Cool Hand (28 page)

Oh, my God. He was pleading with me. Were-style submission.
Protect me.

I felt the hair on the back of my head stir like hackles. He was getting straight through to my wolf.

And now Zane was aware the Cimarron was conscious again. Just as he was aware the wolf was begging for my help, and I was responding.

I couldn’t leave him here.

Oh, shit. Diana, Savannah, Claude, me.

My training said he wasn’t my concern. With the seesaw of Were and Athanate tonight, my head was completely screwed.

When in doubt, stick to your objectives.

I had two strays to take home; I couldn’t jeopardize them for a Were I’d never met.

My gut refused to agree.

Zane was watching me with the sort of unblinking stare that Rita used.

“He’s just a cub,” I said.

“Who may have heard things said this evening. I’m trusting to your discretion, and Larimer’s. Why should I trust his? Will you vouch for him?”

I couldn’t. That would mean adopting him.

Would that start a war with the Cimarron pack? I didn’t know.

“Please,” the cub whispered.

“What if I send him to Denver?” I asked.

I didn’t know enough about the Were in general and this one in particular. He could be a criminal cast out of Cimarron. Or an envoy. For that matter, he might be here trying to make an alliance with Albuquerque against Denver.

But I could send him to Felix, who’d said that the Cimarron pack was okay in his eyes. Then it’d be Felix’s problem and decision. If Felix didn’t like him, he wasn’t in any worse position than he’d be down here.

That didn’t mean Felix would like
me
. He’d see it as me getting him caught up in more Were politics.

Zane nodded agreement.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Bode and Haz both came in when Zane called out.

“Clean him up and find him some replacement clothes, Bode,” Zane said.

Bode lifted the cub to his feet and helped him out the door.

Haz had another report to make. She took Zane’s hand again and started pressing her quick-fire patterns into his palm.

She reached the end of her report and he brought her hand to his lips, pressed a kiss on the back.

“Thank you, Haseya,” he said.

Haz’s face didn’t twitch, but I could sense her body respond to the kiss like a flower in the sun.

Yeah, one of those alphas.

She left. I didn’t think she wanted to.

“Well, two strays, and now a third,” Zane said.

He retrieved his glass from the floor and poured himself another slug from the moonshine jar, before strolling around the table to offer me some. I shook my head.

Close up, the alpha seemed to take up a lot of the room.

He leaned his butt against the table. “Strip,” he said.

“
What?
”

“You can’t walk through Albuquerque like that.” He had a point. There were patches of blood soaked through my jeans where I’d knelt on the floor, from the knees right down to the ankles. Some arterial spray from Fuller ran across my T as well. He waved a hand at the clothes Haz had brought in earlier. “Haseya is close enough in size to lend you these.”

He was challenging me again.

Damn him.

I wasn’t body shy. The army had taken care of that. But this was not-so-subtly different.

I wasn’t going to squirm like prey. I wasn’t going to ask him to leave.

I peeled off the T.

Oh, God. The underwear. Jen’s lacy black underwear.

I sat and pulled my boots off.

“I like the underwear, by the way,” Zane said.

“Thanks.” Voice level. Go me. I was
so
not going to say
it likes you back
.

I unzipped my bloody jeans and wriggled out of them.

It was as bad to turn away as it was to stay put. There wasn’t a lot of my butt that was covered by the material.

The bastard was enjoying it.

“
Three
strays,” he said. “What’s that worth?”

I hadn’t even heard him move and he was suddenly right in front of me, hot and hungry, putting out his sexy alpha song. The Were laugh at the Athanate for getting sex and Blood all mixed up. Well, the Were did exactly the same thing with their dominance games.

My pulse pounded in my throat.

Savannah and Claude. Whatever it takes. Forget about the cub. Concentrate on the kin.

I put my hands on my hips.

I wasn’t going to keep playing dumb, and I wasn’t going to go in blind.

“Let’s get this straight. You want sex in exchange for giving the three of them to me?”

He pressed in on me.

“I didn’t say that,” he murmured.

There wasn’t anywhere else to go. My butt was up against the table.

He had no idea what he was doing to my body.

“Didn’t we reach an agreement on an association in exchange for your kin?”

“Okay,” I managed to say. “I mean, yes. Association. Kin.”

His hands slipped onto my waist, and I gasped. Goosebumps rippled across my belly and down my arms. The scent of Albuquerque wolf filled my nose like the whisper of nighttime wind through a dry arroyo.

“So,” I said. “So. Sex for the cub.”

“I didn’t say that either,” he whispered right into my ear. His body pushed against me.

I lost my balance and grabbed hold of his arms.

He was strong. He had a lean powerful body, a good core. I knew he’d have great abs.
Good thrusters
, we used to call guys with a well-defined six-pack in 4-10.

His knee worked its way between my legs, nudged them apart.

“Stop,” I said.

“Don’t tell me you don’t want it.” He kissed my forehead, his hands kneading my back. “You got the cub. No price. This is just us.”

“You’re a fool, Zane.” It was so difficult to speak. I had to force each word out. I didn’t want to speak anymore. The air felt so thin.

“I don’t think so,” he whispered, his head turning, kisses marching down my cheek to my throat. “I can hear your wolf. She wants me. I’m no fool.”

“You are.” I breathed it into his ear.

The asshole wasn’t listening.

His body was molded against mine. My heart was going like a trip-hammer, but the rest of me had gone all liquid, as slow as honey.

“Why?” He sounded genuinely puzzled. His lips pressed against my neck. He leaned away just enough to slip a hand between us. His fingers traced the contour of the lacy bra over the swell of my breast, slipped the strap.

“Because you’re not talking to my wolf,” I ground out as he bent his head. “She’s got what she needs at home.”

His head bent as his lips flirted, teasing, slipping slowly down. And that made his neck into a graceful arch, right in front of me, just under my mouth.

I could feel the hot pulse of Blood beneath the dark skin, pounding its seductive message. Luring me out.

I couldn’t speak another word. The air seemed to squeeze from my lungs and my fangs manifested, already aching to plunge into his dark skin.

What was it Pia had said?
The harder the loving, the sweeter the feeding.

My fingers dug into him and my eukori began to snake into his head.

I thirst. Submit to me, wolf. I will drink from you.

And the nightmares started to ooze out of my strongbox.

“No.” I groaned with the effort of
not
biting.

“What?” He blinked and finally looked up. “Shit!” he yelled.

And he fell onto his ass.

This time it was Bode, Haz
and
Rita bursting in to see what the hell was happening to their alpha.

If it had been just Haz, I might have been in trouble, but it was Rita in front of me.

Zane choked out something in slang and waved Haz and Bode away as he got back to his feet, angry and confused.

Had I just screwed our deal?

Rita must have caught some of that on my face.

She gave a tiny shake of her head and distracted me by grabbing the clothes from the table. She helped me to dress, as I’d helped her.

“Great underwear,” she muttered, and bit her lip.

Haz’s spare clothes turned out to be a pair of her skin-tight leather pants, a T with the flaming head logo, and a motorcycle jacket. My holster went neatly under the jacket.

As soon as I was dressed, she ushered me out. Savannah, Claude and the Cimarron were waiting.

Claude and I took the groggy Cimarron between us.

The two guys had been given sweats. The pack had found some more biker clothes for Savannah.

“You stepped on his ego; he’s not going to die from it,” Rita said in answer to my question. “And yeah, in case you’re wondering, we knew he was going to hit on you. It’s something male and female alphas do, sorta sizing each other up. Haz doesn’t like it, but she’s not as mad at you as it looks.”

She snickered. “He sure as hell wouldn’t have been expecting fangs.”

I believed her as far as it went.

But Zane was nowhere near as crazy and impulsive as everyone made out, and he’d spent a lot of time watching my reaction to his dominance displays. Just how much had he found out this evening, and why did he think it was so important?

Was he really aiming for an association with Felix? Or a challenge?

Did how I respond to him give him information about Felix?

My paranoia had been squashed beneath my wolf and Athanate battling. It came out again now with a vengeance.

The gate swung open silently. The Calle was black and empty before us.

“Stop!”

My heart stuttered and the wolf came back with a snarl.

Zane was striding down from the house.

I squared up, standing in front of the others.

Mine.

He ignored that. He had a fat envelope in his hand.

“Your winnings, and my cell number,” he said. He put his arms around me and slid the envelope into my pocket. Not my jacket pocket, the butt pocket on my borrowed leather pants. Which was very tight.

I let it pass.

“Let’s try that again,” he whispered. “But a bit more slowly, next time.”

I chuckled.

I didn’t even bite his head off when he slapped my ass to send us on our way.

The Cimarron cub’s name was Benjamin. “Just Ben,” he slurred.

Haz had washed and sealed his wounds. With Ben’s Were constitution he should be fine in a couple of days. Right now, he looked like a war casualty. I was worried whether we’d be able to get him on a Greyhound looking like he did.

We’d walked out of the Calle and across the road, down toward the railroad yards. No one seemed to be following. I called Tullah and asked her to pick us up, far out of sight of the Calle. Paranoid maybe, but I didn’t want the Albuquerque Were to know what transportation we were using if I could help it.

I contemplated trying some Athanate healing on Ben, but I was still on edge from Zane. I was worried that anything like that would tip me over into fangs or fur.

Meanwhile, he seemed to be getting sleepy, which wasn’t a good sign.

“Talk to me, Ben,” I said. “What happened to you?”

“Came to see Albuquerque alpha,” he mumbled around his battered lips. “Was just following my nose downtown. Didn’t expect to get jumped by Gold Hill.”

“Why come down here? You’ve heard what the New Mexico packs are like?”

“Uh. Had to talk to someone,” he said. “The alpha, he had it right. Gold Hill are fixing to move east.”

“Grabbing territory?”

“That’s part of it.” He stumbled, then winced as Claude tightened his grip. “Cimarron has a lot of territory. All strung out along the old Cimarron Trail and Route 56. We run the Kiowa Grasslands and the Rita Blanca as well as the Cimarron Grasslands.”

Pack pride shone through his voice.

Tullah pulled up and Ben was silent as we eased him into the back of the truck.

“Greyhound station,” I said to Tullah.

As we moved off, Ben went on quietly: “There are small packs in Mills and Clayton, between us and Gold Hill. We work with them.”

“You share territory?” I couldn’t help the disbelief in my voice.

He tried to smile. “Long as you don’t call it that. We ‘coordinate’ so we don’t run into each other. Kinda time-share. Anyhow, Gold Hill are trying to take over the Mills pack. Want their name and their territory. We don’t want that. We don’t have an association, but we’ll fight alongside Mills.
Unless
Gold Hill has backing from Albuquerque or Santa Fe. That’d mean us going up against the New Mexico packs. Don’t want to do that.”

“Okay, so you had to find out.”

He nodded. The Hill Bitch wasn’t designed to be comfortable, but we’d propped him against our bags and his body was sagging from the effort he’d put into walking.

“Put your mind at rest,” I said. “In case you didn’t overhear this part while you were lying on the floor, Albuquerque will cheer you on against Gold Hill.”

“Got to call my…” he stopped, squinting at me in the darkness and rubbing his head, “my alpha, got to tell him that. Please.”

“Yeah, I understand.” That was a problem. Zane didn’t want anything from our conversation getting back to Cimarron. And I had made an agreement with Zane to send Ben to Denver.

“Why the Albuquerque pack?” I asked, playing for time. “Why not Santa Fe? That’s closer.”

He shuddered and slipped lower in the seat. “Yeah. Santa Fe’s the boss pack. Everything you’ve heard about the Albuquerque pack? Santa Fe’s ten times worse.” His eyes closed and he frowned. “Worse. Worst.”

“Stay with me, Ben.”

“Half-head,” he murmured. “You could take Albuquerque, Ms. Farrell. Could take Zane. I felt it. You’re Coyote smart. Not Half-head in Santa Fe. Don’t go up against him. Please.”

“You had your head rattled, Ben. You’re not making sense. I don’t want to fight anyone.”

Savannah had been silent all this time. Now she spoke. “He has a concussion. We can’t put him on a bus tonight.”

We had no option. I had a possible lead on Diana and a promise to Zane.

“You could help him heal with aniatropics,” Savannah said, as if it was obvious what I should do. And it was, if you didn’t take my problems into account. If I didn’t get all fangy.

Tullah’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.

“You’ll ride shotgun?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Okay. Pull over. Let’s give it a try.”

Savannah was kin and Claude obviously knew all about what Larry had been. Officially, since he wasn’t kin, Claude shouldn’t have been here to watch this, but if any Athanate House had license to bend the Athanate security rules, it had to be House Farrell. I almost grinned.

Kaothos edged into the back of my mind.

Any sign of losing control, fangs or fur, and you knock me out, okay?

I will, Amber Farrell.

Kaothos was being a very serious dragon tonight. Good.

Savannah realized something was odd. Her gaze went back and forth, but she didn’t say anything. I was impressed with how resilient both she and Claude had been, given how their lives had been over the last couple of weeks, let alone the last couple of hours.

I loomed over Ben, looking down at his sleeping face.

Cute. Not Alex, and nothing like Zane back in the Calle. It was only a kiss; a healing. No more than I’d done for Rita. I didn’t need to rattle the strongbox.

I let my eukori loose, imagining it drifting down on him like a net of spider silk.

His eukori was spiky and half-formed, as if he really wasn’t sure what he wanted to be like. That was fine by me. I wasn’t here for his spiritual development.

I felt his heart and matched it with mine, beat for beat. I tentatively stretched my senses inside him, feeling out the damage.

The taste of aniatropics flooded my mouth and I kissed his unresponsive lips.

There was a flash of memory: doing this for Jen in Bian’s van, bringing her back from the brink. My heart did a double beat and I had to wait until it was running smoothly again.

If I could heal Jen, I could do this for Ben.

Without being able to visualize it clearly, I felt the damage in his head: the blood leaks; the pooling fluids; the pressure.

There was another moment of panic. What should I do?

Step by step.

Aniatropics would help the wounds heal and stop the blood loss. That’s what they had evolved for. I could feel his body’s defenses. I knew where they needed to be and what they needed to do.

Or I knew what they needed to do in my body.

I panicked again and nearly stopped. Tullah could feel the connection waver through Kaothos. She reached over from the front and squeezed my arm.

Step by step.

Slowly, his veins and arteries repaired. His blood flowed freely through his system again. Shivers ran down my body. His blood, not his
Blood
, not something I craved. Kaothos’ claws pinched little warnings inside my head.

I felt his body restore itself. Fluids drained from the pressure points. Breathing got easier. His eukori became more settled.

It seemed to take forever. My time sense was warped.

At some stage I must have sat back. I wasn’t sleeping, but I was only vaguely aware of Savannah checking Ben’s pulse. She woke him and started checking his eye movement and asking him questions.

My House, I thought lazily. I was pleased she had some medical knowledge and the confidence to use it.

My House.

My jaw started to pulse.

Kaothos pinched me again and I clambered stiffly out of the truck to suck some cold air into my lungs.

“We haven’t got an option,” I said to Tullah when she joined me. “We have to put him on the bus. We can’t take him with us.”

“We could send them all together.”

I shook my head. “I need Savannah. She knows House Romero. If Charles Romero really thinks he’s still Panethus I may be able to talk to him about Diana, but I need Savannah to give me a way in.”

“Send Claude along with Ben?”

“Maybe, if he and Savannah are okay with that. They’ve had a bad time. I don’t want to add to it.”

Savannah stepped out of the truck, leaving Claude talking to Ben. She’d pushed the sleeves up on her borrowed biker jacket. Tattoos spiraled down her arms, making them totem poles and ending with the raven just above her wrist.

Raven. The mystery bird, I seemed to recall from something Alex had said.

It was the first chance we’d had to really talk since we’d rescued her, and she didn’t want to meet my eyes. Seeing where I was looking, she pulled the jacket sleeves down and hugged herself in the chill night air.

“I messed up, big time,” she said.

“Yeah.” I wasn’t going to gloss over it. It’d worked out okay, but that wasn’t her doing.

“Why did you follow me?” she said. “You risked yourself.”

“I made a commitment to Larry.”

“Is that it?” Her face flushed, and she mumbled an awkward apology.

“No, that’s not it.” I said, irritation trickling into me. “I couldn’t ignore what I’d heard about the Were. I had to do something. But you’re right about the main reason. Larry was my House and you were his kin. That makes you part of my House and that means you’re my responsibility.”

“We’re not property,” she said. “Claude isn’t even kin, anyway.”

Ungrateful little idiot. My vision locked down. I grabbed her and shoved her against the Hill Bitch, anger suddenly flooding through my veins.

“You made a choice for yourself. You made a choice for Claude too, when you included him in the Athanate world. Once you make that commitment, you have to stick with it. You don’t have options anymore.”

Kaothos was scrabbling against my mind, but my anger had built a wall she couldn’t breach.

I didn’t need restraining; Savannah needed to be aware of the realities of her situation.

My jaw pulsed and my fangs came out, aching.

She twisted to get away and I grabbed her hair, pulled her head back to expose her throat.

Fear surged out of her and I tasted it, hungered for it. And for her Blood.

“Amber!” Tullah fought her way between us. “Stop!”

Claude was tugging at my wrists to loosen my grip.

I was stronger than both of them.

“
Mine
,” I said, my voice dark with need.

“Not like this.” Tullah was in the way now, preventing me from biting Savannah.

I couldn’t bite Tullah. I’d promised I wouldn’t. I’d given my word. That had to mean something.

And I’d given my word that I wouldn’t bite
anyone
.

What would Diana think of me acting like this?

I let them go and we staggered apart.

Tullah pushed Claude and Savannah back into the truck.

I felt sick.

“I can’t handle it,” I muttered. “I’ve run out of time.”

I leaned on the back of the Hill Bitch and rested my head on my arms. I was strung-out, tired from adrenaline overload, constant pressure and not enough rest over the last few weeks. The nights of unconsciousness that Kaothos produced just weren’t as good as sleep.

If Tullah hadn’t been there, I’d have bitten Savannah.

Maybe my bite would kill her, maybe not. But I’d been enjoying her fear.

I was standing at an Athanate crossroads. In Ops 4-10, Top had drilled us so that our training became hardwired into us, became instincts that could be trusted under life-and-death stress. He’d told me that in every moment, I was the sum of all I had been and done. As an Athanate, what I would become was dictated by the road I traveled now. Every step.

Dominé had it right—
vasana—
the experience that created a desire for more of the same. If I fed off fear now, that’s who I would become. I would have no desire for anything else. I would be Basilikos.

“You can, Boss. You can do it.”

Tullah tugged me around and, ignoring my protests, hugged me tightly to her.

I stiffened.

“Don’t,” I said. “Stop. I don’t know if I can control myself.”

“If you can’t, you can’t, and I’ll know no one could have tried harder,” she said.

My jaw was throbbing again.

“Please,” I whispered. But my arms moved on their own, circling her body and hugging her back.

“Boss, you can bite me. I give you permission. You’re not putting out your gimme-your-neck vibes, you’re not influencing me in any way. Just the opposite.”

“This is Kaothos making you,” I said.

“No,” she replied.

No, Amber Farrell. I have promised
, hissed the lizard.

Tullah turned her head. Her neck was an inch from my fangs. All I had to do was sink down and my Athanate instincts would do the rest.

“Better to bite me,” she said. “I’m not scared. I’m not feeding any monsters.”

“But it could kill you.”

“Maybe. Still better to bite me than Van. Kaothos could keep me alive, Van hasn’t got anything like that,
and
she has Claude to look after.” She sighed. “And all this stuff about how dangerous your bite might be…the Athanate have no idea. Not really. You’re the first hybrid.”