Resurrection
Автор
Lisa Childs
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Chapter One
Centuries ago…
The rhythmic beat, beat, beat of the drums echoed in Anya’s blood as it pumped hot and heavy through her veins. Sand shifted beneath her knees where she knelt beside the trickling stream. She cupped her hands in the water, splashing it onto her face and throat. But the water didn’t cool her heated skin. Nor did the wind that rustled the branches of trees in the woods looming all around her, nearly blocking out the glow of the crescent moon.
Beat. Beat. Beat.
Her hands trembled, and she clasped them against her throat where her pulse pounded in tandem with the drum. Although she was far from home and in a foreign land, she still recognized the natives’ music for what it was. A war cry.
Would they wait until morning to attack the invaders? Or would they, with their intimate knowledge of the terrain, use darkness as a cover to defend their land? She could not find fault with protecting what was theirs. But how did they know that the strangers had come to conquer? Or did they treat every intruder as a threat?
Beat, beat, beat…
She had no answers to her questions. The only thing she knew for certain was that a battle would be waged. Anya closed her eyes, reliving the devastation of previous wars. The scent of blood, sweet and strong, filled her nostrils. Blood, thick and sticky, clung to her skin as she laid hands on the fallen warriors, bringing them back to life.
Resurrecting the dead.
That was her special ability. Such a gift was bestowed on every other generation of females in her family. Anya’s grandmother could predict the future. Nana had already seen Anya’s fate: the long arduous voyages across oceans, down straits and over lakes, to a faraway land…a land with powers nearly as unique as every other female generation of Anya’s family.
Because it was special, the conquerors had to have this magical land—had to claim it as theirs as they had claimed Anya.
From the shadows in the forest, Gray Wolf studied her. With her hair and skin as pale as the luminescent crescent moon, she appeared more an ethereal woodland creature than a flesh-and-blood woman. She had slipped away from the invaders, past even their watchful guards, as if she were an apparition. Yet the Wise One claimed she was not a spirit.
The shaman had picked the special flowers, and after dividing the poisonous blossom from the stems and leaves, he’d eaten the poison. Not enough to kill him, just enough to invoke the visions that had warned of the invaders…and the woman. She was more powerful than the men with whom she traveled—because she made them invincible.
Yet she was not.
She leaned over again and cupped her palms in the trickling water of the stream. As she lifted her hands, water escaped through her fingers, dripping from her delicately featured face onto the bodice of her gown. The wet material appeared nearly as translucent as her skin, molding to every swell and curve of her body.
He held the breath that burned in his lungs, struggling to escape in a groan. But he could not betray his presence. Not yet. The drums pounded, echoing the heavy throb of each beat of his heart.
Gray’s fingers slid over the smooth tip of his spear. His mission was to turn her from flesh and blood to spirit. Some other warriors thought him brave for accepting the mission, for sneaking into the enemy camp to kill the woman. Some thought he had chosen the mission out of vengeance for the death of his woman at the hands of previous invaders.
But he had not accepted just the mission; he had accepted his fate. He did not need to eat the poison flower to know that she was his fate.
Not a twig snapped nor an animal rustled. So it was the extreme stillness of the night that alerted Anya to his presence. Kneeling yet in the sand, she turned away from the stream, and he was there. Even before he touched her, she felt him.
Then one of his arms slid around her waist, pulling her to her feet and back against the hard sculpted muscles of his bare chest. Moonlight glistened on his skin, reflected in his deep-set dark eyes and caught in the shock of white hair that fell across his forehead. The rest of his hair, hanging long around his face and impossibly broad shoulders, was as deep a black as the shadows in the woods.
She opened her mouth to scream, but something cold and hard pressed against her cheek. From the corner of her eye she caught the glint of moonlight off metal—the tip of a spear. He slid the spear over the line of her jaw, down the arch of her throat to where her pulse pounded madly. Then the metal tip slid farther down, the sharp point slicing away the damp bodice of her robe. Moonlight bathed her bared breasts and glanced off the spear as it ran down the cleft between them. The tip moved across the swell of her left breast until it pressed against the flesh under which her heart beat hard.
He wielded the weapon with skill, with just enough pressure that she felt the threat but no pain. Not even a scratch from that sharply honed point marred her skin. She arched her neck, so that she could see his face, meet his gaze and try to read his intentions.
Did he only want to scare her? Or did he actually intend to kill her? Or seduce her? No matter his intentions, he exuded danger and was certain to harm her.
His dark gaze held hers, but she could read nothing in the fathomless depths.
She licked her lips, drawing his attention to her mouth. “Wh-what do you want with me?” she asked.
Muscles flexed in his forearm and biceps as his large hand tightened around the handle of the spear. Did he intend to plunge the weapon into her heart?
“No,” she murmured, the protest weak when she needed to fight. Yet she dared not move too much or breathe too hard for fear of the spear tip piercing flesh. But she reached out to clasp his forearm with her fingers, her pale skin a stark contrast to his. Muscles hardened beneath her touch.
He released a breath, which stirred her hair. Despite the heat of his body pressed tightly to hers, goose bumps lifted her skin, and she shivered.
“Please don’t hurt me,” she pleaded, tears stinging her eyes, because she knew her efforts were futile. She doubted he could understand her words. She couldn’t reason with him or threaten him as she had the warriors with whom she traveled.
But maybe she could seduce him.
She slid her fingers along his arm, stroking his dark skin. And she moved her other hand from her side to his, smoothing her palm down the hard muscle of his bare thigh. He expelled another breath—this one ragged.
Gray’s body grew taut, aching with the desire to take her. But the Wise One’s words echoed in his head. “Kill her quickly, lest she trick you. The woman is a sorceress.”
She shifted in his grasp, pressing against him. And the lushness of her body roused his to life. He hardened and throbbed—and swallowed a groan.
Her hand clutched his thigh, her nails digging into his skin—marking him as he wanted to mark her—as his.
She turned her head, her soft hair brushing his chest. Then her lips followed, trailing across his skin as she pleaded again. “Don’t hurt me…”
He understood her. From the invaders who had come before, he had picked up the language. But that wasn’t the only thing he had learned from those earlier visitors. He had learned that the ones with the pale skin were not to be trusted.
Kill her quickly…
The Wise One’s voice grew fainter in his head, drowned out by her soft whisper. “Please…” The warmth of her lips brushed his skin again.
Beat, beat, beat… The drums, pounding out the war cry, reminded him of his mission. He stepped back, releasing her so abruptly that she dropped to her knees on the sand again. Then he raised the spear. If his people had any chance of defeating the invaders, this sorceress could not live.
She lifted her face toward him. Tears shimmered in her light blue eyes; one broke free and trembled on her thick black lashes. “Don’t kill me. I’ll do anything…you want me to…”
He had never seen such beauty. Her hair, her face, her body…she seemed too perfect to be of this world. To be real. Unable to help himself, he reached out to touch her hair again. Soft pale gold tendrils tangled around his fingers; he clenched his hand in her hair.
She turned her head, and her lips glided across his forearm. “I’ll do anything…”
She reached out, sliding her hands up his thighs to the loincloth under which his erection throbbed. Her fingers closed around him, and he jerked.
“I can be your woman,” she offered. “I can pleasure you…” Her golden brows drew together over her light eyes, her unshed tears turning from terror to frustration. “You don’t understand me…”
Even if he hadn’t been able to comprehend what she was saying, her actions spoke louder than her words. She pushed aside the buckskin and leaned forward, brushing her lips along the length of his shaft.
His fingers, still clutching her soft hair, fisted. A woman had not touched him—in so long. And never like this…
As passion flooded him, his grip on the spear eased, and he buried the tip deep into the sand. As he wanted to bury himself inside her.
She closed her mouth around him, her teeth scraping over his most sensitive skin. Then he felt something else sharp, the point of a weapon at the base of his shaft.
She pulled back her head and lifted her face to his.
“You may not understand me, but you’ll understand this,” she said, her eyes glittering with determination and desperation as she increased the pressure of the weapon?literally threatening his manhood.
His body tensed even more as anger surged through him, along with the passion. She might not be a sorceress, as the Wise One had warned but the woman was definitely dangerous.
