“Goddess, D, when I realized you were missing, I nearly died.” A shudder wracked his body. “When I finally figured out where you were, I heard you scream. I thought I was too late.”
She brushed her cheek against his chest. “He touched my head with his hands. It felt like he poured acid in me. I really thought he’d planted something in me, but the Shaman couldn’t find anything but shadows.”
He slid his hands in her hair and pulled back to meet her gaze. “But you’re all right?”
Her eyes filled with pain as she looked at him, but it was a pain not of the flesh. Grief, plain and simple.
He kissed her softly, reverently, drinking in the feel of her. The taste. Memorizing her sweet lips, so warm, so soft and precious. If all he had left was a few hours, he’d spend them like this. With her.
Tighe pulled away, then swung her into his arms, startling a quick gasp from her. “I need to make love to you, D.”
Delaney hooked her arm around his neck and pressed her lips to his cheek. “I need to make love to you, too.”
A pleased growl rumbled in his chest. “I need a shower first. I must stink like five-day-old garbage.”
She shuddered. “I think my sense of smell has been permanently burned away.”
Her words made his chest ache, and he remembered that kitchen, that smell, and could only guess what a horrifying experience that had been for her. His grip on her tightened, and he pressed his head gently to hers as he carried her, safe in his arms at last.
He took her back through the gym and into the open shower at the back, where he lowered her slowly to her feet. Kissing her briefly, he turned on one of the showers and began stripping.
Delaney did the same, lifting the soft pajama shirt to expose her beautiful breasts.
“Not here, sweetheart,” Tighe said softly. “There’s someplace else I want to make love to you. I’ll only be a minute.”
Delaney managed a sad smile. “I need a shower as badly as you do. Probably worse, considering where I’ve been.”
He stared at her, understanding dawning slowly. “Is there a reason you didn’t shower the past two days?”
She pulled off her pajama bottoms and tossed them on the bench. “I was out of it as long as you were, though not quite in the same way. The moment I woke up, I came for you, Tighe. The moment.” Her gaze met his, her eyes filled with a silken strength and a tenderness that made him ache with love.
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her fiercely, tenderly, telling her silently what was in his heart. But the slide of her nakedness against his had his body revving, his eyes changing. If he didn’t put distance between them soon, it would be over here and now. And this was not where he meant to make love to her.
“Quick shower, D.” He forced himself to release her and turned on a second of the four showerheads. He didn’t dare try to stand that close to her right now.
As Delaney stood watching him, she cocked her head. “Are you really going to take a shower with your sunglasses on?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
Her disbelief annoyed him. “There’s a reason I wear them, D. It’s important.”
But as he watched her, an aching hurt entered her eyes. “All we’ve been through together, knowing we could almost be out of time, and you’re still going to hide from me?”
A fist clenched inside his chest. “You don’t understand.”
“Then tell me.”
He stared at her, feeling trapped. She didn’t understand. She couldn’t possibly understand. Yet everything she’d said was true. And, goddess, but he loved her. He could bare himself for her, couldn’t he?
He lifted his hands and dropped them again. “It’s because my eyes go feral whenever I’m attracted to a woman.”
She gave him a look that said she clearly thought he was an idiot. “So?”
“So, they turn into tiger’s eyes. They’d scare the shit out of you.”
She fisted her hands on her bare, slender hips. “You’re kidding, right? Have you forgotten I was the one who got you out of there? I stared into your tiger eyes for what seemed like forever, Tighe, and yes, I was scared. You were snarling and snapping, trying to bite my hand off, but the thing that scared me the most was that I wasn’t going to be able to reach you.”
With a growl, he stepped under the hot spray of the nearest shower and tipped his head back as that fist in his chest tightened. He heard her move, then felt her arms slide around him as she pressed her cheek against his chest.
“You don’t scare me, Tighe.”
“You like kissing monsters?”
“Take off the sunglasses, shape-shifter.”
“Dammit. Can’t you just leave it alone?”
“Nope.”
In a fit of anger, he pulled off his shades and tossed them onto the floor. As much as he wanted to stare down at her with his animal eyes, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t stand to see her own eyes change, fear filling their depths.
Delaney’s fingers curved around his jaw and with a feather-light touch, made him look at her. “Why did you use the word monster?”
He forced himself to meet her gaze, bracing for her reaction. But she just continued to look at him like she always did. “It’s just a word, D. Animal, Feral, monster. It’s just a word.”
She shook her head even as she watched him with eyes warm and understanding, an understanding he wasn’t sure he could handle.
Lifting her hand, she pressed her palm to his cheek. “I love your eyes, Tighe. Because when I look into them, I see you. Even when you were in that feral state, the moment you came back to me, I saw you. Your fierce strength and gentle protectiveness. Your courage and honor and determination. Whether your eyes look like a man’s or a tiger’s, I see you.”
He tore his gaze from hers and looked up at the ceiling. “Thanks.”
She released a soft snort. “Thanks? Tighe, for heaven’s sake, you’re an amazing creation. Rare, powerful. Beautiful. In all your forms.”
He heard her words, but the fist inside his chest only pinched harder. “You don’t understand.”
“Obviously not.”
Her soft palm slid across his chest. “Tell me. Help me understand. If you give me just one last gift, make it this.”
He groaned. “You don’t fight fair.”
“You can’t always win with fair.” Her soft mouth brushed his arm in a sweet kiss. “I want to understand you.”
“Let me finish my shower, first.” He needed space. Because she was getting too close. She was digging too deep.
Delaney sighed, her eyes frustrated and sad. “Okay.” She moved to the other shower and picked up a bottle of flowery shampoo Kara must have left down there.
He washed thoroughly, scraping his skin raw, lost in feelings and thoughts he didn’t know how to explain. Things he didn’t want to explain even if he knew how. But Delaney’s presence, the solidity of her acceptance, grabbed hold of him and wouldn’t let him go.
He’d give her the sun and the moon if he could. He supposed he could try to explain what he didn’t entirely understand himself. And if he was going to do it, it had to be tonight.
With a sigh, he turned off the water, wrapped a towel around his waist, and sat on one of the benches, tipping his head against the wall behind him as she finished her shower. His gaze fastened on the rocklike tile of the wall across from him as his mind looked inward.
“I love living here, D, fighting beside these men. And when I shift into my tiger, it’s a rush unlike anything you can imagine. But I swear, I swear not a day goes by that I don’t think about how I’d give it up…” He shook his head. “I’d give it up…”
The words burned in his throat.
Delaney joined him, wrapping a towel around her dripping body as she sat down beside him. Her fingers stroked his damp arm. “For what, Tighe?”
Pulling her against him, he struggled to find the words for a longing he’d never given voice to.
His voice shook. “To hold my daughter again.”
Delaney started. He tasted her surprise. But all she did was press her head against his shoulder. “Tell me about her.”
Where to begin? But as he clung to her, the words poured out.
“She was precious. Perfect. Her name was Amalie, and the last time I saw her she was five, with dimples like mine and a cloud of golden curls that she’d flick back from her face as she ran from one discovery to the next. She had a quick mind and an insatiable curiosity, and from the moment she learned to speak, all she did was ask questions. Why do the clouds move? Why don’t all butterflies wear the same colored wings? Why did her cuts take days to heal and mine only seconds?”
“She was mortal.”
“Yes. My wife, Gretchen, was human. The children of such unions can be either, but Amalie was mortal.”
His eyes fogged, a lump forming in his throat. Goddess, but he missed her.
“Tell me about Gretchen.”
Swallowing back the emotion, he forced himself to push past the anger that thoughts of her always brought and think about the girl she’d been. For the first time in centuries, he thought of the girl he’d fallen in love with all those years ago.
“I met her when I was fifteen. She was a year younger, but I knew I was going to marry her. From the first day I saw her, I loved her.”
“Where did you meet her?”
“We both wound up with the same foster father. I grew up in a Therian village in Denmark. When I was nine, my mother had a premonition of a Mage attack. The Mage in that area, at that time, were trying to wipe out the Therians.”
“Why?”
“A superiority thing we’ve suffered from the dawn of time. One of the women in our village had married a human a few years before, so my mother took me to her and asked her to let me stay there for a while. She promised she’d come back for me as soon as it was safe.”
Delaney’s soft hand stroked his chest. “She didn’t come back, did she?”
“No. A few months later, the woman I was living with died of a mysterious illness. She was Therian, so of course it was no illness. It had to have been Mage magic of some kind. I was too young to understand fully what was going on, but I had a feeling…I knew my mother would never come back for me. So I lived with the human, Anders, and his young son, helping with the farm.”
“Did he know what you were? That you were immortal?”
“I was never really sure. In hindsight, no. He couldn’t have known. When I was fifteen, his fourteen-year-old niece came to live with us. Gretchen. She was…incorrigible. Full of mischief and laughter, and I fell head over heels in love with her. Three years later, we married. Amalie was born a year after that.”
A soft kiss brushed his shoulder. “What happened?”
He looked down at her dark head and lifted his hand to touch the cool sleekness of her hair. “Why are you so sure something happened?”
She lifted her head to meet his gaze, her heart in her eyes, and he knew she felt the pain in his chest. So he told her.
“I was marked by the goddess to be the next Feral Warrior.”
Her eyes widened. “Literally?”
“Yes and no. By the goddess, I mean Nature. There’s not a real woman or anything. But the marking is literal.” He touched the four claw marks that scored his right nipple. “I woke up to these after a hell of a dream I can’t remember. I kind of knew what they meant. I’d heard of the Feral Warriors and how they were marked, but I’d never seen one. That night, as we got ready for bed, I wanted to make love to my wife.”
Delaney’s breath sucked in audibly. “Your eyes changed.”
Tighe nodded, the old pain driving a stake through his heart. “She screamed.” He looked across the shower, his sight caught far in the past. “I thought she saw something behind me, something threatening my family. That emotional rush turned me completely feral. Not crazy, like you’ve seen me, but still feral. I was horrified as claws unsheathed from my fingers, and fangs grew in my mouth. She ran from me. She ran from our cottage screaming for help, yelling that there was a demon in her home. The villagers attacked me, hacking at me with knives and axes. If I’d been human, I’d have died. I managed to get back in my skin—back in my human form—and tried to explain, but they weren’t listening. I had no choice but to run that night.
“The next morning, I snuck back into the village. I had to talk to Gretchen. I knew she loved me. If I could just explain, everything would be okay. But the moment she saw me, her eyes filled with such terror. Such terror, D.”
Delaney looked up at him, and he met her gaze as she reached for his hand. “That’s why my terror sets you off, isn’t it? It’s that memory.”
“Probably. I was furious with her, but mostly…I hurt, D. She’d betrayed me. Betrayed everything we’d meant to one another. She started screaming again and ran from me, and I let her go. I understood it was never going to be okay. But as I left my house, my home, and started back through the garden, I heard Amalie. I turned around to find her running toward me. Toward me. She was crying for me. Gretchen’s uncle snatched her up as the other villagers armed themselves, ready to drive me away a second time. All the while Amalie kicked and screamed, reaching for me, the tears streaming down her face.” He covered his eyes against the burning that wouldn’t stop. “I turned and walked away. I turned my back on her, D. I never saw her again.”
