by Lisa Kessler
Yeah, I’m a prize. I moaned inwardly.
When I started to slide out from under Adam’s arm, he pulled me in closer, nuzzling his chin into my hair.
“Good morning.”
The bed squeaked as I shifted and rolled around to face him. “How come you didn’t tell me about Aren when I was looking at those pictures? You had to know I saw his college graduation photo over there.”
His eyes opened fully and met mine. “You cut right to the chase.”
“I’ve been awake for a little while thinking.”
“I see that.” He kissed my forehead and drew back. “I should have told you.”
“But you didn’t. He’s a huge part of your life. How could you leave out something important like that?”
“I didn’t think you’d ever meet him.” He shrugged a little. “It didn’t seem important.”
I pulled away and sat up. “So all the talk of not wanting me to leave was bullshit.” My heart was breaking inside, so it was all I could do to keep the tears at bay. I hoped some righteous anger might help me stay strong.
“No, it’s not bullshit. I don’t want you to leave. Now you’ve met my brother, and you heard what he said. The Pack is always going to see you as a potential threat because you’re a jaguar. In my head, I didn’t think you would ever meet them, so I didn’t think I needed to tell you about them.”
“You say you don’t want me to leave, but if I stayed you were never going to let me into your life. I thought I could handle being your dark little secret, but you made me feel…” I got up and went over to the window. Staring down at the people holding hands, walking on either side of the street made the ache in my heart pulse. “You made me feel like I deserve more.”
Even though Adam was still in the room, I felt completely alone.
I heard the bed squeak as he got up. I swiped a stray tear from my cheek. I didn’t want him to see me cry.
He stood behind me. The heat of his bare chest teased me through the back of my thin cotton tee. His voice was just above a whisper. “I am so sorry I hurt you, Lana. I know I’m not handling any of this very well.”
I turned on him, dipping into my well of self-pity and anger, and lashed out. “Any of what, Adam? What exactly do we have anyway? I don’t even know why you’re here. We both know there’s an attraction, but we also know I can’t stay. I never should have stayed even a second day. I’m such an idiot.”
He kissed me then, hard. My body betrayed me, pressing against his chest. My fingers slid up into the back of his hair as our tongues tangled with urgent passion. When he finally pulled back, we were breathless and my lips felt hot and sore. He rested his forehead against mine.
“I love you, Lana,” he whispered.
“Is that what you say to all the girls who threaten to walk away before you’re ready to let them?”
A muscle in his cheek jumped, but he didn’t pull back or raise his voice. “I’ve never said those words to another woman.”
I stared into his eyes, searching for any sign of deception, but all I saw was Adam. No masks, no false promises, no defenses. My eyes welled with tears as I reached up to cup his cheek. “How can we ever make this work?”
He turned his head and kissed my palm. “One day at a time.”
“I don’t want to take you away from your family, Adam. I know how horrible it is to go through life without them.”
“Do you love me?” he asked.
My heart screamed yes, but in my head I could hear Sebastian’s voice telling me about the Nero Organization’s experiments with werewolves, how they suffered away from their Pack. I started to look away, but he caught my chin and forced me to look up at him.
“You think too much. Just tell me how you feel.”
He made it sound so simple. But nothing about this was simple.
Panic rose in my throat. My instincts, learned from hard lessons in abandonment, threatened to strangle me. My head was screaming to run while I still could. But I didn’t want to run. I stared into his eyes, this man who knew all the secrets I struggled to hide from the world. He’d never seen me as damaged goods, and when I was around him, for the first time in my life I didn’t feel broken.
“Yes. I love you, too,” I whispered. “But that doesn’t change the fact that we have no future.”
His mouth curved into a sexy, dangerous smile that made my pulse quicken. “We make our own future.”
Adam scooped me up into his arms so fast that I gasped. He kissed me, making his way back to the bed. He laid me down on the cool sheets, and I hummed against his lips, enjoying his slow, lingering kisses. Finally he pulled back.
Without a word, he stood up and unbuttoned his jeans. I watched him take off his pants and wet my lips as he moved to the foot of the bed. Every muscle of his body looked chiseled and strong. A faint shadow covered his jaw, and the intensity in his stare made my skin burn.
He leaned down and kissed just above my knee before looking up at me. I felt his hands stroke along my legs until his thumbs caught the waistband of my lace underwear. I couldn’t take my eyes away from his hungry stare. My hips rose up off the bed slightly as he slid the lace panties down and tossed them aside.
His hands caressed my calves, kneading the muscles, drawing a moan from my lips as he moved his attentions upward. He pressed lingering kisses up my thighs, pushing my legs apart, and I opened myself to his attentions. I reached down with one hand, my fingers getting lost in his hair as he kissed along my inner thigh, his hot breath teasing my yearning skin. When his fingers brushed along my curls, my body writhed with desire. Without taking his eyes off of mine, he slid his finger deep inside of me.
I moaned, working my hips as his fingers teased and stroked until my heart was racing. Adam growled against me, giving my aching core a long, slow lick. I cried out his name as he grasped my hips and pulled me even closer. He brought my legs up over his shoulders, feeding on me until I couldn’t catch my breath. When his tongue moved inside of me, he brought his fingers up to rub insistently at my sensitive nub until my hips rocked against his lips.
I shuddered, gasping his name as my body exploded, every muscle contracting and writhing with pleasure. He lowered my body to the bed and licked his lips as he moved up over me. I could feel the tip of him pressed against me, but he didn’t enter me. My hips tilted, hungering to feel him inside of me.
“I want you,” I moaned.
He leaned down and kissed me long and slow. I could taste myself on his tongue, and the territorial animal in me clawed to the surface as my nails gripped into his back. I never wanted him to touch another woman, and no other man would ever touch me. It was a carnal, primal pledge from a part of me I never knew existed.
Adam growled against my lips. “You’re mine.”
He plunged into me, filling me to the core of my being. His hands kneaded my breasts, teasing my nipples through the thin cotton of my T-shirt until my back arched under him. Adam pushed my shirt up and bent to take my nipple into his mouth. He looked up at me from under his brow as I watched his mouth on my skin. His hips rocked into me harder and faster as he sucked at my breast. Slowly, he drew back, his hand cupping me as he licked slowly across my hardened nipple. My body writhed, and he smiled, claiming my lips with his.
I raked my nails down his back, my heart pounding. Sex had never been this intense for me before, this urgent. I needed him, and he needed me right back. My legs wrapped around his waist as he rose up, pounding himself into me. Adam gripped my hips, slamming me into his pistoning thrusts until I felt him pulsing within my body.
One hand slid between us as Adam growled. “Now, Lana. Now…”
My body obeyed his demands. Every inner muscle clenched tightly around him as he exploded deep inside of me, calling out my name. His fingers dug into my hips as he held me against him until the aftershocks faded. When he laid back over me, his elbows rested on either side of my head as he looked into my eyes.
“I love you.” He kissed me.<
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I smiled. “I love you, too.”
“There’s something else I need to tell you,” he said.
I shook my head with an exhausted smile. “If it’s going to mess with my afterglow here, then I don’t want to know.”
Adam laughed. God, I loved the sound of his laugh. He rolled to the side, pulling me into his arms. I snuggled against his chest with a happy sigh. He kissed my hair, and his hand ran slowly up and down my back.
“There’s a wolf thing that I need to tell you about.”
I raised my head to look down at him. “Uh oh.”
“It’s not bad,” he reached up to cup my cheek in his hand. “Not to me anyway.” He met my eyes. “Remember how I told you we have to convert women before we can have children?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Only boys carry the wolf gene.”
“Right. Well there’s another part of that I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want you to run away screaming.”
“I love how you’re setting this up so far.”
He shook his head with a grin. “Sorry. It’s just…” He hesitated and my smile faded. “Wolves have an instinct to mate with one female for life. Okay, that’s not even big enough to describe it. It’s like this wolf inside of us comes alive, demanding we protect and love our mate like it’s a physical need. Some of us wait for her to come along, and others just enjoy their freedom without any strings attached.”
“If you’re trying to tell me you’re one of the others, don’t bother. I figured that out a long time ago. You had player written all over you.”
He rubbed his face and heaved a sigh before meeting my eyes. “I’m trying to tell you I found my mate.”
I almost choked on my tongue. My brow furrowed. “What?”
“You, Lana. That’s why I can’t let anything happen to you, and if it means we have to leave Reno, then I’m going with you. I just want you to understand. I can’t let you walk out of my life. You are my life.”
I collapsed back onto his chest, listening to the sound of his heart beating. “We’re not even the same…species? Race? Whatever.” I lifted my head to look up at him. “How is this even possible? Has anyone else in your Pack had a mate who wasn’t human?”
Adam shook his head. “Not in our Pack. And I haven’t heard of it in any others either.”
“So maybe I’m not really your mate—you just really like me.” My inner foster kid whispered I told you so.
Adam brought my hand to his lips and kissed it. “Remember the night we met at the café, when I grabbed your arm to pull you out? It hit me so hard, I almost lost my footing. The wolf knew instantly that you were my other half. My mate. And in the donut shop? When that guy starting flirting with you, I came unglued. I wanted to beat the crap out of him. It was over the top.” He put my hand over his heart. “I thought those stories were Pack legends to try to get us to settle down, but trust me. I’m a believer now. Jaguar or not, you’re my mate.”
I tried to wrap my brain around it. “But we can’t be together here, and I can’t take you away from your Pack.”
“You can’t take me, but I can choose to go.” Adam stroked my hair. “We’re a team, okay? Where you go, I go.”
“No, you don’t understand. When Sebastian told me about the Nero Organization, he mentioned that they tried to train some werewolf subjects to be assassins like the jaguars, but the wolves couldn’t work alone. He said something about their spirits being weakened. They need to live in a Pack. You can’t just leave them, Adam.”
“I wouldn’t trust everything Sebastian tells you.” He held me a little tighter. “He just wants you to stay away from me.”
“We weren’t discussing you when he told me this.”
Adam shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore.”
I sighed. “He also told me that if he doesn’t bring me back to the organization soon, they’ll send another jaguar after me.”
He held me a little tighter. “I’ll kill him.”
“Killing a bunch of jaguars isn’t the answer here,” I said. “One of them might be my brother.”
“What?” Adam tensed and pulled back enough to look down at me.
“Sebastian didn’t confirm it, but he thinks my mother gave birth and hid me from Nero. They only got the boy.”
His fingers slowly traced my spine before he spoke. “ As far as they knew, you didn’t exist until you got those CAT scans.”
“Exactly.” I kissed along his neck. “I think I need to get down to San Antonio and see if I can get my sealed records. There might be a clue about my parents. I need to put the pieces together to truly know what I am up against.”
“You think they’re hiding from Nero, too?” His fingers stroked through the back of my hair. I closed my eyes, resting my head against his chest and drinking in the comfort.
“Sebastian told me my father is still with Nero…” I wet my lips, pushing down my emotions. “My mother was eliminated.”
“I’m sorry, Lana.” He kissed my hair. “You know she loved you.”
I frowned without lifting my head. “How do you know that?”
“Because she didn’t want you to be an experiment like she was. It probably broke her heart to leave you behind, but it was her only chance to save you.”
I kissed over his heart while mine broke for a woman I never got to meet. “I want to know where she left me and when. I want to know everything.”
“I’m going with you.”
I wiped my tears and lifted my head. “What about the ranch?”
“Luke can exercise the horses. We won’t be gone long.”
“No.” I kissed his lips, then pulled back and met his eyes. “I’m not taking you away from your Pack.”
“It’s not forever.” He reached up to cup my cheek. “Remember what I said about needing to protect you?” He kissed me again, long and slow. For a second my brain short-circuited and I forgot what we were talking about.
I laughed softly. “You’re trying to distract me.”
“Am I?” He flashed me an innocent smile.
I gave him a gentle shove. “You know you are.” My smile faded a little. “What about your brother?”
He sobered. “He won’t like me going away with you.”
“Will he follow us?”
I could feel the weight of his stare. “Probably.”
“We could ditch him. I’m good at hiding under the radar.”
“I know you told me you thought you’d be okay being a secret, and I thought I’d be all right with it too. But I’ve lied to my family enough. I feel like a spineless asshole. I don’t want to hide anymore.”
His admission felt like a punch in the gut. He lied to them all because of me.
“I should get ready to go.” I pulled free of his embrace and sat up in the bed, yanking my cotton T-shirt back down.
He watched me get up. “This isn’t your fault, Lana. But I’ve never kept a secret from Aren. Never.” His voice dropped even lower as he looked over toward the window. “I hit him yesterday.”
“You did what?”
He rubbed his knuckles, staring at his hand. “We both said things we shouldn’t have. It escalated.”
I pressed my hand to forehead. “God, Adam. Even if we found a way to keep Nero away, I can’t stay here and singlehandedly destroy your relationship with your family. I can’t. I won’t.”
He got up and wrapped his arms around me. “It wasn’t just you. I lied to him, Lana. We were both upset and only part of it had anything to do with you. I don’t know if my Pack will ever come around, but we don’t have to worry about it today.” He pulled back and I looked up at him. “Why don’t you get the plane tickets to San Antonio, and I’ll go back to get the ranch taken care of.”
“All right.” I nodded. “But no more socking your brother. I don’t care what he says.”
He kissed my forehead. “Deal.”
“We should leave right away.” I grabbed my laptop and sat on the
bed. “It’s only a matter of time before Nero sends another jaguar to finish Sebastian’s job.”
“I’ll be back in an hour. I just have to be sure Luke knows the plan and has everything he needs for me to be gone for a few days.” He got up and started dressing again. I watched him pull his shirt on and step into his jeans, his muscles rippling, taut with power. He yanked on his work boots and crossed to the mirror to comb his hair. He looked like the dangerous Adam I’d met that first night. My heart thumped in agreement.
His green eyes cut over to where I sat on the bed. In one stride he was next to me, his hand cradling my head as he kissed me again, urgent and hard. He drew back, and his shoulders looked heavy under the weight of his thoughts.
His voice was low and sparked with intensity. “Stay here, okay? If we want a head start in Texas, Sebastian can’t know we’re leaving.”
“I’ll get the tickets from my laptop, no reason for me to leave.”
His gaze locked on mine. “Be safe.”
“You too.”
He nodded and turned to leave. As he opened the door, he glanced back over his shoulder. “We’ll figure this out.”
Adam didn’t wait for a response, and I was left sitting on the hotel bed staring at the door. I got up to engage the deadbolt, which the hotel staff must’ve fixed during housekeeping. How would we ever make our relationship work? This was all more than I bargained for, but I wanted it. More than I’d ever wanted anything. I started to smile and shook my head. Be careful what you wish for Lana.
With a sigh, I yanked my shirt off over my head and went to the bathroom for a quick shower. It was going to be a long day.
Chapter Twenty-Four