Hawk's Revenge: Lone Pine Pride, Book 3 (14 page)

“Am I dismissed?” he snapped.

“Are you reporting to me now? I thought you were all
I’m not part of this pride
.” At his glower, she shrugged. “Sure, you’re done. Go pee a circle around your doc.”

Adrian didn’t dignify the parting jab with a reply. He turned and began jogging toward his cabin. It had been hours, far longer than he normally went without checking on her. Sure, she’d had a bear guarding her most of the day, but he was young, and if Kathy was back at the main compound telling everyone Rachel was helping her, then the others had probably left as well. Rachel was alone. Locked in the cabin. Defenseless.

And Dominec hadn’t been at the riot.

Dominec, who could easily track her back there along one of the scent-trails she’d left when Adrian had guided her blindfolded through the woods.

Dominec, who had already made one attempt on her life.

Tired though he was, Adrian poured on a burst of speed, sprinting dead-out toward the cabin.

“Rachel!” He bellowed her name—as if that would help if she was being dismembered—and took the cabin steps in a single leap. The lock wasn’t on the door and his panic escalated to critical levels as he yanked the door open and charged inside.

And there she was. Sitting at the table. Calm and cool and collected.

The fear that had driven him instantly morphed into a blinding rage, latching on to the nearest excuse. He slammed his hands down flat on the table, bending down so his head was on her level.

“What the
fuck
were you thinking?”

Chapter Eighteen

Rachel had barely had time to process the panicked shout outside before Adrian was bursting through the door, surging into the room like the devil himself was at his back. It was late, far later than he normally arrived with her dinner, and he looked like hell—exhausted and covered with flecks of rust-brown dried blood. He’d staggered to a stop, his eyes glowing more hawk-like than ever as his gaze raked her from head to toe and back again. A thousand expressions flickered across his face before they were all swallowed in a dark scowl.

She’d been sitting at the table, wondering if she could use toilet paper and eyeliner to make a list of procedures for Kathy to give the pride doctors as a starting point, mentally composing her thanks to Adrian for allowing her the visit. Before she could ask him what had happened to leave him looking like he’d been in a bar brawl he was in her face, snarling accusations.

“I don’t know what you—”

“You think an Organization doctor can just start running fertility experiments on shifters here and no one will mind?”

“
Former
Organization doctor,” she snapped, rising to her feet, her spine straightening as she realized what had twisted his feathers. Lord, why was it always like this with him? Just when she thought they were making progress, he had to take seven steps back from trusting her again. “And I’m not experimenting on her. I’m helping her. Like she asked me to.”

“You think everyone here is going to care about that distinction? Do you know how many shifters only see an Organization doctor when they look at you?” He prowled around the table and she retreated instinctively, forcing herself to stop as soon as she realized what she was doing, her calves pressed against the low futon mattress.

“Isn’t that what you see, Adrian? Isn’t that why I’m your personal prisoner up here? Because I’m the Evil Organization Doctor Who Can’t Be Trusted? When are you going to stop painting me with that brush? Yeah, I betrayed you when we were a team, but you left me behind too. I thought I was going to die and I never blamed you.”

He stopped, close enough to box her in but not touching. “Is that why you’re bringing it up now? Because there’s no blame?”

“I’m only saying neither of us is perfect.”

“I never claimed to be.”

“No. You just wanted
me
to be. Because if I was a saint and I loved you, then it absolved you of all your sins and you must be a good guy after all, right? All those people you were ordered to kill as a sniper, you were forgiven if Rachel the Madonna loved you.”

He backed away from the futon and her, raking both hands through his short hair. “Don’t talk about love with me.”

“Why not? Because you hate yourself for still being in love with me?”

“Stop.” He growled. “No fertility treatments. End of discussion.” He turned away, as if they were done and she grabbed the object nearest to hand—which unfortunately was just a pillow—and chucked it at the back of his head.

“This isn’t your call!” she shouted as he spun around hissing in anger after her pillow-assault. “It’s Kathy’s body. Kathy’s baby.
Kathy
who trusts me to help her. It doesn’t matter what you want.”

“I can keep you here where Kathy can’t reach you.”

“Why? So I can be useless and bored? This is what I’m good at. It’s what I was hired for and here I can actually do some good with it.
Let me
.”

“It isn’t safe. Do you want to get yourself killed?”

Rachel froze, realization pulling the stopper on her anger and letting it leak out of her like water down a drain. He wasn’t trying to punish her. He was trying to protect her. She’d thrown the words about love at him on impulse, but there must be some truth there. He was determined to hate her, but couldn’t help worrying over her. Lord, what a mess they had made of things.

If only he would let himself see what he still felt for her.

“Why did you send Kathy and the others to see me today?” she asked softly.

He turned away, moving to the sink and running his hands beneath water that must have been icy, scrubbing at the rust-brown flecks caked on his skin.

“Adrian?”

“To distract you,” he answered without looking at her. “Keep you busy so you didn’t try to break free and get down to the main compound.”

“What’s going on at the main compound? What happened today?”

“There was a riot,” he said, still without looking up from scrubbing his hands. “Some of the recently released shifters managed to get into the building where the Organization prisoners were being held.”

Rachel hissed in a breath. “How many were killed?”

“Not quite half. Nine of twenty-two. Leaving a lucky thirteen.”

“Including me?”

He looked up then, frowning at her as if she’d said something disgusting.

“Aren’t I one of them? Isn’t that what you’re worried about? That no one will see a difference?”

“Some won’t.”

“So show them I’m different. Don’t treat me like a prisoner. Let me help Kathy.”

He shook his head, turning back to his hands—which were now as thoroughly cleaned as Lady MacBeth’s. “I can’t protect you down there.”

“Adrian, for the last three years I lived with the knowledge that every day when I got to work my employers might decide that today was a good day to kill me. A little danger is nothing novel.”

He didn’t react. Washing, always washing.

Rachel played her last card. “Am I really any safer here? Locked in a box? Easy pickings?”

His hands went still. A moment later he shut off the water and grabbed the ragged kitchen towel. He winced and Rachel zeroed in on his knuckles. “Are you hurt?”

He neatly folded the towel and tucked it over the edge of one cupboard. “It’s nothing.” He tried to dismiss her concern, but she caught his hand, cradling it between both of hers as she examined the swollen area.

“You should have this X-rayed. It could be broken.”

“Shifters heal quickly.” He began to pull his hand away, but she gripped his wrist firmly.

“At least let me wrap it. You won’t do anyone any good if you keep reinjuring it because you’re too stubborn to get it looked at.”

He grunted, but reached into his pocket with his uninjured hand and pulled out a key ring, extending it to her. “There are bandages in the trunk.”

She moved cautiously—no sudden moves, as if he was indeed a bird of prey who would be startled into flight. He sat on the futon and she withdrew the supplies from the trunk which seemed to hold a bizarre mishmash of possessions—an extra pair of boots, a well-worn spy novel, a lumpy black duffel bag and a white box with a familiar red cross on the front—all lined up with military precision. Adrian’s things. Was this all he had in the world?

She retrieved the first aid box and popped it open. Laying the bandages on the bed, she sat tailor fashion in front of him and drew his hand into her lap, gently probing the injury. It was almost definitely broken, and she wanted to push him to get it seen to properly, but shifters did heal rapidly. It was possible if she bound it today, it would be as good as new in a day or two.

Without pain killers, it had to hurt, but Adrian didn’t make a sound as she wound the bandage snuggly over his knuckles, bracing the broken bones in place. How often had he been injured with no one to tend to his wounds?

He didn’t look at her, watching her hands moving over his, but for once his gaze didn’t feel cold. A strange sort of truce existed between them as she worked. She found herself working slowly, wanting this moment to last longer. She secured the end of the bandage, letting her fingers linger, a light caress over his wrist, the back of his hand. When she heard his breath catch, she dared to lift her gaze to his face, he was close, his eyes all hawk as they fixed on her lips. She let her own gaze fall to the firm line of his mouth, leaning toward him. “Adrian…”

It was just a kiss. But nothing with Adrian was ever
just
anything. Their lips brushed gently, hesitantly, both of them hyperaware that the slightest misstep would shatter their fragile truce. And she didn’t want anything to break this moment. She lifted a hand and traced the hard plane of his jaw, his stubble rough against her fingertips. She deepened the kiss, sliding her tongue along the smooth inside of his lip. He groaned. The entire world seemed to shiver and hold its breath.

And then he lifted his head.

“I’ll take you down to the infirmary in the morning.”

Frustration spiked. “Adrian. That wasn’t why I kissed you.”

He pulled away as if he hadn’t heard her, standing and striding to the door.

“Adrian!” The padlock clicked shut after him.

Part of her wanted to celebrate. This was progress. But another, larger part of her ached. Would he ever stop walking away from her?

A low, distressed sound reached through the night and Rachel cracked her eyelids, blinking sleep away as her half-awake mind struggled to identify the noise. It came again, raw and edged with fear. She rolled to the edge of the futon, searching out the source, and came fully awake as she identified the lumpy mass sprawled blocking the door as Adrian’s sleeping form. He twisted restlessly, caught in some nightmare as another low, ragged sound ripped from his unwilling throat.

For a moment she was too shocked to move. He’d been guarding her sleep like this without her knowledge. Perhaps all week. She would never understand this strange man who would look at her like a murderer by day and watch over her each night. Who brought her presents—which he refused to admit were presents—and then turned around and snarled at her when she so much as brushed his hand.

He groaned again and she sat up in bed, wondering if she should wake him. Was he dreaming of the Organization? He may lash out at her if she woke him, but she couldn’t leave him in that dream world where he was obviously in pain when she might be able to help him.

Rachel slipped out of bed and crept across the icy floor on bare feet, half-expecting him to come surging awake at every creak of the floorboards, but he was too deep inside whatever nightmare held him. She knelt at his side, careful not to loom over him, and touched his arm—gently at first and then more firmly when he didn’t respond. His skin was warm beneath her palm, warmer than human, and harder, like the muscle was closer to the surface, barely contained inside his skin.

“Adrian.”

His eyes moved rapidly behind his closed lids, but they didn’t open.

“Adrian, you’re dreaming.
Hawk
.”

He jerked, flailing wildly, striking her across the cheek and throwing her away from him, eyes still squeezed shut.

Chapter Nineteen

“Adrian. Hawk.”

She was calling for him. He heard her, would know her voice anywhere, but he couldn’t reach her. He was back in the prisoner barn, but it looked wrong. Stretched. Rachel was vulnerable—outside the cell where the other prisoners had barricaded themselves—but with every step he ran, the distance between them seemed to grow longer. The footing was treacherous and he slipped, going down in a mess of blood and gore, something slick tangling around his ankles. Intestine, he realized, kicking at it, bile rising in his throat as she called again, closer this time. He looked up and could almost reach her, almost touch her, but then Grace was there, smacking his hand down with a swipe of her claws.
We aren’t doing enough
, she said. Kye’s face swam in front of him, fangs bared. Xander. Brandt. Roman. All those he’d thought were friends barring his way, forcing him away from her, his hands scrabbling for purchase on the blood-slick floor.

Then Dominec was there, his scarred face half-feline as he loomed over Rachel. The tiger dug his claws into her abdomen and twisted. She screamed and Adrian threw off the friends who would hold him back, fighting away their clawing hands. He reached for talons and wings. His hands instantly elongated, the tips sharpening to razor points. A familiar pain split his shoulder blades, wings bursting forth, but they felt wrong, diseased. He tried to flap them, tried to lift his partially shifted body above the fight to get to Rachel, a pool of blood rapidly expanding around her, her mahogany eyes dimming, but with the first downward thrust the bones of his wings snapped, the agony piercing as the brittle bones shattered and his feathers fell to stick in the gore at his feet. He called again to his hawk, but his wings dissolved, crumbling, the pain crippling. He screamed in a thousand points of pain as she said his name again, this time through lips white with blood loss, her eyes already dead as Dominec licked the glistening red of her blood from his claws. He’d failed her. Again.

“Adrian. You’re having a nightmare. Please, wake up.”

He felt hands on him then, shaking. Heard the sound of another heartbeat racing alongside his own.
Rachel.

He jerked awake—one moment wrapped in the bloody remains of the dream, in the next splayed on the floor of the cabin, Rachel crouched over him, gripping his shoulders, her face a mask of worry.
Alive.

He lunged for her, needing the feel of his arms around her more than he needed his next breath. She flinched at the sudden movement, but didn’t try to pull away when he buried his face in her hair, breathing her in, holding her close. He could feel her surprise in the slight stiffness of her shoulders, the careful way her arms closed around him in return. He whispered her name, his lips stirring the hair beneath her ear, and that wary stiffness melted away. She sank deeper into his arms, all warm, soft femininity—and so heartbreakingly alive.

It wasn’t a matter of conscious thought to lift his head and seek out her lips. It was the completion of a compulsion so irresistible the lack of it would have been unthinkable. She was smooth and sweetly yielding against his mouth, accepting all the desperation and tenderness that surged through him. He held her ever closer. There could be no distance in a kiss like this, no barriers between them, even air. She squirmed against him as if she could climb inside his skin and Adrian coaxed her mouth open, thrusting inside to claim all that she was with a sweep of his tongue. She tasted like heaven—strawberries, the lingering mint of toothpaste and something else. Something that was singularly
hers
. For the first time, he wished he were a different kind of shifter, so he could bathe in her scent, roll himself in the taste of her.

He slipped his hands beneath her flannel pajama top—hating himself for giving her something that covered her lush body so completely. Her skin was silk as he stroked up her back and she gasped, arching her body against his.

He claimed her mouth again, diving deep. He tried to reach her gorgeous breasts, but the damn flannel got in the way. Adrian gripped the shirt in both fists and yanked, sending buttons flying until her lush, delectable curves were his to feast on.

“God, I missed you,” she breathed as he bent, palming and massaging her breast, his tongue teasing the nipple with delicate flicks before sucking it fast and hard into his mouth just how she liked it.

She was a finely tuned instrument, and one he remembered exactly how to play. His free hand slipped down the front of her pajama bottoms and found her, wet and willing. Still laving her breast, he gently flicked her clit, making her cry out and twist in his arms, then soothed her with long, sweet strokes, delving his fingers into her sweet, tight channel, and she keened, shoving her pajamas down her hips and kicking them off.

Her fingers yanked at the drawstring of the slacks he’d been sleeping in, shoving down his pants until she found her prize, her fist wrapping around him with the perfect pressure.
“Fuck.”

“Condom?” she asked breathlessly and he swore again. They’d always been careful before. For all he knew he and Rachel weren’t even genetically compatible and shifters weren’t susceptible to human STDs, but they could be carriers for them and as a non-human Adrian couldn’t exactly get a blood test at a local clinic. He’d always protected her.

Please God, let there be a condom.

He dove for the footlocker containing his possessions, wrestling with the lock as Rachel followed, holding her flannel top closed in a strangely modest gesture.

Adrian threw open the trunk, rummaging through it without regard for his usual, orderly packing system. The toiletry bag was buried at the bottom. When he pulled it out of the trunk, his blood-deprived brain almost thought it heard a symphony. He yanked open the bag and there it was. Salvation.

What the fuck was he doing?

That single, rational thought somehow found its way through the lust fogging his brain.

Then she reached around him, plucking the condom from his fingers with one hand while the other wrapped around his cock and all his higher brain functions gave up the fight.

Rachel stroked her hand up Adrian’s cock, her face pressed to his shoulder to inhale the scent of him. Her Adrian, back in her arms.
Yes.
She used her teeth to rip open the foil packet and rolled the condom up his length, giving him an extra stroke for good measure.

He turned, hands sliding beneath the loosely flapping fabric of her pajama top, lifting her, placing her against the wall and pinning her there with his body, every point of contact a searing, erotic heat. He nipped her lower lip, her throat. Guiding her legs around his waist, he fitted himself against her core and pushed inside. She stretched around him, every sensation amplified by the fact that it was him. Her hawk.

His yellow eyes gleamed, nothing human left in them as they shone into hers. Deeper, harder, until she was sobbing his name, clutching his shoulders, and that first violent tear of pleasure ripped through her.

He bared his teeth and pounded into her, hard and unrestrained until she felt the prick of his talons delicately pinching her hips as he found his own release inside her with the intense, burning silence that she remembered so well. She whispered his name, holding him to her with arms and legs, as if she could hold on to that fleeting feeling.

Spent, he collapsed onto the futon, holding her against him. She wanted to wallow in the moment, to stretch it out for an eternity, but the jab of his talons was a little too sharp now that her afterglow was fading. Rachel had never been into pain.

“Careful,” she whispered. “Your talons are sharp.”

Talons.
Adrian froze. Moving carefully, slowly, he withdrew his hands. Now that she pointed them out, he could feel them, the sharp points where his fingertips should be, but he needed to see them as well. He hadn’t been able to partial-shift any part of his body other than his eyes since he’d escaped from the Organization. Part of him hated the loss of her warmth as Rachel leaned slightly away from him, her eyes questioning, but his thoughts were tangled up in talons and wings.

He lifted his right hand and both of them stared at it—the knobby, bony knuckles tapering to fierce, razor-sharp talons. They may have come when he called them in the dream or after, with her, with his release. He hated to lose them, even for a second, but he called to his human hands, watching as his fingers reshaped themselves into something wholly human.

Was he healed? He probed for the hawk, the other half of his soul, in the dark of his mind, but it was still lost. His talons. His eyes. It came to him in pieces, but withheld the most important part. His eyes burned, shoulders aching for the loss of his wings.

“Adrian?”

He jolted. Rachel lay against him, the length of her aligned to the length of him, but he’d momentarily forgotten her presence—not that he’d forgotten she was there, but more that the presence of her was so natural, such an extension of him that it was simply accepted. Her voice startled him—but it was the rightness of her in his arms that sent a jolt through him, not the disruption.

Shit.

What had he done?

Adrian set her away from him sharply, rolling to his feet and clenching his fists to fight the instinctive urge to help her to hers. He peeled off the condom, dropping it in the trash, and yanked up his pants, securing them clumsily. What the fuck had just happened? He’d reached for her like his long-lost mate and she’d come into his arms as if she belonged there.
Wrong. So wrong.

She scrambled to her feet, the sounds impossibly loud and clumsy. He should have heard her approach him and woken. She shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on him, even in the middle of a nightmare. His instincts should have raised the alarm before she got so close—but it felt so fucking right to have her close.

Wrong.

“Are you all right?” she asked, her voice a little rough. From sleep or arousal. Her heart still beat too quickly, her rapid breath raising her full breasts beneath the god-awful flannel top that she held closed with one hand. The beginnings of a bruise marred the perfection of her left cheekbone and he reached out to brush his fingers delicately beside the spot before he could stop himself.

“Did I…?”

Her slight grimace was answer enough before she said, “I got in the way when you were in the dream.”

Regret pierced him. That he could have harmed her felt more wrong than everything else in this chaotic interlude. “I’m sorry.”
For everything.

She waved away his apology. “It doesn’t hurt.”

He couldn’t tell if she was lying.

And that was always the problem with Rachel. He’d never been able to tell when she was lying.

He didn’t trust easily, but she had been the exception. It had been too easy to trust her and it would be too easy to do it again. He’d listened to instincts that swore she was
his
in an inescapable way, and he’d been wrong.

And now here he was again, falling too easily into her arms. He could be with her—he couldn’t seem to stop himself—but he couldn’t let himself be swayed by what she made him feel.

She’d delighted in his pain while he was in captivity. He remembered the malicious cheer in her voice. He couldn’t trust himself to trust her now. Not when she could be Mother Theresa or Machiavelli and he couldn’t tell the difference because he wanted her—and desire was the great blinder.

She hovered in front of him, on the balls of her feet as if she would rush forward into his arms at the slightest indication that he would welcome it. But no matter how he wanted her, how he ached for her in a way he’d almost forgotten how to feel, he couldn’t take that last step. Not with the cruel edge of her voice ringing in his memory.

If she would just admit it…

“How could you do it? Even if you had to, how could you?” She was supposed to be the exception.

Her eyes flared with shock and hurt. “Adrian… I explained. They knew about us—”

“Not that. The experiments. Why did you have to make them think you enjoyed hurting me?” Why had she had to make
him
believe it?

He needed to know, but he saw the denial closing down her face before she said a word. “I never—”

He couldn’t listen to her lies. Not tonight when everything was raw.

“Go back to sleep, Rachel.” He turned away without waiting to see if she would obey. He didn’t want to see the hurt on her face, didn’t want the guilt. He snatched his holster from the floor near the door where he’d been using it as a pillow before everything went sideways. He finished fastening his pants on the porch, hooking the holster to his waistband.

The icy night air felt right on his skin, the veil of falling snow just the mask he needed so he didn’t have to look at himself—or his desire—too closely. Wrong. She was wrong. It was an illusion that made her feel so right. Mistakes and lies.

He just needed to remember that.

“Damn it, Adrian!”

He leaned against the exterior wall, listening to Rachel cursing inside. She had an impressive repertoire. Surprisingly varied.

He’d never heard her lose her temper before Lone Pine. Not when they were sneaking around, always united, and he’d mooned over her like a freaking puppy. And not later, when he was her prisoner. She’d always been calm then. Chillingly so.

His memories of his time as a guest of the Organization were a foggy jumble at best, but he remembered with absolute clarity the first time he’d heard her voice inside those cells. It hadn’t been immediately after his capture. He’d had weeks to build up elaborate rationalizations for why she’d sedated him and handed him over to her bosses.

And all it had taken was the sound of her voice to shatter them all.

He’d been blind—thanks to one of the many operations to investigate the unique properties of his corneas—but he knew her voice, even with all the compassion stripped from it.

She’d been giving orders. The others bowing and scraping to her. He’d said her name, but she hadn’t responded—except to tell his jailers to determine the exact amount of pressure required to break an avian shifter’s bones. For science.