Tethered (25 page)

The moment stretched out, endless. Was this more torture, drawing out her horror and fear? He could draw it out all he wanted. She wasn’t going to give him a goddamn thing—

“I know you will not,” he said against her neck. “And I cannot, either.”

He hadn’t been extending the torture, then. He’d been trying to work himself up to biting her, and couldn’t follow through. Thank God. He couldn’t kill her, couldn’t hurt her. There was nothing he could do to her.

So why wasn’t he letting her go?

The touch of his healing Gift soothed the pain at her neck. A burning lick up the length of her throat followed. Taylor shuddered, recoiled.

His left hand gripped her hip, held her still. “So we will sate your hunger instead.”

Her hunger? But she wasn’t—
Oh, God.

Arousal burst inside her like a summer storm. Wet. Hot. Electric. Her body arched, straining against his. Her bare nipples brushed his chest. The delicious rasp of his reptilian scales wrung a moan from her throat, but this wasn’t sexy because he still looked like a giant demonic monster, and he wasn’t hard or tempted, and this wasn’t her, this was Michael—

“Get out of my head!
” Her shout cleared the fog of need. Taylor swung her knee, slammed it into his dick, but didn’t produce a flinch. “You bastard! You can’t kill me or hurt me, so you play with my brain? Threaten me with dragon sex? Are you trying to frighten me or just piss me off?”

Darkness swamped her mind. He was taking over again. Screaming, Taylor fought his possession, but she couldn’t stop herself from lifting her lips to his, from sliding her tongue between his razored teeth to taste the burning heat of his mouth. A desperate sob built in her chest. Tears spilled as she deepened the kiss. Oh, God. It didn’t even matter what he did with her when he took over her mind. That he did it against her will was horror enough.

His hand cradled her jaw. Still holding her mind tight, he lifted his head. “I’ll keep you with me for eternity, Andromeda. I’ll use you as a brainless puppet. Your body will live, but you won’t be
truly
alive—”

You rotten fucking bastard!

The shout rang inside her head. She shoved him out of her mind with a scream of rage. Tears still burned her eyes but not in horror and desperation anymore. Only fury remained—and she was done. Done, done, done. A puppet? He’d use that against her? It wasn’t even a threat. Even if Michael could hurt her, even if he ripped out her brain, that wouldn’t give him his body as he’d wanted. No. He’d only
threatened that because it stabbed the most painful part of her, opened the wound that
never
healed and poured acid and salt into gaping flesh. And he’d known to do it because he’d been in her head, because he’d seen her little brother lying in his bed, his mind gone but his body still living on.

Not a threat. Just deliberate cruelty.

And if this was at the core of him, if this was his nature, then he wasn’t a Guardian—he was the kind of monster that the Guardians wanted to destroy. So he could have his goddamn body. Just as he’d wanted.

She met his obsidian gaze, felt his triumph, and realized he’d pissed her off just so that she would give it back. It really didn’t matter anymore. He could have it, and stay here in Hell where he belonged.

“Fuck you, Michael,” she said.

She dropped his body out of her hammerspace and onto the sand behind him. Now he’d have to let her go to eat it, and she’d get the fuck out of here.

But he didn’t move. And she hadn’t known that getting rid of his body would feel like this—her chest painfully tight, as if filled with sudden pressure. She stared up at Michael. Over her head, the grip of his fingers holding her wrists loosened. His arm dropped to his side but she didn’t fall back to the ground. The pain in her chest became agony. Blood spilled from his mouth…and she could taste her own. She looked down between them.

Oh, God. A long spear impaled the symbol between her breasts, so deep that she couldn’t see the spearhead. Blood coated the steel shaft.
Michael’s
blood. The spear had stabbed through his back, then all the way through her chest.

Khavi.

Taylor couldn’t see the other Guardian behind Michael, only a familiar muscled form with dark bronze skin and lifeless limbs. His body from her hammerspace, skewered with them. So this had been the plan. No wonder Khavi hadn’t shared it with her. Khavi hadn’t just considered Michael’s nature—she’d known Taylor’s nature, too. Taylor would never have given his body to this dragon, not until he
pushed past her limits with his cruelty, not until she was done with him and said her final “fuck you.” Khavi had known. And they’d both fallen perfectly into place. Now the spear connected them all. Michael’s body, his soul—and Taylor, who’d linked them together.

A thrum resonated through the steel shaft. In front of her, Michael’s dragon form shrank again…but not shape-shifting. Held motionless by pain and shock, Taylor watched as he
melted
back, as if slipping along the bloodied spear—and was sucked into the symbols that Khavi had carved into Michael’s body on the day he’d transformed Taylor, on the day he’d sacrificed himself.

His soul, returned to his body. And his life…?

His eyes opened. Amber. Human. His gaze locked on hers and his body surged forward on the spear.

She flinched back and he froze. His hand lifted toward her.

“Andromeda.”

She wanted to tell him not to call her that, he knew she hated that name, but she couldn’t speak past the blood in her throat. But at least that had been his voice.
His
voice. A harmony. Michael was back. Why wasn’t she free? She felt him in her head, dark and protective, building up her psychic shields and pushing away the agony. His healing Gift slipped along the spear still impaled through their chests—he wouldn’t be able to heal her, not a wound from that weapon, but he was trying. She was safe, though; she’d survive this. It hadn’t touched her heart.

His gaze fell to the symbol.
Release.
His amber eyes darkened to obsidian, realization and denial tearing through his mind and echoing in hers.

Khavi yanked the spear back.

Excruciating pain tore a gurgling cry from her, but that wasn’t all that went. Bits of her bone and flesh clung to the spear. Michael’s big hands rose to catch her even as the spear’s head, dripping with her blood, jerked back through his body.

And her mind didn’t release him. He was
ripped
away, and she screamed as his psyche tore free
with bits of hers still clinging. He caught her as darkness filled the shredded remains.

No white light, no kiss. Just darkness and pain and the stench of Hell, wrapped up in Michael’s arms.

Meljean Brook
lives in Oregon with her family. She is the author of the Guardian series and the Iron Seas steampunk romance series. For contact information and extras for both series, please visit www.meljeanbrook.com.

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Titles by Meljean Brook

The Guardian Series

DEMON ANGEL

DEMON MOON

DEMON NIGHT

DEMON BOUND

DEMON FORGED

DEMON BLOOD

DEMON MARKED

The Iron Seas Series

THE IRON DUKE

HEART OF STEEL

RIVETED

MINA WENTWORTH AND THE INVISIBLE CITY

(A Berkley Sensation Special Novella)

TETHERED

(A Berkley Sensation Special Novella)

Anthologies

HOT SPELL

(with Emma Holly, Lora Leigh, and Shiloh Walker)

WILD THING

(with Maggie Shayne, Marjorie M. Liu, and Alyssa Day)

FIRST BLOOD

(with Susan Sizemore, Erin McCarthy, and Chris Marie Green)

MUST LOVE HELLHOUNDS

(with Charlaine Harris, Nalini Singh, and Ilona Andrews)

BURNING UP

(with Angela Knight, Nalini Singh, and Virginia Kantra)

ANGEL OF DARKNESS

(with Nalini Singh, Ilona Andrews, and Sharon Shinn)