Sarai's Fortune (17 page)

She swallowed and looked back down, quiet for a moment. Zac stroked her hair with a gentle hand, waiting.

“What I didn’t see was that, after he killed my father, he also slaughtered my mother when she refused to be his. You see, in his mind he had won her.”

“Did you actually see it happen?”

She shook her head. “They had left me with a friend who lived close by. When they didn’t come home, I knew what had happened. I was hysterical, and Gloria, the lady watching over me, couldn’t figure out why.”

She twisted a button on his shirt in an absentminded way. “It wasn’t until the next night that someone from the Carstairs Dare showed up at her door. They let Gloria know what had happened, that I would go live there. They offered for her to join as well, but Gloria was too wild and too old to change her ways.”

“How did they know you were there?”

Sarai gave a shake of her head. “I was five. I don’t really remember. I knew Walter Carstairs had ordered them to come bring me back. In my visions, I never saw the face of the man who had murdered my parents. All I knew was that he had a crescent-shaped birthmark on his left side, just below his heart. It wasn’t until fifteen years later that I saw that birthmark again…on Walter Carstairs.”

“Geez,” Zac breathed. “At least I faced my parents’ killers and knew what was motivating them.”

Sarai shifted a little bit in his arms. “Andie told me about that once. How old were you?”

“Eleven. Old enough to understand. I also had somewhere to go, people to take care of me. They sure as hell weren’t the people responsible. I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”

“I worked it out, in the end, in my own way. I knew I would never be the one to take on Walter, but I found a way to take him out. My gift might be a curse, but one that can come in useful sometimes.”

Zac didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t blame her for engineering revenge on the man who not only had taken her parents, but whose son had tormented her for years.

“I promised myself I would never let my children grow up without parents. For a long time, I thought that meant I would never have children.”

She tipped her head to look up at him again, her blue eyes searching his. “Have you ever thought about having children?”

Zac shifted, not all that comfortable with this line of questioning. At the same time, this was the most she’d ever spoken about herself, and he wasn’t about to stop her. So he told her the truth.

“I never thought I’d find the right woman.”

“I know what you mean.”

“I bet. It would be difficult for you to have kids with another woman.”

Sarai chuckled. “Only if we wanted them to have both our genes. Although that’s possible these days too, I guess. But you knew what I meant.”

“Where’s all this coming from?” Zac asked. “Did you see something today that scared you?”

“Nothing that puts us in immediate danger…and nothing I’m ready to talk about. Yet. It just caught me off guard. Took some thinking about.”

Zac wanted to press her, hear all the details. However, he also knew from Andie, and now his own experience, that Sarai only shared her visions when she felt it would help lead to a better future. He guessed that wasn’t currently the case.

The click of the opening door alerted Sarai to Zac’s return. That and the mouth-watering scents of the Italian food he’d picked up for dinner.

“Hi,” she called without looking up from her e-reader. She sat on a chrome stool pulled up to the black marble kitchen counter.

He dropped several bags of takeout on the counter and started pulling the food out. He glanced at her and she couldn’t miss how his eyes traveled over her figure. “Nice dress.”

Sarai felt a warm glow at his words. She’d ordered a bunch of clothes online, since most of hers were still in the first apartment. She’d decided she was tired of boring old conservative stuff. Today she was in a sundress—red with white polka dots. She liked it, felt feminine in it. She liked how Zac’s eyes seemed glued to her figure in it.

With a thump Zac placed a brown box in front of her.

“What’s this?” She looked at him with raised brows.

“It’s for you,” he muttered before he made an abrupt about-face and headed to his room.

“I kinda figured that,” she called after him. He didn’t reply.

Sarai shook her head with a small smile. She guessed Zac was an uncomfortable gift giver.

Curious, she grabbed a pair of scissors out of the knife block and cut the tape on the box. Inside, under a pile of styrofoam peanuts, Sarai found several items. There were throwing knives of several types. She didn’t know enough about them to distinguish them other than by shape and color. Then, under those, were various different sheaths. Straps for her knives that she assumed could go around her thighs, around her waist, one that looked like a gun holster, even a sleeve for her arm.

After pulling everything out, she stared at the pile of goodies in shock. Then Sarai looked at where Zac had disappeared into his room. She followed and opened his door without knocking. He wasn’t in the bedroom, but she could hear to shower running. She leaned against the doorjamb, arms and ankles crossed, and waited.

She didn’t have too long to stand there. A few moments later, Zac appeared rubbing a towel over his wet hair, another towel slung low around his hips.

He stopped when he saw her.

Sarai bit her lip. She stepped inside and closed the door. Leaning back against it, she clicked the lock.

Zac raised his eyebrows.

“So…” she murmured. “You think a set of throwing knives and strappy things are the way to a woman’s heart?” She kept a straight face. With difficulty.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “No.”

“No?”

He shook his head. “I think a set of throwing knives and sheaths are the way to save a woman’s life. If she happens to be you.”

“Well, let me tell you exactly what I think about that,” she said in a voice she hoped conveyed some kind of anger.

She stalked across the room to stand in front of him. Zac held himself very still, watching her closely. His expression guarded.

Taking advantage of all her training, Sarai reached out and shoved. Hard. Not expecting it, Zac landed on his back on the bed with a muffled
oomf
. Before he could say anything, she was on top of him. Taking his face in her hands, she got right down to his level.

“I love them,” she whispered, before she angled her lips across his in a scorching kiss.

****

They found George at the kitchen table eating when they finally emerged from the bedroom. He glanced at them, face blank.

“Found the food on my own. I was too hungry to wait around.”

Zac held in a chuckle as Sarai’s cheeks stained a deep red. “Uh…okay, George,” she mumbled. Then she hustled over to dish up some for herself.

Zac followed at a slower pace. He still couldn’t believe a simple gift had triggered
that
reaction from Sarai. What woman went gaga over knives, anyway? But he unexpectedly found her actions both adorable and incredibly hot.

He’d sort of expected her to be offended. She graced his bed each night now, and the first gift he’d ever given her was throwing knives. He didn’t count her e-reader. At the very least, he’d thought she might think of it as coming from her protector, rather than from her lover. He’d never expected her to jump him.

Without a doubt, she kept him on his toes.

Their stolen time together had even let him forget, just for a moment, the bigger issues plaguing them. As soon as he sat down at the dinner table, Zac wasted no time in getting straight to the point.

“I caught Kyle Carstairs’s scent today.”

The next instant, he wished he’d been a little less abrupt in his delivery. Sarai’s spoon clattered to her plate as her face leached of all color.

George glared at him.

“Are you sure?” she whispered through chalky-hued lips.

Zac held her gaze as he slowly nodded. “I caught it across the way from our building. He’s been close.”

“How do you know it’s not some other cougar?”

Zac hated to extinguish the small light of hope in her eyes. “I caught his scent the day Carstairs challenged Andie and Jaxon. Even chased him down when he ran like the coward he is. I’d recognize it anywhere.”

Sarai’s expression fell. After a moment she pushed away her untouched food. She jerked out of her chair to circle the room. “What do we do?”

Zac moved to intercept her pacing. He held her shoulders with his hands. “It’s not clear if he knows you’re here or not. He may just be watching me.”

Sarai’s expression went all vague. He recognized her attempt to access a vision. After a few minutes, her focus returned to him.

“Any luck?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It involves me, so it’s a black hole.”

Dejection was written in the pull of her lips, the slump of her shoulders. He pulled her in close so he could wrap his arms around her, resting his chin on top of her head. “I won’t let anything happen to you. He’ll have to go through me first.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she muttered into his shirt.

Zac leaned back from her a little bit in order to see her face. “What is it about that creep that scares you so much?”

As far as he could tell, Kyle was all bark and no bite. Or, for a cougar shifter, all scream and no attack. The coward had run away after Andie had killed his father, despite the fact that he was still in the middle of fighting his own challenge against Jaxon. Zac had zero respect for Kyle Carstairs.

Sarai pulled out of his arms. She walked over to the piano where she trailed her fingers over the smooth contours of the keys cover. “I don’t know what drives him. That’s what scares me.”

“You want to explain that a little bit, darlin’?” George asked.

Zac was focused on Sarai so intently, he had forgotten for a moment that his old friend was even in the room.

“Walter Carstairs, sadistic asshole that he was, was still someone I figured out quickly in terms of how to deal with him.”

She looked at both men. “You know cougars aren’t naturally community animals. We’re loners. A male cougar will fight everything that comes into his space, and we like a lot of space. Walter became Alpha because he was the strongest male in the territory willing to join the Shadowcat Nation at the time, proven through years of fighting off all comers. He ruled the only way he knew how…with an iron fist and a lot of violence. As long as you stayed out of his way or did what he wanted, he left you alone. Most often what he wanted wasn’t necessarily bad. It kept the dare together and protected. It’s partly why he remained Alpha as long as he did without serious opposition. That and he’d kill anybody who opposed him.”

This last she said with an ironic roll of her eyes.

“And Kyle?” Zac asked.

“Kyle was the catalyst for a lot of Walter’s bad decisions. He was the little boy who would pluck the wings off flies or use a knife to cut open an animal in such a way that it suffered but didn’t die, just so he could sit there and watch it squirm. He was just as power-hungry as Walter, but it was never to rule over just the dare. It was to have the resources to do whatever he wanted. Total power. Total domination.”

“And he wanted you.”

Sarai sat down at the piano bench with a shrug. “No. Not me. The Seer baby I had the potential to provide him. I would’ve been dead…” Sarai shook her head at her own thoughts. “I
will
be dead the second I give birth to any child he conceives with me.”

“We’ll just have to make sure he never gets close enough for that to happen.” The thought of Kyle even laying a finger on her made him want to snap the guy’s neck.

Sarai sent him a sad smile. “Don’t underestimate Kyle. I know that after seeing him run off, you don’t respect him. He’ll use that perception against you. He’s not stupid. Just obsessed.”

Sarai shivered as if bugs were crawling over her skin.

In a moment of clarity, Zac grasped what it must be like to have a stalker. Somebody so intent on you, he would sacrifice all else in order to get you. Only Sarai wasn’t being stalked. Her unconceived child was.

Sarai’s eyes snapped open. She blinked, trying to adjust her vision to the dark room, but realized she wasn’t seeing the room. Instead, she was seeing a vision, looking at a familiar stairwell, the one in their building. She was looking through the eyes of whomever she was following. Seeing what they saw, feeling their deadly intent. Quick and silent, they moved up the stairs.

With a gasp, she jerked upright.

“What is it?” Zac mumbled, woken by her abrupt movement. He’d moved into her room after their first night together. It hadn’t been a conscious move. They just couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

“They’re here,” she whispered.

His expression moved from questioning to fearsome. “Wolves? Or cougars?”

Sarai frowned. “Can’t tell. Wolves, I think.”

“How many?”

Sarai ran through the series of visions that were coming to her faster and faster. “Best guess, five.” She looked at Zac suddenly. “They don’t know George and I are here. They’ve come for you.”

Zac smiled grimly. “Their mistake then. Got your knives?”

Sarai nodded as she opened the drawer in the bedside table. She started strapping them on over the tank top and shorts she’d worn to bed.

“Good. You get ready while I get George. How long?”

Sarai was standing by now, tightening the strap on her armband, and slipping the knives into their pockets. “Less than ten.”

“We’ll be back before then.” And he was gone.

Sarai finished getting her weapons ready. Then she grabbed her MP3 player, cranked it up, and popped in the wireless headphones. Those damn wolves weren’t taking Zac without a fight. In less than two minutes, he reappeared with George right behind him. Both had thrown on a t-shirt and jeans.

Sarai pulled her headphones out.

“Do they have guns?” Zac asked.

“No.” She tipped her head to the side as she double checked. “I take that back. They have tranquilizers. At least I think that’s what those are. They’re loading unusual dart-shaped bullets into them.” She frowned. “I don’t think they want to kill you.”