Dawn's Awakening

  e’s not dead.”

  She knew he wasn’t dead. He had touched her, held her down; she had seen his eyes and his smile and she had known. And beneath the sense-numbing scent of Capzasin had been the scent of a unique rot, an evil she didn’t want to remember.

  “You remember the labs?” Dash asked then.

  “I remember him.” But the memories were returning and she knew it. She could feel them moving inside her, gripping her soul with sharp talons and raking across it.

  The pain was almost enough to steal her breath. She refused to look at Seth, refused to let him see fear in her eyes again.

  “Dawn, it’s not possible,” Callan snapped. “I made certain of it.”

  She inhaled roughly and turned back to him. “I saw those tapes, over and over, for years,” she whispered. “Dayan made me watch them, Callan. For hours on end. I know his voice. I remember his eyes and I remember his scent. Like a rotting soul mixed with the scent of the man. I remember it.” Her eyes locked with his and she flinched at the pain she read there. “He managed to escape, or he wasn’t there when the labs blew. But it was him.”

  Callan’s fists clenched as he glanced over at Seth. Dawn refused to follow his gaze, refused to let Seth see what she was feeling, the panic beginning to ride inside her, the fear that rolled in her stomach and had the bile gathering at the back of her throat.

  “I’m sorry,” Callan suddenly whispered, his face smoothing out, his expression becoming cold, remote. “I failed you again, didn’t I?”

  Dawn sighed. “You’re not Superman, Callan. What happened then or now isn’t your fault.”

  She ignored Seth’s muttered curse and Ely’s worried gaze as she pushed herself from the pillows. Her wrist was wrapped, her ankle tender, and her head throbbed as though gremlins were ripping holes in her brain.

  “Ely, I have a headache.” She sighed tiredly. “Do you have afix?”

  “An injection,” she answered. “You have a concussion. I still have yet to treat it.”

  “Then treat it before those pickaxes burrowing in my brain do some real damage.” She lifted her hand and gingerly felt the knot at the back of her head.

  “Dawn, talk to me,” Callan bit out. “You have to be wrong about this.”

  Dawn closed her eyes as Ely prepared the injection. She wasn’t wrong. She wanted to be. They had no idea how much she wanted to be wrong, but every sense had been tuned into her surroundings then. The animal she had learned to control had taken in everything.

  “He’s older now,” she mused. “Not as strong, but just as arrogant, and just as cocky. And perhaps more insane than ever. He was possessive. You heard that?”

  “He’s playing with you,” Callan snarled. “It’s not the same man.”

  “Yeah, it was.” She steeled herself as Ely placed the syringe against her arm and injected the medicine into her system.

  She felt distant, separated from what she knew and what she felt.

  “He wore gloves and camouflage clothing,” she told them. “A black mask. The clothes were treated to shield his scent, and the smell of Capzasin was wearing off. His voice was a little huskier, but it has a distinctive sound of lust.” She almost, just almost, flinched as the voice from the past echoed around her. “The eyes were the same, but there was more madness in them, as though he’s slipped over an edge that he was teetering on before.”

  “You don’t fully remember the labs,” Seth rasped from where he stood beside her. “You said you didn’t remember.”

  She swallowed tightly. She felt numb, the numb that comes before realization.

  “You should have recognized the voice, Callan. You just don’t want to. I don’t blame you that he’s out there. You can’t kill them all.” She shrugged as though it didn’t matter.

  The pain was easing in her head, the pressure against her scalp receding as Ely’s drugs began to reduce the headache and the swelling in her brain.

  Her fists clenched in the comforter beneath her as she felt those shackles against her flesh again, felt her own blood dampening her skin.

  This was going to be bad, she thought. Could she control the pain and the fear that would swamp her when those memories returned?

  She touched her forehead and fought them back. All it took was control. She was weak right now; she knew how weak she became when she was concussed, how hard it was to keep from drowning beneath the fogging memories that wanted to roll over her.

  “He has my knife.” She could feel the weight missing against her thigh.

  Callan cursed as he turned away and paced across the room. Dash watched her silently, and she could feel Seth at her side, the rage barely contained as he fought the information.

  “We’ve searched every inch of this island,” Dash finally said. “We’ve found nothing. Whoever he is, he’s hiding himself well.”

  “We’ll clear the island,” Seth retorted. “Get the guests out of here and see what he does.”

  “No.” Dawn would have shaken her head, but her brain still felt a little edgy.

  “Don’t tell me no, Dawn,” he snapped furiously. “I won’t risk your life this way.”

  “And I won’t risk yours,” she said calmly.

  She felt too calm. She knew what was coming though. It wouldn’t take long before the fallout began.

  “We’re clearing the island.”

  “Then we’ll transport you to Sanctuary and have you locked in a bunker for your own protection.”

  “You don’t want to try that,” he warned her quietly, though his voice rasped with shocked fury.

  She turned to look at him then. She loved him. She loved him until she felt as though her heart would burst with it.

  “We play this out here.” She eased to the side of the bed. “I need a shower, if no one cares. I need to wash the stink off me. Dash, have our shooter, Byron, flown in. He’s the best eyes we have, even better than Jonas. I want him on the top of the house.”

  “He’s here,” Callan snarled.

  The anger in the room was going to smother her. It was weighing down on her like a heavy, wet blanket as the testosterone pouring through the three men nearly overwhelmed her.

  “Moira’s to go back out tonight. I want her with Styx. Tell him his chocolate will become nonexistent if he babies her. I want her back up to peak. I’ll meet with the team in a few hours…”

  “You’re no longer lead, Dawn,” Dash reminded her calmly.

  “Get over yourself, Dash,” she grunted as she reached the bathroom door. “I trained for this. He’s my mate. If you don’t like it, then go growl at Elizabeth, because I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Elizabeth growls back,” he muttered as she closed the door behind her and leaned back against it.

  The shaking was starting now. The tremors were working through her muscles and she had to swallow tightly before turning on the hot water and pouring the basin full of a scented liquid soap. Its scent was strong, hopefully enough to mask the smell of fear from Dash and Callan. Because she was scared. More scared than she had been since Dayan’s death.

  The past was returning with a vengeance and she didn’t know if she could bear it.

  Seth stared at the closed door, then at the Breeds that watched it as well.

  “She’s terrified,” he said softly.

  Callan sighed heavily as he raked his hands through his hair and gave him a brutally fierce look. “I’ve not smelled fear like that rolling off her since we were in the labs. And it makes me crazy. Son of a bitch. Those bastards nearly destroyed her there.” He stalked across the bedroom. “There was nothing we could do. No way to help her. And there’s no way to help her now.”

  “Yes, there is,” Dash said. “We find him and slice his throat for him. It’s that simple.”

  “Her blood pressure is also elevated and the hormonal readings on her blood work are off the charts,” Ely said as she moved from the small desk where she had set up the analysis equipment she had brought with her. “If sh
e follows the pattern as she does with the nightmares, she’ll head out at dark to hunt.”

  “The hell she will.” Seth wasn’t having it. He glared at the doctor, then Dash and Callan. “She does not leave this house.”

  “Then it’s your job to keep her in it.” Dash shrugged, his expression savage though his eyes glimmered with an edge of humor. “Try taking her to the exercise room you have in the basement. Let her work it off there; otherwise the adrenaline will make her crazy. Dawn’s survived, Seth, admirably, by remaking herself. Don’t try to change who and what she is now. Let her fight it out, even if she has to fight with you.”

  “She’ll have to fight,” Callan injected. “She has to let the rage out or it festers into the worst of the nightmares.”

  “I’ll handle Dawn. I want that shooter and the bastard that attacked her found,” Seth snapped, angry with both the situation and the men who gave their advice so easily.

  They wanted to continue to pamper her, and, Seth admitted, he wanted nothing more in this world than to protect her himself. But Dawn wouldn’t be protected. She was ten years past the ability to allow anyone to stand between her and danger.

  It didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.

  And she had been in that bathroom alone long enough.

  “I want a progress report before nightfall,” he ordered coldly, moving to the bathroom. “And I want that bastard found, Dash. I want him found and I want his blood.”

  He jerked open the bathroom door and stepped inside, closing and locking the door carefully behind him.

  Steam rolled from the shower, but Dawn wasn’t standing beneath the spray. Seth took just enough time to toe his shoes off before he jerked open the door to the large shower and felt his heart break with grief and pain.

  Dawn wasn’t crying. Dawn never cried. How many times had he heard that over the years? Tears did not roll down her cheeks—instead they sliced through her soul. She lifted her head and stared back at him, the eyes golden brown, and filled with pain, as she stared up at him from where she sat, her legs pulled up to her bare breasts, her back against the shower wall, the water falling around her.

  “You’re ruining your clothes.” Her arms tightened around her legs as he pulled her between his upraised knees, enclosing her in the shelter of his arms.

  “I’ll buy more.” Seth kissed the top of her head as she rested her cheek against his chest.

  The was a long silence then, nothing but the sound of the water flowing around them as he rubbed at her back, her shoulders.

  Seth had never felt more helpless in his life than he did now. He had no idea how to help her, how to ease her pain, and that sent additional fury pounding through his brain. He wanted to smooth those shadows from her eyes, wrap her in safety and protection and never see fear in her face ever again.

  “I wish you had stayed in the house,” he finally sighed, his inadequacies rising inside him.

  What was he, that he couldn’t even protect the woman that meant more than life to him?

  A small sound escaped her. Caught between a laugh and a dry sob, that sound tore at his heart.

  “You’re not made of steel.”

  “Neither are you, Dawn.” He rubbed his cheek against her hair, his eyes closing at the smell of Paris with Love, that unique scent that had its matching vial of shampoo and conditioner. He would have to call the soap maker and request more of that scent. It seemed to suit her.

  “You’re my mate, Seth,” she whispered. “You’re more to me even than that. I’ve trained to protect, not to hide in a dark room and be protected. What happened was my fault. I let my fury overwhelm me. I didn’t take the proper precautions or he wouldn’t have taken me down so easily.”

  “He used a tranquilizer, Dawn.” Disbelief filled his voice. “You’re not immune to it, and you sure as hell can’t avoid that damned dart once it’s fired at you.”

  “Actually, you can,” she breathed out wearily. “I should have heard it, sensed it. I have before. I’m trained to know.”

  Seth closed his eyes at the confusion in her voice, the sense of helplessness and failure she felt.

  Dash said she had remade herself. She hadn’t. The potential for the strong, valiant woman she was had always been inside her; otherwise she would have never survived the life she had been forced to live in those labs.

  As the water saturated his clothes, ran off them both in heavy streams, Seth saw what Dash and Callan hadn’t.

  “Next time, we’ll work together,” he promised her, knowing he would never take the chance of leaving her behind again.

  It wasn’t a lack of trust in her abilities. She would have never survived that attack if she wasn’t strong and well trained. He had heard the battle she waged with her attacker; the strength in the man’s voice, and his shock when she overpowered him.

  He had seen the proof of it on the ground around her—the struggle to survive—and he had been too far away from her to defend her. He had left her, when he knew he should have realized she would never wait on him.

  Pure rage had governed him though. She had remained calm when the bastard first made contact. She had found the Breed he had attacked, sent her help, begun coordinating the search when Seth picked up the comm link and heard the vile, smug laughter in that voice. The lust and possessiveness, the certainty that he would destroy the woman as he had nearly destroyed the child.

  “Next time, we’ll let the team do their job and stay in place.” She leaned against him tiredly, curled against his chest, her naked body warmed by the heat of the water, and by his body. “I can’t lose you like that, Seth. Don’t make me lose you like that.”

  The utter loneliness, the helpless emotion in her voice, tore at his soul. If she walked away from him, it would destroy him. God help him, if she were to die. Could he live through the pain? He didn’t think he could.

  He lowered his hand until his fingers were tilting her chin, lifting her face to his.

  “You won’t lose me,” he whispered, staring into the shadowed eyes, his chest clenching at the fear she was fighting so hard to hide.

  He had known this would happen. Had known the memories would begin returning once he had her in his bed. How was he supposed to protect her from those?

  “I can kick ass.” She stared back at him somberly. “I trained, Seth. I know what I’m doing. I kept him from hurting me.”

  She kept him from raping her. He heard her unspoken words.

  “I watched your training vids,” he revealed. “I know you can kick ass, Dawn. You kick righteous ass, babe.”

  And she did. She was small and light, but she could turn the most hardened Breed Enforcers into pretzels as she moved around them.

  “You watch too many vids of me,” she whispered. “Don’t watch vids, Seth. Watch me.”

  “No more vids.”

  He lowered his head. He couldn’t resist her lips. She had been biting at them; they were red and luscious and he wanted to soothe them. He rubbed his lips against hers, licked at them.

  “Shower sex again?” She smiled against his lips.

  He stared into her eyes. “I’m hungry for you. Now, Dawn.”

  Her hand lifted and speared through the wet strands of his hair as she pulled his mouth back to hers.

  “Here I am,” she murmured against his lips. “All yours, Seth. I’m all yours.”

  CHAPTER 18

  The fear was burning in her stomach, nearly as hot as the arousal, tearing at her control and the memories she had contained for so many years. Dawn didn’t want to face them. She didn’t want to face the pain and the horror, the helplessness she knew she would have felt.

  She didn’t want to feel that, ever again. She just wanted to feel this. Seth’s hands as they roamed over her wet body, sliding and heating, stealing her mind from the fears and the shifting shadows of pain and turning it to pleasure instead.

  Kissing Seth was like kissing sunlight. The same heat, the same blinding acceptance and wash of joy moved through
her as it did when the sunlight touched her face.

  In the past days, experiencing passion in his arms had opened a world for her that she had never known existed. A world she never wanted to lose.

  “You’re still dressed.” She dragged her lips back from his long enough to pull at the sodden shirt.

  Curled against him as she was, she could feel every inch of his chest along the side of her body, every beat of his heart.

  He ignored her little protest. His hands cupped her head as he drew it back once more, his lips covering hers, his tongue pressing into her mouth to tangle with hers.

  As he rubbed against the swollen glands beneath her tongue, Dawn felt the hormone that built there flowing free. He lapped it up. A low, throbbing growl left his lips as he teased her tongue to his mouth, then suckled at it. Sweetly, seductively, stealing the hormone and letting it course through his body as she came to her knees, turning to him, desperate to give him more.

  She needed to bind him to her, if only in this way. Any way. That instinctive, animal part of her fought to make certain there was no part of Seth Lawrence that didn’t belong to her. Make certain he could never again forget the strength of his hunger for her and touch another woman.

  He was hers. She was his. She was so totally his that at times she wondered if she could survive without him now.

  “Don’t think, Dawn.” He pulled back from the kiss, only to run his lips down her neck as his hands cupped her breasts.

  They were so sensitive. The mounds were hard and swollen, desperate for his touch. Her nipples were pebble hard, extending toward him, aching for his mouth.

  Dawn shook her head, her hands pulling at his shirt as his lips covered one of the hard, too-sensitive peaks and drew it into his mouth.

  Instant, ecstatic pleasure tore through her. She felt his tongue flaying the hardened flesh, his mouth suckling her. Deep. The pressure a pleasure-pain, as a half mewl, half purr escaped her throat.

  Her fingers tightened in his hair as her womb clenched, spasmed. Between her thighs she could feel the moisture gathering, easing from her pussy to coat the swollen folds that parted in anticipation of his touch.

  “Touch me.” She needed his touch. She needed his hands stroking all of her, his fingers delving into her.

  And she needed to touch him.

  Dawn knelt between his thighs, between his knees, feeling his lips pulling at her nipples, his tongue raking across them, and she let herself fly.

  She couldn’t think when she was in his arms, she could only feel.

  “Purring for me?” He dragged his lips back, his breathing harsh as his hands gripped her hips and he forced her to her feet. “Grab the metal rings, Dawn. Hold on tight.”

  The metal rings were two towel holders hanging out of the way of the water. Her hands latched onto them as he turned her, then rose before her.

  He stripped quickly. The sodden clothes were tossed to the corner of the shower and his erection stood out from his body, flushed dark, the veins pulsing beneath the flesh.

  Bronze flesh rippled over hard muscle as he moved to her again, his lips tasting hers, his tongue stroking over hers, tasting the last remnants of the heat spilling from her tongue.

  His hands caressed as he tasted, skimming down her sides, over her hips, parting her thighs.

  “I want to taste you.” He reached up and readjusted the fall of water until it cascaded around them rather than over them. “I want my tongue inside you, licking all your sweet cream. Feeling it on my tongue, against my lips.”

  She nearly lost her breath at the look of sensuality on his face. Her hands tightened on the rings as he slowly went to his knees once again.

  He lifted one of her legs, placed it gently over his shoulder, then bent his head to her.

  “Seth—” She cried out his name, her head falling back as her hips tilted forward, giving him access to her flesh, feeling his tongue stroking, slowly, so slowly around the hard nubbin of her clit.

  His thumbs parted the folds and his lips covered the pulsing knot of nerves so he could suckle it, making her insane with need. Powerful flashes of sensation raced through her nervous system. Tiny implosions centered in her womb had her jerking, reaching, begging for release.

  “I could taste you all day.” His voice was hard, lustful. “Every day. The sweetest flesh in the world.” His lips caught a flushed pussy lip, sucked it into his mouth, licked over it.

  The bare flesh had no protection. There were no curls between his touch and her flesh. There was only the heat tearing through it.

  Then one hand cupped her rear, the other looped beneath her leg and dragged it to his other shoulder. He was supporting her, his hands on her ass, holding her to him, and he began to devour her.

  Hard, hungry thrusts of his tongue speared into her vagina as he lapped. Lapped and moaned and caressed flesh, so needy, so hungry for touch that it rippled and milked his tongue.

  She tightened on the thrusting flesh, her thighs framing his face as she writhed into the delicate fucking. She was pierced by flames. Flames that whipped through her body, clenched her muscles and left her reaching, climbing, desperate for release.

  Then he licked up, circled her clit, surrounded it with his lips and sucked, sending her spinning, racing into ecstasy as she wailed his name, certain she would never recover from the pleasure tearing through her.

  But he didn’t give her time to recover. He came to his feet, her legs sliding down his arms until he was wrapping them around his waist.

  “Hold on tight.” His voice was hard, his expression heavy with lust as he gripped his cock and fitted it against the hungry opening between her thighs. “Hold on to me, Dawn. I’m going to fuck us both into oblivion.”

  He eased inside her.

  Dawn’s head thrashed back and forth. “Harder. Take me, Seth. Take me hard.”

  He stretched her open slowly, inch by inch, the muscles in his upper body straining, his neck corded at the force of control needed to take her so slowly.