Jared (37 page)

His eyebrow went up at the softness in her voice. He
pushed away from the wall with a languid grace. As intertwined as their energy
was, she couldn’t miss the start of surprise and desire. She smiled and curled
her fingers in invitation. His grin broadened.

He came to her in even strides. One, two, three, and
with each step the certainty inside her grew. This was the man she’d spent her
life searching for, the man who’d always been meant to be hers, the reason her
energy had drawn her to the American West in the first place. Every step she’d
taken in her life had been designed to bring her here, to this time.

She tipped her head back as Jared’s arms came around
her. Her body fitted neatly into his. To this realization. Jared was hers. Why
she hadn’t been able to resist Caleb’s pain when he’d been thinking so hard of
his brothers and worrying. She blinked. Oh God, he didn’t know she was the one
who’d converted Caleb. She licked her lips, remembering how he’d looked that
first time she’d seen him, an avenging angel bent on delivering justice, how
he’d helped the young couple because she’d asked him to, how he’d kept her
warm. She owed him better than a lie. Even one of omission. “There’s something
I have to tell you.”

She didn’t want any more interaction between them
without him knowing.

His lips grazed her cheek, the corner of her mouth.
His need to care for her, his need for her poured over her in a blaze of hunger
that found an answering yearning in her. She brought her hands up to his back,
hugging him to her. She’d come all this way, taken all these years to find him,
and in the next second when she confessed everything, it would have all been
for nothing.

“Jared.”

“What if I tell you I don’t want to hear it?”

He caught her earlobe between his teeth.

“Then I’d have to say, you need to.”

He bit down gently. “But I don’t want to. Not if it’s
going to take this away.”

A shiver shook her from head to toe. She turned her
lips into his neck, breathing in the clean, musky scent of his skin. “You
always smell so good.”

“Not nearly as good as you do. You smell like sweetly
spiced honey.”

“Honey’s all sticky.”

He laughed. “I’ll work on a better analogy.”

She licked her lips and gathered her courage. Another
graze of his mouth over her cheek. Another buss to the corner of her mouth.
“Remember how the other night you wanted to just forget everything outside the
cave existed?” Jared asked.

“Yes.”

His fingers played with the bottom of her turtleneck,
lifting it and letting it drop, teasing her with the promise of his touch as he
tempted her with the option of not disclosing. “I’m asking for that favor for
tonight.”

“I don’t think I can offer that to you.”

His palm slid under her shirt to rest against the
hollow of her spine, the heat from his touch extending from side to side. “Why
not?”

“Because you’ll hate me for it later.”

“I could never hate you.”

“Just because you can’t imagine it, doesn’t mean it
can’t happen.”

She felt the sharpness of his talons. “Uh, sunbeam?”

“What?”

That razor-sharp talon cut downward, slicing through
cloth and conviction. “Yes, it does.”

The waistband of her jeans gave without a whisper of
protest, sliding down her hips as the hunger dug into her gut, gathering for
another strike.

His mouth closed over hers, gently, sweetly,
completely, edge to edge, seducing her past her common sense, past what she
knew she should do, beyond what was right and wrong.

This is right.

The thought pushed through her conflict.

This isn’t real, she answered back.

This is all I want.

She knew he wasn’t talking sex. He was talking about
the perfect blending that happened when they came together, the way their
energy meshed, their thoughts meshed, the way his mere presence drove away the
emptiness she’d dreaded over the years more than the pain of hunger. This was
the completeness that seeped into her soul when he held her.

She cupped his cheeks in her hands, pulling her mouth
away from his, taking his breaths as hers as she whispered, “You have to
promise even if you hate me later, you’ll remember that you didn’t want to hear
it now. That it’s your fault.”

He didn’t flinch. “I promise.”

That talon snagged the back of her shirt. It didn’t
tear as easily as her jeans, the stretchiness working against a clean cut, but
Jared didn’t seem to mind, actually rather seemed to enjoy the struggle. He was
such a contrary man.

She worked her hands up around his neck, straining up
on her toes to link her fingers behind his neck. The material gave with a
staggered rip. Cool air caressed her back. The warmth of his breath caressed
her mouth, The heat of his smile warmed her soul as he dropped his hand to her
rear, steadying her. “Need a little help?”

“Absolutely.”

With an efficiency that might have raised her brow at
any other time, he tore through the rest of her shirt. The halves fell away
from her back. His hands spanned her waist. He lifted her up. She wrapped her
legs around his hips and snuggled into his embrace. Pressing her forehead into
his throat, her groin into his erection, she let him support her. Her
fingernails sank into his neck. The scent of his blood spiced the air. The musk
of his arousal surged to the heart of her own.

His hand cupped the back of her head, wrapping in the
strands of her hair. “Sweet little sunbeam, warm me.”

She’d give him anything. “Just tell me how.”

“You’re doing fine just the way you are, but if you
could see your way to slipping your arms out of those sleeves, the temperature
would go up a degree to two.”

She smiled. He wanted to feel her naked skin against
his. “I just bet it would.” She scraped her fangs over the artery in his neck.
Absorbing his shudder against the points of their connection, his anticipation
heightening her own. She tugged the right sleeve off and then the left. Not
pulling the material away from between them, just letting it pool between their
chests, loving his growl at the insubstantial denial. With another growl he
reached between them. With an upward yank, her shirt flew through the air and
landed on the floor. His followed close behind, and then it was her turn to
shudder as her breasts sank into the crisp mat of hair on his chest.

“Yes.” Jared dragged his chest back and forth against
hers, tormenting her nipples with the exquisite abrasion. “Give that to me.”

Locking his hands on the back of her head, he held her
still as he walked backward three steps, the reverberation of each step another
heated pulse to the hunger throbbing between her thighs. His shoulders hit the
wall, jarring her. She blinked as the world came into focus.

“No, baby. Stay with me.” With a skim of his callused
fingers down her spine, Jared re-centered her focus on the energy arcing
between them. “Bite me.”

Her fangs tingled and ached, but she didn’t
immediately obey. He wasn’t the only one that enjoyed teasing. She ran her
tongue over her lips. “Isn’t that supposed to be an insult?”

He canted her head to the side, pressing her mouth to
his throat. “Between us, it’s an invitation.”

“An erotic one at that,” she whispered against his
pulse, feeling it catch and then race as her meaning sank in.

“Hell yes.”

Goose bumps sprang up against her lips. She tested the
intriguing roughness with her tongue, smiling when Jared arched his neck,
giving her free access to run amok. She licked daintily, preparing him, while
pleasuring herself with the salty flavor of his skin, the sensation of his
heart beating against her mouth.

“Son of a bitch.” Another shudder shook his big frame,
and she smiled as pure feminine delight flowed through her at the knowledge
that she could make a man this big and this strong weak at the knees.

Some of her joy must have spilled over to him because
an aggressive surge of masculine demand came right back at her. Hot and thick
with desire, it melded with her own lust, driving it higher. His hand jerked
her fangs to his neck. That wonderfully addictive flavor that was so uniquely
his poured into her.

It was all over for her then. She couldn’t hold back,
couldn’t tease. Need slammed her gut, backed by another surge of masculine
demand. She bit. His shout of Yes! ricocheted through her mind. He held her
close against him as she fed, surprisingly, more tenderness than lust in the
stroke of his energy, his hands. She clung to that softness as hunger and
passion swamped her, hoping the bond between them would be enough to carry them
through the revelations yet to come. She dug her hands into the back of Jared’s
neck and pressed herself closer. It had to be. She didn’t know if she could
survive if she had to return to that awful aloneness.

Never.

He drew her almost painfully close.

You’ll never be alone again.

She closed her eyes and hoped it was true.

RAISA was limp and sated beside him, exhaustion
tugging at her safeguards. Her right hand draped across his chest. Her fingers
swirled lazy patterns in his chest hair. Jared covered her hand with his,
feeling her smile stretch against his chest. He had the illogical impulse to
stay like this, to not bring up anything they needed to talk about. To just
linger here in the bed, letting the intimacy insulate them from the real world.

“It would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

Apparently, Raisa’s guards weren’t the only ones that
were lowered.

“Yup.”

“But we have to talk.”

“Yeah, we do.”

A little sting in his chest as her finger caught on
his hair and then a turn of her head as she pressed an apologetic kiss to his
pectoral. “You need to know about Miri.”

“Among other things.”

She kissed him again. “She’s a were.”

“Not seeing the reason for secrecy.”

“She’s mated to a vampire.”

The shock of that immobilized him. Vampires and weres
had a competitive relationship. And in the last six months in which alliances
had become a necessity, he’d learned a lot about the history of both and one
fact stood out. The two never mated. The reason was simple. Leadership in the
were world passed through the female to her mate. A male vampire marrying up
with a were female from an Alpha family would put the power of the pack outside
the species. Not something anyone was comfortable with.

“Breathe, Jared.”

He had been holding his breath.

“What pack is Miri from?”

“I don’t know. We thought it was safer that way.”

“Sounds excessive.”

Her fingers wrapped around his, squeezing. “You won’t
say that when you hear the rest.”

How much worse could the rest be? “Just spit it out.”

“Miri had a baby.”

“Son of a bitch!” Worse didn’t begin to cover it. If
the child was female, every pack leader in the world would want the baby and
the father dead because of the threat they represented. Potential vampire rule
of were society. As a fertile female, another mate would be found for her,
whether she wanted it or not, but this mating would not be allowed. “Tell me
the child was male.”

She stared at him, her big brown eyes wide and
pleading.

“I don’t know for sure.”

“But?”

“I don’t think so; otherwise, Miri wouldn’t be so
adamant about me not telling anyone.” Raisa’s nails dug into his hand. “They
took her baby, Jared. They took the baby away as soon as it was born, and the
things they’ve done to her since . . .”

He kissed the top of her head, stroking his energy
over hers in pulses of comfort. “I know what they do.”

And it wasn’t pretty.

The rest of it wasn’t, either. If the Sanctuary had
gotten rid of the baby, that would solve the problem and the alliances the
Renegades had formed would stay solid. At least maybe long enough to win the
war. He wanted to think of that as a solution, but babies were meant to be
spoiled, not tortured. And women were meant to be cherished, not abandoned to
anyone’s fanatical pursuits.

Rai’s energy smoothed back over his. In an apology and
a release from responsibility.

I’m sorry.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“This isn’t your fight.”

“It’s everyone’s fight.”

“This will ruin everything.”

“Then it will ruin it. But when it’s done, Miri and
the baby will be safe.”

She went so still, he doubted she was even breathing.
“You’ll try?”

“We’ll all try.”

She was shaking her head before he finished speaking.
“You can’t tell the weres.”

“Not all of them.” He was in agreement on that. No one
outside the Circle J could know. “But I will tell my brothers and the
McClarens.”