Javier, he heard his brother say through their telepathic connection.
He jerked back and dashed into the room, falling to his knees on the floor next to Juan, desperately trying to not look at the bloodied, tortured body of his wife on the bed. His brother was in his cat, and blood pooled on the floor from deep eviscerating wounds in his stomach.
“Who did this?” His eyes stinging, his stomach unsettled, Javier wanted to help his brother, but it was too late. Too much blood loss. His brother’s entrails... He laid a hand on Juan’s neck, digging his fingers into his fur to feel for a heartbeat. It was slow, too slow and thready. His brother, his twin, was dying.
Lev Ivanovich Durchenko, Juan said, the telepathic words weak. Our wife, our children... I failed to protect them... His brother sobbed and gasped for air. Kill the shifter bastard... Kill him slowly...
“Juan. Juan,” Javier shouted, desperately seeking a pulse in Juan’s throat with both hands, but it was too late. His brother exhaled his last breath, and his eyes stared into nothingness.
Agony such as Javier had never known descended on him. A long, tortured cry ripped from his throat as he laid his forehead against his brother’s furry cheek.
* * *
Heidi was just pulling on her skirt over her shower-dampened skin when she heard Javier shout. She jerked open the bathroom door to see him on the bed, gripping a pillow to his chest, sobbing as he cried out for someone named Juan.
Rushing to the bed, she laid her hand against his arm. His muscles were coiled tight, his chest heaving with his sobs.
“Javier.” She shook his arm. “Wake up.”
With a shout, he surged into a seated position, staring at her with crazed, pain-filled eyes spilling over with tears. Her heart pinched as she touched his damp cheek.
“Hey. It’s okay. You’re safe.”
He swallowed loudly and swiped the back of his hand over his eyes. When he looked at her again, his expression was closed, all signs of weakness gone. “You are leaving,” he said, looking her up and down.
“I’m hungry and figured you would be too when you woke up. I was just going to run out for some sandwiches and drinks.” She laid her hand over the arm still gripping the pillow to his chest.
He glanced down, seemed to realize he was hugging the pillow and tossed it away. Staring across the room toward the window, he said, “Thank you. Yes. I am hungry.”
“Javier...”
He shook his head. “Not this moment, chata. Please.” He swallowed again. “I cannot.”
“Okay.” Heidi stood and leaned over to kiss his cheek. “I’ll be back soon.”
He nodded but refused to glance at her.
Her heart aching for him, she grabbed the key card off the top of the television and slipped on her sandals. “Soda okay to drink?”
“I am not particular. Water would be good.”
“Okay.” Quietly, she slipped out of the room and checked to make sure the door closed tightly behind her.
She wanted to know his story, wished to God he’d open up to her. From the little he’d shared with Axel last night, she knew he somehow lost his mate and brother. She could only assume that Isabela was his wife and Juan was his brother. However they died must have been traumatic to elicit such horrendous nightmares that someone as strong as he seemed would shed tears.
She couldn’t remember ever seeing any of her brothers cry except for when they lost their mother.
Heidi wished she were still alive. She could really use some motherly advice right about now. There was a huge heart buried under that big, muscular chest of Javier’s, and Heidi feared she would never be able to get through to him.
His wounds ran deep, and some scars not even a vet could heal.
Regardless of his past heartaches, or the dangers of caring too much for a patient, she suspected she was falling for him even though she knew how foolish that would be. He’d sworn to Axel that as soon as he was physically able, he would leave Leavenworth. A promise from one alpha to another. Not for a second did she doubt the sincerity of his word.
The drive from the hotel to Subway wasn’t long. She probably should have walked it and given herself time to think more about the smartness of going back to Javier’s hotel room and spending the night with him. Part of her wanted to stay—a huge part of her—because she knew there was no way she’d ever find another man that made her feel the way he did. The sexual chemistry was so amazing it scared her.
But so too did his vulnerable side, the part of him he tried so hard to hide. He’d been hurt, but his alpha nature demanded he show no weakness. That had to be why he refused to open up about his past. And she had to accept the fact that there could be no future with him as long as he clung to the past, regardless of how sexually well-suited they were.
“Oh my god!” She gasped, bypassing the sandwich shop and heading to the mini mart another half mile down the road. She’d had unprotected sex with a shifter. She had no way of knowing if they were biologically compatible enough to produce children together, but there was a chance with him...unlike her previous human lovers.
She’d never had to worry too much about the risk of pregnancy before, but Javier was no average human male. How could she have forgotten that even for a second?
She ran into the store straight to the condom aisle and grabbed a box. A wave of emotion hit her, and she had to stop and drag in a deep breath when her eyes threatened to tear up. Her hand settled over her abdomen, and she imagined a baby, two, three. Babies with Javier’s eyes and her hair, his dark skin.
She grew up knowing she’d never be a mom. Her mother had done her best to present the facts gently. In all their family’s history, there’d only been one female shifter who produced offspring. She’d married a distant cousin of hers, another shifter. It was the only way then and now. But as rare as female shifters were, lone males were not exactly easy to locate either. And after her ancestors had fled to the New World, the odds of finding any outside one’s own family was impossible, or so it had seemed. There had been no other shifters known to them for a couple generations. As far as they’d known, the Falkes were the only shifters left in the world. Until Javier.
Heidi stared at the box of condoms in her hand.
What if they were compatible?
She could have children with him.
But he was leaving.
She didn’t need a man to raise kids. She lived with her dads, and they’d welcome more grandchildren no matter how they came to be. They’d love more babies in the house. They never wanted Dakota to take the triplets home.
She set the box of condoms back on the shelf but couldn’t stop staring at it. Could she do that to Javier? With his brother and mate both dead, Javier might never become a father. What if she was the only female with shifter blood in the world? She might be his only chance too. Did he want children? She couldn’t answer that question, only he could, and he wasn’t even ready to answer all of the other questions she had about him, his past...
He was leaving.
Could she let him impregnate her and never tell him?
No. She couldn’t. It wasn’t fair. No matter how much the thought of being a mom made her want to throw caution to the four winds, she couldn’t deceive Javier.
They might be each other’s only chance at parenthood, but that must be a decision made together, openly, willingly and without deception.
She picked up the box again, grabbed a six-pack of water bottles, a six-pack of soda and paid.
She was back at the door of his hotel room in less than a half hour. When she opened the door, she heard the shower running. Carrying the bags of food, cola and water toward the coffee table at the other end of the room, she tripped over something on the floor at the foot of the bed, almost falling on the sandwiches.
Javier’s cas
t sat in shredded pieces on the floor. Shaking her head, she put down the bags then picked up the pieces of plaster and tossed them in the trash can. She knocked on the partially open bathroom door. “I’m back with food.”
The water shut off, and she went to the small sofa to unwrap a couple of sandwiches. Javier came out of the bathroom, water droplets trickling down his gorgeous chest, a white towel wrapped around his waist. He limped his way to the sofa and sat next to her, raising his injured leg onto the end of the coffee table.
“Go on,” he said.
She raised her attention from the puckered scar on his thigh, exposed by the gap in the towel, to his eyes. “Go on, what?”
He smiled, but his look was just a little bit condescending. “You wish to be upset about the cast, so go on and get it out.”
Rolling her eyes, she picked up one of the foot-longs and handed it to him. “It wouldn’t do me any good to say a thing, would it?” She pulled a bottled water out of the paper bag and offered it to him.
“No, it would not.”
“You’re limping pretty bad.” She opened her own can of cola and sipped.
“I will for a few more days. Thank you for dinner.”
“You’re welcome.”
They ate in silence, Javier eating two of the three sandwiches she’d brought him, while she took surreptitious glances at his body. The water droplets slowly dried on his golden skin. His chest was bare of hair, but just below his belly button a thin line disappeared into the edge of the towel. His thighs were heavily muscled, and she had the urge to just...bite him. Her teeth fairly itched to do it.
“Oy, chata. Eat your sandwich.”
She glanced at the half eaten six-inch in her hand.
“You stare at me as if I am your dinner.”
A little laugh bubbled out of her, and she finished her sandwich quickly.
Javier reached into the bag of drinks, paused, then pulled out a box instead of another bottle of water.
Heidi held her breath while he slowly turned it over in his hand. Finally, she looked into his face and found him staring at her with a confused expression.
“We have already had sex. I do not think these will matter now if it is disease you are worried about. But I do not have any. You are the first woman I have had sex with since my wife—” He cleared his throat. “For a little over two years.”
She shook her head. “Actually, that hadn’t even crossed my mind.”
His brow furrowed and his lip curled. “Then you simply enjoy the feel of condoms?”
“Ah, no. You’re the first person I’ve ever had sex with without one.” She shrugged. “Humans expect you to use them, and there are diseases that we can catch, even though our immune systems are better than theirs, so I have...until now.” She licked her lips. “I realized that—” she licked her lips again, “—there’s a small possibility that, you know...”
“No, I do not know. What are you trying to say?”
She took a quick breath and rushed out with, “I never thought I would have babies, because the only sure way would be with a catamount shifter. Because there were never any male shifters around I wasn’t related to, I never worried about getting pregnant before.”
He stared at her, silent, his expression unreadable.
“I’m sorry. I should have thought about it before we...” She waved her hand toward the bed.
“You can get pregnant by a single shifter? You do not need two males to conceive?”
“There was one other female in the Falke line that we know of, sometime way back when, and yes, she got pregnant by another catamount shifter. Just one.”
“We are not the same species.”
“I know, but that might not matter. I don’t know if a jaguar and a cougar could mate, but it’s not as if you’re pure jaguar, either. You’re a shifter. I’m descended from a shifter line. There’s no telling what might be possible. I should’ve realized it sooner, and for that, I’m sorry.”
Javier set the box of condoms on the coffee table next to the empty sandwich wrappers and stared at it a long time.
How could she have ever considered not telling him? To just go with it and hope to conceive? He looked so... She wasn’t sure what he looked like, but he wasn’t happy.
“If something did happen,” she started slowly, “as a result of that first time, you don’t have to worry about it. I would never expect you to...uh...that is... I know you have a life elsewhere.” She bit her tongue when he turned a glare on her so fierce it could knock a person dead.
Javier’s nostrils flared, the muscle in his cheek flexed. But then he blinked once and the anger cleared. “You will be the death of me, chata.” In the next instant his mouth was on her, a fierce possession she couldn’t—wouldn’t—fight. He ate at her mouth, sinking his tongue in again and again, while he buried his hands in her hair and held her steady.
She jerked away from his mouth to grab a few deep breaths, but went up on her knees on the sofa next to him and nipped at his neck, his shoulder, that gorgeous, luscious chest. When she flicked her tongue over his nipple, he hissed, so she did it again.
His hands still in her hair, he gently guided her down his body, letting her lick and kiss each rippled muscle along the way. He smelled of hotel soap but beneath that he tasted of pure male. A flavor she had never experienced yet would never, as long as she lived, forget. She pulled his towel open when she reached his bellybutton.
“Oh.” His cock was impressive. So long and thick against his abdomen, a tiny drop of silky fluid glistening at the tip. Flicking her tongue, she tasted that salty little drip and moaned as her pussy clenched. She didn’t understand her reaction to him, to his very essence, but it was undeniable. If she could take him into her, body and soul, every bit of him, maybe as she grew old alone, she would always have the memory of these few days with him.
Dipping her head, she took his cock into her mouth, suckled, licked, groaning when his fingers tightened in her hair. She wrapped one hand around his shaft—no way could she take him all into her mouth—and stroked. At the same time she cupped her other hand under his ball sac and gently tugged, squeezed and rolled them.
Javier sighed and dropped one hand from her head. It slid under her blouse, under her bra, and he cupped her breast, pinching her nipple.
When she hummed her pleasure around his cock, he thrust up just a little, so she took him as deep as she could while stroking him with a tight fist. He plucked her nipples harder, rolled them between his fingers. Her pussy pulsed with each tug, each tiny bit of pain he imposed, and she sucked for all she was worth.
“I will come if you do not stop,” Javier warned, his voice low and gravely, so sexy.
Heidi sucked harder, dipping her head again and again, stroking him hard, squeezing his balls that had grown tight and puckered. She wanted him to come. She needed to drink him in. All of him.
The fist in her hair tightened, tugged, the pain making her moan in pleasure. And then he shouted, the sound primal, and his warm seed spurted into her mouth. When it hit her tongue, she cried in shocked surprise as an orgasm rocked through her. She swallowed everything he gave her then collapsed next to him, panting, her head resting on his thigh.
Javier gasped in deep breaths, the hand in her hair gentling, his other hand cupping her breast now in a tender grip.
After a few minutes, their breathing slowed. Heidi didn’t understand what had just happened. She’d come from him playing with her boobs? Impossible. She wasn’t that experienced with men. There weren’t many in Leavenworth to choose from, and rarely did any she’d slept with actually give her one orgasm. Javier had given her multiple earlier that day, and now, with only his hand on her breasts, she’d come while giving a blow job—something, up until just a few minutes ago, she’d always found rather distasteful.
“Are you all right, chata?” Javier pushed her hair away from her face when she turned her head to look up at him.
“Yes. You?”
He chuckled. “I am all right.”
She grinned and pushed herself onto her knees. She was going to stand, go wash her face, but instead she threw her arms around his neck and buried her face against his shoulder, hugging him hard, emotions too numerous and confusing to understand battering at her.
Slowly, Javier raised his arms and wrapped them around her in a loving embrace.
It took all of her will not to beg him to stay, holding her, forever. She didn’t know why he had to leave other than to fulfill his promise to Axel. She frowned at what was left of his cast in the trash can. What was his hurry? She was sure they could work it out with her family.
They’d have to understand. The attraction had been fast, even for her, but she’d never been one to sit idly by when there was something she wanted.
Beyond her desire to have babies, she wanted him and no one else. More than she’d ever wanted another person. If he would just agree to stay, he would resolved all her fears of growing old alone or having to leave everything and everyone she knew and cared about for the remote chance of finding a partner, companion and lover. A mate.
He was so strong, yet behind that gruff shell he had a tender, albeit wounded, heart she wanted to know, to hold safe. Closing her eyes and resting her head against his chest, she listened to the steady pulse of his heartbeat.
She longed to share with him all her own secrets, her passions, her life. With him she need not hide who she was or fear discovery. With him she had hope.
Oh, God, she thought as she breathed in his scent. How would she manage the next fifty or sixty years of her life alone, or pretending with a mere human male, after she’d experienced Javier? When he left, her life would be empty.
Surely Axel would see that, understand that Javier could be her one. It wasn’t as if Axel had asked permission when he and Gunnar decided to take Dakota as mate. And he’d eventually accepted Beth as Kelan and Reidar’s mate despite his first confrontational encounter with the opinionated, well-armed scientist.
Falke’s Renegade Page 10