Hawk's Revenge: Lone Pine Pride, Book 3 Page 12

  And perhaps this was theirs.

  There had always been layers of lies between them before—Noah and Dr. Russell—but now they were Adrian and Rachel, with all the complications that entailed, and this first soft exploration was so impossibly sweet her heart rose up in her throat and tears pricked the backs of her eyes as her lids fell helplessly closed. Her hawk kissed her like the act had been invented just for them. A flick of a tongue across her lower lip, a nip at the corner of her mouth, the soft press and draw that was so much more than lust and heat and need—it was seduction. Impossible to resist.

  His name escaped her mouth on a sigh.

  He went still. Shifter still. The motionlessness of an apex predator.

  Adrian lurched away from her so sharply she swayed, catching herself against the wall. He was already halfway across the room, the door slamming shut behind him before she could do more than say the first syllable of his name. The sound of the padlock clicking shut was ominously loud—even managing to be heard over the thundering of her heart.

  Merciful heavens. Her fingertips lifted to her lips, almost scared to touch them lest she brush away the imprint of him. What had just happened?

  They’d been fighting and then… Lord, chill bumps raised up on her flesh just thinking about it. If that was how the man ended an argument, she was going to have to rile him more often.

  His anger gave her pause. But if he hated her so much, he couldn’t kiss her so sweetly. Could he? All those little solicitous touches. The way he was so hell-bent on protecting her. She kept looking for signs that he still cared for her beneath all his anger, when it might just be the predator being possessive of his kill.

  There was emotion there, that was for sure, but it was different, so different than before. He’d always been careful with her before. Controlled. She’d rushed into his arms, afraid each moment with him would be her last and in a hurry to wring each drop of pleasure from their time together as possible, but Noah—Adrian—had been patient. Deliberate. Holding her like he would keep her in his arms for an eternity or two.

  That was gone now. There was anger where his adoration had been, but when he kissed her…the tenderness was still there underneath it all, confusing things.

  He was so certain he’d seen her while in captivity. She’d seen herself how out of it he’d been. The drugs must have done a number on his memory. It wouldn’t be the first time a prisoner thought their hallucinations were real. But she didn’t know how to earn forgiveness for the crimes his fevered, drugged-out mind had convicted her of.

  She wasn’t fool enough to think they could go back to where they had been before, but where did they go from here?

  Adrian called for his feathers, needing wind currents pressing against the undersides of his wings, but the hawk remained out of reach, dormant, and it was that absence that finally slowed his headlong flight from the cabin. He couldn’t go far, couldn’t leave her undefended, but neither could he go back. Not when he could still feel the warmth of her imprinted on his body.

  He didn’t know how he’d ended up kissing her. Or how it had turned so fucking tender. Or why she had melted in his arms like warm chocolate and sighed his name against his lips like he was the patron saint of imminent orgasms.

  He just knew he couldn’t let any of it happen again.

  He could almost forgive her betrayal, almost forgive the syringe piercing his skin and the creeping numbness that felled him, if not for the way she’d tormented him when he was in the Organization cells. And now to lie about it when he had heard her voice, that distinctive southern lilt, a thousand times.

  She was still lying to him, proving he was right not to trust her, proving he still didn’t know who she really was. Loyal to the Organization? Loyal to the shifter cause? Loyal only to herself?

  He’d believed down to his soul that she was his, and there had been a purity in that belief, justifying every risk—which made her violation of it that much more unthinkable.

  Whatever she was, she had never been loyal to him.

  He was close enough to hear when she began moving around inside the cabin, struggling to light a fire. The cabin would be cold, the fire in the pot-bellied stove long since burned out. The urge was strong to go back to her. Light the fire. Care for her. But that way lay weakness. He wasn’t sure he could look after her without succumbing to her. His instincts demanded he do the former and his brain insisted on the latter.

  No matter how strong his reservations, no matter how completely he knew she couldn’t be trusted, his need for her was still an animal thing, pressing out against the inside of his skin. Just like it had been from the beginning.

  He knelt with pine needles and twigs digging into his knees, staring at the cabin but seeing another night. Another forest.

  It had been snowing the first time he saw her.

  He wasn’t supposed to see her. It was safer if they never met. Safer if he couldn’t even identify her on sight. As long as he didn’t know who his accomplice was, she couldn’t be compromised if he was captured. And vice versa.

  For the first two years they’d worked together he’d resisted all curiosity about his counterpart on the inside. But then he’d arrived early at the clearing for a pick-up and there she was. Kneeling in the snow. Tucking a scarf around the neck of an eleven-year-old wolf-shifter, one of two sisters being relocated. It was unusual for the Organization to have wolf cubs—the packs were famous for protecting their young, but somehow these two had ended up in Organization hands. In Rachel’s.

  As a hawk, his vision was far keener than a human’s, sharper even than most other shifters. Even in the low light and through the snow, he’d been able to see her like a diamond shining in the night.

  His father had told him the story of how he met his mother a thousand times. Love at first sight. The first look hitting him like a runaway train. Adrian had known that hawks mated for life, but he’d always thought his father’s story was romanticized beyond belief. Until the sight of Rachel bowled him over and laid him flat.

  The rich mahogany of her hair was thick and swept to one side, falling over her shoulder with a hint of a curl. What he could see of her figure beneath her bulky winter coat was curved, feminine perfection, but it was her face that stole his breath. She wasn’t just beautiful. She was exquisite.

  Her features were delicate and refined. High, sculpted brows arched over eyes the exact shade of dark chocolate, framed by lashes so thick snowflakes tangled in them. Her nose was a perfect upturned slope, above a mouth so kissably soft he ached for a taste just looking at it. And beyond the individual perfection of each aspect of her face, her personality seemed to glow from every pore. A purity that was somehow unspeakably seductive.

  On a scale of one to ten, she was a fourteen. He’d never seen anything like her. Not in real life.

  Rachel.

  He shouldn’t have known her name. It was dangerous to know it. But he’d heard some of the more careless shifters he’d transported say it and now he understood the almost reverent tones used by some of the men when they spoke of her.

  That night in the snow, he’d listened to the sweet seduction of her voice, as she’d stayed too long, trying to comfort the cubs. By that age they had teeth and claws sharp enough to defend themselves, but Adrian understood the reluctance to leave them alone in the woods, waiting for the next leg of their journey. Even if it was a necessary measure.

  He’d watched her until she faded into the forest that night. And all the nights after.

  He’d gotten in the habit of going early to their meets, watching for her, hungry for the sight—until one night a few months later when she hadn’t shown up for a scheduled drop.

  The shifter smuggling operation was a well-oiled machine—and no one person was more important than the operation as a whole. They all knew that. If she failed to show, he wasn’t supposed to wait. He would abandon th
e op and flee. Those were the rules. They kept everyone safe. But when she’d been five minutes late, he hadn’t been able to walk away. Not from her. When her tardiness had stretched to fifteen minutes, then twenty, panic had dug its talons into his heart and he hadn’t been able to wash his hands of the op the way he knew he should.

  He’d crept closer instead, moving in the direction of the Organization facility, searching for some trace of her, staying in human form so he could keep his gun at hand. His imagination had conjured up a thousand nightmare scenarios before he finally heard the crunch of boots on the brittle frozen leaves and saw her, struggling through the forest with a singularly human lack of finesse, branches tangled in her hair with a small shifter child wrapped around her torso like a baby monkey.

  There should have been two—mother and child—but Adrian knew better than to ask after Mama Bear. When he’d spoken her name—Rachel, not even supposed to know it—she’d whirled toward the sound of his voice, stumbling and nearly falling to the ground, awkward with the weight of her cargo. Her human eyes had frantically scanned the night until he realized she couldn’t pick him out of the darkness and moved forward until her pupils contracted minutely, focusing on him as the moonlight touched him.

  She’d been wary, cautious, and there was something fiercely protective in her eyes. He’d known instinctively that she would fight to the death for the little cub in her arms—and that knowledge had reached through the distance he always kept around himself and made his chest ache strangely.

  Instead of trying to pry the cub from her arms, he’d broken protocol yet again and led Rachel with her cargo through the forest to his waiting Jeep. They hadn’t spoken on the trek. Nor when he’d opened the door and tucked Rachel and her ungainly burden into the passenger seat. They were miles down the road, the cub snoring softly in Rachel’s lap as more miles whipped beneath the wheels, before she spoke, thanking him for waiting.

  He’d frowned, his gaze never veering from the road ahead. I shouldn’t have.

  Then I’m even more grateful you did.

  Then he had looked at her. Rachel. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in real life—but this time every hair hadn’t been in place. There was dirt on her jaw and a stick snarled in her hair. Dark circles were heavy under eyes haunted by whatever she’d seen tonight. Lines of tension slashed between her eyebrows and at the corners of her mouth. And she was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  They reached a truck stop where he called in a favor to get her a ride back to within a decent hike of where she’d left her car. The night was cold, so after they settled the sleeping cub in the back seat, they waited in the warmth of the cab for her ride, the heater quickly fogging the windows and giving them a false sense of isolation, of safety. They who knew better than anyone that no one was ever safe.

  He didn’t remember everything they talked about that night—she’d teased him about filling an ark and blushed when he’d carefully extracted the twig from her hair. Talking nonsense mostly. He’d just wanted to hear her voice, the soft lilt of her accent—but he did remember asking her if it was safe for her to go back. Her soft promise that they didn’t suspect. That she would be fine. He’d been surprised by the protectiveness she called up in him. Surprised when he heard himself say, You don’t have to go back.

  The desire to keep her with him, to keep her safe, was a bright burning thing, but she’d just smiled and murmured, Yes. I do.

  That should have been the end of it. He should never have seen her again, but Rachel tempted him to break every rule he’d ever had. Soft, sweet, innocent temptation.

  He’d known from the beginning that every meeting with her could be a trap, but he had wanted to trust her. She had tempted him to go against his instincts, tempted him as nothing else ever had, and here he was, weakening toward her again, if only in his own mind.

  She was different now. Fiery. Less restrained. And that fire was a temptation in itself, but he would resist it. He would keep his distance. He was stronger than this.

  Or he thought he was. Until he heard the shower turn on and heated memories made him painfully hard. Adrian closed his eyes, but the visions were no less vivid that way. Unsnapping his jeans and taking himself in hand was pure self-defense. He recalled her slick heat, the way her eyes would flare with surprise every time she came—as if each frisson of pleasure startled her anew. His grip tightened and he groaned, jerking hard into his hand until the muscles in his neck knotted and his spine tingled.

  Fantasies of her were still more satisfying than sex with anyone else. But the fantasies were all he would let himself have.

  Adrian slumped back against a tree. He would get over this. He had to.

  The hot water wasn’t very hot to begin with, but Rachel stood under the spray until it was downright icy, waiting for some epiphany about how to crack Adrian’s anger toward her. Jailer or protector, lover or punisher. Something had to give.

  The toiletry buffet he’d left for her that morning had yielded her preferred brand of shampoo, conditioner and body wash. She was clean and floral-scented again when she emerged from the bathroom to find even more mixed-messages from her hawk.

  He was gone again, but signs of his presence were everywhere. The fire blazed in the stove. Cozy flannel pajamas were stacked neatly on the bed, next to another set of clean clothes for the morning. A tray of food was perched on top of the flat top of the pot-bellied stove, staying warm and smelling good enough to have her stomach growling and reminding her how little she’d eaten today.

  Rachel put on the pajamas and devoured every last morsel of the meal. The fire had warmed the small room nicely. Warm, clean and fed, the exhaustion of the day rose to the fore and she curled onto the futon, facing the door. She tugged the single blanket over her and wriggled around to find a comfortable position on the lumpy mattress, all the while watching for Adrian’s return.

  She wasn’t chained. He wouldn’t go far. He wouldn’t trust the padlock to hold her forever. He could be lurking on the porch. Or shifted into hawk form and watching her from a perch in a tree.

  The thought stuck. She’d often wondered what his bird form looked like. Would those yellow eyes still hold the force of his personality when he had wings? Would he be larger than the average hawk? Would his wings beat at the air with graceful sweeps? Would he ever trust her enough to show her?

  Her dreams were filled with raptors in flight and feather-light brushes against her lips that deepened into long, erotic tanglings of tongues, but Adrian never returned.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Looking for something?”

  Adrian jerked guiltily, automatically trying to hide the bottles in his hands behind his back, but Grace just lifted one tawny brow and snorted at the attempt. “Relax, Hawkeye.” She plucked one of the flowery bottles from the shelf in front of him and rolled it between her hands. “I’ve seen men trying to figure out how to buy lotion for their girlfriends before.”

  “She isn’t my—”

  “I know, I know. You don’t care for her even a little bit and you’re certainly not in love with her. Which is why lavender versus peach has become like Sophie’s freaking choice for you.”

  Adrian looked down at the bottles in his hands and shoved the peach one back onto the shelf. The general store at the pride was pretty bare bones—if you wanted something, you took whichever brand they had and said thank you—but when it came to feminine toiletries there were an abundance of options. He’d remembered what kind of shampoo Rachel used—the one time they’d showered together was engraved in his memory—but he’d never seen her put on lotion. Didn’t know what she’d prefer.

  Not that her preference mattered. She was a prisoner.

  He shoved the lavender back onto the shelf, plucking up the peach. Or what the fuck was Midnight Mist? Was that better? He started to switch the bottles—

  “Jesus,” Grac
e grunted. She shoved the bottle she’d been playing with into his hands. “Go with orchid. Orchid is hot.”

  “It’s not about hot,” he snapped. Rachel’s face was getting chapped by the harsh winter wind on their walks to and from the compound for her interrogations each day. It was his job to look after her. This had nothing to do with fucking hot, damn it.

  “I get it. It puts the lotion in the basket or it gets the hose again.” At Adrian’s horrified stare, Grace grinned wickedly. “What? I’m funny.”

  “Says who?”

  “My mom. Of course, she also thinks I’d be happier if I was married with a pack of rug rats nipping at my heels, so clearly the woman has been smoking something.” Grace grabbed a bottle of her own and started down the aisle. “So how’s the good doctor?”

  The good doctor was temptation and torment. But he couldn’t very well say that.

  He’d been avoiding speaking to her as much as possible ever since that…aberration the other night. She was too tempting. Too familiar. His memories too sharp.

  She wasn’t his lover. She was his prisoner. And he wouldn’t blur that line. He’d gotten in trouble before when he’d let his feelings for her rule his actions. He wouldn’t be so foolish again. Not when she was still lying to him, playing games.

  Their days had fallen into a certain routine. He would collect her each morning after she’d dressed and eaten the food he left for her in the night. He’d guide her, blindfolded, down to the compound and deliver her to the Alpha, his mate or his lieutenants, depending who had new questions for her that day. The sessions were always recorded, but as the days wore on and she was able to provide less and less new information, they grew shorter.

  He hovered nearby until the questioning was complete, then blindfolded her again and led her back into the woods to his cabin. She often tried to engage him in conversation, but he’d grunt monosyllabic replies and ignore her as much as possible. After checking the cabin for threats, he would lock her inside, returning only when he brought her dinner tray.