holding Teresa, pulling her close, running his hands up and down her body as if to assure himself that she was really alive. And safe.
Quickly, he stripped out of his coat and wrapped it around her, giving her back her pride and dignity. He felt her tremble, her entire body quaking, and he hated himself for leaving her alone. If he had been with her, none of this would have happened.
“You came,” she whispered, holding on to him and shuddering as if her bones were trying to vibrate out of her skin.
He held her close, cupping her head to his chest with one hand. If his heart was capable of beating, he knew it would have been crashing against his rib cage. Rune had known danger and had always faced it with cool deliberation. But never had he tasted panic like he had just experienced.
“Always, Teresa,” he whispered, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “I will always come. Did they hurt you?”
“No.” She shuddered again and lifted her head to look at him. “They didn’t have time. But they were going to.”
“Well, they won’t be trying that again,” Finn said, giving one of the bodies a good kick just for the hell of it.
She shook back her hair and stared at him. “Who are you?”
“That’s Finn,” Rune told her, looking across the fire at his brother. Grateful he’d been here. “An old friend. He’s an Eternal. Like me.”
One corner of Finn’s mouth curved briefly and flattened out again in an instant. “Don’t listen to him, Teresa. I’m way better than him.”
She actually smiled and Rune felt relief slide through him like a cooling breeze drifting through hell.
“Thanks for the help,” he said.
“Not a problem.” Finn gathered up their supplies and stuffed them into the duffel bag before tossing it to Rune. “You and your witch ought to be on your way, though. Someone might come looking for this bunch.”
“Right.” Rune tossed the strap of the bag over his shoulder and said, “You’ll take care of the bodies?”
Finn grinned at him, lifted both hands and called on the fire. As the flames burned on his hands and arms, he said, “Cremation special, man. Don’t worry about it. Oh, and I’ll look into the other thing we talked about earlier.”
At the moment, Rune didn’t give a flying fuck about the possibility of a rogue Eternal. All he cared about now was Teresa. Seeing that she was safe. Her body pressed tighter to his and he felt her rub her pelvis against his thigh. His cock jerked into action even as he told himself to get a grip. She’d come too close to disaster to be interested in any man—even her mate. So he swallowed back the need crowding him and muttered, “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me,” Finn told him. “Just find that fucking Artifact, will you?”
“We will.” The flames swarmed over the two of them and in an instant Rune and Teresa were gone.
Chapter 47
Teresa was still shaking an hour later when Rune escorted her into a small but clean motel room in a quiet town not far from Tierra Blanca, Veracruz.
“Are you sure?” she asked, still dwarfed by Rune’s far-too-big black leather coat. “Is it safe to stay here?”
“Safe?” he muttered thickly, tossing their duffel bag onto one of the two chairs in the room. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and said, “I thought the jungle would be safer for you and look what happened.”
She spun around to look at him. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I shouldn’t have left you alone.”
“And I shouldn’t have done that spell without you close. So we both screwed up.”
“But you were the one to pay the price.”
“They didn’t hurt me,” she reminded him, feeling the swell and rush of the mystical moonlight energy swarming inside her still. “You stopped them.”
He stalked across the room, grabbed her shoulders and pulled her into a fierce embrace. “I only wish I could kill them again. That they touched you tears at me, Teresa. That I left you alone rips my soul to shreds.”
Teresa reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Don’t. Don’t take what they did and make it a part of us. It’s not. They were evil and now they’re dead and that’s the end of it.”
He lifted his head to look down at her. She watched him search her features, looking for further assurance that she was all right. Unharmed. She understood his need and shared it. She wanted