Jared (20 page)

Jared’s thumb settled on the pressure point under her
ear. “Suffice it to say, my conversion was not a liberating experience. Unlike
yours. And don’t think I didn’t notice you didn’t answer my question. How were
you turned?”

She didn’t mind telling him. It didn’t matter anymore.
“The place my parents sent me was a saloon. After all those months of travel I
arrived to find out my new beginning wasn’t what I had thought it would be. My
mother’s cousin, Nicholai, who needed help, was actually looking for a
prostitute to pick up business. I wasn’t agreeable to the plan. We discussed
the issue. My nerves were a bit frayed from weeks of seasickness. I wasn’t as
diplomatic in the presentation of my position as I could have been. I got the
bad end of the argument. Nicholai brought in friends to help persuade me.”

His friends had been bigger than Nicholai and just as
mean. She’d been terrified, and strangely determined. The more they beat her,
the more she’d clung to the word “no” until she’d been past feeling anything
and their arms had tired. Jared snarled, and the muscles beneath her cheek
tightened. He was in her mind again. She quickly closed her mind on the
memories and did her best to sooth the rage that poured from him in a waterfall
of emotion.

“A man came upon me in the alley where they’d tossed
me.”

“They threw you into an alley?”

“I wasn’t much to look at before they started beating
on me. I’d been sick for the entire voyage. I don’t suppose my looks improved
with bruises.” She shrugged. “I think they thought I was as good as dead.”

More rage rolled off him. More need for violence. “The
bastards.”

“They were that.” It took everything she had to
contain the lashing fury of his emotions. “Anyway, he asked me if I wanted to
live. I said no. He laughed and said he thought I might have a change of
heart.” She shrugged. “He was right. I did. He stayed with me only long enough
to tell me the rules and then moved on.”

Jared’s grip on her was miser tight, as if the threat
still existed. As if he could protect her from the pain of the memory. “What
about your inability to take blood?”

“That,” she admitted ruefully, “was one of the reasons
he moved on. I think he felt guilty for that.”

“He damn well should have.”

“Why are you so mad?”

“He had no right to convert you against your will.”

“Do you seriously think I could have comprehended what
he was offering me?”

“It was your choice.”

She shrugged. “Well, like everything else at that time
in my life, it was made for me, and since it worked out, I’m fine with it.”

“You shouldn’t be.”

“It happened, I can’t change it, and it’s provided me
with opportunities I never would have known otherwise.” To put it mildly. “And
it definitely beat dying on top of a garbage heap. Do you know how much garbage
reeks in summer heat?”

Her attempt at levity fell flat. Jared’s thumb came
under her chin and tilted her face to his. “I’m sorry those men hurt you.”

He was still stuck on the fact that she had been
beaten. The fury that rolled off him was as strong as if it had just happened.
And it struck her as so incredibly sweet that he would be angry on her behalf.
Especially as the men were long since dead and she was obviously over it. She
stretched up and kissed his chin. “Thank you, but it’s long passed.”

He hiked her up so his mouth could meet hers. “I still
don’t have to like it.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck as he rolled her
beneath him. “Well, I suppose you could kiss me and make it all better.”

His head tilted to the side, and his lids lowered over
his eyes while his mouth took on a distinctly sensual tilt. “I suppose I
could.”

SOMETIMES opportunity just dropped into a woman’s lap.
Raisa eased out from under Jared’s arms. Being locked up in a pack leader’s
house while her guard/lover slept the sleep of the exhausted definitely
qualified as one of them.

She drifted soundlessly across the floor, grabbed
Jared’s shirt off the chair, and slipped her arms into the sleeves. A thrill at
her new-found strength coursed through her. Jared stirred. She suppressed the
emotion. The man was too connected to her, his emotions constantly tapping
hers, and if she wasn’t careful to stay focused, she’d ruin everything. She
couldn’t afford that. She rolled the too-long sleeves up. She’d found Ian’s
office earlier today. If she was very lucky, the information she needed to feed
the Sanctuary would be there.

Jared stirred again. She glanced toward the bed. If he
caught her, he wouldn’t be happy. He had a sense of honor that went bone deep,
and he wouldn’t ever understand why she needed to do this. Especially as she
couldn’t tell him. Couldn’t tell anyone except the mystery man who was Miri’s
mate. Miri had been wild with desperation when she’d made Raisa promise to tell
no one. She owed Miri her life and her sanity. She’d keep her promise to her.
She slipped from the room and headed down the hall.

Raisa paused at the window before Ian’s office door.
She cast out with her energy but didn’t feel anything. Easing the curtain
aside, she lifted the blind and peeked out. Muted daylight burned her eyes.
Nothing stirred beyond the porch. No sign of Creed or Ian or any other were.
That was good. The hint of twilight in the sky was not good, however. She only
had a few minutes before Jared woke.

It was a simple manipulation of energy to pop the
electronic lock. With one last look around she slipped into the office. She
scanned again for any residual energy from cameras. There was none.

The door clicked shut behind her. There was no sign of
a computer, no sign of a laptop. There were, however, five file cabinets.
Shoot! Ian would be the old-fashioned type. She closed her eyes, sensing for
any remnants of the were leader’s touch, any clue as to where she should start
searching. The file cabinet in the right corner held a faint glow.

Desperation crept up on her blind side. There had to
be something in there she could send. She was almost out of time. The Sanctuary
would demand a report, and if she didn’t have anything of import, they would
take it out on Miri. The torture they would mete out to the werewolf woman
didn’t bear thinking about. They might even kill her. After all their
experiments, the Sanctuary had all but given up creating ways to get her to
conceive.

Raisa swallowed. She had to find information. She
needed the time it would buy to find Miri’s mate. A mystery man whom she didn’t
know how to find beyond the mental imprint Miri had given her. Someone she
couldn’t even ask about for fear of alerting the man who’d betrayed Miri to the
Sanctuary. Her energy reached for Jared in an instinctive need for comfort. She
made a mental grab for it, hauling it back. She couldn’t ask Jared’s help.
Jared couldn’t be here now. She couldn’t put him in a position to betray his
friend.

Standing still, she waited to see if the call had
reached him. There was no sound from the bedroom, no disturbance in the energy
field around her. After another minute, she relaxed, grabbing the edge of the
desk for support. She so was not cut out for this. All she wanted to do was to
confess everything to Jared, give her problem to him as she’d been raised to
do, but she couldn’t. Not only had women evolved past such dependent behavior,
but there was no guarantee he’d believe her. No guarantee that he’d put Miri’s
life over her safety. No guarantee she could trust him with the information.
And right now, getting Miri out was her only imperative. Well, that and staying
alive long enough to make it happen. She approached the file cabinet.

Getting Miri out was going to take some doing. Her
proven fertility gave her the honor of being the number one hope for the Sanctuary’s
breeding program. They’d taken everything from Miri in their efforts to get her
to cooperate, used Raisa against her, but despite all her outward fragility,
Miri was one tough wolf. Nothing they had tried had broken her, but this last
thing they’d done . . . Raisa clenched her fists, remembering Miri’s haggard
expression, the flat resolution in her feverishly bright green eyes when they’d
discussed the other woman’s options. That just might break her.

Raisa clenched her fists. She wasn’t going to let that
happen. If she had to betray every wolf and vamp between here and perdition,
she’d play this out, find this mysterious mate, and make him—make him—give a
darn about Miri. She just needed to buy enough time to find the no-account.

The cabinet wasn’t locked. Not a good sign. Raisa went
through it quickly, speed-reading folders and skimming contents. Nothing.
Nothing she could use.

She crouched down and tried the next, and the next.
Nothing but birth records, health records, deeds, and a lot of other mundane
data that she couldn’t even fake into making interesting. She needed something
to feed the Sanctuary before the deadline.

Then she saw it. A faint glow peeking from under the
back edge of the cabinet. A floor safe? She levitated the filing cabinet away
from the spot, grateful for the strength Jared’s blood gave her. She didn’t
think she’d have been able to complete any of the mission the Sanctuary had
sent her on without it. Which made her wonder if they’d really expected her to
survive, because they knew how weak she was. Had used it against her
constantly, made fun of her, mocked her, tortured her. She would like to go
back just once, as she was now, and make them eat every mocking insult. That
would definitely make her feel good.

The floorboards fit seamlessly together. If it hadn’t
been for her ability to see and manipulate energy, she never would have known
from the hair-thin trace of energy that there was a panel in the floor. But she
did, and there was.

The boards lifted easily, floating to the side before
she lowered them soundlessly to the floor. Beneath was a safe. A strange color
of energy surrounded it. She eyed the energy warily. She’d never seen the like,
couldn’t see a pattern in the shimmering red-gold haze. She squatted there,
torn by indecision. She needed something. She glanced at the windows, sensing
the descent of night. She remembered the deft touch of Ian’s mind to hers. The
flash in his eyes as he’d connected. She glanced at the gold edge of the energy
surrounding the safe. Same color.

She held her hand over the hole. Nothing. Technically,
she should touch her energy to the threads spreading outward from the glow and
look for clues, but instinct held her back. She was looking at a trap, one far
more sophisticated than she’d ever seen in her limited experience. She could do
nothing with this. Tears burned the back of her eyes. She levitated the boards
back into place.

“A wise decision.”

She spun around so fast she landed on her butt. Jared
stood in the doorway, arms folded across his massive chest, naked and furious.
He would kill her for this. Vampire and were law demanded it.

I’m sorry, Miri. I wasn’t good enough.

She was never good enough.

Jared pushed away from the jamb and came toward her
one measured step at a time. “Who’s Miri?”

She couldn’t look away from his chest as he
approached. Her energy was all over him, lingering in pale glowing love bites
visible to any vampire who cared to look. She’d known what she was risking when
she had lain down with him, but she’d also known what she was up against, and
once before she died, just once, she’d wanted to know exactly what he’d shown
her—the beauty and power of her own body.

She’d used him. No way around it, and now she had to
pay the price. Raisa focused on the love bite just above his left nipple,
narrowing her eyes so that was all she could see, letting it get bigger and
bigger in her field of vision, the closer he got, until it swallowed everything
except the remnants of the passion they’d shared.

His hand came around her throat, not hurting her, but
all he had to do was close his fingers and he would crush her throat. And she
would deserve it. She closed her eyes as he lifted her. She didn’t want to see
the hatred and disgust in his face. She much preferred the tenderness and
possession she’d wallowed in as he’d been loving her.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Someone I promised to help.”

“By stealing from Ian? Betraying me?”

What did he want her to say? He saw what she was
doing. “Yes.”

Keeping her eyes closed, she built his image in her
mind, focusing on her favorite, the moments he’d spent inside her, his body
deep in hers, his mind entrenched with hers, his face showing the same caring,
the same need, the same longing that exploded within her. She built the image
and held on to it as her lifeline.

As if he realized she couldn’t speak with his hand
around her throat, Jared grabbed the front of her shirt with his other hand,
slamming her back against the wall. His image shimmied in her mind’s eye as she
hit the wall with controlled force. Pain reverberated up her back. It was
nothing compared to the pain she could feel reverberating under Jared’s fury.

He thought she’d betrayed him.

“Why?”

The question grated out at her, lashing her with
contempt and anger. And she couldn’t fight it. She had betrayed him. It didn’t
matter why; she had, and she deserved to die for it. That was right, but it
wasn’t right that Miri would. That wasn’t right at all.