“Piers. Have you really thought this through?”
Lavery squinted at Rufus in amazement, as though a mouse had just started talking.
“I beg your pardon? Did you address me, officer?”
“I’m not an officer any more, Piers. You know that.”
“Oh yes. Couldn’t stand the pace. Not surprising, really. Special Forces have very high standards. It must be difficult for people of low caliber to keep their heads above water.” He put his head on one side in feigned sympathy.
Rufus didn’t rise to the provocation. He stayed calm and almost friendly in tone.
“The thing is, Piers… This ritual. Do you have any idea what kind of dark entities you’re likely to summon? I mean, really?”
Lavery frowned and smiled. “Dark entities? I’m not afraid of anything. Any entity that can help me get what I want is very welcome here.”
Rufus made a pained face of concentration, like a mechanic asked to provide an estimated price for a big repair job.
“Not as simple as that though, is it, buddy? Once the genie’s out of the bottle, you’ll have a hell of a job putting it back in.”
I wasn’t sure if Rufus was stalling for time, or if he was going somewhere with this line of enquiry. The men were almost finished unlocking all Sebastian’s metal bonds.
But Lavery cut Rufus off anyway. “I’m not your buddy,” he spat. “Are we ready?”
“Ready,” called one of the men.
Sebastian climbed off the wooden blocks and walked towards the altar. His wrists and legs were red and lacerated from the metal fastenings. As he walked, he fixed me with his eyes.
“Don’t watch,” he said to me. “Please. Promise me you’ll shut your eyes and block your ears. I don’t want you witnessing this. I don’t want the last time you saw me to be some gory horror scene. Remember me as I was when we were happy together. Will you do that?”
I was sobbing now. “Don’t do this,” I pleaded. “Let him try to kill me. You know it’s probably my time anyway. Shift now and kill him. Wipe him off the face of the earth. I may still have time to escape.”
But Sebastian shook his head. “It’s too late. He holds all the cards. If I do this, he’ll let you go. Whatever else he is, he’s got a superstitious sense of justice. He won’t go back on his promise, or he’ll fear the consequences.”
Lavery cut in. “That’s not superstition, Chase, you doofus. That’s called integrity.”
Rufus laughed loudly. “Integrity? You’re lecturing us on integrity?”
Lavery ignored him. “Start the ritual,” he ordered.
The chanting began again.
I was suddenly plunged inside a flashback to one of my visions.
The chanting and the stone floor and the sound of dripping… For a moment, I was totally still, just feeling the memory coming to life.
This was definitely the place I had dreamed of and hallucinated. All my life, since my teens, I intuitively knew his day would come.
The awareness wasn’t conscious. But it was there, in the background, like a noise I’d stopped hearing.
Surely that meant my death must be right around the corner?
I held my mother’s pendant in my hands. Inside, I was still.
Somehow, from somewhere, I got the message I needed.
* * *
On the floor beside me, Isabel stirred and rubbed her eyes. Then she sat up.
The man holding Dahlia pulled her across the floor so he could guard both Isabel and Dahlia together. He pointed his gun at the two of them in turn.
Isabel was still dazed, by the look of her. Her eye was blackening and dried blood caked her nose. But her eyes were bright again and she seemed like herself.
Sebastian lay on the altar, staring at me. I wanted to look away, because he’d asked me to. But I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
As the ritual drew on, the air felt noticeably colder. There was a slight smell of something rotten.
Was this the dark entities arriving? I shuddered.
Then I noticed I wasn’t being guarded.
Lavery trusted that I was sufficiently terrified by the threat of the personalized death potion that I wouldn’t need a gun to my head.
He was wrong.
I fingered my mother’s tiger’s eye pendant round my neck and I looked deep into the eyes of my fated mate.
And I decided enough was enough.
“Stop,” I yelled. “Stop this right now.”
Lavery signaled for the chanting to continue.
I took a deep breath.
“STOP THIS MADNESS RIGHT NOW,” I hollered at the top of my voice.
The chanting stopped. Lavery stared at me with his cruel eyes. I could tell he hardly believed my audacity.
“Do you dare to interrupt this sacred ceremony?” he thundered.
“Yeah. I do,” I said. “I dare.”
Sebastian shook his head, but I nodded back.
“It’s okay, beloved,” I said. “I’m not frightened by this man’s threats. Neither are you. That’s why you’re lying down there, willing to go through the most horrific death imaginable. To protect me. But it’s not necessary.”
Everyone stared in my direction. I looked around at them all.
The attention of lots of people didn’t shake me any more. It energized me. I felt power flowing through me with every second that passed.
Rufus watched me intently. Dahlia kept her eyes shut, flinching as though waiting for an impact.
Liger Lucas sat on the floor, lurching back and forth woozily as if half-drunk.
Sebastian’s blue stare burned into me. I felt the strength of his love in the very core of my heart.
The glass vial was cool and smooth in my hand, like a pebble.
Like my mother’s pendant.
I held the vial up so everyone could see.
“You all seem to have one of these,” I said. “It’s here to frighten me into doing as I’m told. And to convince Sebastian to let you take him willingly. I presume the dark magic works best when the victim is willing.”
I wasn’t sure where that information came from, but Lavery nodded happily.
“Witchy knows. Witchy knows all about spells, don’t you, witch? It’s in her dirty blood.”
I smiled serenely.
“There’s something else I know too.”
Lavery waited for a second, then shouted “What? What are you twittering on about now, you ridiculous harpy?”
Sebastian’s low growl filled the chamber for a moment.
“The other thing I know is that my visions told me I’d die here. So, you see, your threats mean very little.”
I put the vial on the ground in front of me.
“Sebastian, if this vial should get broken by any means, I want you to shift. Shift into your beautiful, powerful tiger form. Then kill this bastard before he hurts anyone else.”
Sebastian sat up on the altar. Panic seemed to contort his face. Tiger stripes flashed on and off his forehead.
“Finola, NO. Don’t even think about it.”
“I love you Sebastian. With every single atom in my body, I love you. I know you love me too.”
Clutching my belly, I whispered “I love you, baby. Don’t be scared. We’re going to be all right.”
I raised my foot over the vial.
“I’m holding my nerve, Rufus,” I said. “I promised you I would.”
“NO!” yelled Sebastian.
Then, before Lavery’s men could stop me, I stamped on the vial.
It shattered instantly.
40
I waited. Two seconds passed. Three. Four.
I wasn’t dead yet.
The room was frozen, as though someone had pressed the pause button. Everyone stared at me.
Lavery looked the most astonished of all.
Then Sebastian’s growl filled the room. First it was a soft rumble, then it turned deeper and louder, until it began to sound like we were right inside the engine
of a jet plane.
Sebastian leaped off the altar, mid-shift. Fur sprouted from his chest and his nose widened. His claws sprang out and he roared.
“But that’s impossible!” shouted Lavery. “You must die! It’s tailor-made! How can you not be dead?”
I laughed. “It’s simple really. I didn’t die because I’m no longer the same person I was before. My DNA has changed. The baby’s DNA is circulating in my blood right now.”
Isabel stood up.
“Yep,” she muttered, dabbing her nose. “That’s how medical screening procedures like the Harmony test work. The mother’s blood contains the baby’s DNA.”
I nodded. “My baby’s DNA is magical. It activated my own dormant magic and so my DNA is permanently altered. I’m a shifter’s mother now. I’ve been changed forever. I’ll never be the same old Finola again. Old non-magical Finola was the only one who died here tonight.” I laughed joyfully. “Isn’t it wonderful, Lavery? I lived to see you proved wrong.”
“And now you’ll live to see him destroyed,” snarled Sebastian.
In the blink of an eye, he shifted fully to tiger form. The material tied round his waist ripped as easily as rice paper.
“Kill them!” yelled Lavery to his men.
The full force of Sebastian’s rage was finally unleashed.
Lavery’s howls reverberated round the chamber as Sebastian sank his teeth into him and shook him like a rag doll.
He snapped Lavery’s neck with one firm shake and his lifeless body slithered to the floor.
The men holding Dahlia, Isabel and Rufus took a second to react. It was one second too long.
With a mighty roar, liger Lucas sprang at them. He bit one and knocked the other unconscious with one swipe of his big paw.
Lucas and Sebastian rounded up Lavery’s other men between them. They knocked each one out with their mighty paws, raining down heavy blows so they hit the stone walls and fell down. It probably wasn’t enough to kill them, but it was hard enough to immobilize them for now.
I tried not to look at Lavery’s body, bleeding out in a stream across the floor.
The shock of the night’s events hadn’t hit me yet. And I didn’t want it to. I didn’t want my baby to pick up any stress from me.
Sebastian and Lucas shifted back and stood naked in the middle of the floor.
Rufus pulled out some rolled-up clothes from inside his jacket and handed one roll to each of them. I marveled at his organizational skills. He’d thought of everything today.
Dahlia rushed up to Lucas, sobbing. He held her close, his face pressed into her hair.
Sebastian and I looked at each other intently. With eyes fixed together, we ran towards each other as fast as we could.
Nothing in this world or the next could have kept us apart.
He lifted me off my feet, kissing me hungrily. I grasped the sides of his face, returning his kiss and gripping round his bare waist with my legs.
He held me with his mighty hands, kissing me until all the sorrow of the the day had vanished.
After a second, he pulled back.
“Finola… My amazing Finola.” His eyes were shining. “We’re… you’re…” He looked down at my belly and back up. Then he nuzzled into my neck and breathed me in deeply. “We’re having a…”
I smiled, half in tears at the same time. “Yes,” I whispered. “We’re having a baby.”
He kissed me hard again, squeezing me close and spinning me round. When he lifted his head again, he was grinning like crazy.
“You’re the mother of my child,” he said. “You have no idea how wonderful it was to hear that back there.”
“I have some idea,” I said, peppering his wounded neck and jawline with tiny kisses.
He exhaled and pressed his forehead against mine.
“I need to get you somewhere private,” he murmured. “You’re the most beautiful, brave, mysterious, clever woman I have ever met and I’m deeply in love with you.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “And if I don’t have you again very soon, I’m going to fucking explode.”
His words sent electric shivers darting all over me.
I looked round at the others. Dahlia was tending to Lucas’ head. Rufus was dabbing at Isabel’s eye with his handkerchief.
“Yeah, let’s get out of here,” I said. “Because I need you too, as soon as possible. It’s been a whole day without you, for crying out loud. Take me home, Sebastian Chase.”
He picked me up and carried me out of the chamber, the others following behind.
It was over.
We were safe. We were together.
We were soon to be parents.
As I bobbed along in his arms, the night sky looked more beautiful than ever. I touched the tiger’s eye pendant and looked up at the moon.
Thank you, Mother, I whispered silently. Thank you for helping me find the courage to trust my intuition.
The stars above us seemed to twinkle extra brightly as we made our way to the SUV.
41
The hotel Rufus found for us was clean and comfortable, but not the kind of luxury Sebastian was used to.
Neither of us cared in the slightest. We would’ve been happy in a ditch together. All we wanted was a little privacy.
And now we had it.
We could scarcely keep our hands off one another in the car. I felt my body calling out for his, just from sitting next to him.
His hot thigh pressed against mine in the back seat and his hand gripped mine tightly. My pulse raced with longing.
Every now and again, we’d turn simultaneously and look at one another, smiling.
“Get a room, you two,” Rufus called from the driver’s seat. “Oh wait, you’re just about to get one.”
At some point, we got inside the hotel. I couldn’t recall the lobby or the receptionist’s face or even the name of the hotel. Sebastian was carrying me in his arms and all I could see was him.
And all I knew was that my body was about to light itself on fire if I didn’t feel Sebastian Chase inside me, like now.
The elevator took forever to arrive. When it did, it was tiny. A little box with two mirrored walls.
“You guys get the first one,” said Isabel. “I don’t think I can handle being crammed into a confined space yet. I’m still pretty shaken. We’ll wait.”
We knew she was just trying to give us some time alone. We were grateful.
As the elevator doors shut behind us, we leapt on each other desperately.
Sebastian slammed me against the wall, searching my mouth wildly with his tongue. His hand reached behind and squeezed my ass, while the other dove inside my clothing and started undoing my bra.
The elevator reached our floor. I held the key to our room in my hand. It said room 44.
We ran hand-in-hand down the corridor, giggling like teenagers cutting class to make out somewhere forbidden.
There it was. Room 44.
Sebastian lifted me up and threw me over his shoulder, like he had once before. That was in his house in Cornwall. It seemed so long ago now.
As I dangled over him, I could see slash wounds all along his back. My poor man. What had that bastard done to him?
A flood of relief washed over me when I remembered Lavery was dead. Definitely dead, this time.
No more running. No more fear. No more members of Sebastian’s family at risk.
And a new family of our own.
We shut the door behind us. Sebastian held me at arm’s length, looking me up and down. Then he turned me around.
Finally, he pulled me close again.
“Finola Malley, you are the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I could look at you all night long. I’m going to look at you all night long. And I’m especially going to enjoy looking at you while you scream my name with my cock deep inside you.”
Wetness pooled in my panties as he pushed me backwards onto the bed, standing over me.
Then he paused for a moment.
�
��We can’t hurt the baby, can we? I mean… this?”
I shook my head. “No. Isabel told me it’s the size of a grain of rice right now. It couldn’t have any idea that this is happening. And being fucked by you right now would make me very happy indeed.”
“You know, I haven’t taken a shower since just before our night out in Dublin. I should probably fix that.”
“Probably,” I said. “If you need any help…” I trailed off, sliding my fingers down the buttons of his borrowed shirt.
Sebastian growled very softly.
“Get in the bathroom right now.”
He pulled me up and I ran through the bathroom door, feeling how wet I was with every step.
Switching on the shower, he tore off my clothes and threw them to the floor. The usual carelessness of a man who grew up with servants. But I didn’t care.
He peeled off his own borrowed clothes, taking a little more care because of his injuries. I moaned out loud when I saw his throbbing cock, rearing up against his stomach.
“First, I need to wash the memory of tonight off both of us,” he said. “And then I’m going to give you anything you want. Everything you want.”
He shot jets of shower gel all over us both, just like that time in my flat the very first night we met. When he massaged the suds over my tingling breasts, I cried out. With both hands, I smoothed the cleansing gel all over him, tracing every contour of his hard body.
I squirted more of the lavender-scented gel onto him. With one hand, I rubbed his cock and all around it, feeling the sheer weight and power of him in my palm. Then I stroked it down the cleft of his ass. He flinched but his cock surged at me even more.
When we had rinsed off, he kissed me long and slow, until I felt dizzy with desire. My pussy ached with need for him.
But he was going to make me wait.
“On your knees,” he said, with one last kiss. He held his huge cock in his hand. “You keep looking in this direction. May as well have yourself a close-up.”
I sank to my knees before him, as the water played over my shoulders. My hair was plastered down my back, apart from a few unruly curls around my face.
“Mmm.” I was more than happy to play his game. “May I taste you?”
Tiger Billionaire: The Whole Story (BBW Paranormal Tiger Shifter Romance Box Set) Page 26