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“Take care of her for me, Ethan. She’s my sister now.”
He looked over at Marie again. “I will protect her with everything I am, Kat.”
As Ethan clicked his phone closed, he repeated his promise. Turned it into a vow. “With everything I am.”
Several hours later, Marie struggled to wake from a dark and terrifying dream in which bears battled panthers, and the strange lizardlike creatures the landwalkers called alligators snapped at the flesh of the vanquished. She abruptly sat up on the couch where she lay, realizing that it would not take a dream-speaker to translate that dream for her. She was caught in a battle between opposing predators, and her gentle gifts of healing wouldn’t be of any assistance at all to him.
To Ethan.
She watched as he stood at the table in his starkly furnished strategy room. Other than the couch where she’d finally dozed off, only a few scattered chairs, a desk, and a large table covered with charts and papers decorated the spacious room. He’d called it his office, but she’d been in the palace war room and recognized this place as its twin in purpose. Ethan’s men surrounded him, discussing strategy and plans for the upcoming challenge. As if he felt the weight of her gaze upon him, he turned those golden eyes toward her, and his heated stare pinned her in place, stealing the very breath from her lungs.
He’d spoken truly when he named attraction a tame word for what lay between them. If attraction were a single hearth flame, this was a conflagration. An inferno of raging desire. It made no sense at all, and yet it made all the sense in the world.
Some attractions defied logic. Isn’t that what the women who came to the temple had told her time and again? Even her brother, when he’d described his newfound love for Kat, defiance mingled with hope that she might understand and embrace her new sister.
Bastien, who’d always underestimated himself, finally came fully into his own when he found a warrior woman to stand at his side. But she, Marie, was no warrior. The best she could manage was a few simple tricks with the calling of water.
Her gift was to h
eal and to aid in childbirth. So unless Travis decided to go into labor during the challenge, she thought bitterly, there would not be much she could offer.
A noise alerted her to movement, and she looked up to see the pride members filing out of the room, nodding as Ethan issued last-minute instructions.
“William, take a team and relieve the first watch,” Ethan said.
William nodded. “Get some rest. You’ll need it. The intel says Travis is one of the most powerful alphas in the central part of the country.”
Ethan bared his teeth in a terrifying mockery of a smile. “Then maybe he’ll offer some sport before he dies.”
Marie gasped at the overt ferocity in his voice, and he stood, head bowed, for a long moment before he turned to face her. As he crossed the large room toward her, she shivered at the intent plain on his face. He wanted her and was prepared to lay siege to her defenses.
She was unsure if she had any defenses left to raise against him.
He sat next to her and lifted a hand to twine in her hair. “Did you get a little rest?”
“I think I must have slept for a while. It has been a very long day, and I did not sleep well last night, with the excitement of the journey ahead of me.”
His lips tightened. “Not exactly what you thought it would be, is it? I’m really sorry, ocean girl. Once we get this little problem out of the way, I’ll wine and dine you in the very best restaurants.”
She considered the leap for a moment before deciding to brave it. Life was fraught with potential danger. This courageous man would fight for his pride members, his lands, and even his life in fewer than twenty hours.
In the end, the leap was really only a very small step. She leaned her face into his hand and pressed a kiss to his palm. “I don’t need the best restaurants, Ethan. Right now, I would be honored simply to be alone with you.”
A crystalline moment stretched between them, lasting so long that she was afraid her offer had been misguided. Then something in him seemed to snap, and he lifted her onto his lap, pulling her to him so tightly that she could barely take a breath.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Marie?” he said, rasping out the words. “That you will be mine, if only for this night?”
The moment was too huge to comprehend; too crucial to some inherent need in her soul to acknowledge. Instead, she found refuge in levity. “Well, perhaps. But only if you will respect me while I’m naked.”
He shouted out his laughter and jumped up with her still in his arms, as though she weighed nothing at all. Then he bent to kiss her and poured so much longing and hunger and need into the kiss that she was dizzy long before he released her to stand on her feet.
“I want you right now, ocean girl. But I won’t take you here in my office. I want you in my bed.”
She nodded, and he caught her hand in his own and pulled her, half running, down the hallway to his rooms. When they arrived, he kicked the door shut behind him and then locked it. She caught her breath, transfixed at the predatory cast to his face as he stalked her across the room.
“Wait,” she said, breathless with anticipation, with longing, with a trace of fear. “I want…” She ran to her bag and dug in the bottom for the colorful scarves of Atlantean silk she’d brought with her, thinking perhaps she would wear them to some event with Bastien and Kat.
She tossed the scarves, rich with gold, silver, turquoise, and so many other jewel colors, onto his bed and spread them on his stark white pillows and sheets.
