Crave (9 page)

She was shocked herself when her list continued. Every time she said one thing, another two popped into her mind and she wanted to eat them too.

“Did you get all that?” Callum said to the person on the other end of the phone when she was done, his eyebrows still glued to his hairline.

She presumed the person responded positively because he ended the call and let the phone fall onto the bed. He stared at her.

“You really are hungry. I suppose you didn’t eat lunch or dinner last night.”

Yeah. That was her excuse and she was sticking to it. She hadn’t eaten in almost two days in fact, not since her money had started to run low.

Callum grinned, grabbed her and rolled on top of her as he kissed her. The urgent sweep of his lips over hers, the teasing strokes of his tongue, pushed her embarrassment away and she melted into the bed beneath him, enjoying the warmth of the duvet and the feel of their naked bodies tangled together. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him, knowing it wasn’t going to go anywhere with her breakfast on the way but wishing it could. He kept kissing her, the minutes ticking away and her hunger for Callum building with each one, until she couldn’t take it anymore.

Maybe just a quickie.

Kristina rolled him onto his back and kissed him harder, moaning as he grabbed her bottom and squeezed it, pressing her groin to his.

Someone knocked at the door.

“Breakfast,” Callum said with a smile and pecked her cheek before lifting her off him.

She sat in the middle of the bed and frowned at his bottom as he walked around the foot of it and then into the bathroom to her left. He returned wearing a white terrycloth bathrobe and holding another one in his hand that he held out to her.

Kristina grabbed his wrist and tried to pull him back onto the bed but he shook his head, raised her hand to his mouth and kissed it.

“Food first... you need to keep your strength up.” He grinned and walked out of the bedroom and disappeared around the corner of the living room.

She heard the door open, quickly donned her robe and roughly tied the belt around her waist, and then slid off the bed. She reached the open double doors to the living room just as a smartly dressed waiter pushed a large trolley into the room, and was followed by another. They lined up the two carts next to each other, both laden with an array of elegant silver domed covers, and removed the covers one by one with a flourish to reveal scrumptious looking food. There was everything she had ordered and, God, she wanted to eat it all, every last scrap.

The second waiter left and the first held a black leather folder out to Callum. He took it and signed the bottom of the print out it contained. The younger man looked at them both, and then his eyes settled on her and he said something that made her want to fly across the room and bite him.

“Eating for two?”

Callum’s dark eyebrows flew up and then he frowned at the waiter. The man’s eyes slowly edged back to him as though he had sensed the wave of anger that swept outwards from the vampire and he hiccupped a laugh.

“I meant you and your lady, Sir... not anything like that.” The human quickly closed the bill and backed out of the room, throwing a nervous smile her way.

Callum slammed the door in his face so hard that the walls shook.

“You look beautiful,” he said as he turned to face her and Kristina blinked at his change in temper. No trace of anger laced his scent now and she couldn’t miss the spark of hunger that lit his eyes as he raked them over her, as though he could see through the fluffy white robe to her bare body. “You have a breathtaking figure but the robe does swamp you a little and sort of hangs in a bad way. The disgusting little flea saw us and then the amount of food, and just made an arrogant presumption. He didn’t know you had missed meals and we were fairly active last night...”

His dirty smile told her that she had lost him to memories of what they had got up to.

Callum was right though and she was just making up for missed meals and burned calories, not eating for a reason altogether more alarming.

She looked down at the robe sagging around her waist and tracked back over what he had said.

She looked pregnant?

Kristina immediately stripped out of the white bathrobe and threw it on the floor. Callum’s eyebrows rose again and his grin widened.

“Do I look pregnant to you now?” she snapped and the desire in his eyes turned to confusion. He stared at her for long seconds and then his shoulders slumped and he smiled again, crossed the room to her, and picked up her robe.

He settled it around her shoulders. “No. We both know it isn’t possible. Even if it were, which it isn’t, it’s not as though you would already be craving.”

That was true. She hadn’t thought of that before.

God, why was she getting so worked up about this? Was it just because it was the reason she had run away from home, leaving everything she had ever known behind? She pressed her hand to her stomach and breathed deeply through her nose, long soothing breaths.

No.

Her heart reasoned that she couldn’t get the probability out of her mind because she feared that Callum would discard her the moment he could and she would end up as a single parent, just as her mother had been. It had taken years for her mother to find the courage to confess that her father hadn’t died before she was born as she had always told her. He had used her mother when she was ripe for mating, when sexual intercourse with her would feel best, and then left her the second he had discovered she was bearing his child.

Her mother had suffered because of it. Not only had it broken her heart and her will, but it had led to years of abuse from other pack members. She had lost her place within the family. In the end, Kristina’s father’s cruelty had cost her mother her life. She had taken it forty years ago. The day after Kristina had celebrated reaching maturity and entering the pack hierarchy.

“Kristina?” Callum whispered and she shook herself and looked up at him. He frowned and brushed a thumb across her cheek. “Why are you crying? I didn’t mean to make it sound as though you looked pregnant... you don’t.”

She smiled and scrubbed the heels of her hands across her face. “It isn’t that. Just... bad memories... nothing that concerns you.”

“It does concern me when you end up staring at me with a mixture of pain and anguish in your eyes as though I’m some sort of demon out to destroy you and then start crying.”

Kristina slipped her arms back into the robe, pulled it closed, tied it tighter than before so she had a waist and didn’t look pregnant, and casually walked past him to the trolleys of food. It really did look delicious but she had lost her appetite.

“Kristina?” Callum said, his tone harder this time, conveying the anger she could already sense in him. He wanted an answer. He wanted her to open up and confide in him, but she couldn’t. The thought that she might share part of herself with him only for him to leave her as her father had left her mother, used and broken, petrified her too much.

“I said no personal stuff, remember?” She picked at the crispy rashers of bacon that filled one of the smaller plates and popped a piece into her mouth. It was divine. The salty flavour revived her hunger.

Callum caught her arm and whirled her on the spot to face him.

“I know you did... but I’m sorry... I want to know about you.” The hard edge to his emerald eyes demanded that she tell him and she opened her mouth, teetered on the brink of letting it all flood out of her and finding comfort in his strong protective embrace, and then clamped her teeth shut and shook her head. “Why not? What are you so fucking afraid of? Are you afraid that this thing that’s happening between us might get a little too real for you?”

She stared mutely at him.

He released her arm and paced away from her, his fingers trembling as they raked through his hair, his chest heaving with each breath that held his growing anger at bay. She could feel it in him, a volcanic rise within his straining body, threatening to slip beyond his control and erupt.

He turned on her and the darkness in his eyes receded, his voice softening, edged with desperation. “You think this doesn’t scare me too? You think I’m not petrified of where this might lead? Do you honestly fucking believe I haven’t spent the past two days wondering if you’re just going to walk out on me? I don’t know what you’re thinking... and I feel so fucking weak around you... and I’m man enough to admit that scares the shit out of me. Christ, I kept waking up today fearing I would find you weren’t there beside me in bed... fearing I’d wake alone. I held you so damned tight because I thought if I did, I would feel it if you tried to leave me and could wake and stop you.”

He swallowed hard, his fists tight trembling balls at his sides, pinned there as though he was stopping himself from doing something he would regret. What? Strike her? Kristina frowned at her thoughts. Why would that come to her first? How messed up was she? Callum had been nothing but kind and gentle with her. The one time he had hurt her, it had been her own fault and he hadn’t been in full control of himself. He hadn’t meant it. The reason he was restraining himself was probably because he wanted to touch her and feared it would drive her away if he did.

“I can’t do this,” he said and her heart squeezed. He couldn’t leave her. She didn’t want him to go and she didn’t want him to kick her out either. She opened her mouth to say so but he cut her off with an icy glare. “If this means nothing to you... if you can’t let me get close to you... let me know you... then get the fuck out of my life now. I’d rather cut my losses here than let you get any deeper into my heart so you can break it when you finally run away from me.”

“Callum.” Kristina reached for him but he was already turning away, storming towards the bedroom. He swept his hand out in a way that warned her not to follow him and slammed the double doors.

Kristina sank to her knees in the middle of the living room.

She didn’t like ultimatums, but for some reason this didn’t feel like one. He had laid himself bare before her, had confessed that this was already something to him and that he wanted it to be something special to her too, had made himself vulnerable so she felt that she could too.

She wrapped her arms around her chest and stared at the closed white doors, the barrier between her heart and his.

He wasn’t the only one who was frightened by how this was making them feel. She felt weak too, needed him so much after only a short period of time. He had become vital to her so quickly. She had felt the need in his embrace as they had slept together, sensed his arm tighten like steel around her whenever she had moved, and had known it was because he had wanted her to stay there pressed against him until he woke. She hadn’t realised why though.

She hadn’t realised that she was so ridiculously afraid of any male getting too close to her that she had been on the verge of running away from one who made her feel so safe, who had protected her from her own kind, who brought her to life with his touch and made her smile for the first time in what seemed like forever. She hadn’t had much to smile about since her mother’s suicide. She couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed or giggled. It came so naturally with Callum.

The shower switched on, humming low, and the sound of water slapping against tiles brought images of him naked and wet to mind.

Kristina sucked in a long deep breath and exhaled it slowly.

She picked herself up, mentally dusted herself off, and turned to the trolleys of no doubt very expensive food that Callum had kindly got for her. Her gaze drifted across the living area to a small dining one that looked a little formal for her tastes. She set the food out on the coffee table instead, sat down on the striped dark blue and gold couch, and ate while she waited for Callum to emerge from the bedroom.

It was an hour later, or two servings of bacon, eggs, sausages, potatoes and tomatoes, pancakes, half the toast, two waffles with chocolate sauce and strawberries, and a glass of orange juice in food terms, that he finally made his reappearance.

She tensed when the doors behind her opened and swallowed her mouthful of food, waiting for him to say something. He crossed the room, appearing to her left, and sat down in the armchair there. He swung his feet up onto the wooden coffee table and she couldn’t resist a glance at him. A white towel rode low on his hips but other than that he was all delicious naked flesh.

“Still here I see.” He scowled at her. “Well, that’s some progress, I guess.”

Kristina picked at her food, her appetite waning again. The apology she had practiced from the moment she had sat down to eat fled her mind and she found herself saying something surprising instead.

“I was thinking about my mum and all the shit she went through. That’s why I was crying.” Her olive branch confession probably did her more favours than a feeble apology ever would have. Callum sat up, balanced on the edge of his seat and turned to face her. He didn’t press her to continue so she didn’t panic, and it all flowed out of her. As naturally as everything else did when it came to him. “I never knew my father. He left mum when she got pregnant with me. I always thought she was a strong woman, that she handled it so well and hadn’t let it hurt her. I realised I was wrong when I reached adulthood and entered the pack. She had just been strong for me... waiting until I was independent. Then she killed herself.”

“Christ... I didn’t know. If I had...”

“You would have what? Not been honest with me about your feelings? Let me continue to act like I was because I’m scared I’ll end up like my mother? I had to grow up sometime, Callum, and you couldn’t have known... so don’t blame yourself. You said what had to be said... and I do actually appreciate it... because now I know I’m not the only one who is scared crapless about this.” She risked another glance at him and the steel in his green eyes was gone, replaced by a feather soft and warm look that filled her with a need to go to him, settle herself on his lap and beg him to just hold her for a while and tell her that her craziness hadn’t ruined everything.