Hawk's Revenge: Lone Pine Pride, Book 3 (11 page)

She gave herself up into his care, blanking her mind of the concerns of the day and focusing instead on the cool night air filling her lungs one breath at a time and the warmth of the hawk at her side. Even without her sight, she always knew where he was. Her Adrian-sense was well-honed.

She was enjoying the walk, wishing it could stretch on longer—so of course it felt like it passed in half the time of their previous trip. Before she knew it he was tugging at the scarf and her eyes—well-adjusted to the dark now—opened to the shadowy shape of the cabin rising out of the clearing.

“I’m sorry I’ve run you out of your home.”

“You haven’t.” His hand was back on the small of her back, nudging her up the steps. She went obediently, wondering if he had any idea how often he touched her—little brushes, subconscious gestures, but always in contact, always keeping her near.

“But where do you sleep?” she asked as he pulled a key ring from his pocket and set to releasing the padlock. “While I’m here, I mean.” Where had he been last night?

Please don’t say with Grace. Please don’t say with Grace
, she chanted internally, remembering the blonde’s knowing smile as she met Rachel’s eyes.

“Here,” he grunted. The padlock came loose and he opened the door, stopping her with a hand on her hip when she would have preceded him into the shack. He crouched forward as if expecting an attack, slipping into the room and searching it with the efficiency of deadly experience. He acted like they might come under attack here. From the Organization? Other shifters?

A chill danced down her spine and she glanced over her shoulder, scanning the dense shadows of the forest. A dozen shifters could be lurking out there, two dozen Organization operatives, and she would never know.

“Hawk?” she called, her voice quavering.

“Come on in. It’s clear.”

She stepped into the dubious fortress of the cabin, feeling disproportionately relieved when the door was shut behind her. The damn thing only locked from the outside, but she was still grateful to have it closed at her back.

Then what he’d said earlier registered.

“What do you mean you sleep here? What about last night?”

He gave her a look that questioned her intelligence. “Did you really think I would leave you unguarded?”

“Do you mean to say you slept outside? In this cold?”

“I don’t require much sleep and shifters aren’t as affected by cold as humans.”

“You can still get hypothermia.” She’d seen the studies. Temperature tolerance was a favorite experiment at the Organization because it served the dual purposes of torture and scientific research.

“Relax, Dr. Russell. I still have all my fingers and toes. The specimen is intact.”

Rachel had always been able to control her temper before—she’d had to—but tonight, exhausted, cranky and unjustly accused for the millionth time, her hold on her anger snapped. Perhaps this was another of those defining moments—a small one, this time. The moment when she’d finally found her breaking point.

She stormed across the small room, getting right in Adrian’s face—or his chest, since he towered over her. She poked him with one stiff finger. “I have
never
treated you, or any other shifter, like a lab rat. I know you’re mad at me and yes, I did a terrible thing to you, but you can’t cram me into the Evil Organization Doctor box just because you don’t want to deal with your feelings for me.”

He caught her wrist, stopping her poking. “What feelings are those? Loathing? Disgust?”

“Lust.”

Chapter Fourteen

Adrian blinked, rocking back on his heels like she’d swung at him, discomfort written all over his face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He dropped her wrist like it was on fire and started to push past her, but she sidestepped to block him, her body bumping into his, chest to chest, hip to hip. “Don’t you?” she challenged, grabbing his hips by the belt-loops. “Tell me, Hawk, which pisses you off more? That the Organization fucked you or that I did?”

She’d never said that word like that before, actually referring to the act. Her face flamed, but she forced herself to meet his glowing yellow gaze without flinching.

“Do you still want me?” She’d never been bold with him before, but she rubbed against him now, provocative and slow. “Is that why you’re so angry?”

His eyes blazed and suddenly he wasn’t trying to get past her. One hand gripped her hip as the other closed over her throat, gently but firmly. Her heart rate tripled as he rushed her backward with his body until the rough-hewn wall pressed against her back. The hard heat of him pressed against her abdomen as he loomed over her, a savage light in his eyes.

“Tell me, Doc,” he mimicked darkly, “were you just following orders? Did the Organization tell you to fuck me into submission?”

Her heart pounded, need driving the beat. He’d always been tender with her, treating her like she was precious, breakable, but this was different. There was an electric wildness in him now. An edge that she knew should not turn her on, but she was practically squirming with desire.

Her protest was breathless. “I meant it when I told you everything between us was real.”
And still is.

“Everything,” he echoed, acid in the word. “Are you proud of yourself?” His long fingertips moved over her neck, softly stroking the delicate skin as his other hand curved around her waist. “Proud of how I fell for you? Proud of how easy it was to trick me? Were you laughing with your Organization friends while you were taunting me in that fucking cell?”

His voice was hypnotic, seductive and low. Rachel felt herself melting under the spell of it and almost missed the significance of the words.
Taunting me in that fucking cell.
“I didn’t—”

“Don’t lie.” His fingers tightened fractionally, not enough to hurt, but just enough to remind her that he held her life in his hands.

Pinned against the wall, she trembled, but not from fear. He would never hurt her. “I never saw you. They wouldn’t let—”

“Don’t
lie
,” he snarled. “You were there. I know what I remember.”

“I swear I’m not lying. I wouldn’t lie to you. Not about this.”

“And I should just believe you. When everything between us was a lie from day one.”

“It wasn’t a lie. You were…” Words failed. He’d been
everything
. The only thing in her life that had felt real.

“What was I?” That yellow gaze bored into hers, partial shifting until everything human left his eyes. “Your express pass to the higher echelons of Organization operations?”

“I explained about that. What it let me do. It was necessary.”

“If that’s what you need to tell yourself.”

“Adrian—”

“You should have told me
before
,” he growled. “But God forbid I question Saint Rachel. Does it make you feel good? The way the shifters here fucking worship you? The
savior
. Did you like the way all the lieutenants looked at you today? Everyone
loves
you. Does it make you feel powerful?” His other hand moved to grip the hair at the nape of her neck, drawing her head back as his gaze roamed down her body. “I bet you get off on knowing I still want you. That you fucking
own
me.”

“I never wanted to own you,” she whispered. “I wanted…”

“What? You want to be my consolation prize for all I went through?” His hold on her waist lowered to her hip and squeezed before jerking her tight against him so she could feel how hard he was.

“Stop it,” she whispered, pressing her thighs together against the heat pooling there.

“Tell me what you want.” The words were a dark growl, his face was harsh, but all she saw in him was pain that made her throat ache, and all she wanted was…

“You,” she said on a sigh. “I always want you.”

“
Fuck
.”

Whatever battle he’d been fighting with himself ended as his mouth crashed down over hers.

The kiss started off fast and fierce, a surge of wild heat and possession. She held on tight, tugging his body closer to hers, but seconds after his tongue plunged into her mouth, he released a low moan and everything changed. His rough grip eased, his lips softened and that erotic darkness in him retreated, transforming into something so sweet and heartbreakingly tender that it was even more impossible to defend against than the initial overwhelming rush.

What began as reckless, undeniable lust became something else entirely.

A tease. A taste. A lazy exploration.

Their bodies were plastered together in a thousand points of heat but he drew back until their lips flirted and brushed tentatively, like a middle-schooler’s first kiss.

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 the 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.