Beautiful Warrior Read Online Free

a crap if he died. “Please, don’t accept it as part of your creation. I couldn’t bear to know that you died because of something I did. If you fight it, then maybe Duncan will stay safe, too.”
    “Maybe Duncan isn’t supposed to live.” 
    I shoved my bowl away. “How can you say that?”
    With a curious expression etched on his handsome face, he watched my stew slosh over the sides of the bowl and onto the table.
    Tears threatened to sting my eyes . This hallucination wasn’t going as planned. Even the stupid blanket was falling off of my shoulders. “Damn it.”
    He cocked his head . “You have a temper.”
    “Really?”  I pushed the blanket away , knocking it onto the floor, and dragged my nails across the tabletop, treating it like a chalkboard. “You fucking think?”
    H e had the gall to smile. “Are you going to be that way when we’re together, little butterfly? Are you going to scratch and claw and curse when I’m inside you?”
    Little butterfly . Duncan called me that, too. Vanessa was part of a scientific name connected to a species of butterflies known as Painted Ladies. I’d read a book about them when I was a kid and had told Duncan about it.
    And now, the warrior was u sing it as an endearment, leaving me even more bereft. But that didn’t stop him from taking what he wanted. He stood up and plucked me right out of my chair, cradling me roughly in his arms.
    An d carrying me straight to his bed.

 
    Chapter Three
     
    He pushed away the covers and placed me on the mattress. Then, while braced above me, he looked down at the breathless expression on my face.
    “You’re in love with him,” he said.
    Him . Duncan . “Yes.”
    “Does he love you, as well? ”
    My heart thumped against my chest, kicking like a caged animal. “We haven’t talked about it, but I doubt it’s even crossed his mind. Something happened to him when he was young, something traumatic that he can’t remember, and it affects how he reacts to love.”
    “If he can’t remember what happened, how does he know it was traumatic?”
    “He just does. He feels it, I suppose. But it only seems to affect how he reacts to romantic love and the bond it requires.”  My heart was still pounding like mad. “Have you ever been in love?”
    “No.”
    “Do you think you’re capable of it?”
    He stared, unblinkingly, into my eyes, like a hypnotist or a magician. While he drew me into his power, I waited for him to respond, uncertain of what he was going to say. The logical response from a warrior living alone in the woods would be a resounding “No,” but the way he was looking at me, it was anybody’s guess.
    “Yes, ” he replied, his voice deliciously husky. “I think maybe I am.”
    Swee t Lord. If only he was Duncan and not a hallucinatory version of him. I put my hand against his cheek, needing to touch him.
    Needing it so badly.
    As I skimmed the rugged angles of his jaw, I said, “Please help me find that magic that will keep you alive.”
    “I can’t do that.”   He reached into my hair, tangling it around his fingers the way I’d imagined him doing. “And I won’t keep discussing it with you.” 
    Aware of every motion, of every sound, of the ache his refusal caused, I listened to the rain pouring down on the roof. “It’s not fair that you—”
    “Hush. ”  He reprimanded me in a harsh tone, tugging on the blonde tendrils he’d taken hold of.
    Once again, I tried to persist. “But—” 
    He cut me off, crushing my mouth with a kiss. As his tongue pillaged mine, I made a desperate sound, everything inside me going raging hot, the fever burning from the tips of my spiky eyelashes to the tops of my pink-polished toenails.
    T he sinful sensation of being this close to a man was still wonderfully new. But it was frightening, too, knowing that I was hallucinating such an intimate encounter.
    Mired in emotion, I thrashed beneath him. I hated my disorder, my disease, my illness. No matter how