by Tami Lund
“I’m cold,” Olivia complained. “Let’s go back.”
“Okay.” They turned around and began walking toward the house. Olivia was walking along the cliff’s edge, and Cecilia moved to nudge her over, so that she would be between her cousin and the steep drop off. It seemed a smart move, given Olivia’s balance problems these days.
They both heard the sound at the same time. Like the wind, except more intense, stronger, as if the wind were blowing through a tunnel. Both women turned and were greeted with faces full of snow, the result, it would seem, of a giant snowball that had been thrown from the vicinity of the woods.
Olivia took the brunt of the hit. It threw her into Cecilia, who struggled to push her cousin away from the cliff that was much, much too close. Olivia fell forward, onto her stomach, while Cecilia’s arms windmilled as she staggered toward the sheer drop off. She fell onto her backside and began sliding, even as she scrabbled with her gloved hands at the snow, trying to stop herself from falling further, and eventually over the edge.
But she went over the cliff anyway, seemingly in slow motion. She reached out for something, anything, and managed to grab a branch that was sticking out from the side of the rocky wall. She hung from the branch by one hand as she tried to get purchase against the rocks with her other hand and her feet. At least she wasn’t plummeting to her death. Although hanging by one hand, a hundred feet above the ground, wasn’t exactly a whole lot better.
“I gotcha.” Something solid and warm latched onto the hand clinging to the branch. Cecilia looked up and saw Finn’s face looming over the side of the cliff. “Grab my other hand,” he commanded.
It took several tries, but she finally managed to swing her other hand into his grip. “Pull,” he commanded to whomever was behind him, and then she was being lifted, up and over the edge, and finally her feet touched solid ground, and instead of dropping to the snow and kissing the earth beneath her feet, she grabbed Finn and clung to him as if she never intended to let him go.
“Go,” she heard him say. “I’ve got her.” She opened her eyes and saw Tanner scoop his mate into his arms and rush toward the house, with Olivia’s father chasing after him.
“Is she okay?” Cecilia asked.
“She isn’t the one who fell over the side of a cliff,” Finn replied. She still hadn’t released her hold around his waist. She could feel his arms wrapped around her, as tightly as a vise.
“At some point, we’re going to have to get up and walk into the house,” he remarked.
“Please don’t be mad at me anymore,” she said, and much to her own utter embarrassment, she choked on a sob, as tears filled her eyes.
“Oh, come on, Cici, don’t cry,” he complained as he pushed her face into his shoulder and held her as tightly as she was holding him. “I’m not mad, I swear. Just stop crying.”
She swiped at the tears, hiccupped on a sob and managed a watery smile. “If I’d known crying would do the trick, I would have done it three days ago. Why have you been avoiding me?”
“What are you talking about? I’ve been your constant shadow.”
“I don’t want a shadow. I want a—a—” She hiccupped again.
“Do we really have to have this conversation out here? My ass is numb. I’d rather be inside. Plus, I need a stiff drink. I think I nearly choked on my own heart when I saw you go over that cliff.”
She finally loosened her hold enough for him to climb to his feet and help her to hers, but she immediately wrapped her arm around his waist when he started walking toward the house.
“Clingy females aren’t normally my thing,” he told her in an amused voice as he wrapped his arm around her shoulder, and they walked arm in arm until they reached the house.
“Olivia says nothing about me is normally your thing.”
Finn scowled. “What the hell does Olivia know?”
She turned to face him. They stood just inside the door, in the vast entry hall. She could hear voices drifting from the entertainment room to her left, where she presumed Tanner, Olivia, and Uncle Sander had gone.
“Finn…”
His lips crashed down onto hers with such force that she staggered backward. He followed her, cupping her face with his hands as he ravished her mouth. She snaked her arms around his back and met his zeal with equal enthusiasm. It felt so good, so much better than even the other few times they’d kissed. She could tell he had been frightened, that he needed this connection to sooth his own jangled nerves.
She wanted to connect completely.
She tugged at his shirt, slipped her hands underneath, so she could touch the warm skin and taut muscle underneath. She felt him working at the buttons on her coat. She used her magic to make it easier for him, and her coat fell to the floor a moment later.
“Cici,” he murmured against her throat, as his lips trailed a hot, wet path, setting her skin on fire. Magic sizzled in the air. “I need…”
“Me too,” she responded. Her gaze swept the room. If they hurried, they could rush upstairs before anyone realized they’d stepped into the house. They could find the nearest bedchamber and lock themselves inside. Hopefully, the others would be so distracted by Olivia’s fall that they wouldn’t be concerned for Cecilia and Finn’s absence.
“Where are Cici and Finn?” It was Olivia’s voice, drifting out into the hall and squelching Cecilia’s plan. She reluctantly stepped out of Finn’s embrace and bent to sweep her coat off the floor. When she straightened again, she saw that Finn’s eyes were glowing, and he was looking at her as if he had every intention of dragging her upstairs, instead of stepping into the entertainment room to let everyone know that they’d returned safely to the house.
“We cannot cause Olivia to worry unnecessarily,” Cecilia pointed out, every bit as disappointed as he looked.
Without a word, he dropped his gaze and preceded her into the room.
Olivia lay on the couch, arguing with Tanner over her condition. Cecilia walked over and dropped onto the cushion near her feet.
“That snowball wasn’t an accident,” Olivia blurted.
The tension in the room was as thick as smoke, and it ratcheted up about a thousand notches at Olivia’s proclamation. “Despite what happened with Samuel, I believe I could use a stiff drink,” she muttered as she leaned back against the couch cushions and closed her eyes.
“I’ll refrain from drugging it,” Finn said drily.
“Tanner, I’m fine,” Olivia complained as she pushed him away when he tried to flatten his hand on her stomach. Tanner shared Olivia’s magic, so he was able to summon the healing magic to determine if the pup growing in her belly had been affected by her fall.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he stated. “At least until Alexa arrives and gives us a professional opinion. Where the hell is she?”
“My father cannot shift into a bird and fly to go get her,” Olivia pointed out. “So he has to do it the old-fashioned way, and it takes a few minutes to walk down those steps in the face of the cliff.”
Finn returned with three glasses of amber liquid and a bottle of water. He handed the water to Olivia, while Tanner snatched one of glasses and drained the contents. His face slowly shifted from starkly white to having some color.
“Drink,” Finn ordered as he shoved a glass at Cecilia. She accepted it and drank. “Good,” he said with an approving nod. “Now finish it. You’ll feel better when you do.”
“I thought you weren’t planning to get me drunk and take advantage of me?” she shot back, annoyed by his high-handed demands.
“I said I wasn’t going to drug you,” he retorted. “Speaking of,” he said, looking at Tanner. “Even though your mate took the brunt of the hit, I still maintain that Cecilia is the target.”
“What?” Cecilia and Olivia both said at the same time.
“Yes,” Tanner confirmed. “It looks as though you’ve made an enemy, Cecilia. Someone seems determined to hurt you.”
Cecilia lifted the glass and dran
k deeply.
Suddenly, Finn and Tanner both sharply turned their heads toward the doorway leading to the entry hall. They exchanged a look, and then Finn strode from the room. “What in the—” Before she could complete the sentence, Finn was back, with Uncle Sander, Dane, and Lisa in tow.
“I thought I told you to get Alexa,” Tanner snapped at the king.
“I passed Dane along the way,” the king explained, sounding winded. “When I told him what happened, he naturally insisted upon examining Olivia himself.”
Dane was already kneeling next to the couch, his palms pressed to Olivia’s abdomen, his eyes closed. Magic flared around his hands.
“Alexa is a better healer,” Tanner said.
“Dane delivered my pup,” Lisa snapped. “Under duress, I might add.”
“And he’d never delivered a shifter pup before,” Cecilia added. Finn glared at her. She glared right back.
“Why is she here?” Olivia asked, indicating Lisa.
“I’m training her to be my assistant,” Dane replied as Lisa smirked at Olivia. There was clearly no love lost between the two women.
Dane pulled his hands away after a few moments. “The pup is fine,” he reported. “The mother could use a relaxer, though. Your heart rate is too high right now. What happened?” He placed his hands on her stomach again and sent his signature soothing magic through her system. Olivia sagged back against the couch with a dreamy look on her face.
“Thanks,” she said in a breathy voice.
“That isn’t going to hurt the pup, is it?” Tanner demanded.
“No. Ask Lisa. I gave her a much stronger dose when she was whelping little Freddy, and he’s the healthiest pup I’ve ever seen.”
While Dane appeared completely unfazed by the fact that Lisa named her infant son after her late mate, both Tanner and Finn visibly flinched at the mention of Freddy’s name. The memories, to them, were still too fresh and too stark and much, much too dark.
“Tell me what happened,” Dane demanded again.
“She almost fell over the cliff,” Sander reported from where he stood near the window, wringing his hands. “If Cecilia hadn’t pushed her away, they both would have gone over. Thank you, gentlemen, for saving my niece.” He nodded at Tanner and Finn in turn.
“We didn’t have a choice,” Finn said gruffly, as he glared at Cecilia, as if she’d done something wrong. She frowned back at him.
“Stop glaring at me. I didn’t throw that stupid oversized snowball.”
“No, but I think we can narrow down the list of suspects now,” Finn replied.
“What in the world are you all talking about?” Dane demanded indignantly.
“I think they’re trying to say that someone purposely attacked Olivia and Cecilia,” Lisa guessed as she walked over to the bar and helped herself to a drink.
“Aren’t you still nursing your pup?” Tanner asked as he glared at the dark-haired female shifter, who very deliberately raised the glass to her lips and took a hearty swallow.
“I just finished his last feeding about twenty minutes ago, so I’m good to have at least one drink,” she explained, submitting, after a moment, under Tanner’s narrowed, dangerous gaze. “And the Fates know I could use one right now. Shifters don’t do shit like this. We aren’t sneaky. If we want to kill you, we come right out and tell you.”
“What?” Dane gasped while his eyes bugged nearly out of his head.
Lisa shrugged.
Dane swiveled to look at Tanner. “Someone is trying to hurt Olivia and Cecilia?” He sounded as though he could not possibly believe something so outrageous.
“Kill,” Lisa said.
“Cecilia,” Finn added.
Lisa threw back the last of her shot of whiskey. “Not only that, but it’s one of your own.”
Finn and Tanner both studied Dane with narrow-eyed gazes. Dane lifted his hands in surrender. “It wasn’t me,” he said immediately. “I’ve been with her all day.” He pointed at Lisa, who had the good grace to blush.
“It’s impossible,” Sander said with a shake of his head.
“Shifters can’t create monstrous snowballs and then send them flying through the air at high rates of speed,” Finn pointed out.
“Well, we could,” Tanner qualified. “But it certainly wouldn’t have been able to fly that far. That snowball was magically thrown. Which means a Lightbearer threw it.”
Chapter 14
The list of suspects, it turned out, was all but nonexistent. Cecilia had never offended someone within her own community to the point that they would attempt to kill her, at least not that she was aware.
“What about that guy that you shoved glue up his nose when you were kids?” Finn asked. He was grasping at straws, he knew, but he needed answers. He kept replaying the scene over and over in his head, until he shoved himself off the couch and resorted to pacing as a way to try to tamp down the urgent burning desire to hurt someone, anyone. Specifically whoever the hell was responsible for very nearly killing Cecilia.
What if he, Tanner, and Sander hadn’t been standing near the window when it happened? What if Tanner didn’t have that strange connection with his mate, which caused him to look up at the precise moment the giant snowball hit the two women? What if Cecilia hadn’t caught that branch as she slid over the side of that cliff? What if he hadn’t been able to run fast enough, if Tanner hadn’t had the foresight to grab his legs when he dropped to the ground and nearly slid over the cliff himself?
What if? What if? What if? Fates, he was going to strangle on the damn what-ifs. Impatiently, he strode over to the bar and poured himself another drink. He’d lost count by now of the amount of whiskey he’d ingested, but it wasn’t enough. He could still feel the way his heart felt like it was about to burst as he watched Cecilia shove her pregnant cousin to safety, thus propelling herself over the edge of that damn cliff.
As he lifted the glass to his lips, his gaze sought her out in the currently far too crowded room. He felt a jolt of something—magic, maybe?—when he discovered she was looking at him too. There was something in her eyes, something he recognized, because he felt it too.
He needed to couple with her. It was no longer simply a want. If it ever was. From the very first time he’d ever touched her, there had been a connection, a strange sexual attraction that Finn had been working to convince himself was just some fucked-up anomaly, and if he ignored it, sooner or later, it would simply go away.
He now knew better. It was never going away, at least not until they actually did something about it. After what happened out there on that cliff, he knew the only way he was going to get a grip on the emotions flying around in his head, bouncing against one another and giving him a damn headache, was if he coupled with her.
He had tried to stay away. For three days he’d rebuffed her attempts to talk to him. He even told Tanner to find someone else to watch over her, even though he knew damn well he wouldn’t entrust her care to anyone else. But he thought if he stayed away, maybe he could separate himself from the emotional connection that had somehow developed between them. At least, the one-sided emotional connection he felt on his end.
What kind of dumbass was he, anyway? He’d managed to fall for a Lightbearer—that part was bad enough. But then it had to be her. How many times had she made it clear that she wasn’t interested in mating, wasn’t the maternal type? He wasn’t an idiot, he could see the signs. She might want him on a purely physical level, but that was it. The emotional bullshit was all his own.
He wanted to couple with her in the most intimate of ways. He wanted to take her as a shifter, to claim her, to mate with her, to not give her a damn choice in the matter.
Of course, he wouldn’t do that, because he wasn’t that selfish of a shifter, but he sure as hell wanted to take advantage of the blatant sexual desire he could see in her eyes at the moment.
Abruptly, she stood and hurried toward the door. He heard her mutter something about needing fresh air. If she t
hought for even half a second that she was leaving this house without him firmly attached to her side—well, she was a bigger fool than he was.
He slammed his glass onto the bar and chased after her. The other occupants of the room didn’t even notice. They were too busy deciphering the endless list of Lightbearers who might possibly want to kill Cecilia—and rejecting each one. As a rule, Lightbearers didn’t have it in them to be cold-blooded killers, and Cecilia was by no means an offensive person.
She stood in the middle of the entry when he pulled the parlor door closed behind him. “I hope to hell you don’t think—” He didn’t even finish the sentence, due to the fact that a petite, blonde-headed Lightbearer had thrown herself into his arms and was urgently kissing his face.
He slipped one arm around her waist and cupped her neck with the other, exerting just enough pressure to guide her to lips up to meet his. The urgency didn’t slow as she slanted her mouth over his, thrust her tongue into his mouth, demanded his tongue come out and play.
How the hell had he ever imagined he didn’t like dominant women?
“Find a room,” he commanded as he twisted his hand in her hair and pulled her head back so she was forced to look at him. “I don’t know this house as well as you do.”
“O-okay,” she said shakily. He would think she was frightened if he couldn’t smell the scent of her arousal. She turned and stumbled toward the nearest door.
“A closet?” he said with amusement.
“S-sorry,” she said, and she started to close the door.
“No,” he said, and he grabbed the door and pushed her inside. “I can’t wait any longer.” He pulled the door closed and then tugged on the cord attached to the bare lightbulb hanging above their heads.