Whatever it was, it was pleased I stopped trying to get away.
It felt tender and...
“Shadows...”it whispered again. The rest of what it said was muffled.
Thunder rumbled somewhere that was nothing more than a dull thud. Behind my closed eyelids, light flashed, and I didn’t realize I had closed my eyes at some point until now.
My lips parted on a sigh as the wind circled around me, my hair dancing with it. My hand reached out, searching for something, but I wasn’t all too sure what. My fingers stretched, and I knew whatever I was trying to touch wasrightthere, out of reach.
I knew it wasn’t Rune.
It was something else... something...
Beautiful words in an unfamiliar language met my ears. It warmed me while also sending chills through me as I shuddered with shaky breaths. The words blended together until they sounded like one constant word in a different tongue.
And that one word was ingrained into me but not translated. But the feeling it brought made me suck in a sharp breath.
“Sækpír...”
Heady power crackled in the space around me, causing the hairs on the back of my neck to stand and goosebumps to spread along my arms and legs. My nipples pebbled, becoming sensitive against the soft cotton of my shirt under my leather armor. A familiar touch brushed over my shoulder and down my spine with invisible fingers.
It dragged me from the depths of the trance I’d been under for who knows how long. It felt like seconds while at the same time, ages. The time weighed on my body like heavy stones, sinking me further into the darkness, away from the new power that tried luring me back.
The further I sunk to the power that was promised, the more the opposing touch forced me to rise.
To awaken.
My head swam like I drank the mead Hluti gave me the first night we met. It made my stomach churn with the faint promise I was going to toss my cookies soon. My body was weighed down like I was sinking deeper into the ocean, lost and unable to find which way was up or down.
Electricity zapped somewhere nearby. It started off small, and I barely heard or felt it. But with each heartbeat, it became stronger and louder. It went on for a few long seconds before my flesh pebbled and awareness shot through me again. The same invisible touch, but from something else, dragged a rough, warm finger along my back like it was on my bare skin. It was intimate, making me shudder and blink out of the spell I’d been under.
I knew this power.
The voice talking in the beautiful language stopped in the middle of the word.
My hair lashed around my face from the new direction of the flow of something opening with the zaps of lightning. My ears filled with pressure, like they were about to pop.
Something opened...
A portal.
Like an arrow released from a taut bow, I was snatched from the depths of my trance. I broke free, barely registering the lightning arcing around me and the man who gripped me in his unyielding hold. He smashed me to his chest, his large arm curling around my waist as he stepped back from the darkness I was in. Behind him was the other side of the portal that wasn’t the Walmart parking lot we had left. It was night here too, wherever it was, but no thunderstorm. Dark outlines of large trees, their limbs gently swaying in the breeze.
I raised my eyes to his face. His blue eyes narrowed, and his jaw set as he seethed at whatever was in the darkness.
Whoever it was, they were trying to send me a message that I couldn’t make out, and Rune wasn’t happy about it.
He scooped me up in his arms, turned around, and carried me to the other side.
“Beauty,” he rumbled to me, his voice laced with irritation.
I knew from the tone of that one word that he was going to take it out on me. It’d been building since I came back to life. The way he threatened to spank me, made me ride his leg, showed me his fantasy of fucking my throat in a brutal punishment as he worked out his pain and anger while pleasuring me and making sure I enjoyed it too.
And it didn’t take much thought for me to know I’d let him do it all to me.
ChapterEleven
Dry leaves crunched under Rune’s boots as he strode with me still in his arms princess style. The sword at his hip clacked against something, a metaltingringing with each footstep. I didn’t know what it was hitting against, but the sound alone promised death to anyone who wasn’t an ally.
