Scorpio Sons 4: Chase: (SF/Shifter Romance) (9 page)

“It’s lovely, Mr Scanlan. Really. Not dry and sour like some wines can be.”

He gave a little chuckle. Should he tell her that if wine tasted sour it was probably off? It sounded like she wasn’t a wine buff.

“Chase, please. We’re sitting on my bed relaxing. Mr Scanlan is hardly suitable in such a situation.”

She nodded again and finished off the wine in her glass. He swallowed down the last of his and went to refill them both, bringing back the mud-cake with him. Placing the tray between them, he handed her the refilled glass.

“That wine will go straight to your head if you don’t put something in your stomach to soak up the alcohol. You do like chocolate, don’t you? I’ve never met a girl who didn’t.”

She gave a little laugh. “Yes, I like chocolate. If I could afford it, I’d be a chocoholic.”

Grinning, Chase leaned in to cut off the corner of one of the pieces of cake with a fork, and brought it to her mouth. “Good then, eat. I’ve had it before. Very rich and very moreish.”

Reluctantly, blushing brightly, she took the cake off the fork. Chase felt his body come to instant attention. That was not what he intended. This was not a seduction. He wasn’t trying to get her relaxed enough to hook up with him.

Swallowing roughly, he returned to the plate and cut another small section off the cake. His eyes were glued to her mouth as it opened and accepted the second fork laden with sweet indulgence.

Unable to take feeding her a third mouthful, he put down her fork and took up his own. Gaze fixed firmly on the plate, he chewed and swallowed the rich confection.

Just as he’d hoped, Anna picked up the fork and started feeding herself. Smiling at his success, he relaxed a little more and took another mouthful, this time appreciating the taste fully. He was a bit of a chocoholic himself, but rarely indulged unless it was placed right in front of him.

“Not bad, huh?” he said as he licked dark chocolate icing off his upper lip.

“Heavenly,” she replied with sincerity that had been lacking in all their interactions so far.

“I used to adore Oreo cookies when I was a kid. Our cook would buy in a dozen packets and hide them around the kitchen, knowing I’d eat them all in one go if given half a chance. I’d twist the two halves apart and then lick the white icing a couple of times before putting them back together and taking a bite.”

“We had cookies called Waffle Sandwiches that had wafer biscuit on the outside and a thick wedge of chocolate in the middle. Me and my little brother always took the wafer off and ate the chocolate first. Mama used to give us one each if we ate our dinner.” A sweetly sad smile lifted her lips as she brought the next piece of cake to her mouth.

“They died in a fire? That must have been terrible.”

She glanced across at him and nodded, before taking a large swallow of wine that left her glass half empty again. The light flush to her cheeks had deepened.

“It was, but I didn’t get to...think about it much. Everything happened so fast. I’d been away with my school overnight. The bus that brought us back at lunch time the next day pulled up outside my burned-out house and I got off and stared at it. It didn’t feel real, especially with all that tape around it and the police. I was shunted into an orphanage immediately and then a few days later taken to Russia with some of the other children... After that, my family seemed more like a pleasant dream than a real memory. Sometimes I wished...” She petered to a stop and took another mouthful of wine.

“What did you wish?” he coaxed gently, his heart going out to her.

“I wished I hadn’t gone on that school excursion. If I’d been home, maybe I could have woken up when the fire started and gotten everyone to safety, or I could have died with them. Either choice seemed preferable to my life after that.”

“Don’t think about it. When I think about finding my mom dead I wonder if I could have stopped her if I’d been home, or paid her more attention...anything. But it doesn’t help, so I try not to think about it.”

“Stop your mom from doing what?” Her big, pale-blue eyes stared up at him seriously.

He wished he’d kept his mouth shut. He didn’t share his private life with people, certainly not a girl he’d only just met. But she knew about loss and grief and guilt. Hers was not like his, but still... She deserved an honest answer.

“Killing herself. My mom killed herself. One night when I was out partying with my friends she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills, washing it down with a quart of vodka. I came home in the early hours to find her dead on the sofa in the TV room.”

“Where was your father?” she asked softly, placing a small hand on his arm.

“On a business trip. He was rarely at home. Work for the Résistance occupied all the time he had left over from his business interests. I was lucky. I was the saviour of the human race, so I got a lot of attention.

“But mom? She was nobody important, just the woman he’d fallen in love with when he was young. Maybe things would have been different if she’d had kids. But she couldn’t have any, and so she was stuck raising me, the test-tube baby her husband fobbed off on her. Don’t get me wrong, she loved me like a mother should. But once I reached my teens I kind of started ignoring her too, like dad. And she just buried herself deeper and deeper in a bottle.”

“How old were you when you found her?”

“Seventeen, almost eighteen. I think she thought she’d lose me completely once I turned eighteen and came into my legacy.”

“Legacy?”

“Yeah. On my eighteenth birthday, instead of a business portfolio or a new car, my father presented me with a file that fully explained what I was, how I was one of a hundred identical babies genetically engineered to be super-soldiers. My task, I found out, was to find and bring together my brothers so we could fight against the Guild.

“Up until then I’d known I was different... My cat came out when I was fifteen, and that’s when my dad explained a little about my heritage. I’d always known I was adopted, always known I was being raised to fight the Guild, but when my cat came out I was suddenly presented with the fact that I wasn’t quite human; that I had animal DNA. But it wasn’t until I was handed that folder on my eighteenth birthday and told my task, that I understood just what I was being asked to do. What they were expecting of me.”

“I’m sorry your mother died that way, but I’m not sorry they gave you this job. If you can stop monsters like the men who took me... If you can save other children from going through that...”

Chase passed her what was left of his cake because she’d finished hers. She took it with a smile of gratitude and hungrily tucked into the added bounty as if she’d never get anything like it again. He wondered if that was what it felt like every day she was imprisoned, wondering if the meal she ate would be the last.

“You know, I half expected you to sympathise with me for being lumbered with that kind of responsibility so young. But looking at it through your eyes... I guess I was a spoiled Trust Fund kid who resented not being able to live the carefree life my friends had. I had my youth cut short by responsibility, but you had yours cut short, more cruelly, and a lot earlier than I did. I can see why you would focus on the big picture, not the small personal losses.” Chase paused for a moment, contemplating whether his next question was wise to ask just when he’d managed to get her relaxed.

But no matter the wisdom, he needed to know. “In your letter to Alyssa you said you killed the monsters. What did you mean?”

For a long moment, Anna ate cake and sipped at her wine silently. The silence went on so long Chase started to wonder if she was intentionally ignoring him. Then she took one final gulp of wine, put the glass on the tray next to the two now-empty cake plates, and sighed heavily.

“I had several Protectors during… that time. If you had a Protector, you didn’t have to work the streets; you weren’t a whore for sale. Instead, you were set up in a room of their choice and you only met your Protector’s needs… Or that of his friends, if he felt like sharing you. I don’t know which life was the worst, but it didn’t matter, because I was never given a choice.” She spoke so softly that, if not for his cat hearing, he would never have been able to make out her words. Her accent had grown heavier too, as if being taken back to that time brought back the old her.

His cat was screaming at him to do something – anything – to avenge his mate. What he'd imagined her life must have been like had now being proven correct. It gutted him. Never had he felt so helpless. Because he couldn't do a fucking thing to save her from all that.

But he
could
destroy every one of those bastards who did this to her. And he would!

His need to do violence almost drowned out her next words.

“On the night my Guardian Angels came for me – I assume now they must have been part of the Résistance you people talk about – I had finally reached the end of my rope. A few nights before, my Protector and his friends had hurt me worse than ever before. When he came to me that night the thought of ...what he would do was more than I could stand. I...I’d uncoiled a bed spring, thinking to use it on the lock. But instead, that night, I decided to use it on him. I stabbed him through the eye with the wire. It went into his brain and killed him.”

Anna lifted her chin in challenge, as if she expected him to be horrified by what she’d done. She was a murderer, after all.

His Anna had only been protected herself, and she'd taken down one of the Guild monsters. In his eyes she was a hero. And all he felt was admiration for the child she had been only four short years ago, and horror at what she’d experienced.

But that wasn’t enough. The death of that one man wasn’t nearly enough to make up for what she’d suffered. He didn’t know who was responsible for taking her, but he’d find out. And then every bastard who had used and abused her would feel his wrath.

“He wasn't your Protector, Anna. He was your
Abuser
. And what you did was very brave. I doubt many kids your age could have done something like that,” he settled on saying, keeping bottled his furious need for vengeance.

“It wasn’t brave; it was an act of desperation. Sooner or later even a craven cur will turn on an abusive master. Not brave.”

Chase took her hands and kissed the back of each in turn, marvelling at her humility. He felt belittled by her courage and strength. And the desire to give her what she deserved came to him in a powerful wave of commitment. His mate would never have to be that afraid or that desperate again. She would
always
be kept safe. Nothing would ever hurt her again.

Not even him. Most especially not him.

Anna felt like she was moving through some kind of dream. It wasn’t a nightmare, because no one hurt her in it. But it wasn’t pleasant either, because she was ever aware that she was again imprisoned. A nicer, more friendly prison, but a prison all the same.

However, as she sat on Chase’s big bed, feeling the relaxing effects of the alcohol seep into her system, she started to appreciate that this imprisonment was nothing like her last. Sure, she had to stay below ground, but she could come and go where she liked in HQ. Yes, being surrounded by so many men was a little frightening, but because they all looked like Chase, and had what must be her
cat
’s instinctual trust, that wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Even at dinner, surrounded by them all, she’d felt okay with it. Not happy, not comfortable by any stretch of the imagination, but okay. And maybe the more she was around them, the easier it would get. As long as none of them made a move on her.

And if she
really
wanted to go out, she could. But only with Chase. For her
protection
, so he said. Anna hated that word. When Chase had told her not to call the monsters her Protectors, but her Abusers, it had struck a chord. Even though she had used it simply as a label, it still had meaning. While ever she used it, she was denying the horror of what they'd done to her. She didn't want to do that anymore. So from now on, even in her own head, she was going to call them
Abusers
.

She returned to her last thought about going out. Alyssa went out without Colton. At least that's what she'd told Anna over dinner. Maybe not alone, but she
could
go out. Surely, once Chase was comfortable with having her in his life he’d relax his rules a little. It struck her that he was desperately trying to placate the
cat
's every whim, and by doing so he was letting it behave badly. For a man who was supposedly always so tightly controlled, this seemed an anomaly.

Having spent the last two years totally free, the new restrictions chafed. But there were worse things than sitting talking to her so-called mate, while eating cake and drinking wine. Far worse things.

In the afternoon, Caleb had showed her how to use the internet so she could find and order in bedroom furnishings. Alyssa had hovered for a while, but when a call came in from her Colt, she’d disappeared.

Looking around the room now, she realised that maybe she’d gone a little overboard in her choices. The space was not as large as she remembered it from earlier in the day. And there was a wall sized TV screen to consider, too. But that would be a problem for tomorrow. There was still tonight to get through.

So far Chase had been pleasant company, when he wasn’t ordering her around. It broke her heart to hear about his mother, even though he kept the details to a minimum. The guilt he must feel for not being there was a heavy load to carry, she could sense, and shouldn’t be his to carry. It sounded like his mother had just given up on life when it didn’t go the way she wanted. She didn’t have to wallow in self-pity until she died. That had been her choice.

But that wasn’t something she could say to Chase. He’d see it as criticism of his mother. And it was. The woman had wealth and her health. She could have found some way to be happy. Instead, she’d depended on her son and husband to do that for her. And when they didn’t, she just took the easy way out. The selfish path. The cruel path. She would have known what her suicide would do to her son, and possibly her husband. Yet she did it anyway.

“Anna?” Chase said, as if it wasn’t the first time he’d spoken to her and she hadn’t replied.

“Sorry, what?” She looked up into his warm brown eyes and felt a little light-headed. And it wasn’t from the alcohol.

There was something about this man that called to her. Although all the brothers she’d met so far looked pretty much the same, none of them drew her the way this man did. Something told her she could trust him; something she'd always thought of as her instincts, but was now beginning to realise was the cat she'd seen in the mirror that morning. So maybe it was as simple as the
cat
part of her being claimed by him. Or maybe it was more. Because she did trust him; even though he’d bitten her, taken her away from her home and imprisoned her in an underground maze.

“I was asking if you were ready for bed. You look exhausted.”

“Oh, yes. I am. And the wine hasn’t helped. But at least I’m more relaxed now. Dinner was very challenging. As you realized.”

“I have a lot of work to do… but… my cat just wants to curl up at your side and sleep. Would you mind?” Chase seemed nervous and a little insecure, as if he expected her to deny him.

But that had been one of the conditions of this strange contract they’d made. He would not require anything from her except to sleep at her side, he' said, and check in with her at different times during the day. For the rest of the time, she was free to do as she liked below ground.

So why was he worried she’d refuse? Maybe he was going to make a move on her after all?

Scrambling off the big bed, she headed for her overnight bag that sat by the bathroom door. Only when she’d found the floral boxer shorts and blue tee-shirt she wore as PJs did she look at him again.

“That’s okay," she choked out, keeping her eyes averted. "It’s a big bed. I’m just going to have a quick shower.”

“Okay. I’ll just find something to... wear,” he muttered.

“
Find
something?” Anna couldn’t help asking.

“Yeah, well, I usually sleep naked. But that’s not going to work tonight.”

She swallowed the lump that formed in her throat and felt the blush burning its way up her neck to her cheeks. Imagining him in that big bed, naked and sleeping, was too disconcerting to think about.

“I just wear boxers and tee-shirt,” she held up her sleepwear so he could see it.

“If I just wore boxers, would that be enough?”

That would leave his chest bare. That very muscular chest naked. But it wasn’t indecent, so she could handle it. After all, it was
his
bed. And he’d promised there’d be no funny business.

“That’s okay. Boxers are okay,” she mumbled, closing herself into the bathroom.

The shower was a little bit of heaven, a heavy jet of hot water that she could get to just the temperature she wanted. By the time she stepped out of it again, the room was steamed up, despite the exhaust fan, and she was feeling even more relaxed and sleepy. But there was also excitement thrumming below the surface, and that had everything to do with what she would find on the other side of the door.

Taking her courage in both hands, she opened the door and stepped out into the darkened space. Her eyes adjusted immediately, and she realised that something was definitely different about her vision. And the speed she could move. When she’d accompanied Chase to his room he’d moved incredibly fast, but she’d had little trouble keeping up with him. Were these parts of what it meant to have a cat inside her?

Chase was lying on
his
side of the bed, a light-weight comforter covering him. His eyes were closed, his dark-blonde – or was it light-brown – hair more tousled than she’d seen it before. Not sure if he was asleep, she crept across the room and climbed up onto her side of the bed from the bottom. Maybe when she got started refurnishing the room she’d move the bed away from the wall on her side, so she didn’t have to disturb him getting in and out of bed.

A memory of the camping trips she’d taken with her family flashed into her mind. All of them wrapped up in sleeping bags in the small nylon tent, lying in a row like tinned sardines. When she had to get up to go relieve herself in the night she had to step over three bodies to reach the tent flap. It had been like an obstacle course.

Smiling, Anna slipped under the comforter. The size of the bed was one factor that had convinced her she could handle sleeping with him. There was more than enough room for both of them to have their space in the bed. It wasn’t like the narrow, lumpy mattress she shared with her Protector, where she’d been crammed into the corner by his mountainous, stinking form.… No,
Abuser
. She needed to call him what he was. Not her
Protector
, her
Abuser
!

As she settled in, every sense was on hyper-alert for movement on the other side of the bed. But Chase didn’t budge. And after a few minutes, she let herself relax.

Sleep came before she knew it.

When she woke again it was to find herself pinned beneath a heavy arm, a hard body pressed against her back. Panic rose up like a tidal wave, and she fought to get out from beneath that awful weight at the same time as she fought down the urge to scream.

Screaming didn’t help. All it got her was a beating.

Fractured memories of being held down and helpless rushed to invade her mind. Anna could smell that childish room beneath the stench of stale beer and body odour, feel the chill in the air, and hear the creak of the bedsprings as that huge weight bore down on her. It hurt. God it hurt!

But worse than the pain was the total lack of control. He was so big. She couldn’t get him off. His body was like a steel trap, holding her in place. No matter how hard she struggled, she couldn’t get away from him.

Whimpering, sobbing, she thrashed, mindless with terror.

“Shhh, it's okay...” came the low male voice in English.

What was this? Her Protectors never spoke English. Was this a new one? All her senses told her that this man was unknown. A stranger. A stranger who spoke English with an American accent.

“Anna, it’s me, Chase. You’re safe. Stop struggling. I’m not... I’ll try to let you go if you stop struggling.” The voice was more urgent this time.

Chase? Who was... And then all the memories of the day before came flooding back. This was Chase, the man who had turned her into a cat. The man who had found his mother dead of an overdose.

With every bit of her strength she forced down the panic. Gasping for breath, she focused on relaxing her limbs. When she was still, his great weight edged off her until he was gone completely. Only then did she scramble away to the far wall, huddling against it, staring suspiciously at the man on the other side of the bed.

Chase now lay on his back, his naked torso revealed as one muscular arm covered his eyes. He was gasping for breath too.

What had happened?

“Sorry. I must have snuggled in while I was asleep. I don’t usually... I mean... when I sleep with women I don’t usually do that... after. Not that there was an after.” His words were garbled, as panicky as she had been only moments ago.

“You wouldn’t let me go!” she accused angrily.

“I couldn’t. My cat... Jeezus. My cat felt you struggling and his reaction was to hold you down. Keep you still. I couldn’t wrestle him back until you stopped fighting me.”

“You said you wouldn’t –”

“And I didn’t. My cat wasn’t trying to take you.” He fell silent for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. “It was protective. He – I – felt your panic. Covering you with my body was instinctual. I couldn’t determine the threat so I held you down; protecting you from whatever threatened you.

“When I realised you were frightened of
me
, it didn’t help. The only thing I could think of was to get you to stop struggling.”

Anna drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. She had seen cats holding down their prey, just as he’d held her down. She understood it was an instinctual action, but that didn’t make her feel any better. In those moments, she’d been terrified of him; of the memories drowning her. Only in her nightmares had she felt that sort of terror in the last four years.

“I don’t care. I can’t do this... I can’t wake up to find you holding me down. It’s just like... You don’t know what I thought was happening.”

“I can guess. I’m so sorry, Anna. I never expected this. I usually like my space when I’m sleeping. I don’t know why I ended up spooning you.”

“I can’t do this, Chase. I mean it. You have to let me go. I can’t do this!” Her panic was returning the more she thought about other nights when she’d wake up under him like that. She believed him when he said he was unaware of what he was doing; she believed him that it wasn’t sexual. But for her it brought back too many bad memories. The fear was more than she could handle. Way more than she was willing to put up with.

He climbed to his feet, checking his wristwatch as he went. Despite the terror, despite her memories, the sight of his long, well-toned masculine beauty drew her eye. His face was tired and drawn, but his body was perfection. It disappointed her when he covered it up by pulling on slacks over the boxers and throwing on a shirt that still lay on the floor.

Had she noticed that last night? The fact that he didn’t hang up his clothes, but just dropped them on the floor. No, she had other concerns then, like climbing over his sleeping form to get into bed.

Why would a man so carefully controlled in every aspect of his life discard his clothes on the floor? It didn’t fit the impeccable appearance he presented to the world.

“I can’t let you go, Anna,” he said tiredly, rubbing his face with his hands. “I
want
to give you that. You have no idea how much I
want
to give you your freedom. But I won’t be able to function if I do, and my work is too important. Try to understand.”