"Death Row 03 - The Avenger" - читать интересную книгу автора (Black Jaid)

She sighed again when it became obvious he was too angered to speak with her. She absently watched him pull flatbread, meat and cheese from his satchel. “The Hierarchy would have put both you and Kerick to death upon capture had they thought me alive. This you know.” Her teeth gritted. “And if by some off chance they did not, I could have left remission and turned on you at any hour. I couldn’t have borne it had you died at my hands—claws.”

Silence. Cold, harsh, angry silence. Yet there was a gentling in his eyes too. She seized him by his two strong arms, waiting patiently until he gave up and gazed down upon her.

“I love you more than life itself, Eli,” she whispered. Her breathing was heavy, her heart thumping against her chest. Being this close to him again after so many years… “The intensity of it has never left nor weakened.”

She felt a tear form in one eye and had to frown at it. She glanced away as she released his biceps, taking a deep breath. By Cyrus, she was not the sort of wench who ever cried! Yet the thought that Elijah might hate her made her want to do just that. When he had thought her dead, she had lived on in his memories in a reverent fashion. But now?

“I’m an old woman who has seen five decades,” she said softly, staring at the ground. “My beauty has perhaps faded, but my love for you has not.”

His nostrils flared impossibly further. “You betrayed me,” he hissed. “I would have rather gone to my death knowing you lived than to have lived thinking you dead.”

Her head shot up. Her gray eyes widened. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “When a group of scouts came in and obliterated everything within sight, they assumed I too had died. I had but a moment to make a choice.” She nodded definitively. “And I stand by the conviction that I made the right one.” She sighed as she turned on her heel and walked a pace away from him. “Today you are angry. Tomorrow you will realize the truth to my words.”

“I doubt it.”

“You and my sons are alive,” she said tiredly, suddenly feeling exhausted and bone weary. “To me, this is all that ever mattered.”

Silence.

“Tara?” he murmured.

She cleared her throat. “Yes?” she asked without glancing back at him.

“You are wrong about one thing.”

She said nothing, just waited for him to blister her ears with a thousand retributions about how she never should have—

“Your beauty has grown, not faded,” Elijah said softly.

She swallowed against the lump of emotion in her throat. “You lie,” she said, her voice catching. Her body was still strong and toned, but there were more laugh lines around her eyes. A misnomer, she decided, given that she rarely smiled, let alone laughed. She’d also grown a streak of silver in her black mane of hair. Young she was not.

Tara turned around slowly. Her legs were shaking so mightily she felt as though her knees might give out and send her toppling to the earthen ground. “But that’s a lie I can live with,” she breathed out.

His dark brown eyes searched her face. He shook his head slowly. “It’s not a lie,” he whispered.

She looked up, taking in the sight of his heavily muscled, six and a half foot frame, until her gaze at last settled on his handsome ebony face. She took a deep breath. “I would ask you to prove it, yet you know that we cannot chance loving each other.”

His eyelashes shuttered. “Do you honestly think I’ll let you get out of this cavern unclaimed?” he murmured.

Her heart began pounding as her nipples hardened. Apparently she wasn’t as old as she’d thought. Her very womb contracted at the mental image his words conjured. Unconsciously, she licked her lips. “Eli…”

“Take off your clothes.” His voice went down in timbre. “Now.”

She blew out a breath. Sweet Cyrus, how she wanted to. She could see his penis thickening against the brown leather pants he wore. For years she had wondered what it would feel like to be joined with him, to feel his long black cock impaled all the way inside her. What he offered was no small temptation. “I…I cannot.”

He sighed just a bit. “Tara—”

“Eli, please,” she said in a defeated voice. She briefly closed her eyes before meeting his gaze. “Old I may be, but you know as well as I that women are breedable until death. We don’t have bodies like the ancient females.” She shook her head. “Scientists made sure of that.”