Prince of Shadows (5 page)

He gave a jagged little laugh. “Nothing. You have a very . . . a very sexy ass. Especially in that dress.”

She laughed, too, but her words were bitter and full of sloppy, alcohol-induced candor. “Sure it is. What’s wrong with me? What does it take to get a man to kiss me like he wants me?”

Silence. Then a low rumble. “Ask.”

She spun to find herself so close that she had to bend back over his arm to see his face, so hard and at the same time almost stunning in the uneven light. His eyes gleamed like liquid silver. “Are you waiting for me to send you a text?” she prompted.

She heard his sharp inhalation.

“Dammit, Cale. Kiss me like you—”

His mouth slammed down over hers, devouring the rest of her words. She couldn’t remember what they were. Her entire train of thought was derailed by his fierceness and hunger.

He released her so he could scoop her face between his hands, holding her for the deep, continued plunder that searched and stroked, tasting, taking . . . oh God, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Her head spun and her knees weakened until she was clutching his jacket to keep from swooning away into an intoxicated puddle of bliss.

This was what she’d dreamed of that morning, this mad, frantic flurry of sensations. Her heart pounded in her ears. Her lungs cried out for oxygen, but she couldn’t relinquish the dizzy euphoria.

He cared for her. He desired her. He wanted her to the brink of losing control. It was all she’d thought about, longed for, wept over, and now he was hers. She could finally have him.

“Touch me,” she begged as his lips trailed down the arch of her throat. The words bubbled out without thought or restraint. “I want your hands on me. I want you inside me.” Her eyes closed, her world tumbling, she moaned his name in desperation.

The hurried pant of his breaths caught. Held. Then exploded. “Fuck!”

It wasn’t a suggestion.

Her eyes flew open when he shoved her away, making her stumble in her high heels. The dreamy clouds scattered from her fantasy as she looked up into Cale’s taut expression.

“For starters,” he grounded out, “if you want to get laid, it’s a good idea to call a guy by the right name.”

Before she could grasp his meaning, he turned his back on her and stalked inside, leaving her shivering and disoriented.

What—?

She took a few staggering steps to follow, to plead with him to explain, when everything began an unpleasant roll. She managed to grab the iron railing on the stairs leading up to the dock and swung herself around, sprawling back on the cement stairs while everything upended. She squeezed her eyes shut and gripped her lips tight to hold in the contents of her revelry. After long sweaty minutes passed, she had a jolt of clarity that shifted her thoughts from surviving the next minutes without hurling, to wishing she could die.

Lost in a tangled remembrance of that morning’s dream, she’d called him Silas.

How could she have done such a thing?

Kendra heard the sound of footsteps approaching. He was coming back. Time to think of something fast to mend the irreparable. She glanced up and froze. Because it wasn’t Cale who’d come out into the dark after her.

five

Cale went straight to the bar.

How could she come on to him like that and then . . . If she’d wanted to kick him in the balls, she’d found the most sensitive spot. That sudden, crippling hit. The shock.

Idiot. Fool. To think that she—

No thinking. He channeled all that churning into a tight fist of tension, letting it vibrate deep inside him, clenched and ready to strike.

“Hey, where’d you go?”

He slid a glance up at Wesley, who settled on the barstool beside him. Wes reared back from whatever he saw in that brief acknowledgment. “Whoa, what the—”

“Shut the hell up and buy me a drink.”

Wes motioned to the bartender, regarding Cale without sympathy. “It’s not like you’ve never been shot down before.”

He hadn’t. Not ever, since the time of his maturity. He was a Terriot prince. He’d never met a female whose knees he couldn’t spread just by making eye contact. This was the first time it had mattered. And that fiery ache was punishing.

“Just a tease,” he muttered into his beer. “Not worth my trouble.”

He wanted to mean the harsh words, but he didn’t. Kendra wasn’t to blame for his not being what she desired. She’d been pretty damn specific. He took a large swallow, choking down his pride. It wasn’t her fault that he wasn’t Silas sonofabitch MacCreedy.

Cale let his knotted aggression slip by small degrees. She was drunk and he’d pushed. He’d wanted to see things that weren’t there, and she was seeing double. A bad mix. A bad move. But that didn’t make it a no-win bad idea. He could become what she desired. He could take a page from the Saint Silas handbook and be all White Knightish and smooth. He could court her, woo her. He could . . . Who was he kidding? He was a stock four-by-four, not a Town Car. If things got in his path, he went right over them. He didn’t know any other way. Maybe he couldn’t charm her with pretty words and noble deeds, but he could damn well provide her with anything she wanted, pump a child into her in a way that would have her begging, “Thank you, sir, may I have another,” and protect her from anything that—

His head came up and turned toward the back of the club. His senses sharpened. She hadn’t come back in. He couldn’t scent her in the crowded room.

He’d left her drunk and alone in the dark. As vulnerable as a sacrificial lamb. She’d crushed his unrealistic expectations, and he’d staked her out for the wolves. Terriot wolves.

Cale was off the barstool in a hurry.

He burst through the back door, already bristling as he came upon the worst scenario imaginable.

There were four of them: Michael and three of his brutish friends. Kendra was splayed facedown on the steps with his brother straddling her. The back of her dress was split down the middle. The sight of her modest pink underwear was almost more awful than it would have been to find her nude. She made small, animal-like sounds as she struggled to escape, but Michael’s hand was fisted in her hair, preventing it.

“Get. Off. Her.”

Michael’s wild, pupil-engulfed eyes cut to Cale, and his lips drew back from fearsome teeth. “Go back inside, Cale. This is none of your business.” The other three assumed threatening poses on either side of their friend.

“The hell it isn’t, brother. You think I’m just going to walk away?”

Michael laughed. “You had your chance, and now it’s mine.”

Though that was true, Cale argued, “She doesn’t want this. She doesn’t want you.” Moving closer as he spoke.

Again, the harsh laugh of disregard as Michael’s knees clenched to keep her from squirming. “If I can take her, she’s mine. That’s how we’ve always done things. Once I’ve marked her, who’s going to give a damn if it was what she
wanted
?”

“I will. She’s mine. You’re not going to do this, Mikey.” He took another step, and the trio positioned themselves in his way.

“Watch if you like, but I’m claiming her and the crown that goes with her.” Michael nodded to his friends as he pulled Kendra up onto her hands and knees with a cruelty uncharacteristic of this younger brother he’d mentored.

She looked Cale’s way then, and he got a glimpse of terror-bruised eyes as Michael’s claws ripped through her cotton panties. The muted sound she made was his call to action after the many times he hadn’t dared come to her aid.

Cale plowed over the three who would slow him, chewing them up and spitting them out in his wake. He caught Michael about the neck. They rolled together across the blacktop and came up crouched and ready. A wicked blade appeared in Michael’s hand as the anticipation of blood and the scent of female fueled his primal fire. They circled warily.

Michael lunged, stabbing for Cale’s neck and chest until Cale grabbed the non-knife-wielding arm to twist it up behind him with a quick, hard jerk, popping joints, snapping bone.

“Stop,” he ground out, trying to defuse the situation. “What the
hell
is wrong with you? Cool down, Mikey. We don’t want to do this. Let it go before it goes too far.”

But things had already passed that point of no return.

Michael’s head lashed back, cracking into Cale’s cheekbone with a burst of pain and stars. Taking advantage of the disoriented second, the younger Terriot buried his blade in Cale’s thigh and went after his forearm with teeth snapping.

Leg buckling, Cale started to go down. He knew that once he did, he’d never get up alive. They’d tear him to pieces and then turn back to Kendra. He couldn’t let that happen. He whipped his free arm around Michael’s neck, palmed the side of his face, and twisted. As hard as he could.

The sudden slackness of his brother’s body dropped Cale to his knees. Through the haze of pain, he saw the other three fade into the darkness to slink away from any consequences as he eased Michael to the ground. He laid his head upon the still chest, breathing hard and shaking from the trickle-down of adrenaline. His teeth clenched against the anguished wail struggling to escape.

Knowing he couldn’t let grief or weakness paralyze him before he got Kendra to safety, Cale swayed to his feet and shuffled to the stairs. He went down to his good knee with a groan and touched a hand to the back of her head. She lunged forward with a blurt of alarm, all elbows and kicking feet as she fought him. He didn’t have the time or strength for gentleness as he seized her by the shoulder. “Look at me. Stop fighting. Dammit, open your eyes.”

Her damp lashes fluttered and flew up. For a moment, there was no comprehension as her hands came up to slap at his sore face, getting in some fairly decent blows before he gave her a whiplashing shake. “Kendra! Focus, or we could die here!”

His curt words had the desired effect. Her frantic breaths slowed, and her eyes cleared.“Cale?” She said his name, and everything inside him steadied.

“You can’t fall apart. We’ve got to get out of here. Fast.”

His deadly calm reached her, and she nodded, her huge eyes fixed on his.

As he shrugged out of his coat and wrapped it about her ruined dress, her gaze dropped away in shame, then riveted to his injured leg. Her pallor returned, and he was afraid she was going to lose it. But she took a deep breath and acted, fumbling around on the steps to come up with the panty hose that had been stripped off her. He watched, bemused, as she used them to tourniquet his thigh above the pumping wound, his breath hissing when she pulled tight. As her hand trembled just shy of the blade, he covered it with his own for just the briefest squeeze. “It’s okay. I got it.”

Cale jerked the knife free, and the next thing he knew, he was lying flat on his back on the steps, head swimming as he returned to consciousness, while Kendra neatly tied off the strips of her pink panties that bound a padding made from part of her torn dress.

A raspy chuckle rattled up from his chest. “That’s not exactly how I planned to get into your pants tonight.”

She gave him a wan smile. “Can you stand?”

“I’ll have to. We’re walking out the front door. Okay?”

She nodded with more confidence than he felt.

“You’re gonna hold it together, right?”

“Right,” she answered faintly.

“Help me get up.”

Easier said than done, but finally, she tucked under his arm, and he took a test hop. Not too bad.

Bad was when she got her first look at Michael. She made a soft choking noise and wobbled. Cale squeezed her hard and snarled, “Goddammit, if I can stand it, so can you. Walk!”

She stiffened, put her arm about his waist, and walked.

Cale moved as fast as he could through the club’s crowded interior. His senses swam. Sweat beaded on his face. Wesley gave them a startled and then speculative look as Cale paused to say, “Michael’s out back,” before choking unexpectedly. “You and Jamie take care of him, and don’t say anything to anyone until we have a chance to talk later. Do that for me?”

Wes put aside questions to say simply, “It’s done.”

“Thanks, man. I—” His voice broke and failed. Kendra nudged him into motion. As they stood in the shadows of the front entrance, waiting for his Jeep to be brought around, she noted his weakened leg and said quietly, “I’ll drive.”

He crawled up into the passenger seat, clicked in, and left the driving to her while his focus waxed and waned. Heat came boiling out of the vents in response to his shivering. Or, more likely, to hers.

Her chin quivered. She kept blinking and swiping at her eyes. He knew he should say something to comfort her before she put them into a tree on the lake’s dark, twisty road, but no words came to mind. What could he say? He’d left her alone.

Her soft, snagging breaths tore at his conscience. He should reach out, make some gesture. Silas Man-of-Her-Fucking-Dreams MacCreedy would have known exactly how to deal with the situation, but he couldn’t seem to move.

Cale rested his temple against the cool window glass and closed his eyes. He’d killed his brother for her. That would have to be gesture enough for now.

“Cale. We’re here.”

He blinked his eyes open and straightened in the seat.

Stopped outside the men’s dorm, Kendra took a big breath and got out, coming around to the passenger side as Cale was opening the door. She gripped his arm and managed to get under it. When he tried to pull back, she told him, “It’s all right. If anyone sees us, they’ll just think you were too drunk to walk. Which way?”

“Inside, to the right. I’m on the second floor. You can leave me at the stairs. I can manage from there.”

And they’d go their separate ways.

Her shivering started up again, along with that cold sweaty fear, as she guided him up the walk. He was moving better, probably already beginning to heal. He’d be fine on his own.

She wished she could say the same.

There was no one in the lobby. She took him as far as the stairs; as he reached for the railing, her arm tightened about him. He glanced down, his eyes darkly circled with strain. “I can make it.”

Still, she clung. Thinking of that walk in the dark, of being in her room all alone, jumping at whispers, dreading her dreams. She swallowed hard.

“Maybe you should come up. It might be safer if you stayed with me.” When he saw that she couldn’t meet his eyes, obviously afraid that he’d see her cowardice, he added, “Only until morning. It’ll be fine. And I’d . . . I’d rather not have to worry about you being alone.”

She didn’t answer for a long moment, then simply nodded.

Kendra wasn’t sure what to expect from the bachelor quarters. Cale’s room was small and self-contained: a double bed; a dresser housing a flat-screen, headphones, laptop, iPod, and a stack of dog-eared Isaac Asimov and Tom Clancy novels; a small table with two chairs in the kitchenette corner. No girlie or macho posters, no stray socks, no take-out containers or empties. Just utilitarian tidiness. And the familiarity of his scent.

Cale shut and locked the door behind them, filling the space with his presence. She couldn’t have been more relieved. He hobbled to his dresser and pulled out a T-shirt and a pair of gym shorts.

“Takes a while for the shower to get warm, but it’s got pretty good pressure.” He handed her the clothes. “You go ahead. Should have everything you need, towels, toothbrush . . .”