by Jayce Carter
Kieran didn’t acknowledge the apology, shifting the necklace and holding it up to the light. It was then that Tiffany realized it didn’t look right. The rectangle that had been the charm was bent and split near the bottom.
He clasped his fingers around the charm and pulled, the end coming off to reveal a USB drive.
Kieran held the drive up, his gaze narrowed. “Well, what do we have here?”
* * * *
The night was hot, and, despite having stripped down and left the covers off, Kane couldn’t seem to get past the heat.
They’d spent the rest of the evening trying to pin down the damn drive. That was, of course, Kieran’s area. He’d muttered about encryptions, but fuck if Kane understood a word of it. The brownies had burned in their work, and dinner had ended up as some sandwiches when they’d realized how hungry they’d all grown.
Finally, around ten at night, Marshall had herded them off to bed except for Kieran, who had rejected the idea with a single snarl.
Fine, the asshole could stay up all night if he wanted to.
Kane sighed and shook his head. That wasn’t fair. He was pissed that they finally had some idea of what those fuckers were after, and he was useless. Kane could knock people around, he could track, he could kill, but computers? Fucking. Useless.
So, when Tiffany could have used him, when he could have maybe done something, he had nothing to offer. Instead, he lay in his bed, awake as fuck, and she slept next door.
Always falling short, wasn’t he?
His door creaked open, and he fought the desire to tell Kieran to fuck off. The bastard probably wanted to talk about their next plan, and while Kane didn’t have the same animosity he’d had for Kieran at the start, he didn’t want to have a heart to heart in the middle of the night, either. Kane kept his mouth shut, figuring there wasn’t a need for his piss poor attitude. Wasn’t Kieran’s fault he felt like a failure.
The door shut, and when it did, it pushed a breeze of air his way. On that gust? The delicious scent of Tiffany, and look at that, turned out his cock wasn’t tired, either.
Kane lifted his head to find her slim silhouette moving toward the bed, steps quiet. “Hey, doll.”
She paused, then huffed. “I wanted to surprise you.”
“You want me to pretend next time? Because if you try to wake me up with those pretty lips of yours around my cock, I promise I’ll play along.”
She snorted, no tinge of insult in the sound. Nah, Tiffany wasn’t the sort of girl to get offended over something like that. Hell, the increase in her scent wasn’t his imagination, either. She crawled into the bed, miles of warm skin against his as she settled in beside him.
“You ain’t wearing much,” he said.
“Neither are you.” Her small hand settled on his chest, fingertips brushing one of the scars there. “Besides, you came to my room last time.”
He swallowed down the discomfort of her touching the scar, playing off the panic. “So, this is just tit for tat? Because, I don’t mind tit.”
Tiffany sat up, then leaned over him. Was she going to straddle him? His dick might have wilted a bit, but damn if she couldn’t get him back up to snuff fast.
A click, then light poured into the room from the bedside lamp. After a moment, his eyes adjusted enough to make out Tiffany leaning above him, her blue eyes staring down at him with a lot worse than lust. Lust, he could deal with. Lust, he liked.
That shit there? It was pity, and curiosity and fucking steel.
“Don’t ask,” he said, voice somewhere between a beg and a threat.
Her shoulders dropped and she sat back.
He caught her hand to keep her there, despite the fact that she didn’t look at him. “Doll…”
She shook her head. “Don’t. I’m not going to force you, Kane. You’ve been there for me, never made me tell you anything. I’m tired of being on the outside. I want to know you, to understand you, but there’s this huge part of your past I don’t know anything about, that you won’t tell me anything about.”
“Ain’t anything worth knowing.”
Her gaze dropped, and he knew she eyed the worst of the wounds, the thick white scar that had been left when a knife had nearly pierced his heart. Still, she didn’t reach to touch it, nodding at the scar instead. “These almost took your life. You wouldn’t even be here if they had, and you’re telling me that isn’t worth knowing?” A soft sigh blew from her lips, warm and long. “And I’m going to bet that whatever it was left scars that aren’t on your chest. The ones that make you snap and keep people away. You do it to me, too. How do you expect this to work if I can’t even understand you?”
And there it was. The girl was too fucking smart, saw too much. He should have known she wouldn’t let that shit go, that she would eventually figure it out on her own.
Kane pulled her in closer by the grip on her wrist, hiding the flinch as he set her hand over the worst of the scars. Ugly white ruined skin ran over his pec, and even the intricate tattoo couldn’t hide it.
Her eyebrows drew together. “How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
Her short gasp made him want to laugh to break the tension. Sure, fifteen sounded young, but it wasn’t, not in his world. By fifteen he was already watching out for his sister, already out on his own.
“So, what happened?” Her soft fingertips stroked along the thick line of scaring.
The gentle touch pulled the story from him. “I was living on the streets, my little sister Kasey and me.”
“Where were your parents?”
“No idea who our dad was, or if it was the same man. Mom was an addict, and after the first time I found one of her dealers trying to crawl into my sister’s room at night, we were out of there.” He gritted his teeth at the memory, at the way he’d sleep on the floor of his sister’s room when their mom had any fucker she thought could get her a fix over. Fuck, those were bad days. He pushed forward. “I was thirteen when we took off and Kasey was eleven. Making money ain’t easy when you’re that young, and when I couldn’t make cash doing anything legal, well, only left one option.”
Her lip was pressed between her teeth as she listened, and he expected to see disgust on her face. Girl was fucking perfect, with her perfect family life and her perfect past and he was nothing but a mess. When nothing like that crossed her face, he figured she either didn’t get it yet, or she was good at hiding shit.
“Started with easy shit. Did a lot of break-ins, stole shit they needed back, got information. Kid that young doesn’t get noticed much, and it let me slip into places other people couldn’t. Got good at it, developed a network of people who passed information. I wouldn’t say Kasey and I lived in luxury, but she never had to worry about food. We crashed at friend’s places and she got to keep going to school. Kept her out of it as much as I could.”
“What happened to her?”
The question made his scars feel like they’d rip back open. “Guy I worked for gave me a bad job. Wanted me to break into this mansion up in the ritzy area of town, said the asshole owed him a ton of money. Wouldn’t be the first time I’d done that, gotten in real close and scared the shit out of someone, but he wanted more. Guy had three kids and a pretty wife, and he wanted me to kill one of the kids—didn’t even care which one it was. Figured that would send the message that we could get to him anytime, and if he wanted to keep the other two breathing, he’d pay up. I’ve done shitty things, but killing a kid? Fuck, I couldn’t do it. Told him he was crazy, that I wasn’t going to do it. I left and gathered all the cash I had stashed, figured I’d pick Kasey up and we’d leave. Guy was faster, though. By the time I got to the friend’s place we crashed at, friend was dead, Kasey was a bloody mess on the floor, and the asshole left me for dead after he and his buddies carved me up, too. Spent a couple months in a hospital, few more in physical therapy, and realized that doing the right thing is shit.” He offered a short shrug. “Never got to bury Kasey. Fuckers liked to dum
p bodies, figured it made it easier to hide shit. No idea where they left her.”
Tiffany leaned in, moving slowly as if she knew how wound tight he was, and pressed her lips to the scar. It was a chaste kiss, like soothing the wound that had never healed, would never fully heal. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t get shit twisted here. Kieran wasn’t wrong about me. I am shit. I steal, I lie, I fuck people up for the money. Don’t look at me like I’m some fucking hero when I ain’t. Kasey got killed because I got in deep with the wrong people, because I fucked up and I couldn’t keep her safe. I ain’t a good man, doll, never have been and I don’t see that changing. This?” He waved at himself. “The scars and fucking ink and the way I talk, this bullshit, is it what you were so desperate to know about? Because it ain’t like I didn’t already know you were too good for me, but I guess now we’re both clear on it, ain’t we?”
She said nothing, and the silence chipped away his bravado. He’d done the metaphorical bearing of his teeth to warn her off, tried to make it clear what he was, and now he waited for her to get it. She’ll realized she’s better off without me. Good. Better now than years down the fucking line, huh?
Even as he fed himself that line of bullshit, he held his breath. For the first time, he didn’t want her to go. How many people had he frightened off the same way? At the first sign they might get a look at him, a real look, he’d give them a reason to write him off then take off the other way when he knew they wouldn’t follow.
He didn’t want to do that with her. Fuck, the idea of watching her go, of having her look at him like everything else did, like he was a piece of shit, killed him.
Still, he didn’t take any of it back. He let the ugly truth sit between them and fester.
Tiffany broke the standoff, leaning forward to cup his cheeks and take his lips in a kiss that was far sweeter and gentler than he expected. Sex was always rough with him because that sweet shit? Too personal. Too dangerous.
When she slid her lips against his, coaxing as if he were some virgin in need of reassurance, it melted him. He returned the passionate exploration, deepening the kiss by slipping his tongue past her warm lips, dipping into her mouth to taste her. She ran her hands over his pecs, not following the scars but rather paying homage to his entire chest, as if the scars were no more or less important than any other part of him.
He broke the kiss with an uneven breath. “I tell you I’m a shitty person and you kiss me? You ain’t got a lot of sense, you know that?”
The smile she gave him sealed the deal. The omega was tough enough to stand against his snarling and his asshole personality and still grin like that. Damn, she was perfect for him.
The point was only made clearer when she slid a leg over his hip, her heat covering him. “I’ve got enough sense to not worry about your snarling. You’re not as scary as you think.”
“Really?” He grasped her hips and rolled her, pinning her wrists above her head and using his weight to hold her down. “Let’s see if you feel the same way after I have you knotted, doll.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tiffany found Kieran seated on the front porch, his laptop perched on his thighs, his eyebrows pulled toward one another. His eyes were red and dark circles sat under his eyes.
“Why are you out here?” She sat on the bench beside him.
“I was typing too loudly, and it was easier to move out here than to listen to Kane complain.”
“Were you up all night?”
He shrugged. “There was a lot to do. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep even if I had gone to bed.”
The idea of staying up all night made Tiffany want to nap. After her time with Kane, she’d dozed off in his bed. Later, when the sun had streamed in through the windows, she’d found herself alone. Kane must have moved to the living room to complain about the typing at some point, but it didn’t shock her.
He’d admitted when they’d still spoken by text and on the phone that he never slept well.
Admonishing Kieran wouldn’t do anything, so Tiffany didn’t even try. “Find anything?”
The question finally stilled Kieran’s quick fingers on the keyboard. He reached up to grasp the top of the laptop screen and close it, then faced her. “Some. A lot of the information I couldn’t make sense of. I’m good at what I do, but to fully access these files, it’s going to take more than just me. What I could find?” He sighed, setting the laptop aside. “It’s not good.”
Tiffany crossed her legs, trying to look at ease despite the fear. “What do you mean?”
“That drive didn’t belong to an omega there. It has files from the people who abducted them.”
“Why would it smell like an omega, then? Because an omega wore that, I can guarantee it. I could smell her on it.”
“My best guess? They hid it on one. Maybe the mate of one of the alphas to protect it, to hide it. It doesn’t change that what is on that drive is the reason people are after you, and they won’t stop until they get that back.”
She shouldn’t have been surprised. She’d known whatever reason these people were chasing her wasn’t good, but to think she’d had the answer all along and hadn’t even noticed? Tiffany tried to push down the nerves, to think through it. “So, what do we do?”
Kieran leaned back, his face that hard and distant mask he wore that she couldn’t read. “I’ve already put in some calls contacts I have in the FBI. This is a delicate matter, because criminals like this usually have more than a few people in their pockets. The men I contacted, I trust. We can turn the information over to them.”
“And what about me?”
“Ideally, we’ll have enough information on the drive to sweep up any threats. The agents I spoke with want to talk to you tomorrow to discuss specifics, but I suspect we’ll turn the drive over and you’ll finish out your year with me. After that, well, then you’ll be able to start your life.”
Tiffany stared at him, not sure how to respond. His eyes were flat, face giving nothing away.
After everything, he was saying she could walk away? Was she nothing but a contract to him? He’d said nothing differently, hadn’t promised her more, so why did it hurt?
She tried to keep her voice steady. “So that’s it?”
“What do you want from me, Tiffany?” He asked it as if he didn’t know.
How can he not know what I want?
“Nothing at all,” she whispered when she knew her voice would give her. She rose, ready to walk away, to swallow down the hurt at how quickly and easily it was for him to toss her aside.
He caught her wrist. “I understand that you have some feelings for me. That’s not uncommon, especially because you don’t have much experience.”
She drew in a deep breath and pressed her lips together to keep from snapping at the arrogant bastard. Was he sitting there and explaining that she didn’t even know how she felt?
If he noticed her reaction, he didn’t let on. “The fact is, after that year, after you are able to go on your own, you will realize that this infatuation is based on a lack of options. You’re young, Tiffany, and you don’t know what you want yet.”
“But you’re so sure that it can’t be you?”
His thumb stroked over the pulse on the underneath of her wrist like some consolation prize. “I’ve been through this before. I’ve had omegas who were swayed by the dynamic, not the alpha. It’s why I stopped taking care of omegas, because once I helped them get on their feet, they realized I wasn’t what they wanted. You, who haven’t done enough or lived enough to know yourself, let alone what you want, are asking for trouble.”
“So, you expect me to spread my thighs for you for a year while you offer me nothing? And I’m supposed to be okay with that?”
“Yes. It’s for your own good as much as mine. You’re young enough, desirable enough, you could have any future you want. You have Marshall and Kane, both interested in something long-term. The last thing you need is a jaded alpha like me.” Self-hatr
ed dripped from his voice, and beneath that? Fear.
Tiffany stared back into his eyes, willing some crack to show his feelings beneath that mask of indifference he wore. “Isn’t that for me to decide? Let me figure out what I want, but I can’t do that if you take away the chance.”
His eyes softened the barest amount, but a shake of his head was final. “I can’t. I can’t plan a future knowing you’ll change your mind. All I can give you is the year, Tiffany, the year to get you on a good path. Trust me, by the end of it, you’ll realize it’s best this way.”
Tiffany pulled her hand away. She didn’t yank, but tugged and he let her slip away. Wasn’t that the theme, though? He was happy to let her go.
All his pretty words didn’t change that he didn’t want her, didn’t think she was worth the risk. A year? A year wasn’t enough, and she knew it. Each day of that year would only make losing him worse. She tried to picture that year, tried to imagine it passing with her living with him, sleeping with him, and knowing he didn’t want anything more.
It tore into her.
She couldn’t do it.
Trying to live with him knowing he’d cut her loose as soon as he legally could would kill her.
There was only one option, and none of the men would like it.
* * * *
This isn’t good.
Kieran could read situations and people, and the hard look on Tiffany’s face said he would not be pleased with whatever she was about to say. After having spoken to the FBI agents herself for a few hours, she’d called the men together like some family meeting.
What had happened? What was that troublesome omega planning?
Whatever it was, he had a feeling he’d be objecting to it.
She probably would explain how she wanted to continue to help with the investigation. Maybe she planned to ask about getting an apartment away from Kieran, a neutral place where she would have time for Kane and Marshall as well.