Page 6 of Angel's Conquest

Was that what had happened to her? Had she finally been thrown aside, discarded like the refuse she had long been treated as?

But then where was that warmth coming from?

Clara leaned into the flush of heat that was gently parting her lips. Her wolf even whined with warmth against the onslaught of sweet breath that fluttered over her teeth, across her tongue, and cascaded down the back of her throat in a rush. And wasn’t that just wonderful? The heaviness that had pummeled her chest a moment ago suddenly lifted away, and that sweet intoxicating flood of air filled her most intimately . . .

It was a dream she never wished to surface from. Even after her lungs deflated on a sigh, the warm flow of air filled her chest again, invigorating parts of her that had borne a deathlike stillness. And the scent . . . it was almost heady in its heat. A campfire smokiness that unfurled nature’s secret spices and lured not only her wolf but every sleepy cell in her body.

Clara clung to the scent hard, chasing after it with a desperate curiosity when it would ebb away from her. Gosh, why was she doing that? Where had this need come from? As soon as the question hit her, it was accompanied by a nagging prick that tickled the corners of her mind. She was forgetting something, but what?

When she arched her back through the next onslaught of air, her shoulder blades pressed into something hard. Long, curved, pointed at the tip . . .

The moonstone relic!

Clara’s eyes winged open, and fear froze what little motion remained in her numb body. Someone was on top of her, pinning her into the damp earth. Darkness dressed the figure in shadows, blocking out any light that may have illuminated her circumstances. But that heat, the seductive heat that lingered in her lungs and under her skin, still swirled above her and everywhere their bodies touched.

Fingers cradling her jaw, lips warming her own, a slight rasp of a beard jerking her free of the fog.

And then the scent hit her. Smoky. Spicy.

Not lycan.

A human! A human was kissing her!

With floundering strength, her shaky hands heaved against his strong shoulders. To her great surprise, she needn’t have bothered. The human tore his mouth from hers and flung himself off with a speed to rival any hunting wolf. Though there was no shortage of nearby boulders along the riverbank, he’d chosen the farthest one, it seemed, to enmesh himself against. He held up his long arms, all fingers extended high toward the moon, and stayed in a crouched position, as if in defense of a circumstance both out of his control and in need of dire explanation.

“I wasn’t trying anything, I promise. I saw you floating in the river unconscious, and when I pulled you to shore, you weren’t breathing well enough on your own.”

Clara’s head slowly fell to the side as she studied him, and instantly her cheeks warmed with that seductive heat from earlier. Was this what all humans looked like? Even clouded in shadows as he was, she could still make out the rich auburn hair that hung in loose waves about his chin as he shook the emphasis of truth into his words. A beard of similar color framed his mouth in a neat gathering, though the hairs didn’t extend along the rest of his jawline like the beards of most lycan males.

Males . . . she was with a male.

Thoughts of her kind awakened her realization of the compromised state she found herself in, and she quickly tried not to let her gaze linger too long on that beard or, more particularly, his mouth. But damn her, she couldn’t resist the urge to see more of him.

A human. A real human! She’d done it!

But her soft elation was quickly quelled when she spied the chest holster fitted against his toned frame. Blade hilts sat in neat little rows snugly along his ribcage, hugging his chest like an unbreachable wall. Straps of what looked to be leather crisscrossed over his trapezius muscles as well, which drew her eyes to land on a handle poking out from above a tense shoulder. She didn’t need to see more to know what that handle was likely attached to and what a male with as much strength as the one before her could do with a simple reach behind himself.

It was that awareness that brought back every ounce of cold her body had, for some reason, forgotten to shiver through. Clara gripped her dripping mantle tight around her shoulders and risked a glance at the surrounding forest floor for her cloak.

“It’s in the water,” the human male replied. “I had to cut it off to free you.”

That certainly got her attention. Free her? Free her from— Oh, God. The relic. It had been tied around her neck. Had her father’s guards found her? She opened her mouth to speak when a comfortable and familiar weight pressed against her upper back.

No, I didn’t lose it. It’s here.

As discreetly as possible, Clara gripped the leather strap cinching her throat and twisted the relic so it rested comfortably between her breasts, then stowed it safely beneath her blouse.

Her wolf’s low growl of warning rattled through her now-shivering muscles, a silent reminder that safety was not assured. Clara quickly rose to her feet, and the human’s hands flew up in front of him.

“Whoa! Slow it down, there. I just pulled you from that river not two minutes ago. There’s still water running off you, and you’re a far cry from being high and dry.” The male kept his hands raised but took two steps closer, his gaze assessing her hairline where her temple throbbed. “You’ve got quite the head wound, and I have no idea how long you’ve been soaking up more than your share of the Ellis, so we’ve got to take care of things before any blood still in you decides to evacuate.”

How strangely he spoke. Oh, she was able to gather his meaning about her injuries, but his vernacular was so odd. “The . . . Ellis? What is that?”

He gestured toward the river. “The waterway that runs through this part of the White Mountains. Feeds into all sorts of treatment plants in and around Aurora, including the town’s reservoir. The treated wastewater dumps out at this part of it, so the rapids can seem a little edgier at the base here.”

Clara followed the nod of his chin toward the bridge that loomed above the churning waters and had to stifle her gasp. The small archway was crafted from the smoothest stones she’d ever seen, which glowed nearly alabaster against the barest light of the moon. None of the architecture in her father’s stronghold could ever have been so fine. She was almost tempted, despite the unknown danger of the male before her and the risk to her relic, to shift into her wolf form just so the she-wolf’s enhanced eyesight could be her own. The masonry of the work alone was astonishing. She could barely make out any mortar that didn’t appear as smooth as her own skin. And the curve of the bridge itself! So flawless she couldn’t imagine mortal hands possibly crafting something that contained zero traces of embellishments or protrusions. Her gaze drifted lower, drawn toward the rush of water tunneling out of a circular enclosure that was still mostly shrouded in shadow.

Holy mother . . .