He’d been putting this off. Had hoped that a few weeks apart would give him some time and he could pretend that he’d healed a little faster with some new tech or something. But that wasn’t going to work if she saw him now. It was too soon. The minute she took in with no injuries, no plaster on his leg and arm, no swollen eye and cheek, she’d know that it wasn’t impossible to heal like that. At best, she’d be inquisitive about how that was possible. At worst….. she’d figure it out. Ask even more questions. One’s that would cause her more problems if he answered.
He’d been dealing with his own demons where the female was concerned. He felt a pull to her that he couldn’t explain. Thought that it was gratitude in the beginning but as the days had gone on, the pull had become stronger. A need to see her, make sure she was okay persisted. The daily updates and her poor health weren’t helping matters. He’d needed word on her so badly he’d made them do this. Spy on her. It wasn’t right he knew that and kept his distance.
There was also an ache in his system he couldn’t shift. He’d put it down to the extremes of what he’d endured but it lingered. He wanted to see her but knew that really wasn’t a good idea. So he’d forced himself to stay away.
But Greyson was right. If she was ill he needed to deal with it now. He couldn’t just send in his people, that would scare the shit out of her and if she refused to see them, it would make things worse. Damn it.
“Send a message. I’ll bring dinner and see her tomorrow so we can talk.”
***
Day 16 and she couldn’t seem to get her ass moving.
Showering had been an effort. She’d nearly not bothered which was unheard of for her and a little disturbing. Dressing was worse, putting her dirty laundry in the basket was a chore. She’d nearly missed a step on the stairs, skipped breakfast again it was too much to do and settled on coffee.
Too tried to work and couldn’t concentrate. In the end, she took some pain killers and went out on the porch, sitting in what was her favourite place. The hammock. She drifted in and out of sleep and couldn’t seem to care. At some point voices reached her lifting her from the recesses.
“Is that her?” A female voice snarled with some edge to it.
“Yes.” Clay. There was a rustle of clothing and feet stopped. “You were told to stay away like everyone else.”
“I’m not going to hurt her,” the female hissed.
“Jo, the Boss was explicit in his orders.”
Will was sure she could hear the sneer in the female’s voice. “I hold a place of position here Clay, take your hands off me.”
“You hold nothing until he says so and as of now, he hasn’t said so. So until he does, you do as your told like everyone else.”
There was some huffing and snarling followed by feet being dragged away. Will blinked and saw Clay watching a beautiful woman huff her way across the lawn. He turned and saw that her eyes were open and plastered a smile on his face.
“Not happy is she?” Will asked.
Clay narrowed his eyes at her. “You look tired and you’ve been asleep for hours.”
“Yeah I am. Think I’m coming down with something.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that.” He told her thumbing in beautiful’s direction.
Will shrugged and closed her eyes. “No matter.” Too tired to be bothered by it. Not her problem.
She slept the day through, and still didn’t feel any better. Whatever was wrong with her was getting worse. She’d have to ask Greyson to take her to a doctor. Finally pulling herself inside feeling hot and woozy, she made strong fresh coffee. Watched some TV for a bit laying on the sofa. The sun went down, she’d not made food today, her stomach not feeling great and she wasn’t hungry anyway. Pushing up from the sofa she padded to the kitchen and remade more coffee and took another pain killer. She didn’t know if it was helping or not but she needed something. There was this itch under her skin she didn’t understand. A feeling that she was missing something hovered in her mind, that something needed resolving but she couldn’t think what that could be.
Slumping in her chair at the table she was unsure if she should call the house and ask for Greyson. He wasn’t her biggest fan. She felt she didn’t belong here and the longer she stayed, the feeling just got worse.
The sound of a car pulling up outside drew her attention and the porch lights came on. Will looked over at seeing the movement. She was so not up to visitors.
She wanted to wave them off but couldn’t find the energy to lift her arm. She was so pathetic it stung.
Greyson got out of the car. Great. Just what she needed. He opened the back door and ….. was that… Ben?
Will strained her eyes. Were they working right? He stood by the car while Greyson got a cooler out the back. He was standing there staring right at her. She was so glad to see him that she couldn’t stop grinning. Then he walked to the steps up to her porch and his face became clearer.
Her mouth dropped open and she frowned. What the hell is going on? His gorgeous unblemished face stood 20ft from her. His eye and cheek back to looking normal, no caste on his arm or leg.
Greyson opened the door and Ben came in behind him.
“Hay, Darcy.” Greyson called out as he walked through the living room to the kitchen behind her. She ignored him. Her sole focus was on Ben.
She drank the sight of him in from across the room as he stood in the living room by the front door clearly not sure of his welcome. It wasn’t often that he was this unsure of anything. Quietly closing the front door, he walked slowly towards her. She took note of everything. Looking him up and down several times. His face, then his arm, then his leg, then back to his face. Confusion crossed her face. She’d known only too well how badly broken they were. Even doc when he saw him that first time wasn’t sure they’d be no scaring, no lasting damage. He thought that was due to what she’d done for him before his system could shut down. Another thing he owed her for. He’d been lucky but that didn’t help him here. She knew he couldn’t possibly be mended in such a short time.
He slowed his pace towards her and picked up that unique scent he’d missed so much that was so uniquely hers.
“That’s….. not possible..” she whispered.
She stared in awe and disbelief looking for an explanation and then her fear hit. He could smell it in the air. Her eyes widened and her back stiffened. He stopped not wanting to scare her more. Greyson put something down on the counter behind her and it was as if she was just remembering him there, she jumped and scuttled away from him.
Bennet held in the pain he was feeling seeing her. It had been a long time since he’d seen a human reaction to something not human. There time together had made him forget that. It had been so natural.
“Greyson, walk to the door.” He told him. Greyson looked up strangely at him, seemed to get something was wrong and slowly walked towards him going towards the door and stopped. He could see her breathing getting faster, her heart rate increasing. She was panicking. Dark circles surrounded her eyes and there was a pinched look in her face.
Even with everything that had gone on around her that day, she didn’t look like this before. The report on her today was correct. She might be seriously ill. He could see the strain he was putting her through. Not one quip left her mouth. That wasn’t Darcy.
She shook her head and moved to a chair further away from him. That wasn’t right. He couldn’t be fixed it had only been a couple of weeks. He’d still carry some of the bruising. His arm and leg would still be in plaster and his face…..
“How’s…. that even possible?” she mumbled. Her mind still working on the problem.
It was practically a mental calculation of healing time vs. the amount of damage going on in her brain. Her mind not computing the visual of now to then. That was real. She’d cleaned up the blood, splintered both the arm and leg and tended his knife wounds.
“This couldn’t be real, it wasn’t normal….. for a human….”
He
r words pulled him from his thoughts as her eyes got larger and larger in her face. They showed the fear she’d been feeling when she’d finally come to the only logical conclusion. Too alien to be human. Horror and fear filled her face. Her flight instincts were right for something so different to her, but it didn’t stop him wanting to reach for her.
She instinctively pulled away from him. Why was she scared? It was Ben.
She knew him, saved him. She breathed him in as he reached out to touch her shoulder to reassure her, but she shied away.
She couldn’t have him touching her. She craved it too much. There were too many wrong things going on that she didn’t understand.
His smell reached her senses and an electrical pulse shocked her. Ben stepped forward seeing it.
“No,” she mumbled turning from him.
She looked at him, tears in her eyes as his image swam before her. Another bolt rolled through again and she cried out as her body went rigid with the pain.
He threw the chair out of his way and came to her bending down and reaching out to touch her gently, crushing pain hit, rolling through her body. Bending over she cried out, her body starting to shake. He gripped her harder, taking her hand in his.
“Ben, wha…ts happening?”
His own senses were on fire. She was the only one to ever use a shortened version of his name. No one else dared, his parents too formal, to his comrades he was the Boss or Bennet or My Lord.
He liked the sound of it on her lips but felt totally helpless for all his power to help her. He didn’t know what this was and for the first time in a very long time he had no idea what to do.
He brushed her hair from her face. “You know it’s still me right Darcy?”
She looked at his eyes and gave him a strained nod. His relief was palatable.
“I don’t know what this is Darcy. Can you tell me where it hurts?” The sound of his own fear in his voice scared him.
She slipped forward towards him, nearly falling off her chair. Greyson hovered to help. “Stay back.”
Bennet moved to help her and gnarled viciously to his friend. “Don’t touch her.”
Grabbing her, he placed her on his lap. Holding her tightly to him.
“You ok Boss?” Greyson asked in the background.
He ignored Greyson his mind totally on Darcy. She clung to him sweetly. Her skin was hot. Her body shaking. She tried to climb up him, her face nuzzling in his neck. “God… you smell…. so good… Feels better…”
His cock was hard as rock. He was responding to her sexually. Possessive instincts kicked in, his control under threat. He wanted to snarl and snap at Greyson, he didn’t want him anywhere near her.
“Get the doc now.” He ordered. Some rational thought managed to get through the sexual domination he wanted to start. She was ill and he wanted to fuck her. It was messed up. He reigned in his lack of control. It was in tatters. She needed help and although it knifed him to know it, it was help he couldn’t give her.
He didn’t know how.
Greyson got on his phone. Bennet heard him talking and giving directions. “She’s burning up. Her skins on fire,” he told him. She was way too hot for a human. “Get me some ice.”
Two ice packs appeared, he put one in her lap and one at the back of her neck.
“Try to focus Darcy is that better?” he asked nearly moaning out loud as she rubbed her clit against his cock. It helped to cool his arder no end. She nodded her moist eyes unfocused. “Can you tell me where it hurts?” he asked gently like he was speaking with a child. He petted her hair unable to stop touching her. Encouraging her closeness.
“Eve…rywhere,” she cried out biting her lip drawing blood. The scent filtered into his brain. Her blood saturated the air between them. He wanted that on his tongue and down his throat. He moved instinctively towards her.
“Bennet!” Greyson shouted at him. He stopped taking a breath giving him a nod of thanks. He’d been lost to for a moment.
“I’m…. okay.”
Another wave hit her. They were getting stronger, sapping her energy. “Its too much…. Ben hurts too much.”
He wanted to lick that blood. Taste it. Devour it. But he held back. Taking her blood now would be dangerous and they had bigger problems.
“It’s okay baby, we have this. You can do anything remember.” He felt her nod. “Where the fuck is the doc,” he growled at Greyson. His need to help her spiked with her pain. The sound vibrating in his chest. Darcy moved on his lap. Grinding into him. Shit. The door burst open and doc came in rushing over with several of his men.
“About fucking time.” Bennet gritted out.
The doc ignored him coming towards him. “What happened?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Bennet growled out angrily as Darcy meowed in his lap. All his possessive instincts flying to the fore. He held her tightly in his arms. Desperate to make it all right. “Fix her.” He begged him. Then looked at his men standing with Greyson. “Get them out.”
The doc moved towards her reaching out. Bennet couldn’t help it. He snarled at the doc to back off, full on snarled at him. And he’d only raised a hand towards her. He was in a bad way. Was this catching?
“My Lord, I need to touch her to help her.”
He wasn’t thinking straight. What was he doing? He gave a nod, holding all his instincts in check that no other male but him should be near her. The doc moved in slowly to check her temperature. Darcy suddenly moved her head away from the doc, gripping Bennet’s upper jaw with her teeth.
“Ben….. I need…take the pain… away.”
Then she let go and whipped her head around snarling at the doc as he moved to touch her. “No.” She ordered, her voice boarding on alpha. The doc stopped. She nuzzled back into his neck once more. “He smells…. Wrong.”
Needle scratch on a record. They all stilled as several things fell into place.
The doc looked over to him. “My Lord,” he said in awe.
“She’s….She’s Craven.” He whispered looking back at Darcy.
WHAT? That couldn’t be right… The doc blinked, then flicked his eyes over to him. “Did she take your blood Sir, while she helped you?”
Bennet thought back. He didn’t know. “I was half crazy doc and not at my best. She fed and watered me, cleaned me up, pulled me out of the depths of hell, got some on blood on her face while cleaning me.” Frustrated he held her tightly to him, cradling her head against him and rocking her. He didn’t know. He should have paid more attention.
She wouldn’t stop moving her body it seemed to be on fire.
“Are you feeling possessive Sir?” Understatement of the year right there doc. He nodded.
“She cared for you. Protected you. Saw to your needs. And it looks like she got some of your blood, maybe a very small amount.” The doc shook his head like he wasn’t sure of anything. Bennet didn’t find it reassuring.
“Did she call to you in that moment? Did you want to protect her Sir?” He gave a nod.
“The conditions are met. Maybe she took such a minute amount that it gave her body time to adjust. It’s difficult to say. You’ve not been around her since you got back?” He didn’t trust himself to talk and felt like mute giving a shake of his head. Words were getting harder to form.
“It’s possible it gave her time then, only heightened and triggered by you being here today. Had you been here sooner, it might have been worse triggering the change when her body wasn’t ready for it. The time might just save her. I’m in the dark here My Lord. It’s been so long. I don’t know if that is good or bad. There hasn’t been a human Craven in hundreds of years ….” Doc looked stunned. Bennet knew the feeling. “She clearly has the gene link,” doc went on. “The odds of a receptacle female not in a family are …… well …..” He looked sharply up at him. “Not since…. your mother.”
Stunned silence hit the room the only sounds came from Darcy. She cried out and started to whimper rocking on his lap.
“That cannot be. Look at her,” the doc demanded. “Not since his mother who was human. She’s already started to weaken going into the change. You need to make a choice Lord. You know our history. She will surely die if you do nothing and might die if you attempt to complete the link.”
Bennet cradled her head to him. “God damn it.” Greyson shouted. “It’s taken fucking years to get this alliance on the table. Jo’s here thinking she’s a shoe in for queen status and already throwing her weight about.”
Bennet growled again. “Watch your tone.” he snapped.
“Where was that bitch when I needed help? Playing the high and mighty. She’s done nothing but drive me nuts and fuck anything that’ll have her since she arrived because I won’t.”
He hadn’t stopped it because he really didn’t give a shit. He didn’t want her and was being pushed into taking her.
Her Pride His Prejudice Page 6