by Moira Rogers
“They’re evacuating Red Rock, pretty much. Taking the refugees and those who can’t fight to another sanctuary town.”
It was a good move, one that would protect the weakest among them and afford them more time, but it wasn’t a solution. “Gavin and Sam have to go, obviously, and Joe and Brynn.”
Adam followed her back toward the kitchen. “I don’t think Joe is happy about not being in the fight, but they need someone strong with them in case things go bad.”
And Brynn was still far too shaky for a fight of this magnitude. “We’ll all do what we have to do, I guess.” She gestured toward the kitchen table. “Sit. I made lasagna. Well, I didn’t make it. I took it out of the freezer. People feed me all the time so I don’t cook for myself much, but you’re probably used to that. Or used to be used to it. The country-doctor thing, I mean.”
He looked like he was trying not to smile as he dropped into a chair. “Don’t have much need for a doctor. I’m pretty hardy. Did get some help though when I accidentally cut off one of my fingers five years back.”
“Let me guess. You’d taped it back on and hoped that would work.”
“No, I know how to use a needle.” His smile widened. “However, the angle was awkward and the results…a bit crooked.”
Cindy laughed and pulled two bottles from the cupboard, one merlot and one cabernet, and held them out for his perusal. “Good news is, you got it done. The bad news is, if that healed at all, then yeah. You may as well have just taped it on.”
“So the pack doctor told me. After the fact.” He was running his hand along the edge of her table again, the gesture almost absent-minded. “Next time I slice off part of my hand, I’ll do my best to keep that in mind.”
Cindy watched him as he kept touching the table, almost as if testing its grain. “Dylan said you make furniture.”
“Mmm. Or it’s what I do these days, anyway.” He rapped his knuckles against the top of the table. “Not bad quality.”
“It came with the house.” Cindy opened the merlot and poured two glasses. “What did you do when you were human?”
“Pretty much the same thing I do now. Hide in the woods with an ax. I remember it being a lot less comfortable in the lumber camp, though.”
“Of course.” Only he could take the phrase “vampire lumberjack” from humor to straight-faced reality. “How did you transition from a logging camp to fangs?”
“How do all stories start?” The corner of his mouth twisted up in wry amusement. “A woman. And you could find a few dozen men my age who would give you the same answer to the same damn question. Anna-Mae was partial to loggers.”
“Was she looking for the perfect companion or just inordinately sloppy?”
“If she had motivation beyond her own amusement, she never shared it with me. She single-handedly made Bangor the epicenter for vampire activity for most of the nineteenth century. By the time I made my first trip to the brothels in the Devil’s Half Acre I should have known better, but I was young and not very bright.”
It seemed so ordinary, a horny young man’s quest for sexual satisfaction, and yet it had changed the entire course of his life. “So she…turned you? What do you call it?”
“Shitty luck?”
“I mean the process,” she told him gently. “How does it work? It’s got to be more involved than drinking, or else I owe you one hell of a beating now.”
“Magic.” He spread his fingers out on the table and stared at his hand, his gaze slightly unfocused. “Intent. Every vampire develops their own ritual, if they do it enough for it to matter. Or they adopt the ritual of the one who made them, because it’s what they know. We’re no different than wolves, really. Magic taking root where it doesn’t quite belong and never really fitting right. Only difference is the kind of magic. Life and death.”
“Magic isn’t destiny.” She’d seen too many wolves deal in death, and with the kind of swift, efficient brutality she doubted Adam even had in him.
“You’re being too literal. Everything lives and everything dies. The difference is the magic itself, not the people who use it.”
Maybe the difference mattered to him, or to others. “The magic doesn’t exist in a void. It’s still channeled through people, good and bad. That’s what I see.”
Adam reached out his hand. “Come here.”
“The lasagna’s almost ready.” She went anyway and slid her hand against his, just to feel the spark of awareness that passed between them.
“The lasagna will be all right.” He lifted her fingers and brushed a feather-soft kiss against her knuckles. “Don’t misunderstand me, Cindy. I don’t think death magic is all bad any more than I think life magic is all good. I’m too old to be that idealistic.”
Suddenly, she realized why she’d been harping on the subject. “I don’t want you to think that’s how I look at you. Death.”
“I should have known better than to try to convince a doctor that death is not the enemy.” He kissed her hand again, then released it. “But I’m glad, honey. Glad you don’t think I’m the enemy.”
“Pain.” She slid one of the wine glasses to him. “Pain is the enemy, not death.”
“Pain,” he echoed. “That is something we can agree on.”
Cindy thought they probably agreed on a lot of things, which made their attraction even more dangerous. “Time to eat.”
Surely they could enjoy dinner before they had to talk of serious matters, and certainly before she had to apologize again.
Eating dinner with her was a mistake.
Cindy was the sort of woman he’d always been stupid about. Smart women. Tough women who didn’t need or even want his protection. They reminded him of Joan, the stubborn, fool-headed young alpha who’d led the wolves with him for such a brief time. But Joan had been a lady, a well-born society debutante who’d scolded him for his coarse language and rough manners. That the man she’d eventually fallen in love with had been coarser and rougher than Adam didn’t matter—he’d never been partial to prissy ladies and no amount of power could have sparked attraction between them even if she’d been willing.
The woman sipping wine on the other side of the worn wooden table was anything but prissy. She was barefoot now, in jeans that hugged slender but strong legs and a shirt with a neckline low enough to make any man’s mouth water. She wore no impractical shoes with heels high enough to break an ankle or expensive fabrics that cost a fortune. Her clothes were comfortable and well worn, and it made him harder than any satin or stiletto. She was real.
And Christ, he wanted her.
She wanted him too. Her gaze lingered on his mouth and his hands, and she absently rubbed her thumb against the bowl of her wine glass.
“Cindy.” Her name rumbled out of him, sounding like a caress. An invitation. Which it is.
She smiled. “Adam.”
The sound of her lips around his name was almost as hot as the thought of her lips around his cock, an image he hadn’t been able to banish since she’d tried to get on her knees for him. “We going to get dumb over each other now?”
“This?” She glanced at the table and divided the last of the wine between their glasses. “This isn’t dumb. It’s just dinner.”
“Oh, dinner is innocent. I bet what we’re going to do before the end of the night isn’t.”
“Mmm.” She pushed her plate back and rose. “Come to the living room and bring your wine. We’re going to talk.” Her hip brushed his shoulder as she walked past him.
He followed, but slowly. Slow enough to admire the curve of her waist and way her jeans clung to her ass. “And what should we talk about?”
She curled up on the sofa and tucked her feet under her. “I need to apologize for not letting you talk when you wanted to. It was rude and stupid.”
It had been self-defense, and he was old enough to recognize it. “No law says you have to tell me your darkest secrets or listen to mine.”
“No, but avoiding it hasn’t been wor
king so well for us.”
He opened his mouth to protest again, but something about her stopped him. Her posture, or the look in her eyes—he wasn’t sure what it was, but instinct told him to proceed carefully. “I suppose it hasn’t.”
Cindy smoothed her hair behind her ear and turned her face toward the crackling fire. “Tell me what happened.”
It was easier this time. Maybe because he’d already told the story to Sasha and Dylan, so the edges weren’t so raw, or maybe because Cindy didn’t have the sharp eagerness of a historian confronted with a primary source.
Because it was easier, he found himself telling her more. About how it was Astrid who came to him first, and about Astrid’s girlfriend, Maggie, a tired, terrified woman in danger of having her will beaten out of her. He even told her about Joan and the surprising strength she’d hidden so carefully beneath her polished society veneer, and for the first time the thought of his two accomplices brought a flicker of fondness instead of only pain and loss.
He told her everything about how it started, but nothing about how it had ended. And because he wasn’t quite ready to, he sidestepped the matter entirely. “Joan’s still alive, I think. She married a friend of Gavin’s and they took over some tiny little island together. Turned it into the first sanctuary town.”
“Breckenridge Island,” Cindy murmured. “Gavin talks about it sometimes.”
Which meant Joan had kept in contact with Gavin—or Seamus had. It had been easier for Seamus and Gavin, whose involvement in the tragedy had been as heroes come to save the day. In the aftermath, Adam and Joan had fought to meet each other’s eyes, both struggling under the weight of their losses. So many lives broken, and four lost forever, including Astrid, who had died to keep Maggie safe.
Joan had retreated to her island with a new lover to shelter her in her grief, and Adam had returned to the only place he felt comfortable—the quiet expanse of the Great North Woods.
“I’m sorry.” Cindy touched his hand, her eyes bright, reflecting his own sadness. “For what happened, and because you still hurt.”
“It was a long time ago.” He covered her hand with his own, smoothing his fingertips along her skin just to enjoy her soft warmth. “But yes. I’m not so full of pride that I can’t admit it hurts sometimes.”
She studied him in silence for a few moments. “Who told you what happened to me? Gavin?”
“Gavin.” Her expression was hard to read, so he stroked her hand again. “He didn’t tell me much, and I wouldn’t have pried. People deserve privacy in their pasts.”
“Wouldn’t have done any good. He doesn’t know everything.” She pulled her hand from his and sat back against the other end of the couch. “When I was twenty-six, an alpha named Preston kidnapped me. He turned me himself. Beat me, caged me, you name it.”
Anger would do her no good at this point, even if her too-careful recitation stirred long-banked rage to life inside him. Only decades of practice kept his voice steady. “He tried to break you. Your spirit.”
“Yeah.” She laughed, the sound high and brittle. “But I didn’t break. I shattered…into about a million pieces. Then Preston put them back together, exactly the way he wanted them.”
He knew he was in trouble when her vulnerable pain hurt so much. He’d never been good at words, not the clever, gentle kind required for diplomacy or comfort. But he could give her truth. “You’re wrong. Maybe he broke your mind, or your resolve, but your spirit is there, Cindy. I’ve felt it.”
She didn’t respond or react, just stared into the fire, tears spiking her lashes. “He died almost three years later. One of his betas killed him and took over. Kendall. By then, Gavin and Sam had heard about me from some of the refugees. They sent Joe and Keith to rescue me.” A shudder wracked her. “I didn’t want to leave. They thought I was scared to, but I couldn’t go. Not until I made Kendall pay, even though he was no worse than Preston.”
Worse than her mind and resolve. The bastard had broken her heart, had turned her own emotions against her. Adam had seen all too closely how enough abuse could inure a person to the pain, until the absence of pain felt like kindness. Few of the rabid alphas he’d met in his day had had the patience for such an endeavor, fewer still the control, but those who did…
He didn’t know what words to offer her, what he could say that might give her some comfort. “And did you? Make him pay, I mean.”
“I killed him. For Preston.” She wiped her cheeks. “Your mind plays tricks on you after a while. You get to this point where you’re so starved, for everything, that simple decency feels like something magical. And—and I—” She broke off with a sob. “It’s stupid. It’s a fucking survival instinct, and I know that. I know it.”
His heart ached for her, and his words weren’t enough. So he whispered her name and opened his arms. She climbed into his lap, buried her face against his shoulder and cried.
It was a level of trust he hadn’t expected from her, and it brought warmth and terror in equal measure. He was bad enough with words, but the responsibility of someone’s emotions, of her heart and protection…
He’d once failed so spectacularly that he’d never again allowed the risk. No one came to him for comfort. The young alphas in Bedagi Creek had come to him for friendship, or out of curiosity. Women from the pack had come to him for the pleasure of his bed, but never anything that extended beyond one afternoon or one night. Never anything important.
Holding Cindy was easy. So was smoothing his fingers through her hair. He concentrated on the feel of soft blonde strands beneath his fingertips and tried to ignore the fear that built as tears soaked his shirt. Almost eighty years had passed, but he might be back where he’d started—unable to be enough.
Eventually, the tears stopped, and she went lax in his arms. Her breathing slowed, evened into the rhythms of sleep.
Frantic, dirty sex on every surface in her house would have been less dangerous than the quiet, trusting way she curled against him. Perhaps he shouldn’t have laughed at Gavin’s prediction that Cindy would break him.
There was only scant comfort in the knowledge that no one had predicted how much he’d like it.
Chapter Five
Cindy woke to the sun peeking through the curtains and a hard male body warm against her back. Adam.
She snuggled deeper into his arms and froze when she realized they were both clothed. Memories of the night before rushed to the forefront—confessions, secrets and her own mortifying tears.
The arm draped over her body tightened, keeping her tucked against Adam’s chest. “Go back to sleep. I hate dawn.”
“For obvious reasons?” She hated the huskiness of her voice, the slightly breathless note.
“The sun won’t kill me, but I don’t like it. Didn’t like it when I was alive, either.” His breath tickled the nape of her neck. “Always wished I could laze about in bed, like I imagined rich people did.”
He probably came from a time when being wealthy meant gentlemanly pursuits that didn’t involve work at all. “No sleeping in for me, either. I would have been solidly middle-class. My father was a doctor.”
“Oh yes?” His low, sexy chuckle elicited a shiver. “My father was a carpenter, but he had a poor head for business. We were lucky to have food to put on the table most nights.”
The conversation somehow managed to be more intimate than the fact that they’d slept together, even innocently and fully clothed. Cindy rolled to her back and tried not to think about how close his face was to hers. “You’re never cold. I thought vampires were supposed to be. More Hollywood bullshit?”
“Are you going to change into a monstrous half-human, half-beast creature and rampage through the streets?”
“Only if I don’t get my coffee.” The retort was automatic and embarrassingly defensive. He always rendered her silly, tongue-tied, and it made her sound like an idiot.
Adam just laughed. “A detail left out of the legends, then.”
Cindy sat
up. “You turn me into a moron.”
“No, I make you blunt and cranky.” He tucked one hand behind his head and grinned at her. “Lucky for me, I find cranky women very appealing.”
“You’re awful chipper for someone who hates mornings.”
“Pretty women ease the pain.”
Was she this annoying, giving flip answers to everything? “I’m sorry I unloaded on you last night.” She smoothed a wrinkle from the quilt. “Thanks for staying, but I’m okay now.”
“Didn’t just stay for you, sweetheart.” His hand slid over hers, fingers curling tight. “You listened to me too.”
Cindy’s chest tightened. She’d found Adam attractive from the moment she’d seen him, but that was vastly different from the tenderness he evoked now. “This is—” She couldn’t even choke out the words. He knew it was crazy, had said as much the night before. We going to get dumb over each other now?
She’d told herself over and over that it was a bad idea. It was a terrible idea, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t change the way she felt.
“You know the worst things there are to know about me,” she whispered. “Don’t you want to go?”
“You don’t know the worst thing there is to know about me.” His fingers tightened around her hand, and his eyes held a haunted look, full of guilt and self-blame. “I let them go. I cut the bonds. They were my people, and they were being hurt, tortured. To wear us down, to take the power and make us weak. I had to choose, and I chose to let them go.”
“What were your other options?”
“To let the magic drain the people with me, the wolves who were still free. I made a choice, but no choice would have been good. And that’s because I set myself so high. I had no business having that sort of power with no thought of how to use it.”
You didn’t have to put yourself in that sort of position to be faced with impossible choices. For the first time, Cindy allowed herself to think of her relationship with Preston like that—simply a way to survive a no-win situation, to stay alive long enough to live.
“There are things I know,” she said slowly. “If I’d kept fighting him, Preston would have killed me. Same thing if I’d pretended to be happy with his…affections. So I know that my mind did what it had to do. What I’m still working on is understanding that I didn’t do the right thing. I did the only thing, and sometimes that’s all there is.”