The guilt, shame, horror and grief Evander should have suffered from that initial kill had consumed him with Gregor’s death. His brother hadn’t uttered a word, but accepted the accusation and resulting punishment of a rogue rather than betray his twin.
Evander had begged Nicolai to spare Gregor…had pleaded with him not to destroy his brother. But Nicolai hadn’t listened, hadn’t granted mercy on behalf of the soldier and brother-in-arms who had served him loyally for over seven hundred years.
Grief had turned to hate.
Hate for Nicolai who’d destroyed his twin. Hate for the hippogryph society that had failed to protect him and Gregor as children, then condemned him for the monster they had ultimately created. Hate for the humans his king insisted they—the more powerful beings—hide their existence from like rats in a sewer and yet protect like menial servants.
Gregor’s death and Nicolai’s ruthlessness had obliterated Evander’s allegiance to his people, to Lukas, Adon, Dorian…and especially Nicolai.
Bastien had been his first victim as a declared rogue.
Nicolai had taken the person Evander had loved so he returned the favor with the Dimios’ best friend. Every kill afterward had been a humiliating nail in Nicolai’s coffin as he failed to capture the rogue he’d trained in the art of tracking and execution.
And now—Evander paused in front of the hotel window and stared out over the quiet backwater town called Grace Crossings—his greatest revenge loomed close. All the players were set in place.
Soon, very soon, it would be game and match.
Chapter Two
Tamar Ridgeway rolled over, sighing.
Her internal alarm clock blared the six o’clock hour with an annoying ring that refused to let her burrow back under the covers for a few extra moments of sleep. With an irritated grumble, she stretched out her arm, seeking warm, hard flesh, but instead encountered a cool jumble of blankets.
Damn.
For an instant, sorrow and disappointment crashed down on her like a cruel dousing of frigid ice water. A dream. That’s all it’d been—that’s all it ever was. After three years of fantasies about her winged warrior, she should be used to waking up alone. Yet the knowledge didn’t prevent the initial despair or loneliness from claiming her in that gloaming between sleep and wakefulness. It was like the morning following Christmas Day, after the excitement and joy of the holiday had passed. And the time before it came around again stretched an interminable three hundred and sixty-five days forward.
Shoving the regret aside along with the covers, she rose from the bed and padded across the hardwood floor. A blunted ache took up residence in her left hip and thigh and she winced at the muted pulsing of strained and tired muscles. She stopped, exhaled a breath. Lowering her hands to the scarred flesh, she kneaded and massaged the tight sinew, ligaments and tendons. They were always stiff first thing in the morning and needed time to catch up with the rest of her body.
She glanced down at her leg and the hardened whorls and thick ridges that creased it like a child’s scribble-scrabble drawing. The scars that covered the left side of her body were constant reminders of the plane crash she’d survived at twenty-five years old. After years of intensive physical and psychological therapy, she walked with a limp, had broken up with her fiancé and was still afraid of the dark…and flying. She hadn’t slept in a dark room or stepped foot on a plane since the crash, but she lived. And finally—finally—three years later, she had her life back.
When the throbbing had subsided to a negligible thud, she headed toward the bathroom and a much-needed shower.
Most people who had suffered the kind of trauma she’d endured had nightmares for years. Her? She dreamed of a lavender-eyed, blond winged warrior. For the first two and a half years after the crash he’d been her champion. She’d watched him laugh with his small unit of men, charge into battle and recover from his wounds. He’d been her nighttime protector, her comforter. But the last six months…damn. In the last six months instead of a spectator, she’d become a full active participant. And he’d become the man who made love to her as if he’d invented the act. Her dreams had always been vivid and detailed—even as a child. But how she imagined the things he did to her with his fingers, tongue and cock…whew.
In the safety of her mind, she morphed into a sexual creature she hadn’t known existed. She’d enjoyed sex before, but had never craved it. Nicolai’s frank, unapologetic sexuality—from his caresses to his words—allowed her to be as uninhibited and free as he. Heat flowed to her face as she recalled some of those words. In her twenty-eight years, she hadn’t uttered the word…pussy aloud. Hell, she even whispered it in her own head!