Beautiful Warrior Read Online Free Page A

I referred to it, it didn’t change the reality of how it affected me.
    He ended the kiss and lifted his head. Unable to cope with his dark gaze, I squeezed my eyes shut.
    “Look at me, ” he said.
    Fol lowing his command, I opened my big, owlish blue eyes, praying that I could get though this with my soul intact.
    “ How did you get here?” he asked.
    Confused, I replied, “What do you mean?”
    “ How did you arrive in Room 105?”
    I couldn’t tell him that I was crazy or that none of this was real . “I found the portal to it in a hotel room in California.”
    “And Seven was with you?”
    “No. He appeared when I got here.”
    “So you were alone in the hotel?”
    I shook my head. “Duncan was beside me. I insisted on having him there while I searched for a way to come here. But I was the only one who was able to enter the portal.”  Which meant, in actuality, that the true “me” was still in the hotel room with Duncan.
    “He watch ed you disappear through the portal?”
    “Yes,” I said , bending the truth. What Duncan saw was a delusional girl spiraling into madness, and as to how the other “me” was faring, I couldn’t say. Was I mumbling to myself, the dialogue from this hallucination chopping out of my mouth in indistinct syllables? Or had I gone into a stupor, staring blankly at the walls while the activity churned solely in my mind?
    Whatever the case, Duncan was prepared to call 9-1-1 if he couldn’t handle what was happening to me. For all I knew, I was on my way to the hospital already, strapped to a gurney with the sirens blaring.
    How horrible would that be, going into a psych ward while I was having a romantic encounter with the warrior?
    He said, “I’m glad you came here without Duncan. If he was with you, I couldn’t have taken you to my bed.” 
    I heaved an anxiety-ridden breath . He looked exactly like Duncan, but they weren’t the same man. Although Duncan thrived on sex, he’d been reluctant to sleep with me at first. This version of him was using sex against me.
    But suddenly I didn’t care .
    I dragged his face back to mine and kissed him with a vengeance. Our tongues dived and danced, our pulses pounding in unison, mimicking the crash of rain.
    He rubbed his pelvis against mine, his buckskin pants chafing my skin and the knife at his waist bumping my hipbone. Dangerous as ever, he toyed with the waistband of my panties, playing with the elastic and snapping it back and forth.
    I realized that he didn’t even know my name. He’d yet to ask and I’d yet to tell him.
    Duncan’s name meant dark-skinned warrior, which fit my fantasy of him, but it wasn’t his birth name, nor was it invented by me. A schizophrenic man named Jack had chosen it for him. I wasn’t the only delusional person who’d impacted his life. Duncan was an advocate for mental illness.
    And the warrior ? He was in it for himself, for his own hungry needs. Yet he was noble enough to die for my cause, to help Abby’s people and lay down his life when it was over.
    I damned myself for creating him that way .
    Determine d to have me, he forged ahead, telling me to turn around and get on all fours. This was it, I thought. The stallion-and-mare-type mating.
    I did what was required of me . But I didn’t like that I couldn’t see him. It made me feel disconnected.
    He worked my bra free and went after my panties, sliding them down my legs and tossing them aside.
    Once I was naked, he shed his clothes. I could hear him removing his knife and buckskins, the rustle of movement filling the fire-lit room.
    He pressed up against me, the warmth of his skin and the hardness of male arousal assailing my senses. He reached around and thumbed my nipples, making them peak beneath his possessive touch. He buried his face in my hair, too, and whispered something incoherent in my ear. I assumed it was a Native word. But since I wasn’t familiar with indigenous languages, there was no way I could be sure. Eager to