Read Online Falcon’s Captive by Vonna Harper - Free Book Online Page B

back made for battle and legs designed for an active life. He wore leather shoes.
    She’d slowed while deciding how to get around an ant mound when something tugged at her mind. Grateful for any distraction, she immediately looked skyward. Yes, there it was, a Falcon. It was so high that someone who didn’t know what he was looking at might not know what it was, but she had no doubt that this predator was one of her kind and not just a bird, because her heart and nerves never lied about the difference.
    As hunters, Falcons were solitary creatures so she hadn’t been surprised to see only one earlier. Just the same, she’d tried to believe that her rescue would come about when a large number of Falcons attacked Nakos.
    Obviously, her kind didn’t believe that time had come, if it ever would.
    The strap around her neck pressed against her, reminding her that she’d slowed down. But although she picked up her pace a bit, she didn’t take her attention off the bird. Watching it filled her with a sense of belonging. This was her land. Nakos was a stranger and as such unwanted. He and the other Ekewoko should return to Ekew!
    But he’d said they couldn’t.
    Why?
    And why had his leaders commanded him and the other warriors to come to Falcon Land?
    “What?” he asked, startling her.
    Responding to the second tug on her leash, she glared at her captor. Back when she’d dived into the lake, she’d been so intent on regaining her love of life that she hadn’t cared whether she was naked or dressed. Now, because of him, her nudity seemed to stalk her. She felt defined by her lack of clothing.
    “I asked you a question.” He stopped and pulled, making it clear that he expected her to join him. “What were you looking at?”
    “Nothing.”
    “You’re lying.”
    By way of response, she turned as far away from him as she could. He could force her to swing back around, of course, but she hoped she’d made her point.
    “What is it? You think your people are coming to rescue you?”
    “ People? Why do you say it that way, as if we’re less than human? You call us Wildings when you know nothing about us.”
    “Tell me, then, starting with what you call yourselves.”
    That she’d never willingly do. “It doesn’t matter. What does is that when they surround you, you’ll regret what you’ve done to me—for as long as you live.”
    If he was alarmed, he gave no indication as he studied their world. On the verge of laughing at his attempts to see behind boulders and bushes, she tried not to react when he suddenly looked upward. Certainly his eyesight wasn’t as keen as hers but—
    “That speck. What is it?”
    “I see nothing.”
    “Yes, you do!” His hand snaked out and around her throat. Although she resisted, she couldn’t stop him from pulling her against him. They touched from shoulder to hip. “It’s a bird, maybe the same as before.”
    “Maybe.”
    If she planted her hands against his chest, she might have been able to push away, but somehow it was easier to sink within the contact.
    “Something’s happening here.” He sounded a little in awe. “The speed with which you recovered from the poison and that bird—it’s as if it’s following you; us.”
    Of course she wouldn’t, but she was tempted to tell him what it meant to be a Falcon. Instead, she let his strength enter her. What she felt went beyond sexual awareness. It was deeper somehow, a tentative joining of two people with nothing in common.
    “I didn’t want to come here,” he told her. “I did because I would never refuse to follow my lord’s lead, but I don’t understand why this place we call Screaming Wind means so much to him and Tau. I still don’t.”
    “Tau?”
    “Our shaman.”
    From the little he’d said, she’d concluded that they’d been forced to leave Ekew. Born and raised in Falcon Land—or Screaming Wind, as he called it—she couldn’t imagine ever living anywhere else.
    But if he forced her to