“Yes.” Tommy hauled her to her feet. “Come on. I’m taking you back to Pittsburgh.”
She gave a laugh that ended with a sob. “Back? Back to what? The ruined shambles of my life?”
Tommy laughed and put a hand to her slender neck. “I could kill you and end all your suffering.”
She gasped in surprise and gazed at him with doe-eyed amazement.
“Well?” He ran his thumb down her windpipe, feeling her pulse flutter like a moth under his palm. God, he found holding the life of a little, naïve female in the palm of his hand such a turn-on. It made him want to tear off what remained of her clothes and take her, but he controlled the urge. That was his father’s way — to force himself on unwilling females.
Her eyes flicked to Spot, reminding Tommy that the boy watched. “Your son?”
“My mother’s sister’s son, but he’s my responsibility. I’m head of our household.”
She looked back to Tommy and studied him.
“What do you want?” He knew what he wanted.
“I want to live.” Amazingly, the pupils of her eyes dilated in anticipation, and she leaned toward him, seeking his mouth with hers.
It was all the invitation he needed.
It was a crazy-making fuck. She was on him like a sack of mud: clinging, demanding, and impossible to scrape off. His body responded too fast, leaving his brain struggling to catch up.
After Tommy collapsed on her, panting, Spot nudged him. His cousin looked north, his ears twitching. Tommy had forgotten about the possibility of other oni. The rest of the oni force couldn’t be close, or Spot would be more anxious. Still, it would be best to get moving.
Tommy leaned back onto his knees. Jewel Tear lay in the green moss, her sable hair a dark halo around her. Her silk dress was in tatters, showing alluring flashes of her tawny skin through the shredded fabric.
She gazed up at him with a lazy, satiated look. She lifted her leg and ran her foot up his bare thigh and hooked it around his hip and tugged slightly on him. “Untie me.”
He took out his knife and cut her free, careful not to cut her fingers as he sliced away the bindings. She sat up, feline graceful.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“Tommy.”
She echoed it, running her hand up to play with the hair at the back of his neck. “What does it mean?”
“It’s a human name. It doesn’t mean anything.” He fought the urge to nuzzle the full breasts that nearly spilled out of her tattered dress. Forget not having time for it. Now that he’d taken the edge off his desire, his basic mistrust of people was kicking in. Why was this highborn elf acting like a cat in heat?
Danger had a way of doing that to some people. Was she one? Or was it more than that?
“We need to get going.” He forced himself to stand up, breaking her hold on him, and pulled on his clothes. “I killed twelve warriors. Were there more?”
That rattled her, as if she, too, had forgotten the oni in the heat of the moment. She scrambled to her feet and brought her freed left hand to her mouth. Tommy flinched as she cast a spell. The last domana he’d seen casting spells had been Windwolf as the male set oni on fire like giant candles.
Nothing seemed to happen, but Jewel’s eyes went wide.
“What is it?” Tommy was fairly sure he wasn’t going to like the answer.
“We need to move.” She stripped a food pack off one of the dead oni and then headed straight east in a fast walk.
He grabbed a second pack and followed even though he could hear nothing. “Do you know where you’re going?”
“Away from the oni.” Jewel Tear dug through the bag and found an apple that she ate hungrily. “Big camp back there.” She waved the apple toward the camp that Spot had searched for her. “And another there, there, and there.” The apple traveled in a circle. “And the whelping pens that they were taking me to.”
She shuddered and flung the apple away with a curse.
He was surprised that she knew where the oni were taking her. “You speak oni?”
“Forest Moss has insisted on teaching it to me. Hours of tramping all over that damn city with him using it as an excuse to say vile, disgusting things to me.”
“Oni doesn’t have nice words.”
“I’m of that opinion now.” She walked faster. “Since, in the last two days, there were only a smattering of words that I didn’t understand.”
Her guards must have realized that she understood them and used that to terrorize her. They probably delighted in explaining what would happen to her at the whelping pens.
Tommy realized that Spot was trotting to keep up with them. The boy wouldn’t be able to keep that pace. He caught Jewel Tear’s arm. She screamed, dropped the food bag and whipped her hand toward her mouth. He caught her wrist before she could cast a spell.
“We’ll wear ourselves out at this speed,” he growled.
“There’s a platoon behind us! They’ll find their dead, and they’ll come after us at a run.”
Tommy swore but kept hold of her, keeping her helpless. “Can you fight like Wolf Who Rules? Prince True Flame? Set things on fire?”
“I can fight.” She tugged carefully, testing his hold, trying to free herself. He was careful not to hurt her. They both knew a broken arm would make her helpless. Her wriggling ended with her pressed against him, head tilted so she could glare up at him, lips nearly brushing his. “I can’t set things on fire. That’s Fire Clan esva.”
He breathed in her rich scent and resisted the urge to kiss her. “They’ll scout and see that there’s only the three of us. They probably won’t send for reinforcements. Let’s lure them farther away from the rest and deal with them. Most of the oni haven’t fought a domana — and lived. They don’t know how dangerous you are.”
She gave a wicked laugh that promised hurt in the oni’s future.
He cautiously released her and backed away.
She rubbed her wrist where he had held her helpless. “Don’t ever grab my arms again.”
The earlier sex had only whetted Tommy’s taste for Jewel Tear. When he was sixteen, he and his cousins had stolen a canister of nitric oxide and spent a blur of days falling into sweet oblivion. Afterward, he felt he could easily kill to gain another canister, and the feeling had made him both scared and angry. Frightened because he already had one master: the oni. He didn’t need one that he willingly served. Angry because he had given himself the weakness.
Now he was feeling the same lingering want, tainted again with fear and anger. He’d never wanted a female like this before — but then he’d never had a female this fine. He avoided humans. Even if the woman was drunk and he had her pinned facedown in the bed — the fear of discovery always ruined his pleasure. That cold niggling feeling reached down in him and awoke long-buried memories of his own rape. It kept him from the very lush University of Pittsburgh students with their painted-on leggings and tight shirts. The half-oni girls were safe but never as fine. Not that it really was their fault: they didn’t get enough to eat and sometimes had literal dogs for fathers.
No, his experiences weren’t with females this beautiful, rounded, soft, and wonderfully scented. Even her mouth tasted of some sweetness he couldn’t name. In the quick hard fuck, there hadn’t been time to wallow in it all. The oni army was breathing down his neck, and yet he was wondering what it be like to bare her chest and suckle to his heart’s content.
It scared him that he couldn’t keep his mind off her. On Elfhome, more than a dozen nasty plants liked to lure in prey and then pin them helpless to be eaten alive. The plants were all sweet-smelling, beautiful things. Did this elf female have him already pinned? Had she used some kind of magic to ensnare him so tightly? Having time to think about it, he couldn’t come up with any sane reason she would spread her legs so willingly for him otherwise.