Change of Heart 05 - Forging the Future (23 page)

He was so strong, and sadly, I tested him all the time. His reserves of strength had to be great since I constantly forced him to display his power.

“Listen,” he rumbled, putting a warm, gentle hand on my cold skin. “It’s like a muscle, right? The more you work it out, the stronger it becomes.”

I rubbed my cheek in his palm, lifted my chin, and ran my jaw across the same skin, loving the feel of him.

“You make me strong,” he whispered—taking hold of the back of my neck as I whimpered, wanting to be closer, in his lap—and eased me forward.

I breathed out before he kissed me, gently, softly, and then whined when he eased me back, running his thumb across my lips.

“My mate needs claiming, but first his beset needs food.”

“Amen,” Crane grumbled. “Stop eye-fucking your mate on my time.”

He was trying to keep the mood light after the horror I’d unleashed.

Logan bent to lift Crane into his arms, one arm behind his back, one under his knees, and it looked odd, because while my mate was quite tall and broad, my best friend was not a small man.

I started to do a slow pan.

“No,” Logan warned me as he rose to his full towering height. “Look at me.”

Instant obedience as I tipped my head back to meet his golden gaze.

“I forbid it, do you understand? I will not have that image in your mind for all time. I will not have you torture yourself for defending your family and saving your friend.”

My body heated as I stared, and I realized how much I wanted to be where Crane was. Yes, we were in the middle of God knew what, and I had no idea how many men were there, but still, I was at the mercy of what I needed to stay me, as well as his pheromones.

“Aside from my father, Koren, Russ, and Rector, there were five others.”

“So you’re saying six men are dead because of me.”

“We all make choices.”

Yes. We did.

“Now I need to eat, too, so I’m going in. Can you carry Yusuke and Danny and Ivan one at a time?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, then, come on.”

I was so torn. Half of me wanted to see, the other half did not.

“Do as I say, for once.”

“I will,” I agreed, “but don’t make a habit of thinking I’ll listen to you all the time.”

“Don’t worry. I know better than that.”

I
DIDN
’
T
understand why no one was moving until I followed after Logan. All of them—Yusuke, Danny, and Ivan—were on their backs, breathing, but that was all they were capable of. Markel helped Logan and me carry the others in, and Artem showed up with the remainder of the khatyu to retrieve Peter, Koren, and Russ and to pile the others for burning.

It was hard to know how to feel. I had Yusuke openly sobbing as she sat in my lap, her arms wrapped around me. During the crying she managed to get out a thank-you and that I was a blessing right before she started hyperventilating.

Logan took her, lifted her up off me, and then put her into a chair beside Delphine. His sister had her breathe into a paper bag Eva brought from the kitchen, and then, when she calmed, Delphine fed her. Markel fed Ivan, who couldn’t stop crying, and Eva fussed over Danny and Logan at the same time. I tried to help her—I really wanted to take care of Logan—but she was right, I was a little unsteady myself. While Eva bustled around, Ilia took care of me. He made sure I had more meat on my plate, poured water for me and everyone else, and went from person to person, hugging them.

I wanted to sit up straight and be strong. Everyone had gone through worse than me, after all, but Logan yanked my chair sideways so it butted up against his and then leaned me into him so he could rest his cheek in my hair.

“I’m so proud of you.”

“I was a nightmare out there.”

“You were exquisite, and you saved us all,” he murmured, kissing my temple. “Again.”

“I kill people.”

“When they try and kill people you love—yes, you do.”

I moved my food and bumped my head down on the table. “I can’t believe we lost Andrian just—oh God, Irina,” I gasped, lifting my head, staring at Logan.

“She’s sleeping,” Eva promised me. “So is her son. I checked. Nothing wears you out like a funeral. They could have slept through a tornado.”

“Which they did,” Markel said, giving me a warm smile.

“I should go check on Crane,” I announced, getting ready to rise.

“No,” Eva said, hand on my shoulder to keep me in my chair. “He ate, he drank, and he’s asleep. His body needs to heal. I hope he sleeps for days.”

“None of us can sleep,” Danny uttered, shivering now that his body was digesting his food. It was too much to ask it to regulate his body temperature at the same time. “What if they attack us again?”

“No,” Logan replied. “I made a call.”

And as if on cue, there was a knock at the door.

Logan yelled—he couldn’t get up, he was too tired—and in walked Christophe Danvers, semel of the neighboring tribe of Pakhet, who crossed the floor to us, flanked by his sylvan, Rana Shah, and his sheseru, Joshua Levitsky, and twenty other men who fanned out in the living room.

“Jesus, you look terrible,” Christophe barked at Logan, reaching us. “You too,” he said, including me.

“My reah,” Josh breathed, moving quickly to reach my side and kneel.

“I hate the reah crap,” Christophe grumbled, but he put a hand on Logan’s shoulder and held on. “What can I do?”

“Protect us until the akhen—”

“Until Domin what? Just say Domin, we all grew up together, for fuck’s sake. He’s still Domin to me. I know all about the time he—”

“My son is right there,” Logan groused, pointing to Ilia.

“Oh yeah, look at that,” Christophe said, smiling. “Mini Jin, that’s super.”

God, I was so happy to see him. I leaned forward and hugged Josh, which startled the hell out of him and left him sputtering as I stood, wheeled around Logan, and leaped at Christophe.

He caught me easily, all the time shaking his head, and I realized that in all these years, he’d mellowed the most. His first yareah, he’d divorced, and he’d taken for his second yareah Haya Blum, who was the exact opposite of Talon in both temperament and appetite. Meaning that she was the salt-of-the-earth type, extremely level-headed, very kind, and she only slept with her mate, which was a huge change for Christophe.

She made him accessible and thoughtful, and most of all, she gave him the ability to laugh at himself. He used to take everything so very seriously, but for the past four years, he’d been a completely different man and semel. So it made sense that Logan would turn to him now.

“Get off me,” Christophe mumbled, giving me a hug before we separated. “I’m glad you’re back. He wasn’t the same while you were gone.”

“I wasn’t either.”

“And I’m sorry you lost Avery,” he said to me before moving his gaze back to Logan as he arched an eyebrow. “But I told you, Avery wasn’t strong enough to be your sheseru.”

“He was not strong enough to be anyone’s sheseru,” Rana said, sounding exasperated before offering me her hand. “Blessings on you, my reah.”

“And you,” I replied, taking her hand and squeezing.

Christophe took a seat beside Logan. “Explain what’s going on to me.”

They talked while the rest of us moved around.

I got Yusuke in bed beside Crane, and she got naked and wrapped around him like a second skin. She needed to feel his heart beating. Their girls went into the room with Delphine and Markel, Ivan and Danny got thrown into a room and a bed together, Eva went to her room—but not without promising me that while she was relieved that Peter and her sons were alive, she had been fully resigned to them
not
being.

“We all have choices to make, Jin. I keep telling you that.”

I went upstairs to grab a cardigan because it was getting cold, and when I walked out of the bedroom, I was grabbed hard and shoved face-first into the wall. I would have struggled, shifted, done anything to get away if I wasn’t already begging my mate to take me.

“Logan,” I husked, breathing his pheromones in and out, his spicy scent cloying, sticking to my skin, my hair, all of me.

I toed off my right shoe, and he shucked my pants down fast, freeing the same leg so I could spread for him, open my stance. There was no gentleness in him, only his hand on the back of my neck holding my forehead against the wall as he pressed the swollen head of his cock against my entrance.

“You are bound to me,” he whispered roughly before he drove to the hilt in one violent movement, the lube he’d quickly slathered on his shaft allowing the savage breach.

I writhed on his cock, wanting more, needing him to move, to take me, even as I reached down and stroked myself to hardness.

“All your power is mine because you are, Jin Church.”

“Yes,” I whimpered as he snapped his hips forward, plunging inside again, boring deep.

“Never forget you belong to me.”

“No,” I rasped, panting as he pummeled into me, ravaging me as I chanted his name.

He bucked into my body, and I felt his release, spilling inside me as I came on the wall with what would have been a scream if he hadn’t slapped a hand over my mouth.

I loved it when Logan Church was gentle and slow when he made love to me.

I loved it when Logan Church was fast and dirty, fucking me against the wall.

All of me loved all of him, and he always knew what I needed and delivered the exact thing. After losing his tribe, he’d needed to claim what would always be his. I was the one unchangeable thing in his life, for I was his mate and I belonged only to him. He had just reminded us both.

He slid too fast from my body, and I cried out, not from pain, but from the feeling of fullness so quickly gone. Spinning me in his arms, he bent and kissed me hard, molding my body to his even as he cupped my ass, still leaking his come, and lifted me.

“You need another shower,” he sighed, kissing me as I was carried down the hall.

“I love you,” I whispered.

“I know you do,” he teased.

He showered with me and then left to return to the others, but not before kissing me breathless once more.

“I love you too,” he said in leaving.

I was exhausted, my body spent, and went to lie down in bed. Right before I nodded off, Ilia bounded up the stairs to our bullet-strewn room—though now without benefit of glass in any of the windows that faced the courtyard—and dived onto the bed with me.

“Oh, love, be careful of the glass,” I warned.

“I had my slippers on,” he told me. “Daddy said I had to wear them if I came up here.”

My semel was always vigilant.

“Good,” I said with a yawn, barely able to keep my eyes open and noticing that he was the same. “Will you lie down by me?”

He nodded and crawled across the bed to reach me.

We snuggled together, leaving room for Logan, and I had a twinge of fear, remembering Sasha in the room. For a moment I wanted to open my eyes, just to reassure myself that he wasn’t really there, but then I heard my mate’s low chuckle from downstairs and let the tension flow out of me.

We would be safe while we slept. It was one thing to terrorize us on our land, a whole other to threaten another semel or his retinue. Logan was brilliant to call Christophe, and I knew that had he thought we would be attacked the second time, he would have called him the moment we laid Andrian to rest.

God, what a day and night and morning. I could only hope that from here on, things would be better. I wanted to be a blessing to my mate, but it seemed like I brought pain as well. If I had been gone forever, I wondered if Peter would have still reached for Russ. He might have let Logan drown in his grief and then simply propose he step down. Logan probably would have simply released the tribe and taken Ilia to Egypt to live with Domin. But I’d returned, and so he’d had to fight.

I really hoped having me was worth the sacrifices.

Chapter 13

W
HEN
I
finally woke up, Logan wasn’t in bed and I instantly missed him. I went downstairs to look for him and found him showered and shaved and standing between Christophe and Justin Cho, semel of the tribe of Qebui, from San Francisco. He was one of Logan’s oldest friends, and as far as I could see, he was alone.

“Morning,” I greeted them.

Logan turned and crossed the room quickly to reach me, opening his arms wide.

I lunged at him, and he kissed and hugged me and held me close, all the while murmuring the same words: “I love you; you’re the world to me.”

There was my answer. No matter what, I was worth everything to my mate.

When he finally let go, rubbing my upper arms like I was cold and brushing away tears I hadn’t realized were leaking from my eyes, his smile made his laugh lines deepen.

“What’s Justin doing here?” I asked, happy just to be looking at him.

“Justin agreed to Domin’s proposal, so he’s meeting him here.”

“And what was that?”

“To build.”

“I’m not following.”

“That’s what Justin’s company, Crescent, does. He’s a real estate developer. He builds all over the world, and then he sells those buildings as one or in pieces through agents.”