Savage Hearts (23 page)

Which reminded him of the thing that was keeping him from going outside and joining Cate—his sister Sonya. Hell, if he was going to talk to Sonya—and apparently he [ppaht=was going to have to sooner or later—it was better to do it now, when he was feeling more generous than he was likely to feel ever again.

Man
, he thought as he dialed Sonya’s number,
she should send Cate a goddamn fruit basket for this.

“Soren,” she said.

He hadn’t heard her voice in years.
Still hard.
Still cold.

“What do you want, Sonya?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

Soren calmed himself by watching Cate. Desi was actually licking her face.

“I don’t have the patience for this, Sonya,” he said. “Just tell me what you want and we’ll be done with it.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” Sonya said, and she actually sounded upset. Soren reminded himself that it was a trick. It was always a trick. “I told you, I’m getting calls about Julia. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Sonya, cut the shit. You don’t care what I want you to do. You’re asking for something, so just fucking ask for it outright.”

There was a pause. Soren almost thought she hung up.

“Pop had a heart attack,” she said.

Soren blinked. His stepfather had had a heart attack?

“I didn’t know that,” he said.

“He didn’t want to call you,” she said. “He’s fine now, he was just in and out of the hospital really quickly, and I didn’t think…and then he asked me not to call you.”

“Sounds about right.”

His stepfather, Ted, had always hated him, and that hadn’t been helped by Soren’s success. The mean old bastard would probably see having a heart attack as admitting weakness.

“But I thought you should know,” Sonya went on. She sounded…nervous? His sister, the heartless ice queen, sounded nervous. It was the weirdest goddamn thing.

“Sonya…”

“Listen, I don’t want anything, I promise,” she said quickly. “I’m done with that and I’m sorry, Soren. I know you’ll never believe me, but I’m so sorry for…for all of it. It’s just that they keep calling about Julia.”

“Jesus,” Soren said. Cate’s attention was drawn away, toward the walk leading to the front of the house—she was waving at someone. “You already said that, Sonya.”

“I know,” she said just as [sai

Sonya went on. “But they keep asking about her overdose. They keep asking if you guys ever got high together.”

It took a lot to shock Soren Andersson, but that did it.

“You know the fucking answer to that, Sonya,” he said. “So just tell the fucking truth.”

He hung up the phone.

~ * ~ * ~

Cate had never been much of a dog person. She didn’t understand the blind affection and unearned loyalty, and so she didn’t understand dogs. Desi, however, was not a normal dog. Desi was…

Desi was Desi. More like a cat, maybe?
Except not quite that, either.
From the outset Cate had recognized that look. Desi was careful, cautious, and was going to make Cate work for his affection. That, Cate understood.

They got along great.

And now that Cate was playing with a dog, of all things, on this secluded piece of beach on the Malibu coast, alone with Soren, she truly felt like she’d been transported to another world. He’d tied her up and done things to her that had shown her…she still didn’t know exactly what. She had no words for it. Did anybody? Did it matter?

This was an entirely new world.
A better world.
And it was good, for a short time, to forget about everything else.

Which was why it was strange to see two people she didn’t technically know walking toward her on Soren’s private property. ‘Technically,’ because after all the research she’d done on Savage Heart she recognized at least one of them—Declan Donovan. And the blonde beach type walking next to him, sandals in
hand,
must be Molly Ward.

Well, this was weird.

Yet it didn’t matter. Apparently nothing could bring Cate down from the peak Soren had put her on that morning. She had never felt this at peace or this sure of herself in her entire life. For once she wasn’t worrying about what mask to present to the people approaching, or what she needed to hide. The man should bottle whatever it was he’d done to her; he’d make a fortune.

Except that Cate didn’t want to share it.

Her head was spinning with that monumental thought as Molly Ward walked up to her smiling with her hand out.

“You’re Cate!” Molly said. “You kicked serious ass today at that press conference. You had me freaking cheering.”

“Molly?” Cate said. She noticed Declan was looking at her in a strange sort of way, but coming from a man like Declan Donovan it was a little unnerving. He was the darker version of Soren—huge, and somehow more present than a normal man. Thicker. Just…more.

No wonder the two of them together made an unstoppable force.

“Oh yeah,” Molly said grinning. “Sorry. And this is Declan.”

“It’s good to meet you,” Declan said. “He needs someone to take care of him on this, or he’ll let that woman get away with murder.”

“Yeah, I don’t get that,” Molly said.

Declan shrugged while Molly looked on, and Cate thought she caught a note of evasion. “Call it sexist or messed up if you want, but Soren’s not gonna do anything that hurts a former sub, even if she’s trying to screw him over. Just take it as it is.”

Huh. So there was obviously something there. Declan was the man who’d known Soren the longest, after all, and he definitely seemed to know more about this than Cate did.

So she filed that away for future reference.

“Well, it’s good to meet you both, finally,”
Cate
said. “I’ll be scheduling follow-ups with both of you, if you don’t mind. I know my associates have been thorough with their interviews, but—”

“You don’t have to explain,” Declan waved her off. “We’ll do whatever you need. And here comes the dumbass now.”

Cate looked up, back toward the house, happy and kind of turned on at just the knowledge that Soren was approaching—Jesus, this was getting ridiculous; he had really done a number on her—and she saw him. Towering bulk, dressed in white trousers and one of those tank tops that might as well have been spray painted on, blond hair whipping around his head in the ocean breeze. He was mesmerizing.

Cate didn’t even notice she was cold until she saw he was carrying a sweatshirt over his arm.

And then, as he came closer, she saw his face.

It wasn’t the focused aggression of the Dom, or the careful attentiveness of…well, of Soren, and it wasn’t the smiling face she loved to see. The man looked like a storm gathering on the horizon. There was definite doom and gloom, and Cate felt it hit her right in the chest, as though they were connected. As though she couldn’t help it.

Had something happened? How could she be on cloud nine while he was so upset about something?

Cate wasn’t the only one who picked up on it. Desi froze for a moment, alert, staring—and then charged off toward Soren, the dog’s high whine traveling even over the sound of the tide coming in.

Cate followed.

She didn’t know why. It wasn’t really her place; she’d only known him a few weeks and they had this very restricted relationship, and she should have been more careful of crossing over boundaries. There were a million things she should have done, but something compelled her to go to Soren.

She saw his face soften, and the relief was immediate. Physical.

“Are you ok?” she asked shyly.

Soren cocked his head at her, his eyes studying her while Desi calmed down. Then he smiled, gently.

“Since when do you worry about me?” he said.

“Since about ten o’clock this morning, give or take?”

His blue eyes sparked. “I’m ok.
Just family stuff.
It’s all right, I promise. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to bend you over the kitchen counter later on.”

Cate exhaled slowly. “This morning was…I don’t know, Soren, I don’t have any frame of reference, but it was…” She looked down. They’d spent the whole day together, but she hadn’t actually said this yet, not explicitly. “It was life changing,” she said, looking up. “Thank you.”

That had been difficult, to be that vulnerable. But she’d done it. She had done it. Would she have been able to do it before this morning’s experience?

Who was she kidding? No way.

“Yeah, it was,”
Soren
said. “Don’t think that was usual, Cate. It wasn’t. It was extraordinary. And thank
you
, sweetheart, because I plan on doing it again.”

Jesus. The heat coming off of him could undo her, even from a few feet away.

Cate looked up at him again to find those steady blue eyes on her. She loved it, the way he looked at her. She tucked her windblown hair behind one ear and impulsively said, “I like it when you laugh.”

Soren raised his eyebrows. “That’s a new one. I’m not known for that.”

“Yeah, I know,”
Cate
said, grinning. “Such a serious Dom.”

“Careful.”

“Do I have to tickle you again? I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your friends,” she said, looking back. Declan and Molly
were
finally walking toward them.

She turned back to find Soren smiling ear to ear. “Embarrass
me
? I don’t think you’ve thought this through.”

Cate giggled. “But you go down so hard, it’s like watching a redwood fall. Just sad.”

“Sweetheart, you try tha [, yatcht again, and I’ll have you your ass in the air and over my knee so quickly your head will spin,” he said. “I don’t care who’s watching, believe me.”

Cate looked at him, wide-eyed and breathing hard. He was serious. He was smiling, but he was serious.

He looked her up and down with obvious heat in his eyes and said, “Maybe I’ll do that anyway. Now put this on.”

He gave her the sweatshirt, a big, old, oversized thing that smelled like him, and Cate melted a little bit more. It nearly came to her knees. She’d only barely put it on when Declan and Molly finally joined them, obviously not wanting to interrupt a moment.

Cate waved at them just as Soren pulled her close. Out of the side of his mouth he said, “
Treehugger
.”

“What?” she said.

It took her a moment. She’d called him a redwood, sort of, and…

Oh.

It was a terrible joke. Awful.
Not even…not
even a joke.

Cate couldn’t stop the laughter. Soren Andersson, humor-deficient Norse god, had just tried to crack a joke.

“Shut up,” he said, and she looked up to find him laughing, too.

“It was
so
bad,” she said. Her abs actually hurt.

Soren pulled her in against his own shaking chest, wrapping his arms around her while he laughed into her hair. “Your ass is going to be
so
red,” he said.