Jory Strong: Spider-Touched

“Don’t ask it of me,” he warned.

“I can’t promise I won’t.”

And because she wanted him to have the words, she added, “I love you.”

Tir rolled so she was underneath him, his cock once again buried deep in her heated channel. Her emotions flowed into him, fierce and aching, compelling. Devastating in their intensity. He touched his lips to hers, whispered against her mouth as his hips moved, beginning a slow climb to shared ecstasy. “Love doesn’t begin to encompass all I feel for you.”

RELIEF spread through Rebekka as Levi came into sight. Seeing him made her escape from the Iberá compound more real than the chauffeured drive or the moments she’d spent in the room off the foyer with Annalise Wainwright. Seeing him allowed her to believe life would return to normal—an illusion that lasted until the witch standing next to her on the porch said, “The matriarch thought you and the Were would be more comfortable staying elsewhere tonight. She’s arranged for an escort to the shamaness’s house. It’s safe to speak in front of him, but don’t ask his name.”

The comment took Rebekka’s eyes off Levi, and she startled at the man now standing where moments ago there’d been nothing but shadows and a raven perched in a tree just beyond the gate marking the boundary of the Wainwright property.

Shapeshifter, she thought, but even from a distance, she knew he was nothing ordinary. He was clothed, where a true shapeshifter wouldn’t have been. More telling, eyes the color of a dense forest blazed with inhuman fire, while a stylized raven marked his cheek.

“If all goes well,” Annalise said, “I will speak with you again in the future. You may keep the token in the Were’s possession as a symbol of alliance; it no longer holds a spell capable of bringing help.”

Rebekka nodded and Annalise went inside, leaving Rebekka free to hurry into Levi’s hug and barrage of questions. Before she answered the first of them, she glanced at the stranger who leaned against the oak tree where he’d once been perched.

Levi stiffened. A low growl emerged, only to be met by a laugh.

The man pushed away from the deep shadow and approached. “That’s hardly the appropriate greeting for the poor escort and messenger boy charged with ensuring you spend the night in a place free of trouble.”

“Who are you?” Levi asked, making Rebekka cringe.

“You’ll have to trust the little healer when she tells you I mean you no harm, though as a courtesy to Aisling and her prince of a mate, it would be best if we appeared on her doorstep before full dark arrives.”

Rebekka gave Levi another quick hug then disengaged, saying, “We can talk as we walk.”

Lion gold eyes issued another warning to their escort before Levi took up a position next to her. And as they walked, she told him what had happened since they parted upon seeing the guardsmen and Gulzar near the Mission.

When she reached the part where Aziel had appeared, Levi produced the blackened token and handed it to her. He stopped in his tracks when, moments later, she got to the end of her story, telling him, “Annalise prophecies a war between supernatural beings. She claims healers will emerge who are able to do what I can’t for those trapped between forms.”

“What you can’t do yet ,” their raven-marked guide said, causing them both to look at him, though he neither looked back nor stopped walking.

Levi let the stranger advance a block before he took a step. Rebekka doubted even ten blocks would be enough distance to keep their escort from hearing their conversation.

“Is he right?” Levi asked.

“Yes.”

“What do the witches want from you?”

She curled her fingers around his arm. “They didn’t ask anything.”

“Yet. They involved you in their schemes from the first, by sending for you. You could have lost your life, either at the hands of the guardsmen or the Church.”

“Because I chose not to leave Eston in the truck for guardsmen to find,” Rebekka said, and she wasn’t sorry for that choice. Just as she wasn’t sorry they’d ambushed the trapper or waited in the woods to offer shelter to Araña. “If not for the witches, Anton would have dragon lizards and Cyrin would be dead.”

Levi snarled at what Anton had planned for his brother. She squeezed his arm, hardly daring to mention the dream they shared of freeing the animals and Weres held at the maze, but she didn’t know Aisling or her mate, and Annalise hadn’t said it was safe to speak freely once they arrived at the shamaness’s house.

“I think the witches intend for Araña to gain control over the demon. If—”

“She and Tir intend to break into Anton’s house. Araña made a bargain with Draven Tassone. I don’t know the details of it.”

Confusion buffeted Rebekka. The vampire’s involvement was unexpected. “Tir is the prisoner?”

“Yes.”

“When will they attempt it?”

Levi stopped her once again, this time putting his mouth close to her ear. “She has three days to complete whatever task she agreed to.”

Rebekka’s palms grew suddenly damp. “Then they have until tomorrow at noon unless they want to face the magistrate’s men as well as the demon.”

“I warned her about the magistrate’s arrival when I saw her earlier. She and Tir witnessed the assault on your house and she came to the brothel to warn me. Her boat is hidden in the outer harbor. I’m meeting them there shortly after sunrise tomorrow.”

Rebekka’s breath caught. Her thoughts went to the patriarch, trapped in his wheelchair, his limbs slowly becoming useless. She could think of only one thing Araña and Tir had that could be used for bargaining with the vice lord who controlled the outer harbor. “Rimmon’s daughter?”

“I told them she suffered from the wasting disease. If Tir healed her as you think he might be capable of doing, there’s no rumor of it yet.”

Levi turned away from her and began walking, hands shoved into his pockets and shoulders hunched in an uncharacteristic way. “I contemplated betraying them. I asked her to use her gift to find you. When she claimed not to have control over it, I told her about Annalise sending for you. I told her to seek out the witches and learn how to use her gift. When nearly a day passed…”

Levi shrugged. “I was on my way to the outer harbor to see if Tir had succeeded in stealing the boat and making a deal with Rimmon. Then I was to meet with the werewolf we freed. He approached me at the brothel—

“Now I know he lied. He said he was there when Tir was turned over to the trapper. He claimed Tir was a demon-possessed human being sent to the maze.”

Rebekka slid her arm through Levi’s. “You wouldn’t have betrayed them.”

“I’ve thought about little else but the possibility of you being held at the maze and Gulzar—” A shudder went through him. “If Araña had arrived a few minutes later, I would have missed both her and the messenger bringing news you were safe. I might have—”

“No. You wouldn’t have betrayed them.”

He shrugged again and remained silent. Ahead of them, the stranger leaned indolently against a fence in front of a white adobe house with a profusion of flowers underneath the windows and on the porch.

Rebekka touched her pocket and felt the folded pages she’d ripped from the journal on the patriarch’s desk. Choices. Paths taken and not taken.

Sitting across from Annalise, she’d accepted that maybe she couldn’t know the cost ahead of time. Maybe she could only go with her heart and do what she considered right at each juncture. “There might never be a better chance to free those held in the maze.”