BlackWind (43 page)

Bronwyn thought about it, then nodded. “I can see that happening. He knew he'd need it and he probably had already decided to bring Cree here as head of security.”

“That was the Day from Hell, in my book.”

“Doesn't he do his job?”

“Only too well. It's like living in a Fascist state at times, if you ask me.”

“I get a feeling you two don't care for one another.”

“You got that right, girl.” Sage wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Let's drop the subject of old O-Neg and talk about something more fascinating.”

“Like what?”

“How fascinating I find you and how I want to jump your bones every time I see you.”

Bronwyn chuckled. “You are incorrigible, Hesar!”

“Nope, just horny. How ‘bout it? Wanna relieve some of my tension?”

Bronwyn's pager went off. She took it off her belt to see who was summoning. “Gotta go.”

“Whatcha going to do for supper?” Sage asked, taking up his fork again.

Bronwyn stood, picking up her pie and glass of tea. “Whatcha got in mind?”

“It's taco night at Taco Poncho in Grinnell. How ‘bout that, then a movie and a big box of popcorn, cup of soda, then home to have wild, dirty sex with me?”

“Tacos, popcorn, soda, and
no
sex, and we've got a date.”

He sighed. “Okay, but you don't know what you're missing.”

“Six o'clock?” she countered.

“On the dot. I'll pick you up.”

As she was leaving, Bronwyn waved at her mother and Sage's father, sitting alone in a secluded part of the cafeteria. Her mother made a sign for Bronwyn to call her. Bronwyn nodded and hurried back to her office. When she arrived, she was surprised to see Cree waiting.

Despite the neatly pressed black uniform, the Captain of the Security Services looked rumpled. At some point after she'd last seen him in the cafeteria, he had taken the clip from his hair, which now hung loose about his face. There was pallor to his skin. His eyes were bloodshot, with dark circles accentuating the high plains of his cheeks, while his goatee glistened with moisture.

“You took your damned sweet time getting here,” he complained.

“Did you have an appointment?” she snapped.

“I don't make appointments.”

“With me, you do.” She looked at Mari Beth. “Is that understood?”

The secretary shot a nervous look at the Reaper. “Dr. McGregor, I—”

“Go to lunch,” Cree ordered Mari Beth without looking her way.

The woman jumped up, ran to the file cabinet and retrieved her purse, then took off as though the hounds of hell nipped at her heels.

“How dare you?” Bronwyn said, turning on Cree. “You can't come in here and—”

One moment she was in front of the secretary's desk, the next she found herself plastered against the wall, Cree's hands tight on her upper arms as he pressed into her.

His fierce eyes bore into hers. “Let's get something straight, Doctor. I don't make appointments and I don't call to let you know I'm coming. When I need something, I get it
when
I want it,
where
I want it, and
how
I want it. I won't take backtalk from you and I won't argue with you. What I say goes and what I do isn't questioned. Do you understand?”

He was so close she felt his body heat, felt the rise and fall of his wide chest against the front of her lab coat. His grip on her arms was painful but she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing he was hurting her. His breath was salty, but not unpleasantly so, as it fanned the wisps of hair at her temple.

“Let go of me,” she said quietly.

He stared at her, his grip tightening even more. She stood perfectly still as his savage gaze crawled over her face, settled for a heart-stopping moment on her lips, then captured her eyes. He said nothing, only watched her, his body as tense as a coiled spring.

“You don't frighten me, Captain,” she said, raising her chin. “And you are not intimidating me, if that is your intent, so you might as well take your hands off me.”

“You have an appointment tomorrow to interview George Vance and Jason Faulkner,” he said as though she had not spoken.

“So?”

“You are not to schedule appointments with Class Seven inmates without my permission.”

Bronwyn's eyebrows drew together. “Why the hell not? There is nothing in the protocol that says I have to—”

“I am telling you. You will not meet with any Class Seven inmate without me being present in the room with you.”

“Oh, no,” Bronwyn drawled, shaking her head. “You can not be present during any sessions. That's a breach of doctor-patient confidentiality—”

“If I'm not there,” he said, a muscle working in his jaw, “you don't have the interview. It's as simple as that.”

“You can't do that!”

He pulled her against him, the full length of their bodies from chest to thigh coming into hard contact.

“I can do anything I like,” he said, his voice a mere whisper.

With his rock-hard thighs and belly tight against her, Bronwyn's knees threatened to buckle. Her breasts were being flattened against his broad chest; her nipples hardened into nubs at the contact. In the damp region between her legs, a wild pulsing started that made her heart beat faster and enlivened her breath. Her vision lowered to his neck, where a vein beat strongly in the thick column. His goatee smelled of cinnamon cologne mixed with a scent that made her womb quicken. She ached to thread her fingers through his long black hair and pull his mouth to hers. The thought brought a groan, but she wasn't sure if it was his or her own.

“Just do what I say,” he whispered. “I am only trying to keep you safe, Bronwyn.”

For a long time, she stared into his eyes, wondering if he was as effected by their nearness as was she. When she felt his grip relax, then slip from her arms, she almost moaned.

“Bronwyn?” he questioned, stepping back. “Do you understand?”

She mentally shook herself, then straightened her lab coat, pulling it together over her chest. She nodded, all anger inexplicably gone.

“I will bring a set of headphones and my radio,” he told her. “I won't listen to what you two are saying and I don't read lips so I won't be privy to what is being discussed.”

“You read minds, though, don't you?” She had no idea where that question came from and was surprised when he nodded.

“Aye, but I won't,” he said firmly, then moved back, allowing her room.

“They are that dangerous?” she queried.

“Some are. And even though much of the time they'll be restrained when you are in session, insanity can give a man strength and resources he wouldn't normally have. You never know what they are capable of doing. I want to make sure you're safe with scum like Faulkner and Vance.”

Still experiencing sensations she found disturbing, Bronwyn went to her office door. “You could have just asked.”

“Then I wouldn't have had a reason to put my hands on you.”

She turned to gape at him and found his face as red as the triangle on his black shirtsleeve. She was stunned when he dropped his gaze and turned to leave.

“Captain?” she called, halting him at the door.

He looked at her.

“Next time, just ask.”

“I think we understand one another, Bronwyn. There won't be a next time.”

Long after he had gone, Bronwyn stood beside her office door and tried to calm the racing thunder of her heart.

Cree cursed all the way back to his office. He was annoyed with himself for having lost control, furious he had made the comment about putting his hands on her. He struck out at the corridor wall, putting a dent in the steel panel as he stormed into his office. Slamming the door behind him, he threw back his head and howled with frustration, the sound reverberating through the room.

“What the hell did you do?” he snarled, flinging himself down in his chair.

He looked at his trembling hands. His palms itched, were slick with sweat. With a snarl, he thrust his arms across his chest and buried his hands in his arms pits. Breath rasping through his lungs, he had to clench his teeth to keep from howling again.

She had been soft under his hold. Her flesh had smelled of raspberries. The press of their bodies had driven him nearly insane with a desire he knew he could not appease. He ached; he needed; his blood was throbbing with passion.

“Bronwyn,” he groaned, covering his face with his hands.

There had been a time, he thought as he hovered in his misery, when he could have denied the pull she had on him. Until she had shown up at Baybridge, she had been but a distant, if ever-present, memory. The other part of him dreamt often of the pretty teenage girl with the long brown hair and emerald green eyes. The other part of him had remembered scents and touches and the sound of her voice. The other part of him had longed for the girl.

But this older part, the man within him, had seen the woman in her. He had inhaled the scent of her womanhood and it had beckoned him with its siren call. This older part now had the feel of her on his palms, the sound of her soft, Southern voice in his ears. He longed for her. He ached for her. He needed her, as he never had Chandra.

“Though he may be eased by surrogate manipulation, a Reaper may physically mate with only one female in his lifetime and he must remain loyal to that mate even unto death!”

The man who had taught him the rules of the Convocation had impressed upon him at a very early age the laws that governed his kind. He knew each rule as though it had been burned into his brain.

The older part of him had mated with Chandra. He had given her his seed. She had been his mate.

The only mate he was allowed to possess for all eternity.

“I believe this situation might well be unique, though, don't you?” Brian had inquired.

Cree slowly lowered his hands.

Aye, he thought, it was unique. In his extensive knowledge of Reaper lore and law, no precedent had been set forth for such a thing as he had experienced. No Reaper had ever been given the Revenant Queen of another. Only the Queen's offspring had been implanted in Reaper candidates, so what had happened to him was completely outside the norm.

He screwed up his courage and closed his eyes, willing his mind to link with the One who controlled him.

“Lady?” he questioned and felt the Queen undulating painfully along his spinal column. He sucked in his breath, the agony excruciating.

“You wish something, Beloved?” She inquired.

“Is it your wish that I remain alone the rest of my life?” he asked, his heart pounding.

The Queen shifted positions, bringing him to his knees with the agony. For a long while She did not answer, and when She did, Her voice was a soft caressing hiss in his ears.

“You want this human female, Beloved?”

He panted with pain as he knelt on the floor, one hand on his throbbing spine. “She is his mate,” he gasped, then shook his head. “She is
my
mate!”

“You want Dispensation to have her.”

The pain was nearly unbearable, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not block it. It laid him out on the floor, drew his legs to his chest, and punished him with its brutal intensity.

“What are you willing to offer to Me for the female human, Viraidan?”

Eons ago, he had done Her bidding without question, willingly carried out the vile requests She had made of him. He had slain his enemies and friends alike to feed Her unquenchable thirst for gore. His sword had plowed through many a body to ease Her thirst and he had done so with no regard for the lives he wasted. He had borne no conscience and had given no quarter. As his reward, She had given him Chandra to ease the need within his loins.

“Give her to me, Lady,” he begged, his voice strained with agony.

“And in return?”

The part of him that still bore the thoughts and feelings and emotions of Sean Cullen balked at what he knew he was being forced to promise, but that part also knew it was the only way Bronwyn McGregor would be a part of his life again.

“I will hunt,” he said, shame filling what was left of the soul of Sean Cullen and thrilling the evil that remained in Viraidan Cree. “But—”

A wild torment drove through his body, bringing a scream of animal suffering to his lips. It was all he could do to finish speaking before She allowed the torture to spread.

“But I will only slay those who deserve such a fate,” he panted. “I will not harm the innocent.”

The pain eased slightly. The burning, throbbing waves of agony rippled over his spine, then stepped down in strength a little more.

“Give me the evil ones and I will be content,” She said in a soothing voice.

“Agreed,” he replied and felt the pain decrease again.

“Kill in the fashion of those before you.”

“Aye,” he said, willing to do whatever She asked to stop the excruciating pain.

“Then you may have her, Beloved.” She released Her hold on his body.

The torment racking his spine stopped, and an immediate lassitude overtook him. He relaxed in the cottony warmth She provided.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“Sleep.”

His last waking thought before the tendrils of darkness enveloped him was of the pretty teenage girl with the long brown hair and grass-green eyes.

The Bugul Noz sat on his canine-fashioned haunches and stared at the sleeping Reaper. Observing Cree's restless tossing and hearing the occasional soul-deep groans that came from him, Ordin Gver felt a great pity well up inside him.

It had been long after the moon had risen that Cree had come back to his apartment. He had barely acknowledged the black dog before going into the bedroom and flinging himself down on the mattress.

Ralph had nosed open the partially closed door and gone to the bed. “Humphf?” he inquired. What's wrong?

“I sold my soul today, Ralph,” Cree said in a flat voice.

“Humphf?”

“To have her again. To know love again.”

Ralph stood on his hind legs and dragged a sloppy tongue over Cree's cheek. He had reveled in the gentle ruffling of his ears and the affectionate pat on his broad head before the Reaper turned to the middle of the mattress, shutting him off to further care.