Mine to Claim (Shadow Shifters: Damaged Hearts) (8 page)

While I struggled to get my words out something unexpected happened. Aidan’s fingers found mine. In the silence he extended his arm, lifting mine. Looking up I could see the slices of moonlight coming through the window blinds lacing through our fingers. Aidan clasped my hand tightly, not saying a word, not really needing to. When he guided our arms back down to the bed I was still blinking, trying to figure out what all this meant. What I felt was as if a shield had popped into place, completely covering me from Rory’s words, my friends’ actions, and everything bad that had ever happened to me. I inhaled slowly, felt the trickle of a bothersome tear etching down my face to land inside my ear. Swallowing deeply I opened my mouth and the words continued.

“He’d been almost brutal in his persistence, probing and grabbing, even biting me on the shoulder when I’d first begun to fight back. The mark is still there,” I whispered, thinking about the bumpy line of flesh that had never healed completely but was thankfully hidden by wearing clothes with thick straps in the summer months.

“Rebecca didn’t think pressing charges was a good idea and to prove her point she ran right home and told her parents what I was planning to do. They called Rory’s parents and before dinner that night all of the parents were sitting in my living room discussing why I shouldn’t spread those vicious rumors about Rory. Why it was so important for Rory and me to stay together, so financially important for all of our families. So I didn’t press charges and I didn’t break up with Rory. But he and Rebecca and the rest of our group made every day of my life a living hell from that moment on.”

“What? Your friends turned on you too? None of them believed you or supported you?”

He sounded incredulous at the thought. I guess it was a hard thing to swallow; believe me, I had been the one doing all the swallowing at the time and it wasn’t easy.

“I was no longer one of them in spirit, just out of necessity. So for appearances Rory and I were still together, but he flirted with other girls, even had sex with them. One time he and Rebecca even made me watch. He said that I should take notes of what a real woman acts like.” Tears flowed freely then, like a dam inside me had finally broken. My chest heaved as breathing became an issue, but I didn’t make a sound, I didn’t sob or whine, just let the tears flow.

Aidan never released my hand, he didn’t move at all, but there was this huge tension that sort of lingered over us like a black cloud. Way to officially break the mood, I thought as I finally gave in to a sniffle. After too many moments of silence went by I lifted my free hand and wiped at my eyes. Then I tried to sit up, intent on grabbing my jacket and calling a cab to take me back to the dorm.

But Aidan didn’t release my hand. So when I sat up, he only pulled me back down. He rolled over then so that part of his body was on top of part of mine. Moonlight continued to slash through the blinds, eerie lines of light along his still too handsome face. A muscle ticked in his jaw, his eyes had grown to that ominously dark color again, his brow was drawn, and my breath hitched.

“He was a total jerk and he deserved to have his ass kicked from Seattle to Florida and back again. And those you called your friends were no better than he was. Where I come from he would have been handled appropriately.”

His words were spoken so slowly, so succinctly and so filled with rage and contempt I could barely take another breath. His fingers had grown tight in mine, the part of his body I could feel was laced with tension and for the briefest moment I was afraid.

Aidan shook his head. “Don’t be afraid, Grace. You don’t ever have to be afraid of me. I will never do anything to hurt you.”

Said the guy dressed in all black who was glaring at me like he could and would kill at the drop of a dime. My heart hammered without any coercion from me because I couldn’t speak, didn’t know what to say. Fight or flight should have been the next instinct to kick in, but I didn’t move.

“I can’t hurt you.” Aidan spoke again, his voice a couple decibels softer this time as he lowered his forehead to mine. “And I won’t let anybody else hurt you.
A minha outra metade. Meu companheiro
.”

Again, I was speechless. I understood everything he’d said except the last part. I thought it may have been Spanish, which I had studied in the ninth grade, but translation wasn’t working for me at the moment. I was such a dweeb to not be able to say anything after dumping my whole tragic life’s story on this guy I barely knew. I felt like crap and then again, I felt kind of special thanks to the words of his I knew. Nobody had ever felt the need to protect me before. Not my parents or my friends, nobody. My parents wanted to control me, plain and simple. They wanted to dictate everything I did right down to the clothes I wore, but they never protected me, not when I needed them to. I wasn’t sure I needed Aidan’s protection right at this moment, but damn, it was good to know he was offering it and in such a sexy, melodramatic sort of way.

What I did next would go down in my personal history as the moment Grace Kincaid became the real and true Grace Kincaid.

I lifted my free hand to cup Aidan’s cheek. “Thank you,” I whispered, kissing his lips softly. “Thank you very much.”

I spent the night with Aidan. We both lay on our sides, fully clothed, except we’d taken off our boots. He had one arm cupped under his head, the other wrapped tightly around my waist. I scooted back against him, loving the warmth and even the feel of his desire for me pressed snugly against my back.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” he said quietly.

I didn’t know what time it was, we’d been talking on and off about different things for a while. I now knew that he didn’t care for hot beverages and loved his motorcycle more than he loved sitting at bars drinking. Now, it seemed I was about to learn something more about the one they called a recluse, but I tentatively called a friend.

“Where are you supposed to be?” I asked, letting my fingers dance along his knuckles. I liked touching him and over the past few hours had grown used to the freedom he allowed me to do so.

“I want to be free to decide,” was his cryptic answer.

He gave those sometimes, answers that I knew had a greater meaning but that he refused to provide. Luckily for him, I could sort of relate to what he was saying in his roundabout way.

“Once I graduated from high school I was free to decide where I wanted to go to college. That was news to my parents and they hated the idea of me coming all the way to Victory just to go to school. I had a full scholarship so I didn’t need them to write any checks for me. I made the decision and moved and I’m very proud of taking that step. If you are where you want to be you shouldn’t feel bad about it,” I told him, like I was in any position to be offering advice.

“There are things in the way,” he continued.

His other hand had moved to my hair. He fingered the strands, let them fall, then lifted them again. At one point I thought I heard him sniff them, but I wasn’t totally sure and didn’t want to get freaked out by it if he had.

“What type of things?”

“Family. Loyalty. Responsibilities. The
Ètica
. They’ve been etched in my mind since birth. Each time I close my eyes I can see them as plain as day. I am reminded of what I should be doing and where I should be.”

That sounded way too serious and I wasn’t sure how to react, so I turned over and looked at him.

“Do you like where you are right now? I mean, right at this very moment, are you content with where you are?”

The corner of his mouth lifted and his hand flattened on my stomach. “I like being here with you.”

I smiled then, as if someone held a camera in my face and said, “Say cheese.” I know it had to be a goofy as hell grin, but I couldn’t help it. “I like being here with you, too.”

He leaned over and kissed me softly on the lips then whispered,
“Por quanto tempo ela dura.”

I didn’t get the chance to ask any more questions because Aidan was kissing me once again. Long, deep kisses that left my breasts tingling, my thighs clasping tightly to soothe that annoying pang between my legs. I rubbed Aidan’s biceps, loving the feeling of pure strength there. When he lay on his back, pulling me on top of him, I let one of my legs slip between his. He cupped my butt and I pushed a hand up beneath his shirt to feel the warmth of his flesh. Our kisses continued, mesmerizing me, and driving both of us to the edge quicker than I think even Aidan expected. When he tucked my head beneath his chin and whispered, “Sleep,” I did, because for the first time in my life I felt like I was exactly where I belonged and I didn’t give a damn who said what about it.

CHAPTER 8

Aidan

No exposure.

The two words rang in my ears from the moment I woke up with Grace in my arms to the seconds after I watched her walk into her dorm building. I knew returning to the campus was a risk. Hell, staying in Victory when the cops were looking for me was a risk, one I shouldn’t be so willing to take. But I couldn’t leave her, not without touching her, tasting her, one more time.

Now that I’d had that time, I should go. I should head back to my apartment, get the few things that I had, and leave this place for good. That’s what Rome had advised when he called me yesterday. The East Coast Faction Leader had told me to leave at that moment and head straight for Havenway, the Shifter Headquarters he was building. That was the last place I wanted to go, the last thing in this world I wanted to be.

Unfortunately, lying in that bed last night staring up at the old dingy ceiling while Grace slept in my arms had hammered home one crucial fact. It didn’t matter how much I wanted to denounce my heritage, how I most times despised what I was born to be, the fact remained that I was different. I wasn’t totally human and therefore had no business wanting, almost needing, the contact with this human female.

That in and of itself was exposure and Rome had no idea.

As for Grace, she was also clueless as to who she’d lain with, with whom she had almost had sex.

Dammit!

I’d never been so glad for a prior bad experience in my life. Although I really was ready to catch a flight to Seattle and beat the living hell out of that punk-assed Rory for what he’d put Grace through. I was glad she’d stopped us, stopped me from making another colossal mistake. Having sex with her would start a chain of events I’d never be able to undo. Mating for us was not like human one-night stands, or at least I knew it wouldn’t be for me. Not with her.

The cat, the jaguar, that lingered just beneath the surface of my skin had made it known that she was the one, she was our other half, our
companheiro
. As if that had not been confirmation enough, her scent had sealed the deal. As it permeated through my body last night, the cat inside had purred, writhing in pleasure in the obvious connection. It didn’t seem to care that she was a human and not a Shadow Shifter. I, on the other hand, had to care about that. I had to care that the laws of the
Ètica
dictated that no Shadow Shifter should expose him- or herself to a human, that we should remain separate and apart from this species, while living right beneath their noses.

It was a ridiculous law, but binding nonetheless even though we’d long since migrated from our home in the Gungi Rainforest in Brazil. We were still bound by them. Shackled and held captive by them was more like it. This was why we were trained so efficiently, why we studied so long and so hard before being allowed to live freely around the world. We had to learn how to blend in seamlessly, to look and act like a human, knowing full well we would never be like them. It was for their protection, we were taught. They needed us here to protect them from the ones like us that had their own rules and agendas. It was such bullshit I wanted to punch something. I wanted to yell at how stupid and unfair the entire setup was. But what would that prove, who would it help?

Instead, I grit my teeth and kicked up my bike’s engine. I knew what I had to do, and no matter how much I detested the idea. I knew there was no other choice.

About fifteen minutes later I rode around my apartment building. I’d pulled my helmet down so that my face couldn’t be seen. Nothing of me could be seen actually, as my jacket reached all the way down to the gloves I’d slipped on my hands. My pants hung over my boots and the chill in the air had prompted me to slip on a turtleneck when I’d awakened beside Grace.

Grace.

No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get her out of my mind. I wanted nothing more than to stay in that warm bed, entwined in her, listening to her breathe, smelling the sweet scent of her hair. Yes, my body had remained hard for her all night, yet there had been something more than physical reaction. There had always been something more.

After the third ride around the block and not seeing any police cars I opted for a more subtle encounter. The officers could already be inside or on their way out after checking the place again. I didn’t really know and a part of me didn’t give a damn. I knew I could handle those officers if need be, I was a trained killer after all.

Still, I drove around to the back parking lot, riding my bike right through the cement parking space blockers into the grassy area just beyond. About ten feet farther back was a line of trees. It wasn’t a dense forested area, just a patch of wooded land that the apartment construction apparently hadn’t needed to mow down. I came back here sometimes when I needed to think, to feel just a little of what I’d left behind. There were bigger areas like the national parks, which were a couple hours away, where I would go to run, to stretch, and let my cat be free. But when I needed a quick fix, a second to simply be who and what I was born to be, I came here.

Cutting the engine, I parked my bike in the deepest part of the brush, pulling off my helmet and inhaling deeply. Then I walked back to the edge of the trees, sat down, and waited for night to fall, for the cover of darkness to assist what would be my last act in this place.

While I waited I thought of Grace, of what might have been and my chest ached. My temples throbbed, nostrils flared, and I roared, loud and long, sharp teeth pricking my lips. She was mine, I knew without a doubt, mine to love, to claim, to mate. And I couldn’t have her.