by Kate Douglas
“Yes, I am in a ménage relationship. Do you think that’s strange? Oh, no,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Maybe you think it’s a little odd that these very sexy and virile men would look toward full-figured women for their love interests?”
Marena frowned at that odd question, tilting her head to the side as she considered her response. “I’ve never had a problem with my body and I’ve been what doctors call ‘obese’ according to their BMI charts and guidelines since I was seven years old. Yet even now, at twenty-eight years old, I’ve never been diagnosed with high blood pressure, diabetes, or any other medical condition directly related to obesity. I’m healthy and sexy and don’t give a damn who thinks differently. So, the answer to your last question is no, I’m not at all amazed that a group of very attractive men would have the good sense and awesome taste to look to a plus-sized woman for their pleasure. Why the hell wouldn’t they?”
Kira laughed then. Loud and long, until she almost dropped her half-full glass of wine on the pretty Aubusson rug.
Caroline had smiled as well, nodding her head as she reiterated her first question. “So it’s just the ménage thing you find strange?”
Marena shook her head. “Not at all. To each his own. If that’s what makes you and them happy, then who am I to have a problem with it? In fact, let’s just get this out of the way right now. I don’t have a problem with any of you. Feline shape-shifters or lycans or whatever else might be walking this earth. It’s a big planet, room enough for all of us in my book.”
“If ever we thought of creating a lycan council you’d get my vote as spokesperson,” Kira said finally after her laughter had subsided. “I like you, Marena.”
“I do, too,” Caroline added. “And that’s a good thing, especially since Phelan’s so taken by you.”
“No,” Marena replied quickly. “He’s not. He doesn’t do girlfriends.”
“Really?” Kira asked. “He told you that?”
Marena nodded. “Yes. He did.”
“When? Before or after he made you scream his name?” Kira continued.
Now that was a little beyond the honest scope and Marena hesitated a moment. That was a mistake.
“No, don’t answer that. Tell us this, Marena: Why did you drive all the way from San Francisco to Montana? If you wanted to get back to work so quickly, why go so far?” Caroline asked, this time lifting her own elegantly arched brow.
Her red-painted lips had tilted slightly as if she was enjoying Marena’s discomfort.
“I . . . I don’t know,” Marena replied honestly, thinking back to the day she’d left her condo and climbed into her SUV.
She’d just begun to drive knowing only that she needed to get away from the police who would no doubt show up at her apartment momentarily. Tammi had said they were asking about her and wanted to question her. It was only a matter of time and that’s why she’d left, but she hadn’t thought, not once, of where she was going.
“I just drove until the light went on telling me I was low on gas. I pulled over at the next gas station and got right back onto the road. Continuing nonstop,” she finished quietly, her gaze going to the window once more.
She looked out to the dark night with no light in sight. It was an ominous blackness that, for some reason, she felt a kinship to.
“Until Phelan found you in that B and B,” Kira finished. “What made you stop there?”
Her fingers clenched the stem of the wineglass until she thought she might actually break it. “I was hungry, I think,” Marena started, trying to remember back to those moments when she was in the SUV and had decided to pull off the road. “I wanted to eat and to lie down. I was in so much pain and I felt so sick and then I wasn’t anymore. The pain was gone and . . . and Phelan was there.”
“Phelan was there because it’s where he was supposed to be to save his mate,” Caroline told her matter-of-factly.
“His what? No,” Marena said, shaking her head. “I’m an attorney. I don’t do boyfriends or romantic connections. It gets in the way and I can’t . . . I don’t want . . . He’s not—”
The words she was stumbling over were halted immediately, only to be replaced by a yearning so deep and so warm that she almost buckled with its intensity. That feeling had come as his hand touched her shoulder.
“Are you ready for bed?” Phelan asked.
Marena looked up to see Kira and Caroline smiling knowingly at her. When she looked at Phelan it was to his drawn brows, thin stretched lips, and a muscle twitching in his jaw. He was upset, angry possibly. At her? Or something that had been said? She didn’t know and she didn’t care. Just as she didn’t give a damn what Caroline and Kira had been trying to say. Phelan was nothing to her. None of these people were. No, she acknowledged that they all would be a means to an end once she found Davis. That’s all that mattered here. Find Davis, clear her name, get back to her job and her life.
Nothing else.
Not even the sexy lycan who was staring at her while his hand rested on the shoulder where she’d been bitten. Especially not him, Marena thought as she once again attempted to ignore the pulsating of her pussy and the heaviness of her breasts.
Chapter 8
His body jolted with the sudden and intense pain ripping like a fresh wound down the left side of his face. Phelan didn’t growl, he didn’t yell out in agony, but he did reach up grabbing tufts of his hair and pulling until the pain there matched the pain in his face. Angered by that action, he quickly pulled his hands down, fists clenching in his lap as his eyes watered and he opened them to the darkness of his bedroom.
Tossing back the sheets that had tangled between his legs, he rose from the bed, walking steadily toward the patio doors. He’d chosen this back part of the house as his refuge because it wasn’t close to the rooms of any of the other pack mates. Blaez and Kira had their own suite on the second level of the house while Channing and Malec were located on the far end of the first level. Here Phelan could be alone with his demons. He could sit in the darkness or out on his small porch with the closest view into the forest and think about the life he’d been given and the burdens he’d been forced to bear. Alone.
Once outside he leaned forward, bracing his hands on the wrought-iron railing. It was one of the few spots where they’d used something other than wood on the house, because Phelan had liked the strength and the clean lines of the black iron. Everything in his world was about strength. A lycan needed inner strength as much as the physical because they were created to sustain whatever came their way. That wasn’t entirely correct; they were created out of vengeance and pain and to an extent were sentenced to live the same way. It had taken Phelan a while to absorb and accept that fact. His inner strength had been the only reason he’d been able to bear all the disappointments and pitfalls in his life.
Heat fused his face and for a moment Phelan could visualize the moment Eureka had wounded him. It had been a dark night, similar to this one, only there had just been a storm, so the scent of rain, wet leaves, and fresh mud filtered through the air. They’d been standing at the base of a cliff near Mount Elden in Colorado and he’d just finished telling Eureka that their time together was over.
“You are not who I thought you were,” Phelan had said, hating the sound of the words as they hit the air. He’d despised the fact that she’d deceived him, lied to him, and most likely used him.
He had been a fool to think there was anything real between them, to believe for one second that a lycan could have the happiness that a normal human did. From the time of his birth Phelan hadn’t known that type of happiness. His parents had left him at an orphanage when he was five years old, after they’d taught him everything about the lycans and the world within which they were cursed to live. They’d simply walked away and he’d never seen them again.
Sixteen years later, he’d felt like he was once again experiencing that feeling of desolation, of loss so severe he could barely breathe. He despised that feeling, right down t
o his very core.
“I am the love of your life,” Eureka had replied, coming to stand right beside him, her hand going to his elbow and holding tightly.
A day before, possibly even an hour prior, Phelan would have relished that touch. He would have enjoyed the way it made him feel inside—wanted, needed, possibly loved. But now he knew differently. He’d seen and heard all that he needed to when he was in the Olympic realm. He knew the truth.
“You are a vengeful bitch!” he stated vehemently, pulling his arm away from her and taking a step back. “It is your job, inbred in the very cells of your body. Your main goal is to punish in the name of justice. Instead, you do his bidding, no matter what that is.”
“You are wrong,” she replied calmly.
“I am right!” Phelan roared, his teeth elongating. “I saw you with him, saw you vowing to kill me and any other lycan that got in your way! You pledged your allegiance to Zeus.”
“It is what I am supposed to do,” she answered. “You already knew who and what I was when we met. But then things changed, Phelan. You changed them for me, for us.”
She looked and sounded sincere, but she had been the same way standing in that garden, surrounded by tall, colorful, and exotic plants, looking up at Zeus as if he were her personal savior. The sight was burned into Phelan’s memory, as was the rage he’d felt at that moment. He’d wanted to kill the god right then and there for once again wreaking havoc on his life. He hadn’t, thanks to Blaez and the intense training they’d undergone for their covert ops team. Phelan knew at that moment that he was in control of himself and his destiny. Even in the Olympic realm, when faced with a fury, he was still in control.
“I was a fool,” he admitted solemnly.
“You are my love,” she’d insisted.
“No.” He’d shaken his head. “I am nothing to you now. And you are nothing to me.”
“That is a lie! We are everything. We are the new! We can change everything together. What difference does anything or anyone else make as long as we are together?” she’d continued, her eyes growing brighter.
Phelan had not answered her. He had not told her that the difference was the lycan who had saved his life, the one whom he had vowed to protect until the end of his days. He did not mention Blaez because he no longer trusted that Eureka wasn’t sent to kill him.
“I should have known better,” was his stilted reply. “I should have known that there was no happiness for us. For any of us. There is only the duty of who and what we are. That’s all there will ever be.”
“You are wrong, Phelan. There is more. We’ve had more,” she pleaded.
“We’ve had lies and deceit! You never said that you were directly under Zeus’s authority. Not one time did you claim to be one of his pawns.”
“I cannot change who and what I am! I am a fury. My family are the justice keepers in the Olympic realm,” she argued.
“And in the human realm? What are you doing here? What justice could you possibly dispense on this earth? Or is there another reason Zeus wants you here?”
She’d gone silent then, as did everything else around them. The wind had stilled and there were no sounds from any other creatures of the night.
“I am going to turn and walk away. Do not follow me. Do not come to me again. This,” he’d said with a bitter taste in the back of his throat, “is done.”
He’d turned then and taken only one step when the air picked up violently, swirling around him as if he’d walked into the center of a storm. She’d made a horrific sound, somewhere between the deafening screech of a harpy and the wounded call of a bird. When Phelan turned again she was right there, arms stretched wide. Her face had looked thinner, her eyes turned totally black as her long raven-colored hair blew in haunting tendrils around her face.
“It will never be done!” she yelled, her voice a hollow echo on the strong winds. “You will always be mine!”
She was swinging before Phelan could react, the vicious claws of her right hand slashing across his face.
“No one will want you scarred and broken. No one but me, and I will never leave you, no matter how far you try to run! And you will never find another, never give your heart and soul to a mate. Only me! Only us!”
She’d continued to scream even as her nails had dug deeper into his skin, scorching him with a heat that Phelan swore he could feel in the core of every bone of his body. It had taken all the physical strength he’d been born with and accrued in the military to grab hold of her wrists and to finally pull her hand free of his face. He would never strike a woman; his father had ingrained that into his head early on. Then as he’d grown into a man, Phelan had continued to stand by that rule. Still, he wanted her out of his sight before she could tempt his resolve any further. He picked her up from the ground where she’d fallen back and he growled long and loud into her face. He shifted so that she could feel the full rage of the beast within him and then he tossed her away, watching as she tumbled over the cliff. She would spread her wings and fly; of that Phelan had no doubt. He just wanted her to fly away from him forever.
With his face bleeding and his heart seemingly ripped straight from his chest, Phelan turned away. Still in lycan form, he’d run hard and fast, not stopping until he was deep into a forest, not sure in which state or which realm. There he’d stayed for too many days to count. Until he’d known what he must do, how he needed to proceed from that moment on.
The memory was so fresh and so potent, Phelan was now out of breath as he stood on the patio. He gripped the iron railing so hard he could hear it cracking the wood where it was embedded in the floor.
“It’s okay now,” Marena said from behind him, her voice a husky whisper. “It was just a nightmare. I’ve been having them a lot myself lately.”
She hadn’t touched him, thank the gods. Yet she’d stood very close, almost until the skin of her arm could rub along the skin of his. The touch hadn’t been necessary and neither had the words, Phelan suspected. The comfort was there in her presence alone. The same comfort he afforded her when she was in pain. It was there between them, as natural as the rising of the sun. Another anomaly he wanted to curse, to rail against in anger. Only at this moment he simply did not have the strength.
“It is painful,” he admitted in a quiet voice, a hand lifting to his scar before he knew better and stopped himself.
Marena moved then, leaning closer to him and lifting her arm until her hand covered his on his face. Gently, she pushed his fingers away, letting her own trace the ugly bumps of skin. Phelan couldn’t bear to look at her while she did. He did not want to see the pity in her eyes.
“A woman did this,” he heard her say softly. “She was hurt and confused and lashed out in anger. Petty and foolish anger that hurt you physically and mentally.”
Phelan shook his head. “No. Not inside,” he insisted. “I let her inside once, but that was the one and only time. This was not done to hurt me. It was done to dissuade you.”
He did look at her then, saw the quick flash of shock and then knowledge in her amber eyes. This was the first time he noticed that her eyes were the color of Kentucky bourbon, his father’s favorite drink. Her lashes were long and fanned over her cheeks when she closed her eyes. She was tall, not near his six feet three inches in height, but the top of her head met his chin, so that all she had to do was look up and their gazes were instantly locked. That’s how they stood now, as he’d turned a bit when she touched him. Their sides rubbed against the railing, her hand on his face, his fingers clenching and releasing as he resisted the urge to touch her in return.
“I didn’t even know you when this was done,” she told him. “I had no idea I would ever know someone like you, so how could she want to warn me away?”
“I believe she knew the time would come,” Phelan admitted. Everyone had seemed to know a mate would soon appear for him. Everyone but him, of course.
No, that wasn’t true. Phelan hadn’t doubted there was a mate out there fo
r him. He’d simply refused to take one, and right now, knowing all that he knew, Phelan wasn’t certain that he was going to change his mind on that stance.
Regardless of how tempting Marena Panos may be.
“But I don’t do girlfriends.” He reiterated what he’d already told her, taking a slow step back, until her hand fell from his face. “I don’t do relationships or connections of any kind.”
“Okay,” she replied after a few seconds of silence. Nodding her head, she folded her arms over her ample chest, turning back to lean her bottom on the railing this time.
Tonight she’d opted for shorts, skimpy and flirty with large pink hearts all over the white material. The tank top she wore was pink also, like the flowers that grew beneath his mother’s bedroom window. Phelan frowned then, ignoring how delicious the swell of her breasts looked squeezed together by the tight cotton material.
He hadn’t thought about his parents in years and in the last ten minutes he’d thought of them twice as he’d looked at her.
“I’m guessing you have a reason for taking that stance. Would you like to share?” she asked.
Phelan’s immediate response was, “No.”
To that she’d simply raised a brow.
“How do you expect me to take that answer? It could simply be a dare, to see how intent I may be on testing your resolve, or you could be dead serious because you’ve got some deep, dark past that’s scared you way more than she did physically.” Marena shrugged. “There are a few other options, but it would be much simpler if you just told me the truth.”
He stood a good distance away from her now, testing a theory that had just popped into his mind. Earlier today she’d taken a shower while he’d been in his office and she hadn’t complained of any pain. Tonight he’d walked out here and stood for a few moments and she hadn’t had any pain. Or maybe she had and that’s why she’d come out here looking for him. So he’d walked to the other end of the deck. It wasn’t that far, maybe thirteen feet. She hadn’t moved, only watched him curiously, no doubt waiting for his response to her question.