Wild, Tethered, Bound Read Online Free Page B

the place in a year or two. So she should care about card-counting teams in the casino; but mostly, she just wanted a few quiet moments to herself.
    She switched the radio off.
    It was harder to ignore the newspaper a guest had left behind on the bench beside her. If she opened it, Dessa knew what she’d see. The war in Afghanistan was still raging and the forests were almost all gone. Without the forests, the soil was eroding, and creating an ecological misery for the people. Perhaps she’d been wrong to leave, but she couldn’t do it alone. If only she’d had a daughter…but that dream had died with her heart tree.
    Closing her eyes, Dessa tried to remember the insistent throb of life that had once thrummed through her veins. The memory was strong; she could feel its erotic pull. She felt the tiny pulse as it beat a warm path down her belly to the warm place between her thighs. Her breath quickened and she felt the lethargy of mortal life flow away.
    Suddenly, Dessa’s eyes flew open. The pulse wasn’t a memory at all. She suddenly was sure it was real. It was the faint heartbeat she sensed just a pace behind her own. The familiar echo of her heart tree. But it couldn’t be!
    Forgetting her shoes, Dessa ran down the path toward the casino. Some tendril of connection, some long-forgotten tether, was leading her there. Instinct made her duck into the shadowy hollow of a buttress tree and, from her hiding spot, she saw three men in the underbrush—all dark haired, with broad, beastly shoulders.
    The one with the sunglasses reached for the other’s arm and Dessa watched the two men merge together into one. In spite of herself, she gasped.
    Who was he? What was he?
    As a dryad, she had the power to bind mortals to her, but as she watched the remaining two men join in a coalescence of sweat, sinew and skin she knew he was not like her. She saw mortal pain flash across his face—his familiar face—and then knew exactly who and what he was.
     
    “Lieutenant.”
    It had been a long time since anyone had called him that. Nick almost dared not turn around. But when he did, there she was. Was that figment of his war-fevered imagination actually standing in front of him? Could she be real?
    In spite of the fact she was wearing a black skirt and a white blouse with the emblem of the Evergreen Resort on it, he knew her instantly. She didn’t look like some wild nature spirit anymore; she looked like an officious employee who had somehow lost her shoes. But he’d seen those eyes in his mind every night for the past five years and wouldn’t have mistaken her heart-shaped face for anyone else.
    Casino security was still on his heels, but he couldn’t seem to move.
    “Hurry,” she said, reaching out for his cheek, just as she had all those years ago, and this time he did not flinch away. Now her hand caressed him and he felt as if his skin were melding with hers. She kissed him. Her mouth, bittersweet, tasted like syrup and walnut. And in that kiss, he felt an unfamiliar throb, as if there were another heartbeat inside his chest.
    Nick had lived in separate pieces ever since the day he came upon the dead bodies of those little girls. Now it felt as if he were somehow being bound back together. Not just within himself, but within her. As if he were being pulled to her, like tree vines were wrapping around his ankles and calves, drawing his hips to press fervently against the curve of her own. He felt the heat between her legs. He smelled her, a wild scent somewhere between musk and lavender. She was drawing him into her, like a lover, and he felt himself harden in response.
    But this wasn’t sex and his cock wasn’t the only rigid part of him. His legs became tree trunks and he watched with horror as the skin of his arms quickly covered over with bark. She wasn’t just pulling him into herself…she was pulling him into the tree.
    Just then, security rounded the corner and Nick was sure he’d been caught. But security