Broken Heart 08 Must Love Lycans (31 page)

“Love me,” I said.

“I do,” he said helplessly. “I do.”

I clung to him and met his slow, measured thrusts.

Delicious, sensual fire rolled over both of us. I wasn’t sure who was feeling what now, but did it matter? It was the same. It was scary and beautiful and overwhelming.

I tightened my legs, urging him deeper. His hands curled under my shoulders as he thrust harder, faster. Sweat slicked our bodies as we strained toward mutual satisfaction.

His teeth scraped my neck. His groan was a low rumble that became a growl. I surprised myself by answering with one of my own.

He thrust deeply, stilling, panting harshly and, as he spilled his seed inside me, I flew over the edge with him.

For a wondrous moment, the world sparkled, and all I knew, all I found, was absolute pleasure, and within it, the shining grandeur of love.

Chapter 13

T
he next morning … er, afternoon, I awoke to puppy kisses and muttered curses. I looked sleepily up at Damian, who was wiping drool off his cheek.

I laughed.

Then we heard a faint ringing.

“My cell,” said Damian. He scrambled out of the covers and hopped off the bed. Jeff thought that was a fine idea, and because he didn’t realize the bed was fortyseven million feet off the ground my death-wish doggie made a flying leap.

By the time I’d opened my mouth to yell, Damian whirled around, caught him with one hand, and then leaned down to scoop his BlackBerry from his jeans pocket. He was back on the bed with phone and puppy in hand before I uttered a strangled squeak.

Damian answered his phone, dumped Jeff into my lap, gave my breasts a lascivious stare, and then leaned against the pillows as he listened to the caller. I petted my poor, half-brained pooch and slowly, my heart rate returned to normal.

A minute later, Damian ended the call. He did not look happy. “Dante escaped—minutes after I joined you at Margaret’s house. My brothers and Adulfo have been searching for him, but they’ve found no trace.”

It didn’t sound like the opening salvo to a conversation either of us wanted to have, so I threw myself on top of him and made him forget about Jarred, and everything else. We even managed to ignore Jeff, who got bored and went to nap on a nearby pile of pillows.

Afterward, Damian took a quick shower and went off to check in with Hilda and Arnold. Then Jeff and I took advantage of the steam shower, and got dressed (me, not the dog. Oh, but wouldn’t he look cute in a teeny shirt that said STUD MUFFIN?). Damian had managed to ship all my clothes and lingerie (of course) from Broken Heart. It was amazing what he could accomplish with willpower and wealth.

When Damian returned, he walked me down the hall to another huge room.

It was mostly empty except for a couple of chairs, a table, and all the boxes we’d packed from my father’s study.

“I can’t believe you managed to get it all here.” I paused. “Wait. Yes, I can. Because you’re you, and nothing’s impossible for you.”

“Almost nothing,” he said, the whisper of sadness cut me like a thin blade. Then he smiled at me, and I melted into a puddle of love goo. “I’ll go get us something to eat while you get started.” He kissed me. I grabbed his shirt and kissed him back. He staggered out of my grip and shook his head.
“Nein,”
he said with a laugh. “We will never get any work done.”

“That’s true,” I said crankily. “So maybe you should start looking around for the chalice, and I’ll look for clues about my mother.”

“And get to know your father.”

“Yes,” I said, my heart tripping over in my chest. In those boxes were there remnants of a man I hadn’t known—and would never know except through what he’d left behind. I was saddened by this thought, but not devastated. It was difficult to miss what I’d never really had.

Damian offered me another smile, and then he scooped up the pug. “Come, runt. I will introduce you to the gardens, so you can water them.”

“Shouldn’t we get him a leash?” I asked worriedly.

Damian looked at me, arrogance etching his features. “I am the crown prince of all lycans,
Schätzchen.
I can command one tiny puppy.”

“Does Jeff know that?”

He sent me a haughty glance, which he softened with a half grin. Then he and Jeff left, and I turned to the boxes.

And to the unmasking of my true past.

 

Three days later, I knew my father had been a sucker for foreign films, deep-dish pizza, and nature walks. At the beginning of his marriage to Margaret, he was a producer for a local radio station; after she hit it big, he turned to managing her career.

To my great disappointment, my father’s journals held all kinds of information about plants and birds, as well as some observations about nature, all random notations with the occasional crude drawing of a cardinal or flower. But there were no mentions about me, or his mistress, or his actual life. After a while, I began to realize how much was missing, all carefully removed by his enraged wife.

I went through every letter, every ledger, every book, every goddamned piece of paper. I found an elementaryschool drawing done by my brother, one of my sister’s high school report cards, and a postcard from Ireland that Margaret had mailed to him twenty years ago.

By the end of day three, I reached the conclusion that I would never know Bert, or my mother, or their story together.

None of the photographs included me. They were all pictures of Bert and Margaret together, Bert alone, usually in some nature setting, or with them with their two children. Throughout the years, I’d been part of the Morningstone photographic history. But she’d erased me. She didn’t want me to exist, and so she did everything possible to make sure I disappeared.

That level of hatred was difficult for me to comprehend. She’d been tough on me, but even my older siblings had admitted she’d always been a stern disciplinarian. She never hit me, and while her criticisms wounded, she didn’t call me names, and she never made me do any Mommy Dearest–type things. Of course, she was under the public microscope. If she stepped one toe out of line, she risked losing everything. Who would believe her “firm but fair” child-raising tactics if it was found out she’d been secretly abusing her own daughter? Or rather, the orphaned child of her late husband’s paramour?

Why had she snapped? Could she have truly bided her time, twenty-eight long years, while she waited for the opportunity to finally exorcise me from her world? It didn’t make sense. But insanity rarely did.

Come to think it, neither did love. Emotions didn’t operate with rules. And sometimes, there was no logic to them at all. How many times had I heard patients admit, “I know I shouldn’t feel this way, but …”

Exactly.

I sat among my father’s effects feeling tired, and truth be told, weepy, too. But it wasn’t grief for him. It was grief for her, for Margaret. She’d been the only mother I’d ever known, and it hurt that she didn’t want me. There was relief, too. Sure. Because I no longer had to worry about what she thought about me, or what I could do to earn her approval. Maybe one day I’d feel better about everything. I’d be able to let go. Maybe.

“Did you find anything about your birth mother?” asked Damian.

Jeff stirred from the pile of papers he’d flopped down on a half hour ago, then jumped to his feet, tail wagging. Then he trotted over to the werewolf and yipped. Damian scooped him up, and bent down to kiss me.

“I got nada. Any luck tracking down the chalice?”

“Nein,”
he said. “Only three days until the Solstice.”

“I know.” My heart gave a tug. Three days for a new life to begin, or for the old life to be over. Permanently. “You think we can get these boxes to my sister?”

“If you like. What if she returns them to Margaret?”

“Her choice,” I said philosophically. “But I think she and my brother should know about this stuff. And it’ll mean more to them.”

“All right,
Liebling
,” he said. “I’ll help you.”

Damian was an efficient packer, and we worked in a comfortable silence. At least until Jeff grabbed one of my father’s leather journals and dragged it off. By the time I’d convinced the dog we were not playing a rousing game of tug-of-war—or should I say, he got bored, let go, and ran over to see why Damian was laughing so hard—the journal had been chewed thoroughly.

“Shit.” I wiped the drool off on my jeans, and then opened it to the back to inspect the damage. The decorative paper had been ripped and poking out from it was the corner of something. I tore it all the way, and a narrow strip of photos fell out.

I picked it up, and gasped. Five squares of black-andwhite photos revealed Bert, a pretty girl with dark hair and darker eyes, and between them an infant. In the first photo, they kissed each other while holding the baby. Then they kissed the baby. The next two photos were silly faces, me in the center of the fun, and in the last one I was crying, my mouth caught forever in a wide-open wail.

“Kelsey.”

“He loved her. Us.” I showed him the photos. “I wonder where they took these.”

“Carnival, maybe,” he said. “Hard to say.” He studied the photographs. “It looks as though they were happy.”

“But he was married,” I said. “He had no right to go off and seek happiness with someone else—not unless he had the balls to tell Margaret good-bye.”

“Do not judge him, Kelsey,” he said softly. “We don’t know his reasons, or his motives. And your mo—Margaret has proven unreliable.”

“He didn’t beg her for mercy,” I said, suddenly sure. “He wanted a divorce. They’d raised their children, hadn’t they? He was miserable. And she was … well,
her
. Maybe my real mother isn’t dead.”

He handed me back the strip. “Kelsey, if she were alive, your father would not have stayed with Margaret.”

He was right. It was only five tiny photos commemorating the days or weeks before everything changed. No doubt my mother had died, and Bert had done the only thing he could for me, asked his wife to help him raise me. I wanted to believe that he thought he’d be around to protect me, and to one day tell me about my mother. I supposed if he’d gone off and tried to raise me alone, I would’ve ended up an orphan. Would foster care have brought me any better of a life?

I searched through the journal once more, but there were no other hidden photos or messages. I tossed the book into the final box, and Damian taped it up.

I would never know the story of my parents. And they wouldn’t know mine. It wasn’t the kind of information or closure I wanted, but life didn’t always tie up nicely. I had to live with the unanswerable questions, and it sucked.

But at least I had a consolation prize.

I smiled at the photos, and decided to believe my mother and father had been reaching for happiness.

That’s all we can do—reach for the stars and hope.

 

“Your castle is too big. It would take an army and a year to search this whole place thoroughly,” I griped as Damian and I headed downstairs. Jeff was too little to tackle the wide stone steps, so Damian, who was a big ol’ sucker, carried him tucked under one muscled arm. We’d spent the last few hours combing through rooms that seemed to hold everything except a silver engraved cup.

“Mother would not have left the chalice where Morrigu could find it easily.”

“You think Morrigu snuck in here and searched for it?”

“I wouldn’t doubt it. My mother’s clever. I believe she either made the chalice part of the bargain, or acquired it as an insurance measure.”

“That makes sense.” We reached the end of the staircase, and I waited for Damian to take the lead. I knew the general direction of the dining room, but I had yet to figure out the labyrinth of hallways and staircases. I needed a personal GPS (which was currently Damian). “I know we have only two days left,” I said. “But I would love to do something fun. Something that’s awesome and frivolous.”

“Ah. I believe I have just the thing,” he said. “But first, dinner.”

Damian took my hand and tugged me along. As she had every meal, Hilda waited by the massive table, food plated and wine poured. She was a big woman with apple cheeks, sparkling blue eyes, and a penchant for fussing. She wore dresses that featured colorful flowers, which she covered with a crisp, white apron. Her graying blond hair was always neatly braided, a yellow ribbon tied at the end. I loved that ribbon. It was whimsical.

“Jeff!
Mein kleiner Frechdachs
,” she said in a thick accent as she plucked the pug from Damian. “I take him to kitchen.” She flapped her free hand at me. “Ach! Too skinny,
Frau
. Eat, eat!”

Damian and I settled down to dine and to converse, and I thought about how nice it was to be here, with him, doing something so normal. These moments offered an easy comfort, like donning a favorite coat, or tucking under a cashmere blanket.