“And so out of your despair, you arose courageous and strong,” Drakor murmured as he lifted my face up toward his. He kissed me, long and slow and deep. When his lips left mine, I saw hot need in his gaze. “You are such a beauty, Nisha. You are as exotic as the night for which you were named.”
I reached up and stroked his bold, square jaw. “My mother named me in her language. She was called Jariat.”
Drakor brows arched almost indiscernibly and he gave a soft, amused-sounding grunt.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” he said, caressing my cheek. “It’s a very old name, from a very old people. A beautiful name.”
“Is there anything you don’t know?”
He leaned down and kissed me once more. “I have been around for a long time. One cannot help but learn a few things. But you. . you are a marvel to me, Nisha. I am amazed by all I’m learning from you. I never dreamed I could care so deeply for a human.”
“Nor I, for one of the Strange,” I whispered, my heart aching with emotion, my body thrumming with desire.
Our lips met again, with a passion neither of us seemed able to deny. Drakor undressed me with maddening care, his mouth tasting each naked inch of my skin. His own clothing came off in a hurry, and then he was poised above me, his thick shoulders and arms bunched with muscles, his bare chest smooth as velvet under my roaming fingertips.
I put my hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down on top of me. His mouth claimed mine with fierce need as our bodies came together, hot and yearning. He filled me up, gave me more pleasure than I’d ever known.
We tossed about in a slick, delicious tangle of legs and hands, insatiable for each other, even after we’d both come down from a shattering release. He was wild and magnificent, and even if I’d spent a thousand nights in his arms I knew I’d still crave more. I hungered for all of him, and for all we’d never have again once we reached our destination and said our goodbye.
As we lay together side by side, he stared into my eyes with the same unspoken longing I felt weighing down my own heart.
“Nisha,” he murmured. “My God, I never expected you. I never expected to feel any of this. I shouldn’t feel it. You are human, and I am not.”
“I know.” I nodded, tried to smile even though it hurt.
He brushed his lips across mine, a sweet, tender kiss. “You are human. . and I don’t care. I want to be with you, wherever you need that to be. I love you, and none of the rest matters.”
I swallowed, uncertain I’d heard him correctly. “You what?”
“I love you,” he said, and kissed me again, more firmly now. A claiming kiss that burned through me like fire.
I started to tell him that I felt the same way, but then I heard something terrible ring out in the distance. A low howl, coming from somewhere in the dark outside. Then another, and still another.
All the blood seemed to drain from my head and settle into my stomach as cold as ice.
Drakor looked at me, his gaze stark. “Hellhounds.”
We barely had time to dress and jump back into the cab of my truck before the beasts’ howls had grown dangerously close.
I turned the engine over and swore when the damned thing sputtered and choked. I tried again. It coughed to weak life, rattling as though it were on its last legs.
And that’s when I noticed the needle on the fuel gauge.
“Shit.” I reached into the dash and tapped the temperamental old gauges, hoping the needle had merely gotten stuck as it so often did on relics like the one I was driving. After a few knocks, it did move a couple of degrees — deeper into the negative. “We’re practically out of fuel.”
In my haste to get us out of Port Phoenix, I’d neglected to do even the most basic systems check. And, in my state of fatigue after so many hours behind the wheel, I’d managed to drive us smack into the middle of nowhere. With hellhounds on our tail.
Another bone-grating howl went up somewhere in the darkness outside.
“I think we can make it another ten miles or so. We can head deeper into the wilderness and try to outrun them.” I grabbed the gearshift and started to put the rig into drive. Drakor’s hand stopped me.
“Nisha, there isn’t time. The truck will only be a hindrance in the end.” He took my hand in his and pulled me across the seat to slide out the passenger side door with him. “Let’s go.”
“We’ll never make it,” I said as we raced away from the sound of the gaining hellhounds. “Are you strong enough to fly?”
“I am,” he replied. “But I wouldn’t be able to carry you very far yet. We have to run.”
I tried to pull myself free of his hold, but he wouldn’t let go. “Drakor, listen to me. You have to get away. You have to leave me here and save yourself.”
He swore something dark and nasty and pulled me into a faster pace. The forest was pitch black, a maze of tall pines and thorny bramble. We tore through it, uncertain where we should go except as far away from the hellhounds as possible.
But each second that I felt hopeful we might elude them, it seemed the Strange beasts sounded closer. Their howls and snarls echoed in the woods, coming at us from several directions.
“Drakor, please,” I whispered fiercely. “We can’t both get away from them. They’re going to catch up to us.”
“Then I will stand and fight them,” he muttered tightly, not slowing his gait.
No sooner had he said this than one of the two-headed hounds erupted from out of the darkness and launched itself at him. I lost his hand in the sudden crash of colliding bodies. I heard the gut-wrenching sounds of the struggle, the snapping of animal jaws. The tearing of vulnerable flesh and sinew.
“Drakor!” I cried, anguished to think of his suffering.
All at once, flames shot up into the night. In the abrupt illumination, I glimpsed Drakor in his dragon form, the thick forest in front of him, nothing but endless night at his back. He hissed a plume of fire at the attacking hellhound, incinerating the beast. Another one came at him with both sets of jaws gnashing and was similarly torched.
Two of the awful creatures were down, but three more were right behind them.
And Drakor had already shifted back into a man.
He was panting and sweating, strain showing in the taut lines of his face. My heart sank like a stone in my breast. The shift had drained him of his power.
“Nisha, behind you!”
I swung around and met with two sets of feral eyes staring out at me from the heads of an enormous hellhound who stood just an arm’s length away. It bared its terrible teeth and fangs, massive hind legs coiled and ready to spring into a leap.
I couldn’t run. There was nowhere to go. I went for my gun, but it was too late.
The hellhound leapt at me.
It knocked me off my feet, sent me reeling through the dark night air. I waited to feel the crushing blow of the ground coming up to meet my spine. It didn’t materialize. Instead, I fell and fell and fell. . into a black void. A chasm so deep and wide it was all I could see.
“Nisha!” Drakor’s voice roared from somewhere high above. It echoed off the stone walls of the abyss that surrounded me. “Nisha, no!”
All my fears of flying — that inexplicable terror at finding myself airborne — pressed down on me like a lead weight. I plummeted faster.
From somewhere deep inside me, I knew it was my fear that would destroy me. Not the hellhound that had pitched over the ledge with me and had since dropped out of my sight. Myself alone.
I thought of my mother, who sacrificed herself so that my father and I could live.