Page 124 of Shadow Blind

He chuckled. “Hate to break it to you, babe, but you signal your arousal with more than scent. It’s in your eyes, which turn the color of cinnamon. And your nipples, which pebble and turn rosy.” He reached up and tweaked her nipple, then returned his hand to between her shaking legs and his finger to her dripping core. “And then there’s this—” He pumped his finger in and out of her pussy. It tightened around his finger. “Look how wet you get for me.” He chuckled again. “I know when you’re aroused.”

“Well, of course, you do.” She squirmed beneath the thrust of his finger. “We’d have to test the hypothesis on other men, like at the cafeteria, and see if they can smell my arousal.”

Aiden froze. What the fuck? His head shot up.

A peal of laughter broke from her. “Oh, my God, you should see your face.”

“Fuck that.” Aiden reared back and grabbed her calves, lifting them over his shoulders.

He was ninety-nine-point nine percent certain she was joking, but no sense in taking chances. Time to pull out the big gun and distract her. With one hard thrust, he buried his cock inside her. She shifted to align them better and wrapped her legs around his waist. Her arms wound around his sides, all the better to dig her talons into his back as she approached her climax.

He couldn’t wait.

After giving her a few seconds to adjust to him, he started a slow, steady thrusting. She hummed and shivered beneath him. He sucked back a groan and kept pumping, his tempo increasing until he was hammering into her like his life depended on it.

In no time, the tingle at the base of his spine started back up. Her body tightened beneath him. Her pussy convulsed and she flew. He followed, chasing her toward the sunrise, and the unicorn, and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

He was home again, Demi in his arms, her magic back in his life.

Chapter forty-nine

Day 24

Denali, Alaska

Wolf stepped into the darkness of his quarters without turning on the lights. He let the door swing shut behind him, welcoming the shroud of silence and obscurity. For several long seconds he just stood there, his shoulders slumping, staring into an infinity of emptiness while a flash grenade of memories exploded in his mind.

Flash. Crack. Boom! Samuel and Kuznetsov swallowed by a ball of orange and white fire. Samuel’s body lifted and thrown, limp as a ragdoll. The crackle and spit of flames. High pitched screaming, shouting. The acrid smell of smoke, burning metal, spent accelerant, and roasted flesh.

The images vanished, but his flight or fight response continued. His heart slammed against his ribs. His pulse pounded in his ears. His harsh, loud breathing filled the room. His mouth had gone bone dry, his throat tight. His muscles were so tense they ached. No doubt his pupils were dilated too. All symptoms of an adrenaline burst, even though the danger had long since passed.

A low, frustrated grunt broke from him, fracturing the silence. Without hitting the light switch, he stumbled toward his bedroom. He was tired. So damn tired. The exhaustion was so heavy, it carried weight and heft. Each step was a battle. While lack of sleep, along with constant meetings over the past four rotations played a part in his exhaustion, most of the fatigue came from internal rather than external sources.

He’d lost warriors before. Jude, for one. His anisbecco’s death had left a bloody crater within him, one that hadn’t quite healed, even now, three cycles later. In one exceptionally painful case, he’d lost an entire helicopter of warriors. So many lost lives, so much vanished potential.

It was frustrating that his gift forewarned of some deaths, yet not others. He’d seen Aiden’s death multiple times, and early enough to prevent it each time. He’d prevented Kait’s death with it, too. Samuel’s as well. Yet he hadn’t seen Jude’s. He hadn’t seen the chopper crash that led to the end of all those warriors’ lives.

He hadn’t seen Daniel’s murder.

His gift was a fickle beast, serving only a chosen few.

Benioko said the warning pulse could not prevent all deaths, only those brought about through the meddling of the younger gods. The Shadow Warrior’s and Blue Moon Mother’s shadow children were a petty and jealous lot, envious of the love their parents showered on their earthborn offspring. Sometimes, the lower gods acted behind their parents’ backs, orchestrating events to bring about the demise of the favorites among their parents’ earthborn children.

Such deaths were not woven into the web of time by the elder gods; thus, they could be circumvented. Shadow Warrior created the warning pulse to prevent such unsanctioned fatalities. But other deaths, those that had been woven into the tangle of time, could not be prevented, thus his gift never warned of their passing.

Still, even knowing this, some fatalities were difficult to accept. Daniel, for instance. His murder should have been preventable. Maybe not through Wolf’s gift, but through his knowledge, training, and instincts. Daniel had died because of Wolf’s failure, because of his lack of foresight.

The sucking guilt of this was constant. It kept his eyes open deep into the night while he weighed what he’d done against what he should have done, where he picked apart every single decision. Every single command. Every single action.

If he’d left Kuznetsov’s mistress behind in Petropavlovsk, if he’d refused to let her off the Thunderbird to use the bathroom, if he’d assigned a more experienced guard to accompany her to the shed, if he’d gone with her rather than Daniel. Any of those decisions could have changed the outcome, saved the young warrior’s life.

Instead, Muriel was grieving the loss of her first borne child, and Samuel— Wolf flinched. Samuel didn’t even know his jnaaee, the youngling more like a son than nephew to him, had journeyed to the web of his ancestors.

Samuel’s condition was easier to accept. Not his maimed and broken body. That would never be easy to see. But Wolf’s what ifs over the past five rotations had proven that nothing he could have done would have offered a better outcome.

If he and Samuel had switched places, his Caetanee would have been directly in the RPG's path. The grenade would have hit him before it reached anyone else. The only reason Wolf and O’Neill had escaped death was because of Wolf’s gift, which gave enough warning for him to tackle O’Neill and drive them both to the ground, so the grenade had gone over their heads.

But O’Neill had been within tackle range.

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