by Nancy Gideon
Jacques rubbed a restless hand over the top of his head and relaxed his stance. “I will.”
“Okay. Good night then.”
Susanna sat quietly, her eyes upon the rigid figure at the door. She’d expected that explosive fury ever since he’d stepped out of the elevator all geared up for battle. Now that the danger of their external situation had eased, all his pent-up aggression had turned toward her.
She was tired and beaten down with worry and not about to take any more of his temper no matter how well justified.
“You don’t get to yell at me.”
Jacques turned at that quiet statement of fact. His brows veed down in anger but she didn’t let him speak.
“You lost your past, but I lost my future. I gave you the chance to have one without going through every day and night for seven years knowing what you were missing.” Her voice thickened and faltered, but when he took a step toward her, she put up a hand. “Go take a shower and let that sink in. And don’t come out of there until you’re ready to have a civil discussion that doesn’t involve a raised voice.”
For a moment, Jacques didn’t move. She could see the astonishment blanking his brain of all the blame he’d been about to heap upon her. Frustration and hesitation worked his jaw. Intensity banked in his eyes until they appeared as black as the cold night outside. When she wouldn’t look away, he pivoted to storm into the bathroom, shivering the thin walls with a powerful slam of the door. She didn’t let out her breath until she heard the shower running.
He was in there for a long, long time.
Susanna waited, mentally sorting through her rational arguments, lining them up into an unbroken wall of circumstances that would absolve her guilt. So why did she feel so ashamed? Why did the thought of the anguish and uncertainty tormenting him for all the weeks, months, and years cut to the heart of her until the pain was a raw, bleeding ache of blame?
She was responsible for what had happened to him. She’d initiated their forbidden relationship. She’d wanted him beyond all reason and that desire had weakened her ability to see the truth. That what she’d done was wrong. That what they’d done was wrong.
And that left her with one sobering revelation. She wouldn’t change a damned thing even if she could go back and do it over.
The water stopped running and suddenly courage failed her. The room was abruptly too bright, the setting too stark for the conversation they were about to have. She wasn’t sure she could face his glowering stare again without breaking down completely.
Jacques paused in the open doorway, backlit by the harsh bulbs above the sink. All he wore were jeans that hung low off lean hips. Shadow and highlights delineated the sculpted muscles of arms, shoulders, and chest. She couldn’t see his expression clearly from where she was tucked under the covers in the darkened room. As he reached for the bathroom switch, his features were etched in silhouette, fierce and strong, and her pulse trembled the same way it had that first time she’d seen him.
Instead of moving toward the beds, he went to the window, parting the drapes a scant inch so he could peer outside.
“Your Shifter bodyguard,” he began, his manner subdued and cautious, “that was me?”
“Yes.”
“The one you found exciting, the one you loved, the one who marked you, that was me?”
“Yes.”
“My name was Jack Stone?”
“Yes.”
“What else do you know about me? Did I have a family? Where was I from? Was there anyone I was close to, who cared about me, who missed me?”
His poignant questions made her throat burn. “I don’t know. You didn’t talk about your past.”
“How interesting could a slave be? I probably didn’t have time for a lot of hobbies.”
She tried to ignore his bitterness by telling him softly, “You talked about the future you wanted, what we’d do, the life we’d have.”
He gave a harsh laugh. “And what was it I wanted?”
“What you have now.”
“Everything except you.” He turned toward her and she was glad she couldn’t see his face. “Right?”
“Yes.”
“What the hell were we thinking?”
“That we deserved more than we were allowed to have.”
He pondered that for a moment, his mood quiet yet still simmering. “You could have left with me.”
“No. They’d made an investment in me that I hadn’t paid back. The project I was on was very valuable. They would have killed you and dragged me back.”
“I could have stayed.”
“Under their control? With no chance of ever obtaining those dreams? I wanted more for you. I had to let you go. I had to. I loved you too much to keep you prisoner and watch you die.” Her voice fractured painfully.
“Didn’t you wonder what happened to me? You never tried to find out?”
She drew a hitching breath. “I didn’t dare. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself. Any more than you could have stayed away if you’d remembered any of what we’d shared. The only thing I had to hold on to was the belief that somewhere you were living those dreams, that you were free.” She smiled, a fulfilling sense of satisfaction making her voice husky. “You did well for yourself. I knew you would.”
He stepped away from the window, rubbing his arms distractedly. “I remember how much I hated the cold up here.”
“You used to say even wrapping up inside another animal couldn’t keep you warm.” She paused as his fingertips brushed over the worn leather of the coat hanging on the back of a chair. “But that I could.”
His eyes glowed in the darkness.
And she took a chance.
“It’s warm over here.”
Nineteen
Jacques slipped out of his jeans and under the covers, his weight upon the soft mattress threatening to bring her softer body to him. Even though she braced to keep from rolling up against him, the space they shared beneath the sheet was suddenly, gloriously warm.
He lay on his back, arms crossed upon his chest in a tense pose that didn’t exactly invite intimacy. She approached him carefully, the way one would a dangerous wild thing that had had its trust abused and broken, with a gentle hand and a soft word.
He held his breath as her knuckles grazed his cheek where scars barely remained.
“When I saw you lying on the floor at the club, I thought they’d killed you.”
His stare stayed focused on the ceiling as he started breathing again in slow, wary respirations.
“I was so afraid that you’d died thinking I’d betrayed all of you.” She paused, giving him an opportunity to speak. When he didn’t take it, she asked, “Is that what you believe?”
“No. I think you were deceived right along with the rest of us.”
“Damien used my calls to find me. He traded Max to get me back. I had no idea he was capable of such things.”
“And you’re going back to him, knowing what kind of man he is?” A quiet question without blame or derision.
“Everything I thought we had together was a lie. I could never trust him again, knowing that.”
He turned toward her then, his eyes gleaming in the darkness. “And you’ve never told any lies?”
“Only when I told myself I could forget you.”
As her words snagged on that admission, his head rolled away in a denying gesture. “You didn’t answer my question. Are you going back to him?”
“I don’t want to. I have to. He has things I need. My work. My daughter. You don’t understand.”
“I understand more than you think.”
She was silent for a moment, studying his harsh profile. When she placed her hand atop his, his fingers spread to squeeze hers tightly for an instant, then released them as she was asking him to release her. “I know you do. And that’s why you won’t stop me.”
“I want to,” he growled low.
“I know.”
“It’s not f
air,” he said suddenly. “You know my dreams, but I don’t know yours.” His gaze was intense when he regarded her. “I have none of those memories of us together.” He brushed the wide neck opening of the T-shirt she wore aside so his fingertips could trace the scars it covered.
“There’s nothing we dream of more than finding and claiming our mate. There’s nothing that binds us like that connection. That claiming and the link from it are more sacred than a marriage vow. It can’t be broken. It can’t be denied.” His tone grew wistful as he continued.
“I have none of those memories even though I know we’re mated. I dream sometimes of what it must have been like between me and the one I’d hoped would be mine to protect and treasure for the rest of my life, but I’ll never know.”
Susanna fit her palm to the side of his face. “Let me show you what I dream about.”
She kissed him, at first with a slow, sweet yearning, treating herself to the taste and yielding softness of his sinfully full lips, then treating him to the seductive swirl of her tongue. He responded but didn’t pursue, eyes closing, breath quickening.
She’d dreamed of him constantly, vividly, but the reality far surpassed those pale interpretations. Dreams couldn’t flood her with sensation, couldn’t flush her with heat and hunger as she learned him again there in the darkness by texture, touch, and taste. Dreams didn’t kiss back. Kisses so drugging and deep they sucked at her soul.
A tender devotion tangled with that hot blast of passion. She feasted on his mouth, her hands worshipping the hard contours of his body. Everything she knew of desire and all the pleasures that came with it, she’d learned from him. He’d taught her trust and temptation and the wild bliss of casting off restraint. He’d been protector, teacher, lover but all those cherished moments she clutched close in her heart were lost to him.
In his loneliness, he couldn’t find solace in reliving that first dangerous shiver of attraction, those purposeful accidents that brought them into skin-to-skin contact and sent lust and longing into an agony of denial. He couldn’t replay the first touch of their lips, so unexpected, so sweet, so forbidden. Or the chain reaction of reckless stolen moments: secret gazes, hurried kisses, trembling touches that spiraled greedily out of control. He didn’t have the memory of his own heroics, when he’d ripped her from the arms of terror to surround her with his own comforting and possessive embrace. She’d gone to him that night, overcoming his caution and the last shreds of his reluctance to hold him and have him and love him. She couldn’t imagine giving up any one of those precious slivers of discovery.
Yet that was what she’d taken from him.
Perhaps she could give some of it back.
Susanna wore nothing beneath his T-shirt. When she slid her thigh across him, the contact of her moist sex with his ready hardness sparked instantaneous combustion. Without breaking from their urgent kisses, she began to move slowly, suggestively against him until his big hands clamped to her hips to direct the rhythm. She allowed him to guide the intensity toward its inevitable peak, yet when he tried to lift her slightly so he could sheath himself inside her, she hit Pause.
“Not yet.”
He was panting hard, obviously way past the point of no return. “What? Anna?”
They were nose to nose, breathing in each other’s urgent breaths. Her palms pushed up the slick of his chest to clasp the sides of his face, her fingertips pressing firmly against his temples to begin a slow massage. All the while her tongue teased against his parted lips until he groaned aloud.
“Anna.”
“Close your eyes. Trust me, Jacques. Trust me and let go.”
Not understanding, still he did as she asked, not questioning the request or the strangely disorienting pressure she was quickening inside his head the same way MacCreedy had. He closed his eyes and let the tension leave his body.
Letting her essence flood into him just as she took him into her.
Everything changed in that instant. Jacques’s world expanded with shattering flashes of light and heat. And in him, around him, through him was Anna. Her lips on his, her hot, greedy sex clutching his, her thoughts, her emotions, her every sensation exploding until he couldn’t find the separating line between them, because there was none.
Let go, Jack.
Her siren’s whisper tongued his every nerve ending until desire followed with a need so raw, so violently pure it surpassed anything he’d ever experienced.
He let go. He couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t hold back the beast inside him. Under the silken slide of her flesh over his, his muscles bulged with power as control dropped away, replaced by seething instinct. Coaxed by her lapping kisses, his teeth became fangs, his breath quick, aggressive growls.
She was kissing him, riding him, urging him with hoarse pleas.
Take all of me. Make me yours. Claim me, Jack. Don’t ever let me go.
She hadn’t said the words aloud, yet they streaked through him like lightning, sizzling hot, icy cold all at once, too exciting, too compelling. Too much to resist.
He groaned in mindless ecstasy at the feel of her soft skin against his mouth. Her neck, her shoulder, warm, throbbing with life and temptation. Urges, dark, fierce, on fire, raged inside him, forcing his intentions to escape acceptable boundaries as he bit down hard. Senses swirled at the taste of her. He could feel her pulse pounding through him, taking over the tempo of his own heartbeats. And then that harsh beautiful rhythm became the fierce waves of her climax as she cried out his name.
Jack!
And he lost himself, possessing her, claiming her, coming inside her. Endlessly.
Then all Jacques could hear were his own ragged breaths.
Susanna lay on her stomach beside him, her eyes shut, her hand curving about his jaw, her thumb languidly rubbing over his lower lip.
What had just happened?
They’d had vigorous sex. His body was depleted by it. The scent of their mutual satisfaction lay heavy on the air. Had that been all?
He scrubbed his tongue about the inside of his mouth. No sign of elongated teeth or the metallic sweetness of blood. He looked to Susanna in confusion. She was resting easy, no scratches marring her skin, the T-shirt mussed but not torn. Nor was there any indication that he’d just savaged her neck in the throes of mating madness.
He caught her hand in his, drawing it away from contact with him. Her eyes opened on a tender smile.
“What was that?” he asked shakily.
“Memories for you to keep,” she whispered, her eyes already drifting shut again. “I love you, Jack.”
He lay in the darkness for a long while as her soft breaths punctuated his escalating panic.
Memories?
Almost afraid to check, he reached back into his mind, cautiously searching. And there they were: the images, the sensations, the sounds of them together, consummating that intensely personal moment that bound one to the other. Not a dream, but a memory, the only one he had of his life before New Orleans. Solid, rich with delicate detail, ripe with emotions. Real. A slice from that great emptiness when he was Jack Stone and she was the female he had to possess even if it meant his life.
And in a way, it had.
Only now Jacques knew it had been worth it. Completely and totally worth the sacrifice of everything that had come before to have her.
But how to hold on to her?
Jacques awoke to faint slivers of daylight seeping through a slight part in the curtains. Though the sheets tangled about him still held her scent, he could tell Susanna had left the bed they’d shared some time ago. He relaxed when he saw her bag on the dresser top. She hadn’t gone far.
Even before getting out of bed, he checked to see if it was still there, that precious nugget of his past. Smiling to find the memory nestled safely amongst his years as Jacques LaRoche, he grabbed a quick shower and clean clothes, and went out to find his mate.
Giles St. Clair stood out in the blustery wind, a dusting of early snow dotting his jacke
t, melting at first contact with the steam from his coffee. He passed Jacques a second cup and they stood for several minutes sipping in silence. Finally, Jacques glanced at the closed door.
“How are they?”
“Charlotte’s scared out of her mind, but she’d never let on. Max hasn’t come around yet. What did you bastards do to him?” His tone was deceptively mild.
“I didn’t do anything to him. They aren’t my kind.”
“But they’re her kind.”
Jacques didn’t answer.
“Are they going to want him back?” All manner of bad intentions rumbled through Giles’s question.
“If they do, they’ll be disappointed.”
“That was my thought, too.”
Both turned when the door opened behind them. Susanna hesitated, her gaze touching almost shyly upon Jacques’s as she stepped outside and shut the door behind her.
“We should be ready to leave in about ten minutes,” she told Giles.
He swallowed down the last of his coffee. “I’ll go gas up.”
Left alone on the frigid walkway, Jacques and Susanna tested the relationship waters. He managed a smile that was both nervously awed and fiercely possessing.
“You have questions.” She could see them banked and uncertain behind his eyes.
“I do. They can wait until we’re safe at home.”
At home. His apartment. His bed. The two of them together. Susanna trembled. Instantly, he whisked off his coat, intending to engulf her in its warm folds, even though it meant shivering in his shirtsleeves. She put up her hands in protest.
“No you don’t. That’s not necessary. I’m used to the cold.”
“And I’ve got a bit more bulk to protect me from it,” he argued.
Seeing he wasn’t going to relent, Susanna dropped her arms and let him swaddle her with the coat. Its weight pulled on her shoulders but the heat and his scent had her drawing it close about her.
“Besides,” he rumbled, “it’s the least I can do after you warmed me so sweetly last night.”
“Good morning.”
Charlotte’s greeting startled them. They hadn’t heard her open the door. She looked between them, dark eyes filled with speculation and amusement until Susanna flushed red and muttered something about gathering her things before disappearing into the other room. The detective then turned an interrogative eye to Jacques.