Scorpio Sons 4: Chase: (SF/Shifter Romance) (22 page)

When they were all seated and the maid brought out a bottle of white wine, Scanlan tasted it and then nodded. One of the glasses in front of Anna was then filled and Chase watched her sip the wine slowly.

“Nice, light chardonnay from here in California. I believe in buying local, if it’s good enough,” his father said, watching her reaction as intently as Chase did.

Anna smiled and nodded. “It’s lovely.”

“I never expected my son to get his own Russian Bride. I expected him to choose local, too. Obviously home-grown didn’t have the quality he required.” Scanlan smiled as he sipped on his own wine.

“I’m Ukrainian. And I’m glad your son preferred imported.”

Scanlan burst into polite laughter. “She has a sense of humour, Chase. She’ll need one living with you.”

“I guess she will.” Chase took a long, deep swallow from his glass, without noticing what he drank.

“So, did you enjoy your little trip back to your homeland? How long has it been since you were there?”

“Six years since I’ve visited that part of Poland. At first it was a little sad, but on the whole it was a wonderful trip.”

Scanlan looked taken back by this answer. “So he let you go off shopping and such, while he got down to work, did he? That doesn’t sound like Chase.”

“Shopping? I didn’t shop. I led the team potholing through the Carpathian Mountains so we could find the entrance to the Exodus site.” She said it as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do.

The kitchen maid came in with a tray laden with salads. Chase noticed how Anna made a point of looking up at Rosa every time she placed something in front of her, smiling her thanks.

“Exodus site?”

“Something I haven’t had a chance to catch you up on. We think we’ve found where the Guild have their space craft. The trouble is, we had no way of getting in behind the electric fence because the surveillance was so sophisticated. Anna, it turned out, was born and raised by Résistance, as we’re finding is the case with many of the Mates. Her father’s ancestors had discovered the site and kept an eye on it ever since, via an intricate system of tunnels. That information they passed down through the generations.

“The Guild must have found out, because they disposed of all the male members of the family who knew about the caves. All but Anna’s father, who didn’t live in the area. But one year when he brought his family back home to explore the caves he was seen, and shortly thereafter a house fire claimed the lives of the whole family except Anna.”

“You were lucky to have escaped,” Scanlan said with what almost sounded like genuine concern.

“I didn’t feel lucky,” Anna said, taking a deeper swallow from her glass. Chase glanced across at her anxiously.

“I’m sure you grieved, my dear. Losing one’s whole family would have been horrific. But believe me, life is preferable, even if it includes the pain of grief.”

It almost sounded like Scanlan was thinking about his wife when he said those words. Did he feel regret, guilt? Chase had never really asked. He’d been too intent on cold-shouldering the man for his sins to ever ask about his feelings.

“You don’t know about me, do you, Mr Scanlan? Chase didn’t tell you?” Anna looked at him with a steady gaze.

“Chase didn’t even tell me he’d found a mate. That information came from other sources. So, no, all I really know about you is that you came from Russia...or the Ukraine, it now seems, and he found you working as a cleaner in one of the hotels in LA. For obvious reasons, I was worried. Now I can see I worried for nothing. You will make Chase proud when he takes you out to meet our peers. Any rough edges we can have knocked off with a few lessons in deportment and such.”

“I was a prostitute, Mr Scanlan. For two years in Russia.”

Scanlan put his glass down with a clatter. “I beg your pardon?”

Chase didn’t know whether to intercede or not. Whatever he might say at this point would sound like he was making excuses for her. And he didn’t want her to think that’s how he felt, or have his father seeing it that way, either. But damn, he wanted to protect her. His cat seethed furiously.

“I was taken from the orphanage I was sent to after my family died. And I killed a man to escape that life. With help from the Résistance I was successful.” Her face was expressionless; only her hand shook as she reached for the glass again. It needed refilling, he noted irrelevantly.

“How old were you?” his father asked, his voice husky, like it belonged to a lifelong smoker.

“Twelve when they took me, fourteen when I killed my Abuser. Is it possible to knock those rough edges off, do you think, sir? What will your peers think when they find out?”

For a long moment his father said nothing as he stared at his empty salad plate. Then he looked across at Anna with a fierce expression. “I’m a pretentious prick, aren’t I? Thank you for putting me in my place. And I don’t give a damn what my peers think about your past, unless it’s horror that you were forced into that life.”

For the first time in eight years, Chase looked at his father with respect. Was this a trait they shared then? This fierce desire to protect innocents? He’d never considered why his father had been so dedicated to the cause. Now he started to see that it might come from the same source as his own obsession. Not so much a duty to perform, but an intense desire to right wrongs done to innocent people.

Anna breathed a sigh and turned to look at Chase. She appeared a little wobbly with relief.

“And if I didn’t know already why I love you, you would have just shown me,” he acknowledged her with a slow bow of his head, his gaze never deviating from hers.

“Love?” she whispered, her mouth dropping open.

“Bad timing? Sorry. I just had to say it. You are the most amazing woman I have ever met.”

For a moment, those eyelashes fluttered. He realised that it was the mascara that made it more noticeable tonight than at other times.

“I’m glad you admire me...” she said tentatively, still trying to discount his revelation. Should he let her off the hook? Clearly it embarrassed her to have him declare himself so openly. She wouldn’t want to deny him in front of his father.

Fuck that. “You were my cat’s choice of mate, but you’re also mine. It just took me a little longer to catch up. I don’t just admire you; I respect and adore you... I
love
you, Anna. I know you’re still young, and maybe you’re too young to love me back. But –”

“Chase, shut up, okay? I’m not too young. I haven’t been young for six years. And I’m glad you love me. I... I think I love you, too.” She dropped her head and blushed brightly.

He felt as if fireworks had exploded in his chest. Suddenly, finding air for his lungs was impossible. Forcefully, he drew in a breath and let it out again, trying to bring his internal chaos under control.

She thought she loved him too. Given her distrust of men, he’d expected love to be a long time coming. It had been enough for her cat to accept his as her mate. This was huge.

“Will you continue to assist Chase with his work?” his father said. “You are clearly useful to us, and if I’d been able to find something for my wife to do that involved more than just keeping
Home Beautiful
and being my hostess, maybe she would have handled her sickness more effectively.”

“Maybe if you had time for her!” Chase couldn’t help his pavlovian response.

“I could have spent every hour of the day with your mother and it wouldn’t have been enough. There was something inside her that needed all the love I had and so much more. She was like a black hole that was never filled, and after a while I gave up trying. But if I’d encouraged her to feel good about herself, useful and valued, maybe things would have been different. I don’t know.”

“We all make choices. Those men could have destroyed me, but I wouldn’t let them. I think my parents taught me to value myself so I could make good choices. Until I helped find the way into that compound, I’d forgotten that. I forgot that I was valuable. Maybe Mrs Scanlan never got that as a child.”

“Maybe not. She was from old money, raised to marry well, have children and be decorative. I know she never saw much of her own parents growing up, just a series of nurses and nannies. When I met her, all I saw was a beautiful face and exquisite manners. I fell for her that first day. But it was years before I realise how damaged she was. Even then she was drinking, although it was far less blatant.”

Chase started to feel a little of his own pain easing. Sometimes he’d felt like that around his mother, like no matter how much he loved her it would never be enough. He thought it was because he wasn’t her real son nor the man she'd married. That in some way his love was second-prize, inferior. But maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe nobody’s love would have been enough.

“I wish I could have helped her,” Chase said softly, playing absently with one of his knives.

“I wish I could have helped her too, more than you will ever know. But maybe you won’t make the same mistake with Anna. Or maybe she won’t let you.” His father looked at Chase’s mate. “I’m glad he’s found you.”

She smiled then, a beatific smile that warmed both father and son. And before anything else could be said Rosa was back to collect the salad plates and distribute the lobster bisque.

“I was in awe of you tonight, sweet girl,” Chase told her as he slid the zipper of her dress down for her and kissed her bare shoulder.

“I overstepped, when I spoke about your mother. It wasn’t my place to comment on her inadequacies.”

He kissed her shoulder again, this time tasting it with his tongue. She smelled like honeysuckle and tasted like heaven.

“You didn’t overstep. And if you hadn’t been brave enough to say what you did about your childhood, with pride, Dad and I might never have come to that understanding. I didn’t know he felt the same way I did about Mom. I blamed him because I thought I wasn’t enough for her. But now I understand that neither of us was enough for her. Maybe if she’d had kids of her own...”

“She had to be enough for herself, don’t you get that? She could have had ten kids, and every one of them could have seen her as the centre of their universe, and it probably still wouldn’t have been enough. I’m sorry she felt so bad about herself. But it was nobody’s fault but her parents.”

“So many rich kids are raised to only see themselves as commodities. In a way, I felt like that. I was loved and wanted because I was the Chosen One. I was this super human, Superhero, who was going to save the world. So I got all the attention I could have wanted. Too much, if I’m honest. But still I always felt important. Even when I fucked up and killed my best friend, I still felt of value, as you described it. I squandered that value, but it was still mine to squander, until I’d had enough of rebellion. While ever Mom tried to find value in other people’s eyes it was never going to be enough.”

She turned in his arms and kissed his mouth tenderly. “I love you, Chase Scanlan. I don’t know what I did to deserve your love, but I’m grateful for it. Grateful for you.”

Chase felt his heart ease a little more. Funny, he hadn’t realised how tight his chest had been for all these years, until it began to ease. It happened in stages as he fell in love with his mate. But it wasn’t until he found out his father’s feelings that it became obvious. And now Anna had told him that she loved him... Well, that just sped the process up a little more.

Maybe he still had some way to go before he felt totally light-hearted. Maybe he never would, given his role in life. But with role-model versions of himself like Connor and Caleb he knew that it
was
possible. He could be playful and childlike, spontaneous and free. Like he felt that night on the bike. It didn’t have to mean disaster.

He looked up at the empty wall behind their beds, which had been pushed together now that Anna was okay about waking up to find his weight pressing down on her. Why hadn’t she replaced that moonlit scene?

“You still got those photos somewhere?” he asked her, nodding up towards the space where the pictures had been.

“Ummm. Yes. Sorry. I didn’t know what to do with them and I haven’t had time to find something I like as much. It’s okay, you won’t ever see them.”

“No, I think I’d like them on the walls now. They’ll remind me of how it felt in that moment to be young and invulnerable, wild and free. I think it’s time I let go of what happened after that moment. We were kids, stupid kids. I wish I’d had the sense to say no to that midnight ride. I wish I’d encouraged Mike to stop when he started to lose his edge. But you can’t put old heads on young shoulders. I wish he hadn’t had to pay with his life for that stupidity... But there was nothing wrong with that feeling.”

She leaned up and kissed his lips again, this time with more intensity. “I’ll get fresh glass and hang them tomorrow.”

Then all thoughts of what would come tomorrow, or the day after that, faded away. He held her small, slim body against him, feeling his excitement build. Breathing her in, he picked up the now-familiar scent of her arousal.

Sliding his hands down her body, he luxuriated in the feel of soft, warm skin, until he reached her delightfully peach-shaped rear. Then he clutched her cheeks tight, pulling her hard against his aching cock.

Sinuous arms wound themselves around his neck and she jumped up to wind her legs around his waist, too. Only damp panties and his own clothes separated them, and he was fast to remedy his part in that separation. Then, with his pants around his ankles he rubbed her lace-covered core along his length. Her heat pushed him higher, as did the sound of her panting breaths in his ear and her writhing body against his.

Chase liked that she was small. He liked that she made him feel like an oak tree with ivy clinging to it. He loved how she responded to his every touch, knowing that every time she did so, it was something totally new for her. She’d never experienced any kind of pleasure with a man before. Only pain and humiliation. Yet still she gave herself to him unreservedly, the well of her desires deep and energising.

Sick of the panties separating them, he tore them off her. While she moaned at the sudden aggression, he slammed into her body, into the heat that waited for only him. She bucked as he impaled her, her head thrown back, her soft fair hair floating loosely over her thin shoulders, the pins that had held it in place scattered about the room.

“I love you so much,” he groaned out as he sank even deeper, feeling her inner muscles loosening a little more to give him access. Finally he was wedged as deep as he could go, his balls brushing her cheeks. Anna was gasping harshly, riding her own passion. He wanted to see it in her eyes.

“Look at me,” he demanded on a gasp, drawing her away from him before slowly sliding her back. The sensation was exquisite.

When Anna looked at him, he noted her eyes had turned silver, just as he thought they had. His cat had risen too, as soon as he’d pushed his way into her tight core. In those metallic depths he could read her pleasure and the intensity of her emotions.

And her love.

This
was
love, he mused with what was left of his brain. This intense connection, this need to be one with another person, to share every emotion with them as it rolled through you and over them. Wanting it to go on like this for a lifetime, sharing the good and the not-so-good along the way.

“I want you to bite me,” he got out, “but I know I won’t last if you do.”

“I’m so close, it doesn’t matter,” she gasped out, rearing back in readiness to sink her teeth into his hard shoulder. When the brief pain came it was euphoric. It flashed through his system so fast tears came to his eyes. By the time it reached his cock he was exploding, harder than ever before. It felt like the top of his head was being blown off.

But as she orgasmed in that same moment, sucking his cock dry, panting and purring like a small motor next to his ear, he felt his own pleasure soar even higher. He was past wondering at the unnatural levels of pleasure he experienced. He was over worrying about it. Now it was all about the sensations, the incredible pulsing sensations that were rising inside him again, even as his body relaxed after the first release.

He was going to come again. And not just the small, incredible explosions all over his body that he normally experienced while she bit him. This was different, this was another ejaculation. Dragging her even closer, he fought to control the rising tide, not wanting it to take him too soon. Not wanting this incredible moment to end yet.

Anna let out a low moan against his neck and he felt her muscles ripple around his sensitised cock. That was it. No way he could stop what was coming now. He allowed the wave to carry him up and over, riding its power, feeling insignificant in comparison to the primal force of that release.

His spine arched and he threw his head back, tearing away Anna’s connection to his neck. The roar that came from him was not human. But it expressed the overwhelming sensation rushing through him.

When the wave crashed, he dropped with her backwards, onto the bed, his legs no longer able to hold him up. Fast as a cat she unwound her own and sat on his hips, keeping their bodies joined.

A trickle of blood ran down his chest from the wounds she’d torn in his flesh. Anna must have noticed them too, because she leaned in and licked the holes closed. Then she flopped onto his chest with a groan of exhaustion.

“Do you think it gets less intense the more we get used to each other?” she muttered into his neck. The sensation of her breath across his wet skin aroused him instantly and he groaned a different kind of groan to hers.

“What does Alyssa say?” he asked, trying to concentrate on her words rather than the sensation of her slick heat still cradling his cock.

“Hasn’t lessened any yet. But its early days still.”

“You want it to ease up?” Even though part of him felt that way, another part wanted this intensity to continue forever. Yes, it was exhausting, but God it felt incredible!

“I can’t decide. But you almost yanked my teeth out of my gums when you pulled away so suddenly. Give me notice next time.” She giggled at her own complaint.

“Can’t. It comes on too quickly. You just have to use cat speed to get out of the way.” He smiled tiredly at his own idiocy.

“Get out of the way, huh? I’ll remember that, mister!” She tickled his sides and his still sensitised flesh responded. He pushed her off him as he bellowed with laughter.

She was on him again in an instant. He had no idea where she got the energy from, but she was tickling him like a mad woman now, and he was helpless to stop her. When he was gasping for breath, she eased up and flopped back onto his roller-coaster chest.

“Take that, Mr Scanlan. Next time you think to tell me to get out of the way.”

He laughed again as he panted, drawing in air that had deserted him while she’d tortured him. His cock was softening now, and he felt mellow and relaxed, and oddly light.

“That felt good.” He decided, speaking his thoughts out loud.

“Sex does, so I’m told.”

“No, pea-brain, the laughing. I can’t remember when I laughed so hard and for so long. Not since I was a little kid. It felt good. Nuh uh, not again. I’m worn to a frazzle.” He held the hands that had been preparing to tickle him again.

“You called me pea-brain!” she cried indignantly, trying to free her hands.

“Mom used to call me that when I was little. I’d forgotten. She always said it with a laugh, so I knew she didn’t mean it.”

“Oh, okay, well if your mother said it, I guess I’ll accept the insult. Can I call you
butt head
, because that’s what my Dad called me when I did something stupid?”

“Butt-head and pea-brain. We make a great pair, don’t we?” He couldn’t stop grinning like a maniac.

“When we save the world do you think they’ll erect statues of us and write butt-head and pea-brain at the base?”

He kissed her nose. “No statues. When we’ve saved the world no one will be any the wiser. There’ll just be more environmental projects and less greed and waste. Less political unrest and cruelty. Who knows. But I do know that the human race won’t know it was us who saved the day. And that’s okay by me. I don’t do it for the glory or the statues.”

“Me either. If I can save even one kid from experiencing the horror I did, I’ll be happy.”

“You’ll save more than one kid; that I can promise you. But we’ve still got a long way to go. Not as far as we had before we found our way into that compound, but still a long way.”

It was Anna’s turn to kiss his nose. “As long as we get to do this occasionally, I don’t care how long it takes. Well, I do. But I can be patient. I can’t believe how much I love you. Less than two weeks ago I thought you were an arrogant control freak. Sexy as they come, but still a dick. Now I think the sun shines out of you. It must be the great sex.”

“Yeah, I was a dick, wasn’t I? If the brothers weren’t able to roll with mated Sons behaving like dicks there’d be a lot less brothers. Somehow we all take it in our stride. Maybe we know it can be us next. Like I let Coop get away with murder. Although at the time I didn’t do it because I thought it would happen to me. I was determined never to
let
it happen to me.”

“Pea-brain!” Anna kissed him as he laughed.

“I guess I am. Glad I was proved wrong on that one.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I hope you enjoyed Chase’s story. If so, it’s probably due to the fine work of Sofia Clements who painstakingly goes over every sentence to make sure it is consistent with other books in the series, and Jan Millward who double-checks my typos and grammar and explains patiently about rehydration packs hikers use these days.

If you are enjoying the series, please consider leaving a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads so that others can follow your lead. Indie published books like this haven’t got a huge marketing budget, (that's why they're cheaper.) They depend on the word-of-mouth of readers like you to promote them.

If you want to find out more about me and my other books, go to
www.nhysglover.com
.

And to get you ready for Book 5: Cameron’s story, here’s an excerpt. I hope you’re intrigued enough to keep your eye out for its publication in March 2015.