Wicked Paradise (9 page)

The Druid man he’d sensed several times prior to that day and the mysterious new woman hid within the jungle. WindWraith halted to gain his bearings, pulling his roiling mass into a cohesive shape. He adopted the form of a black lion. Ruffling mane, swaging tail, omnipotent growl. Dense midnight black fur, bloodstone eyes. His powerful, solid body raced into the low-growing brambles at speeds his disjointed, expansive form failed to achieve.

Tearing through the jungle, he cut down the foliage in his path, strewing bits and pieces of greenery behind him. He zoomed across a narrow creek and lifted off his hind legs to fly over a quartet of dead crystal boulders. Wind fluttered his mane, fresh Druid magic sizzled on his tongue. Magic as ancient and potent as the magic he had tasted, nay, possessed, many lifetimes ago. Residual energy deep within the blackened rocks filtered into him, aiding his strength, sending him flying through the brackish jungle air.

The island secreted a new power that day. It languished on the air in tentative pockets, testing a newfound boldness, easing out of a deep hiding. Oddly, the island paradise acted less intimidated by WindWraith after many years docilely hiding to avoid being raped of its power. WindWraith roared out his glee, as if
he
had everything to do with rousing the island back to life.

Not wishing to ensnare the couple, he maintained a narrow distance behind them, enough to gauge their magic and origins. And to discover how the two together had awakened the slumbering island. How the woman preserved ties to his homeland and held the ancient blood of his era. How had the couple arrived? They hadn’t traveled through the gateway he’d manipulated the few other useless sorcerers through to land on the island. Was there another gateway? He’d searched every cranny of the island and the perimeter waters as far as the crystal barrier and never discovered another portal. Had the earthquakes opened one? Better still, had the quakes destroyed more of the brilliant stone barrier, the outer lock on his prison? The barrier old Merlin thought WindWraith too weak to destroy.

Drawing upon his former powers, he shifted into an eel shape and slithered into a crevice in the rocky cliffside, his color morphing into the hues of the cliff. He watched the man and woman rest on the rocky ledge, assessing each other. He stretched out a feeler one foot, two, three. Dazzling sunshine flooded him with fuel from the heavens. Crystal power pricked at him, and singed holes in him, eating away irreplaceable cells. Enraged, WindWraith squealed in pain and whipped his feeler back into his rocky haven.

The Fomorian studied the electrical pulses in the air around the couple. The man hid his magic well, though not completely. Easy to detect, the fire in the Druid’s blood was a perfect complement to the Druid fire in WindWraith’s magical makeup. Yet, the man seemed overly strong to be merely a fire mage. Another form of magic existed inside him. Not water, not air, not earth. WindWraith’s confusion rippled along his coiled length. A possible vessel, the young, strong body he desired most of all.

The woman, though. Ah, she represented a perfect magical counterpart. Ancient Druid blood flowed strong and thick in her veins—fire, air, and earth. WindWraith must get closer to determine her particular strengths. She may be the ideal vessel. On the other hand, she may be too strong for his magic, a nigh impossible, yet thoroughly intriguing conundrum.

Weary of his idleness, he pressed his powers to the ground, setting in motion another battle of wills with the island.

Chapter 10

Ryan spread a thin hide over the length of Morgan. She snuggled into a mattress of droopy fronds and moss leftover from his last exploration. The crinkling beneath the spongy moss made enough noise to wake the dead, yet she slept on. A fierce need to protect her swept through his very center, battling his resolve to remain wary. Overwhelmed by his heightened emotions, he inhaled slowly, bolting her unique bouquet inside his senses, a light floral scent that permeated her hair despite her saltwater dunking.

Unable to tear his sight off Morgan’s serene face, he clenched his thighs, preventing his hands from touching her. His body thrummed from the control it took not to wake her and resume what they’d started. It’d been so long since he’d had a woman, scarce and precious in his ravaged world.

At first, he believed his dream of Morgan was demon-wrought, meant to divert him from hunting Fomorians or finding a way off the island. He hardly remembered the last dream he’d experienced living in the remains of Los Angeles—New Angeles. All he remembered were the nightmares of the fighting, the Fomorian’s poisonous bite, death’s wreckage, the razing of nearly every living, breathing thing across Earth’s barren lands.

The dream they’d shared had been different from any other he’d experienced, though. He’d felt what Morgan felt, shared in the sensations of her arousal. So real, it confused and excited him all at once. It made him believe in a future, while he wondered if she represented death. Future and death were the two beliefs that kept his people sane as they resisted the deathly bite of the Fomorians that killed off most of humanity.

The recollection of a shadow-shifter he was sure was a Fomorian flirting with Morgan, exerting its false claim upon her in their dream, inundated him with white-hot jealousy. No one had the right to touch her! Not even in his dreams.

Shock shoved his spine ramrod straight. What the hell? She didn’t belong to him. He pounded his fist on the ground. What the temptress did to his senses wasn’t a good thing. She could weaken him, make his heart feel things he didn’t want it to feel, didn’t know how to feel.

He stole one last glance at Morgan’s bewitching face, and left to sit on the ledge outside. As he swung his legs over the smooth lip, the treacherous, endless sea riveted him. Ryan stabbed his hands into his snarled hair. “I can’t let her get to me.”

Morgan and his overwhelming attraction to her went against everything he believed in, everything he’d trained for since birth. As the most powerful Druid in North America, descended from centuries of dominant sorcerers, his people depended on him to protect and lead them. They expected him to make the proper choices for their wellbeing, especially in a treacherous post-apocalyptic world. That included introducing anyone into his coven who posed a potential threat. Paranoia had become common sense among his people when very few humans remained who weren’t ensorcelled by the Fomorians.

Even in his dream, he’d sensed a veil of danger shadowing Morgan. Had his enemies planted her to distract him from leadership? Why not? The Fomorian Horde had tried every game in the playbook to bully him. They’d infiltrated his coven once, killing several guards, stealing magic from those he trusted most. The more magic the bastards stole, the closer they traveled to their goal to turn Earth into the ultimate Fomorian playground...including a massive breeding ground for strong Druid-Fomorian freaks.

But his people weren’t newbies at fighting evil. All pagans born with innate magic had been on the frontline of attack for several years before the Horde Wars. Druids, witches, and warlocks weren’t able to mass a united offense to defeat the growing Fomorian population. The day after he sailed away from the California coast, he was expected to enter into a pact to merge the remaining Western and Eastern Druid covens of North America. As much as he hated the merger, it was critical to fight off the attacks. To help the rest of the human race survive, if anything remained of it.

For those reasons, he refused to allow entanglements to deter his purpose or his responsibilities to those who counted on him. The raven-haired beauty embodied everything he fought against. Ryan groaned deep in his throat, shook off his tangled thoughts.
Damn it!
In his twenty-six years, he’d never experienced such a war between his head and heart. A death dirge had strummed inside him for so long he hardly recognized the life budding in his blood, bones, and muscles.

Mesmerized by the flat sea stretching to the ends of the bizarre, foreign world, Ryan watched the sun dip into twilight, an amber oval floating on the sapphire surface. He’d lose his incentive to find the dead boar if he didn’t get his ass in gear. He had only a small cache of dried food buried in the cave. Who knew how long they’d need the cave’s crystals to protect them? Especially since that bastard shadow-shifter now knew of Morgan’s presence on the island.

Ryan checked on Morgan, brushed silky, dark wisps of hair off her pale face. He gathered his gear and climbed up the shorter length of the steep cliff wall, using the footholds he’d marked when he first discovered the cave. Tracking was one of his innate Druid talents, but he dared not use the minute magic necessary to invoke it even when shielded from outside detection. He also wanted to preserve his magical energy and prevent the Fomorian from stealing more than it’d already filched from him. He’d be damned if he became a midnight snack for the bastard and desert Morgan to its evil clutches.

Ryan poked his head over the top of the crag and scanned the encroaching jungle. Although he sensed a faint trace of the Fomorian, the cliff-top appeared safe, and he hauled himself onto level ground. Sprinting into the jungle, he stomped off his irritations on crackling twigs and leaves carpeting the jungle floor. Twin moons lit up the twilight sky, and the sinking sun in the eastern horizon deepened the shadows in the jungle. After two weeks on the island, it still amazed him how ass-backward this land was from the world he knew.

He hoped Morgan knew something about their mysterious location, one of a million other questions begging for answers. Least of all, why he felt as if she were winding through his soul, why he felt her magic. He’d never experienced such a strong connection to a woman—or anyone, for that matter. And he’d never wanted anyone so bad, so fast.

With raw needs, just like any other man, Ryan had known his share of women before the Horde Wars. He never sought them out. He gave them what they wanted and sent them on their way. A few returned for more, hoping to break his shell, to win the heart of a man known for his cold, calculating distance. The temptress in his mind, now in his life, defied even his basest needs. All he wanted was to explore every inch of her delicious body with his hands, his mouth, his tongue. When he’d kissed her, and she flicked her tongue against his, he drank her taste into his soul, locking it deep to draw upon later.

Renewed aggravation trod up his back, anchoring, suffocating. Finding a way home was a top priority. Unable to lose sight of that, he understood he couldn’t act alone. Once they discovered a way off the island, Morgan’s magic was crucial for his plan to work. Even if it meant he never touched her again, he needed her.

And they sure as hell were
not
killing that Fomorian.

Ryan was taking the bastard home with him.

Chapter 11

Jumbled images peppered Morgan’s mind. The spent greenery underneath her crinkled, and she focused her sleepy eyes on shimmery gold flakes veining the granite wall to her right. Rustling sounds across the dwelling startled her into full consciousness. Reality slammed into her. Time to face the Druid assassin, a murderous Fomorian, and a bizarre island destined to do them all in—despite the syncopated heartbeat she’d felt lying close to the ground, or the cool, calm reverberations that had lulled her to sleep.
Thank you for the wonderful birthday gift, Father
. She heaved the bed covering off, sending it flying across the cave.

“You’re awake.” Ryan closed the distance between them. He crouched beside her, hooked her hair behind her right ear. He checked her head wound, his long fingers lingering on her cheek.

Mistrust oozed across her stiff shoulders. She scooted against the stone wall, stretching the borrowed T-shirt over her knees, hiding her bare skin along with her chaotic emotions. Bewildered by Fate’s slap in the face, she needed to step back, to erase her moment of weakness when
she
kissed him.

“It’s not time to play shy with me.” Ryan returned to the other side of the small cave and picked up the discarded hide.

“I cannot do...what you want.” Her body ignited, betraying her mouth. She fisted her hand on her stomach.

He folded the hide into a small square and shoved it into his pack. “Who said I wanted anything? You sure as hell didn’t mind my touch last night.”

“You certainly didn’t give me much choice,” she accused lamely, beating down the heat of her own regrettable act in the seduction.

His eyebrows peaked. “No?” He sneered. “Are you saying you didn’t like it? Sure as hell fooled me.”

Alas, the problem. She loved it. It was difficult to hide how he made her feel when she initiated the kiss and melted against his body. The intensity of her pleasure in his arms, her lips pressed against his, scared her. Binding spell aside, Morgan should not trust this stranger. She picked at the bedding, crumbling dried fronds between her fingers. “Are we safe?”

“Yes.” Ryan strutted out of the cave where a small fire burned in a circle of stones on the ledge. “I have something for you.” He returned to the entrance. Firelight framed his silhouette in the inkiness of full night. Her rune-marked satchel and the small leather pouch Gwilym had given her dangled from his hands.

“My belongings!” She jumped up and snatched the bags from Ryan’s outstretched hand. “Thank you.” Pleased, she gave him a wide smile. “I can return your T-shirt. I have clean garments.”

“Keep it. I like it on you.” His voice held a smile, though shadows concealed his face.

Morgan liked the T-shirt, too. The softness of the unusual material caressed her skin and offered her a sense of familiarity in a world where nothing belonged. “I will keep it until you want it back.” She refused to admit to herself that the shirt now held Ryan’s faint smell, spicy and male, thoroughly beguiling.

Taking her bags, she slipped cross-legged onto the rustling bed. “I have a gift for you, too.”

“According to you, I already have something of yours.” Ryan gripped his amulet.

“Indeed.” Morgan rolled her eyes. She burrowed into her leather satchel and tugged out her herb pouch. Myriad aromas wafted from the bag, some bitter, some sweet, all smelling of home. “This will help with your...problem.” Her gaze rose to his loincloth, held for a meaningful moment, continued up his sculpted chest to his overconfident face, to the one tiny dimple, more like a frown line, on the side of his left eye. His fair hair hung loose, framing his tanned face. Earlier, he’d tied his hair in a leather thong, and his rugged handsomeness was captivating. Now, with his deep golden hair flying free, mystery in his sparkling eyes, a smile flirting at the corners of his full lips, he was breathtakingly beautiful. A palpable entity in the air, his magic was at once wild and tame, ancient and fresh, soothing and aggravating. A boon to her powers, she welcomed the intriguing meld.