Bound Guardian Angel (43 page)

Trace didn’t like the sound of that. He’d
fully expected Cordray to be there today. Dare he say he had
hoped
she would be there today, because part of him wanted
what had happened in the hall outside the kids’ room to happen
again. Sooner rather than later. Only this time, he didn’t want it
to stop.

He rubbed his thumb up and down his sternum
as something that felt like heartburn simmered inside his
chest.

He was probably just overly hungry, except
his stomach wasn’t growling. There was a gnawing sensation in his
belly, but it didn’t feel like hunger. If he were a human, he would
think he was coming down with a bug, but he wasn’t human. He didn’t
get sick. Not like that, anyway.

He sighed and glanced out the window as a
female he hadn’t seen before—one with blond hair—crossed the
backyard to the dorm.

“Who’s that?” he said.

Mya followed his gaze. “That’s Steffie.”

“Steffie?”

“She’s one of our volunteers. She comes in a
couple of times a week to do laundry and clean. She brings in
groceries, too.”

He frowned. There was something he didn’t
like about Steffie, but he couldn’t put a finger on what.

“How long has she been a volunteer?” He was
still rubbing his knuckles over his chest but let his hand drop to
his side when Mya turned a questioning glance toward him.

“A couple of months. Why?”

He tried to shake off the odd feeling
Steffie gave him but couldn’t. But he didn’t want to worry Mya,
either. “No reason. Just curious.” He glanced around the kitchen.
“So, can I help with breakfast?”

Mya set the platter of french toast in front
of him. “You can if you’re ready to eat?” She winked. “It’ll be
every man for himself once the kids pile in, so you’d better grab
yours now so you can be out of the way when they get here. French
toast is their favorite, and you could lose a hand in the feeding
frenzy if you’re not careful.”

“Good to know.”

She returned to the stove and took up the
sausage while he stacked four pieces of french toast on a
plate.

“Here.” She dropped four sausage links next
to the toast.

“Thanks.”

He helped Aiden and Null build their own
plates, and five minutes later, the back door flew open as the
other five kids Cordray took care of flew in, flooding the dining
room with chatter.

The girl named Panya blushed as she sat
across from him, meeting his gaze for only a second before looking
away. Leon and Riley were too absorbed in one another to pay him
much attention, although both wore worried expressions and had dark
circles under their eyes as if they hadn’t slept. Riley’s were
rimmed in red, and it looked like she’d been crying. Between
mouthfuls of french toast, Faith and Gavin quizzed each other on
what sounded like tests they were taking later today.

The atmosphere was right in every way but
one. Cordray wasn’t there.

In only a few short days, he’d come to
associate her with the kids. She was the lifeblood of Asylum. The
heartbeat of the orphanage. Its soul.

Cordray made everything feel more
alive—including him—with just her presence.

Ever since he’d met her, his heart beat a
little harder whenever she was around. His blood heated, his skin
sizzled. His entire body perked up. When she departed, she took all
the light and spirit with her. Life just didn’t feel as exciting
when she wasn’t there.

Cordray was as vital as oxygen to everyone
she encountered. Vital to him. He
needed
her. Needed her as
badly as he needed Micah. Maybe even more.

He’d been so committed to treating her like
she was the enemy that the realization that she was important to
him slammed into his soul with the force of a charging elephant. He
actually dropped his fork and swayed backward in his seat.

Null’s mysterious blue eyes twinkled as he
giggled. Everybody quieted at the clang of metal on porcelain.

Straightening, he picked up his fork and
spun the handle in his fingers. “Sorry.” He cut off a bite of
french toast and huddled over his plate.

What did these new feelings for Cordray mean
for his relationship with Micah? He couldn’t imagine his life
without Micah or Sam, but it was rapidly becoming apparent he
couldn’t imagine his life without Cordray, either.

He’d just found order in his life, and now
controlled chaos threatened to disrupt all the spiritual feng shui
he’d fought so hard to put in place.

He was still struggling with his thoughts an
hour later as he cleared the garden and prepared it for
planting.

Gardening was a far cry from his job as an
enforcer, but there was something oddly comforting in working the
earth. It helped prevent the rampant thoughts whipping through his
mind from spinning out of control. It also reminded him of when he
was a kid, gathering herbs and roots for his mother’s
tinctures.

She’d been such a beautiful woman. Dark
skin, green eyes, thick brown hair that she often had to wrap in a
scarf, because she could never do anything with it. But he’d always
loved how she looked when she let it down. By today’s standards,
Mother’s hair had been a mess of tangles, but she owned it,
carrying herself with grace and confidence.

And then she’d died.

All because of him.

He closed his eyes and lifted his head
toward the sun’s rays as a tremor of fear rippled through him.

He still hadn’t faced Brak and his
father.

What if Father blamed him? He’d never been
close to anyone in his family. Not really. He’d been the black
sheep. The one no one comforted. The one who had to fend for
himself when he was being attacked by the other kids.

He blinked his eyes open behind his
wraparound sunglasses and turned back to the garden.

A warm breeze blew in from the south, which
probably meant a storm was coming. It was that time of year. Spring
in Chicago always meant storms. So yeah, it would be nice to finish
clearing the garden before the rain arrived.

The hours droned by. Lunch came and went.
Riley and Leon returned home from school, and Null and Aiden came
out to play at the edge of the garden while he finished up.

A little after four-thirty, he returned the
tiller and shovels to the barn and went inside to retrieve his bag
and dirty clothes before heading back to Micah’s.

Hopefully, he would be allowed to borrow one
of Asylum’s SUVs. He would hate to call a cab, but since his custom
chopper was still parked in Micah’s garage, his travel choices were
limited.

Other than Mya and Brenna preparing dinner
in the kitchen, the house was quiet. Lonely even. Unlike this
morning at breakfast.

He climbed the stairs, stuffed his dirty
clothes into his duffel, then stepped back into the hall as he shut
his bedroom door.

He felt like a gypsy. Bedroom here. Bedroom
at Micah’s. Dorm at AKM. He rarely went home anymore. To his true
home, the little trailer that held almost all his worldly
possessions. Not that there were many. He still had his old rock
collection. That and a few clothes, some books, and that was about
it. He’d learned to live simply, not leaving much of a footprint
during his travels. Until joining AKM, he had wandered from place
to place.

Story of his life. He’d never really felt at
home anywhere.

Home. What did the word even mean to him? It
was more than a place to lay his head. More than four walls, a bed,
and a place to brush his teeth. Home was where the heart was. But
where was his heart?

He loved Micah and Sam, but they had each
other. With them, he would always be the thirteenth donut in a
baker’s dozen. And that was okay. He’d rather be that than nothing
at all. But, ideally, one day he would be part of a pair. Not a
spare tire but one that was necessary to get the car from
a
to
b
. Micah had Sam. Io had Miriam. Malek had Gina. Sev and
Ari had each other. Even Tristan had someone, although Josie wasn’t
officially his mate. Trace wanted the same. He wanted a female who
was all his own, who existed expressly for him. Someone he could
build a life with. A home with. A family with.

As he passed Cordray’s bedroom, his chest
began to ache again. It had ached most of the day. A dull, nagging
pain deep inside his rib cage. And it was getting worse.

He stopped and glanced at her door as he
stroked the tips of his fingers down his sternum, remembering how
she’d felt pressed against him. How her nails had dug into his
shoulders as she pulled him closer. How her teeth had felt as they
harshly nipped his bottom lip.

His cock thickened, and heat pulsed heavily
throughout his body. Just the thought of her was enough to make him
ravenous with arousal.

He set his hand on the doorknob.

She hadn’t come home. He knew she hadn’t. He
couldn’t stop himself from looking anyway.

It was like watching a movie you’ve seen
fifty times. You know how it’s going to end, but you still hope the
characters will create a different ending. So, as the latch gave
and he began pushing open the door, his heart skipped a hopeful
beat as if he would find her lying on her red satin sheets, black
hair spilling over her pillow, beckoning him to join her. All he
found was a made bed, the lights off, and the windows
shuttered.

His heart fell.

Her scent still hung in the air. It was
stronger here, in her personal space. The subtle, musky, citrusy
scent that was uniquely hers.

He drew in a long, deep inhale.

Cordray.

A few days ago he had hated her. Or at least
he thought he did. Now? Hate wasn’t the word for how he felt, but
whatever mysterious emotion roiled in his blood was just as strong.
He wanted to throw her off a cliff then rush to the bottom to catch
her before she splattered into bloody pulp. All so he could be her
savior, not that Cordray needed saving. But he wanted her to look
at him as if he were the hero she’d never known she needed.

She was fire, but he still wanted to touch
her. How twisted was that?

He shut the door then forced himself to walk
away from her luscious scent, which—now that he thought about
it—he’d become quite addicted to.

By the time he reached the stairs, the ache
in his chest had intensified, as if retaliating against him for
leaving her room. As he entered the kitchen, his chest was
positively pounding.

He winced as he rubbed his knuckles against
his left pec.

Mya glanced up from the stove and gave him a
concerned frown. “Are you okay?”

He cleared his throat and nodded. “Yeah,
um . . .” It hurt to breathe. “Can I borrow the keys
to the Denali? I’ll bring it back tomorrow morning.” He raised his
duffel of dirty clothes as if that was all the reason she needed to
understand his request. Truth was, he was too busy trying to tame
whatever this shit was ripping a chasm through his ribs to speak
any more than he had to.

“Sure.” She gestured toward the rack of keys
hanging on the wall inside the mud room. “The keys are on the skull
ring.”

There were a dozen keyrings hanging on the
rack. A dragon, a black widow spider, a snake. Cordray’s Gothic
influence was everywhere.

He lifted the skull ring off the rack, and
the violent churning inside his chest diminished to a rough simmer.
These were Cordray’s keys. The chain was a part of her. He tucked
the keys into his fist and inhaled easily for the first time since
before he’d entered her bedroom a few minutes ago.

With a nod of farewell, he pushed through
the door that led into the garage, opened the bay door, and hopped
behind the wheel of the white Denali.

Destination, Micah’s house.

Maybe after a session in Micah’s dungeon he
could get a grip on whatever voodoo spell Cordray had cast over
him.

Chapter 23

Cordray stirred awake in the late afternoon to the
sound of her cell phone pinging with an incoming message.

She groaned as the residual effects of Jack
Daniels filtered through her brain. Or maybe it was the remnants of
her brain that were filtering through the residual Jack Daniels.
She couldn’t be sure, because, yeah, she’d shredded a few to a
million brain cells with her frat-party drinking binge this
morning.

Good thing her vampire genes could replace
them as fast as she destroyed them or she would be nothing but an
incoherent smudge of flesh and bone.

At least her head no longer felt like a
hundred of those stubby, pellet-shaped Minions were inside her
skull dancing to disco music, but her stomach still felt sour.
Ironic that she couldn’t feel anything that happened to the outside
of her body, but everything going on inside felt magnified by the
power of ten.

She rolled herself into a sitting position
and rubbed her eyes before blindly reaching for her cell phone,
which she vaguely remembered setting on the corner of the coffee
table before passing out. Her hand landed on polished wood. Opening
her eyes, she saw that her mobile wasn’t there.

“Looking for this?”

She turned toward the sound of Micah’s
voice. He was standing in the doorway leading down the hall. He was
holding her phone, and from the way his finger was slowly scrolling
up the screen, he was reading her messages.

She lurched toward him. “What the hell—” A
million ice picks dug into her brain, making her rethink movement,
talking, and even breathing.

She clutched her head and sank back into the
couch, propping her elbows on her knees as she cradled her forehead
in her palms. She would have whimpered had Micah not been
there.

“You’ve been a busy little bee.” Micah’s
booted feet broke into her field of vision as he stopped in front
of her.

She groaned when what she really wanted to
do was snatch back her phone and punch him for violating her
privacy.