ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (153 page)

I smiled and looked out the tinted window. He was right, I usually ended loving it even when I didn’t want to go.

“You know me so well,” I said to him.

“It’s my job,” he answered. It was  standard answer he gave me. A safe one.

Sometimes I wonder what else he would have said if it was just me and him. If our circumstances were different. If he was just a boy, and I was just a girl. I knew it wouldn’t be the same. He had so much more to him than the few words he spoke. Sometimes I wanted to see that side of him.

We drove into a crowd of people with cameras flashing like lightening.

“Dammit, how the paparazzi always know I’m coming…” I said.

Colt got out and held the door open for me. I stood up and smiled, posing for a picture or two. The lights were everywhere and some people called out questions that I ignored.

A shadow moved between the cameras, and I suddenly felt cold, despite the sun. My chest tightened and the air around me smelled suddenly sour, pinching my nose.

“Get me out of here,” I said to Colt. “They’re harassing me.”

It wasn’t entirely true. I could have posed much longer. But that shadow scared me. Two red eyes bore into my soul before Colt’s body blocked my view, and he escorted me inside, his hand on the small of my back.

“Thank you for that,” I said when we were safely inside. He took my bag for me, and we walked toward the station where my stylists were waiting. I tried to shake off the icy finger that traced shivers down my spine.

When I sat down I glanced toward Colt, ever ready and on guard. I could still feel his hand on my back like a ghost of himself he’d left behind. He glanced at me and smiled, a curl of his lips that was gone almost as fast as it came, and I wasn’t even sure it had happened.

My stylist started asking me questions about what I preferred, and distracted me. When I looked up at Colt again his back was to me, watching, waiting, and the moment that was between us had dissipated into thin air.

I hadn’t always been the nervous type. There was a time when I was like every other girl out there – full of dreams insecure but hopeful, and ready to take on the world. When a man out of the shadows had approached me and told me I’d had a gift, I’d gone against my natural instincts to get away from him.

He hadn’t been scary or creepy or anything like that. He’d been an ordinary man like any other, with a pleasant sort of face and a business proposition. It was the feeling that hung around him that I should have known to avoid. The idea in the back of my mind that I would be playing with fire. That men like those didn’t just offer girls like me something without asking something in return. But I’d been young and foolish.

“Not for right now, of course,” he’d said when I’d pointed out I’d still had two years of high school left. “But it’s never too early to hone your talents so that one day you can just step into your role.”

It had sounded fantastic. A dreamer like with the opportunity to hit the ground running. He’d told me he wanted me to attend a meeting he was leading that evening, a place where he’d show me what it was like in his world.

I’d agreed to attend. The hall had been dark and something dirty had lurked around the edges of everything, although with my eyes I could clearly see the place was clean. More people filtered in after me, all dressed in dark colors. Some wore robes, some wore suits or dresses. It wasn’t until after they’d locked the doors that I’d realized what it was that had made them all look the same.

They’d all had the same eyes. Deep, haunting. The suggestion of dark rings underneath them, although none of them had, they’d all had flawless skin.

When they proceedings had started they’d started chanting, and I’d realized where I was. This hadn’t been a business proposition as much it had been a trick to get me to attend a coven meeting for the witches in the area.

I’d heard of witches. I’d lived in a house with one. My mother had been a witch, a pretty powerful one, before she’d disappeared and my father had whisked me away. This wasn’t new to me.

What they managed to draw out of me was new. I’d wanted to run at first, but before the end of the ceremony I’d realized I’d had a natural talent. A knack for dark forces. Spells came to mind before I heard them on the lips of the others. When someone had thrown one at me, a weird concoction of words and sounds that sounded like the scrape of metal on concrete, I’d braced myself and a force had bounced back from me, knocking the witch off her feet.

“What was that?” I’d asked the man closest to me.

“Your calling,” he’d said.

It hadn’t been hard for me to slot into the group of novices they were training. Three other girls like me, and two boys that seemed much younger, and very much foreign in their own bodies. The spells had been easier for me than for the others. I’d been stronger from the start, and after two months of meeting once a week, the same man had approached me again.

“You have talent,” he’d said. “I can see it a mile away. It’s what I saw in you the first time. But talent isn’t enough. It’s time you commit yourself to the coven.”

It had been a big request, but I’d considered it. I’d felt good about who I was and what I was capable of. Until one night I joined the mature witches. Their chanting had been different than I’d seen until now. The magic in the air had been so heavy it had weighed me down, stopped me from breathing. And when the high priestess arrived, she’d walked up to me with black eyes that were pure evil. When she’d grabbed my chin her hands had been like ice, frozen, and when she’d looked into my eyes it had felt like she could see every fear, every bit of pain, everything that had been sacred, that made me, me.

“Yes, she’ll do,” she’d said. And then she’d produced a knife.

A blood sacrifice, that was what she had wanted. To claim me and tie me to the coven forever. And that had been where I’d realized if I gave in to them, it would be the end of me. I’d yanked back, breaking out of her hold and she’d been surprised. She couldn’t have me. I’d flung the closest spell I’d had at her, and she’d stumbled backward. The rest of the coven had gasped. I’d caught a whisper floating in the air that for that insult, and for refusing the biggest compliment in the history of covens, I’d have to die.

I didn’t know how I’d gotten out of there, but I had. And I’d been running ever since. My father had been murdered shortly after, and I’d headed to Vegas where there were always so many people I couldn’t be singled out as long as I stayed in a crowd.

I shuddered and focused on my reflection in the mirror. The person I was now, my black hair, my altered nose, and all my bodyguards – they hadn’t found me yet. Those red eyes in the crowd earlier had brought all of the memories back.

I hoped to god it had just been a fanatic fan. I couldn’t tell anyone what had happened, what I was running away from. I never knew who I could trust and who I couldn’t, and there were too many people that had personal contact with me on a regular bases. No, I believed that even if Colt didn’t know, he would be able to keep me safe. He was the type of man that would throw himself in front of a bullet for me.

I felt warm inside just thinking about it. That kind of dedication, it was very similar to what I wanted in a man someday. If that day ever came.

Colt

Something was in the air. Something thick and foreboding, like a fog rolling in, but the air was clear and visibility reached as far as my own eyes could. But it was there.

I’d learned a long time ago not to trust what I was seeing and hearing. I had exceptional sight and hearing, being a lycanthrope, but still there were other creatures that could slip through. No, I relied on the sickening twist in my gut, the tingle on my skin, the crawling at the back of my skull, too. Those things told me when real danger was close, because if it could slip past my eyes and ears, it was dangerous enough for me to have to kill it.

I took a deep breath, sniffing the air. The smell of perfume pinched my nose and I blew out again before I inhaled, trying to smell around the fake smell of flowers. Gemma was surrounded by a handful of people. Count the camera men, light engineers, digital editor and agent, she was practically in a crowd. But something out there was after her. And it was waiting. I could feel it.

I glanced over at Gemma. She was dressed on a golden dress that wrapped around her body so tightly it traced every curve and valley. Like saran wrap. Her skin was a bronze color and her eyes were made up with colors that reminded me of black smoke. She smiled and posed, pulling her shoulders back, leaning forward. She pouted, smiled, pouted again. They set a fan on her hair and it flew up in the air.

Gemma was completely at home in the limelight. She complained about the terrible lot her life had brought, the pains of being so popular they wouldn’t grant her peace. But I knew deep down inside she loved it. She loved Photoshop that could take away the tiniest imperfection – not that I thought she had any. She loved the fan mail even though she hardly read it herself, her agent had a team that did that for her.

She loved that she was in the tabloids even if she just went shopping. Most of all, she loved that she was as invincible, untouchable. I sighed. If only that was true.

Between poses Gemma glanced my way and her eyes, emerald green and deep as the ocean, looked into my soul. A jolt of electricity traveled through my body. Bedroom eyes, that’s what my father, rest his soul, would have called those. When she smiled again at the camera, it reached all the way to her eyes.

“I think we’ve got what we need,” the photographer finally said, and Gemma wilted. She stepped down from the platform and out of the light, and the stylists went to work transforming her back into herself again. This was the most fascinating part of all. I was a lycanthrope in a mystical world where nothing was what it seemed. Every creature I knew could change its appearance one way or another. And here in the human world, Gemma was doing almost the same thing. She wasn’t dealing with just one side of herself any more than I was.

“Are you ready to get going?” I asked when she walked to me, balancing on her wedges again.

She nodded. “I’m drained. Can we slip out the back? I really don’t feel like facing more cameras, I’ve had enough for one day.” She put her hand on my arm and her skin burned me through my black blazer. I nodded.

I let the driver know to meet us out back, and I led Gemma to a door that led out to a delivery area. The sun was bright after the darkness and artificial lighting inside, and we both blinked. I looked around. The car was nowhere to be found.

“I think Claude’s fighting the masses,” I said. Sometimes he had to push through a crowd of reporters even when Gemma wasn’t with him because someone had recognized his plates. The paparazzi and tabloids would stop at nothing.

“Do you think—“ Gemma started but a dark shadow appeared from the side of the building with a hiss like a boiler pipe had broken, and cut her off. I stepped in front of her instinctively.

The shadow had red eyes, and as it moved closer it took the shape of a man. He was tall and lanky, with arms and legs that looked like they’d been stretched out. He moved like he wasn’t sure what to do with it all, like he wasn’t used to being in this form. His face was bony and narrow, and his skin was so white he could have been dead. His eyes blazed a brilliant red before it simmered down again to a dull brown. I knew what this man was.

“Get back inside,” I ordered Gemma. She nodded, listening to me, and disappeared through the door. It banged shut behind her. I didn’t know if this one was alone, but I couldn’t risk Gemma seeing what was about to happen next.

I’d recognized this man for a shape shifter the moment I’d seen him take form from a smoky cloud. To humans it looked like they had just struggled to see him until he’d stepped out of the alley. Werewolves understood what shifting meant, and what shape shifters could do. They liked to travel as fog or as smoke, something you wouldn’t notice until it was on top of you. It had changed to a person when it had seen me. No point in pretending when we both know.

It stared longingly at the door where Gemma had disappeared.

“Pity you had to go spoil the fun,” he said in a voice that sounded like it had a reverb setting to it. A lagging echo dragged behind every word. “It would have been so much more fun keeping her around to watch the show.”

“Just keep talking, buddy,” I said. My own voice sounded a lot more like a growl. The sound of his voice alone was working me up into a rage. I could feel the wolf stir inside of me, waking up. It responded to anger, and if I became angry enough, it came out to play without my permission. The wolf side of me was pure animal. Look an animal in the eye and challenge him on something and you were bound to get a fight.

“I always thought she was quite pretty. Such a little wisp of a person in real life, don’t you think? Looks much larger on television.”

I didn’t answer. Instead I turned with him as he tried to circle me. I never turned my back on an enemy.

“Quite clever of her to get a werewolf as a bodyguard. Covering all her bases, I see. Not just a pretty face.”

He kept making remarks about her looks, and that pissed me off. I didn’t like it when people spoke about her that way. Too many celebrities were painted as objects, something men could perv over, and I didn’t like it. Gemma was different. She didn’t just sleep with anyone that she fancied. She had standards and she took care of herself. I hated when she was placed in the same bracket as some other people that had been on the news lately.