Finally, he returned to her and came to stand before her. Taking her hands in his, he raised them to his mouth, one after the other, and kissed her knuckles.
“You asked why this is important to me.” His eyes throbbed with emotion. “Because I love you, D.”
Bittersweet happiness twisted through her misery. “Tighe.”
He lifted his hand and caressed her head. “I love you. It’s not going to hurt me to bind myself to you. Because I’m bound, whether through ritual or the emotion in my heart, I’m yours. Always. No matter how long that is.”
The tears started down her cheeks. “Tighe, I love you, too.”
His expression tightened into something close to pain. Cupping her face in his hands, he kissed her, the kiss shattering in its anguished tenderness.
The saltiness of her tears mixed with the sweet wildness of his taste as she kissed him back, running her fingers along the back of his neck and into his hair, holding on. Holding on.
Tighe pulled away. “Lie down, brown eyes.” Their gazes met, and for one awful instant, she saw the clone in his eyes. Her heart stuttered.
“What is it, D? You’re scared.”
“It’s…I felt like he was here. Like he was watching me.”
“He can’t reach you here, sweetheart.” But he swung away and went to retrieve a knife from the shelf where he’d found the lighter. With a quick swipe, he slit open his palm. Bright red blood ran down his hand.
Delaney held out her hand, ready to do the same. Or at least, the human version of it.
Tighe shook his head as he grabbed one of the towels and wiped the blood off his hand. “I would know the moment I looked in your eyes, D. I know you’re not him.”
Delaney frowned. “I should have known. I shouldn’t have had that moment of doubt either.”
His hands slid into her hair. “There’s a difference, brown eyes. I look like him. Plus the fact, he terrorized you. It would be surprising if you didn’t have moments like that.” Stepping between her thighs, he pulled her against him and gently stroked her head. “Now, lie down.”
As he stepped back, she did as he asked, positioning herself in the middle of the platform. Tighe pulled himself up from the end. She spread her legs, and he knelt between them. But the memory of the last time she was naked in front of a man stabbed at her, and she froze.
Tighe shook his head, his expression unhappy. “He’s not here, D. Don’t let him be here. Not now.”
“I can’t help it. I can’t forget.”
“I know, sweetheart. Maybe this is too soon.” He sighed and moved as if to leave.
She reached for him. “Tighe, wait. I need you to help me forget. Touch me. With your warmth. With your love. Touch me everywhere and erase his cold touch. Please?”
A small smile flashed shallow dimples. “There’s nothing I want more, brown eyes. Nothing.” He grasped her ankles gently with his warm, strong hands, touching. Caressing. Slowly, he worked his way up her calves and her thighs, his touch warm and tender and so very different from that other touch. His hands slid over her hips, skimming her abdomen to tenderly cover her breasts. “Like this?”
She smiled for him. “Yes. Exactly like this.”
He caressed her breasts, softly kneading and plucking until her breathing became slowly ragged. One hand left her breast to travel between her thighs.
But at the first stroke, she flinched. “I’m sorry.”
“D. Look at me. Look into my eyes. He never looked at you with eyes like mine.”
She stared into his golden tiger eyes and felt only warmth. Only love.
His warm fingers moved back to caress her inner thigh, sliding higher, one millimeter at a time, pulling her back to that place of heat and need.
“I’m going to touch you, sweetheart. I’m going to slide my finger into your honey. It’s going to feel good, as it always does when I touch you. Because I love you.”
His finger stroked her lightly, then pressed, warm and gentle, into her, so different from that last cold invasion.
She shuddered with revulsion at the memory, even as she lifted her hips, embracing the touch of the man she loved. He probed her slowly, with infinite gentleness, then quicker as she heated, as her body opened and wept for him. Over and over he slid his finger in and out until heat coursed through her, until desire raged through her veins, until she was rocking her hips, gasping with need.
Finally, he withdrew his finger and came to her, bracing himself on his arms, yet not entering her. Not yet.
His gaze held hers. He didn’t have to tell her this time to watch him. His eyes were so tender, so full of love, she couldn’t have looked away if she’d wanted to.
“I love you, Delaney Randall. I bind myself to you, heart and soul.” As he began to chant, he slid deep inside her, stretching her, filling her, then out again, in rhythm with the ancient sounds coming from his throat. Her heart took up the beat until it pounded through her, lifting her in passion and excitement as if she were part of something beyond the body, beyond the earth, far beyond anything any human had ever known.
As he entered her over and over, she felt the warmth of a hundred angel wings brushing her mind. And saw the tiger lift his head to the skies with a roar of keen satisfaction.
A flicker of a smile lit Tighe’s mouth as if he, too, felt the tiger watching. His eyes bored into her, holding her. Claiming her as he drove into her, driving her higher and higher, faster and faster, until the ritual pounded through her blood like ancient drums, lifting her, launching her…
As she stared into those beloved tiger eyes, she screamed with the roaring rush of pleasure, then gasped as Tighe’s love rushed into her, embracing her like a tender warmth riding the wings of her soul, filling her with a fullness, a rightness, a completeness so perfect that chills raced over her skin and tears ran from her eyes.
She’d thought binding would enslave her. Instead, for the first time in her life, she felt whole.
Tighe watched her with moisture in his own eyes. He kissed her, and the sweetness, the passion, exploded inside her a hundred times more brilliant than before as if she’d been living life in two dimensions, two black-and-white dimensions, and through this ritual, he’d lifted her into a stunning new existence.
She felt transformed. Reborn.
Tighe lifted his face and stared into her eyes with infinite tenderness. Infinite sadness.
And the beauty of the moment shattered in bittersweet shards of truth.
Tighe was dying.
And even if, by some miracle, he survived, they had no future together. They both knew it. She saw the knowledge in the sadness in his eyes.
He gathered her into his arms, and they held one another, clinging to a dream that couldn’t last.
“You bound yourself to me,” Delaney murmured, finally, against his collarbone.
With slow, lazy brushes of his warm palm, Tighe stroked her body. “I did.”
“How? There was no blood.”
“The previous ritual paired us. Opening myself to you, in this place, was the only thing left to do.” His lips brushed her temple. “It was the most profound thing I’ve ever done, brown eyes. The most perfect.”
“I never dreamed it would be like that. That it could be like that.”
He brushed back her hair. “You’re okay?”
She shivered as his question brought back thoughts of the clone. “Yes. But, I swear, for a moment there I felt like he was watching me. For an awful moment, I felt like he was inside you, looking out.”
Tighe stiffened. She felt the energy going through him like a lightning bolt.
“D, that’s it! We see through his eyes, right? What if he’s seeing through mine?”
Delaney froze. “Do you mean visions? Like he’s seeing us? Me?”
“Why not?”
“Now?”
“I don’t know. We see him when he feeds. I have a hard time believing he’s seeing me when I eat. Don’t get me wrong, I like to eat, but there’s nothing powerful about it for me.”
“He said he loved me. And, Tighe, he knew my name. Just before he grabbed my head, he said my name.”
“He’s getting the visions when I’m with you.”
“With me?” Delaney croaked. “As in…?”
Tighe squeezed her shoulder. “Think, D. Maybe this is why he stopped feeding on people directly and moved back to fires.”
She gasped. “Of course. He realized we were getting visions of him when he killed. We were going to be able to trap him if he kept it up.”
His hand clenched her shoulder harder. “I know when it happened. It was while we were driving around after the Lincoln Memorial murders. He was killing the babies. I stopped at the light and looked down at you and told you what he was doing. And where he was. He stopped midstep. He heard me.”
“But you weren’t doing anything more profound than driving.”
“Wrong, sweetheart. I was looking into your eyes. And there’s nothing more profound to me.”
He sat up, then hopped off the altar and started pacing, studiously not looking at her. His hands raked into his hair. “I was looking in your eyes the morning you told me you were going to meet Kara in the foyer. He showed up instead.”
Delaney jumped off the altar and grabbed a towel. “Maybe that’s why he told me he loved me. Because he sees my feelings for you in my eyes. He’s reacting to that emotion.”
“Exactly. I was looking into your eyes when I gave you the cell phone and told you it had a tracking system.”
Delaney looked at him in astonishment even as he carefully kept his gaze averted. “How can you possibly remember all the times you looked into my eyes?”
He circled behind her, then pulled her tight against him, his arm warm and comforting across her rib cage. “Because every time I look into your eyes, I feel like I’m drowning. Like my feet are being swept out from under me. Looking into your eyes feeds my soul, D.”
She covered his arms with her hands and held onto him as he held her. “Does that mean I can’t look into your eyes anymore?”
“No.” He squeezed her tight, and let out an excited whoop. “It means we may finally have a way to catch him.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Ten minutes later, Tighe paced the war room, adrenaline racing through his body on a riptide of hope. It might well knock his feet out from under him again, but for the moment, he had a chance at life, and that was all he could ask for.
Delaney sat at the big table, her back to him so they didn’t accidentally make eye contact. At the table with her were Lyon, Kara, and Kougar. Jag and Wulfe were on their way and would be filled in later. Paenther and Foxx were still in the Blue Ridge. They only waited for Hawke.
As the warrior walked into the room, each man and woman pulled out a knife and cut his or her palm.
Lyon turned to Tighe, eyeing him with controlled excitement. “Tell them what you told me.”
Tighe nodded and turned to the others, then explained how he and Delaney had figured out the clone was seeing through his eyes.
“So he’s not seeing anything but Delaney?” Hawke took his seat and leaned forward, his eyes flashing. “But he’s hearing whatever’s said during that time.”
“Right. Full sound visions, just as mine are.” Tighe stopped and turned toward the table, his hands going to Delaney’s shoulders, his gaze skipping from one Feral to the next. “We can use this to set him up. To set a trap.”
Lyon’s brows rose questioningly. “Do we know what he wants?”
“The other half of Tighe’s soul,” Delaney said. “He told me he was going to use me to get it.”
“Did he say how?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
Lyon’s gaze swung to Hawke. “Any clue?”
“None. All we know is he had her lying in a pentagram and he possesses at least some of the knowledge of the Daemons. His plan could be anything, but everything points to its involving either Delaney, or Tighe.”
“So we’re going to make it easy for him to catch us.” Tighe waited until all eyes were back on him. “We’ll pretend to be planning to trap him again.” He looked at Kougar. “One of your Daemon traps. Something that requires all the Ferals to leave Feral House. I’ll tell D I’m staying here with her as long as I can, then tell her something went wrong, and I have to leave to help you. If I’m his target, he’ll have access to me when I cross the woods alone. If D is the target, he’ll have her virtually unprotected in the house.”
Lyon grunted. “I’m not leaving Kara unprotected, but the clone doesn’t have to know that. And the rest of them will be in their animals, hidden, watching you two.”
“Exactly.”
“He may not believe you’d leave Delaney alone,” Lyon said.
Delaney gave a soft snort. “If there’s one thing he doesn’t understand, it’s love.”
“How would he get into the house?” Kara asked. “The doors are always locked.”
“His life’s on the line.” Tighe kneaded Delaney’s shoulders softly, gaining strength just from touching her. “A locked house wouldn’t stop me if I needed in. It won’t stop him. He’ll try. We’ll stop him before he breaks in.”
Lyon’s gaze met his. “It’s a long shot.”
“Maybe not, Roar,” Hawke said. “The clone has to know he’s dying, too. I’m willing to bet he’s already planning some kind of move. If he senses how close his soul is to crumbling, he’s planning it tonight. By giving him our plans, or our supposed plans, we’ll be giving him exactly what he wants.” He nodded to Tighe. “It might work brilliantly.”