Free TamingTabitha by Virginia Nelson Page A

the yearly gathering—a time when
all Races were suspended so they could go home and see family. His laugh could
shiver over her skin even in a room full of people and she’d been drawn to him
even while refusing the sexual offer in his gaze.
    In that neutral space, she’d learned enough about him to
know he’d make a good mate. Strong, funny, attractive… But could he catch her?
Her few exchanges with him had branded her soul with his mark, the quirk of his
smile planted in her mind like a fertile seed. She licked her lips and her
heart raced and her palms sweated at the thought of how he might claim her if
she didn’t manage to dodge destiny. Just because she’d resisted the bonds of
mating didn’t mean her body didn’t crave it on a base and primal level. Tonight,
she felt like an overripe fruit, bursting with the need to be plucked from the
tree and tasted.
    In the distance she sensed another presence and she knew
she’d drawn in a second hunter. Her status as an unclaimed Seer would shine to
them in the night, brighter than the far-off city and far more compelling.
Gage, the second hunter, had been at the gatherings as well. Not as strong as
Lancaster, but clever. Where she knew she might outsmart Lancaster, she didn’t
have such illusions about Gage. His ice-blue eyes framed by chill white hair
seemed to look inside her, to know what she wanted and needed. He’d plotted
when he’d stared across the fires at her. She’d known he would come for her.
Both men awakened fantasies she’d resisted but couldn’t ignore.
    But the chances of them both finding her in the same remote
forest?
    Her breath quickened. Did she dare hope for the impossible?
Closing her eyes, she allowed a moment for the idea of her body, golden with
her power, sandwiched between the darkness of Lancaster and the frozen white of
Gage. If liquid desire readied her body for the Claiming at just the thought of
the two men, how much would she react to their actual touch?
    Hunters never shared their mate, so even thinking such
things was forbidden. Their people would never condone such a match, even if
two hunters could be kept from fighting to create one, or so she told herself
when she imagined just such a pairing. Not to mention her inability to satisfy
two men rather than only one mate. She could think of hundreds of reasons why
her fascination with the two men wouldn’t work and only one reason it could—she
craved it. She hungered for them both in a way that might be sick and wrong but
remained irresistible and, with time, had come to seem inevitable.
    The chances of two hunters being this close and not
realizing it were less than impossible. The men, she knew, could speak amongst
themselves. While the women Seers could hold life in their body and therefore
see the future, the men were grounded in the now. They could touch a mind, hear
a mind—making their feeds off the humans so much more intimate—but it trapped
them in the current time rather than wandering the time stream.
    It made sense, really, why the women mated young and few
made it so long as she without seeking a lover. Her mind rocked back and forth,
trapped in a constant seesaw throughout time, since she’d come of age. All
women did, until a man planted the very present sense in them. The constant
flood of possibility drove some to madness, but she’d teetered unbalanced out
of worry for her future for a very, very long time. What if she wasn’t enough
for her mate? What if she hated him? What if she couldn’t be what he needed?
    As if drawn by her consideration of her conflict, a vision
overtook her and she stumbled. Landing on her knees, she dug her fingertips
into the mossy loam, trying desperately to keep from falling into the future.
She needed to run, not see.
    Unfortunately, the ground wasn’t enough to keep her from
sliding away. Darkness crept like a fog over the land surrounding the castle
back home and formed into a single man, glaring up at the ramparts.