He’d seen the tracks before he brought Anna her horse. He’d found them as he walked around the clearing looking for a distraction. He couldn’t ignore her. Not a chance. But he could stay busy. That was when he’d seen the obvious imprints of Lev’s paw prints at the edge of the forest.
Lev wasn’t gone.
Relief rushed over him until he thought he’d drowned in it.
Then, for a second, he froze, torn between the chance to find his brother and the age-old need to keep Bell safe. Since Bell was long gone, finding the white wolf had to be his top priority, given any chance of success at all. Lev was more important than the sword. For now. He wasn’t denying the inevitable need to destroy the emerald sword. He was keeping his priorities straight. There was no other reason he would put off destroying the sword.
Certainly not one in formfitting leggings that made it hard for him to concentrate.
He hadn’t had any sign that his brother was still in the forest yesterday. Now that he’d found fresh tracks, he had to try once more to bring Lev home.
He went for the large dappled gray destrier and led it to Anna. She had moved to mount without a word. He’d thought it was going to be quick and easy to follow his brother’s tracks, but one second of contact between his fingers and Anna’s had slowed him down.
His body still shook from her electric touch.
He was on his horse again and he’d taken the lead. He’d veered off onto a different trail and she’d followed without question. This was his mountain. He was familiar with every twisting pathway. He knew each hollow and glade. It was the tingling sensation in his every cell that was new territory.
They really needed to find the sword and end whatever was happening between them.
Volkhvy power was fueled by energy that came from the Ether. Anna shouldn’t be able to use it to create a spark that caused a chain reaction of pleasurable pain to suffuse his entire body. His mind knew that. His body, however, had felt what logic denied.
The Ether was cold. It was a black hole you couldn’t see or touch. One that devoured, and during that continuous vacuum, it expelled energy that witches could absorb and harness for their spells. At one time, regular folk had tapped into the power as well with mostly harmless hearth magic to help speed recovery of illness or growth of crops, to protect loved ones preparing to set off on long journeys, or to hasten their return.
But there was inherent danger in the Volkhvy race and what they could do with the power from the Ether. His mother was dead because of that power. His father had been corrupted by his lust for it. As the head of Bronwal, it was Ivan’s responsibility to walk the line between trust and caution in dealings with the Volkhvy. Soren was far less willing to walk that line.
Anna had said it wasn’t her. That the arc had been caused by their connection. If that was true, he was as guilty as she was if he allowed himself to enjoy the Volkhvy enchantment that bound them together.
He’d vowed to keep his distance.
He couldn’t allow that promise to be a lie. Until he found Lev, he needed to ignore the spark caused by their connection. He tightened every muscle in his body against the tingling pleasure that lingered. He rode with clenched teeth and a ramrod-straight spine.
And his body still burned.
“We’re riding into the forest, Soren. Deeper into the shadows. Are you sure you took the right path?” Anna said.
He should have known she wouldn’t be a blind follower. Survivors never were. If there was anything of Bell left in Anna, the Light Volkhvy princess, she would always have her eyes open and her wits about her.
“There were tracks in the clearing. Fresh wolf tracks of a particular size,” Soren confessed. “Lev’s tracks.”
He heard the horse behind his come to sudden halt. He reined in as well and turned halfway in his saddle. Anna was right—they’d ridden deeper into the woods where the sunlight didn’t reach. In the velvety shadows, the woman behind him was cloaked in darkness. He couldn’t read her expression. He could only see her porcelain skin and the sheen of ruby lips she must have moistened to speak.
“You said I would frighten him away, but now you’re using me as bait,” Anna said. “I’m dampening my powers and you didn’t warn me about the tracks because you wanted to keep it that way.”
“If I don’t get him back to the castle, he doesn’t have a chance of reclaiming himself,” Soren said. “He won’t harm you.”
“You’re harming me by leading me into danger without giving me a chance to prepare to defend myself,” Anna said. Her voice was quiet and accusatory. The hushed syllables made him flinch. He would have given Bell a choice, but he didn’t trust Anna. He wouldn’t allow anything to happen to her. He needed her to help him lure Lev out of the woods...whether she wanted to or not.
“From what I’ve seen, you don’t need preparation. Those gloves are useless,” Soren said.
“I wouldn’t recommend you put that theory to the test with skin-to-skin contact, Soren Romanov. Not if the arc from earlier is still tingling in you the way it’s tingling in me,” Anna said.
Suddenly, they were talking about something other than finding his brother. He’d sensed the sensual possibilities in that arc of electricity they’d shared. And, yes, his whole body did still tingle, although he tried to ignore it. Some of his reaction to his thoughts must have shown even in the shadows, because Anna’s hands tightened on the reins and her horse took a step toward his. Maybe she could see his face beneath the trees better than he could see hers. He controlled his features. He set his jaw and narrowed his eyes. He might be aroused by her suggestion of what would happen if they were suddenly skin to skin, but Anna didn’t need to know.
“I won’t take them off. I won’t risk frightening him away again,” Anna said.
He’d controlled his face. Now he controlled his body. He rejected the electricity because he had to. He had to focus on rescuing Lev. His brother would come for a witch. He was sure of it. His only choice now was to believe what Anna said and hope it wasn’t a mistake.
* * *
Her physical reaction to Soren mocked her now that he’d admitted to leading her haplessly into the forest. She’d been distracted by the lingering effects of the arc between them, and she’d already been taken off guard by his nearness.
Fifty miles apart would be too close to ignore him.
But she was determined that she wouldn’t be the one to destroy Lev’s chance of a reunion with his family. So she kept her gloves in place and held even tighter to the reins to keep from reaching to remove them.
It was impossible not to feel betrayed.
The red wolf wouldn’t have led Bell into danger without a warning.
Soren wasn’t only physically different as a man. He was a complete stranger to her. One that couldn’t be trusted in spite of instincts deep within her that said otherwise. She had relaxed her guard. There was no way around the truth. She had to learn how to see Soren as someone who was a potential enemy rather than a lifelong friend.
“I’ll leave the gloves on, but it will be up to you to protect me from the white wolf,” Anna said. She never would have had to ask the red wolf for protection. His constant, watchful presence had been a promise she didn’t have to seek out or demand. Their circumstances had changed. She had to change with them.
“He won’t harm you,” Soren repeated.
This time she didn’t reply. No matter what the white wolf did, he wouldn’t damage her as much as his brother already had.
Suddenly, Soren jumped off his horse’s back and whacked its flank to urge it to turn and run away. The great black stallion needed no encouragement. It had scented the white wolf on the breeze. Its nostrils flared and it reared up on its hind legs before it whirled to land facing the way they’d come. Anna held on while the gray pranced and whinnied in fear as it responded to its companion’s emotion.
“Let them go,” Soren shouted above the noise of hooves.
The black had lunged into a gallop and was quickly on his way to the sunlit clearing. Soren was beside her as she tried to dismount. Her urgency to avoid getting thrown by the frightened, prancing gray was too great to be cautious. She threw herself into Soren’s outstretched arms. Even his strength couldn’t withstand the force of the destrier’s dance and her leap. Soren fell back from the gray with quick grace to avoid its hooves. He caught her and protected her in a controlled slide that carried them several feet away from the path on a tangle of weeds.
Once again, they were touching.
And even the white wolf’s howl far in the distance didn’t stop her from feeling the strength of Soren’s arms and his body heat beneath her.
The scent of crushed greenery rose around them, but it was Soren’s scent that filled her senses—evergreen boughs and fallen leaves, both woodsy and fresh. Her red wolf had always carried the scent of the Carpathian forest in his fur. On Soren’s masculine skin, the scent was more seductive and sweet. She’d thought fifty miles apart would be too close. Now she was pressed against him with nothing but clothes separating them. The hoofbeats had faded into the distance and the forest had fallen into a hush around them. Her heartbeat was so loud in her ears she was afraid it would become audible to the man beneath her.
“I’m still going to destroy the sword. After we get Lev back to the castle.” Soren finally spoke to break the stillness.
“If you don’t, I will,” Anna agreed.
The only way to protect herself from the insane urge to get as close to Soren as possible was to end the reason for them to be together. The sooner they destroyed the sword, the better.
Soren rejected her with his words, but he was also searching her face. His eyes tracked from her tousled hair down to where she’d caught her lower lip by the edge of her teeth. She wasn’t the only one fighting their connection.
The white wolf was coming.
She was a witch and she was with his brother. No matter how savage Lev had become he wouldn’t ignore the threat of Volkhvy in Romanov territory. Some conditioning to be a champion was worked into his flesh and bones. And his hatred of witches had been forged in him through a devastating loss that obviously drove him to the brink of madness.
But the sudden ululating cries of a feral enchanted wolf seemed a more distant concern than the man who held her. Soren shook. She had grabbed his shoulders as they fell. She didn’t have the luxury of gauging their width, but the tension in his muscles was so extreme that his body trembled.
She looked up from her hands to his face.
And then she began to tremble, too.
Soren Romanov’s gaze was no longer tracking over her face. Instead, he stared at her lips. The intensity of his focus carried the weight of a physical touch. Her mouth tingled and it was his pure Romanov magnetism, not her power. His hands tightened on the curve of her back. Only his fingers. He didn’t pull her closer with his arms. He only held her tightly with his hands, as if it was instinctive and not a conscious choice. In the pit of her stomach, a hot coil wound tighter and tighter until, if it didn’t ease, she thought she would faint.
Had he raised his face closer to hers?
Gravity pressed her splayed body against his broad chest. Her breasts were flattened so that their heartbeats pounded against each other. But she was certain that his lips were nearer to hers than they had been before.
Anna tried not to breathe. She didn’t want him to see her pant, and there was no way she could achieve regular respiration with their mouths almost touching. Crazily, she realized Soren was holding his breath, too. She searched his face as if she could quickly tell what might happen in the next second, or the next.
She wasn’t going to kiss him.
The white wolf was coming closer, and all she could think about was the man who had cushioned her from the hard ground as she fell—only to become even harder and an even greater threat beneath her.
Because of how badly she wanted to taste him.
Once again her gaze went to his lips.
She resented the untrimmed beard that tried to hide the full swell of his mouth from her view. She could only see a hint of where her lips longed to press. A hint was enough to steal her breath and tighten something deep inside her. The coil had become a hot knot of desire where the earlier tingles had been. It tried to propel her toward the possibility of one lip-to-lip indulgence, one flick of the tip of her tongue.
He must have seen the hunger in her face.
“Anna,” he breathed, and it was doubly seductive because it was the first time he’d used her real name without sounding as if he used it as a reminder that she was his enemy. It didn’t matter that it was a reluctant plea. She barely had to lower her face before his hands came up to the back of her head and he pulled her the rest of the way.
One warm taste was all it took to shatter her completely.
She inhaled a gasp of surprise that tasted of the forest around them, but also the forest long captured in the red curls that had escaped his attempt to tame them. She reached to touch his human hair as their lips pressed together, deeper, again. She was no longer able to resist lightly threading her fingers through the silky strands, but when his mouth opened, she forgot his hair. His tongue met hers in a sudden stolen exploration. She registered his heat, the rough and smooth textures, the intimacy of sharing breath as he gulped for air, too, and then their mouths parted as if they both were shocked at what had happened.
Anna pushed back from his chest and rose in a scramble to her feet. At the same time, Soren stood. She struggled to breathe. Her cheeks were hot. Her whole body was inflamed. Soren’s skin was flushed. He pushed his hair back from his face as if he needed to clear the way for oxygen to get through and fill his lungs.
Nothing could have prevented that kiss.
Not Lev coming closer. Not all the willpower in the world. It had been rolling toward them on a tsunami of inevitability since Soren had regained his human form and she’d come back to Bronwal.
* * *
Anna had been right. Skin to skin was devastating. There was no chance of recovering from lips to lips and tongue to tongue. He could barely breathe, and now he knew forbidden fruit tasted of mint and Anna’s heated sighs.
From the second he’d landed on the ground with Anna sprawled on top of him, he’d been unable to make rational decisions. It wasn’t the time for their first kiss. There would never be the right time for such intimacy between them. But there had been an inevitability he couldn’t resist.
Their bodies melded perfectly together, even with no effort and no comfortable accommodation. Her lush figure—one he knew better than he should from their years of camaraderie—was a sudden pleasure of full breasts and intriguing curves against his human chest. Her lovely face—so familiar and dear to him at one time—was flushed and her lips were parted as her breath came quickly from between them.
And then she’d seen him looking at her. She’d caught her breath and held it as if she waited to see if he was brave enough to follow through with what his body told him to do.
She was there, in his arms, and he couldn’t deny that he was overwhelmed with the sensation of wanting her there, needing her there, enjoying her there. It wasn’t a leisurely moment where they were free to indulge or deny impulses with careful thought and the summoning of maximum self-control.
It was sudden, quick and hot. His hunger rose and, judging from her response, hers had, too.
Now the white wolf howled, coming closer and closer, but all Soren could hear and feel was his own frustration at the distance between him and a witch he wanted to kiss again. He should be glad the mistake had ended as quickly as it had begun. He should be glad she looked as if she regretted the momentary lapse of judgment and control.
Instead, he felt an echoing howl deep inside his chest.
He wanted to taste Anna again. Deeper and longer. He wanted to explore every inch of her curves with his human hands and indulge all the desires that arose, both hers and his, as a result of that exploration.
Yes. Skin to skin was devastating. But not because of the electric energy of the Ether that her Volkhvy blood allowed her to channel. She’d controlled that even as their lips met. It had taken great effort. He’d felt her trembling as she’d fought for command, but her control over her abilities had held.
As he stood facing her, it was the simple requited passion between them that devastated. The power of the Ether was nothing compared to their chemistry. He’d tried not to think of her since the night of the Gathering, when her parentage had been revealed. He’d tried and failed the minute he shifted to become a man. Their sudden separation should have been a reprieve. It had been torture instead. Now he found that being with her was a different kind of torture. Fantasy and impossible what-ifs had been replaced by the living, breathing reality of a woman he longed to touch in spite of her blood and his loyalty to his brothers. The kiss had been a mistake, but one he would long to commit again and again.
* * *
“That can’t happen again,” Anna said. The emerald sword sang I told you so in her veins, pulsing with the beat of her heart. They had both decided the sword had to be destroyed. The kiss only made the inevitable that much harder to accomplish.
“It won’t,” Soren said. He sounded so certain. Much more certain than he’d tasted and felt. His lips had been eager on hers, startled but willing and quick to know exactly what to do. How could such a wild, hard man have such a soft, sensual mouth?
She found herself looking at his lips. Even partially hidden by his beard, they drew her attention. He should be frowning. His mouth should be hard and angry. It wasn’t. His lips were still soft and full. If she stepped toward him again, they would welcome her even if he didn’t.
But then, his mouth changed.
“Get behind me and don’t say a word,” Soren said. Anna froze. The pleasure she’d experienced moments before fled, leaving her cold. The man in front of her no longer looked at her lips, and his mouth had become a tight, stiff line. He looked over her shoulder at a threat she could suddenly sense as the fine hairs rose on the back of her neck.
“He’s here,” she guessed. But she could already hear the breathing of the large, winded wolf that had appeared out of the forest behind her.
“I’ve come to bring you home, brother,” Soren said loudly.
Anna tried not to jump at his sudden false exuberance. She decided to follow his instructions. He knew the white wolf better than anyone. If she couldn’t use her powers, she had to survive in other ways. She moved forward, carefully and slowly, to place herself behind Soren. Doing so caused her to face the white wolf. Once she turned around, her heart began to pound and a wash of adrenaline flooded her body. Lev was an even more monstrous sight than he’d been before. His fur was more matted and dirty with dried blood. His teeth were bared. He filled the entire width of the path with his broad shoulders and widespread paws. Her hands tingled almost painfully in response. She ground her teeth against the instinctive desire to tap into the Ether.
“Lev. Come with me to Bronwal. You can lie by the fire and rest. Ivan wants to see you,” Soren said.
The white wolf growled in response. He wasn’t looking at Soren. His focus was on Anna. He stepped forward one pace, then another. She couldn’t tap into her powers, and the sword was somewhere far away in the possession of the Dark Volkhvy. It wasn’t a decision to reach for her former protector. It was pure survival instinct.
Without thinking, Anna reached to place one gloved hand on Soren’s shoulder. She shouldn’t have touched him. She sought an anchor and a reminder of why she couldn’t remove her gloves. What she received was an electric jolt through linen and leather that caused her to cry out. Somewhere the emerald sword flared. She sensed it even if she was too far away to see, and a sympathetic flash of green sparked behind her eyelids.
Her cry only seemed to throw fuel on the flames of Lev’s raw, savage emotions. The white wolf leaped forward. Soren reached for his brother’s fur on either side of his head, but even as muscular and as strong as he was in his human form, he was no match for a giant enchanted wolf.
Soren’s fists tightened and held, but Lev’s jaw closed over Anna’s arm before Soren could prevent it.
Her gloves weren’t useless. The thick leather protected her from having her arm torn off by the white wolf’s ferocious bite, but Lev’s teeth shredded the leather. Her skin was exposed and unprotected. The tips of his teeth snagged flesh. Her blood was shed. Anna’s power flared from the gaps in her glove.
Lev’s bite loosened, and a brilliant flash of green light repelled him backward away from them. Through her pain, Anna saw Lev land hard on the packed earth of the mountain path. He didn’t move. Not one of his giant muscles twitched. Her pain was too great to care. Driven by her agony, her power flared again. This time instead of using the Ether as a weapon, she used it as an escape. The white wolf didn’t move as the world disappeared. Before Anna lost consciousness, she felt the frigid cold of the Ether’s vacuum, and she heard Soren shout his brother’s name.