So much depended on Tallis.
“India again, eh?”
She blinked. He held her hands between them, their knuckles lined up like the mountains where she’d grown into a woman. “But you’ve only just returned to Scotland. What about your family?”
“I didn’t mean right away. A month’s sleep and a lot of lovemaking have an appeal not even you can deny, goddess. And I’d like to make my peace here. Repair Clannarah. Stand before the Leadership of the Pendray to clear my name. No loose ends before we go.” He kissed the backs of her hands. “Then the real work begins. The Indranan deserve peace, and . . . the Chasm isn’t fixed. It’s bigger than me. What Olla said is a relief beyond description.”
“You really want to come with me?”
“We committed last night.” He offered a crooked smile. “Unless you’re bored of me already.”
“Bored? That word will never make sense when applied to you.”
He kissed her lips. Kavya tasted blood, but it didn’t matter. They were both alive. She would never need to look over her shoulder again.
But she did need something.
“Tallis, the Indranan way . . .” She swallowed. “Of bonding.”
He looked away briefly. “I know. You gave yourself over to my desires, completely and passionately. I—I’ll submit to the Indranan way, if you ask it of me. Because I love you.”
Kavya gently held his cheeks beneath her palms. The old means of reading him. She could’ve slipped inside his mind and taken what she wanted, but that had never been them. “You have secrets you never want brought to light. Manipulated by my sister. Driven to murder and exile. That’s done and gone. I know all I need to know about you. Right here. Right at this moment.”
“What if I insist?” He knelt before the Mother—that place so sacred to the Pendray—and touched the back of his neck. “You promised me a kiss. Give it to me, and I’ll show you something beautiful.”
Legs shaking, she knelt and draped her body across his broad back. He pulled her arms down over his shoulder and held her hands.
“Kavya,” he said softly. “Make me yours.”
With surprising greed, she bared her teeth against his nape and nipped, scraped, bit. Nothing so harsh as what Tallis had claimed, but the significance of it shuddered into her soul. All the while, in the deep center of her mind, she gloried in the images he shared. The sea through his eyes. The salt-laden air as he smelled it. The feel of her touch and how it warmed his coldest, darkest corners. Then he revealed glimpses of Kavya from his perspective. Eyes, lower lip, breast, teasing smile, toes, and then back to her eyes.
In doing so, he did more than share impressions. He proved his trust that she would never take more than he offered. It was just the show of faith Kavya had longed for.
They were Pendray and Indranan, well and truly bonded.
“I’ve traveled this world, aching to be home again,” he said, aligning their knuckles over his heart. “I thought it was Castle Clannarah. My family. Or after my revenge, I’d find a place of my own. But I got it all wrong.”
“Where is home, Tallis?” She nipped and kissed again, where his silver-tipped hair met the silky skin at the top of his neck.
“Where else would it be, my Kavya? It’s with you. Wherever we go, you are my home.”
Continue reading
for an exclusive excerpt from
HUNTED
WARRIOR
The Dragon Kings
Book Three
by
LINDSEY PIPER
Coming from Pocket Books in 2014
CHAPTER
ONE
She was called the Pet, but she didn’t think of herself as a creature in need of protection, care, or condescension. She’d left that life behind. Neither was she a captive, as she picked her away through the ruins of a crumbling rock labyrinth on the island of Crete. How she’d come to be there was a story she didn’t dare contemplate for fear of madness. There was no rhyme, no reason, no guide other than the future she saw in bits and patches.
The sun was fierce and gorgeously freeing on the back of her neck. She was a Dragon King, and Dragon Kings loved fire. Most wouldn’t admit how much the cold sank under their skin and sapped their sense of godlike invincibility. Maybe that was for the best. Too many of the would-be gods romancing the planet believed themselves immortal, no matter the press of extinction. They didn’t realize that all empires ended, even those blessed with access to what humans would consider the supernatural.
Turning to stare into the blinding white-yellow glare, she didn’t bother to shade her eyes. Her second sight—the gift from the Dragon that gave her the ability to see the future—was always with her, no matter its unpredictability. A man sought her. A violent man who hid his violence behind titles and lineage.
Time was slippery like moss on a riverbank or slime on the carcass of a dead fish. Time was viscous on her fingertips. Time was running out.
With no further hesitation, she continued her cautious journey through the abandoned ruins of ancient kings. The walls had been reduced by countless rains and droughts, days and nights, until all that remained were bleached waist-high spikes and jagged edges. The stubborn ground was strewn with pieces of the crumbled labyrinth. There was nothing to grab should she fall—not without impaling her hand. Dragon Kings healed rapidly, but some damage was too much for even their extraordinary physiology to repair.
Archaeologists had dubbed the site of little historic worth, with its condition so degenerated that they could gather scant new information about the Minoans of long-ago Crete. How wrong. How blinded by the hubris of a society that believed itself the most advanced of its animal counterparts. Any thought as to the Dragon Kings’ existence was disregarded. Fairy tales of Valkyries and Olympians and messiahs. The woman called the Pet knew differently. All the myths were true. What was once would be again.
And the Chasm wasn’t fixed.
The Dragon Kings were dying. Why her predictions of the future had led her to Crete as a means of stopping that slow extinction was beyond her. She had to trust. She’d always needed to trust, when little in her life stood as examples of why that must be so. Maybe her real gift from the Great Dragon wasn’t the ability to see the future, but to have faith in what she couldn’t explain.
The labyrinth was waist-high, yes, but it was still a tangle of dead ends, wrong turns, and twenty-foot-deep pits that barred any attempt to pass. When she realized she’d made a mistake, she couldn’t simply climb over the wall and continue on. Her hands would be shredded. So, as with all mazes, she doubled back and kept the details firmly in mind. The conventional wisdom was that if one picked a direction and stuck with it—all left turns, always, no matter what—the heart of the geometric puzzle would be revealed.
Those occasional pits were too deep to escape. And time . . . Yes, time was slippery.
She needed to hurry, because the man was coming for her. Yet she couldn’t even describe what she sought.
A gift for Cadmin. That’s all she knew. She drew on powers as both soothsayer and true believer to remind herself of her journey’s importance. Cadmin, the closest she’d ever known to having a baby of her own, although the fetal child had developed in another woman’s womb—that of Cadmin’s true mother.
“It took some time to find you,” came a voice at her back. “But you couldn’t expect that I’d give up trying.”
The Pet turned and met the steady glare of Malnefoley of Tigony, the Honorable Giva. With that title, he should’ve been the unquestioned leader of their people. With the derisive nickname of the Usurper, however, his leadership was a listing ship, barely righting itself in time to escape the swallowing swell of a wave.