Hawk's Revenge: Lone Pine Pride, Book 3 Page 18
“Can anything make you feel better?” she challenged, her own anger rising. “We both know you’re never going to forgive me, so what are you doing with me? What do you want? Every day it’s hot and cold. You want me, you hate me, I get it, but I am sick of being the villain in this pairing. What more do you want me to do?”
“I want you to be who I thought you were!” he shouted.
She froze, startled as much by the raw honesty of his words as the volume.
“I want you to be the woman who would never betray me for any reason,” he went on, quieter now, though there was no lessening in the fierce intensity of his glowing yellow gaze.
She met his eyes, though it was a struggle to do so. She felt like she was shaking apart from the inside out. He would never forgive her. “I’m sorry I was too human to live up to your lofty ideals.”
“So am I.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I want you to be who I thought you were.
He hadn’t meant to say that. He hadn’t even known he was thinking it until the words were out of his mouth and then the profound rightness of them had sent shockwaves through his soul. He couldn’t seem to forgive her for not being the woman he’d wanted her to be. He hated all the reminders of who she was, what she’d done, because she was supposed to be his. His mate. His everything. The one who would never, ever betray him for any reason. Not even to save the lives of a hundred others.
Because he wasn’t sure he would have made the same call. He might have let all those shifters she saved fry if it was a question between her and them. And he wasn’t sure if that made him a better man or far, far worse.
Rachel was still stunned and he took advantage of her shock to stride past her and out of the building. Grace was there. Grace would watch over her. Right now, he couldn’t be around her. He couldn’t be around anyone.
He’d rushed back to the infirmary after his stretch on the perimeter. He’d been on edge all day on the wall, worrying that someone would make an attempt on Rachel the first second he wasn’t watching over her. But when he’d hurried through the infirmary, chasing the sound of her voice, her words had begun to penetrate and his blood had chilled.
He’d known she was an Organization doctor. Obviously, he’d known. He remembered. But hearing her talk about her subjects like they were nothing more than genetic material to be acquired and manipulated…it had shifted something dark inside him, reminding him once again of those awful months.
He’d been fighting his memories of last night all day and this was the perfect example of why. He couldn’t let himself want her. Couldn’t allow himself to believe she was who he’d once thought she could be to him. Wanting her was a weakness that had destroyed him before.
It wasn’t just that he wanted her to be the ideal that he’d envisioned before they met. He needed to be able to trust her and he didn’t know how he was ever going to be able to let himself do that. He didn’t even know what he was doing with her anymore, what kind of role he was playing.
He jogged away from the busy pathways of the main compound, reaching instinctively for his wings and hissing with frustration when his hawk remained stubbornly dormant.
He needed to fly. He wasn’t whole without his wings. That piece of himself, his hawk soul, was missing, perhaps forever, and it felt like an amputated limb he was left struggling to balance without.
There weren’t many avian shifters left—he knew his parents had feared that he was the last of his kind—and now even he had lost his wings. Surrounded as he was by other shifters, he was still as alone as ever. Separated from those so like him, but so crucially different. Separated from his hawk. Separated from Rachel.
He’d been alone much of his life—isolated even in the band of brothers that was the military. Ever since his parents died, he’d kept his own counsel and he’d never minded the solitude. He was a solitary creature. It suited him. But now he ached. Ached for the mate who was not to be. Ached for the hawk that had abandoned him.
Adrian ran, pushing himself through the snow that had fallen the night before, and his soul ached.
“I take it our little birdie left.”
Rachel’s head snapped up at the dry voice from the doorway. When Adrian had run out, she’d dropped onto one of the beds, momentarily defeated. She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there before Grace found her.
The lioness eyed her, reading something on Rachel’s face that made her step into the room and flick the door softly closed. “You okay, Doc?”
Rachel released a soft, exasperated breath. “I don’t know what I am anymore.”
Grace plopped onto the other bed, facing her. “That sounds like a good start. Like that whole the wise man knows first that he knows nothing bullshit.”
Rachel snorted. “Something like that.”
Grace waited, surprisingly patient, until Rachel found herself spilling everything she’d been holding on to for the last week—hell, for her entire life.
“It isn’t fair,” she said. “I lived my life by the rules, always trying so hard to be perfect so my parents would never regret for a second the choice they made to love me. My mother worried that I pushed myself too hard. My parents were wonderful. Love was never conditional for them—they were so good to me. I never understood why God decided to bless me with them. Why me, right? So I tried to be perfect enough to earn it. Always doing everything exactly right.”
“How’d that work out for you?” Grace said dryly—clearly not a woman hindered by playing by the rules.
“It worked great until I fell in with the Organization and my parents passed away and all of a sudden I was in a new cage. Lies and danger and trying so hard to do the right thing. Always wondering if I was doing more harm than good, never free to be myself. Always playing three different games, trying to stay ahead of suspicion.”
Rachel pinched the bridge of her nose, a headache starting just thinking about those years. “It was so isolating, so lonely, and then Adrian came along and I felt like I could relax with him—even though I knew it was stupid. I knew I shouldn’t let down my guard, because the Organization was watching. Always watching. And then they wanted him.” She swallowed thickly. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to get out of the cage I was in—so I made the shitty call. I told myself the Organization would have captured him anyway and that I should use the opportunity to gain trust so I could save more shifters. I told myself it was the greater good, but I hated who it made me. So I pushed back. I freed more shifters, I freed him, and the Organization put me in an even smaller cage. Their pet M.D. Until y’all found me.”
She closed her eyes, remembering the moments of adrenaline and hope. “Waking up in that cabin with a chain around my ankle was the first time in my entire life I can ever remember being truly free to be whoever and whatever I am. No pretense, no expectations. Here I may be a prisoner of sorts, but I’m more free than I’ve ever been. I could love it here, if Adrian would just let me. But he’s too busy hating me. Everything is just wrong.”
Especially the way she felt for him. “I can’t figure him out,” she heard herself confessing to Grace. “One second he’s angry, the next he’s protective. He touches me so tenderly I just fall apart, then pushes me away and won’t even look at me.”
“He’s a man. He doesn’t know what to do with all the feels,” Grace said in what Rachel was coming to recognize as her usual dry way. “If it’s any help, he refused to leave you if I wasn’t personally guarding your cute little ass. So he’s clearly got a hard-on for keeping you safe.” She shrugged. “That’s something.”
“Am I really in danger?”
“From most of the pride? No. But there are one or two who might still want a piece of you.”
“Like Dominec.” Rachel shivered, remembering the man with the heavily ridged scars twisting his face.
“Maybe,” Grace ad
mitted, though she didn’t sound certain. “None of us really know him.”
“But he’s part of your pride. Your…family.”
“Sort of. Keeping Dominec around is kind of like having a pet dragon. Some days it makes you powerful and some days it makes you barbeque. Can’t always tell which kind of day it’s gonna be.”
“So I should listen to Adrian.”
“In terms of your protection? Not a bad idea. He knows his shit. As far as the rest of it? Hell, what do I know about damaged shifter men with more instinct than brains? All I can do is wish you luck, girl, because if you decide you want him, you’re going to need it. Now, you ready to look at some prisoner mug shots?”
If you decide you want him…
Those words haunted her for the rest of the afternoon as she looked at the photos and identified nine of the remaining thirteen prisoners. Most were harmless—the most aggressive having been killed in the riot—but Rachel flagged two of the guards as assholes to keep an eye on. For a moment she thought one of the women, a cowering brunette with her hair covering most of her face, might be Madison Clarke, but when Grace told her the name on the woman’s badge was Marta Torres, she vaguely remembered a receptionist by that name and kicked herself for seeing bogeymen everywhere. Madison would never let herself get taken alive. Adrian’s paranoia must be rubbing off one her.
If you decide you want him…
The words still echoed in her brain into the evening as she explained the hormone therapy to Kathy and her mate and worked alongside Dr. Brandt to create a balanced hormone cocktail for the pair, listening with half an ear for Adrian’s return.
If you decide you want him…
Funny how she’d never before thought of it as a choice. Ever since that snowy night when he’d first swept into her life, he’d occupied a central point in her world in a way no other man had, filling up her thoughts and taking up space in her hopes. But was he really what she wanted?
He was strong and loyal and stubborn and moody and so intense she felt as if every second she spent in his presence saturated her soul and fired her senses. There was more feeling packed into a minute with him than in a month without and she wanted more of that intensity. More of the way he touched her when he didn’t seem to realize he was doing it. Gentle, solicitous, taking such care with her in a way that was automatic.
If only he didn’t stop himself from that automatic affection whenever he noticed he was doing it.
Was he what she wanted? She felt stronger when she was with him, like the most fierce and authentic version of herself. She wanted to be that woman. The one he inspired her to be. Not a perfect angel, but something much more real.
And not the woman he seemed determined to think she was.
So yes. She wanted him. But only on her terms. Only if they could start fresh and move forward, without the past hanging over them like a guillotine blade always waiting to fall. If they couldn’t have a fresh slate, then there was no point punishing herself wanting him. She’d taken everything he’d thrown at her, scarcely defending herself because on some level she’d felt like she deserved it, but that was over now.
No matter how many defining moments she had, no matter how much she told herself she’d changed, she was still that little girl trying to earn love. She’d spent half a lifetime trying to earn it from her parents and now here she was, ready to spend the other half trying to be worthy of Adrian’s affection. Something had to give.
She was done being sorry, done apologizing. He would either accept her thousand attempts to make amends and forgive her, or she would find a way to separate herself from him. She didn’t want to leave the pride—she liked it here—but she would, if they would let her. If that’s what it took to get away from Adrian.
It was time they both decided if they wanted this. If he wanted her, he needed to get past her past. If she wanted him, she had to show him how. Starting now.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Rachel was sprawled on her back on one of the beds in the emergency room of the infirmary when Adrian returned to take her home. She propped herself up on one elbow as the door slammed, blinking sleepily at him. It wasn’t that late, but she looked utterly drained, with dark circles smudged under her eyes.
He eyed her, unsure what reception he would get after the way they’d left things, but she just smiled wearily and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “Hey, Hawk.”
“Did you get dinner?”
“Moira fed us. She’s an incredible cook.” She came to her feet, stretching her arms high above her head, back arching so her breasts were outlined perfectly against the material of her soft woven shirt.
“Is she?” Adrian mumbled, knowing he sounded dazed, but unable to take his eyes off the feast of her body.
“Mm.” Rachel grabbed her coat and tucked her arms into it, zipping up and hiding all those delicious curves from his view—though she was no less erotically enticing to him hidden by all the fluff. “I was thinking,” she continued conversationally. “You should teach me to defend myself.”
He scowled, pulled out of his pleasant lust haze by her words. “Why?”
“It seems like a waste to have the toughest fighters in the pride babysitting little old me.”
He frowned. Grace should be here. Rachel couldn’t be left undefended. Admittedly, she was fine, but still.
“If I wasn’t so helpless, you wouldn’t have to escort me around,” she went on, breezing past him into the winter night beyond.
He quickly followed, frowning. There was something different about her tonight. She looked exhausted, but there was a bounce in her step, a challenge in her eyes. More fight to her, though she wasn’t combative. Just asserting herself.
She stalked ahead of him, tossing over her shoulder, “Unless you don’t trust me not to use any tricks you teach me against you.”
He lengthened his stride to keep up with her. “I don’t.”
She huffed out a sharp, aggravated sigh and glared at him, saying nothing. Definitely something different. Had something more happened today? He felt like he was missing something since their fight.
She charged forward down the path, doubtless fueled by irritation, then stopped so abruptly he nearly tread on her heels. Rachel whirled to face him, hands on hips. “I don’t know where we’re going.”
He pointed to a path on the left and she marched down it until the next fork where she paused again until he took the lead. She didn’t try to start another conversation and he wisely kept silent as he guided this new, feistier version of Rachel back to the cabin.
He didn’t know what to make of her like this, though he didn’t entirely dislike it. The new wildness was oddly compelling—and would probably be downright erotic if it hadn’t been sparked by anger that was aimed directly at him.
Adrian didn’t delude himself that she would hold in whatever she wanted to yell at him about forever. Five seconds after the door to the cabin closed behind him, she spun, hands back on hips, mahogany eyes shooting sparks.
“What’s it going to take?” she demanded.
“I don’t know what you—”
“Stop it,” she cut him off. “You know exactly what I’m asking. What is it going to take for you to forgive me? For you to even begin to be able to trust me again, because I have done nothing but prove myself ever since that one mistake, so what the heck is it going to take, Hawk?”
“It isn’t you.”
“Bullshit.” She blushed as she said the word, as she did every time she cursed, but it was no less forceful for that.
“It isn’t. It’s me I don’t trust where you’re concerned.”
She muddied everything with lust. He’d been an idiot, led around by his dick, and he refused to be made a fool by his desires again.
He meant to leave it at that, but at the bewildered look on her face, he found himself going on.
“I trusted you when I shouldn’t have last time. You batted those big brown eyes and tempted me into mistrusting my instincts—and look how that turned out.”
“Then it is me,” she snapped, stripping off her jacket with quick, angry movements. “I’m the evil temptress who led you astray. It’s always the woman’s fault when a man wants her, isn’t it?”
“Stop. I never said that.”
“That’s exactly what you said.” She flung the jacket at him and he caught it, flicking it aside. “I seduced you with my big brown eyes. It couldn’t have been your fault. I made you want me against your will.”
He drank in her flushed cheeks and the rapid rise of her chest. “It was never against my will.”
“No, just against your precious instincts.”
“What do you want me to say?” He prowled toward her, crowding against her when she refused to give up ground. “That you don’t overwhelm my senses and drown my instincts in need until all I can think of is tasting you?”
“That’s a start.” She sucked in a breath, her breasts rising to brush against his chest. Her pupils were the size of dinner plates.
Shit. How had he gotten here? So close all he had to do was lean and they would be flush against one another. He’d be breathing in the air she breathed out, looming over her like he could intimidate this woman who would never bend, never break. Her core of internal strength wouldn’t allow it.
And he fucking loved that about her. Loved that she would never be defeated, no matter what. She was a queen, a warrior, a thousand times stronger than he’d suspected the first time he saw her, soft-hearted and sweet, in that forest. Tempered steel and southern silk. And he’d never wanted anything in his life the way he wanted to take her, lift her to his mouth and seal them together, never to let her go. He ached with it, this desire for her—not just where his erection was swelling and pressing against his zipper, but in a tight, vulnerable spot just behind his heart.