Beautiful Warrior (3 page)

“So the man who beds you each night is an earthbound copy of me?”

I nodded. “But he doesn’t bed me every night. We don’t live together. Our relationship is still fairly new. We’ve only been intimate a few times.”

“And now you’re going to be with me.”

My cheeks went hot. “There’s more to this than that.”

He furrowed his brow
. “I already agreed to protect Seven from the border monsters, and I’m willing to help the rest of your sister’s people, too, if that’s what is concerning you.”

“My
concerns aren’t about them.”  A lump formed in my throat. “I cursed the warrior to die when he turns twenty-one. Duncan is twenty now, and that’s how old you must be, too. So by next year you’ll both be dead, unless the curse is broken.”

“I’m not afraid of dying
. That means nothing to me.”

I blinked at him, my lashes fluttering in rapid succession
. “But Abby says that there’s magic in Room 105 that should be able to keep you and Duncan alive. I just need to find it, and once Seven and the others are safe, I want you to help me search for it.”

“
I’ll do no such thing. If my destiny is death, then I accept that as my fate.”

“But I don’
t accept it.”  I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. “I made a horrible mistake when I willed the warrior to die.”

“If you’re my creator
and you willed me to die, then death is part of my power. I won’t weaken my spirit by combing 105 for a magical cure.”

Heaven help me
. Duncan didn’t believe in the curse, and the warrior didn’t give a crap if he died. “Please, don’t accept it as part of your creation. I couldn’t bear to know that you died because of something I did. If you fight it, then maybe Duncan will stay safe, too.”

“Maybe Duncan isn’t supposed to live.” 

I shoved my bowl away. “How can you say that?”

With a
curious expression etched on his handsome face, he watched my stew slosh over the sides of the bowl and onto the table.

Tears threatened to sting my eyes
. This hallucination wasn’t going as planned. Even the stupid blanket was falling off of my shoulders. “Damn it.”

He cocked his head
. “You have a temper.”

“Really?”  I pushed the blanket away
, knocking it onto the floor, and dragged my nails across the tabletop, treating it like a chalkboard. “You fucking think?”

H
e had the gall to smile. “Are you going to be that way when we’re together, little butterfly? Are you going to scratch and claw and curse when I’m inside you?”

Little butterfly
. Duncan called me that, too. Vanessa was part of a scientific name connected to a species of butterflies known as Painted Ladies. I’d read a book about them when I was a kid and had told Duncan about it.

And now, the warrior was u
sing it as an endearment, leaving me even more bereft. But that didn’t stop him from taking what he wanted. He stood up and plucked me right out of my chair, cradling me roughly in his arms.

An
d carrying me straight to his bed.

Chapter Three

He
pushed away the covers and placed me on the mattress. Then, while braced above me, he looked down at the breathless expression on my face.

“You’re in love with him,” he said.

Him
.
Duncan
. “Yes.”

“Does he love you, as well?
”

My heart thumped against my
chest, kicking like a caged animal. “We haven’t talked about it, but I doubt it’s even crossed his mind. Something happened to him when he was young, something traumatic that he can’t remember, and it affects how he reacts to love.”

“If he can’t remember what happened, how does he know it was traumatic?”

“He just does. He feels it, I suppose. But it only seems to affect how he reacts to romantic love and the bond it requires.”  My heart was still pounding like mad. “Have you ever been in love?”

“No.”

“Do you think you’re capable of it?”

He
stared, unblinkingly, into my eyes, like a hypnotist or a magician. While he drew me into his power, I waited for him to respond, uncertain of what he was going to say. The logical response from a warrior living alone in the woods would be a resounding “No,” but the way he was looking at me, it was anybody’s guess.

“Yes,
” he replied, his voice deliciously husky. “I think maybe I am.”

Swee
t Lord. If only he was Duncan and not a hallucinatory version of him. I put my hand against his cheek, needing to touch him.

Needing it so badly.

As I skimmed the rugged angles of his jaw, I said, “Please help me find that magic that will keep you alive.”

“I can’t do that.”
  He reached into my hair, tangling it around his fingers the way I’d imagined him doing. “And I won’t keep discussing it with you.” 

Aware of every motion, of every sound, of the ache his refusal caused, I listened to the
rain pouring down on the roof. “It’s not fair that you—”

“Hush.
”  He reprimanded me in a harsh tone, tugging on the blonde tendrils he’d taken hold of.

Once again,
I tried to persist. “But—” 

He cut me off,
crushing my mouth with a kiss. As his tongue pillaged mine, I made a desperate sound, everything inside me going raging hot, the fever burning from the tips of my spiky eyelashes to the tops of my pink-polished toenails.

T
he sinful sensation of being this close to a man was still wonderfully new. But it was frightening, too, knowing that I was hallucinating such an intimate encounter.

Mired in emotion,
I thrashed beneath him. I hated my disorder, my disease, my illness. No matter how I referred to it, it didn’t change the reality of how it affected me.

He ended the kiss
and lifted his head. Unable to cope with his dark gaze, I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Look at me,
” he said.

Fol
lowing his command, I opened my big, owlish blue eyes, praying that I could get though this with my soul intact.

“
How did you get here?” he asked.

Confused, I replied,
“What do you mean?”

“
How did you arrive in Room 105?”

I couldn’t tell him that I was crazy or that none of this was real
. “I found the portal to it in a hotel room in California.”

“And Seven was with you?”

“No. He appeared when I got here.”

“So you were alone in the hotel?”

I shook my head. “Duncan was beside me. I insisted on having him there while I searched for a way to come here. But I was the only one who was able to enter the portal.”  Which meant, in actuality, that the true “me” was still in the hotel room with Duncan.

“He watch
ed you disappear through the portal?”

“Yes,” I said
, bending the truth. What Duncan saw was a delusional girl spiraling into madness, and as to how the other “me” was faring, I couldn’t say. Was I mumbling to myself, the dialogue from this hallucination chopping out of my mouth in indistinct syllables? Or had I gone into a stupor, staring blankly at the walls while the activity churned solely in my mind?

Whatever the case,
Duncan was prepared to call 9-1-1 if he couldn’t handle what was happening to me. For all I knew, I was on my way to the hospital already, strapped to a gurney with the sirens blaring.

How
horrible would that be, going into a psych ward while I was having a romantic encounter with the warrior?

He
said, “I’m glad you came here without Duncan. If he was with you, I couldn’t have taken you to my bed.” 

I heaved an anxiety-ridden breath
. He looked exactly like Duncan, but they weren’t the same man. Although Duncan thrived on sex, he’d been reluctant to sleep with me at first. This version of him was using sex against me.

But suddenly I didn’t care
.

I
dragged his face back to mine and kissed him with a vengeance. Our tongues dived and danced, our pulses pounding in unison, mimicking the crash of rain.

He rubbed his
pelvis against mine, his buckskin pants chafing my skin and the knife at his waist bumping my hipbone. Dangerous as ever, he toyed with the waistband of my panties, playing with the elastic and snapping it back and forth.

I
realized that he didn’t even know my name. He’d yet to ask and I’d yet to tell him.

Duncan’s
name meant dark-skinned warrior, which fit my fantasy of him, but it wasn’t his birth name, nor was it invented by me. A schizophrenic man named Jack had chosen it for him. I wasn’t the only delusional person who’d impacted his life. Duncan was an advocate for mental illness.

And the warrior
? He was in it for himself, for his own hungry needs. Yet he was noble enough to die for my cause, to help Abby’s people and lay down his life when it was over.

I damned myself for creating him that way
.

Determine
d to have me, he forged ahead, telling me to turn around and get on all fours. This was it, I thought. The stallion-and-mare-type mating.

I did what was required of me
. But I didn’t like that I couldn’t see him. It made me feel disconnected.

He worked my bra free
and went after my panties, sliding them down my legs and tossing them aside.

Once I was naked, he shed his clothes. I could hear him removing his knife and buckskins, the rustle of movement filling the fire-lit room.

He pressed up against me, the
warmth of his skin and the hardness of male arousal assailing my senses. He reached around and thumbed my nipples, making them peak beneath his possessive touch. He buried his face in my hair, too, and whispered something incoherent in my ear. I assumed it was a Native word. But since I wasn’t familiar with indigenous languages, there was no way I could be sure. Eager to take him inside, to shed the feeling of disconnection, I rocked backward, inviting him to enter me.

But he didn’t comply
.

He made me wait.

And wait some more.

He
whispered the unfamiliar word again. It couldn’t be a real word, not if it was coming from my imagination. But regardless of its validity, it sounded compelling.

Soon
, he was trailing a hand down my spine, a caress so light and feathery, so gentle, it almost made me cry. The rain continued to pound, heightening the ambience.

He moved my hair off to the side and nibbled the back of my neck
. Was that what stallions did to mares?

And then, finally
—
finally
—he pushed himself inside, and I gasped from the wicked invasion. He penetrated me with powerful thrusts, our coupling flesh-to-flesh. Duncan would’ve never taken that kind of risk. He was always careful to use a condom.

As he pummeled me
with passion, blades of straw poked out of the mattress and scratched my knees. Even the bed creaked, making its harsh presence known.

The warrior
wrapped one of his arms around my waist and reached between my legs. I swayed to the motion of his fingers, my nerve endings going taut.

While he took control
, bending me to his will, I bit down on my bottom lip and moaned.

I loved
Duncan, but I was having sex with a primitive rendition of him, letting him fuck me for the closeness I craved. The need was so deep, so riveting, spasms shook my core.

I clawed the bed
, and we came at the same time, the power of completion ringing hard and heavy in the air.

In the aftermath, he
fell forward, landing on top of me and pushing me flat down. Much too aware of the battle I was waging, my lovelorn heart threatened to explode.

Fighting the feeling, I
prayed for the gift of sanity. Why couldn’t I be a normal person, living a safe and happy life?

The
warrior grunted and lifted himself up, leaving me without the weight of his body pressed against mine. I missed him instantly, wanting him to push me down again.

I rolled onto my side to face him
. He stared at me, giving me a romantic shiver. In return, I gazed longingly at him, with a haunted look, no doubt, reflecting the ache in my heart. He’d warned me not to badger him about breaking the curse, so I kept quiet. But it consumed me nonetheless.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“What do you think I’m thinking about?”

“Keeping Duncan alive.” 
He tucked a stray piece of my hair behind my ear. It was a tangled mess from the way he’d run his fingers through it.

I softly said,
“If I wasn’t with him, I could fall for you.”  I wasn’t sure why I admitted that, other than needing to purge the emotional pain.

He scrutinized me beneath dark-winged brows, shadows playing like rainclouds across his face
. “We’re not the same man.”

“You’re an extension of him.”

“But I’m not him.”

That was true
. I already knew that. But I was trying so hard to hold on to Duncan, to have a future with him. “What was the word you were whispering earlier?”  Suddenly it mattered. “What does it mean?”

“Ask Duncan the next time you see him.”

“He won’t know.”

“Then ask him to create a meaning for it.”

“I want you to tell me what it means.”  I wanted this hallucination to count for something. Besides, I knew that Duncan would never make something up.

But the warrior merely shook his head, refusing to feed my fant
asy any more than he already had, leaving me feeling disconnected all over again.