The Strip

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Charlie swallowed. A lump had formed in her throat, and it hurt a little. “By Phelan.”

  Kavanagh’s gaze snapped back up, and the light blue of his eyes was now glowing as if someone had lit a fire inside of an iceberg. “Yes,” he said.

  Charlie’s breath caught in her throat. His gaze was so utterly stark in the handsome setting of his face that it fairly stunned her. She could see why he was the Overseer. The power rolling off of him now was stifling. She felt hot and cold, at once. She felt dizzy and short of breath.

  Like she was having a panic attack.

  As if suddenly aware of the effect that his anger was having on her, Kavanagh stood and reigned in his influence. She could feel it sliding off of her, uncoiling from her body and everything around her. How he did it, she would never know, but she was grateful.

  Now she could breathe.

  “I’m so sorry, Charlie. I didn’t mean to lose control.” Kavanagh sighed and moved once more to the floor-to-ceiling windows across the room. The Las Vegas skyline seduced from below, inviting revelers with a siren song of lights and movement, music and magic.

  “I loved my son very much,” he told her, softly.

  “And I loved my father.”

  At this, Alexander turned and pinned her with a somewhat startled expression. He gazed at her in wonder, as if seeing her – truly seeing her – for the first time. And then he smiled again and nodded. Once. “You’re a strong young woman, Charlie. I’ll give you that.”

  Charlie stood too, and ran a hand through her hair. Then she hugged herself and asked the question she’d really been dying to ask since she’d learned he was the Overseer and the only one who would for certain know the answer. “Who is Jessie Graves?”

  Alexander blinked, and then his shoulders sank a touch. He sighed heavily and shoved his hands into the pockets of his suit pants. “He’s a Sentinel. Your Sentinel, right now. And he’s been watching over you for many years.”

  “How many?”

  He waited a good long while before replying. He obviously didn’t want to answer this question. But in the end, he capitulated. “Since you were twelve,” he admitted, softly. “The day your parents died.”

  Charlie’s heart stopped beating – and then started up again, hard. She felt dizzy, light-headed. She sat down on the couch, not even realizing she was doing so. Her fingers dug into the leather and she closed her eyes. “You mean to tell me that he’s known me since I was… since I was a child?”

  “Yes.” Again, he sighed and moved away from the windows. “Charlie, there is much about the werewolf community that you have yet to learn. Sentinels are complicated beings, even by our terms. Graves is the oldest and most powerful among the watchers. That was why I chose him for your job.”

  “Hold on.” She held up her hands and kept her eyes closed. “I need a minute here.” And she did; that much was true. She had trusted Jessie. With everything. And he’d been lying to her, in so many ways, all along. It was too much.

  “If it helps at all, Charlie, he didn’t have a choice. I wouldn’t have allowed him to back down where you were concerned. I needed my best man for this, and he was it. If there is anyone who needs your forgiveness, it is I. Not Graves.”

  At that, Charlie looked up, and she knew that the pain she felt in her heart was reflected in her eyes. She knew, because her grandfather looked as if he’d been hit with a physical blow. His expression was pained with regret.

  “You don’t know,” she said, softly, so that her voice wouldn’t crack, “you have no idea what we… how I….”

  “I have an idea, little one,” Kavanagh whispered. And then he was coming across the room and she could feel his presence drawing nearer. His physical form was preceded by a wave of comfort, warm and reassuring, just as it had felt when she’d first laid eyes upon him.

  Charlie gave in to it, welcomed it, and did not move away when he sat beside her and slowly, tenderly, drew her into his arms.

  It didn’t hurt. Not that she’d expected his touch to hurt. It was just that she was wearing Cole’s mark and she knew her grandfather was a werewolf – a powerful one. Undoubtedly an alpha.

  But she guessed that family didn’t count when it came to a mate’s mark. And as she rested her head against his chest, she was eternally grateful for that. It would have really pissed her off if, on top of everything else, she hadn’t been able to hug the only family she had left in the world. She would have had to kill Cole.

  And she didn’t want to kill him.

  She wanted to other things to him. With him. She wanted to – well, she wanted to….

  “Cole is a good man,” her grandfather suddenly said. His voice rumbled in the chest beneath her cheek, the vibration reminding her of a Harley’s engine. She pulled away and looked up at him.

  “Why do you say that?” she asked, wondering once more if a werewolf could read her mind.

  “Actually Charlie,” he looked sheepish for a moment. “I can.”

  Charlie blinked. He can what?

  “I can read your thoughts,” he repeated, stating the fact as if he were admitting that he’d once been a boy scout or had graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law.

  He didn’t give her time to dwell on it, though. Instead, he expanded upon what he’d said earlier. “Malcolm Cole has been through a lot, as I’m sure Mrs. Kane has told you.”

  Numbly, Charlie nodded. But her eyes were golf-balls in her lovely face.

  “He’s earned the high regard and respect of every member of Council, including myself. And that’s not easy, Charlie. I’ll admit that his ways are unorthodox at times, and that he often lacks subtlety. But I also know that when a wolf is powerful within a man, he is bound to be ruled by it once in a while. And Cole’s wolf is powerful, indeed.”

  “You can read my thoughts?”

  Alexander laughed softly once more. He nodded. “Yes, little one. Each werewolf is born with different powers. Some are more useful than others.” He shrugged, as if it were no big deal. “The ability to read a person’s mind is one of mine. Please don’t let it bother you, child. I’ve grown quite used to filtering out things I don’t need.”

  “You can read minds…. Holy hallelujah.” She suddenly felt as if she needed to hide everything from him. She tried to think of sunflowers. Bees. Summer. The color yellow…. But then she was thinking of her mother. And the funeral.

  And David Reese. Gabriel Phelan.

  When her grandfather’s visage darkened in response to her thoughts, she knew she’d lost the battle.

  “He will be found, Charlie. And he will be brought to justice. This, I promise.”

  There was a knock on the door then. Kavanagh straightened, obviously not surprised. He took a deep breath and managed a small smile for his granddaughter. “Come in, Cole.” He gave the order and Malcolm Cole slid a key card into the door on the other side. He opened it and stepped into the foyer.

  Charlie’s heart rate immediately sped up. Their eyes met and she was trapped; a doe in emerald headlights. For the thousandth time, she was struck with how handsome he was. It took her breath away. No man had ever looked like him. His face was something out of her very own wet dreams. And those eyes of his… Christ, did she ever love his eyes. And he smelled good. Every time she was near him, she was overwhelmed with the sense of him. He smelled like fog and the beach and sailing ships and leather and some wonderful, expensive hint of cologne, and after shave and –

  Beside her, her grandfather shifted and stood up.

  Instantly, Charlie ripped her gaze from Malcolm’s and looked up at the Overseer. A horrid heat crept across her cheeks and neck. She was furiously blushing, his presence suddenly reminding her that he could read her thoughts. He’d most likely read every one of the less-than-demure thoughts she’d just entertained.

  Charlie stifled a moan and looked down to stare steadfastly at the floor as Kavanagh crossed the room to speak with Cole. She overheard them say something softly to one another, and then
her grandfather was leaving. Cole shut the door behind him.

  They were alone.

  Charlie’s head snapped up when she heard Malcolm bolt the door and set the latch. She knew he could hear her breathing from across the room. She couldn’t control her pulse or the air moving swiftly in and out of her lungs. She couldn’t stop the thin sheen of sweat that suddenly broke out along her brow and made her t-shirt feel too hot. She wanted to take it off. And her bra.

  Across the room, Cole turned to face her fully, his light green eyes expertly taking in every single move she made. No woman in the world would be able to keep from melting beneath that gaze. For Charlie, who wore his mark, it was worlds worse.

  He started toward her, his stride slow and easy. One hand was in his pocket. With the other, he set the card key on a table against one wall and then dimmed the lights.

  Charlie’s lips parted and moisture gathered between her legs when she realized that there was only one reason in the world that Malcolm Cole would have both dimmed the lights and locked the door.

  There was no escape for her now.

  “Tell me to leave, Charlie,” he told her, his low tone a gentle warning and a hard seduction wrapped into one. “Tell me now, because you won’t have the chance again.”

  Oh Jesus… oh holy shit….

  Charlie couldn’t think straight. Her thoughts were a jumbled, frantic mess. But, even as her mind was spinning wildly out of control, her body knew what to do. Her body, at least, knew what it wanted. So, she drew a shaky breath and forced the words out of her mouth.

  “I don’t want you to leave, Malcolm. I… I want,” she swallowed, not sure whether she could even finish saying what it was she really wanted to say. “I want you to make me forget everything else. Everyone else.” She tried again to look at the floor, but this time he held her fast and would not allow her to look away.

  Malcolm had stopped in his tracks and his expression was now unreadable. However, his gaze continued to burn, and the pupils at the centers of his stark eyes were expanding. It made him look hungry. Almost mean.

  Charlie shifted under the intense, nearly painful scrutiny of those darkening green eyes. And when the silence stretched, she began to wish that she’d never spoken, or that she’d asked him to leave after all.

  But when she brought her arms up to hug herself in her discomfort, his voice cut through the space between them and once more froze her in place.

  “Stop.” He had spoken very softly, and yet she jerked a little with the force of the command. “Don’t hide yourself from me, Charlie,” he told her, his low tone a touch beseeching. “Not from me.”

  Charlie swallowed hard. She was beginning to ever so slightly tremble, but he continued to run her through with his piercing gaze, offering no respite. And then he spoke again, and his next soft command snaked around her like a vice, a coil of steel wrapped in plush velvet. “Take off your clothes.”

  Charlie couldn’t move. A very big part of her wanted to do what he said. But another part of her was afraid of the exposure, on so many levels. He had yet to see her without her clothes. What if he didn’t like what he saw? She was very fair; what if pale skin wasn’t his thing?

  “I believe they are new, Charlie, and I doubt that you wish to see them destroyed,” he told her, his tone decidedly, expertly calm, even as the air around them nearly crackled with his presence. “So, take them off.” The order was crisp and simple and it made Charlie’s panties stick to her body with warm, wet anticipation. This was what she had always dreamed of. Malcolm Cole and his eyes had invaded her sleep for so long. He was the one she was meant to be with. He was also a perfectly dominant male who cared for her, would protect her, and who knew what she needed and could give it to her. He was her intended, and she had been born to do this.

  It was surreal. It was too perfect. And it was turning her insides to molten magma.

  Charlie closed her eyes and drew in a shaky breath. As she let it out, she curled her fingers under the hem of her t-shirt and pulled it up over her stomach, her breasts, and then her head. With her eyes still shut, she took it in one hand and let it drop to the floor.

  She could hear herself swallow past the lump that had formed in her throat and she wasn’t surprised to open her eyes and look down and find that sweat had pooled between her breasts and dampened the lace of her new bra.

  Without glancing back up at him, she began to unbutton the front of her jeans. She tried not to think about what she was doing. She tried not to think about the way her skin felt chilled in the air conditioned room and the way her nipples were so dark and visible against the fabric of her bra. If she stopped to consider her actions, if she dared to look up and once more get caught in the heat of his gaze, she would falter.

  So, she finished unbuttoning the jeans and then curled her thumbs over the waist band on either side of her hips. Slowly, she pushed the jeans down over her hips, over the swell of her bottom, and then let them pool at her Ed Hardy Converses.

  As she stepped out of them, she slipped her feet out of her shoes, and touched her bare toes to the thick, plush carpet behind them.

  She desperately wanted to hug herself then. She wanted to hide, and she felt both unbelievably hot and cold at the same time. Tremors of anticipation and apprehension racked through her tall, lithe body, and the tension coiling in her stomach forced her muscles to contract.

  She would never know the effect that the sight of her standing there, all lean muscle and soft, damp, glowing skin had on the alpha werewolf before her. She would never be quite fully aware. But she could sense a change in the air. It made her dizzy. She thought she might faint, so in an effort to obey his order not to cover herself, she backed up toward the window and pressed her palms against it for support.

  A low, barely audible growl reverberated from across the room and Charlie’s eyes flew open. The planes of Malcolm’s face were sharp and shadowed, his visage the very essence of animalistic need. Still, his tone was soft when he spoke to her. “Come here,” he quietly commanded.

  Charlie’s eyes widened. Her breathing sped up, and her natural defiance rose to the occasion, forever wanting to play the game. She shook her head, a small movement, and that dark emerald gaze narrowed.

  “Charlie,” he repeated, his rich accented tone the essence of calm authority and control. “Come. Here.”

  The air in the room seemed to heat up, becoming electric and muggy. Cole’s domination coursed through the space between them, an unbearable heaviness that achieved so much more with mere words than most men could ever hope to accomplish with ropes or chains. It brooked no further resistance.

  Charlie closed her eyes and forced her body to move. One step. Another. She opened her eyes again and her stomach clenched, her nipples hardening into painful nubs against the now-scratchy lace of her bra. Her skin felt flushed, her nerve endings raw against what little scraps of clothing were left on her body.

  Cole’s eyes continued to claim her, never wavering, never letting up, and heat routed its way through her body, carving a path of ruthless need across her chest, her abdomen, and between her legs. Moisture continued to gather there, soaking her new lace panties.

  She stopped a few feet from him, utterly unable to go any further.

  The world was suddenly blurring around her as one of his hands fisted in her hair and the other firmly wrapped around her neck and her body was shoved up against the nearest wall, his tall, hard form pressing her into the paint and plaster behind her.

  She gasped in painful surprise and then failed in suppressing a moan of unadaltered need and pleasure as his grip around her neck tightened and his knee forced her legs apart until her wetness was resting on the long, hard muscle of his thigh.

  He lowered his lips to her ear and the words he whispered sent shivers shock-waving through her trapped body. “Get ready, luv,” he told her as his thumb let up on its pressure so that he could gently rub it along the line of her chin. “Because before the night is through, I’m
going to have you in every way imaginable, in every room in this suite, and then Charlie,” he hissed as he tugged her head back, forcing her neck to arch, “when you can’t take any more, I’m going to sink my teeth into you and drink you in.”

  Malcolm’s hand slid up her neck and over her chin. His thumb forced itself between her lips, prying her mouth open. He ran it along the tops of her teeth and she shuddered under the new violation. He lowered his lips to within an inch of her own and whispered across them, all the while gazing deeply into her ice-blue eyes, trapping her in too many ways to count. “Do you have any idea how breathtaking you are, Charlie?” he asked her softly, his tone laced with urgency and desperation. His hand dropped from her mouth to once more gently encircle her throat and she suppressed a moan at the contact. “I suspect not,” he went on, his own breath shaking now as he seemed to fight with something inside of him; something he was barely able to control.

  When his fingers released her throat to graze across her nipple and slide slowly toward her waiting, dripping heat, Charlie felt as if she were lost within some wonderful erotic dream. But there was something he’d said… something he’d just whispered… about teeth? A warning bell was trying to ring within her mind, but she couldn’t hear it. She couldn’t acknowledge it. Cole was too big, too strong, and he was filling her world.

  At once, he released her and pulled away just enough for her to move. “Turn around and put your hands on the wall,” he commanded.

  She stared at him for a moment, stunned at the sudden absence of his body pressed against hers. But the heat of his gaze still seared and her body was screaming for his.

  His command waited to be obeyed.