there when you need me. You are my mate.”
The simple honesty of his words tore down a bit of the wall she had built around her heart and soul. And that worried her. She didn’t want to be vulnerable to him. But how could she hold back from a being who had already saved her life more than once?
“Trust goes both ways, Teresa,” he reminded her.
She tipped her head to one side and stared up at him. Saw shadows crouched in his eyes. She felt his power rippling out around her, drawing her in even as he held a part of himself back.
Something told her that the memories she hoped to draw out of the locked closet in her mind wouldn’t all be puppies and rainbows. There was more between them than he was saying. She knew it.
He might pretend to be keeping the past where it belonged, but at his heart, at his soul, he was holding on to feelings that threatened to destroy the very link they were supposed to forge. He expected her to blindly trust him when it was clear he couldn’t do the same with her.
“Look,” she said, covering a sudden burst of nerves with a stiff, calm voice, “we’re stuck with each other, right? We have the Mating ritual to complete. This quest to finish. So it doesn’t really matter if we like each other, does it?”
“I suppose not,” he agreed.
Oddly, she was almost disappointed to hear him say that. Despite knowing that it was better all the way around this way. After all, she was prepared to go through with the Mating. What she wasn’t willing to do was allow herself to love him. Love wasn’t part of this package and she had no interest in changing that. Love gave people too much power over you.
Gave them the weapons to hurt you.
So, no thanks. She wasn’t interested in eternal love. She was prepared to do her duty. To complete the task her grandmother had prepared her for most of her life. But nowhere was it written that she must love the mate the fates had chosen for her.
When Rune held one hand out to her in a gesture of solidarity, of alliance, Teresa took it, sliding her hand into his. The instant their skin met, a sizzle of something ancient and hot and delicious skittered through her system. Her whole body shook with desire, with quickening passion. She looked into those incredible eyes and saw that he had felt it too and she knew, like it or not, this Eternal was hers.
The question was, what was she supposed to do with him once the quest was over?
Chapter 21
He released her and reached beneath his black coat to the small of his back. He pulled out a wickedlooking knife with a blade that was at least six inches long, sharp on one edge and jagged on the other. The shining silver glinted with menace in the starlight.
She looked from him to the knife and then to the village. Cheerfully bright mariachi music from a radio drifted to them on the night wind. Other than the loud, cheerful tune, the small town might as well have been deserted. Teresa knew all too well how easily sound traveled in the desert. But there were no voices. No laughter. Just … silence, and suddenly the village looked more ominous than welcoming. She couldn’t stop the shiver as a thread of cold slithered along her spine. “Do you think you’re going to need that knife?”
“Better to have it and not need it than the other way around.” He stabbed the blade through a belt loop on his jeans and pulled the edge of his coat over it. “Let’s go.” He paused and glared at Chico. “And keep that bird quiet.”
She frowned after him, but a moment later she fell in step behind him. They came out of the desert shadows into the light and for a moment or two Teresa was nearly blinded. Not that the lights on the porches and spilling from small homes were bright—but in comparison to the blackness of the night it was like being dropped from outer space into the middle of the Vegas Strip.
“This way,” he said and Teresa walked beside him. She felt the gazes of the villagers following them. That unsettled feeling she’d had only that morning was back and she had to force herself to relax a little. If they walked down the street looking like fugitives, that wouldn’t