by Nancy Gideon
He grinned at her foolishly. “How ’bout you carry me the rest of the way?”
“My prince, where’s that resilience you were bragging about? I thought you were in a hurry to bed your new mate.”
“I am.” His mood warmed as his fingertips touched her cheek and stroked over the knit hugging her breasts and the stretchy fabric clinging to her rear. “I’ll prove it as soon as I can find where I put my legs. Why aren’t I wearing shoes?”
She kissed him slowly, deeply, until he moaned impatiently and then muttered, “Damn, it’s cold. Let’s get under some covers, my queen, so I can start seeding that bumper crop of heirs.”
By the time she was fumbling for the light and locking the door behind them, Cale had beelined for the bedroom, leaving a trail of designer clothes for her to follow. Kendra found him facedown on the bed, snoring noisily. Smiling, she draped Brigit’s coat over him, then went to get ready for a night of celibate slumber.
She didn’t realize how exhausted she was until she pulled a heavy comforter over the both of them. She’d gotten no sleep the night before, and her body ached from all the unfamiliar activities of the past twenty-four hours. Ached in a good way.
She was Cale Terriot’s mate. The future queen of their clan. And she was impossibly in love with him. Facts she’d been struggling to resist just a day ago.
His face was turned toward her, features relaxed, appearing so much younger in sleep. She stroked his champagne-stiffened hair gently, refusing to think of what the next day would bring.
Cale muttered softly, stirring at her touch. His hand rose to cover hers, bringing it down so he could press a kiss to her palm, then hold it to his cheek as his eyes blinked open. He stared at her for a long unfocused moment, then told her quietly, “I’ve waited my whole life to have you here beside me. You’ve made the only dream I’ve ever had come true.”
Before she could respond, his eyes slid shut and he rolled away, dragging her arm with him, wrapping it about his neck so he could pillow his face in her open hand. Kendra fitted to the hard contours of his body, her heart so full that it took some time for her to settle into sleep. Her last thought was how good it felt not to be alone. This was how she wanted each day to end, with the two of them sharing intimate space.
Kendra wasn’t sure what woke her. Maybe the coolness of the sheets beside her. Maybe the clean scent of just-showered male. Maybe the intuitive shock that something was very wrong.
Darkness draped the room. A fine filter of moonlight sifted through the skylight to stroke the curve of Cale’s bare shoulder, along the brutal canvas of his back. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, tented hands covering his face, breathing in quick, shaky snatches. When he heard her stirring, he spoke. “Don’t do this, Katy. Don’t do this to me.”
Alarmed, she came up on her knees behind him, placing a tentative palm to that scarred back. His muscles tensed and shivered beneath her touch. “Do what, Cale?”
“It’s okay that you hate me. I get that. I deserve that. The things I’ve done, that I’ve stood by and watched happen . . . Saying I’m sorry—oh, God, I’m so sorry—isn’t ever going to be enough. I just left you there. I’m sorry. I was so scared.”
Kendra pressed her damp cheek to his shoulder as the emotions of the moment shuddered through her, but her tone was unfalteringly gentle. “Of course you were. You were eleven years old. He hurt you. He beat you and threatened you. How could you not be afraid?”
He shook his head. “No. I wasn’t afraid for myself. I was afraid of what he’d do to you. To my momma. What happened was my fault. It was because of me, because of what I did.”
She started listening to his words, listening carefully even as she argued, “It was nothing you’d done.”
“I gave you my diamond.”
“The earring? This is about your earring?”
“I wanted you to have it. I wanted you to know how much you meant to me. But when he saw it was missing . . . I couldn’t tell him where it was.”
The Terriot diamonds. The unmistakable sign of their allegiance to their king, their father. She’d never made the connection before. Until his admission at Vera’s, she’d always thought it had something to do with a misstep by her father. Some slight her mother had given the predator king. But it was because of Cale’s gift of devotion to her, a sign of his divided loyalty between her and his House. It still was.
“I would have given it back,” she told him, years too late to matter. “I would have understood. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted you to have it, Katy. I didn’t want it back. I was going to tell you to put it away someplace safe, but by the time I could walk—”
Her stomach knotted and rolled. “What do you mean? What did he do to you?”
“My father wasn’t pleased that I’d had my inheritance as a prince for less than a day and I was careless with it. I couldn’t lie to him and tell him I’d lost it. He would have seen right through that. So I said nothing. And there was nothing he could do to make me tell him.”
Her tears fell freely for the sweet, surprisingly tough boy he’d been as she whispered his name.
“I thought he was satisfied with that punishment until he and Bull came to get me that night. I thought I was going to be killed for disgracing my family.”
If she could have hated Bram Terriot more, this would have pushed her to it. She couldn’t grasp a father allowing his son even to imagine such a thing. How could the tender essence of a child absorb the threat of a crippling beating or death for an unintended wrong as if he were being sent to bed without supper? How could Cale not have been damaged by such a life of fear and despair?
The matter-of-factness of his next words tore the heart from her. “If I’d known what he’d planned, I’d have begged to die. It would have been easier than living with what he’d done.”
She held him as if she could make up for all the times she hadn’t been there, soothing him with practicality rather than pity. “It wouldn’t have mattered. You know that. It wouldn’t have changed anything he meant to do.”
He took a tattered breath, swallowing with difficulty. “I didn’t know what to do, Katy. I waited, afraid to go near you, thinking of you all alone, hating me for being . . . weak.”
Kendra winced. How could she have ever thought that? Ever thrown that into his face?
“My father never said anything about it, never mentioned it again until after your mother died and my momma told me we were leaving. He called me into his office and asked if I remembered my lesson, told me that if I tried to leave with her, he’d arrange another demonstration to remind me. With you.”
Unfathomable horror shuddered through Kendra. Then raw, fervent gratitude surfaced for that small boy with the oversize courage, standing his ground to protect her. Even then.
“I had to pretend to turn my back on you both,” he continued. “I promised I’d stay. I promised I’d be a dutiful prince if you and my momma weren’t harmed. I didn’t know what would be asked of me. The things I’ve done . . . telling myself it wouldn’t change who I was.” Again, he swallowed hard, his voice fading. “Don’t pretend you can ever forgive me. Don’t tell me you love me, Katy. How could you?”
Kendra didn’t argue with him. Instead, she told him the truth. “I did hate you. When you walked out of that room to follow him, when you stood there covered in the MacCreedys’ blood, after what you did to Silas, all those times when you acted like you didn’t know me, you crushed me, Cale, because I didn’t know how you could just stop loving me. Because I didn’t know you did it to save me. I’m sorry I didn’t believe in you. I thought I’d lost you. I thought all you wanted was the crown.”
“I do want it. I didn’t know how much until my brothers helped me through the Gauntlet to get back to you. I was being selfish. I was only thinking of what I wanted instead of what was best for us all. I owe them. I owe my clan a life free of my father’s cruelty. When I told them I wanted to be their king, they believed in
me.”
“When I told you I loved you, you didn’t believe me.” She could feel him tensing, withdrawing as she spoke the words. She sat back, hoping to read another answer in his expression when he turned toward her, but the mask was in place. She didn’t know how to bring that closeness back. “What can I do to make you trust me?”
Cale gave no quick, placating answer. He thought long and hard, but his reply was unsatisfying. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll have a better idea after tomorrow.”
After Silas arrived.
He thought she was going to leave him.
Hadn’t that been the plan all along? To escape this terrible place of uncertainty and sorrow? To try to capture some sort of normalcy, some degree of happiness, where she didn’t have to fear that any misspoken word could be her last? How had her happiness gotten tangled again with the son of her enemy, who wouldn’t leave the only place she couldn’t bear to stay?
“I wouldn’t blame you, Kendra.” Cale’s words gave her pause. “I know what I’m asking is more than you can give. I know how much you hate it here. If I were any kind of man, I’d let you go, but I can’t. I can’t just walk away from my life here and go with you, either. I don’t know the answer. I do want you to know that I’d understand. I’d forgive you.”
“Forgive me?” She stared at him blankly. Then cold fear began to rise alongside righteous anger. “For what? Not liking the fact that I’ve been a prisoner? That I’ve been threatened and terrorized? That my loved ones have been brutally slain for no reason other than pride? That the boy I loved was bullied and beaten and forced to live in an ugly, brutal world without knowing how much I dreamed of being with him? Don’t you dare forgive me for any of those things. You’re the leader this clan deserves. You’re the only one who can knock that beast off his throne, and I want to see you do it. I want to help you do it.”
She put her palm on his chest, feeling the vigorous beat of his pulse beneath it. Looking deeply into his eyes, she called him on his earlier promise. “I want justice for my family, Cale. Take care of that for me.”
Kendra watched as everything about her mate came together with intensely centered focus. His hand fit over hers, squeezing gently. “For you, my queen, anything.”
Kendra touched a hand to his cheek, let it trail down to stroke the strong angle of his jaw and finally curl behind his head to draw him to her for the softest of kisses.
Time to give him what he’d been afraid to ask for.
His eyes were open, searching hers intently. Looking into them, she read all the things that had marked his soul, and she kissed them away. The lonely ridicule of his childhood. The cherished friendship they’d had to hide. The lessons shared and emotions stirred at such a terrible price. That awful, endless ache of separation and misunderstanding. Her tongue slid over and around his, not to incite but to soothe as she imagined his fear, his pain, his guilt and anguish.
“My prince,” Kendra whispered against the part of his lips as she breathed in his quickening exhalations. Her voice sweetened. “My love. I’m yours.”
In a quick, urgent move, Cale took her down to the bed on her back, knees straddling her, braced on his forearms so they were close but not touching. He kissed her slowly, deeply, adoring her with that deliciously unhurried mouth until she moaned and arched helplessly against him, rolling her hips up, offering her breasts with abandon. “Love me, Cale. I need you so.”
“Shhh, baby. Let me do this for you the way I should have the first time.”
Kendra sighed and surrendered to him. She relaxed beneath his gentle touch and tender kisses and let herself experience rather than pursue.
There was fire, but it was low and smoldering. Tiny flickers of heat as he thumbed her nipples. Ripples of flame as he moved against her in a tempting rhythm. His palm glided over her, parting her, making her tremble as he slid in slow and deep, sensations simmering at the draw and repeated press of his fingers. When she began to thrust to meet them, he withdrew.
“Be still. Let me please you.”
Please her? Everything about him pleased and excited and astonished and gratified her. The smooth feel of his skin stretched taut over granite muscle. The harsh rasp of the breathing he struggled to control. The fixed intensity in his gaze while he studied her every reaction as if nothing had ever been so important or meant so much to him.
“Close your eyes. I want you to feel me, learn me, know that I’m yours.”
His husky words made her shiver deliciously as she waited in the velvet darkness with a vulnerable expectancy.
His kiss was teasingly brief and tender as he lifted away from her. His hands stroked warm and firm as they rubbed down her thighs to cup behind her knees, spreading them apart so he could sink between them to sample her, first with the light circle of his tongue, then with leisurely revolutions of his thumb, and finally, finally, with the smooth, broad head of his erection. Sliding against her wetness, pulsing, pressing, yet not fulfilling her desperate need to welcome him.
“Cale. Cale, please. I need you.”
His breath blew fast and rough against her lips as he whispered, “I’ve needed you every day, every night, you’ve been gone. I’ve wanted nothing but you even before that first time I kissed you. The only thing I’ve thought of since I put that diamond in your ear is claiming you, taking you, pleasing you, having you forever. Open your eyes, Kendra. Look at me so you’ll never wonder again if it’s some damned crown I desire more than this, more than you.”
She opened them, barely able to see him through the sudden wash of tears. His eyes glittered, diamond-bright, silvery blue. His face was all sharp edges and shadowed angles. She could no longer see the boy he’d been beneath the man he’d become, and she never looked away as he began to ease himself into her by slow, overwhelming degrees until there wasn’t a corner of her body or heart that he hadn’t filled completely.
He began to move with concentrated purpose. Expanding and withdrawing that spectacular anticipation. Too much, then not enough. Slowing so she could grip him with those hot inner walls the way she had with her palm on that wild motorcycle ride. So she could feel his every motion. Sensations, so new and raw, radiated everywhere at once. Excruciating pleasure spiked and trembled with each measured thrust and retreat. Just when her insides began to clench and the muscles of her legs to stiffen, he’d stop and wait for her body to loosen so he could begin the process all over again.
The steady, tormenting movements became a delectable circling of his hips. The change in pattern woke all her senses and had them scattering in new directions. This time she couldn’t keep pace, couldn’t seem to find the rhythm, couldn’t hang on as her breathing hitched and labored and caught in a convulsive cry that went on and on until Cale smothered it with a hard kiss while he shuddered through his own release. He rolled with her, letting her collapse along the strong lines of his body. There, she lazily stroked his damp hair and murmured a soft objection as he withdrew.
“Oh, Katy,” he sighed in satisfaction, “I never imagined anything could be this good.”
Kendra’s brows shot upward. “You’re not finished, are you?”
Cale released a wolfish smile. “Baby, I’m just getting warmed up.” And he rolled her over onto Brigit’s fur coat.
twenty-one
Cale hadn’t marked her.
Kendra examined her unblemished skin in the bathroom mirror and puzzled over the reason. There’d been numerous opportunities during the long, heated hours of the night, times when she’d cast aside all subtlety to offer herself with the throaty demand that he make her his. And he’d deferred without explanation.
She had no complaints about the mind-blowing sex that concluded in the shower at just after five o’clock. Then she’d managed to sleep, but when she found him brooding over his morning coffee in an unbuttoned black vest and suit pants and open-throated white shirt, there was no hiding his restlessness and fatigue.
Because Silas would arrive this morning.
> Had he refused to bond her to him because he feared her choice hadn’t been clearly made?
“I’ll have Tony stay here with you,” he announced as he stood and reached for his coat.
Terrified that some unforeseen danger waited in the hours ahead, she gripped his arm, feeling tension in the corded muscle beneath her hand. “My place is with you. Especially today.”
He looked as though he might argue, then simply nodded.
Cale strode quickly up the walk toward the lodge, sunglasses on to combat the unpleasant pounding in his head. Kendra hurried at his side, but he tried not to look at her. Her beauty dazzled. She’d taken extra care with her appearance that morning. For him or for her returning hero? He didn’t know, and not knowing made him sick inside.
He’d done everything he could think of to prepare for this moment. Either she loved him and he was the luckiest man alive, or she was a lovely liar who was about to rip the heart from his chest and dine on it in front of his family.
Kendra caught his hand just outside the main lodge, preventing him from reaching for the door. Cale stopped and turned toward her, brows raised in question. He rocked back in surprise when she stepped up to him, arms looping about his hips, head resting on his shoulder.
“What’s this?” he asked quietly.
“I just wanted to hug on you a bit longer.”
“Oh.” The rough pleasure in his voice reinforced the incredible amount of care he took in holding her close. His thumb stroked along her jawline and circled the diamond in her ear. “Stay close to me today.” He thought she might ask which he feared most, his father or her cousin, and he wasn’t sure how he’d answer, but Kendra simply nodded.
He felt her lips brush against his neck, and to distract from the way his throat tightened, he remarked, “You do me great honor with your very sexy bowlegged walk this morning.”
“You earned it, my prince. You were very . . . resilient.”