Tiger Eye (35 page)

Dela rubbed her arms. “I’ll go down with you. I need to walk this news out of my system.”

Hari remained with the others. Eddie and Dela went down to her studio. She watched him check the alarm codes; his quick fingers flying over the small pad. His dark eyes were intense.

“I want to thank you,” he suddenly said, casting Dela a quick glance. “For saving my life the other night. I haven’t had a chance to tell you … but no one’s ever taken that kind of risk for me.”

There was no self-pity in his voice, but Dela still sensed the cautious hunger of a young man who had been kicked too much as a boy and was only just beginning to find his feet. A subtle hope that this, at last, would be the place to call home.
I am surrounded by Lost Boys
, Dela thought, as she touched Eddie’s slim shoulder.

She said, “I couldn’t have done anything less. Not when you put your own life on the line.”

A flush crept up his neck. “I wasn’t hurt bad. I think my pride more than anything else. Things should have turned out differently. I should have reacted … better.”

Dela hesitated. “With your gift, you mean?”

Eddie grimaced. “Since the attack, I’ve been thinking of all the ways I could have stopped those guys. Heated up their guns, maybe just scorched their hands. Problem is, my control is good but not foolproof. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Fire spreads so easily, and I don’t … I don’t want to …” His voice trailed off. Dela waited, patient.

“It’s difficult,” he finally whispered, and his eyes were haunted. “I don’t want to hurt people, but I also don’t want to lose my friends because I’m weak.”

“Oh, Eddie,” Dela said. “You did the right thing. Everyone has a line they can’t cross, and if hurting people with your gift is what will break you,
don’t do it.
Don’t take the risk. That’s not weak. It’s being strong.”

Dela’s voice sounded hot, fierce to her own ears. She wanted to take Eddie’s head in her hands. She wanted him to understand the horrible lesson she had learned from Adam’s death.

“Eddie,” she said quietly. “Are you with me on this?”

“Yes,” he said, swallowing hard. “Yes, ma’am, I am.”

She ruffled his hair. He ducked his head, blushing.

When they returned upstairs, Blue met them at the door. He looked at his watch, and crooked a finger at Eddie.

“You have a doctor’s appointment in thirty minutes,” he said.

“Awww, Dad,” joked Dean, as a look of stricken disbelief passed over Eddie’s face.

“I forgot,” he muttered. Blue grinned.

“It’s okay, kid. I’ll hold your hand when they come after you with their needles and probes.”

Dean glanced at Artur. “Guess we should go take care of that, um, other thing.”

“What other thing?” Dela asked, leaning against the kitchen counter.

“Adam,” Artur said, grave. “We are going to take his body to be cremated.”

“Oh.” Dela looked down at her hands. “I kind of figured you guys had already done that.”

“Sorry, Dela.” Dean shuffled his feet. “We were waiting to see if Wen Zhang wanted him, but now that he’s dead …”

“I understand. Do I even want to know where Adam’s body has been all this time?”

“There are places where people don’t ask questions,” Artur said. “We make a habit of learning where they are.”

Again,
oh.

No one asked whether she and Hari would be all right by themselves. She almost expected it, some request that they both accompany the departing men. No one said a word, and when Blue winked at her, Dela suspected a conspiracy.

Not that she minded.

When the door shut behind them, absolute silence filled the room.

“We’re alone,” she said, astonished.

“Yes,” Hari said. “But only for a few hours.”

“Well, if
you
can wait—”

Hari took two long steps, threw Dela over his shoulder, and carried her into the bedroom. Dela, laughing, hooked her hands around the door and slammed it shut behind them.

The irony was not lost on Hari. Two thousand years of slavery, countless sexual acts—but here, now, as he gently laid Dela on the bed, he felt untested, clean.

He brushed his lips against Dela’s cheek, scenting her desire, hot and sweet. She trembled against him. Not with anticipation, he realized, but with nervousness.

Hari sat on the edge of the bed and held her hands, stroking her palms with his thumbs. “What is wrong?” he asked, sounding
far calmer than he felt. Dela did not pretend misunderstanding; she gave him a small, tremulous smile.

“Aren’t
you
a little scared?”

He almost laughed; neither magic nor death had made this woman show fear, and yet now her courage faltered. As did his.

“Yes,” he said softly. “You are the first woman I will ever make love to.”

Dela sighed, and with the passing of that long breath, tension leaked from her muscles until she clung to him, limp. And then her strength returned and she hugged him, tight and fierce. There was nothing shy about her now; nervousness had fled, and in its place was the assurance of a thunderstorm: electric, full of power. Dela kissed him; he felt her essence pour into his body, and the beast howled.

Hari pushed away Dela’s sweater, drawing her dress over her head. His hands trailed clumsily over the pale creamy wash of her skin; he lightly squeezed her soft flesh. Dela sighed against his mouth, and then his own shirt came off, his pants pushed aside to the floor.

Dela ran her hand up the side of Hari’s stomach, calling blood to the surface of his skin, heating him as powerfully as the desert sun of old. She traced the lines of his muscles, her fingertips trickling down his arms. She kissed his neck, laving the hollow of his throat with her tongue.

Hari picked up her palm and darted his tongue against her skin. Dela’s eyes widened, and as he trailed kisses across her wrist, she bent over his chest, soft hair trailing down his flushed body. Dela tasted his scars, careful and deliberate, running her tongue over rough flesh, swirling close and closer until she flicked his nipple, startling a low cry from his throat—and then another as she very gently bit down.

Now
he
trembled. His hands danced against Dela’s spine, loving glances of skin to skin, carving a path around her ribs to
the curve of her pale breasts, drawn tight and hard, peaked for his touch. Hari tried to watch Dela’s face, but she was hidden against his chest, suckling.

Hari ran his knuckles along her breasts, unfolding his hands as Dela drew back, moaning. He pressed his thumbs against her nipples, brushing them with tender care, lightly scraping with his nails. Dela’s back arched, and Hari took full advantage, bending her backward over his arm, lowering his mouth to her breast. As she had done for him, he fed on her body, reveling in the miracle of being allowed so intimate a touch. Dela’s whimpers electrified him. In all his years, he had never once imagined he could take such aching joy in giving another person pleasure. It was a marvel, a blessing.

Dela’s hands fluttered against his shoulders. “You never answered my question,” she gasped. “What does it mean to kiss like mates?”

A growl escaped him, and he lowered Dela all the way to the bed, trailing kisses down her body, fingers whispering against her flesh. She shuddered as he spread her legs.

Hari taught her, and when the lesson was done, Dela stared at him with lazy, languid eyes that raked over his aching body with hungry deliberation. He was unprepared for her attack—had only a moment to feel surprise—and then Dela’s hair filled his lap and his world became hot and wet. The kiss of a proper mate—except “proper” was not the word to describe the exquisite torture she inflicted upon his body, stringing him out one lick and touch at a time.

Dela suddenly chuckled, and the vibrations inside her mouth, the hot stir of her breath, made him cry out.

“So we’re mates, huh?”

“Oh, yes,” Hari groaned. Dela licked her entire palm and enclosed him in a loose fist, rotating her hand in a screwing motion that sent his mind reeling past the ceiling into the clouds.

“Oh, yes? Or, oh,
yes?”

“Both.” Hari drew Dela away from him, holding her tight against his body. She gazed at him with liquid eyes, her cheeks flushed, lips parted.

“After this,” he whispered, “you are mine and I am yours.”

“Forever,” she said.

He covered her mouth with his own in the same instant he slid into her body. They caught each other’s cries of pleasure, a passionate entwinement of voice and body, spirits merging with each slick, hot, stroke.

Hari felt Dela enter him as surely as he entered her, a bright light set to make him burst. His blood cried for her, his heart spilling over with every murmured breath of her name. He loved her, and his love sang down to the root of his soul.

They sank into each other’s eyes, and Hari did not know where he began or ended—everywhere Dela, everywhere—and as she shuddered beneath him, her orgasm bringing on his own climax, he heard a long clear tone inside his head, resonating down to his soul. The heat of that note set his skin on fire, and he cried out Dela’s name as his seed poured into her body.

I am complete
, he thought, and knew it to be true.

Hari folded his arms under Dela’s shoulders and carefully turned them on their sides. Still joined, they ground their bodies tight, writhing with the aftershocks of pleasure. Hari buried his nose in Dela’s neck, inhaling jasmine, bathing in the thunder of her heart.

Hari was almost asleep when Dela asked, “When can we do that again?”

Hari smiled against her cheek. For the first time in two thousand years he felt true peace. “As soon as possible,” he said. “And as often as you like, for as long as we are alive.”

*  *  *

It was the fur that stirred her to consciousness—luxurious and warm, caressing her skin as though each individual hair breathed, desired. She felt her body surrounded by that soft heat which was not human, and when she opened her eyes, she found herself embraced by a tiger.

Orange fur, striped with black and cream. A magnificent feline head, pressed against her pillow, pink tongue peeking out from between long white teeth. Dela’s breath caught with wonder. Fairy tales sang opera in her mind.

It never occurred to her to be afraid. This was Hari—miraculous, magical Hari—and he had somehow found his skin.

When the Magi stole my skin, he stole a piece of my heart. A piece of my heart, in the shape my sister. To find my skin, I have to find my heart …

His words trailed fire through her body, an echo of their passion. Could the answer truly be so simple as love? Had their love for each other healed him?

The curse!

Dela began shaking Hari awake. Her shake, however, turned into a stroke, her fingers burying themselves in his chest, trailing low to his stomach. Hari was a huge man—as a tiger, immense. His embrace was heavy, comforting, and—dare she admit it—utterly erotic.

She moved against him, slow, savoring the luxurious richness of fur caressing her skin, the heat of his body. Hari’s limbs twitched; massive paws flexed, revealing the hint of claws. When he opened his glowing eyes, Dela saw the man inside the tiger—her Hari, looking down at her with a fevered hunger that stole her breath away.

A sound emerged from the tiger’s throat, a low cough. Words, perhaps—unsuited to a feline throat. He tried again,
and Dela could not hide her smile. She looped her arm under one of Hari’s heavy sprawling limbs, and lifted it up so he could see the striped fur.

Golden eyes sprang wide.

“It’s true,” she said, laughing in delight, awe. “You
changed!”

Hari froze, and then muscles began shifting in his face, fur flickering to skin and back again, a shimmering transformation. Dela touched the high bone of his cheek, savoring the sensation of his body changing beneath her fingertips. She pressed close as flesh replaced lush fur—his torso narrowing while legs stretched, long and naked—and Hari wound himself around Dela, tight, full of power, love.

“You are beautiful,” she said, heart in her throat.

“Delilah,” he whispered, but he did not pull away as Dela thought he would. Instead he hunched tight around her body, burying his fingers in her hair, exploring her face with gentle kisses, light and fine.

“Turn around,” he murmured, and she shifted in his arms until she felt him hard against her back—hard, then, inside of her—and she pushed deep into his broad chest, rubbing skin against skin, sliding into a slow rhythm that was hot and thick.

She cried out as Hari nipped her shoulder. A moment later he shifted, bracing himself above her, driving her deep into the groaning mattress with hard sharp thrusts. Hari’s teeth grazed the back of Dela’s neck, tangling in her hair as he held her down with muscle and bone. His breath burned hot against her scalp—but not as hot as his long body. Dela squirmed close, raising herself up to meet him, thrust for grinding thrust.

Hari’s fingernails flashed into claws, raking deep furrows in the sheets; Dela grabbed his wrists, crying out as she came. Hari growled, but he did not slow his movements. He pushed harder and Dela glimpsed fur, a light striped sheen of orange and black rimming his human hands and arms. Hari grabbed
her hips and waist, hoisting her even higher against his thick heat. Dela braced herself against the mattress, drowning in pleasure as Hari rode her hard, his teeth pressed against her neck.

They climaxed together, Dela bucking against Hari’s hips as he shuddered, a low cry escaping his throat. His hands flexed, holding her close as he buried himself one last time into her body. Dela felt his seed trickle down her leg. She wanted to taste it.

“Oh, Hari,” she murmured as they collapsed on their sides. For a time, it was enough to feel Hari’s body vibrating with contentment, his arms loose around her. Dela listened to her heart slow, and when she could breathe again without gasping she carefully disengaged herself and rolled over to face him. Hari held her close. Dela butted her head against his chin, drawing in his scent. She buried her fingers in his thick hair.

“Delilah,” he said, and it seemed to Dela that her name was the only thing he could say. He lifted up his arm and they both watched as fur pierced skin, muscles shifting with bone. He shuddered, a choking sound emerging from deep within his throat.