Kiss of the Night (Dark-Hunter 4)

She was dressed in a soft dark green gown like some medieval lady. Frowning, she ran her hand over the material, which was softer than chamois.

Alone inside a stone cottage where a warm fire blazed in a large hearth, she stood off to the side of an old wooden table. The winds howled outside a window that was covered by a wooden shutter that clattered noisily as it tried to keep the winter winds out.

She heard someone at the door behind her.

Cassandra turned around just in time to see Wulf shoulder it open. Her heart stopped as she caught sight of him dressed in a chain-mail vest of sorts. His massive arms were bare with his torso and mail covered by a leather vest that had Nordic designs burned into it. The designs matched the tattoo on his right shoulder and biceps.

His conical helm covered his head and had more mail attached to it that covered his face, virtually obscuring it. But for those intense, heated eyes, she would never have known it was Wulf under there. He held a small battle-axe in one hand, resting it over his shoulder. He looked primitive and wild. The kind of man who had once owned the world. One who was afraid of nothing.

His dark gaze swept the room, then stopped on her. She watched a slow, seductive smile break across the lower half of his face, showing off his fangs.

"Cassandra, my love," he greeted, his voice warm and enchanting. "What are you doing here?"

"I have no idea," she answered honestly. "I'm not even sure where here is."

He laughed at that, a deep, rumbling sound, then shut the door and bolted it. "You're in my home, villkat. At least what was once my home long ago."

She looked about the spartan place, which was furnished with a table, chairs, and one very large fur-covered bed. "Strange, I would have thought Wulf Tryggvason had a better place than this to call his own."

He set the axe down on the table, then removed his helm and placed it over the axe.

Cassandra was floored by the masculine beauty of the man before her. He oozed a raw, sexual appeal that no one could ever rival.

"Compared to the small farm where I grew up, this is a mansion, my lady."

"Really?"

He nodded as he pulled her up against him. His eyes scorched her and filled her with a deep, aching need. She knew exactly what he wanted, and though she barely knew him at all, she was more than willing to give it to him.

"My father was once a warring raider who took a vow of poverty years before I was born," Wulf said huskily.

His confession surprised her. "What made him do that?"

His grip on her tightened. "The downfall of all men, I'm afraid... Love. My mother was a captured Christian slave who had been given to him by his father after one of their raids. She beguiled him, and in the end she tamed him and turned a once-proud warrior into a docile farmer who refused to lift his sword lest he offend his newfound God."

She could hear the raw emotions in his voice. The contempt he felt for anyone who would choose peace over war. "You disagreed with his choice?"

"Aye, what good is a man who cannot protect himself and those he loves?" His eyes turned dark, deadly. The rage inside them made her shiver. "When the Jutes came to our village to loot and take slaves, I am told he held his hands out and let them run him through. Everyone who survived mocked him for his cowardice. He who had once made his enemies quake in terror at the mention of his name died at the slaughter like a defenseless calf. I have never understood how he could just stand there and take a killing blow without trying to defend himself."

She reached up to smooth his brow with her fingers as his pain reached out to her. But it wasn't hatred or condescension she heard in his voice. It was guilt. "I'm so sorry."

"As was I," he whispered, his eyes turning even stormier. "It wasn't bad enough that I left him there to die, but I took my brother as well. There was no one there to protect him in our absence."

"Where were you?"

He dropped his gaze to the floor, but still she could see his self-recrimination. He wanted to go back and change that moment, just as she wished she could take back the night the Spathi Daimons had killed her mother and sisters.

"I had left the summer before in search of war and riches." He released her and looked about his modest home. "After word of his death reached me, riches no longer seemed important to me. Disagreements aside, I should have been there with him."

She touched his bare arm. "You must have loved your father greatly."

He let out a tired breath. "At times. At others I hated him. Hated him for not being the man he should have been. His father was a respected jarl and yet we lived like starving beggars. Mocked and spat upon by our own kin. My mother took pride in the insults, saying it was God's will that we suffer. It was somehow making us better people, but I never believed her. My father's blind devotion to her beliefs only angered me more. We fought, he and I, constantly. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps and to take their abuse and say nothing."

The torment in his eyes touched her even more than the gentleness of his hand on hers. "He wanted me to be something I wasn't. But I couldn't turn the other cheek. 'Twas never in my nature to not answer insult with insult. Blow with blow."

He turned and looked at her with a scowl. "Why am I telling you this?"

Cassandra thought about it for a second. "The dream, I'm sure. It's probably on your mind." Though why it would be in her dream, she couldn't imagine.

In fact, this dream was getting odder by the minute and she couldn't figure out why her subconscious would come here.

Why was she conjuring up this fantasy about her mysterious Dark-Hunter... ?

He nodded. "Aye, no doubt. I fear I am doing to Christopher what was once done to me. I should let him live his life as his own and not interfere with his choices so often."

"Why can't you?"

"Honestly?"

She smiled. "I certainly prefer honesty to lies."

He gave a light laugh, then his face turned brooding again. "I don't want to lose him too." His voice was so deep and aching that it made her heart clench. "And yet I know I have no choice except to lose him."

"Why?"

"Everyone dies, my lady. At least in the mortal realm. Yet I go on as everyone around me perishes over and over again." He lifted his gaze to hers. The agony on his face reached deep inside her. "Have you any idea what it is like to hold a loved one in your arms while they die?"

Cassandra's chest drew tight as she thought of her mother's and sisters' deaths. She had wanted to go to them after the explosion, but her bodyguard had pulled her away while she howled in grief for their loss.

"It's too late to help them, Cassie. We have to run."

Her soul had screamed that day.

Sometimes it screamed even now at the injustice of her life.

"Yes, I do," she whispered. "I, too, have seen everyone I love die. My father is all I have left."

His gaze sharpened. "Then imagine doing it thousands of times, century after century. Imagine watching them be born, live, and then die while you carry on and start over with each new generation. Every time I see a member of my family die, it is like watching my brother Erik die all over again. And Chris..." He winced as if the very mention of Chris's name caused him pain. "He is my brother made over in face and form." One corner of his mouth lifted in wry amusement. "And mouth as well as temperament. Of all the family I have lost, his death will be the hardest to bear, I think."

She saw the vulnerability in his eyes and it affected her deeply that this fierce man would have so human a fault. "He's still young. His whole life is ahead of him."

"Perhaps... but my brother was only twenty-four when he was slain by our enemies. I will never forget the look on his son Bironulf's young face when he saw his father fall in battle. All I could think of was saving the boy."

"Obviously you did."

"Aye. I swore I would never let Bironulf die as his father had. All his life, I kept him safe and he died an old man, in his sleep. Peacefully." He paused for a moment. "I guess in the end I do follow my mother's beliefs more than those of my father. The Norse believed in dying young in battle so that we could enter the halls of Valhalla, but like my mother, I wanted a different fate for those I loved. 'Tis a pity I came to understand her feelings far too late."

Wulf shook his head as if to banish those thoughts. He frowned at her. "I can't believe I'm thinking of this while I have such a beautiful maid with me. I am truly growing old when I would rather talk than take action," he said with a deep laugh. "Enough of my morbid thoughts."

He pulled her forcefully against him. "Now why are we wasting our time when we could be spending it much more productively?"

"Productively how?"