Chapter Forty-Eight

Havermouth, Present Time

Aislen watched the birds eat from a bird feeder suspended off the balcony outside Rhett’s window. Of course, he would have placed one there so he could sit at the desk and draw them, she thought. It was precisely what she would have done if it were her room. Watching them now helped take her mind off the tattoo.

She wished she could say that she was getting used to the pain, but it seemed whenever she found a level of comfort, Rhett would find a new and painful spot.

“I am done with the outline,” he said, leaning back and setting the tattoo gun down on the plastic wrapped tray. “I’ll just apply the ointment and bandages…”

She sighed in relief and rose from the chair, stretching out and rolling her head on her neck as he went to the bathroom and rummaged in the drawers before returning. She felt his breath on her skin as he smoothed the ointment over the tattoo, his pride in his artwork tainted by his misery. (Would he ever be able to look at it without thinking of how it was done...?)

“You were always nicer to me,” she whispered. “Despite anything I did, most of the time you were… gentler, kinder.”

“Turn around,” his voice was hoarse. She turned and looked up at him. His hair fell over his forehead as he eased the bandages away from the tattoos he had done the day before. “These are looking good,” his thumb stroked so achingly gently over the knotted triangle.

“I get it… I… rejected Heath and Cameron, and their male pride was bruised, so they were mean…”

“Don’t use that word,” he jerked his eyes up to her. “You don’t understand,” he said tightly. “It wasn’t just pride… I mean, a bit perhaps. But don’t use that word like that…” He shook his head. “It could become permanent.” He grimaced. (And now I’ve said something that I shouldn’t…)

“I can reject you,” she said repeating the words in his head. “What does that mean?”

“Don’t do it,” he dropped the ointment and seized her shoulders, his face alarmed and his fear flooding through her. "Don't do it out of spite, Aislen.” He was panicked. “Don’t do it. It would destroy us. The Triquetra. Especially if they knew…”

“That I found out about it from you,” she finished on a breath. “What… I don’t understand, Rhett. Werewolf law means that you can’t talk to me about these things, and yet… Cameron said that I was… a mate. And Heath sees a mate as a wife, but more so…”

Not that it was even feasible to think of herself as a wife to the three men… Was that even legal? She wondered. For a moment she imagined living in the beautiful, serene house on the bank of the river with the three men, meals at the dining table, and evenings drinking wine on the balcony… Sitting around the fire… Perhaps, eventually, children running through the trees…

Impossible, she dismissed it with regret. She was suffering a form of Stockholm syndrome.

“Perhaps if you would just explain it to me,” she said, reaching up and cupping his cheek. His jaw was shadowed by stubble. “Then we could… work something out.”

“You’re just telling me what I want to hear,” his voice was gruff, catching on his emotion. “Trying to lure me into lowering my guard so that you can try to escape, like you did this morning with Cameron.”

She lifted her mouth to his, and he moaned as he deepened the kiss, pulling her against him, his desire surging through her with such force that she was amazed that her hair didn’t frizz with the static energy.

She hooked her fingers under the edge of the hem of his top, drawing it up and over his head, and he watched her face as his body was exposed, almost shyly, waiting for her reaction. Heath’s memory of Rhett naked had been accurate, but also hadn’t shown the details of the artwork on Rhett’s body, just an impression of many tattoos.

“Oh,” she whispered, her heart tightening as she smoothed the palm of her hand over his chest, and for once, his thoughts and feelings were a backdrop to her own.

As with Heath's tattoo, the river house was depicted, with the three wolves standing in guard position before it, but so was she, as she had been at eighteen, blending with the moon, her hair making the night sky and wrapping around both the house and the wolves below it, binding all together, like the knots of the triangle that he was obsessed with. “It’s the portrait you made…” She lifted her eyes to his.

He smoothed the hair back from her face and his lips brushed over hers, the kiss tender and wistful.

She cupped the back of his head, holding his mouth to hers and deepening the kiss, pressing her chest to his, the feel of his skin against hers spiralling her want into madness.

She released him, pulling back just enough to release his jeans, shoving them down his thighs to his calves, where they bunched, tangled on his boots. The tattoos on his body went all the way down, she saw. Heath hadn't been exaggerating about Rhett running out of skin to mark.

Rhett held her waist in his hands and took an unsteady step backwards drawing her with him as he sat on the edge of the mattress. She put a knee to the mattress on either side of his hips, rising over him. He kissed along the column of her throat, and over her chest, before she threaded her fingers into his hair and met his lips with her own, sinking down on his c-ck at the same time.

His groan was dragged from deep within him, vibrating through them both.

She ground her hips into him, driving the breath from them both. They clung tightly, his arms wrapped around her, their chest and mouths pressed tight, and he thrusted up into her from below. There was an intensity of tension to their bodies against each other that almost crossed into violence, both expressing the frustration, anger, and pain that lie just behind the passion.

She loved him, she thought. She had always loved him, from the very start. They had always been bound together in some way that she did not understand, assuming it was probably how everyone connected when they fell in love, an invisible tether joining their souls. Twin flames, the witches called it, and like any fire, what warmed could also burn…

She came, gasping, and he groaned, thrusting twice more before following, straining into her. As the pleasure faded into warm contentment between them, his head fell forward to rest in the hollow of her neck, and she stroked through the silken strands of his hair.

She felt the grief within him, the decision made, and his arms tightened for a moment before he lifted her from him and set her onto the bed, rising and pulling his jeans up. He walked across to a Queen Anne dresser, refinished in black paint and bright jewel toned patterns, and took from one of the drawers a pile of clothing. He set it on the bed beside her where he had been and picked up his top from the floor without looking at her.

“The window is unlocked and has no fly screen. I will distract Heath and Cameron for as long as I can,” he said, without looking at her, and walked to the door, placing his hand on the doorhandle. “I knew that this was a bad idea,” he barely breathed the words. “But we were desperate.”

He stepped out and closed the door behind him.

For a moment she sat, stunned, and then she dragged on the clothing and ran to the window, tugging and pulling the drawing desk out of the way before sliding it open. She was over the ledge and onto the balcony before she had thought it through, sending the birds flapping off. She paused for a moment in the sunshine, shocked by her freedom.

She hesitated, her palm on the handrail, looking over her shoulder, her heart aching, and then she ran down the stairs and towards the river, sliding down the bank and feeling rocks and blackberry thorns tear at her bare feet.

She threw herself into the water, trying to run as it weighted down the fabric of the tracksuit pants and t-shirt that she wore, feeling the slime of mud between her toes, and then, when she was deep enough, she fought the tide of the water, swimming upstream and across.

In her teen years, she had swum the river frequently with the Triquetra, and thought that she knew the strength of the current, but it had been five years, and swimming took different muscles than the yoga routine she frequently performed for exercise.

For a moment, almost submerging in the tumble of water, she fought, sure that she would be dragged back towards the house, but she reached the other side, where a tree had fallen, clambering over the limbs, smothering her cries of pain as she stepped on a broken branch, slipping, and bruising herself multiple times before she managed to get near the bank.

She clung and crouched, panting. “Don’t stop, Aislen,” she urged herself. “Don’t stop. They will find you. Run. Run.”

She managed to scramble out of the water and into the trees, where she found a path worn in the undergrowth by the passage of cow herds and wildlife coming to the river to drink. Her wet clothing clung and rubbed against the raw tattoos, and tugged on the piercings. Her feet were bleeding, as were her hands, the nails ragged and torn.

She hurried along the path, adrenaline taking the edge of the pain and keeping her moving, shivering as the wet clothing dragged the warmth from her body.

In the distance, she heard a wolf howl. The Triquetra had shifted in order to pursue her, just as Heath had said they would. She hoped that swimming across the water had confused them, thrown off her scent, but she knew that, although they might look like wolves in their other forms, they were men within those bodies, and men would reason out how it was she had escaped.

She climbed through a fence, the barbed wire tearing at her hair and clothing.

She had an approximate idea of the area, knew that she should intersect a main road soon… Seeing a bright red car pass through the trees again gave her hope and she picked up speed. Despite that encouraging flash of red, the road was empty when she reached it. A typical country road, used by locals.

Her energy was flagging. She hadn’t eaten enough, and between fucking the Triquetra, the pain of the tattoos and piercings, and the trauma of the whole experience, her legs were shaking and weak. Her body shook with cold from the wet clothing further sapping her strength.

The tarmac was easier underfoot and she headed in the direction of town. She followed the road, slowing as she weakened, caught between anxiety that the next car to pass would belong to one of the Triquetra searching for her, and the wish that a car would hurry and find her before she collapsed.

When she finally did hear an engine, she almost wept with relief, turning to face its approach. It wasn’t the Triquetra, but rather a shocked older lady with hair in neat curls, glasses perched on her nose connected by a gold chain that ran around her neck, and a pretty floral dress complete with a white lace collar.

“My goodness, you poor girl. Whatever happened to you?” The woman exclaimed, hurrying to pull a picnic blanket out of the boot and wrapping it around Aislen, who was crying too hard, and was in too much shock to form a response. “Well, it’s straight to the hospital with us,” the woman decided, hastening Aislen into the passenger seat. “Just look at your feet!”

The woman was Dorothy Abbot. She continued her chatter, interspersed with questions, throughout the drive, but all Aislen could do was shake her head, overwhelmed and raw, her heart racing within her chest. The feeling of wrongness, of distress, was so complete, it was a rush of white noise within her head making her nauseous.

They arrived at the hospital and Dorothy flapped and flurried around outside until medical staff came with a trolley bed and lifted her from the car onto it.

“What is your name?” Someone asked her. “Can you tell us what happened to you? Who can we call for you?”

“Talen,” she said. “Talen Gawaine.”