Evidently, after our “breakthrough” in the woods, he’d expected me to be more forthcoming. But I’d had a breakthrough of my own.
I couldn’t spend every day for the rest of my life like that. Avoiding conversations. Ducking kisses. How was I supposed to give either of our parents grandchildren if I couldn’t stand the thought of Brian touching me?
“Okay, it wasn’t a great first day on the job.” I shrugged at my reflection in the mirror. “But I didn’t sign up to cuddle puppies and fluff pillows.”
“Abby, it’s okay to be upset. Do you want to tell me about it?”
I can’t.
I was keeping too many secrets and telling too many lies, and letting the truth out—any of the truths—would mean losing someone. The only person in my life that I could stand to lose was Brian. That meant something. Right?
I took a deep breath. “Well, I do need to talk to you, but not about the crime scene.”
“What’s wrong?” Over the line, I heard the squeak of springs, which told me he’d just sat on the edge of his bed. Or maybe a large chair. I wasn’t sure what the furniture in his room sounded like, because I’d never been there in all my time on the ranch.
Another deep breath. Then I decided to rip the bandage off and hope that was the break-it-to-me approach he favored, because I had no clue how he took his coffee, much less bad news. “Brian, I can’t marry you.” Even if a broken engagement had the potential to drive a wedge between our fathers. My dad wasn’t unreasonable. I had to believe he would understand.
Though I wasn’t sure about Ed Taylor...
Silence settled over the line for the span of a heartbeat. Then: “What?”
“I’m sorry. I thought I could. I thought that’s what I wanted, because that’s what I was supposed to want. But it’s not.”
“Is this about Jace?” Brian’s voice sounded…heavy, but not truly angry. Nor surprised.
“No.” Not technically, anyway. Jace and I obviously had chemistry—just the thought made me blush—but that didn’t change the reality of the situation. I was too young for him. I was his employee, so any relationship between us would be a blatant conflict of interest for him. And if it even looked like I’d broken up with Brian for Jace, I would have dragged a third Alpha into the rift between my dad and Brian’s.
Even if Jace was willing to risk that for me, I wasn’t sure I could let him.
“Then why?” Brian asked. “We could be good together.”
“Yes, I think we could. If either of us really wanted that.”
“I want it,” he insisted.
“Why?”
“What do you mean?”
I could practically hear his confusion. “Why do you want to marry me, Brian?” It wasn’t because we’d connected physically or emotionally. Or even conversationally. “What is it you were looking forward to the most?” I gave him a moment, and when he didn’t answer, I took a guess. “Sex?”
“No! I could have been… I mean, if we weren’t together for the past few years… I gave up lots of opportunities.”
“I’m sorry about that.” I hadn’t meant to dangle any X-rated carrots in front of him. “So, if not sex, what then? The Pride? Did you want to be an Alpha?”
“What did you want?” Brian snapped, and I realized I’d struck a nerve. “What did you get out of this?”
“I…” But telling the truth was a lot harder than asking for it.
“If you deserve the truth, I deserve it. Why did you wear my ring?”
I exhaled slowly, preparing to put into words something I’d never consciously admitted, even to myself. “Because you were safe, and the ring was like a shield. As long as I wore it, other toms stayed away. That’s what I thought I wanted. That is what I wanted, four years ago.”
I’d needed to be left alone, when my species needed me to be propagating. Being engaged to Brian with the graduation clause meant I wouldn’t have to think about getting married for four long years. Only those years had felt a lot shorter than I’d expected.
“And the truth is that I thought I would marry you. I thought that by now we would have fallen in love, because that was what made sense. But love doesn’t make sense, Brian. It isn’t easy, and you can’t just decide to feel it. If we were in love, we’d want to talk to each other all the time, even if all we do is argue. We’d be pulled toward each other any time we’re in the same room. We’d have to fight the urge to touch each other, because we’re not supposed to, but ultimately, we’d lose that fight because when it’s love, it can’t be helped.”
My hand flew to my mouth, as if I could take the words back, but it was far too late for that. I hadn’t known what I was going to say until I was already saying it, and I hadn’t known it was true until I heard it.
“Who are you talking about, Abby? Because it’s not me.”
“No one.” I closed my eyes, horrified by what I’d just done. Conflicted by what I’d just then come to understand.
“It’s Jace, isn’t it? Damn it, Abby, please don’t do this. You know what he’s like. The man’s never met a skirt he didn’t want to lift. Calling himself an Alpha hasn’t changed that.”
A growl began low in my throat. “Calling himself—”
“You know what I mean. He’s an Alpha with an expiration date. A placeholder. You deserve something better. Someone who will treat you like a treasure. He’s using you—”
“He’s not even doing anything!” Jace had pushed me away. Twice. That was the opposite of using me. “Listen, I’m so sorry that I said yes for all the wrong reasons. I’m sorry that I let it go this long when I knew we weren’t in love. The best I can do to fix this is to tell you the truth now.” I took a nervous breath. “I won’t blame you if you hate me.”
“I could never hate you,” he said after less than a heartbeat, yet the words sounded hollow. “But I think you’re making a big mistake. You’re going to regret this when you see what he’s really after.”
“He’s not after anything!” I stood to pace on the tile, my face burning with indignation. “This isn’t about Jace. This is about you and me. I have no doubt you could have made our marriage work. But you deserve better than a marriage that has to be made to work. And so do I.”
SEVEN
Jace
The rest of the west cabin was empty, but Abby was on the phone in Luke and Isaac’s bathroom. I couldn’t make out any of her conversation, though.
Not without trying, anyway.
It would have been completely inappropriate for me to eavesdrop on her, but almost everything I wanted to do with, or for, or to Abby was completely inappropriate. And anyway, I didn’t actually want to know what she was saying; I just wanted to hear her voice. I wanted to know how she was holding up after seeing her picture plastered all over that sick bastard’s wall, and if she didn’t know I was listening, she wouldn’t hide anything.
But I resisted the urge, because we’d agreed that she was an enforcer, and I was an Alpha, and there was nothing more to our relationship. Just like any other enforcer, if she needed to talk, she’d tell me.
Her overnight bag sat open on Luke’s unmade bed with several articles of clothing hanging from it. Most of her stuff was jeans and cotton tees, but something green and silky peeked from one end of the bag, and I really wanted to know what it was.
Abby didn’t strike me as the kind of girl who would wear sexy underwear, but then I was learning all kinds of new things about her.
Focus, Jace.
I glanced around the room in search of something to divert my attention from that green scrap. On one corner of Luke’s desk, I found a gruesome and bizarre computer printout. I picked it up, scowling at the picture, and hinges creaked in front of me. When I looked up, Abby stood in the bathroom doorway, wearing nothing but a towel, and I forgot all about the grisly image.
Hell, I forgot my own damn name.
I’d seen her naked, of course. Most recently in September, before the Pride’s annual fall grou
p run. But in that setting, the last thing on my mind had been…
“Jace?”
My gaze snagged on her damp, plump lower lip, the gateway to indulgences forbidden to me on the basis of decorum, and professionalism, and many reasons I could no longer quite remember.
“Jace?” she said again, and I blinked.
“Sorry. I was just thinking about—” Tasting. Touching. Breaking every rule I’d ever been bound by in my entire miserable life… “—running. Together. Um…” I blinked again and cleared my throat, grasping for focus and control.
Get it together. You’ve seen many nude human women.
But Abby was neither nude nor human, and those two facts made all the difference. Wearing nothing but a towel, she seemed to straddle some erotic line between naked and clothed, and my mind couldn’t quite fathom the temporary state.
Though the rest of me knew exactly how to proceed.
“I was thinking about a Pride run,” I finally managed to say. “We should do one this month. Make it a winter tradition.”
“Sure.” Her towel slipped a fraction of an inch, and I realized I was holding my breath. I knew what she looked like beneath that white cotton, yet being limited to my own memory made me ache to refresh the mental image by removing her towel.
Slowly.
With my teeth.
Abby shrugged, and the cotton slipped a little more. “We could probably all use the physical release.”
My cock stiffened and I prayed she couldn’t see. “Release?” She was doing that on purpose. Again. She was a child playing a woman’s game, and I wanted to let her win.
Abby nodded and dropped her dirty clothes into Lucas’s already-stuffed hamper. “We’re all under a lot of pressure, hunting the murderer. And the killers he’s trying to kill. Ironic, isn’t it?” She turned back to me, and my focus snagged on her mouth again, then followed the line of her throat. So pale. So delicate. I could see her pulse through her skin, and I wanted to lick it. I wanted to feel the thrum beneath my tongue.
I wanted to know that her heart beat, and her pulse raced, and her body ached for no one else. No one but me.
What the hell was I thinking?
“What’s ironic?” I asked, and only my automatic recall of the past few spoken words gave me any clue what we’d been talking about.
“It’s ironic that the killer’s actually doing us a favor.” Abby dropped the hamper lid, and I hardly heard the clatter.
Her chest was freckled. Hundreds of tiny reddish spots sprinkled her shoulders and collarbones, then disappeared beneath the cotton. How far did the freckles go? Were they still red that far down, where the sun rarely touched them? Were her nipples pink? Large and round, or small and cute?
I’d seen her wearing nothing but a thin sheen of sweat literally dozens of times, so why couldn’t I remember? Why hadn’t I memorized every single freckled inch of her skin—every curve and dip? Every peak and valley?
When the hell had she developed peaks and valleys?
“I mean, when we find the rest of Hargrove’s group, we’re going to kill them, right?”
I inhaled deeply, trying to focus on her words as she dug into her overnight bag at the foot of Lucas’s bed.
That’s right. Think about her brothers. All five of them. They were all big, and protective, and…
And I couldn’t remember a single one of their faces or names. All I could think about was Abby, and how badly I wanted her.
My body told me I could have her. My brain told me I should have her. I was an Alpha. She was a tabby. It was only natural. And I knew she was interested. She’d kissed me in the dark, in the woods, her body pressed against mine for balance and maybe for warmth. Then I’d kissed her, in that morbid taxidermy chamber, and she’d tasted like…life. Like everything vital, and warm, and vibrant. Like everything I’d always known I wanted, but could never have.
Because Abby. Wasn’t. Mine.
“Jace?”
Damn it. She was still talking, and I hadn’t heard a word, though I’d seen every shape her lips made as she spoke. “I’m sorry. What?”
“I said we’ll kill them when we find them, right? The hunters?”
“Well, if we can capture them alive, we have to take them to the council for questioning before they’re executed,” I said, and Abby frowned. “But yes, ultimately, they’ll all be put out of their misery for the good of the entire shifter community.”
“So then, do we really have to find the stray?” She pulled a nightshirt from her bag and shook it out. It was blue and it already smelled like her, which meant she’d worn it the night before. “I mean, he’s only doing what we’re going to do anyway, and he clearly knows more than we do about the situation. So, maybe we should just wait and let him do his job.”
Wait, what? I shook my head to regain focus. Her laissez-faire approach to crime prevention had woken me up.
“But it’s not his job,” I reiterated. “It’s my job. It’s your job, now. Vigilante justice isn’t really justice, Abby. It’s violence and chaos.”
“You don’t believe that.” She raised one reddish brow at me as she shook out a pair of pajama bottoms. “I can see it in your eyes.”
What else could she see in my eyes? They probably read like a thermometer at the moment. Could she see my temperature rise with every movement she made? Every glance she threw my way?
Beads of water still clung to her. The clean scent of her skin triggered urges I had no right to feel. No right to want. And the only thing that could possibly smell better than Abby fresh from the shower was the scent of her sweat mixed with mine.
I shifted subtly, trying to disguise the evidence of what I wanted. I needed to taste her. I ached to touch her.
I should have turned around and run, right then.
“If you didn’t have an Alpha’s responsibilities, you might be doing exactly what this stray’s doing,” she insisted. “He’s taking out the men who were hunting me, Jace. Wouldn’t you do that for someone you cared about?”
“In an instant,” I growled, surprised when the truth rumbled out without warning. “And when I find Hargrove and the rest of the hunters, I will personally rip them limb from limb, one bone at a time.” For you. Because they’d watched her. Stalked her. They’d photographed and threatened her. They’d terrorized and murdered her friends, then lured her to their sick-ass slaughtering cabin and come after her with a knife.
They’d tried to kill my Abby…
Another growl rumbled from my throat, unbidden, and her eyes widened.
While part of me was embarrassed by the possessive notes of aggression I couldn’t hold in, a deeper part of me was pleased that she’d heard and understood them, because I could never articulate those thoughts. No matter what my instinct was telling me—no matter what kind of potent hormones some ancient biological imperative was dumping into my bloodstream with every beat of my heart—she was not mine. She would never be mine.
But she was my responsibility.
“I would do anything for someone I cared about, Abby. But there’s a process. As an Alpha, I have to dispense justice rather than vengeance.” Though there were days when I’d much rather be a vigilante. “And even if we weren’t going to take action against the stray, we’d have to find him and question him, because you’re right—he probably knows more about the hunters than we do, and we need to know everything he knows.”
Abby bent over her suitcase again, her shoulders stiff. She didn’t like my answer. “I just think it’s messed up that we’re after this poor stray for doing exactly what we’re going to do to the monsters he’s hunting.”
“We’re not—”
She untucked her towel and let it fall, and I choked on the rest of my sentence. I had to focus on each breath after that to make sure I hadn’t forgotten the entire respiratory process, but that didn’t help, because every breath smelled like Abby. The rest of the room slid out of focus until I saw nothing but the curls tumbling down her back, en
ding just above the narrowest part of her waist. Even her lower back was freckled, but below that, her skin was smooth and pale, leading toward taut, rounded muscle.
Look at something else. Anything else.
I glanced around the room, desperate for something to latch onto. Something to talk about other than how her very well-toned backside tapered to slim, powerful thighs that could probably squeeze…
No, no, no. There was no hiding how badly I wanted her, and if she looked, she’d see.
My gaze landed on the computer printout I’d found on the desk, forgotten with my first glance at Abby in her towel, still wet from the shower. The gruesome image was jarring, but it did the trick.
“Where did you get this?” I held up the page.
She turned as she pulled her nightshirt over her head, then froze when her gaze landed on the paper. Her eyes widened and the hem of her shirt fell past her navel. “I should have shredded it,” she whispered.
Staring up at me from the page was a picture of Abby’s head mounted on a wooden plaque sloppily nailed to a paneled wall. Cartoonish blood dripped from her severed neck in the image, and her human eyes had been digitally overlain with cheesy cat pupils. She’d been smiling in the original photo, and the grinning severed head was well beyond disturbing.
“I printed it at Hargrove’s house before they packed up his computer.” Abby stepped into that green underwear and crossed the room toward me slowly, each step deliberate, as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to be any closer to the gruesome image but was too stubborn to give in to fear. And she was afraid. Terror danced in the coppers and browns of her eyes, but the line of her jaw had been chiseled by determination.
She was so strong. I’d never met anyone who’d been through as much as Abby had and had come through it with half as much resilience and determination.
“Why?” I frowned down at the page, then studied her face again, convinced I’d see more there than she would say aloud. “Why would you even want to print this, much less keep it?”
She glanced at the floor, obviously struggling to put into words an idea that probably hadn’t even been clear when she’d first thought it. “I need to remember why I’m doing this. I can’t afford to forget what will happen if I get sloppy or careless. If they catch me.”
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