Primal Desires (6 page)

Y
ou might have mentioned what those animals were before letting me into the car with them.”

“Did they hurt you? No,” he answered for her. “And you learned a valuable lesson about self-discipline.”

She supposed he was referring to the fact that she hadn't jumped out of the SUV at the first stoplight and run away screaming. She had merely sat in frozen silence until he'd parked and escorted her into the coffee shop. Now, safely seated at a table with a large foamy latte cupped in her hands, she was finally able to voice her objections.

“Do you have a license for those things? Why would anybody want a pet wolf in the first place? Shouldn't they be locked in a cage instead of—”

“They have a very comfortable traveling pen in the back of the truck,” he answered. “But they'd rather be near me, where they can shed in the backseat.”

She couldn't help but smile at this. She noticed a few silver hairs on the black jacket he wore over a white shirt. “And on you, too.”

He nodded and dusted fingers across the front of his jacket. “Fur is my constant companion. The dry-cleaning bills alone sometimes make me question my choice of profession.”

“What is the Beast Master doing in San Diego anyway? Shouldn't you be doing two shows a night in Vegas?”
Bare-chested and in skin-tight pants that show off your package?

The heated look he gave her made her blush and worry that she'd spoken out loud. “I mean—”

“This started out as a vacation, became an obligation, and now…” He shrugged. “It's gotten very complicated—or maybe very simple. I'm not sure yet.”

She wondered why she had this almost overwhelming urge to find out everything there was to know about this man. Everything she hadn't learned from looking him up on the Internet, that is. It was an odd compulsion for a loner like herself, but she'd been having odd compulsions since the moment she'd first laid eyes on him.

“If you were really a loner you wouldn't have come when your family called.”

Anger shot through her. “They didn't call, they sent an e-mail. And stop reading my mind.”

He just smiled. “I'm glad you finally noticed. You're taking it well,” he added.

She banged a fist on the table. “You're being insufferable.”

He bowed his head contritely before looking up at her through impossibly long lashes. “Smugness is one of my prime traits. I can't help it.”

It was hard not to melt at the sight of those big blue eyes, but she tried her best. She sipped her latte and realized that she was very tired. She put the cup down as she fought off a yawn. “It's been a long day.”

“And the strangest day of your life?”

Her gaze flashed back to his. “Not by a long shot.”

He reached across the small table and took her hands in his. They were big, strong, capable hands, hands that had made love to her not long ago. She wanted them on her again soon, but right now she fought the urge to let his touch be comforting.

“Tell me about that day,” he urged in a gentle whisper. “Tell me about you.”

She was sure he could have made her tell him anything. Though it was insane, she truly believed he could invade her mind. She didn't know why his power excited her rather than frightened her.

Since he didn't take what he wanted, she decided to tell him. “Well, apparently I come from a family of insane people.”

He shook a finger at her. “Facts first. We have a lot to correct about your opinions later.”

She frowned but went on. “I'm an American mutt from east L.A. My mom died when I was little. This left me the spoiled only child, and female, in a run-down house with my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. I guess the family came from someplace in central Europe. My father didn't let my grandfathers discuss it with me. I learned a few words of what I later found out to be a Romany dialect, but I've forgotten them.”

“And you weren't curious about finding out more about your ancestry until recently?”

She shook her head. “Until recently I was concentrating on putting some kind of normal life together.”

“Survival does tend to take up all of a person's attention when things get rough.”

“You sound like you know all about what it's like when life goes down the toilet.”

“Oh, I do. But we're concentrating on you right now.”

His gaze caressed her, making her go hot all over. It was hard to go on with a sudden spike of lust zinging through her.

Sofia cleared her throat. “We didn't have much, we didn't do much, but it wasn't a bad childhood. I was loved and protected. Even when—”

This time she had to clear her throat because of the sudden welling of pain. She'd long ago stopped crying over the memories, but now her eyes blurred with tears. She ran the back of her hand angrily across her face.

“Then one day my grandfather came home with the news he'd been diagnosed with cancer. That same day, the dogs chased me. My great-grandfather chased them off, then had a heart attack and died.”

“Your great-grandfather was Grigor Hunyara?”

“Yes.”

“I knew him when he was young.”

“What?”

“Go on,” he urged.

The look in his eyes was too compelling for her not to. “My father—my stupid, idiot, hot-tempered bastard of a father—reacted to all this by going to the garage where the dogs' owners hung out and shooting three men in the head.”

She'd watched her father then barbarically cut out his victims' hearts, but she wasn't about to add that gruesome detail to this already lurid tale, no matter how much she wanted to confide in Jason Cage. Some things couldn't be talked about. The pain of thinking about them was still almost unbearable after all these years. She could still see brain matter splattered against dirty gray walls. She could still smell the blood.

The nausea that always welled up in her when she let herself remember churned in her stomach. She tried to control it, but had to run to the bathroom to throw up like she always did.

• • •

Jason watched the bathroom door anxiously while Sofia was gone.

I will never again think I've had a hard life,
he thought, miserable for her.

Why hadn't anyone told her the truth, he wondered angrily. Why hadn't Pashta told her about her father?

Jason knew why her father had killed those three men. At least, he was almost certain of the reason. Did he have the right to tell Sofia? She certainly wasn't ready to believe him yet.

It couldn't be easy to be mortal in this modern era. So many things that had once been sureties about the supernatural world had been taken away from them. Very few
believed
anymore, even fewer
knew.
His kind had helped push the changes to the mortal psyche, triggered by the scientific age. Scientific discovery had benefited everyone, vampires perhaps even more than mortals. Because of science, his kind could now live in the daylight, and because no one believed in them, they could hide in plain sight as long as they were careful and circumspect.

But it also made it very difficult to explain reality to those who had a need to know, he thought as Sofia returned from the washroom.

“Better?” he asked, and handed her a cup of mint tea he'd ordered while she was gone. “This will help.”

She took a sip, breathed in the scented steam, and sighed. “Thank you.”

He very nearly melted from her grateful look. Jason wanted to tell her then and there that he would do anything to comfort her, to protect her, to give her pleasure. She had him.

Why the hell did her people have to need her now, when all he wanted was her?

“What happened next?” he asked. “After your father—”

“He took a plea bargain and went to prison instead of getting a needle in the arm.” Her dark gaze flashed fiery anger. “He got better than he deserved.”

“Aren't you being a bit harsh on your own—”

“Why do you want to know, anyway?” Her fingers clamped tightly around the cup.

“Your family lost track of you. I was wondering how that happened.”

“My father went to prison. My grandfather died two months after being diagnosed. I ended up in foster care.”

“That had to have been unpleasant.”

She smiled at his dry tone. “Understatement's a gift with you, isn't it? I got lucky eventually,” she went on. “I eventually ended up living with a retired Navy SEAL and his family. I joined the navy when I finished high school, and spent the last six years mostly on sea duty and reading books. Now I'm a civilian, I'm going to college, and for no good reason I'm using my spring break to meet up with a bunch that claim to be relatives—and turn out to be crazier than my murdering old man.” She folded her hands together on the tabletop. “How about you, Jason Cage? Where do you come from? What is there to know that I didn't find out about from your Beast Master website? How did you end up on the other side of this conversation?
Why
did you end up in this conversation?”

He pried her hands away from the cup and took them in his again. “At first I didn't want to be here. Now I can't imagine being anywhere else.”

S
ofia snorted rudely. The fact that he sounded serious scared her to death. When he looked offended, she couldn't help but laugh. “I don't need romantic drivel,” she told him, then ducked her head. “But that did sound—nice.”

“I see,” he said. “You tell yourself that you don't need what you want.”

“I learned early that it's not wise to harbor expectations. And so far, this trip to meet the family has been a complete waste. Even my cousin Cathy isn't answering her phone or e-mail, so I probably won't get to see her while I'm in the area.”

“Complete waste of time? How can you say that after meeting me?” He gave her a teasing smile. “You wound me. Ah, I've made you smile. I don't suppose suggesting your uncle Pashta would like to see you would do the same.”

“You'd be right.”

“I'm glad. This way I get to have you all to myself.”

She wasn't sure what he meant by “this way,” but the incident at the creepy house swirled around in confusing images in her head. “Let's not talk about it.”

“All right,” he said. “We don't have to talk about it.”

He definitely meant something by that, but Sofia let it go. She couldn't stop the yawn that suddenly reminded her that it had been a hell of a long day. Let's see, travel, trauma, treachery, and great sex. Yep, she had every reason to be this tired.

“I have to go to bed. To sleep,” she added at the sparkle in his bright blue eyes. When they rose to leave, she said, “I'll walk. It's only a block back to the motel.”

“George and Gracie won't like being deprived of your company.”

“I'm not interested in spoiling your pet wolves.”

His arm came around her waist as they stepped outside. “That's a very good attitude. You always have to be the one in control. However, never make the mistake of thinking that a wild animal is your property.”

This was doubtless good advice from a man who made his living sharing a stage with tigers, even if she wasn't ever going to need it. “Thanks. You're not planning on saying good night when we get to your truck, are you?”

“A gentleman always walks a lady home.”

She couldn't bring herself to object, even though it scared her to feel so secure in his embrace. His warm touch fended off the cool evening air. Maybe it wasn't permanent, but being with him felt nice for now.

They stopped in front of her motel door. When he turned her toward him, she expected him to kiss her. Instead, he looked her in the eye and said, “There are things I have to tell you.”

Annoyance shot through her. “I said I didn't want to talk—”

He touched her cheek. “We aren't going to talk.”

• • •

“The Nazis treat the Romany the same way they treat the Jews. They send captured Rom to their death camps.”

“I know,” Jason answered Grigor. If he hadn't tried to help some Romany friends, he wouldn't be a fugitive from his own kind.

“They have scientists in those camps who conduct horrible experiments on the prisoners.”

“So I've heard.”

“One of these torturers discovered the Hunyara secret. They decided that a racially degenerate characteristic is responsible for turning us into beasts. They despise us, but they're eager to exploit us. Now the Nazis are hunting the Hunyara and taking them to a very secret camp. They're trying to make werewolves they can control and use. At first, they used other prisoners to find out how the curse is transmitted. They caged them with our werefolk during the moon madness. Now they have soldiers volunteering to be bitten.” He laughed bitterly. “Can you imagine the damage an army of Aryan werewolves could do?”

Jason had no trouble imagining the bloody havoc it could cause. “This has to be stopped.”

“We must rescue our people and the other Rom they've infected,” Grigor agreed. “But there are too many newly made werewolves for me and my father to tame.”

Much more than simply rescuing the werewolves needed to be done. The whole operation had to be obliterated—no evidence, no Nazi survivors. He needed to tell somebody in authority about these experiments, before all supernatural beings were discovered and targeted. But he was a fugitive with no one he could turn to.

It looked like he and a small band of Romany were going to have to save the world all by themselves.

• • •

“We did it before; now we have to do it again.”

Sofia heard Jason's voice as though from a long distance away. What he said made no more sense than the minimovie that had been running in her head.

She blinked and found herself standing outside her motel room door. She could make out the parking lot past Jason's wide shoulders. There were streetlights, and a little traffic. She was in San Diego, not Nazi Europe.

She focused on Jason Cage. “How do you do that?” she demanded.

He kissed her on the forehead. “Think about what I just showed you. Think about it happening again, here and now. And that your missing cousin might be in danger.”

“But—”

The next thing Sofia knew, she was inside her room with the door closed behind her. He was gone, she was alone—lonely and confused—and wondering which one of them was actually crazy.