“Don’t make me unsheathe them.” She smiled sweetly, but he saw a hint of danger flashing in her beautiful blue eyes.
He laughed quietly to himself as she walked away. It was going to be a good night.
He spent most of the night behind the bar, serving the endlessly parched crowd. When she didn’t know that he was watching, he studied her. An outsider would think that she was completely relaxed, but he knew the truth. There was always a bit of reserve about her. She never fully let her guard down. She couldn’t.
She had that one time with him, though. He’d seen it in her eyes. She’d submitted to him. She trusted him. She’d let down her boundaries, released that iron control, just for a short time.
He’d see to it that she submitted to him again. She’d surrender to him, open herself up completely…
She looked up suddenly, glancing his way, and caught him watching her. He smiled at her, a slow smile of promise and possessiveness. She bit her lip and looked away. It was hard to tell under the nightclub’s flickering lights, but it looked as if she was blushing.
Then she looked up again, deliberately met his eyes, and turned and walked away with a flip of her hair.
Challenge accepted, he thought.
He watched her stop and talk to a mountain lion shifter and felt tension tighten his gut. He had no right to be jealous. The shifter was a handsome guy, nothing wrong with him, technically far more appropriate for her since he was of the cat species.
Feline and wolf pairings were risky in terms of cubs. Basically, it was feast or famine. Either the pairing turned out sterile, or they always gave birth to twins – one of each. A cat and a wolf.
He shook himself. Why was he even thinking about cubs right now? First he needed to convince her that she belonged to him and only him, that only he could give her what she really needed.
He glanced at her again. She was still talking to the mountain lion shifter – and she glanced his way to gauge his reaction.
He swallowed down the rising fury in him, flashed her a smile and a wink, and walked behind the bar to help the bartender.
It didn’t hurt that the woman who ordered a drink from him had a very large, very generous cleavage, and that she leaned over the bar to give him an eyeful as she was ordering. He sneaked a glance at Karen. She was alone now, staring at him with a scowl, and when he caught her looking, she quickly turned and vanished in to the crowd.
At 4 a.m., the bar was closed, they’d cleaned up, and it was time to head out.
He caught her as she walked out of the dressing room. She’d changed back into her jeans and tank top.
“It’s time to head home. You avoiding me?” He looked amused.
“Why would I do that?” she asked her tone deliberately aloof. “Besides, why would you care? It’s not like you’re lacking for company.”
“So you noticed. And neither were you.”
She shrugged. “I’m the friendly type. So?”
He blocked her as she tried to walk past him. She wasn’t getting away from him that easily – not again.
A hot wave of desire swept over him, and he moved towards her until she was backed up against the wall. She tipped her head back to stare at him, eyes wide, lips parted. He wanted to claim those lips with a rough kiss, to thrust himself into her sweet warmth… “Remember what happened here last year? Care to start up where we left off?”
To his shock, she burst into tears, and slapped his face so hard his cheek stung. Then she stomped out the back door.
Chapter Seven
Hurt and humiliation boiled over in her, and tears ran down her face. She wiped them away quickly with the back of her arm as she stalked outside, uniform clutched in her hands.
First he’d flirted with other women right in front of her all night long, now he was openly making fun of how he’d ditched her a year earlier. What the hell was wrong with him? What a sick, twisted bastard. Even more upsetting, she still wanted him. She still craved his touch. Every time he brushed past her, she felt a shiver of arousal sweep through her body, and images of that night flashed through her mind.
Well, she might have to work for him for a month, but that didn’t mean she had to spend any time with him or let him continue treating her like this. She’d take all of her meals in her room. She’d avoid him at the club. She’d flirt like crazy with every hot shifter she saw, because it seemed to bother him, for reasons she couldn’t understand. Hell, he certainly wasn’t jealous of her.
She saw Troy coming out the back door after her. Turning her back on him, she passed his truck and walked towards the road.
He jogged after her, catching up to her quickly. “Come with me and get in the damn truck!” he yelled at her.
“No,” she said stubbornly. “I can walk.”
“No, you can’t. I am not letting a woman walk home in the middle of the night by herself.”
She kept walking.
“I’m a shifter, for God’s sake. I can outrun and outclimb anybody,” she snapped.
“Not if it was another shifter. Or multiple shifters. If you keep walking, our deal’s off.” She spun around to glare at him.
“That’s not fair!” she hissed. “That’s not what we agreed on!”
“Then I guess we should have drawn up a contract. Life’s not fair. Listen, you don’t have to talk to me, don’t have to look at me, but you do have to get in this truck.”
Her jaw tightened. She was furious at him, but she was also tired, her legs ached, and she really didn’t want to have to walk five miles back to his house, or even shift and run back.
She followed him back to his truck, pulled the passenger door open without a word, and climbed in. They rode the rest of the way back in silence.
When they arrived, she walked in to the house without a word, and he followed her.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re so mad about, anyway. I’m the one who should be mad at you,” he said as she stalked in to the living room.
She spun around, astonished.
“Excuse me? You should be mad at me?” She was so angry that claws shot from the tips of her fingers and she could feel the fur rippling under her skin. Her ears tufted. She itched to shift, but restrained herself. She needed her voicebox so she could yell at him.
“Yes, I should be mad at you.” He stared at her with a burning intensity. He was completely serious. “In fact, I am mad at you. You walked off and left me hanging. I thought we had something together, Karen, I really did.”
“I walked off and…” she struggled for control. Fur shot through her skin, silver and black, but she forced it back down. “You ran off and left me, and went to make out with some blonde!”
“Why the hell would you think that?”
“Because you said you’d be right back, and you never came back! And finally after I waited for ages Evangeline came and told me you were making out with some blonde. And I felt like a fool! I was still standing there with my hands up against the wall…waiting for you…” tears flooded her eyes. If he made fun of her right now she would kill him.
Instead he looked at her with astonishment. “I had to break up a fight, and then it turned out one of the shifters was badly injured and I had to stick around and deal with the fallout. The second I could get free, I rushed back there looking for you.”
She opened her mouth and closed it again. Evangeline had lied to her. What a surprise. So she’d spent the last year being furious at Ty for no reason.
“I saw you making out with Sarabeth Kaminski the night before you were supposed to go out with me back in high school,” she said defensively.
Understanding dawned on his face. “That’s why you never showed. Ok, I deserved it, and you did me a favor taking my ego down a peg or two. I was an immature asshole back then, Karen. That was ten years ago. None of us are the same person that we were back in high school.”
He slid his finger under her chin and tipped her head back up so she’d look at him.
�
�So, now that we’ve cleared that up, that leaves us where we were a year ago.”
“I-it does?” she knew what that meant. Suddenly her voice went quavery.
“It most certainly does.”
“I need a shower,” she said desperately. God, did she need a shower. She’d been running her ass off all night, she was sweaty and smelled like the inside of a bar.
“Fine. But first we’re going to have a little talk.”
His finger remained under her chin, and he brushed his free hand gently down the side of her face. “I’ve been watching you for a long time, Karen. Watching you when you didn’t realize it. I’ve wanted you for ages, and now I finally have you.”
“No, you don’t.” Her voice came out in a tiny squeak. Dear God, did she want this man. She wanted him so much that it terrified her. He could sweep in and shatter all of her defenses, and then where would that leave her? Defenseless, that’s where.
“Oh, you know I do.” He brushed his lips across hers gently, and a moan escaped her. She closed her eyes, and drew in a deep breath.
“You see?” he said, his voice gone low and rumbling. “We’re two adults here, Karen. There’s no reason for us to lie to ourselves. We’re going to see where this takes us.”
“I can’t let you in like that,” she said desperately.
He ignored her protests. His gaze held her captive, and she swayed where she stood, light-headed. “I want to have you. I want to own you, and in return I want you to own me. You can relax with me, Karen, you can let down those barriers that you keep up between you and the rest of the world.”
“I can’t relax. I never relax.”
“By surrendering yourself to me, you will gain strength. My strength. It’s there for you.” His voice was commanding and hypnotic. She couldn’t wrench her gaze from his. Hunger and need pulsed through her body, and she struggled not to sink to her knees in front of him. His gentle hand on her face held her in place.
“I will dominate you. I will give you pleasure. I will be the only one to give you pleasure. You will belong to me, and I will be proud to show you off and let the world know it. You will surrender to me and let me be your guide, in the bedroom. Outside of the bedroom, you’ll let me be your partner. You’ll turn to me when you need help.”
“I can’t do all of that.” She shook her head in protest. “That’s not me.”
“You can, and you will. Go take that shower, and I’ll be waiting for you when you come out.” He dropped his hand and stepped away from her.
She shook herself out of her trance and rushed off to the bathroom. The hot water sluicing down on her skin was a tease; she imagined Ty lapping at her, running his hands over her bare, damp flesh.
She toweled off and then stepped into a pair of pink flannel pajamas, and buttoned the shirt up to the top.
I’m going to say no to him, she told herself sternly.
She walked down the hallway towards the living room, balling and releasing her fists.
Yes. No. Maybe. No! Just one night? No!
Dear God, she was making herself crazy.
When she came out, he’d also showered. His hair stuck up in wet spikes. He had a towel wrapped around his waist, but other than that he wore nothing. She tried not to stare at the drops of water beading on his broad, muscular chest, or at his dusky brown nipples, or the perfect squares of his six-pack abs.
“Come sit on the couch with me,” he said.
She sank down onto the brown leather couch, sitting as far from him as she could and pressing her knees tightly together.
“Why do you feel the need to always be in control?” he asked.
She took a deep breath, and bit her lip. It was hard for her to open herself up to anyone, much less the man who was inspiring a raging lust-storm of hormones in her nether regions.
He sat and waited patiently.
“My dad,” she said finally, feeling a tightness in her chest.
“Tell me about that,” he said. There was compassion in his voice, and tenderness that made her eyes sting with unexpected emotion.
“Our father has dragged our name through the dirt, and our early lives were total chaos. The house was always a mess until I was old enough to clean it myself. I went to school with dirty clothes, and kids teased me for it.” Ty winced; she knew he remembered it happening.
Come to think of it, she remembered him punching a kid for making fun of her when she was in grade school.
“I learned early on that the only way to keep things together was to do it myself. I’ve worked really hard to be a good example and fix our family’s reputation so my brother and sister would have a chance to be accepted by the local prides and packs. I made sure that they went to school in clean clothes, bathed, with their teeth brushed. Of course, both of them have all kinds of issues that I should have done more to fix -”
“Jeez, stop being so hard on yourself. You’ve had to be mother and father to two younger kids. You’ve done that, gone to college, gotten a law degree, kept a roof over their heads – with no help whatsoever. You’ve had to shoulder an enormous burden. Your father should be ashamed of himself.”
She winced. “He’s got kind of an addictive personality. Alcohol. Drugs. Gambling. It’s not always within his control.”
“That doesn’t mean that you have to have control for him and for you too,” Ty said.
“So far it has.”
“For your brother and sister’s sakes, Karen, you need to cut ties with him. As long as you keep letting him drag you back in to trying to fix his problems, you can’t build a new life for your family.”
“I know. It’s just that he always shows up looking all pathetic and begs me for help and swears that he’s changed. I keep threatening to cut him off, but then when I’m faced with what would happen to him if I do, I always cave.” As she said that, she felt anxiety clutching at her chest. Would her life always be like this?
Ty shook his head, his expression serious. “Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. Cut him off, Karen. He will never change as long as he knows that he can manipulate you into cleaning up his messes.”
“I know that. It’s just hard when it’s family.”
He didn’t argue with her. He just sat there and stared at her, his expression serious.
She squirmed where she sat. The seconds ticked by, and with every breath that she took, his musky, masculine scent filled her nostrils and made her head swim. Was he going to try something? Why wasn’t he trying something? Of course she’d refuse, but…shouldn’t he at least hit on her so she’d have the chance to say no?
Why couldn’t he just make a damn move already?
Finally he spoke. “I don’t want to rush things,” he said. “I want you to want me just as badly as I do you. I want you to crave it. I want you to submit to me willingly. So here are my orders for now.”
She crossed her arms over her chest to hide her nipples, which were swollen and rubbing against the fabric of her pajamas.
“Do you masturbate?”
“What did you just ask me?” Her eyes flew wide open.
“You heard me. Do you?”
Her face flushed so red, she was practically glowing.
“Sometimes,” she muttered.
“Don’t.” His voice rumbled up from his chest, deep and commanding.
“Excuse you?” Her voice cracked. Way to go, Karen, she chided herself. Show him whose boss.
“You will not come until I give you permission. Be a good kitty, and it may be soon.”
She spluttered with frustration, searching for the words that would eviscerate him, that would put him in his place. No words came. There was a look of satisfaction on his face as he stood up and walked away. She hadn’t agreed to obey him – but they both knew that she would.
What was this bizarre hold he had over her?
Burning with need and frustration, she hurried back to her room and s
lammed the door shut.
Chapter Eight
Saturday morning
It was mid-morning, the sun was a blazing white orb in the sky, and the air was hot and heavy. A group of campers sat at a picnic table in the shade, drinking lemonade. They’d just finished making leather bracelets in the Craft Shack.
Nearby, Virginia’s brothers sat on Adirondack chairs, drinking bottles of water and talking to each other, but always watching.
Leah, Riley and Virginia sat on the grass about thirty feet from the picnic table. Riley had found a piece of wood and he was carving it; Leah was braiding daisies into a crown. They hadn’t mingled with the other campers yet; the campers were sitting and whispering amongst themselves and shooting them suspicious looks.
“So, my reputation must be pretty bad,” Riley said, as he carved.
“What makes you say that?” Virginia asked, puzzled.
“Those two big goons who are always following me around.”
“Oh, them. My brothers. They are goons, but they’re here for me, not you.” Virginia waved her hand dismissively.
Riley didn’t bother to hide his disbelief. “Right,” he snorted.
“Excuse me?” Virginia said, annoyed.
“They’re here because you’re such an out of control badass. I bet they can hardly keep you under control.”
Virginia raised an eyebrow and shot him a disapproving look. “What does your sister think of you using that kind of language?”
“She’d be disappointed in me, as usual. She’d say we’re better than that, but we’re really not. I’m not, anyway. I’m a freak.” He was looking at his wood carving as he spoke. Leah stared into the distance, braiding without even looking.
“My brothers, or some other bodyguards, are there because somebody tried to kidnap me a few months back, when I shifted and was running into town, by myself. They shot at me with a tranquilizer gun and missed. I barely got away from them, and we never found out who they were or if they were targeting me specifically. Then a couple of months ago, someone succeeded in kidnapping a teenaged female shifter from Wisconsin. It wasn’t an Alpha looking for a bride, she just disappeared.”
Purr For The Alpha (A Paranormal Romance) (Timber Valley Pack) Page 5