Under His Wings Read Online Free Page B

to protect him and Gregor as children, then
condemned him for the monster they had ultimately created. Hate for the humans
his king insisted they—the more powerful beings—hide their existence from like
rats in a sewer and yet protect like menial servants.
    Gregor’s death and Nicolai’s ruthlessness had obliterated
Evander’s allegiance to his people, to Lukas, Adon, Dorian…and especially
Nicolai.
    Bastien had been his first victim as a declared rogue.
    Nicolai had taken the person Evander had loved so he
returned the favor with the Dimios’ best friend. Every kill afterward
had been a humiliating nail in Nicolai’s coffin as he failed to capture the
rogue he’d trained in the art of tracking and execution.
    And now—Evander paused in front of the hotel window and
stared out over the quiet backwater town called Grace Crossings—his greatest
revenge loomed close. All the players were set in place.
    Soon, very soon, it would be game and match.

Chapter Two
     
    Tamar Ridgeway rolled over, sighing.
    Her internal alarm clock blared the six o’clock hour with an
annoying ring that refused to let her burrow back under the covers for a few
extra moments of sleep. With an irritated grumble, she stretched out her arm,
seeking warm, hard flesh, but instead encountered a cool jumble of blankets.
    Damn.
    For an instant, sorrow and disappointment crashed down on
her like a cruel dousing of frigid ice water. A dream. That’s all it’d
been—that’s all it ever was. After three years of fantasies about her winged
warrior, she should be used to waking up alone. Yet the knowledge didn’t
prevent the initial despair or loneliness from claiming her in that gloaming
between sleep and wakefulness. It was like the morning following Christmas Day,
after the excitement and joy of the holiday had passed. And the time before it
came around again stretched an interminable three hundred and sixty-five days
forward.
    Shoving the regret aside along with the covers, she rose
from the bed and padded across the hardwood floor. A blunted ache took up
residence in her left hip and thigh and she winced at the muted pulsing of
strained and tired muscles. She stopped, exhaled a breath. Lowering her hands
to the scarred flesh, she kneaded and massaged the tight sinew, ligaments and
tendons. They were always stiff first thing in the morning and needed time to
catch up with the rest of her body.
    She glanced down at her leg and the hardened whorls and
thick ridges that creased it like a child’s scribble-scrabble drawing. The
scars that covered the left side of her body were constant reminders of the
plane crash she’d survived at twenty-five years old. After years of intensive
physical and psychological therapy, she walked with a limp, had broken up with
her fiancé and was still afraid of the dark…and flying. She hadn’t slept in a
dark room or stepped foot on a plane since the crash, but she lived. And
finally— finally —three years later, she had her life back.
    When the throbbing had subsided to a negligible thud, she
headed toward the bathroom and a much-needed shower.
    Most people who had suffered the kind of trauma she’d
endured had nightmares for years. Her? She dreamed of a lavender-eyed, blond
winged warrior. For the first two and a half years after the crash he’d been
her champion. She’d watched him laugh with his small unit of men, charge into
battle and recover from his wounds. He’d been her nighttime protector, her
comforter. But the last six months…damn. In the last six months instead of a
spectator, she’d become a full active participant. And he’d become the man who
made love to her as if he’d invented the act. Her dreams had always been vivid
and detailed—even as a child. But how she imagined the things he did to her
with his fingers, tongue and cock… whew .
    In the safety of her mind, she morphed into a sexual
creature she hadn’t known existed. She’d enjoyed sex before, but had never
craved it.