Carpathian 15 - Dark Secret

whirling and bucking. Time seemed to slow down so that every detail was etched in his mind. The way the leaves on the trees glittered with a silvery Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    sheen, the colors of earth and hay. He saw the silvery tones to the water as it shimmered from a distant pond. The breath slammed out of his lungs and he stood quite still, a part of the mountain he was standing on, frozen for the first time in all of his existence.
    Behind him, the woman in the truck stirred, but she didn't matter. She was waking, drowsy, certain they had made love and that she had been overwhelmed by his attentions. The teenage boy and young girl near the corral didn't matter. His brothers waiting at home on their ranch inBrazil, Nicolas waiting here in this crowded country, the Chevez family, none of them mattered. Only that single rider.
    Colby Jansen. Instinctively he knew the rider was Colby. The defiant one. Fire and ice like the mountains she lived amongst. The mountains she loved and clung to so fiercely. He studied her, his gaze black and hungry. He didn't move for several moments, his mind filled with chaos, emotions crowding in fast and furious. Emotions stored somewhere for hundreds of years poured through him like burning lava, forcing him to sort them out at an outrageous pace.
    He had four brothers and all of them were telepathic, could touch each other at will. Rafael reached out, on the common path his brothers used, to share the colors, the unfamiliar raging in his body, the rising tide of hunger. Nicolas had no experience with such a thing. She can only be your lifemate, he responded.
    She is human, not Carpathian.
    It is said there are some who can be converted. Riordan's lifemate was not Carpathian.
    The emotion and sexual hunger rising together were overwhelming, a fireball streaking through his gut, burning his blood, sharpening his appetites. He stretched, reminiscent of a large jungle cat. Beneath the thin silk of his shirt, ropes of muscles contracted. Colby Jansen belonged to him and no other. He wanted no other near her, not the Chevez family and not Nicolas who had seen her first. He felt the beast in him rising, fast and ferocious, at the thought of her with another male, mortal or immortal. Rafael stood very still, forcing himself under control. Dangerous at any time, he recognized he would be even more so in the state he was in. It is most uncomfortable, Nicolas. I doubt I can stand for other males to be in close proximity to her. I have never felt such emotions. Never felt such jealousy or fear.
    It was a warning and both brothers recognized it as such. There was a small silence. I will leave here, Rafael, and go to the high mountains to the east. The hacienda is empty and I will wait for you to sort this out.
    As always Nicolas was calm and serene, a quiet confident sanity that stirred others in the direction he wanted them to go. Nicolas didn't express his opinion that often, but when he did, his brothers listened to him. He was a dark, dangerous fighter, proven many times over. The brothers were connected and had stayed close down the long centuries, relying on one another for the memories that kept their code of honor intact. Relying on one another to keep the insidious whispering of the power of the kill at bay.
    Obrigado.
    Rafael's fingers curled into tight fists until his knuckles turned white as he watched the drama unfolding below the bluff. This woman, small and fragile—human—insisted on doing dangerous, bone-breaking work. There were limits to a man's endurance when he had emotions. He found that he could not take watching her on the back of the pitching, bucking animal.
    She went down hard, her body small and fragile, the huge chestnut powerful and dangerous, the pounding hooves inches from her. Rafael stopped breathing, his heart stilled. Colby rolled free, said something to her brother, who caught the horse's bridle. Instantly she was back in the saddle. Rafael had Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    had enough.

    It was Ginny who first noticed the intruders, the new fourwheel-drive truck, sleek and gleaming, as it roared up the dirt road. The driver parked the vehicle on the grassy knoll a few yards from the series of corrals. The two occupants stared out the windows at the struggle between horse and rider.
    Ginny's low alarmed cry spun Paul around. Every vestige of color drained