Quinn Security

by Dee Bridgnorth

  What the hell kind of riddle was that? she wondered, suddenly furious, but the old woman was already shuffling off to meet her daughter-in-law at the doorway.

  They left Lucy, closing the heavy door behind them, and Lucy just stared at it for a long moment.

  Then she turned her anguished attention to Kaleb and studied his face. It looked like he was sleeping. He looked peaceful, and she wondered if he was caught in a long dream as the underworld tugged his soul deeper and deeper down.

  The journey to the other side is a long one.

  The notion seemed less like a riddle now and more like a suggestion.

  Lucy straightened her spine and furrowed her brow.

  Then it hit her.

  The word Astral.

  What did that really mean?

  When Sasha had informed her that Lucy was an Astral Goddess, Lucy had only been able to process the information in terms of the strange abilities that had begun to disrupt her normal, human life.

  But Lucy could flicker out of this dimension and enter the next.

  The next dimension was the Astral, wasn’t it?

  That’s where she’d vanished when she wanted or needed to zip across the diner or up the stairs of Kaleb’s cabin. It had been the Astral plane that she had traveled with Kaleb’s body to arrive at this little stone house in the blink of an eye.

  What if…?

  No, she told herself. She didn’t need to get her hopes up. She only needed to accept the devastating reality that was now staring her in the face—that she’d lost the love of her life, her one true mate as Kaleb would’ve put it.

  How vast was the Astral plane?

  She couldn’t help but wonder.

  What if Kaleb was still crossing it, still in the throes of his long journey to the other side?

  Suddenly, Lucy was filled with unshakable hope and determination.

  She had nothing to lose.

  She placed her palms down against the firm wall of Kaleb’s chest, feeling the profound lack of a heartbeat, the chill of his body evident beneath his tee-shirt.

  Closing her eyes and reminding herself that even if this didn’t work, at least she would always know that she’d done everything she could within her power to fight for him, she willed herself through, lighting up with the blaze of a thousand suns, as she crossed over.

  She’d never thought to explore it before—the Astral plane. She’d never squinted through the blindingly bright light of its atmosphere, but she tried to do just that.

  When she called out, “Kaleb!” it wasn’t with her voice.

  Here, in this ethereal space, her thoughts cut through the light and echoed through the otherworldly plane.

  Then she felt it. The texture of his energy. He was out there, somewhere, within the thickening light.

  She flew, following the feel of him.

  If she had to search through every corner and pocket of this place, she would.

  She would find Kaleb and see if she was powerful enough to bring him home.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  KALEB

  Caught in a dream.

  That’s what it felt like.

  Blindingly bright light had enveloped him. No matter which way he turned, the light prevented him from understanding where he was coming from or where he was going.

  He’d had this dream before, hadn’t he?

  The white-light dream.

  Yes, he was only dreaming, he decided, the same dream he’d had maybe a hundred times over the years. The one that had inspired him, upon waking one morning years ago, to get his tattoo, the one of an ethereal goddess, the details of her face too murky in his memory to fill in.

  Lucy.

  As soon as he’d remembered the connection he’d formed in his waking life—the realization that Lucy Cooper had been the woman from his dreams, had to be—the reality of what had happened to him came crashing down.

  The werewolf meeting.

  How the pack had turned on him.

  The mob.

  How he’d narrowly escaped their brutality.

  How he’d raced up Main Street, how he’d seen Lucy and Dante, and how he’d seen Whitney Abernathy and her gun aimed at him, too late.

  He’d been shot in the chest.

  It was all coming back to him now and he suddenly understood that he wasn’t dreaming. Couldn’t be. But he didn’t feel dead.

  Was he?

  A hard punch of extreme sadness slammed through his chest.

  He’d almost had her. Almost had it all. He’d almost bonded with Lucy, his one true mate. He’d come so close to eternal happiness, a long life with the girl of his dreams, but he’d failed.

  So, why could he somehow feel her right now?

  Was it wishful thinking? Was it longing? Was this, perhaps, a brand-new form of regret he’d never felt before, where his love for Lucy was so strong that he could actually feel her with full, remembering clarity?

  Despite how bright the light of this place was, despite the fact that he couldn’t see anything, he knew he was flying. He was being pulled. He sensed that soon, whether he liked it or not, he’d be sucked through to the other side.

  And Kaleb had the ominous feeling that when he was, things would get very, very dark.

  The feeling of Lucy was expanding in his heart. He could almost smell her. It felt like she was nearing, like she was out there. He resolved that if he could carry this feeling with him, if he could feel Lucy in his heart, then no matter what was in store for him on the other side, even if it was a dark hell, he would be able to survive.

  As the Lucy-feeling grew and grew, it became harder and harder to distinguish his emotional internal feelings from those that were external and tactile. Maybe it meant that he was disintegrating, merging into the light he was bathed in…

  …but then…

  The bright, blindingly bright light he was squinting into became something else.

  A face.

  Lucy’s!

  He widened his eyes, though they stung, as she brought her glowing face towards his.

  She was smiling, a twinkling sparkle of relief in her ethereal blue eyes.

  “Time’s running out,” she whispered directly into his mind. “Come with me.”

  As she cupped his face with both of her glowing hands, bringing her lips to his, he felt a dark pull on his soul. The other side was near, its pull getting stronger.

  She was right. He could feel it, and it filled his soul with a kind of dark knowing. Time, in fact, was running out.

  If he didn’t leave this place with her, right now, he’d be sucked clear through to a place where she’d never be able to reach him.

  He wrapped his arms around her ethereal body, and unlike every dream that had come before, she didn’t waft away into rays of untouchable light. He could feel her body, warm and solid. He had her and he vowed to never again let her go.

  She wrapped her arms around his muscular shoulders, clinging tight, and together they zoomed into the light, the pull of the next dark world loosening its hellish grasp on him.

  His eyes popped open and he gasped for air.

  He felt stone at his back.

  He saw the rugged stones of a familiar ceiling and as he blinked, discovering that his chest felt like an anvil had fallen on it, Troy stepped into view, angling over him from where he lay. Then Dean and Conor stepped into his view.

  Kaleb craned to lift his head just enough to see that his mother and Grandmother Sasha were also in the little apothecary room.

  His head fell back to the stone table.

  Christ, it felt like there was a goddamn hole in his chest.

  Then he remembered. He might actually have a hole in his chest. He’d been shot through the heart, after all.

  “Lucy,” he breathed, worried that she wasn’t in the room.

  But at the sound of his voice, she surged to his side, took his hand, and smiled down at him, promising, “I’m here.”

  “You found me,” he said.r />
  She smiled even wider as tears filled her eyes. “Of course, I did.”

  Sasha announced to everyone, “Give them space. Come now. They need their privacy.”

  Troy clamped a brotherly hand over Kaleb’s sore shoulder and grinned, “Great to have you back, my brother.”

  Then Conor told him good-naturedly, “You’ve got yourself a keeper, there.”

  “Saved your life in ways no one else on God’s green earth could’ve,” Dean chimed in.

  Shane was the last to leave him. As his brothers piled out of the room, following Nikita as Sasha held the door open, he angled his steely, soldier eyes down at Kaleb, showing more emotion than he ever had in their long lives combined, and told him, “I love you, man. But if you ever get yourself shot in the chest with a silver bullet again, I’ll kill ya.”

  “Deal,” said Kaleb with a smile.

  Soon Shane had crossed out of the little room. Grandmother Sasha offered Kaleb one final smiling look of approval and said, “She was made for you. I saw it. Now is the time.” Then she stepped out into the living room, closing the door behind her.

  Kaleb lifted his arm even though it friggin’ killed and cupped his large hand over Lucy’s cheek.

  “You’re the girl of my dreams, you know that?”

  “Yeah, I figured that.”

  She might not know how literal he was being, but he’d explain it to her one day. They’d have many together. A long life. This was just the beginning. And the end was nowhere in sight. He couldn’t have been happier.

  He lifted his head as he guided her face towards his, but before he could kiss her, he felt a sharp stab in his chest and groaned.

  “Easy,” she told him. “I dissolved the bullet and healed your torn heart, but it’s probably going to feel like a freight train slammed through your chest for at least a week.”

  “Christ, I can’t believe Whitney shot me. She knows?”

  “Don’t worry about that now.”

  “She does, doesn’t she?”

  Lucy hesitated to confirm, but eventually nodded and urged him, “Thinking about that right now won’t do you any good.”

  He agreed. If the sheriff’s daughter knew for sure that Kaleb was a werewolf, it would only be a matter of time before Rick Abernathy waged a full-out war against his kind. And his kind were already in the throes of a war he wasn’t sure they would win, one against Dante Alighieri.

  “Where is he? Where is Dante?” he asked as soon as he remembered flickers and flashes of lying in Lucy’s arms out on the pavement. Dante hadn’t been there.

  The smile on Lucy’s face slipped away and a grave look of concern washed over her. “He’s still out there,” she regretted to admit. “But—”

  “I know, I know,” he breathed. “I shouldn’t worry about that right now.”

  Finally, he pulled her in for a real kiss and she melted into his arms. She felt so right, so real.

  “I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” he told her as she lifted up to search his eyes.

  She smiled and said, “So do I.”

  “Sasha’s right. You’re meant for me.”

  “I think so, too,” she agreed. “Kaleb, I love you.”

  But did she love him enough to become like him, a werewolf?

  Did she love him enough to perform the ritual that would bond them for all of eternity in this life and the next?

  Was she prepared to become his one true mate forever?

  As though she’d heard every thought in his head, she answered him, “Yes, I’m ready.”

  “You are?”

  She smiled, kissed him again, then mentioned, “We might need to let you heal up for a week or two.”

  “No,” he countered urgently. “No more waiting.”

  She laughed and said, “Stubborn.”

  “Only thing is…” he started, trailing off with consideration.

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure I want to get it on in my grandma’s house, if you know what I mean.”

  “Ha,” she laughed. “I think I can help with that.”

  She lowered down and as she planted another kiss on his lips, Kaleb felt the warmth of her immense light and a second later, he was flickering out with her, out of this dimension and into the next.

  When they emerged, Kaleb found that they were in the bedroom of his cabin, Kaleb on his back just as he had been lying on the stone slab, Lucy angled over him exactly as she had been, as well.

  “How do we begin?” she asked him. “And will it work if I’m not human?”

  He knew the answer to at least one of her questions so he gazed up into her twinkling blue eyes and said, “It begins with sex.”

  He’d never seen a more beautiful sight than the grin that was now coming over her face.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  LUCY

  As the glow of the full moon spilled in through the bedroom windows, Lucy smiled down at the man she’d fallen in love with. Kaleb Quinn was, without a doubt, the love of her life. It had been one hell of an unexpected journey to arrive at this very moment, but now that she had she knew, beyond question and without a shadow of doubt in her mind, that they were destined to be together, and that everything they’d gone through up until this point might have also been meant to be.

  It was a bitter-sweet pill to swallow, but Lucy was used to swallowing pills, and she’d rather a metaphorical one at this junction than one that was psychiatrist prescribed.

  She knew in her heart of hearts, however, that her parents hadn’t needed to die at Dante Alighieri’s hand for Lucy to have ended up in Kaleb’s bed.

  She was Astral, like her parents, and had they lived, she was certain they would’ve told her what her true nature was, they would’ve trained her, and she still would’ve met and fallen in love with Kaleb Quinn.

  Maybe she should’ve killed Dante when she’d had the chance. But if she had, she might have lost Kaleb in the process. That was a risk that Lucy hadn’t been willing to take, and she was glad.

  Even though the were-man who had stolen a life from her that she would’ve loved to have was still out there freely roaming the Fist, Lucy couldn’t have felt happier in this moment.

  Being with Kaleb was all she wanted. Having him was all she needed. And she was already looking forward to living the rest of their lives together.

  She brought her lips to his, kissed him, and asked, “Is this going to hurt?”

  “Maybe in a good way,” he said with a grin. She straddled his waist, planting her palms on the firm wall of his chest. “I actually think it’s going to hurt me way more than it will you,” he said, revising his answer.

  She was careful as she helped his tee-shirt up and over his head.

  Remarkably, there wasn’t so much as a trace of a scar from where Whitney’s silver bullet had pierced his chest. His body looked smooth and beautiful as ever, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t in pain.

  “I don’t mind doing all the work,” she told him with a sultry smile.

  “That’s good, because you might have to.”

  She pulled her own shirt up and over her head then tossed it to the floor. She unfastened her bra next and as her perky breasts sprang free, he cupped his large, warm hands around both of them.

  Her nipples turned hard, aroused in an instant. Her eyes drifted shut and she fully savored the feel of those strong hands of his massaging her tenderly. When he gently grazed the firm pads of his thumbs over her nipples, she breathed out a soft moan and felt a warm swell of heat blossom between her legs.

  She looked down at him. Kaleb was grinning and she suddenly felt the shape of his hard body stiffen beneath his jeans.

  As he played with her supple breasts, she inched back from his waist and began undoing his belt. When she removed the leather strap from its metal buckle, she worked his fly down and found his delicious dimensions growing even more under his boxer-briefs.

  Hopping off of him, she wasted no time pulling his jeans down to
his ankles as he lifted his hips to help. She stripped his boots and socks off next and he was free of his jeans a moment later, lying before her on the bed and wearing nothing but his boxer-briefs and a sexy grin.

  She took a second to step off the bed to strip out of her own pants, pulling her Trail Runner khakis off and stepping out of her panties next.

  Standing fully nude before him, they eyed one another for a beat. Another swell of hot arousal flared between her legs as he brought his large hand over his even larger erection. The way he was holding himself, subtly stroking, made her mouth water, and when she kneeled onto the bed, nearing him, she took full charge of pulling those boxer-briefs down.

  As she did, his erection sprang free and slapped against his chiseled abdomen.

  She felt her eyes widen as she drank in the sexy sight of his nude shape, those thick dimensions. She touched him, wrapping her hand around his erection. He felt like hard silk. His warmth was so inviting that she could almost now feel what it would be like to have him penetrate her.

  She wanted nothing more than to feel him filling her tight body, but she didn’t straddle over him next.

  Instead, she crept sexily up the length of his muscular legs and brought her mouth to the girthy head of his erection.

  Kaleb could not be grinning wider as he stared down at him, the light of his spirit brightening behind his sexy dark eyes.

  She wrapped her mouth around him and pulled a strong suck as he groaned. It was music to her ears and showing him how deeply she felt for him, how much he meant to her, by this simple, sensual display felt like the most natural thing in the world.

  She loved him and conveyed it with her every lick and suckling kiss, as she held his shaft firmly in her hand. But soon Kaleb was too worked up to let her continue.

  He rose up, took strong hold of her arms, and pulled her up to meet him.

  She smiled then pressed her lips to his, kissing him deeply, their heads tilting as they deepened the kiss.

  She pushed up, too aroused to hold herself back, and taking firm hold of his length, she helped to angle him against her, and the second she felt his hot shape connect with her warm, wet folds of her core, she breathed out an intense moan.