Centuries ago…

The rhythmic beat, beat, beat of the drums echoed in Anya’s blood as it pumped hot and heavy through her veins. Sand shifted beneath her knees where she knelt beside the trickling stream. She cupped her hands in the water, splashing it onto her face and throat. But the water didn’t cool her heated skin. Nor did the wind that rustled the branches of trees in the woods looming all around her, nearly blocking out the glow of the crescent moon.

Beat. Beat. Beat.

Her hands trembled, and she clasped them against her throat where her pulse pounded in tandem with the drum. Although she was far from home and in a foreign land, she still recognized the natives’ music for what it was. A war cry.

Would they wait until morning to attack the invaders? Or would they, with their intimate knowledge of the terrain, use darkness as a cover to defend their land? She could not find fault with protecting what was theirs. But how did they know that the strangers had come to conquer? Or did they treat every intruder as a threat?

Beat, beat, beat…

She had no answers to her questions. The only thing she knew for certain was that a battle would be waged. Anya closed her eyes, reliving the devastation of previous wars. The scent of blood, sweet and strong, filled her nostrils. Blood, thick and sticky, clung to her skin as she laid hands on the fallen warriors, bringing them back to life.

Resurrecting the dead.

That was her special ability. Such a gift was bestowed on every other generation of females in her family. Anya’s grandmother could predict the future. Nana had already seen Anya’s fate: the long arduous voyages across oceans, down straits and over lakes, to a faraway land…a land with powers nearly as unique as every other female generation of Anya’s family.

Because it was special, the conquerors had to have this magical land—had to claim it as theirs as they had claimed Anya.

 

From the shadows in the forest, Gray Wolf studied her. With her hair and skin as pale as the luminescent crescent moon, she appeared more an ethereal woodland creature than a flesh-and-blood woman. She had slipped away from the invaders, past even their watchful guards, as if she were an apparition. Yet the Wise One claimed she was not a spirit.

The shaman had picked the special flowers, and after dividing the poisonous blossom from the stems and leaves, he’d eaten the poison. Not enough to kill him, just enough to invoke the visions that had warned of the invaders…and the woman. She was more powerful than the men with whom she traveled—because she made them invincible.

Yet she was not.

She leaned over again and cupped her palms in the trickling water of the stream. As she lifted her hands, water escaped through her fingers, dripping from her delicately featured face onto the bodice of her gown. The wet material appeared nearly as translucent as her skin, molding to every swell and curve of her body.

He held the breath that burned in his lungs, struggling to escape in a groan. But he could not betray his presence. Not yet. The drums pounded, echoing the heavy throb of each beat of his heart.

Gray’s fingers slid over the smooth tip of his spear. His mission was to turn her from flesh and blood to spirit. Some other warriors thought him brave for accepting the mission, for sneaking into the enemy camp to kill the woman. Some thought he had chosen the mission out of vengeance for the death of his woman at the hands of previous invaders.

But he had not accepted just the mission; he had accepted his fate. He did not need to eat the poison flower to know that she was his fate.

 

Not a twig snapped nor an animal rustled. So it was the extreme stillness of the night that alerted Anya to his presence. Kneeling yet in the sand, she turned away from the stream, and he was there. Even before he touched her, she felt him.

Then one of his arms slid around her waist, pulling her to her feet and back against the hard sculpted muscles of his bare chest. Moonlight glistened on his skin, reflected in his deep-set dark eyes and caught in the shock of white hair that fell across his forehead. The rest of his hair, hanging long around his face and impossibly broad shoulders, was as deep a black as the shadows in the woods.

She opened her mouth to scream, but something cold and hard pressed against her cheek. From the corner of her eye she caught the glint of moonlight off metal—the tip of a spear. He slid the spear over the line of her jaw, down the arch of her throat to where her pulse pounded madly. Then the metal tip slid farther down, the sharp point slicing away the damp bodice of her robe. Moonlight bathed her bared breasts and glanced off the spear as it ran down the cleft between them. The tip moved across the swell of her left breast until it pressed against the flesh under which her heart beat hard.

He wielded the weapon with skill, with just enough pressure that she felt the threat but no pain. Not even a scratch from that sharply honed point marred her skin. She arched her neck, so that she could see his face, meet his gaze and try to read his intentions.

Did he only want to scare her? Or did he actually intend to kill her? Or seduce her? No matter his intentions, he exuded danger and was certain to harm her.

His dark gaze held hers, but she could read nothing in the fathomless depths.

She licked her lips, drawing his attention to her mouth. “Wh-what do you want with me?” she asked.

Muscles flexed in his forearm and biceps as his large hand tightened around the handle of the spear. Did he intend to plunge the weapon into her heart?

“No,” she murmured, the protest weak when she needed to fight. Yet she dared not move too much or breathe too hard for fear of the spear tip piercing flesh. But she reached out to clasp his forearm with her fingers, her pale skin a stark contrast to his. Muscles hardened beneath her touch.

He released a breath, which stirred her hair. Despite the heat of his body pressed tightly to hers, goose bumps lifted her skin, and she shivered.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she pleaded, tears stinging her eyes, because she knew her efforts were futile. She doubted he could understand her words. She couldn’t reason with him or threaten him as she had the warriors with whom she traveled.

But maybe she could seduce him.

She slid her fingers along his arm, stroking his dark skin. And she moved her other hand from her side to his, smoothing her palm down the hard muscle of his bare thigh. He expelled another breath—this one ragged.

 

Gray’s body grew taut, aching with the desire to take her. But the Wise One’s words echoed in his head. “Kill her quickly, lest she trick you. The woman is a sorceress.”

She shifted in his grasp, pressing against him. And the lushness of her body roused his to life. He hardened and throbbed—and swallowed a groan.

Her hand clutched his thigh, her nails digging into his skin—marking him as he wanted to mark her—as his.

She turned her head, her soft hair brushing his chest. Then her lips followed, trailing across his skin as she pleaded again. “Don’t hurt me…”

He understood her. From the invaders who had come before, he had picked up the language. But that wasn’t the only thing he had learned from those earlier visitors. He had learned that the ones with the pale skin were not to be trusted.

Kill her quickly…

The Wise One’s voice grew fainter in his head, drowned out by her soft whisper. “Please…” The warmth of her lips brushed his skin again.

Beat, beat, beat… The drums, pounding out the war cry, reminded him of his mission. He stepped back, releasing her so abruptly that she dropped to her knees on the sand again. Then he raised the spear. If his people had any chance of defeating the invaders, this sorceress could not live.

She lifted her face toward him. Tears shimmered in her light blue eyes; one broke free and trembled on her thick black lashes. “Don’t kill me. I’ll do anything…you want me to…”

He had never seen such beauty. Her hair, her face, her body…she seemed too perfect to be of this world. To be real. Unable to help himself, he reached out to touch her hair again. Soft pale gold tendrils tangled around his fingers; he clenched his hand in her hair.

She turned her head, and her lips glided across his forearm. “I’ll do anything…”

She reached out, sliding her hands up his thighs to the loincloth under which his erection throbbed. Her fingers closed around him, and he jerked.

“I can be your woman,” she offered. “I can pleasure you…” Her golden brows drew together over her light eyes, her unshed tears turning from terror to frustration. “You don’t understand me…”

Even if he hadn’t been able to comprehend what she was saying, her actions spoke louder than her words. She pushed aside the buckskin and leaned forward, brushing her lips along the length of his shaft.

His fingers, still clutching her soft hair, fisted. A woman had not touched him—in so long. And never like this…

As passion flooded him, his grip on the spear eased, and he buried the tip deep into the sand. As he wanted to bury himself inside her.

She closed her mouth around him, her teeth scraping over his most sensitive skin. Then he felt something else sharp, the point of a weapon at the base of his shaft.

She pulled back her head and lifted her face to his.

“You may not understand me, but you’ll understand this,” she said, her eyes glittering with determination and desperation as she increased the pressure of the weapon?literally threatening his manhood.

His body tensed even more as anger surged through him, along with the passion. She might not be a sorceress, as the Wise One had warned but the woman was definitely dangerous.

With the taste of him on her lips, in her mouth, Anya struggled to focus. Her hand trembled, and she nearly dropped the weapon—the one she always hid beneath her gown, bound to her thigh with a leather thong. She kept it just in case she couldn’t reason or threaten her way out of harm.

“I will kill you,” she promised, tightening her grip on the weapon. “Or I will make you wish you were dead…”

“I have wished myself dead many times,” he told her—in a deep voice and in her language.

She jerked with surprise. “You can understand me?”

He stared at her, his gaze dark and penetrating. “Every word.”

She lost herself in his eyes. Perhaps he understood more than her words. She did not end lives. She resurrected the dead.

“Do it,” he advised her. “Kill me.”

Her hand shook, and she tightened her fingers around the crudely carved handle of the dagger that Nana had helped her fashion, as if knowing the dangers Anya would one day face. But Anya could not drive the blade into him. She could not stain his beautiful skin with blood. Her voice cracking with fear, she pleaded again, “Let me go…”

“Back to the men who will fight us tomorrow, trying to steal what is ours?” he asked. He shook his head, sending his hair falling around his handsome face. “The only way they can triumph is if you are on the battlefield with them.”

“H-how do you know?” Did he have the same gift as Nana? Could he see the future? What did he see as her fate—death at his hands?

He gestured around at the woods and stream. “Like you, our land is special, has herbs and flowers that can be eaten and then empower the one who eats them. That is why your warriors want our land.”

She nodded her admission. “True.”

“Yet how will they know,” he asked, “which herbs will empower and which will kill them?”

“I—I don’t know…”

Distracted by his words, by his ability to speak in her language, she didn’t notice when he moved. His hands wound around her wrists, yanking her to her feet and knocking the dagger from her grasp. Shackling both her wrists in one big hand, he reached into the sand and extracted her weapon.

“You travel with warriors, yet you know not how to fight,” he taunted her as, like with the spear, he ran the tip of her dagger from her cheek, down her throat to where her pulse pounded madly with the rhythm of the war drums.

“I am not a warrior,” she admitted, although he could have no doubt that she did not possess the killer instincts of the men with whom she traveled. Or of fearless warriors like him.

“My name is Anya.” She had distracted him once with feminine wiles she had not been aware she possessed. Guided by those same instincts, she ignored the knife at her throat and leaned forward, so that her breasts, bared by her torn gown, pressed against the wall of sinewy muscle that was his chest. “I am a woman.”

His voice a guttural groan, he agreed, “You are a woman.”

“I can be your woman,” she said to tempt him. She told herself she only offered her body in order to save her life. But her pulse quickened as excitement coursed through her. His body, all dark skin and hard muscle, fascinated her as no other man’s ever had. And she was around men, warriors, all the time now, since she had been taken from her family.

“My woman?” he asked. As if by magic, a flower appeared in his hand, replacing the dagger. The white petals were luminescent against his dark skin. He lifted the flower to her mouth and rubbed the silken petals back and forth across her lips.

Anya’s heart slammed against her ribs, then raced. She stared up into his face, fascinated, too, by the strong features. The nose, which was nearly as sharp as the blade of his spear. The deep-set eyes, and cheekbones that looked as though they had been carved from teak. Then his image began to waver in and out of focus, and her head felt light.

He hadn’t rubbed the flower across her mouth to seduce her but to kill her.

“No…,” she murmured weakly as her legs folded beneath her. But she didn’t fall—he caught her up in his arms. Did he want to carry her off somewhere and bury her? Or was it true what some of the men had said, that these natives burned their dead?

Her last lucid thought was of flames, scorching the flesh from her bones.

 

Kill her quickly…

His people would want proof of her death. Her body. Or at least her blood on his hands.

He tightened his grip on her, holding her higher against his chest as he moved with swiftness through the woods. Branches rustled and voices rose as her war party finally discovered that she was missing. With knowledge of every trail through the trees, he moved sure-footedly. Not toward his village but away.

And silently. Not one of the invaders canvassing the woods caught a hint of his presence. Not as she had sensed him. He had chosen this mission, and his people had agreed he was best suited to carry it out. Until his tragic loss had turned a lock of his hair gray, he had been known as Silent Wolf.

Her weight was slight and his arms barely strained as he carried her to a place so secret not even the Wise One knew its location—deep in the woods, on the rocky precipice of a steep ravine. He dropped to his knees at the base of a pine tree and pulled her with him beneath the low-hanging boughs. The canopy of branches provided the same amount of shelter as one of the village dwellings. On a previous visit to his private sanctuary, he had brought blankets and other provisions. He fumbled with a torch that bathed the space in faint flickering light.

Then he laid her upon the blankets, her long hair spreading like sunlight across the dark material. With reluctance, he pulled his attention from her and rummaged around the canopy until he found an urn. He removed the stopper, poured some water into his palm and, kneeling beside her, splashed the water onto her face, making sure to wipe the last trace of flower petal from her lips.

Her lashes fluttered, then lifted, her light eyes focusing on his face. “Am I dead?”

“If you are, so am I.” But he had been dead?for a long time. Ever since the earlier invaders had killed his woman. Like Anya, she had gone off by herself. To escape him? Theirs had been a union arranged by the elders and the Wise One. Had she regretted their match, their son? He would never know. The other men had found her before he had.

And since losing her, he had been dead?until he touched this woman.

“What did you give me?” she asked, her eyes wide with fear. “Poison?”

“Then you would be dead,” he stated. “I gave you a flower—an aid for sleep. As well as the plants for special powers, this land yields flowers and herbs for every ailment.” Except death. Not even the Wise One knew how to resurrect the dead.

Was that why the shaman wanted her dead? Because she had more knowledge—more power—than he possessed? This was not the first time Gray had doubted the Wise One’s motives. The man already had the chief’s ear, replacing the elders as primary council. Gray suspected the shaman wanted the chief’s power, as well.

“This land is special,” she said as she glanced around the surprisingly spacious area he had found beneath the canopy of pine boughs.

“It is special,” he agreed. But he looked only at her. “And it must be defended against all enemies—by whatever means necessary.”

“I am not your enemy,” she claimed as she propped herself on an elbow and leaned close to him. He was kneeling beside her.

“You travel with enemies,” he reminded her, “with invaders intent on stealing what is ours.”

“But yet you have stolen from them first. You have stolen me.” Her eyes sparkled in the warm glow of the torch.

“It is my mission,” he said, “to take you from their camp.”

“I made your mission simpler,” she said, “by venturing off alone.”

“Why?” He asked aloud the question that had haunted him since he’d found her alone by the stream.

“Sometimes I need to get away,” she said, without explaining what he needed most to know.

Was that why his woman had gone off by herself? Had she needed to get away from him, from their child?

“Why?” he asked again, more curious about her now than about his past.

Tiny lines furrowed her brow as her eyes darkened with painful memories. “You are not the first to take me captive.”

“These invaders—they hold you against your will?” he asked, studying her beautiful face intently so that he might discern if she spoke the truth or was attempting to trick him again.

“They took me from my home, from my family, when they learned my gift.”

“I am not like them,” he said. “They took you for life. I take you for death.” It was his mission. And no matter what he learned about her, honor bound him to carry out the mission he had accepted.

“You are not going to kill me,” she said, leaning closer, so close that her lips nearly brushed his. “You would have killed me by the stream. You would have run your spear through my heart.”

Kill her quickly…

The Wise One had known Gray needed to kill her—before he touched her. Before he connected with her. He cupped her face in his hand, his fingers as dark as a shadow against her pale skin.

Pale skin and hair. He closed his eyes as the memories crashed over him—of the men who had claimed to want friendship, who had offered trades and knowledge. But they had taken more than they’d given; they’d taken lives and destroyed destinies before they had disappeared again.

The Wise One had assured Gray that they would not make it back to the land from which they’d come. With them, they had taken more poison than power.

Yet they still held power over Gray. The power of hatred and vengeance. They had taken his woman. Now he had taken theirs.

“I will kill you,” he promised her and himself. He had to carry out his mission. He could not risk the safety of his people again?not even for her.

Her breath caught, and her eyes widened with fear.

“But before I kill you, I will have you…”

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Beat, beat, beat…

The heavy pounding of the war drum echoed the frantic throbbing of Anya’s heart as blood rushed through her veins. While she was no warrior, she could not calmly accept the fate he had decided for her. She had to fight him.

Hoping her people might hear her, she opened her mouth to scream, but his mouth covered hers, stealing her breath and her desire…to fight. Despite the hard pressure of his mouth, his lips were soft and full against hers. Then his tongue slipped into her mouth, tasting her while giving her a taste of his passion.

Anya lifted her hands, intending to claw at his shoulders, but instead, she clutched at the broad expanse of his chest. Muscles rippled beneath her touch. And he moved so that instead of lying beside her, he lay over her, his weight levered on his hands, which he braced on either side of her. Then slowly he lowered his body, so that his chest pressed against her breasts, bared by her torn gown.

Her nipples, teased by his sleek skin and sinewy muscles, hardened, and she moaned into his mouth. So he lowered the rest of his body, his erection straining against his loincloth and the thin material of her gown. She shifted beneath him, arching her hips as restlessness stirred inside her. And pressure began to build.

And still he only kissed her, his mouth feasting on hers, his tongue stroking in and out of her lips. She lifted her hands from his shoulders to his hair, clutching at the silky black strands to pull back his head.

His dark eyes glittered in the torchlight like sparks dancing on a fire. “Do not fight me, woman,” he warned, his voice gruff with passion. “I do not want to hurt you…”

Yet he intended to kill her? Hope flared that she could distract him from his mission. That she could make him fall…for her.

“Anya,” she reminded him breathlessly. “And what do I call you?” Besides her fate.

“Gray…”

She touched the lock of white in the hair falling across his brow, and she found the strands even softer than the black. “Because of this?”

“Wolf,” he finished. “I am Gray Wolf.”

“And are you?” she asked, shifting beneath his hard-muscled body. “A beast?”

He pulled her hands from his hair and lifted them over her head. Then he lowered his head and slid his mouth down her throat, his teeth scraping her skin.

She shivered, tingling everywhere from his touch.

He flicked his tongue over the hollow of her throat where her pulse pounded like the beat of the war drum. He moved lower, over the exposed curve of her breast. Despite the heat of his breath and the warmth of his mouth, she shivered again. His lips closed over the hard peak of her nipple, suckling, then tugging with his teeth.

Anya moaned as the pressure in her body built. She pulled on her wrists, trying to free herself from his grasp. But his hand held tight while his other hand moved over her body, pushing aside the bodice of her gown. While his mouth stayed at one breast, his palm cupped the fullness of the other, his thumb scraping across the nipple.

The intensity of passion crashing through her body made tears sting her eyes. Never before had she experienced such sensations, such torture.

“Please,” she begged every bit as desperately as she had for her life. “Gray…”

His name on her lips snapped Gray’s fragile grasp on his control. He released her wrists but only to pull the tattered gown over her arms and head, baring her beautiful body to his hungry gaze and mouth. He explored every inch of her pale skin and discovered where she had hidden her dagger, in a leather thong tied around her thigh. Scratches from the blade marred her otherwise flawless skin.

And she marred his skin, her nails scraping and digging as she clawed at his shoulders. But she wasn’t fighting him off—she wanted him closer. He wanted them closer, too, as close as a man could get to a woman. Yet he held back, almost reluctant to bury himself inside her, despite the insistent urging of his tortured body, for fear of losing himself in her.

So while he focused on tormenting her, he tormented himself. He tugged at the leather thong with his teeth, pulling it from her thigh. Then he soothed the sensitive skin with his lips and tongue. Her flesh quivered beneath his mouth. And she tried to press her knees closed as she squirmed on the blankets. But he opened her legs, his attention drawn to the pale gold curls at the core of her womanhood.

Like that of the wolf he was named for, a growl, deep and low, emanated from his throat. And he took her with his mouth, kissing and licking and teasing her most sensitive flesh. She clutched his hair, then his shoulders, as she writhed beneath him.

He slid his hands up her body, pressing her back against the blankets. Then he cupped her breasts, stroking his thumbs over the hard pink nipples that begged for his touch.

As she begged, “Please…”

Did she know for what she pleaded? Did she know the pleasure that awaited her? With his tongue he delved into the heat of her body, lapping at the sweetness as she came apart in his arms, crying his name.

He pulled back as she curled onto her side, sobbing into the blankets, her hair tangled across her face. After pulling off his loincloth, he reached for her and brushed that pale curtain from her face so that she could not hide from him what she felt.

Devastated. Had no man ever given her pleasure before?

“What was that?” she asked, her damp eyes wide with fear—as if he was the one with the power now.

And maybe he was.

“There is more,” he promised her.

She shivered and her nipples hardened again, her breasts tilting toward him. He lowered his head, first brushing his mouth across hers. Her lips opened for his tongue, and he imitated with her mouth what he’d just done to her body.

She clutched at him, first his hair, then his shoulders, then her nails scraped down his back to clutch his buttocks. “More,” she breathed against his lips.

His mouth fused to hers, he parted her legs again and in one swift stroke—so as to not prolong the pain he suspected she might feel—he drove into her. Her body tensed and she cried out again, this time in that pain he suspected. And more tears rolled down her face. He kissed away the salty moisture. “Even your tears are sweet,” he murmured, awed at the completeness of her beauty.

Lightning had struck the ground near him before, and the powerful current had shimmered in the air. That was how he felt now, connected to her, as if a powerful current shimmered between them.

Sweat beaded on his lip as he fought to control the pounding of desire in his body, of the urgency to pound into her until he achieved the release he wanted. He needed…as he had never needed before.

Anya fought him now, when she should have fought him before. Her body stretched, hurting at the invasion of his thick manhood. She pushed at his shoulders and arched her hips, trying to buck him off. But he sank deeper. And she stretched more, skin burning. “No!”

“Shh,” he said, his lips moving over her face, kissing away the rest of her tears. Then he touched her lips with his, reigniting the passion that fear and pain had chased from her body.

His hands moved between them, smoothing over her breasts, tugging at her nipples. Then his fingers shifted lower, over her navel, through her curls. He pressed a fingertip against her most sensitive area, rubbing gently until the pressure built inside her again. Not the pain, but the pleasure.

And he moved, pulling out. But now she wanted him to stay, and she locked her legs around his lean waist and clutched at his back. He drove back inside. In and out. In and out. Her body tensed again as the pressure spiraled out of her control. And she shattered as pleasure poured out of her.

Gray drove in one last time; then he tensed and shuddered as he pumped his hot seed into her. “Anya…” He rolled to his side, with her locked in his arms, their bodies still joined, and he fell asleep with her name on his lips.

In the faint light of the torch, she studied the sharp angles and strong lines of his face. It was a face of more than character, a face of honor. Despite having taken her, he would carry out his mission—because he had no doubt given his word to his people.

When he awoke, he would kill her—unless she killed him first. Despite her body’s protests, Anya wriggled free of his arms, of his possession. As they parted, an aftershock of pleasure rippled through her. She bit her lip to hold in the small cry of satisfaction. She had never known such pleasure existed. And she doubted she would ever feel it again.

Having been asleep when he’d brought her to this spot beneath the tree, she had no idea where they were. Or how to find her people. If she ran, he could find her or he would let her die alone, lost in the woods. Through the provisions with which he’d stocked his hideaway, she rummaged, but she found no weapon—until she knocked aside his buckskin. And found her dagger. She picked up the weapon, the crude handle fitting with comfortable familiarity against her palm.

When she and Nana had created the weapon, she had known that she might need to use it someday. But she had never dreamed that the first man she had to kill was the only one she would ever love…

Realizing the depth of her feelings, she studied his face again—the beauty of his dark skin and strong features. And she accepted that she could plunge the dagger into her own heart more easily than she could his. Hiding the dagger in the sand beneath the blanket, she curled against his side, her head on his chest. Beneath her ear, his heart beat in tandem with the never-ending war drum.

 

Sunlight glimmered through the pine boughs, bathing her skin golden. He stroked his knuckle along the delicate curve of her jaw. Then he ran his thumb over her chin to brush across her full bottom lip. Even in sleep her mouth pursed in a kiss that was both soft and sexy. His skin tingled at the brief contact.

Every time desire had awakened him and he had reached for her in the night, she had met his passion with her own—and with a generosity he had never known. He had never had a woman with such spirit or such beauty.

With her pale hair and skin and delicate features, she was so beautiful and so fragile. All he had to do to fulfill his mission was press his hand over her mouth and nose and deprive her of breath. He slid his fingers across her cheek, and her thick lashes fluttered. Her eyes opened and her gaze met his.

And his breath fled his lungs as his heart raced. He had to do it. He had to protect his people, his land. He had failed them—and her, the mother of his son—before. He could not fail them again.

His hand shaking, he clasped it tighter over Anya’s mouth and nose. Panic filled her pale eyes as she realized his intention…to kill her.

Her lashes fluttered again as her eyes rolled back. And as the life began to leave her body, it left his, too. His strength ebbed away, and he pulled his palm from her mouth. She lay limply in his arms. So he lowered his lips to her cool ones. Her breasts arched, brushing against his chest as he breathed life back into her. Then she kissed him back, lifting her hands to tangle her fingers in his hair. And his heart knocked against his ribs.

He pulled back, wrenching himself from her arms. “You won’t seduce me away from my mission, woman.” He tied on his loincloth and tossed her ragged gown at her. “Cover yourself.”

She dragged the gown over her head. As she hid all that silky pale skin from his hungry gaze, he stifled a groan of regret. But that was not his only regret…

“I have to kill you,” he said.

“If you kill me, you are killing yourself,” she said, then nodded as if she knew something he did not. Just how powerful was this woman? “But that is what you want.”

He wanted her. Even though they had made love throughout the night, he wanted her again. Still. Always.

“Death,” she said. “You told me so last night, before we…before you brought me here. Why do you want to die?”

“I have barely been living,” he admitted. “Ever since men with pale skin and hair like yours killed my woman, the mother of my son.”

She released a ragged breath. “I’m sorry…”

“And because I did not protect her, I should be dead, too.” As a warrior, he was honor bound to protect his people and especially what was his.

“But you have a son…”

“By not protecting his mother, I failed him.” His heart clutched with regret for all that he had lost. “Her people are raising him now.”

“He needs his father,” she insisted with a longing that reminded him she had been taken from her home, from her family, in order to serve the warriors with whom she traveled. Alone with those men, how had she remained untouched—until him—

“Your son needs you,” she urged him.

He shook his head, unwilling to let go of the guilt he had carried for so long. “My people need me to carry out this mission.”

“To kill me.” She opened her hand, and the dagger lay across her palm.

“You found it.” He had hidden the weapon in his loincloth. “Why didn’t you kill me?” When he had slept—finally—after so many sleepless nights, she had had opportunity to leave. But she had stayed, at his side, in his arms. She had not left him as his woman had?even though Anya had had more reason. Could she care about him…as he feared he cared about her?

“I thought about it,” she admitted. “Last night when you were sleeping…”

“What about when I had my hand across your mouth?” he asked, his stomach knotting with regret that he had hurt her.

“You will not hurt me,” she said as if she had read his mind.

Was bringing back the dead her only gift, or like the shaman, did she have other powers?

Kill her quickly…The Wise One’s command rang in his ears. He had already failed part of his mission. He could not fail his people entirely. “I have to…”

She shook her head. “You will not hurt me because I love you. I want to be with you. Forever.”

He dropped onto his knees beside her on the blankets. “Anya…”

“And you love me.”

His chest ached; he felt as if his heart was being ripped apart—torn between his loyalty to his people and his growing feelings for her. He reached for her, closing his hands around her throat.

Anya held her breath, waiting for the pain of his fingers crushing her windpipe. But instead, he stroked her skin and tipped up her chin with his thumb. Then his mouth covered hers, and he kissed her with all the passion he had shared with her the night before. But his lips gentled, and he shared the love she had only hoped he felt for her.

The love that matched the power and intensity of her feelings for him. Her lips clinging to his, she ran her hands over the rippling muscles beneath tawny skin. Smoothing her fingers over the hard slope of his chest, she discovered nipples, smaller and darker than hers, but no less sensitive, apparently, as he sucked in a breath when she flicked a fingernail across one. Then she pulled her mouth from his, slid her lips down the straining cords of his neck, then over the sleek skin of his chest. She flicked her tongue over his nipple.

And his fingers tangled in her hair, pulling hard enough to make her scalp tingle but not hard enough to hurt. Her teeth scraped his nipple, threatening. And a chuckle rumbled in his chest.

Then she moved her hands lower, tugging off his loincloth. And when she wrapped her fingers around his straining erection, his laughter died.

“Let me do to you…what you did to me,” she said, easing back so that she could sprawl across his hard thighs. As her lips closed around him, his hands clutched her hair. She slid her mouth up and down his shaft, taking his length as deep in her throat as she was able, and she ran her tongue around his smooth skin.

“Anya,” he growled, his breath harsh. He pulled her up and dragged her gown over her head, nearly tearing the fragile fabric again in his haste to bare her skin. Despite the warm air and heat of the passion they shared, Anya shivered.

His hands smoothed over her, as she had done to him. He cupped her breasts in his palms and lifted them to his mouth. Then he suckled and tugged at her nipples.

Pleasure streaking through her, Anya arched her back and moaned. His hands slid down her body, over her hips, down her thighs…then he eased her legs apart and stroked through her damp curls.

“You are so hot,” he groaned, easing one finger, then another inside her.

Anya’s muscles went taut at the invasion, and she came, her head lolling back as she keened. He kissed her, then licked the slickness of her passion from his fingers.

“You are so sweet…”

“Let me taste you. Spill your passion into my mouth,” she offered.

He pushed his thumb against her full lower lip, as if considering her offer. But he shook his head and lifted her so that she straddled his lap. Then, his hands shaking as he gripped her hips, he lifted her higher and impaled her on his throbbing erection.

Anya bit her lip at the force of his invasion, stretching to accept all of him. She had thought he’d buried himself deep inside her last night. But she hadn’t realized how big he was, how deep he could reach into her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders, and she rode him, sliding up and down his slick hot shaft.

He gripped her hips again, helping her rise, then pushing her back down. Up and down, she slid, their bodies rubbing together. Her nipples scraped his chest while the hair around his erection teased that most sensitive part of her.

Her body tensed as the pressure built, winding tighter and tighter inside her. “Gray…,” she begged, wanting that pleasure only he had given her. Greedy for more…

He tilted her chin so her gaze met the hot intensity of his. He watched her as finally the pressure eased, her body shuddering with sweet release. But he did not stop moving, driving up the pressure again, building it higher and tighter than before. And as it began to break, she opened her mouth to scream, but he covered it with his, driving his tongue between her lips as he drove himself deeper and deeper into her body.

She shattered, breaking into a million scattered pieces of pleasure, and he grasped her tighter, pounding into her with quick thrusts until his erection pulsed, filling her with his hot release.

Finally, both of them gasping for air, their lips parted. But not their bodies. He leaned his forehead against hers. “This is impossible…our love…”

She blinked back tears. “You love me?”

“Like I have loved no other,” he declared. “You have seduced my soul. It belongs to you now.”

“And I belong to you,” she vowed. “Heart and soul.”

He kissed her again, just a soft brush of lips against lips. “You will forever be a part of me, but we cannot be together in this life.”

She shook her head. “We can,” she insisted, unwilling to give up what they shared. “The warriors—the invaders—without me to resurrect them will fear a fight. They will leave…”

But still the war drums pounded out a beat that seemed to have grown louder and closer.

“It’s not your people who will make it impossible for us to be together,” he murmured, and he tilted his head, as if listening. Then he pressed a finger to her lips.

Yet it was too late for silence. They had been found. He put her gown back on her, knotting the bodice to cover her breasts. Then he dressed quickly. And before they could be dragged from the canopy, he helped her out with him. She blinked against the brightness of the sun, but he gave her no time to get her bearings before he pulled her along behind him.

Twigs snapping in the woods betrayed the arrival of the warriors—not hers, but his. Despite knowing the trails so well, he could not bring her into the forest with him. They would be discovered. Behind them boulders lined the mouth of the steep ravine. Too steep for retreat? He had nowhere else to go, nowhere else to hide the woman who meant more to him than his own life. But it was too late for him to risk the ravine—too late for retreat.

His people stepped from the woods, the shaman leading the warriors. Blood smeared the man’s face and chest. If the blood was human, Gray doubted the Wise One had killed any of the invaders himself. He was more apt to use herbs or roots than his spear. Instead, he manipulated others to do his killing for him.

Just as he had manipulated Gray to kill Anya.

“You had to know that I would find you,” the Wise One said, pointing his spear toward Gray. “And that I would know you had not killed the woman. There is nothing I do not know.”

“There is no reason to kill her,” Gray said, but he spoke to the warriors, not the shaman. Trusting that Anya knew her people the way he knew his, he said, “The invaders have left. There is no threat.”

“She is a threat!” the shaman insisted, shaking with fury. And with fear?

“Only to you,” Gray accused him as he stepped in front of Anya. He reached for her hand, so that she would not tumble from the rocks into the steep ravine. But something sharp jabbed into his palm. The blade of her dagger. He wrapped his fingers around the vicious little weapon.

“She was not traveling with the invaders by choice. They had taken her against her will. She has chosen to be with me,” he said, still awed by the depth of her love. “She has chosen to stay with me.”

“No!” the shaman yelled, his voice vibrating with rage, cords standing out in his neck.

“She is no threat to us,” Gray promised his people. “Only to him. The Wise One wants all the power—to control us.”

“Do not listen to him!” the shaman screamed. “She has bewitched him. She is the danger! We must kill her. Now!”

Gray stared out at the warriors at whose sides he had fought off invaders and vicious animals. Bound by honor and loyalty, he would have given his life for any one of them. Now he would take the life of any who threatened the woman he loved. He lifted his chin and declared, “You will have to kill me first.”

“What…what are you all saying?” Anya asked, her voice quaking with fear. Although she did not know his language, she had to have recognized the threat.

“She will not harm us,” Gray insisted as the gazes of his fellow warriors slid from his to the shaman, “but he will. If we keep following him, if we keep blindly doing what he says, eating what he wants us to eat, smoking what he wants us to smoke, he will kill us. And if she’s gone, no one can bring us back to this life. She can bring us back—”

“No!” the shaman shouted, rage and madness setting his eyes ablaze as he focused on Gray and hurled the spear.

Pain pierced Gray’s heart as the blade penetrated skin and flesh. But he could not die yet. He could not die and leave Anya at the mercy of a madman. Empowered by his love for her, Gray raised his arm and sent the dagger flying through the air.

He did not see if the weapon connected with his target. He saw nothing but the trees overhead as he staggered back. Soft hands gripped his arm, nails biting into his skin. But she wasn’t strong enough to hold him up. And he could not take her with him.

Summoning the last of his strength, he pushed her back. Jagged edges of rock sliced through the soles of his feet as he slipped, then fell. Catapulting through the air to the depths of the ravine, the last thing he heard was Anya’s scream.

Throat burning from the force of her cry, Anya stared into the ravine, trying to catch a glimpse of the man she loved as he disappeared into the abyss.

“Gr-Gray!” Her voice cracked on his name. And her heart cracked, breaking apart, as she realized she could not reach him…to resurrect him.

She turned to his people. But the warriors shrank back, afraid of her, despite their weapons. “Help me!” she pleaded. But she did not know if they could understand her any more than she had understood them.

She’d had no idea what Gray or the other man had been saying. But she had known the leader of the warriors had meant her harm. By taking away Gray, he had hurt her more than if he’d taken her life. He’d taken her love.

But Gray had taken the leader’s life. The warriors lifted his bleeding body. His eyes open in death, he stared, in shock and accusation, at her as they carried him away through the woods.

“Help me!” she screamed after them. “Help me get Gray. I can save him.” But only if she could find him.

She scrambled over the rocks at the lip of the ravine, desperate to reach him. But her feet slipped on the steep slope, knocking pebbles and dirt loose. She fell onto her stomach and slid, branches and weeds catching her gown and clawing at her skin. Tears of pain, both emotional and physical, dripped from her eyes.

“Help me! Help me!” she pleaded weakly. If she died trying to reach him, she would not be able to help him. So she fought her way back up the bank. But the warriors were gone, leaving her alone with her despair. She had no idea which direction they had gone, so she had no way, no hope, of finding their village. But could she convince them to help her even if she could find them?

“Gray!” she screamed his name again. But nothing stirred in the dark depths of the ravine. The war drum silenced, the woods were oddly still but for her sobs.

Frustration and panic gripped her, leaving her only enough strength to climb onto the largest boulder. Then, clinging weakly, she wept, her tears running from the rock to drip into the ravine.

Hours or days later, small dark hands tugged at the skirt of her gown. Too weak to lift her head, she could only turn her cheek against the rock. Two boys stood at the base of the boulder. The younger of the two stared up at her with eyes swollen from the tears rolling down his face.

Hers had dried some time ago, although sobs still convulsed her body—she had no moisture left to shed tears. The older of the two boys lifted a bowl toward her. Her hands trembling and stained with blood, Gray’s and hers, she reached out and took his offering.

“Drink it,” the smaller boy told her—in her language.

This boy was Gray’s son; she saw the father in the son’s eyes and in his indomitable spirit. And she glimpsed the gentle nature of the woman Gray had mourned.

“Thank you,” she murmured as she lifted the bowl to her lips. The drink, thick with crushed herbs and roots, tasted bitter against her lips and tongue. If it was poison, she did not care. If she had the strength, she would hurl her body into the ravine with Gray.

Without him, with her people gone, she had no reason to live.

“Drink,” the boy said again.

“You can understand me?” she asked.

His dark eyes serious, he nodded. “My father, he taught me—to protect me…”

From people like her? The ones with pale hair and skin? Yet she detected no trace of fear in the boy’s eyes, only sadness.

“Tell the warriors to come back, to find your father,” she urged him. “I can help him…” But how much longer? How long could he be dead before her ability to bring him back to life was lost?

“They sent me to you,” the boy explained.

“To kill me?” Had the son inherited his father’s mission?

He shook his head. “To bring you back to our village.”

She turned away, staring into the depths of the ravine. “I cannot leave him.”

The boy followed her gaze and shuddered. “No one has ever come back from there. The elders believe it is the other world…”

“Why do they want me…at the village?” she asked. “I thought…I thought they wanted me dead.”

“The Wise One wanted you dead. They know that, now that he is dead and cannot fool them. They believe my father’s words?that you are no threat to us.”

His last words. That was what he had said. With his last breath, he had defended her. Loving him more, she felt her heart contract.

More tears streaked down the boy’s face. “And they believe me.”

“But you do not know me.”

“I know the Wise One, the shaman. I know that he was the one who killed my mother—not your people.”

Anya’s breath caught at the sorrow and guilt on the boy’s small face. He was so much his father’s son. “How…?”

“I saw him.” The boy shuddered again. “And I did not protect her.”

“But you are just a child.”

“But I did not tell…what I knew.”

His word against the shaman’s? “You would not have been believed. You were right to say nothing.” But she feared he would struggle for a long time to accept that his silence was not cowardice.

“I was afraid,” the boy confessed, his voice soft with shame.

She shook her head. “You are a brave warrior,” she assured him. He did not fear her as his people had.

But the boy did not need her, either. He had his mother’s people. He needed his father, though. And so did she.

Her tears fell again, replenished by the potion the boys had given her. She wept and wept, her tears dripping from the boulder into the ravine.

And rain began to fall, joining her tears. Cracks of lightning and booms of thunder chased away the boys. But she did not move from her boulder, the water soaking her hair and gown.

When the storm moved off, she fell into a fitful sleep, tears still streaming down her face. A while later she awoke to the gentle lap of water against the rocks. She lifted her head and stared with disbelief at the lake that now filled the deep ravine.

Had her tears or the rain filled the abyss? She did not know. Wondering if she dreamed still, she leaned off the boulder and dipped her fingers into the water. Her skin tingled and warmed. The lake was more than real; it was magic.

And it brought him back to her. His body bobbed to the surface, his dark skin pale with death and stained with his blood. She stretched out her arms until she caught his shoulder and dragged him onto the boulder with her. The spear still impaled him. She fisted her hands around the wooden handle and pulled the spear free of his chest, of his heart.

How had he had enough life left to hurl the dagger and save her?

“And you thought I was the one with the power,” she murmured as she pressed a kiss to his cold lips. “You have all the power,” she insisted. “And all my love. Come back to me.”

She laid her hands on his chest. Through her palms, heat radiated from her to him, warming his cold skin. The flesh sealed over his wound, leaving his skin sleek again over hard muscle.

And his heart beat once. Then twice.

“Gray!”

His lids lifted, and he stared up into her face, his eyes dark with confusion, which turned to desire. “Woman…?”

“Your woman.”

“My magic woman.” He shifted against the rock, sitting up. Then he pulled her close. “You brought me back to life.”

She shuddered. “I thought you were lost to me forever. You were dead for days.”

“I was dead for years,” he corrected her. “And the first time I touched you, you brought me back to life.” He lowered his head and covered her mouth with his, kissing her with all his passion, all his love.

The last time, he had given his heart out of obligation and honor. Now he gave it only out of love, love more powerful than any herb or root grown on the land of his people.

“We will be together,” he promised her, knowing now that nothing was impossible—with this woman. “Even if we have to leave this land, we will be together.”

“Yes,” she agreed with a soft sigh of contentment. “But we are not leaving this land. Your people have accepted me.”

He gazed around the woods, but they were alone. “They have?”

“They sent your son. He told me they believed your words…about the Wise One.” Her throat moved as she swallowed hard. “And they believed the boy, too.”

Gray furrowed his brow, confused. Had death slowed his thought processes? He could not understand what she meant. “About what do they believe him?”

She drew in a quick breath, her eyes dampening with sympathy and concern for the boy. “He saw his mother’s death…at the hands of the shaman.”

Gray nodded as his world righted itself. His son had not withdrawn from him out of anger that his father had not protected his mother. Like Gray, he had withdrawn out of guilt, over being unable to save her. A ragged breath slipped through his lips. “That poor little boy…”

“He’s a strong boy. A smart boy,” Anya assured him as if she already felt for his son what she felt for him.

“Can you…do you…”

“Love him?” she asked, and nodded in response. “Yes. And I think he belongs with you. With us.”

His heart, healed by her touch, swelled with love for this woman with her generous spirit. “Yes, with us.”

“Here,” she said, gesturing at the lake filling the ravine. “On the shore of this lake.”

“Lake?” Awed, he glanced down at the water, shimmering with the reflection of the sun, that had filled the expansive width and the depth of the ravine. Most his people had believed it a bottomless abyss. “How…”

“Maybe the rain,” she said, her pale skin flushing with color. “Or my tears.”

“Your tears?” Regret for causing her pain made his heart clutch. He brushed his fingertips across the silky skin of her beautiful face.

She nodded. “I wept my eyes dry. Then your son and another bigger boy brought me a drink.” A slight grimace distorted her delicate features, and she shuddered as if reliving the flavor.

“The bigger boy—he is the shaman’s son.”

“I am lucky it was not poison,” she murmured, then lifted her gaze to Gray’s. Her pale eyes were lit up—much like the surface of the lake, but with love and gratitude rather than sunlight. “The shaman—he’s dead. With the spear already through your heart, you killed him. Already dead, and yet you saved my life.”

Gray nodded, satisfaction filling him that his spear had not missed its target. “Not even death can stop me from protecting or from loving you,” he promised his woman.

She lifted a trembling hand to her lips. “Not even death,” she murmured, then asked with fear, “What if the boy did give me poison—to avenge his father’s death? To be so happy only to have it snatched away again…”

Gray shook his head, his body tensing as he remembered the man’s cruelty toward his own son. “No. He feared his father most. He gave you a special drink—”

“That made my weeping never end,” she said.

“Until you filled the ravine,” he mused, awed again at the depth of her love for him, “with your tears…and brought me back to you.”

“Forever,” she said, wrapping her arms tight around his shoulders. “Never leave me again.”

“Never,” he promised. “We will build our life here by the Lake of Tears—with my son.”

“With our son,” she corrected him, already claiming his motherless boy as hers, too. Then she pressed a palm against her stomach. “And with our children to come.”

“Will they have your powers?” he asked, thinking of how the shaman’s son had instinctively inherited his father’s knowledge of the land.

She shook her head. “Not our children. But of our children’s children, a daughter will be born with a special ability. But I know not what.”

“And if we have only sons?” he asked, smiling at the image she had painted in his mind of their family, of generations of descendents to carry on their legacy of love.

“All our children will have power,” she assured him, “the power of their warrior father. They will be strong and brave and honorable—”

“And happy.”

“And happy,” she agreed, lifting her mouth for his kiss.

As he pressed his mouth to hers, Gray felt the power of the woman in his arms—his woman. But her power wasn’t her ability to bring the dead back to life. Her true power was love.