Redemption (10 page)

Nothing at all like the last time.

She knew what he was looking at. Her scar twisted up her torso from hip to opposite shoulder, three inches across with a smattering of smaller puckered knots around her waistline. Ugly, hateful thing. It disgusted her. She couldn’t imagine how he felt. But she could feel him staring, eyes burning into her skin, marking her with all sorts of new scars.

He wrapped an arm under her hips to hold her tight against him, burying himself deep and arching his body. His tongue touched the edge of the scar tissue where there was still some feeling then pressed flat and wide, tracing along that rippled edge. Her body shook. If he hadn’t been holding her up, her arms would have given out.

Her last boyfriend had claimed indifference but would never touch her there. She’d noticed how careful he was, how his hands always seemed to avoid certain spots, her damaged breast and the nipple that had never healed quite right. Adriano’s tongue moved over her back in another long, slow stroke and then he lifted up again, thrusting into her so hard it rocked her body forward.

“I can’t reach you right now,
gata.
You’ll need to touch yourself.”

She hesitated and he growled. “I’m not waiting for you this time, human. Keep up with me.”

And she did, dropping her left elbow to the dirt and taking her weight on her forearm. She slid her other hand down, pulling back when she touched him, and slipped her fingers up to find her clit, slick and tight and aching to be touched. The wet slap of their bodies coming together, her soft grunts as he rammed into her, the snarling noise low in his throat, every impact, every breath echoed in the confined space.

His big body forced her into the dirt, one arm sliding underneath her, snaking up between her breasts, fingers splayed at the base of her neck. His other hand caught her hip bone and pushed down hard, holding her steady for his thrusts, controlling her completely.

He drove deep, so deep her body braced for every thrust. The next one, she thought again and again, the next one will hurt but it never did, hovering just short of pain, filling her up, bruising but not tearing. And she drove back to meet him as much as she was able, wanting all of him, wanting to see how close to that edge she could come without going over.

Close now, she could feel the ledge crumbling beneath her. He locked her body tight against his as he pushed into her. She was startled by a wild keening noise until she realized it came from behind her own clenched teeth. He wasn’t wearing a condom. Her partners had always worn condoms. Adriano’s bare cock was inside her—the thick hard shaft and ridged tip dragged against her flesh when he pulled back, the slick heavy weight jolted her forward when he drove in. He’d come soon. She could feel him getting harder, the tension building in the muscles that supported her body. He’d spill inside her, his hot juices mixing with hers, filling her up.

Then he bit her. Not a love nip but a burning pressure high on her shoulder that she couldn’t escape without losing skin. She jerked at his next thrust and he snarled in warning. Again. Harder. And she fell, screaming, even as he held her, releasing his hold on her shoulder so he could shout out his own release.

He thrust lazily through the aftershocks, set his chin on her shoulder and gasped for air. When she finally stirred beneath him, wanting to get up, needing the space, his arm tightened and he bit her earlobe. Her body jerked and instinctively her muscles clamped down on his semierect cock.

“You have an animal inside you too, Sophie. All I had to do was ask her to come out and play.” He pulled out and stood over her. “I didn’t even have to ask nicely.”

She watched him walk away, feeling his absence immediately, all of his warmth gone except for the trail sliding down her thighs. She dropped her forehead to the dirt, drew in a steadying breath and then followed him. No matter how raw she felt, she knew this was only the beginning of the conversation, not the end.

He’d slipped into the pool and sat at the far end, his arms spread out to either side, his expression carefully blank. She couldn’t hold that cool gaze for long and closed her eyes as she eased her body into the water, sighing as the heat surrounded her.

“Did I hurt you?”

“I didn’t mean it that way, what I said…about you being an animal.” Had she meant it? She’d called him an animal and she
had
meant to hurt him at the time. Her regret was largely because she’d misjudged how deep her words would cut. He’d reacted like he’d offered her diamonds and she’d rejected them with disgust, rejected him. She opened her eyes just enough to see his expression, still hard and unyielding.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No.”

He jerked his chin toward the cavern. “That is what I am.”

She shook her head. “That doesn’t scare me.”

He sat silent for a long time, just staring at her and then as if suddenly coming to a decision, he leaned forward, grabbed her hand and pulled her toward him. She let him drag her through the water, not knowing what to expect. He caught her chin and turned her face. “You have a scrape here but it’s shallow. Were you hurt anywhere else?”

He cupped his hand and tipped her head to the side, spilling warm water over her cheek. It stung and when she started to pull back, he wrapped his arm around her waist and tugged her closer. “Shh. It’s not bad. I just need to clear away the dirt…”

God, she must look like crap. But she let him reposition her, his hands gentle on her body as he cleaned the wound. “He didn’t hurt you anywhere else?” His hands trembled as they smoothed down her legs. “I didn’t—”

She caught his hand when it slipped between her thighs. “No.”

He pressed his lips to her forehead and sighed her name. “Please don’t be angry with me for not telling you the truth. If you think about it, you’ll see that I had no choice.”

He tried to embrace her but she put a hand flat to his chest, resisting the urge to flex her fingers into the firm muscles. Just barely. There was something that she needed to know. His fingers traced the edge of the scar on her hip and his gaze softened. She didn’t want him looking at her like that.

“Did you fuck me just to keep me distracted? You’ve been trying to keep me away from these tunnels.” When he hesitated, she said, “I’m not an idiot. I knew from the beginning that someone like you couldn’t possibly be interested in someone like me. I should have trusted my instincts.”

He frowned, smoothing a stray hair from her face. She winced as it jerked free of the blood drying on her cheekbone. “You know me so well?”

“I know men.”

He chuckled, low and deep in his throat. “I don’t believe you. You don’t have the scent of a man on you. Not even a trace. I would say it’s been a very long time. How long, Sophie? Months? Years?”

Surprise stole the denial from her lips. “You can smell that?”

“More than that. I’m enough of a human to be entranced by the curve of a soft cheek.” He stroked down the side of her face. “Or the swell of a breast.” He dipped his head and pressed a kiss to the tip of her breast, the ruined one. He angled his gaze up, eyes flashing cat yellow in the dim light. “But I am Yaguara too.” He slid his cheek along her exposed skin, turning his face and pressing it to her throat, inhaling deeply. “And scent is just as arousing for our kind. Maybe more so. Our scientists say it has something to do with pheromones, identifying which humans are compatible with shifter genetics. It’s rarer than you might think.”

“And you think I smell reproductively acceptable.” Her voice took on a dangerous edge. “Be very careful what you say next.”

He licked the side of her neck. “I think you smell delicious.” He nipped at her shoulder. “Don’t be offended. You’re angry because you think you’re too plain for me. I tell you that I find you incredibly arousing. Don’t dismiss my interest because it doesn’t conform to your standards. I’m not interested in skinny women who smell like hair spray and diet pills. If you’re going to reject me, pick a better reason.” His lips twitched. “A good reason. I can smell your arousal too, and I can tell if you’re lying.”

Disconcerting thought. She tried to retreat, put a little distance between them, but his strong arms held her fast.

“Do you know how strange that sounds? That scares the crap out of me.”

He shook his head. “Maybe it should but it doesn’t.”

“If you were so hot for me the first time, why were you holding back then?”

“I didn’t want to scare you.”

“Much better to lie to me about what you are.”

“I was hiding. You understand about hiding don’t you, Sophie?” His voice was low, incredibly intimate in this dark space, with the lantern beginning to dim and the shadows closing around them. She wanted to pull away and, at the same time, curl closer. He looked at her for a long time and she hated that she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Finally he said, “What happened to you?”

She didn’t even try to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about. The elephant in the room…cave. The scar where the stitches had been wasn’t so bad. Her mother had made sure that she’d gotten a good surgeon. But you could still see it, long, slicing from her lower rib to the opposite shoulder right across her breast. The nipple wasn’t right and she’d thought about going in for another surgery to correct it but hadn’t forced herself to make the call yet. The scars from the burns were worse.

She didn’t want to talk to Adriano about it, especially not now, but she could tell by the determined glint in his eyes that he wouldn’t rest until he had an answer. So she took a deep breath.

“My senior year of college. A stupid car accident. There was patch of ice and we caught the guardrail and flipped. We probably would have been fine but the car behind us couldn’t stop in time. That car caught on fire when he hit us. I was lucky to get out alive. My twin sister, Delia, wasn’t as lucky. Neither was the other driver.” Five years and thousands of dollars in therapy had trained her to spit that out on cue, without cracking, without slipping away into memories of death and guilt. Some people accepted it at face value and some, usually those who knew her better, didn’t. She looked at Adriano, wondering which category he’d fall into.

Although she’d allowed him to pull her onto his lap, Sophie still held herself apart, vibrating with tension, braced as if expecting a blow. She didn’t want to talk about this, that was clear, but he needed to know exactly how deep those scars went.

“You were responsible.”

Her head snapped up and she slipped off his lap, turning in the water to face him. “Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know anything about it. I can only see that you think it was your fault.”

She swallowed hard and he ruthlessly suppressed a spasm of guilt. Best to have this out now.

Her voice was barely a whisper. If he had been human, he doubted he would have heard her at all. “I was the one driving.”

He’d wounded her without meaning to. He could see the shadow of guilt in her eyes, so well buried he might not have recognized it if he wasn’t hiding his own. She might believe it was an accident but she still felt responsible for her sister’s death. He didn’t know how to comfort her. And now she thought he was being an insensitive ass.

She glared at him, arms crossed over pert breasts, mouth set in a thin hard line. Angry. Resilient, like an Amancay bloom you could crush with your boot and would spring up before you’d taken two steps. How had he ever considered this woman
fragile
? There was steel there even if it was buried deep.

He was still reeling from the sex. As hot and hard as any he’d ever had with a Yaguara partner. No. If he was honest, it had been more violent. After all, he’d been trying to prove a point. And she’d wanted it, liked it. That had driven him as if she’d been holding a whip to his back.

Not fragile. He didn’t need to look at her scars to see that.

So much about her made sense—why she hid herself in shapeless clothing, in the mountains, in her work. She still grieved and still felt guilt. He knew something of guilt and failure both.

He caught her hand and tugged. She floated back into his arms. He settled her beside him on a submerged ledge as he tried to think of an appropriate response. Humans liked to tell pretty, soothing lies to each other but he had no gift for it.

Sophie changed the subject. “Tell me why we can’t tell everyone about this place.”

He twined his fingers through hers. She was so small, her fingers so delicate. “The landslide compromised the integrity of the walls. It could collapse at any time. I can get in, get what is valuable and get out. I’m willing to take the risk.”

“This place deserves to be studied and preserved,” she said.

“Even if that means the destruction of my people?”

She shook her head but opened her hand to him when he slid his thumb across her palm. “You’re being melodramatic.”

“I don’t think I am. There are secrets here that might reveal us. The stone would allow them to translate the other pieces. We might as well draw them a map to our home. And you can’t know how people will react. Not everyone will drop to their knees at our feet.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. He grabbed her wrist before she could pull away and slid her onto his lap. His cock stirred. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, Sophie. Not everyone is like you. You’ve a gentle heart and a fair one.”

She held herself rigid in his arms and he kissed her shoulder, her neck. Gradually she relaxed and he bent his head to nuzzle the damp hair at her temple.

“There must be a way if we make it out of here alive. I’d be willing to document the findings myself. You could keep all of the material until it was safe to publish it.”

He considered that, the possibility of working with her for months, maybe years, against the risk of exposing her to the king and queen as a potential threat. If they decided to kill her, there would be little he could do to stop it. Even the request for an audience might be deemed a violation of his exile and he would die along with her.

And what point was there to worrying about his future when it was unlikely that either of them would survive past dawn? He did not mention that to Sophie. What was the danger in pretending they might have a future? “I might be able to arrange a meeting with our king for you to plead your case. Somewhere public in the human world. If you had an escape plan in place and were ready and willing to disappear for a long time if he refused.”