, about that, I shouldn’t—”

She waved away my attempted retraction. “Whatever. I’m only telling you this because you need to know.” Her teeth worked at her bottom lip for a moment, and she squinted at the far wall as though she could see something other than chalky, long-dead stalagmite husks. “Not that I wouldn’t have had him killed, if I could’ve worked out how. We were only together to—” she broke off with a snort of mirthless laughter. “Well, much like here, it was my duty to breed. Have you ever seen a woman who looks less like a breeder?” She swept a disparaging hand down her front.

Startled by the undeniable shimmer of tears in her eyes, I instinctively gripped her upper arms, but I was unable to find the words to console or reassure her. Lyrie was unfathomable, I had no idea what I should say.

She remained unyielding, not leaning in to me at all. “My failure to get pregnant was one of the biggest issues in our marriage. One of many, anyway.” A solitary tear worked free, tracing a path through the dust powdering her cheek, but she ignored it, scowling as though daring me to remark on it. “See, chances are, no matter what you do, I’m not going to get knocked up, and the Regime will soon realize they have no use for us. Seems I’m broken.”

The only thing broken about her was her voice, catching on the last three words. Gods, I could recognize internalized pain when I heard it.

This time, when I tugged her closer, she only resisted for a second, then leaned in against my chest, her face buried against my throat. Though she didn’t make a sound, I could feel the sobs coursing her body, each jerk of her bony spine beneath my palms. I wanted to tell her not to cry, but knew she wouldn’t appreciate the acknowledgment of her momentary weakness. Plus, if the woman I’d known for a few short days was any indication, she probably rarely allowed herself the catharsis of tears.

Instead, I pressed my lips into her hair. “It’s okay, Lyrie. Spike and I have a plan. We’re getting out of here. “

“Spike? Is he—”

“Felidaekin. Yeah. They have him in the cells. But he has contacts, and we’ll work it out. When Hartlin pulls us out of here for testing, we’ll go willingly, okay? Then I’ll find a way to communicate with Spike.”

“Can’t you roar from here? The guards wouldn’t understand.”

“Still can’t shift. But roaring’s for posers, in any case, it doesn’t communicate much other than emotion or warning.”

As Lyrie leaned back to look up at me, I winked. “I keep my mouth for other things, sweetheart, but I can’t roar. Cheetahkin. Neither can Spike.”

An odd look of relief flashed across her face. “Oh, so Spike’s a cheet—”

A distant clang interrupted, and she pressed against me for a moment before stiffening her spine and tossing her head back, as though she was accustomed to having long hair she needed to flick from her face. “That’s the guards. Coming to test me.”

She glanced at the dirt where I’d tossed off, grimaced, and bent to scoop up a handful. Smeared it between her legs. “Let’s hope there’s enough traces of semen in there to confuse their analytics.”

I closed my eyes for a long moment. Hells, this wasn’t going to work. My selfish concern, my determination to stick to the behavior I’d set for myself, as though it’d do penance for the harm I caused Becka, now meant I’d put Lyrie in danger.

I wrapped my arms around her waist. “I’m sorry, Lyrie. It won’t happen this way again. It’s not worth the risk.”

“Well, like I said, I’m not going to get pregnant. We only need to do our best to fool the Regime, until your friend works out how to get us out of here.”

“Yeah, that’s prob—wait.”

She looked up at me, then toward the far end of the cave as a rhythmic pounding of metal and stone, evidently a summons, intruded. The flash of fear on her face ripped at my heart, but I rushed the words out. “Lyrie, maybe the reason you didn’t get pregnant by your—husband,” the title was poison on my lips. “You’re not a Glian.”

She frowned. “Yes, I am—oh!”

The sudden hope in her expression was painful.

Damn, I should’ve kept my suspicion to myself.

“Maybe,” she said slowly.

“Shifter!” Smithton’s nasal tone was unmistakable, echoing through the cavernous chambers. “We have a deal. Get her up here.”

I slipped my arm around Lyrie’s waist. “Okay, let’s get test number one out of the way. See if you can create a bit of a distraction, keep the guards busy, so I can locate Spike, or at least have chance to scent him, so I’ll know where to find him next time.”

As she nodded determinedly, striding through the passageways toward the stone steps that led up into the compound, I tugged her arm, holding her back. “Just don’t do anything dangerous, all right?

She arched her eyebrow and shot me a wicked grin. “I could always shift and take them all on.”

I shook my head. “Not yet. Not until you can control it.”

“Teasing, Khal.”

“Yeah, I know,” I lied. Truth was, this woman was wild. I had no damn idea what she’d come up with, or what she was capable of. Or even who she was.

And that totally rocked my world.

She leaned in close and tilted her chin up.

My lips met hers and drank in her taste and her smell, a surging current tightening my arms around her slender frame. “Just be careful, Lyrie, okay?”

No way in hells was I going to lose her.