“Fine,” Cillian and Sinead said in unison, turning to follow him.
“Silly twats,” Brigg muttered under his breath as he spun around and headed for his car.
The ride was tense and quiet. Sinead sat in the back seat with her arms crossed, all too aware that she was brooding like a child who’d had her toys confiscated. She didn’t want to look at either man, didn’t want to remind herself of how attached she’d grown to them. Didn’t want to acknowledge how deeply the emotions ran in her bloodstream. Because to admit it would be to admit that she was already exactly what she’d sworn she wouldn’t become. She was theirs.
Was it really the worst thing in the world to let her heart open up? To admit that her Lioness recognized something in her two companions that she’d wanted all her life? She’d finally found someone to love—two people to love, actually, which only served to make things all the more awkward—but here she was, fighting the feelings at every turn.
And it seemed that she wasn’t the only one.
“I just remembered—I need to go to my condo,” Cillian blurted out as Brigg was on the verge of driving out of the downtown. “I have to…pick up a few things. I can just take the Tube and come to your place in the morning, Brigg.”
Sinead uncrossed her arms and stared ahead at the rear-view mirror, trying to catch the expression in Cillian’s eyes. Did this really mean he wouldn’t be at the house tonight? She wouldn’t get to see him, to touch him again, even talk, as they had the previous night?
No, of course she wouldn’t. She didn’t deserve to; she’d been horrid to him. Pushed him away like he was repulsive to her, when the truth was that she wanted to pull him in forever. To feel those massive arms of his around her narrow frame. To give in to fate at last.
But she was too fucking stubborn, wasn’t she? Too determined to confront the world on her own terms, determined to keep a safe distance from any man. So it was probably for the best to lose him for a little. His absence would give her space. Maybe he was doing this on purpose, just to prove a point. Maybe he really wasn’t there to cage her; he simply wanted her. Anything was possible.
Fuck. It was all so damned confusing.
“You really want to go home, Cill?” asked Brigg, his voice stern like he’d become the patriarch of their strange, dysfunctional little family. “I rather thought you’d stay with us again tonight.”
“I don’t see why you need me at your place just now. It’s not like Sinead will run.” Cillian turned to look at her. “Will you?” he asked.
She shook her head, her expression surly.
“See? She’ll be fine,” he said coldly.
“Fine, go,” said Brigg. “But I’m setting up a meeting tomorrow morning at the house, and I want you there. We need to inform Roth and Lumen of our findings. I’m going to have to report to the task force as well and tell them what our little Lioness here has done for us.”
“I haven’t done anything,” protested Sinead.
“Precisely,” Brigg replied, “but they don’t need to know that.” He pulled over when they’d reached the closest corner. “Marylebone Station’s not far,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow at the meeting.”
“Yeah,” said Cillian, his tone strained. “See you then.”
He didn’t turn to look at Sinead, didn’t acknowledge her at all. He was definitely punishing her, and it was working.
It hurt.
When he’d slammed the door shut she watched him walk away, those powerful legs of his encased in dark denim, his body wrapped in a grey wool coat that fit him perfectly, accentuating the triangular shape of his upper half as he jammed his hands into his pockets.
Another craving to see his Wolf assaulted her. He must be sleek and powerful, not to mention beautiful. Brigg’s, too. Something told her they were both very special. Yes. The more she thought about it, the more she wanted to get to know their déors. Somehow it seemed like a way to let them into her world, to pull herself into theirs. To build trust between the three of them.
“Would you like to get into the front?” Brigg asked her, his eyes locking on hers in the mirror.
“I’m good back here,” she said. “Thanks.”
“All right then.” He hit the gas, and the car pulled away from the curb.
For ten minutes or so they remained silent, the same ugly tension building between them that had permeated the air back in the alley.
“What happened back there?” Brigg finally asked. “Between you two?”
Sinead bit her lower lip. “We had a momentary disagreement,” she replied. “A clash, I suppose you’d call it. But it wasn’t all bad. Just so you know, Cillian took off my brace. I suppose we’ll need a new one, for show. In case we see anyone from the task force.”
“I’m not too concerned,” said Brigg. “You still have a tracking chip, after all. The brace was just for show, as you say.”
“Right,” Sinead replied, her fingers moving to the small bump on her neck where the chip had been injected under her skin. “I’d nearly forgotten about the tracking.”
She went quiet for a minute again before adding, “Something else happened. It was a bit strange, I suppose—a Grizzly shifter actually helped us out in Trafalgar Square.”
“Ah,” said Brigg, who sounded oddly unsurprised. Strange reaction, that. After a moment of silence he spoke again. “You know I wasn’t asking you about Grizzlies. Or your brace, for that matter. I want to know what went on between you and Cillian, though the more you avoid telling me, the more abundantly clear it becomes.”
So that was it. He was jealous; he had to be. But of course. He’d told her he found her attractive. Well, not in so many words, but she knew it all the same. It had to bother him to have deduced that she’d kissed Cillian passionately in the alley. She’d told him she wanted him, for shite’s sake. It was no wonder Brigg seemed so out of focus.
“Does it bother you?” she asked.
“Does what bother me?”
“That he and I had a moment.”
“Not in the least,” he said. Weirdly enough, he sounded like he meant it. Perhaps he really wasn’t interested in her. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise; the man could be very cold and distant, despite his kindness. He’d never tried to touch her, never done anything more than try to look out for her like any friend would have done. She’d always chalked it up to gentlemanly behaviour, but now she was beginning to think it was something closer to indifference.
“Ah,” she replied. “I see.”
Brigg’s eyes flashed bright in the rear-view mirror, laugh lines crinkling at their corners. “The thing is, I’m not so sure you do see. Not at all.”
“You’re laughing at me,” Sinead said, clamping her teeth shut. She wasn’t in the mood to be mocked.
“No, I’m really not. I just find it amusing that you seem to think that because I’m not jealous of Cillian, I must not be sexually attracted to you, either.”
“What? I never said anything about you being sexually attracted!” she protested, annoyed that he was so bloody adept at reading her.
“You didn’t need to. You know, you have a highly readable face. You’d make an absolutely terrible secret agent. Or poker player, for that matter.”
“Yeah? Well, you’re being arrogant,” she said, sulking. He was right, of course, about everything. She did want him to find her as attractive as Cillian did. It wasn’t that she wanted to pit the men against one another in some sort of primitive fight over her; it was more that she was suffering guilt for wanting them both equally. The two were so different from one another, but both so deliciously desirable. It went completely against her nature, but her stupid Lioness had set her sights on both men, knowing perfectly well that she shouldn’t want either of them. “This is so fucked up,” she said. “This whole thing is.”
“It’s not as fucked up as you might think,” said Brigg. His voice had taken on the gentle timbre that she’d come to know so well. She dared to look towards the mirr
or only to find that his blue eyes were narrowed, focused on hers again. “You know, don’t you?” he said, pulling his gaze back to the road. “You know about the Dire Wolves?”
“What do you mean?” She leaned forward, eager to hear what he had to say. Eager to learn that she wasn’t utterly undesirable, or, for that matter, a total devil woman for being so aroused by two men.
“In the old times, the Dire Wolf shifters bonded in threes,” he said. “Two men, one woman. Sometimes the female was a shifter, sometimes human. They called it the Ritual. It’s the moment when three bodies and souls come together in a sort of mind-blowing physical and emotional melding. They say it’s the most incredible sensation that any being can experience.”
Sinead sat back, trying not to let him hear the gasp that drew itself up her throat. “No, I wasn’t aware of that,” she said. “It sounds rather saucy, to say the least.”
“I suppose it is.” Brigg looked at her in the mirror once again as he pulled to a stop at a red light. “But it’s natural, too. Just as it’s natural that we both want you, Lioness. It’s natural that we both want to be inside you at once. It’s natural that Cillian was hurt today, because his desire for you is so strong that it’s driving him quite mad. He’s no more used to the intensity of this attraction than you or I. It’s a little overwhelming.”
This time the breath caught hard in Sinead’s throat. He was being so brutally honest, so unrelentingly clear in his desire. He seemed to have none of the fear that haunted her, none of the insecurities that ate away at her mind and warned her off of love. He simply had instincts, wants, needs.
“What would you two do if you had me?” she asked. “If I gave myself to you?”
“What do you imagine we’d do?” he asked.
“I can’t begin to think…” Wait—yes I can.
“No?” Brigg smiled again. “You mean to say that you can’t begin to imagine my tongue on your nipple? Cillian’s lips on your most sensitive places? You can’t fathom our cocks buried deep inside you?”
“Holy fuck,” she breathed, pressing a palm to her chest to try and calm her heart.
“That’s one way of putting it, yes,” he said, chuckling. “A holy fuck.”
“I don’t understand you, Brigg. You don’t seem self-conscious at all when you say those things to me.”
“Why, should I be?”
“You’re not afraid that I’ll reject you, laugh at you?”
He shrugged. “I’m well aware that you might not find me quite as appealing as I find you. But I’m not going to lie about my attraction to you out of fear.” His eyes met hers again for the briefest moment. “I want you to know what you do to me, Lioness. You should know that I want you. It doesn’t mean that I think myself entitled to you. It doesn’t mean I’ll even try anything. It only means that I’ve let you know my desire. The cards are in your hand, the power yours. I have no control now, because I’ve relinquished it to you.”
“So why haven’t you said anything before now? Done anything? In the bathroom yesterday, you could have…I mean, I was giving you signals, but you didn’t touch me.”
“That’s because I couldn’t, and you know it perfectly well,” he retorted. “You made it all too clear that you wanted me to leave you alone.”
He was right; she’d pushed him away, just as she’d done to Cillian in the alley. Even if she didn’t always do it physically, she always pushed men away, always fled from intimacy.
But she’d never met men like these two.
She clammed up, clamping her jaw shut to keep herself from replying too impulsively. What could she say, anyhow, other than to admit that she was a cruel tease, or at the very least a difficult, complicated mess?
“I don’t really want to be left alone,” she said softly, surprising herself with her own honesty. She’d never said those words to anyone in all her years. “I just don’t want to be sealed up in someone else’s idea of life. I don’t want shackles or locks or demands. I don’t want to be ruled by my mate. Or mates.”
“You think we’re looking to rule you? To dominate you?” Brigg let out a cynical chuckle. “You don’t seem to realize the power you wield over us both, my Lioness. You don’t see that we’re the ones who are ensnared, not you. You have all the choice here; we’re nothing more than your humble servants, whether you grasp that truth or not. So make your life. Choose it. Choose your fate. I’m not going to choose it for you, regardless of how hard you might try to make me. I would never imprison a mate in my world, any more than I would wish to be imprisoned in hers. But then again, I see the Ritual as an act of freedom, not one of bondage.”
“I don’t understand how,” she said. “How can it be freeing to create a bond that tight?”
Brigg smiled. “Imagine feeling more free than you’ve ever felt in your life. Imagine your Lioness empowered,” he said. “Imagine her with all her potential strength, all the time. Imagine that your human half could finally learn to trust and to love. That you could open yourself up and forget every fear you ever had, because your mind has finally come to a fundamental understanding about fate and the universe. You would finally come to see that the world is yours, and that you are no slave to its demands.”
“I…can’t imagine that. Not quite,” she said. She supposed she’d lived too long in a prison of her own making. Too long in a world where she felt constrained by the wishes of everyone but herself.
“Well one day, perhaps you will understand. If I could wish for one thing in this world, it’s that you, Sinead, find your freedom.”
She pressed her head back and wrapped her arms around her body, imagining the sensation of Brigg’s lips on her skin. Longing for the touch of the man who was so willing to speak his mind, but had seemed so reluctant to come near her.
A man who sometimes seemed as broken as she was.
Chapter 17
Cillian stormed towards Marylebone Station, his flesh searing from the cocktail of emotions that had been stirring inside him since the moment his lips had met Sinead’s.
He hadn’t lied about a need to go by his flat; he had every intention of heading back to his condo to blow off some steam, to sit and stew, to try and forget the Lioness for a few minutes. A hot shower, or a cold one for that matter, might do him a world of good. He needed her to stop living rent-free inside his mind, even for a few minutes.
Last night, he’d listened to her story. With every word from her exquisite lips, he’d felt closer to her, more drawn to her. He’d thought—stupidly, it turned out—that she was beginning to make sense at last. When they’d kissed, the world had felt like an explosion of beautiful light, heating him from the inside, breaking him and strengthening him at once. In that moment she’d become his world, and he’d felt, for the first time, like he could begin to believe that Brigg had been right. Perhaps there was a chance that the two men had found their One.
But then, thanks to a few poorly chosen words out of his mouth, she’d done a one-eighty. Shifted gears and turned on him. He’d gone from being her would-be lover to her enemy in a matter of seconds. All he wanted now was to push her from his mind, to forget about her until he could regain his absent sanity. Surely he had better things to think about than a woman who was more frustrating to unravel than a giant ball of string tangled into a thousand knots.
But even as he made his way through the doors of Marylebone Station, a thought entered his mind that yanked him violently away from the woman he’d kissed so passionately. A memory of the earlier incident, the one in Trafalgar Square, involving another shifter.
A Grizzly had helped them. A fucking Grizzly, of all things. Why would one of them ever offer aid to a Dire Wolf shifter? They were sworn enemies. The Grizzlies had declared war on the Trekilling Pack, and for one of their own to fight for the Wolves’ side was…odd, to say the very least.
Perhaps he was motivated mostly by the desire to keep his mind off his would-be lover, but a sudden urge overcame Cillian to search out the man who’d t
hrown himself into the fray and risked his life to give cover to a couple of strangers. Whoever he was, he could be a very useful ally to the Guild. To all of London, for that matter.
Instead of heading home, he grabbed the Tube back down to Oxford Circus. When the train had pulled into the station, he leapt out and sprang up the stairs to Regent Street and turned left. After walking a few blocks, he stopped next to a shop window, looked both ways, and when he was confident that no one was paying attention to him, he stepped through a thick brick wall. A trick known only to those who could use the Wild Magic, the name given to the ancient spells of Dire Wolves, Dragons, and a few others.
Moments later, he was standing in the middle of the Underground Club, the secret gathering place of London’s shifters. It was a favourite hangout for the city’s Grizzly shifters, who enjoyed drinking among their own kind without drawing too many looks from curious Londoners. The Grizzlies, for the most part, were relegated to a secret back entrance. They lacked the magical edge of their counterparts, but they didn’t seem to care much, provided they had access to a warm, dark den and plenty of beer.
The place was all but empty, but music still throbbed through its stone floor and arched ceiling. Cillian glanced around as he strode towards one of the club’s many bar areas towards the white-haired young man who was busying himself arranging scotch bottles on a shelf.
“Silver,” Cillian called out above the music, “how are you?”
The young man grimaced as he turned around and saw the other shifter. “I’ve been better.” He glanced around, drawing Cillian’s gaze to the multitude of empty tables and chairs. “They’re afraid to come here anymore,” he said. “Everyone’s afraid.”
Cillian nodded. “They know they might be followed,” he said. “They know about the task force.”
“Yeah. Between that and the bears, the place has been a ghost town for the last few days.”
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