Caleb (25 page)

Caleb’s
hand came down on her shoulder and squeezed. “Thank you.”

She
placed her fingers over his. “You’re welcome.”

The
chair to her left scraped across the floor as Caleb pulled it out. Under the
table, she hooked her fingers around his pinky as the other brothers took seats
as far away as they could. Derek sat on the right with the brothers. She
doubted the symbolism of she and Caleb being on one side, while unintentional,
was lost on anyone, least of all Caleb. There was definitely a symbolic “us
against them” theme developing here. Completely unacceptable, in her opinion.

“This
can’t continue.”

“That’s
for sure,” Caleb said in a drawl so calm she could have kissed him. “Either you
all get over this fascination with my wife or we’ll leave, but this has to
end.”

Again
with the wife thing. “I’m not your wife yet.”

Slade’s
head snapped around. Jace shook his head, the ever-present smile missing from
the corners of his wide mouth. “I’m thinking that would not be a point you want
to be arguing right now.”

Allie
shifted in her seat, unease flitting through her. It wasn’t their stares that
bothered her, but that indefinable underlying tension she sensed. The hair on
the back of her neck stirred. Caleb’s hand enveloped hers. Tension hummed off
him, too, but more lethal. More focused. She sighed. “Maybe not.”

Caleb
squeezed her knee. Comfort, or an order to shut up? “How long has this been
going on?” he asked.

“Near
as we can figure, it started the second day after she arrived.”

Allie
did the math. She glanced up at Caleb, who was studying the other men at the
table as if he’d never seen them before. “That would make it after we—”

Another
squeeze, harder this time. She shut up.

“And
it’s been building steadily?” he asked.

Jace
ran his hand through his hair. “Pretty much every time you notice she needs
more blood, we notice how much more appealing she’s getting.”

“Sexually.”
Caleb didn’t pose it as a question and no one treated it as one.

Jared’s
flat, cold “Definitely” was more scary than a thousand words could ever be. The
hair on the nape of her neck danced. Caleb’s hand flipped on her thigh, lying
there in an invite she didn’t hesitate to accept. She took an easier breath
when his fingers closed around hers. Some things, like being the focus of mass
lust, were easier to take with a reminder that he was there if she needed him.
“I swear, I haven’t done anything differently.”

Another
of those cold realities that gave her the willies. This time from Slade. “We
know.”

“How
bad is it?” None of the deadly emotion she could feel coiling within Caleb
colored his drawl.

The
twist of pain deep in her gut made her gasp. Hunger. How could she be hungry
again so soon? As if in answer to her question, the tension started again.
Along with the hunger came something else. A tickle of sensation, and then an
alien whisper of sound so faint she wasn’t even sure it was real and not a
hiccup of her imagination.

Come
.

She
blinked slowly, looking around the table. Had anyone else heard the command?
Given it? There was nothing to indicate either way. The men were all looking at
Caleb. She waited. The whisper didn’t repeat. The sensation didn’t linger. Only
the hunger remained, strong and growing stronger by the second. She pushed it
aside as it began its claim. She couldn’t deal with it right now. Especially
knowing that others were privy to the struggle she thought was private. Another
look around the table revealed every man present was looking at her with an
expression of urgency and determination. “Good grief, I might as well be
wearing a neon sign.”

“It’s
true.” Jared waved his hand at their interlaced fingers. “She gets an urge to
put on the feed bag and we want to feed her. She has other . . . needs, and we
want to fulfill them, too.”

Other
needs. She stood so fast her chair teetered and then balanced with a staccato
rattle. He could not be talking about what she thought he was talking about.

“Sexual
needs,” Caleb reiterated, pulling her down onto his lap.

“Exactly.”

Allie
shot Slade a glare. “You don’t have to sound so excited about it. One of you is
more than enough for me.”

She
was rather proud of the way she kept her voice steady, because in reality, the
thought of every man in her vicinity wanting to stake a claim was terrifying.
Heat seared her face at the images that might be going through their minds at
that very minute. She cut off the imaginings and gritted her teeth against the
tremendous, totally understandable urge to flee. She wasn’t talking bookworms
and geeks after all. Every man she’d seen for the last three weeks was a
walking ad for muscular, testosterone-laden perfection. Which had been
intimidating enough when she’d thought they saw her as part of the woodwork or
as a duty to get through. Knowing they now saw her as some sort of sexual toy
up for grabs sent chills chasing the hunger prowling through her being.

Slade
shook his head and flicked a crumb from the edge of the table. “I’m excited
about the clues being put together. I’m not excited about wanting my brother’s
woman.”

She
believed him. There couldn’t be a worse hell for the brothers than an urge to
turn on each other. Because of her. She didn’t know what to say except, “I’m
sorry.”

Caleb
pulled her back against the solid muscle of his abdomen. His hands cupped her
shoulders, the fingers spreading down over her collarbone, moving back and
forth with soothing regularity. “It’s not your fault, Allie.”

“You
keep telling me that.” She traced an old nick in the maple tabletop. The warmth
of his touch did not reach the cold hollow deep inside. Who knew her talent for
disaster would follow her into immortality? “But every time I turn around, I’m
causing some upheaval in your existence.”

“A
little shaking up is good for us.”

A
little maybe, but this was ruining his life. She glanced up. Derek and Jace’s
gazes were locked on Caleb’s fingers, their faces etched with an unsettling
heat. She glanced down. The third button on her shirt had come unbuttoned,
exposing the beginning of cleavage. She reached for it, watching their faces as
she did so, noting the way their throats worked as they swallowed, watched as
Derek’s tongue dampened his lips and felt his lust as clearly as she felt
Caleb’s. Above her, Caleb’s “Son of a bitch” grated through the heavy silence.

She
fastened the button with fingers that shook, her mind racing a hundred miles an
hour. This wasn’t good. Couldn’t be good. Couldn’t end well. She scooted from
under Caleb’s grasp, getting to her feet, shaking her head when he would have
pulled her to him, unable to ignore any longer the threat surrounding her,
wanting nothing more than to go back one hour in time to when she’d had the
bliss of ignorance.

“Allie.”

She
shook her head. “Not now, Caleb.”

“No
one’s going to hurt you.”

“I
know.” At least logically she did, but there was another part of her, one
primitively feminine, that told her to get away, to hide. “I just need some
privacy.”

Jace’s
“For what?” ended in a grunt as Derek’s elbow connected with his rib cage. The
small violence chafed her restraint. Her senses, so much more acute than they
used to be, fed that kernel of panic with the increased scent of male interest,
the accelerated heartbeats, the deeper rasp of breaths drawn too fast. It
caught them all and amplified them, a warning attached to every sensory
trickle.
Run!

She
didn’t run, but she did walk very steadily out of the room. When she hit the
stairs, she let go, burning off the edge of adrenaline with a rapid ascent,
forcing herself to slow when she reached the top, to avoid the board that
squeaked in front of the first bedroom door, to sedately progress to the door
where her and Caleb’s bedroom was located. The Johnson brothers were not a
threat and she wasn’t going to let her crazy imagination make them into one.

“SHE’S
not safe with us, Caleb.”

“So
it would appear.” He just didn’t believe it. The scent of Allie’s panic
lingered in the wake of her flight. Upstairs a door closed too slowly. As if
the person closing it was making a point. Caleb wondered who was supposed to
absorb it, Allie or himself. He looked over at Slade. “What I want to know is,
what’s changed?”

“I
don’t know.”

“That
wasn’t the answer I was looking for.”

Slade
shrugged. “It’s the only one I’ve got.”

“You
find anything out from that damn Internet?”

“Beyond
the fact there are more myths surrounding vampires than fact? No.”

“Dig
deeper.”

“There’s
only so deep I can go without rousing interest from parties like the D’Nallys.”

“Shit.”

“We
could ask that bunch of loco weeds over on the other side of the mountain.”

“About
all they’d do is try to convert her to their religion.” And he did not need
Allie experimenting with that group’s sort of altered reality.

“Heck,
they’re not even talking to us after Jared tossed that too-pretty wannabe out
on his ass when he approached him for a special time.”

“Still,
they have a lot more contact with other vampires.”

“Anyone
ever see them with a converted female?” Caleb asked.

He
hadn’t seen any and wasn’t surprised when his brothers shook their heads. He
glanced at Derek. The were shrugged. “It’s hard to say for sure because they
get trigger happy when anyone gets near, but no were in these parts has ever
seen a vampire female. Or if they have, have never mentioned it.”

And
they would have mentioned it. Of that Caleb was sure. He took a breath,
scanning for Allie. She was in their room. Upset, hungry, and trying not to
show either. “Then they have no more experience than we do. That being the
case, there’s no sense alerting them to Allie’s presence.”

Jared
nodded. “I agree. Even if they are more prone to spit philosophy than bullets,
we don’t need to take chances. Especially if her effect is the same on all
males.”

Derek’s
chair creaked as he turned it and straddled it. “There’s another possibility
that might explain what’s happening.”

“What?”

He
draped his arms across the back. “When a packmate gets . . . in the family way,
instinct drives the mother to separate herself.”

“Why?”
Jace asked.

“A
fertile female is a very valuable commodity. Worth any cost to steal.”

“Again,
why? If you can make as many weres as you want, why is pregnancy so special?”

“We
can’t.”

“Can’t
what?”

“Make
as many weres as we want. It’s a rare human that can be converted, but most
just die, poisoned by the bite rather than converted.”

“Shit.”
Caleb hadn’t known that. “But some can be converted?”

“Yeah.”

“And
to think we thought all we had to worry about was rabies.”

Caleb
cut Jace a glare before turning his attention back to Derek. “How do you know
if a human can be converted?”

Derek
shrugged. “Pretty much, it’s just instinct.”

“Anyone
ever guessed wrong?” Jace asked.

The
twist of Derek’s mouth told the story. “Enough that anyone trying to convert a
human these days faces execution.”

“Which
doesn’t explain why pregnant females go into isolation,” Slade pointed out.

“Weres
mate for life and only mated pairs have a prayer of bearing offspring.”

“Not
following your point.”

“Mating
with a fertile female means pack position and power. Anyone wanting that power
has to kill the original male and all his offspring to insure the propagation
of his own line,” Derek explained, the expression on his face not exactly
reflecting happiness with the way things were.

“Son
of a bitch!”

Caleb
glanced at his younger brother. “Jace?”

Jace
didn’t seem to hear, his attention focused inward, his lips pressed into a flat
line, his eyes swirling with angry lights. Caleb repeated his name. “Jace? You
all right?”

Jace
ran his hand through his hair. “I’m fine.” He turned to Derek. “How long will a
female stay in hiding?”

“As
long as she has to.”

“Hell!”

“Anything
you want to share, Jace?” Damn, Caleb hoped Jace hadn’t been messing with were
women again. With everything else going on, they did not need an escalation of
the war.

Jace
met his gaze dead-on. “No.”

Derek
glanced over at Caleb, one eyebrow quirking upward. “Could Allie be pregnant?”

The
question hit him like a fist in the gut, driving his breath out in a harsh
grunt. Could she be pregnant? Did vampires even get pregnant? “I don’t know.”