Wild, Tethered, Bound (3 page)

Evergreen Resort Casino, Queensland, Australia, five years later

The dryad was on her lunch break. She’d been living amidst the mortals for five years now, but there were still things she couldn’t get used to. Hard floors, straight lines and steel buildings all made her feel confined. And that’s to say nothing of the high-heeled shoes!

With a sandwich in one hand, Dessa kicked off her pumps and stretched out on the park bench in the resort’s botanical gardens. She’d taken the job as assistant manager at the Evergreen Resort Casino because it was a nature preserve, nestled inside many acres of wild parkland.

Now, with her free hand, she brushed the friendly cycads. They were amongst the oldest trees in existence—as old as the dinosaurs—and, just like her, completely out of place here. Like Dessa in the mortal world, this cultivated landscape was too clipped, too restrained and too well-groomed. After all, overhead was not an open sky, but a marvel of mortal architecture—a geodesic dome.

She told herself she shouldn’t complain; perhaps glass and aluminum would protect this forest as her dryad magic had not protected the forests of Afghanistan.

She’d just finished eating when the radio at her hip crackled with an update; casino security suspected a card-counting team in the casino. Dessa found it hard to care. The only card that interested her was the one she kept always in her pocket—the joker, with its scorched edges, a reminder to her of all she’d lost. Since she left the forest, her powers had been slowly waning. Soon, she supposed, she would forget her heart tree; she would forget she was once a dryad at all. But until then, she used what little magic she still had to tether guests to the resort.

Dessa was so good for business, in fact, that her boss predicted she’d be running 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 walked right past as if he wasn’t there. Nick was hidden, no longer in danger of being arrested, but when he tried to move, he couldn’t. He was trapped!

Inside, he flailed. Nick had never been the kind of man who could stand being restrained. He needed his freedom, he needed his independence, and he lived by his own rules—part of the reason he probably hadn’t really been cut out for the military in the first place. But just as he thought he’d break free or die trying, the bark on his body became skin again.

They fell forward together, away from the tree. She released her hold on him and he was no longer inside her—a sensation that left him with a strong and unexpected sexual longing.

“Who the hell are you?” Nick demanded, his blood boiling.

“Dessa,” she said simply, as if he’d been asking her name.

“
What
the hell are you?” Nick clarified. He should have been thanking her, but he couldn’t hide his fury.

In the face of his anger, the woman blinked those astonishing eyes. “I’m a dryad. A tree nymph,” she tried to explain.

Sure, why not? Nick had seen his own body split into three parts. Hell, he was even calling his other thirds by their own names these days. Why not add a tree fairy to his rampant madness?

As if she could read his mind, Dessa shook her head. “You’re not mad. The old stories are real. The worship of people in Nuristan Province aren’t just silly superstitions. You just stumbled on to the truth that most mortals never see…”

“Lucky me.” Nick laughed darkly.

“You’re not lucky,” she said very sincerely. “You’re hurt. You’re broken.”

What did she know about it? Suddenly, he felt vulnerable, and her intense gaze seemed cloying. He needed to get out of here. “Look, thanks for hiding me. I need to be on my way before security doubles back.”

“I’ll hide you,” she said.

“No.” He feared she’d trap him inside that tree again.

She took out her manager’s passkey. “Trust me.”

It wasn’t as if he had many options, so Nick let her lead him down a series of hallways. “The path we took avoided the cameras. They won’t look for you here,” she said, locking the doors behind them.

In the dim light, Nick squinted and made out a cascade waterfall beneath a canopy of indoor trees. There were plastic sheets draped over chairs; the air was muggy, and it was darker than it had been beneath the geodesic dome. “What is this place? A dryad’s lair?” he teased, trying to cover his unease.

“It’s going to be a new tropical addition to the gardens, and part of the renovated spa. Only a few employees have the key. If we wait until dark, we can probably go out the back and sneak out across the grounds.”

“We?” Nick asked.

“This resort is surrounded by acres of forest,” Dessa said. “I’ll need to show you the way.”

“Not to nitpick, but aren’t they going to notice you’re not at your desk?”

She gave an enigmatic smile. “I think my co-workers all suspect by now that I’m a little eccentric.”

“I thought you were
dead,
” Nick suddenly sputtered. “I thought you died in that forest fire. How is it that you’re here? Are you following me?”

Dessa shook her head. “No, there’s a…connection between us. You’re following me, and I’m glad, because I think I’m the only one who can help you.”

So, she’d seen him meld together. She’d caught him in the monstrous act that he’d been trying to hide from the world. He couldn’t look her in the eye.

“You think you’re broken here,” she whispered, touching his forehead. Then her fingers trailed a scorching path down to his chest. “But it’s your heart that’s broken.”

Afraid of her touch, he grabbed her hand in a crushing grip. He must have been hurting her, but she only stared at him and said, “You’re a chimera, Lieutenant.”

“A chimera?” he asked, and Dessa watched his lips curled with doubt. “Like…?”

“Like in ancient Greek lore!” she cried. He was hurting her—the way he gripped her fingers tightly—but truth was pain, and after five long years, she was tired of living a lie. “Have you never heard of a chimera?”

“That hideous creature?” Nick snapped. “With the goat, and the lion, and the fire-breathing dragon?”

It didn’t seem to soothe his temper when she nodded her head.

“First dryads, now chimeras. That’s some funny shit. I’m too old for fables and fairy tales.”

“Where do you think those fables and fairy tales came from?” Dessa asked. “At heart, chimeras are creatures with three parts and that’s what’s happened to you. You’ve split in three. You’re a war-forged chimera.”

He shook his head with denial, and she could see that he didn’t believe her. How could she explain in a way a mortal would understand? “War has always made men into monsters.”

“So you think I’m a
monster,
” he said then let out a dry unpleasant laugh. “You would, wouldn’t you? You were in Afghanistan. I knew they were going to call in air strikes near that forest. I knew there was a chance you’d be hurt, a chance you’d be killed—”

His voice broke then as some dark agony wrestled its way through his body. He was starting to fracture again—but Dessa used her strongest magic tendrils to bind him, to keep him together and to keep him with her. “Lieutenant, what happened in Afghanistan is a wound you need to heal. If you keep going on this way, you won’t be able to pull the other parts of you back inside. You’ll lose yourself, and become three separate, and lesser, men.”

“I’ve heard enough,” he said, turning to walk away. But couldn’t. He couldn’t see the gossamer threads of magic, but seemed to know that Dessa was holding him there. “What are you doing to me?”

“I’ve tethered you,” Dessa admitted.

His eyes flashed with a shadowy, dangerous warning.
“Tethered?”

“It’s the power of the dryads,” she said, not wanting to reveal just how little magic she had left since her heart tree had been destroyed. “We bind nature together. We turn a stand of trees into a forest. We hold life—”

“You’ve
tethered
me?” he asked through clenched teeth. “So I can’t walk away?”

“Not yet, no…”

But that didn’t stop him from trying. He turned, marching in the direction of the door until his footsteps suddenly stopped. As if he’d come to the end of a leash. Then he turned on her like a rabid animal. “Let me go.”

“Casino security is still searching for you,” she warned.

“I’m a gambler,” he said. “I’ll take my chances.”

Dessa was less worried for him than she was for security. She knew what she’d seen; she knew about his monstrous powers. Nick had the strength of three savage men, and when he was separated into those parts without a single conscience, he might not have scruples about killing people who got in his way. But if she were honest with herself, she’d have to admit that what she was most afraid of was losing him so soon again. “I can’t let you go.”

“Why not?” he asked, his temper calming slightly as if he thought she might have a good reason.

“Because I need you.”

“You need me?” he asked, his handsome features struggling to understand. “What do you need?”

How could she explain that he was quite possibly the only man in the world who could give her a child? “When you were in Afghanistan, you ate walnuts from my forest, didn’t you?”

He took a sharp intake of breath. “There was a destroyed tree—”

“It was my heart tree,” Dessa explained, tears welling. “I feel its essence inside you and now it’s the only place I’ll ever find it again. There’ll never be any more fruit of my heart tree for another man.”

Nick came toward her, and she didn’t need to draw him there. He still seemed angry, but also genuinely concerned. His warm hands closed on her shoulders, and he looked down into her eyes. How had she never realized how tall he was before? “You’re crying,” he said, brushing away her tears. “Should I not have eaten those damned walnuts? I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“No, I should’ve offered them to you,” Dessa said, having trouble speaking over her emotions. “But it’s no matter now. In touching you, I can feel the magic and know I’ve found my mate.”

The word
mate
did something to him. He tilted his head slightly, and a confused smile passed over his lips. She knew he wanted her. Primal passion was no different for humans than it was for the animals—no different for mortals than for dryads. She could feel desire in his touch.

But he pulled away.

Mate?
Nick would have been lying if he said that he didn’t want her. But he was still angry at the way she’d used her powers to hold him still. Besides, she’d given him a lot to take in. There was the kiss, the way she’d hidden him inside the tree and the things she’d said about him being a chimera…The events of the past hour all had a dreamlike quality, and he needed time to think.

“Not that I’m not flattered, but a man likes to be wooed,” Nick teased to lighten the mood. “Some drunken, noncommittal groping in the backseat of a car, or maybe a little dinner—”

She squinted as if she didn’t understand. “I can go to the restaurant and sneak dinner back for you before you give yourself to me.”

Give himself to her?
Ug! His lips parted with surprise when he realized she was sincere. With the cascading water behind her, she was looking at him with undisguised hunger, eyes smoldering with sensual need. He’d be a fool to refuse her frank sexual invitation. It’d be a long time until nightfall, hours before he could escape. Was there really a better way to spend the time?

But when it came to women, Nick liked to make the first move. He was the suave seducer, not the seduced. And being locked up in this…spa, greenhouse, tropical whatever…made him feel as if he was about to crawl out of his own skin. Again.

He was about to gently rebuff her advances when she lunged at him. “I need you,” she said fiercely, pressing her lips against his.

This kiss was different than the one before. This one was primal, savage, crushing. He’d once mistaken Dessa for a helpless waif. Now that she was pressing him back against the wet rock wall, he realized how strong she was. As the water flowed over his hair and back, his military training kicked in and powerful forearms strained against hers, forcing the dryad’s hands back until she was the one pinned.

He felt her pert breasts against his chest, her thigh between his and her teeth grazing his lower lip. Releasing one of her arms, he gripped a fist of her wet hair; she was trying to ravish him and it was turning him on almost as much as it was pissing him off.

“I need you,” she whispered again, pale throat exposed. In the midst of their struggle, she’d somehow worked her skirt up over her hips and was pressing against his thigh.

All righty then, maybe this was going to happen after all. Nick wasn’t exactly known for his willpower and he wasn’t a saint. Refusing her now would take more self-control than he had. “Is this what you need?” he asked, sliding his fingers into her panties to stroke her.

“More,” she demanded. Then her hands worked at his zipper.

He grabbed her wrist. “Hey,” he growled, low in his throat. “Ask nicely.”

His words seemed to startle her. “All right…” Then she peeked up at him beneath lowered lashes and whispered, “Please give me a child.”

“
Whoa
.”

It was the last thing he’d expected her to ask. And Nick suddenly realized just how cold the water was that trickled down his spine.