by A. C. Arthur
Inside his cat roared and Bas not only let it, his lips peeled back baring sharp teeth as he growled in dominance as well. A deep inhale filled him with their companheiro calor. It fed him, fueled the hunger deep inside, and guided his dick to the puckered rim where he pressed ever so slowly at first.
She gasped and thrust her hips backward. “Please. Now!”
“Shh, baby. I got you,” he told her, reaching forward to slip a finger between her drenched folds.
Bas worked her slowly with his finger while gingerly pressing his length into her. She bucked again, sucked in a breath, then relaxed as he inserted another inch. It was like a hungry little mouth grabbing hold of him, sucking him so tightly inside he felt tingles up and down his spine.
“Sebastian!” she screamed when he’d inserted the last of his length so that he was now totally inside of her.
Bas moved slowly, eyes closed, head rolling back on his shoulders. He pulled out then pressed in, gritted his teeth, then decided to hell with it all and growled in response. The sound seemed to spur her on and Priya began to rock against him faster and faster. Every muscle in his body tensed as his release built like a churning volcano until he couldn’t withstand it a moment longer and he exploded inside of her.
For her part, Priya shivered and shook as her release ripped free, her center sucking deep on his finger, her essence pouring out of her like a waterfall.
It was moments that seemed more like eons later that they both collapsed onto the couch, naked, sated, completely depleted.
“You broke into my apartment and changed my locks,” she stated as she lay on her back, her eyes closed, breath still coming in heavy pants.
Bas lay at the opposite side of the couch, in a similar position to hers, only he’d cracked his eyes open to see her. Naked and still open he felt his body hardening again with need for her. Swallowing back that need he thought about his reply.
“I came to see you and your door was ajar. I knew someone had been here besides you. I was about to call every shadow in the vicinity to go out and search for you, but my first call gave your location.”
She sat up then. “Gave my location? What did you do, attach a GPS to me when I was in Sedona?”
Recognizing the shift in this conversation by the flash of her eyes, Bas sat up. “I called X. On my command he’s had a guard watching you since your return.”
Priya shook her head as if trying to digest everything he’d just said. Bas figured he might as well put it all out there at one time and let the chips fall where they may. He reached out to her, taking her hands in his and thanking the heavens that she hadn’t pulled away. Taking that as a good sign he slid a little closer to her.
“Look, I was an ass. I’m man enough to admit that. I messed up with you and that’s not normal for me. I don’t mess up with females. At least I only did one other time.” Bas took a deep breath and recited the events in the Gungi all those years ago, saying it aloud for the first time in his life.
“It was right after my parents’ divorce when I was already feeling like they’d both let me down in not fighting for their love, for the joining they’d had. I had been dating this girl named Mariah, but broke up with her right after my parents announced their separation. Not wanting to be around anyone I knew, anyone I thought I’d known for that matter, I went to the Gungi for a few days. I had no idea Mariah had followed me down there until I saw her one night in the forest.”
He dragged both hands down his face, not believing he was telling this story and yet knowing it was absolutely necessary at the same time.
“Palermo Greer and a couple of his flunkies were assaulting her,” Bas reported through clenched teeth. “I wanted to go to her, to help her but I thought about the exposure first. I thought about those stupid rules and I hesitated. Then they shifted and killed her and I was still standing there, frozen in shock. She died right in front of me and I couldn’t, I didn’t stop it. I felt like I’d let her down at that point, like I was no better than my parents. As stupid and self-destructive as I can now say that was, I refused to let anybody in, refused to ever have someone close enough to me that I could let them down again. And it worked for years, until you came along.”
Priya didn’t speak, just watched him. It was an intense stare that a lesser man may have fallen beneath. But Bas had come here with a purpose, he’d set his course, made his plan, and there was nothing that he was going to let stop him from at least putting that plan forth to her. What she did with his words, his feelings afterward was completely up to her.
“You were double trouble because I felt something for you the moment I saw you at the hotel. That connection only solidified when you were outside of Rome’s office. I wanted you too badly to really think about the consequences of being with you. And then it was just too late, consequences were out the window and you were in my arms. And then he shot you and I was in the Gungi all over again.”
He sighed, wishing she would say something, do something, but maybe understanding why she didn’t. She needed this from him. Hell, he needed it for himself, so he took a deep breath and finally said what he thought he’d never say to a female, let alone a human, in his life.
“Life with me will not be easy. In fact, everything you’ve ever known will change. And that’s big, Priya. You’re a human and I’m a Shadow Shifter. We’re not the same and yet I cannot deny the feeling that we are one. Can you?”
* * *
She couldn’t.
Oh, how she wanted to. The moment he said the woman’s name she’d wanted to smack him, to yell at him that he should have never been comparing her to another woman. A dead woman at that! But she couldn’t because she knew why the comparison was made, why the guilt had eaten at him and kept him quiet all these years. She knew and she ached for him because of it. She ached for him because for so long she’d allowed herself to be trapped by caring for her family that she hadn’t taken the time to do things solely for herself, to make her own life better, just for her.
So no, Priya could not deny that she and Bas were one. It was absolutely asinine for her to even try. And if she were extremely honest with herself, as she accepted that Bas was being with her now, she would acknowledge that she’d felt the connection from the very beginning. She didn’t think she had to be a Shadow Shifter to admit that.
“You make things too hard, Sebastian Perry. Sometimes you just have to go with what you know,” was her reply. “I wish you would have told me all this sooner but I get that you were doing that brooding male sort of thing. I guess that’s universal and doesn’t discriminate between species.” She’d tried to keep things light, as the emotion in her almost clogged her throat and Bas looked as if he might actually stop breathing if this conversation wasn’t over soon.
He smiled then, the genuine smile she’d wanted to see since first meeting him. It was the same one that had reached inside her chest and tugged on something there.
“If I could stand on that balcony and watch you shift from a cat to a man, you should have known you could trust me with all your baggage and your fears. Because we all have them, Bas. Hell, I’ve been looking for validation all my life and I had to go thousands of miles across the country to figure out I only needed to please and impress myself.”
“You know what I also knew the moment I grabbed you in that hotel hallway?” he asked.
Priya shook her head. “No. What’s that?”
He released one of her hands and lifted a finger to trace along the line of her jaw. “I knew that you were the other half of me. It was like looking in the mirror at a reflection that was just like me on so many levels, and yet as different as night and day.”
Priya was the one to smile this time, her heart nearly about to burst at his words. “I love you, too,” was her quick reply.
Later that night as Priya lay in Bas’s arms, in the comfort of the Willard InterContinental where it all began for them, she thought of his earlier words about her life never being the same and everyt
hing she ever knew changing. It had already begun to happen.
When she’d questioned Bas about being at her apartment, it was then that he informed her of the break-in. After a meticulous search she realized the only things missing were the key chains she’d saved as keepsakes from her trip to Perryville. Bas had assured her that she could have all the key chains she wanted from now on, but both of them knew what that meant. Priya wasn’t the only one that suspected something was going on, something unexplainable.
He’d offered to either move her out of the apartment or to let her stay there with an armed guard at her side twenty-four/seven. She’d opted to move.
Two days later he’d taken her to dinner with Rome and Kalina at their home in Virginia called Havenway. There they’d discussed in detail what Priya’s job with the Stateside Assembly would be and how she could work from Sedona, traveling to Maryland or wherever else they needed her when necessary. The females, Kalina and Ary, also talked about a joining ceremony since she and Bas were officially mated. Priya wasn’t 100 percent positive but she assumed in their tribe this was the equivalent of marriage, a place she didn’t feel like she was ready to venture just yet. She’d spent years believing—thanks to her mother’s past performance and her father’s cowardly escape—that relationships didn’t work, so moving in with Bas was a big enough step. Surprisingly, Caprise took her side, telling the other females to leave her be and let her and Bas find their own way.
This was a new world for the Shadow Shifters, Rome had said that often at dinner. It was also a new world for Priya, one she decided she was willing to venture into, despite what Bas thought might be a big price for her to pay. She believed in him and in the Shadow Shifters, what she wasn’t so sure of was how the world would react when they found out about them, because eventually—and Priya sensed they all knew this—their secret would be revealed.
Chapter 31
Havenway
Northern Virginia
On an otherwise serene night, Nick and Ary lay in bed asleep, only to be awakened by the high-pitched wails of their only child.
Ary was out of bed first, moving quickly to the cradle that stayed at the foot of their bed. It had been their original plan to find their own house and move out of Havenway, but after Shya’s birth and because of Ary’s job as curandero to the Stateside Shifters, they’d remained at the compound with Rome, Kalina, and at least fifty other Shadow Shifters.
Shya was now four months old and for the last six weeks had been having crying spells and running light fevers. If Ary was worried then Nick was beside himself with anxiety over what might be plaguing their child. As she lifted the clearly agitated baby into her arms, cooing and whispering comforting words, Ary thought of Dr. Papplin’s advice.
“She may simply have what the humans call colic,” he’d explained. “It is normal and usually lasts until they are a year old.”
Ary had been taking classes in human medicine so that she could better assist the tribe in this environment, so she’d had no problem looking up the ailment and coming to the conclusion that Dr. Papplin may in fact be correct. But the fever was a different symptom and as she rested her forehead on Shya’s, Ary thought glumly, it was rising.
Nick sat on the side of the bed with his usual worried glower.
“Here, Daddy, see if you can quiet her down. She likes when you rock her,” she told him, placing Shya gently into his arms.
In a thousand years she would have never thought Nick Delgado would be rocking a baby, kissing the child on her forehead, and staring down at her with nothing but genuine love in his eyes. They’d come a long way, she thought as she moved to the table where she kept all Shya’s supplies to retrieve the thermometer. These last couple of months she’d been trying valiantly to keep a positive outlook, to keep Nick calm. It was taking its toll as Ary too had begun to worry more. When the apparatus beeped, signaling it had completed taking the temperature, Ary looked at the screen and frowned.
“I’m going to call Dr. Papplin,” she told Nick.
Dropping the thermometer onto the bed she crawled over it and reached for the phone on the nightstand.
“What’s wrong?” Nick asked.
“Her temperature’s too high,” Ary told him, panic clear in her voice. “Dr. Papplin? Are you still at the compound? Okay, good. Can you come now? Yes, it’s Shya.”
“He’s coming,” she said to Nick as she moved across the bed once more to sit beside him.
“It’s not colic, is it?” Nick asked.
Ary shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
He frowned, continuing to rock and attempting to soothe Shya who was now red faced, her tiny fists balled up as she screamed with every ounce of oxygen in her little body.
“This is bull! We’re taking her to the hospital,” Nick announced, standing from the bed.
“She’s not human, Nick,” Ary replied. She was wringing her hands, trying desperately to keep it together, but the sound of her child in such obvious distress was killing her. “They’ll find out.”
Nick only shook his head. “I went to the doctor when I was young. Caprise and I had regular checkups just like other kids. Our blood is red and bleeds into a vial just like humans. We go to dentists just like the rest of them,” he argued.
“But we don’t get colds. We don’t contract sexually transmitted diseases. We don’t take as long to heal. Despite trying to fit in, we are different, Nick.” Of all the shifters in the world, Nick was the one Ary knew she could say this to.
“I know that,” he countered. He’d been the one to always point out their differences, to question the blending in of the shifters and the humans, to them hiding what they truly were. But now he wasn’t thinking clearly, Ary was convinced. He was thinking like a concerned parent and so was she.
A knock at the door tore her attention away and she hastily went to answer it, believing it was Dr. Papplin. It was Rome and Kalina instead.
“Is everything all right?” Kalina asked, concern marring her features in what Ary figured might be a mirror of her own.
“She won’t stop crying and her fever is 103,” she recited, her voice cracking slightly toward the end.
Kalina immediately stepped inside, putting an arm around Ary’s shoulders. “Have you called Papplin?” she asked.
Ary nodded. “He’s on his way.”
Rome moved into the room and closed the door. He looked like he wanted to say something but didn’t know what.
“I think we should get her to a hospital,” Nick said again to Ary’s chagrin.
“And you don’t want to?” Rome asked Ary.
That sounded like an awful accusation to Ary and she wanted to scream with frustration. “I want to do what’s safe for her, that’s all.”
“We understand, honey,” Kalina insisted. “We’ll just wait to ask Papplin his thoughts.”
“He’s been giving us his thoughts for the past couple of weeks and it’s gotten us nowhere! He has no clue what’s going on!” Nick yelled, which only made Shya scream more, the sound vibrating off the walls and piercing their eardrums.
“That’s not true,” Papplin said once he’d entered the room. “I know exactly what the problem is.”
“Really?” Ary asked, moving so that she stood right in front of the doctor. “Tell us.”
Papplin was a gangly man who looked as if the weight of the world rested squarely on his shoulders. Ary remembered the first time she’d met him at George Washington Hospital, he’d seemed a whole lot different then.
“Shya doesn’t have colic,” Papplin told them.
“Then what does she have and how can we fix it?” Rome asked. “I agree with Nick that this has been going on for far too long. If she’s sick tell us so we can get her healed.”
Papplin visibly startled at Rome’s cold tone. He removed his glasses, rubbed viciously at both his eyes, then put his glasses back on again.
“Do you remember when you were held captive by Sabar?” he began, speakin
g directly to Ary.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Do you remember when you realized that he’d drugged you? That he’d sampled the damiana mixture on you to test your reaction?”
A chill ran down Ary’s spine.
“I remember.”
Papplin cleared his throat, the sound a low rumble compared to Shya’s crying. “I tested Shya’s blood when she was born. I knew something was wrong then.”
“What? You knew something was wrong four months ago and you’re just telling us now?” Nick roared.
Shya all but jumped out of his arms with the sound of his voice and Kalina moved quickly to take the baby from him.
“What are you saying, Dr. Papplin? What did you notice when Shya was born?”
“It’s customary to take a newborn’s blood,” he began, wiping a hand over his forehead that was now prickled with sweat. “But when I looked at the vial I realized there was no coagulation. I figured I may be tired, becoming alarmed by nothing, but then I got the results back. There were traces of something different in her blood, compounds that should not be there. I ran more tests and linked some of the compounds to traces of damiana that she must have contracted from you.” He looked pointedly at Ary.
“She’s reacting to the drug, and that’s why her crying is so extreme,” he finished.
“No,” Ary whispered. “No. That’s not possible. The damiana should have been long out of my system before I became pregnant with her and I’ve never taken it again. There must be some mistake.”
Papplin shook his head. “I even sent her blood to another lab to be tested. It’s like her body is re-creating the drug so that it stays continually in her system. I’ve taken samples every two weeks since her birth and each time it’s present to the same degree. It’s not dissipating.”
“So she’s getting worse,” Rome added. “She’s going to get worse as long as the drug is in her system and you don’t know how to get it out. Is that what you’re saying?” he asked, raising his voice for what may have been the first time Ary ever heard.