Seeker of Shadows (20 page)

Jacques sounded so surprised, as if he were asking if she’d once had a second head removed from that spot between her neck and the cap of her shoulder.

“I was young. He was my bodyguard. I thought it wildly romantic, until we were discovered.”

He blinked and shut his mouth with a sharp click. The muscles worked about his jaw as she watched understanding shutter his eyes. “You sold yourself to Frost so he’d save your reputation.”

Her mouth quirked at the ugliness of that claim. “Something like that.”

“Something like that or exactly that?”

“What does it matter? He made an offer at a time I couldn’t afford to refuse it. I thought it all out very logically. It’s what we Chosen do best.”

Heart falling, Susanna went inside. What else could he believe? That was the truth. It was what they were: cold, unfeeling creatures motivated by numbers and profit rather than the emotions they reviled. Look how those treasured feelings betrayed her now. She would have been wise to remember what she was, rather than what she wished she could be.

She stumbled when his hands curled about her upper arms, drawing her to a stop. He stood close behind her. Though their bodies weren’t touching, his heat seared her.

“Maybe that’s what they do,” he told her, “but not you. Was it the bond that changed you or have you always cared for others above yourself?”

“Why would you think that’s true?” Her words were strong even as her lips quivered.
Please believe it
.

“Because you’re here to help a friend. You’re risking everything for those logic says you should cast aside.” His voice lowered to a husky vibration. “Because you’re ruled by your heart instead of your head.”

“My greatest failing, according to Damien. The reason I need him to make my choices for me.”

Jacques snorted at that. His arms formed a supportive circle about her, tightening until she was pressed against him. His head lowered to rest on her shoulder, his cheek rubbing over that telltale mark.

“What happened to your Shifter mate?”

“They would have killed him. Damien promised to help him escape as long as I never had contact with him again.”

“Another term of your bondage to him?”

She nodded.

“Did you love him, your Shifter?”

Her eyes closed as she whispered, “Yes.” Then, and now. “He showed me a world I didn’t dare believe existed, one of color and light and dreams.”

“And what did you give him?”

“The only thing I could offer. Freedom.” Or so she’d thought. Until Philo told her of Damien’s true plans. She’d sent Jack Stone to his death and he’d awakened as Jacques LaRoche.

“What was he like, your Shifter lover?”

Susanna placed her palm upon his rough cheek, her emotions twisting as she said, “He was like you. Strong, noble, gentle, a good man. You’re a good man, Jacques.”

Jacques forced a smile when she turned to look up at him, her dark eyes overflowing.

He didn’t move as she stroked his face, as she turned and lifted up on her toes to kiss him.

He was like you.

Jacques scooped behind her knees, lifting her up in his arms as she continued to kiss him. He strode into the bedroom with her, pausing briefly in the mating of their mouths to rip back the covers on the big bed, sending their clothing to the floor in a colorful scatter as he lowered her gently onto that sea of dark blue silk. She never once glanced away as he stripped out of his clothes to stand before her, naked and bold. Her sultry gaze devoured the sight without a hint of shyness.

Jacques had no sense of modesty when it came to his own nudity. He knew he looked fit and powerful and was proud of that fact. He was used to females being enraptured with his sculpted torso and bulging arms, eager to put their hands on those rock-hard swells and delineating ridges.

He’d felt no threat from the existence of a Chosen
male as her mate, knowing they were delicate creatures more proud of their brain than their brawn. But when Susanna surveyed him through heavily lidded eyes, displaying admiration but no awe or alarm at his obvious masculinity, he wondered uncomfortably if she was comparing him to her Shifter lover, and how he fared in that study. That uncommon stumble of confidence made him hesitate, his focus slipping away from all that she offered.

“Jacques?” When he didn’t respond, she came up on her knees, drawing his stare to her lovely dark eyes, to the slight curve of humor on her lips as she asked, “Wondering if you left the iron on in the other room?”

“What?”

“Second thoughts?”

And third and fourth.

She could have charmed him from his distraction with a touch but she didn’t. She watched his face, waiting for him to think it through without complicating things further.

Maybe he was overthinking the issue. She’d been with another. So had he. They’d both lost the ones they’d pledged their hearts to with their bond. The past was a shadow, the future a void. All they would ever have was this brief time to ease each other’s loneliness. What was wrong with that?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

“No second thoughts,” he told her. “Not about this. Not about you.”

“I’m glad.”

Susanna reached for his hands, holding them in hers for a moment while marveling at their size and strength, then placed them at the edge of the T-shirt she wore, curling his fingers beneath the hem. All the encouragement he needed to lift it up and off her. She unfastened her bra and let it drop off her shoulders, then brought his hands to cover what satin and lace had bared.

A soft, plump handful. No more, no less. Perfect for him.

She put her hands on him, too, letting her palms roam the slope of his shoulders, play upon the contours of arms and chest. It wasn’t the tentative exploration of an inexperienced lover.

Jacques sucked in a breath as her hands trailed over granite abs on their way to his even harder sex. No hesitation as she stroked him and cupped him, finally gloving him in a supple rhythm that broke a sweat on his brow and showed no sign of slowing even as the centers of his eyes swelled and his breathing faltered.

Before she brought things to too quick a conclusion, Jacques caught her by the elbows and lifted her from her knees. As she balanced on the edge of the mattress, his mouth cruised the silky curve of her belly as he eased her bottoms over the slight fullness of her hips and down shapely legs.

He stared, lost in his heated study. She was beautifully made, petite, pale, yet firm in those graceful feminine lines.

Her palms fit to his stubbled jaw, tipped his head
up so she could fall deeply into his eyes, her whisper husky with desire.

“I’ve missed this. I’ve been waiting all this time. For you.”

Need shot through him like wildfire, scorching his senses, enflaming his lust until it was all he could do not to throw her down on the bed to pound away inside her to a desperate release.

For you.

That claim swirled about his emotions, stirring his raging passion into a fierce need to please her.

With one hand on the sweet globe of her ass, he used the other to lift her knee, drawing her leg over his shoulder. She clasped his head for balance, then gasped as he pressed his mouth against the mound of her sex, thrusting between her slick folds to sample her arousal with his tongue. Her body bucked and trembled as he tasted her, devoured her, until her breath grew tattered and her soft moans broke into a keening cry.

Then carefully, gently, he eased her down onto sheets as dark and cool as the night, spreading her before him, his heavenly body.

Her fair skin was flushed from the sensual exertion. Her eyes drifted open to fix upon his with a drowsy satisfaction, flooding him with a prideful sense of accomplishment, making him achingly aware of his own unmet needs.

Slow,
he reminded himself.
Be gentle. She’s not used to such vigorous pursuits.

Ignoring the raging petulance of his body, Jacques
stretched out beside her, head propped up on the heel of one hand, the fingertips of his other drawing light patterns on her slightly damp torso. He smiled and she responded with a lazy, cat-in-the-cream expression that twisted his balls in a knot. Her fingers threading contentedly between his.

“We can go as slow and easy as you like,” he murmured heroically.

She stared at him for a long moment, then cast an assessing glance at his pulsing hard-on. Her lips pursed. “I don’t think so. I think I’ve done all the waiting I care to do. I want you. Now. Unless
you
need a nap first.”

He grinned. “Just trying to be polite.”

“Less polite talk and more get-to-the-point action, please.”

His grin lingered. She was delightful, so soft and smart and unexpectedly sassy. And, best of all, insatiable. Everything he wanted in a female. In
his
female.

He drew a breath and let that truth shiver through him. He didn’t just want her now. He wanted her always.

He leaned down to plant a soul-sucking kiss on her lips. The sound she made was liquid pleasure as her fingers laced behind his neck, pulling him over her, into the open valley of her thighs.

“Now,” she whispered. “Please.”

The feel of her, so hot and eager, was almost his undoing as he gradually sank into her center. Her body arched and shook wildly, making him slow his advance.

She broke from his kiss, panting unevenly. Her gaze
sought and found his. Then she smiled again as her legs circled his hips and pulled him in tight, seating him all the way to her womb with one fierce move. She gasped, eyes squeezing shut, then she opened them on a sigh.

“Oh, my. That was worth the wait.”

He flexed his hips in a slow draw and thrust. Her fingers bit into his shoulder blades as he murmured, “Hang on, sweetheart. We’re just getting started.”

Once he was assured he wasn’t hurting her, Jacques proved himself to be the skilled lover his cadre of fawning females suggested he would be. The few times they’d been together in the North, he’d been young and fierce, rough in his urgency, yet so exciting he’d stolen her wits, her breath, her very heart. The edge of excitement was the same, but years and experience had improved his patience and technique as he kept Susanna panting at the cusp of completion. He refused to let her hurry him from his steady, tantalizing pace no matter how hard she clutched at him and cried out for release.

Finally, with all his glorious muscles slick and bulging with strain beneath her palms, with his heart hammering against her breast, he tensed and surrendered control, allowing pleasure to coil and consume her in glorious waves and shudders.

His weight smashed her into the mattress but it was a lovely pressure. She couldn’t make herself release him, her hands rubbing over his back, the soles of her feet caressing his calves and thighs, her lips whispering over the massive square of his jaw to the corner of his mouth.

Her thoughts were dazed and careless with sensual delight as she breathed into his ear, “Can we do this every chance we get until I have to leave?”

Until I have to leave . . .

She felt him flinch and instantly regretted speaking words that spoiled the moment. She couldn’t, no, wouldn’t take them back with false reassurances. It was better to remind him now than to let him—to let either of them—think anything else was possible.

She had to leave and he had to stay.

But until then, she could no longer deny herself the intimate aspects of his company. They would be friends, lovers, confidants, everything she’d desired and been denied in her own glacial world. And when they weren’t indulging in those carnal pleasures, she would work every second to find an answer to their child’s suffering.

And if she could find that answer, if Pearl could be cured, then perhaps they could revisit possibilities.

Jacques slid off her to settle on his back. His eyes were closed as he lay beside her but from the tension in his neck and shoulders, Susanna knew he wasn’t relaxed. Her fingertips teased over his pectorals.

“Are you okay with that?”

“With what?” he asked, not opening his eyes.

“Being together like this.”

“You mean exclusively?”

A sharp jab of jealous doubt took her in the heart. Perhaps that wasn’t much of a deal for him. She couldn’t fault him for previous encounters, but the
thought of being forced to witness his flirtations with another—

“I’m okay with it.” He looked at her then, expression somber as he added, “Until you leave.”

Susanna curled into the tempting heat of his body, drawing an indescribable comfort from that closeness, determined to enjoy being with him while she could.

“I’m sorry. I wish I could offer more.”

She felt his hand in her hair, the brush of his lips on her brow. Then he told her, “It’s not your fault. It is what it is.”

Unfair was what it was. Unbearable was what it was going to be when she had to let him go again.

“I wish—” She broke off, startled to have spoken that out loud.

His voice was a soothing vibration beneath her cheek. “What do you wish?”

Careful what you wish for,
she cautioned herself. She settled for saying, “That things could be different.”

He held her in silence for long minutes, then quietly confessed, “Me, too.”

“Anna!”

Jacques shot upright, disoriented in the darkened room. His breath panted from him, his skin ran with sweat. He blinked back into awareness, letting the remnants of the dream fall away into confusion.

“Jacques?”

He rolled out from under the covers, thinking his
taunting nightmare had suddenly come to life beside him. As he stared up at her from his defensive crouch at the bedside, taking in the huge dark eyes against her ghostly pallor, pain thundered through his head in great, dizzying waves. With palms pressed to the floor to steady himself, he rode out the nausea and chills that often accompanied the dream, breathing deep until his head cleared to register time and place.

“I’m all right. It’s okay,” he softly panted, certain he’d scared her to death.