Anais straightened and looked him right in the eyes, refusing to let how beautiful they were distract her.
“Take me back.”
His eyes darkened and his lips compressed into a thin line. “No.”
Fine. He wanted to do things the hard way and she was good with that. If he wouldn’t take her back out of the kindness of his black dead heart, she would force him to do it at knifepoint.
Anais slowly shifted away from the wall of the cave, heading into the open area between the dragon and the fire. He countered her, turning on the spot, keeping his front to hers. A darker edge flickered in his eyes, one that warned he was on to her and knew she intended to attack now.
“Last chance. Take me back.” She was fairly certain that he wasn’t going to take her up on her offer. She knew stubborn when she saw it. She looked at it in the mirror each day. In a battle of stubbornness, he wouldn’t win.
He took a step towards her.
Anais kicked off, lunging towards him, her eyes on the knife sheathed against his left hip.
He snatched her wrist before she could reach it, his strong grip sending a hot bolt of electricity arcing along her bones. She twisted her arm in his grip, turning her back to him and coming around on his left side. She made another grab for the knife with her free hand and he whipped the arm he held her with forwards, shoving her away from him and making her miss her target.
His growl echoed around the cave and she ducked beneath his other hand as he tried to grab her.
She broke free of his grip but didn’t back off. She didn’t know what he wanted with her, but she wasn’t going to stick around to find out. He’d had his chance to play nice. Now she was going to play rough.
He stepped into her and she brought her knee up hard, slamming it straight into his balls.
He grunted and doubled over and victory flashed through her as he cupped himself, leaving his knife wide open.
Anais made a grab for it.
He reacted in an instant, his head coming up and his hands leaving his groin. In a lightning fast move, he had blocked her attempt, knocking her hand away. She unleashed a short noise of frustration and attacked him, swinging her fist at his face. He blocked again, and again, stopping every punch she threw or kick she swung at him. Her anger rose with each failed attempt to hit him, her temper fraying at the same time.
The bastard was humouring her.
It was there in his eyes as he blocked her, always defending and never attacking. Their bright jewel-blue depths shimmered with amusement. He knew he could stop her any time he wanted because he was far stronger and quicker than she was.
Son of a bitch.
She growled and went to kick him between his legs again, and he caught her shin with both hands, stopping her. She tried to take her leg back but he refused to let go.
Anais launched a solid right hook at him, lost her balance and almost fell. His hand on her upper arm stopped her. What the hell? She would have thought he would be pleased if she had landed face first on the black ground, humiliating herself, but he had saved her.
She had the strangest notion as she pulled free of his grip and faced him.
He didn’t want to hurt her.
His self-assuredness wasn’t the reason why he was only defending. He wasn’t doing it to amuse himself either. He was doing it because any other course of action might hurt her.
He cemented that feeling when she made another lunge for the knife and he grabbed her right upper arm. The cut beneath the sleeve of her black t-shirt burned and she flinched, biting her tongue to muffle the cry of pain that blazed up her throat.
He quickly released her and backed off, distancing himself.
“I am sorry.” He lowered his hands to his sides.
Anais wasn’t sure what to make of him, but she refused to let his behaviour sway her. He probably wanted that. He wanted her to lower her guard.
She rubbed her arm and he looked away from her, glancing down at the ground beside his bare feet.
Giving her one hell of a golden opportunity she wasn’t about to waste.
She made a break for it, her boots eating up the black ground between her and the cave mouth.
“No!” His roar deafened her and echoed around the cave and the mountains beyond.
Strong arms banded around her waist from behind before she could reach the exit of the cave. She caught a glimpse of a green-black world as he lifted her off the ground—a swath of thick forest that covered the valley below the side of the mountain she was in and the forbidding black mountains all around her. That view disappeared as he turned her in his powerful arms, twisting her to face him, and shocked her by pinning her to his very solid chest.
“Do not go that way, Little Amazon,” he husked, his deep voice strained and thick with emotion.
Anais shoved at his chest as panic burst through her, sending her pulse racing, and her mind screamed at her to escape his hold.
He didn’t fight her. He turned so she was closest to the fire and set her down. The moment he released her, she backed off, placing some distance between them again and breathing hard to quell the dizzying rush of her heart.
He remained where he was as she slowly pulled herself back together, towering over her, and she found herself staring up at his handsome face. He looked as raw with emotion as his voice had sounded. Why?
As much as she wanted to know the answer to that question, she wanted her freedom even more.
She tried to get around him again but he countered her each time, moving left or right to block her path, keeping her contained in the back half of the cave, away from the mouth.
“You cannot leave.”
Those three words chilled her to her bones and panic and fear surged back to the surface, an unstoppable force that she could no longer control. They shook her and she couldn’t stop them from chipping away at her strength, breaking down her courage and filling her mind with a thousand horrific scenarios she didn’t want to entertain but was powerless to shut out.
“What do you want with me?” she whispered, unable to find her voice as she stilled and stared at him, her heart hammering against her chest and her hands shaking. She curled her fingers into fists and drew down a deep breath, trying to steady herself when all she really wanted to do was collapse onto her knees and maybe even cry. “Why won’t you let me leave?”
“Others cannot see you.” He looked back over his bare shoulder, towards the cave mouth. “It is not safe for you out there, Little Amazon.”
“It’s not safe for me in here either.” She clenched her fists and narrowed her eyes on him.
He turned back to face her, his expression soft and a touch wounded. Bloody hell, she wasn’t sure what to make of him.
“What do you want with me?” She tried again, needing an answer this time, because she feared he intended to do something terrible to her, even when there was a part of her heart that said it was never going to happen.
He had been upset and had apologised when he had hurt her, and that reaction had been genuine. She had met enough good guys and enough bastards in her life to know them apart. A man who reacted in such a manner as he had wasn’t the sort of man who would then resort to physical abuse.
“I want to keep you safe.”
Of course, men who didn’t want to hurt women could also be dangerously possessive of them. He might be the type who was acting out an obsession, a deep need to nurture and take care of another person, despite how much it terrified that person or how little they wanted to be there with them.
“It’s hard for me to believe that when you kidnapped me.” She backed off another step and did a quick scan of the cave again, checking her options.
He had left the back of the cave open to her, which meant he didn’t think she could escape that way. Her only option was getting past him. Her hope tried to deflate but she refused to let it happen. She would get out of here and away from him.
It just might not be this instant.
His face softened again and he held his right hand out to her as his blue eyebrows furrowed. Like hell she was going to take it. He could want to comfort her all he liked, but she didn’t have to let him fulfil that need.
A flicker of resignation crossed his expression and he looked at his hand, smiled briefly, and lowered it to his side. “I had to. If I had not—”
Dread went through her like shards of ice.
“If you hadn’t… what?” Anais couldn’t stop herself from advancing a step towards him. She didn’t like how he had cut himself off or the flash of fear that had touched his face.
He dropped his gaze to the patch of ground between them and it turned distant. “Dragons have the gift of foresight. What I saw…”
A chill ran through her as she remembered how he had looked at her on the battlefield and how she had felt in that moment. A deep sense of connection had bloomed inside her and he had looked as if he had shared it, and then he had changed. The heat in his eyes had turned to darkness that had coloured his expression, making it grim. She had felt that same sharp stab of dread in that moment, a sickening sensation of her life draining from her.
A heartbeat later, he had grabbed her. No longer a man. He had been an enormous, and breathtakingly beautiful, blue dragon. He had tucked her against the paler blue plates of his chest, holding her gently in both huge front paws, as if he had wanted to shield her, and then he had attacked everyone.
Her side.
His.
He had driven them all away from her.
Because of what he had seen?
“I cannot let you leave. Please, Little Amazon.” His blue eyes implored her to listen to him, flooded with sincerity, hope and a dash of fear. “I will return you… when I am sure you will be safe.”
Anais shook her head, reeling and trying to make sense of everything. It crashed over her, muddling her feelings and leaving her shaken.
“We were in a battle,” she said and shook her head again. “I knew the risks. You had no reason to save me. I wasn’t a damsel in distress. I was there to fight. Why save me? I was… am… your enemy.”
He stared at her, blinking slowly, unmoving as silence stretched between them. She couldn’t read him at all. She had no clue about how he felt or what he might say. His expression gave nothing away.
He held her gaze, his blue eyes locked with hers. “I did it because I had to.”
“That isn’t an answer.” She took another step towards him, growing frustrated with him and with herself. What was she doing? Did she want him to give her an answer that would sway her? Did she want him to say something that would make her trust him?
Hell, maybe she had been right on coming around. She had passed out from lack of oxygen and her brain had been starved of it, because nothing she was thinking or feeling was making any sense to her logical mind.
Something about the man standing before her had her throwing logic and all of her training out of the window, and listening to her heart over her head.
Anais shut down the softer part of herself and forced herself to focus again. She needed to get away from the dragon and this cave, but he was right. It was probably more dangerous out there. She needed to know what she would be up against and where she was in Hell. She needed a plan, or she would end up in an even worse position than she was now.
“It is the only answer I have,” he whispered and he looked as if it didn’t make sense to him either, but he had been unable to find another one to give to her. “I had a vision, and I responded to it. I had no choice. It was instinct. I wanted to protect you.”
Another sensation went through Anais, this one not altogether pleasant either, and it frightened her a lot more than the thought of dying.
She had seen how King Thorne of the demons had acted around Sable, driven by instinct to protect her at any cost because she was his fated mate. Some of the species of Hell had such mates, a person fated for them.
One in a lifetime.
She stared at the dragon where he stood with his back to the cave mouth, cragged black mountains as his backdrop and the light from the fire behind her shining on him, turning his skin golden as it flickered across his honed bare chest and arms, and his blue-leather-clad legs.
He was every bit as stunning as he had been on the battlefield.
A dark and alluring warrior who spoke to her on a deep and primal level.
The sense of fierce attraction and connection returned.
This time it filled her head with flashes of Sable and Thorne, of how they behaved around each other, driven by a possessive need of each other, a hunger that went beyond mere attraction and desire, defying all logic and reason.
Bloody hell.
She refused to allow herself to believe that the man standing before her, a dragon shifter, was such a thing for her. He was a means to an end. A source of information. She would bide her time, gather knowledge, and once she was ready she would escape and return to her world, the one that made sense to her. The one filled with logic and reason, just how she liked it.
“Swear you won’t hurt me and that you’ll return me to my people.” It never hurt to have a few assurances that she could use to quell her fears. He was a warrior. He wasn’t a team player by his own admission, but warriors always had a code. He would keep his vows.
He pressed his left hand to his bare chest and bowed his head. “You have my word. In return, you will swear you will not attempt to leave.”
Anais nodded. “You have my word.”
His hand drifted downwards, drawing her gaze with it, over honed muscles that delighted her eyes and heated her insides. His voice was rich and warm, as deep as an ocean as he spoke to her, cranking her temperature up another few degrees and making her forget she was meant to be afraid of him not attracted to him.
“Will you stay, Little Amazon?”
Anais raised her eyes back to his. They were bright, spotted with gold fire, entrancing her as much as his voice and his body.
She nodded, and for some reason it wasn’t as reluctant as it should have been.
Heaven help her.
She wasn’t sure it was such a great idea after all, because she was certain there wasn’t enough willpower in the entire planet that she could draw on to stop herself from succumbing to the desire that swept through her whenever she looked at him.
Charade
Illusion
