by Kat Simons
“Sheldon’s clothes won’t fit me,” he pointed out.
“Maybe he has a pair of sweats.” She didn’t much like the idea of other women seeing Deacon naked. Though why, she wasn’t sure. More weirdness. Blame Jaxer, she thought. All his fault.
“I’ll check in a minute.”
“You should strip before shifting, you know. To avoid ruining your clothes.” Cary rolled her eyes at herself. What a stupid thing to say. He was old enough to have figured that out by now.
“There’s not always time,” he said. “And I can always buy more clothes.”
He gently kissed the top of her head, and her senses swam. So so not good. She had to stop reacting to this virtual stranger like this. He was going to figure out what he did to her soon and then she’d be in real trouble. She couldn’t afford this kind of trouble. She had more than enough in her life already.
“How did you get to be a Protector? Were you born to it?”
Glad for his questions because they distracted her, she answered truthfully. “No.” She snorted, but the movement hurt and she ended up wincing. “It’s a long story. I was tricked into it.”
“Tricked?”
“Well.” She made a face, half embarrassed, half irritated. “That demon shouldn’t have kicked the puppy.” She scowled at Deacon’s soft chuckle.
“You became a Protector because you tried to save a puppy from a demon?”
Her frown deepened. “I have a soft spot for animals,” she muttered, amazed that her cheeks were heating with embarrassment. This embarrassed her? She should be feeling a little more ashamed of the fact that she was enjoying sitting in the arms of a very sexy, very naked man she didn’t know. But no, that she was fine with. What a ninny.
“Good,” he murmured and kissed her head again.
Gently, he swept her hair away from her neck and nuzzled her, his lips soft and seductive against her skin. She would have moaned if she weren’t afraid it would hurt. She should probably put a stop to all this. Any minute now. Just had to gather her strength.
She was truly mortified by her disappointment when Deacon was the one to move away first.
“We need to get you to a hospital,” he said again.
And before she could protest, he lifted her and set her on the couch. The movement hurt, but shock was dampening the pain. Finally. Then she made the mistake of looking at Deacon’s naked back as he walked to the bedroom. Wow. She could get used to that view.
“By the way,” she said when he returned wearing a pair of black sweat pants that were almost long enough for him but hugged his muscled body like a second skin. She swallowed and completely lost her train of thought. He might as well have been naked still. “You’re gonna be cold like that.”
“I have a naturally high body temperature.”
“Oh good.” She mentally shook her head and said, “What was all that about my being your mate? You said that just to get me out of the way, didn’t you?”
He leaned over and lifted her into his arms. The fact that he could carry her so easily startled her as much as the tenderness in his touch.
“No,” he said, heading toward the door.
“What do you mean?” She glanced down at Sheldon’s body as the passed and sighed. Jaxer would have to clean up the mess. He usually did, but this time, the mess was clearly his fault, so she felt no guilt at all about passing him that responsibility.
“I mean,” Deacon said, drawing her back to the conversation, “I didn’t just say you were my mate to get you out of the way.”
“I’m human,” she felt the need to remind him.
“So.”
“So…I’m not a leopard,” she again pointed out the obvious.
As far as she knew, unlike their mundane animal counterparts, leopard shifters did form mate bonds. But only with other leopards. They might have affairs with humans, but she’d never read anywhere that leopards could actually bond with humans.
“Your scent.” He nuzzled her neck again as he carried her to the elevator. “You’re mine.”
Cary’s stomach tightened, dancing a crazy jig that did more to stop her breath than her cracked ribs. For a long moment, her brain refused to work. None of this made sense.
“We don’t know anything about each other,” she said lamely.
“What do you want to know?”
She asked the first thing that came to mind. “What do you do for a living?” She glanced up to see him smiling, a wealth of tenderness and humor in his golden eyes.
“I own and run animal sanctuaries around the country,” he said.
Her eyes widened. “You protect animals?” she asked as the elevator doors opened.
He carried her in and pressed the button for the ground floor. “I do.”
She stared up at his gorgeous face. He protected animals.
The elevator doors closed, and Cary turned to see her wide-eyed, pale reflection in the polished silver.
Oh boy.
3
Cary groaned as she eased down onto her couch. The painkillers she’d taken before leaving the hospital were wearing off and her ribs ached. The bruising didn’t help. But at least she was home. She hated hospitals, no matter how often she had to avail of their services.
Thankfully, the doctor had been nice this time. He’d refrained from giving her that look—the one that said, “I suspect you’re a battered woman given your medical records, and I want to help you so I might just have to call the police, and I’m definitely going to ask you a lot of awkward questions.”
Leaning her head against the back of the couch, she closed her eyes. She probably did ask for the look. She’d amassed a horrendously long list of odd injuries over the last six years. And she’d never managed to find a doctor here in Portland that she could trust with the truth about her secret career.
Her bosses, who she’d nicknamed the Nags, were no help. They just told her to get hurt less. And every “medical” person Jaxer had tried to hook her up with had turned out to be a disaster for one reason or another. The California “healer” who turned out to be a vodun priestess ranked right up there as one of the worst. They had not gotten along.
Cary wasn’t entirely sure why it was so hard to find a single doctor they could trust. She had a seamstress friend who made her bespelled clothes that kept her keys in her pockets when she had to jump around protecting people. A doctor used to supernatural injuries should have been easier to find than a seamstress.
But for six years, she’d come up empty. And so the ERs at the various hospitals around the greater Portland area had become her haunting grounds.
The worst part was that she always had to come up with lame excuses for the injuries. She couldn’t just admit the truth to strange hospital personnel. That went against the rules and would put her in danger. Besides, who would believe her?
So that single serious bruise and the crack in one rib “came from falling on the edge of a blunt piece of pipe,” even though she’d actually gotten the injury from jumping in front of a bullet.
The black eye? “I got that…falling down the stairs.” Such an obvious excuse! But she couldn’t very well say she got caught in the face by a wizard bolt aimed at a child without sounding insane. And to be fair, she should have turned so the shot hit her shoulder. She knew better than to dive in face first. But hindsight…
“I got the broken toe tripping over the end table.” Actually, she’d gotten mad and kicked a kitten-biting vampire in the leg. Now that had been really embarrassing.
This trip to the hospital hadn’t been any easier to explain. Though bruising along her side and several cracked ribs could come from any kind of a fall. But this time there were no awkward questions or looks. She supposed the man who’d taken her to the hospital might have had something to do with that. If she’d been the doctor, she’d have avoided giving the look anywhere near Deacon, too.
Her dogs picked that moment to start barking excitedly in the backyard, a welcome disruption in her tr
ain of thought. Sounded like Fred, her beloved mutt, had found a squirrel. She smiled, the comforting sounds distracting her from the ache in her side and unwanted musings about the man who’d kept her company at the hospital.
Then her doorbell ding-donged. She’d just managed to get comfortable, now she had to stand?
She rolled her head to stare at the door and considered ignoring whoever it was out there. But the visitor set a finger to the chime and didn’t let up. She sighed and turned toward her good side, using the couch armrest to push herself to her feet. She only knew one person rude enough to abuse a doorbell that way when she was inside battered and bruised.
She opened the door a crack. “What do you want, Jaxer? I’ve earned the day off.”
The impossibly beautiful blond man on her front stoop grinned—his most charming grin, she noticed sourly—and pushed into her little house. As she turned to tell him to get out, he took her face in his hands and kissed her on the mouth. Cary’s eyes widened. For a split second, she couldn’t react.
Then she shoved him away and scowled. “What the hell was that about, you crazy faery?”
Jaxer had never kissed her on the mouth before. Oh, he was flirty and charming and too touchy-feely as far as Cary was concerned. But she’d gotten used to him over the years. That was just the way he acted. And she was—for the most part—immune.
But a full on mouth kiss was new. And it sparked a serious level of suspicion. Jaxer did nothing without reason. He probably knew she was going to kill him as soon as her ribs healed, and he was trying to distract her.
“I’m just glad to see you’re home and feeling better,” he said.
His green-blue eyes warmed, sparkling with something she wasn’t sure she liked. “Who said I’m feeling better? I feel rotten, thank you very much. And it’s all your fault. I’d kill you now, but I hurt too much.”
“Cary.” He gave her an irritatingly elegant shrug. “You know you’d never kill me. You love me.”
She snorted.
“Besides, I needed your help. I couldn’t let Sheldon kill him. And you did rescue him, didn’t you?”
“And got broken ribs for my troubles.” She could have gotten a lot worse, too. “Sheldon knew about Protectors, you ass. The little shit could have killed me.” She jabbed an accusing finger at Jaxer’s perfectly muscled chest. “You said I was going after a black cat. You knew what I thought. You should have told me the black cat was a fully grown leopard shifter. And you should have warned me Sheldon was a teenager. And you sure as hell could have mentioned he knew what a Protector was.”
“Would you have gone if I had?” He raised a brow. “Rescuing an adult man from a teenager?”
He knew her too well. Damn it. She always agreed to protect children, women, the elderly, and animals easily, no arguments. But she was less willing to put her physical wellbeing on the line for fully grown men. As far as Cary was concerned, grown men should be able to take care of themselves.
Though, as it turned out, this particular fully grown man really had needed her help. And the teenager had had a wicked streak of evil going. But still. That wasn’t the point.
“It doesn’t matter if I would have agreed or not,” she countered, waving the hand on her uninjured side in a dismissive gesture as she turned back to the couch. She wasn’t about to admit the truth now and lose the moral high ground. “The point is I went in without all the information. And…” She rounded, glaring at him again. “You didn’t tell me you’d been after Sheldon for months. What the hell, Jaxer? You should have let me know the real situation.”
In fact, she still didn’t know the full story. Deacon had also been stingy with details when she brought the topic up at the hospital.
“I thought you’d get out of there before he got back to the apartment.” Jaxer spread his hands, displaying his well-defined chest muscles through an open silk shirt.
Cary grimaced. It didn’t matter that it was cold as a bear’s butt outside. Jaxer always wore shirts that showed off his chest. He did, admittedly, have a nice chest to show off. A nice body in general. Along with a handsome face which she suspected wasn’t nearly as stunning as his real visage. Behind the glamour all the Fae used with humans to appear less mystical, she suspected Jaxer was probably too beautiful for her mind to take. Though, in her more nasty moments, she pretended he was one of the really really ugly Fae, aspiring to be handsome.
“You got out just fine,” he continued. “I don’t see why you’re so upset.”
Her mouth actually dropped open. “You don’t… What is wrong with you? Sheldon knew I was a Protector.”
“And you were protecting someone, so you were safe.” He closed the space between them and cupped her cheeks. “Cary, I would never send you into a situation I didn’t think you would walk away from.”
“Oh, right. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last six years. All the easy stuff. This Protector gig is a real walk in the park. Why should I worry about getting killed?” She shook her head to dislodge his hold. “And what’s with that kiss you landed on me when you came in?”
Jaxer, for all his irritating qualities, was her friend as well as her mentor. He’d stood by her from the beginning of this whole Protector business. She felt like he was changing the rules of their friendship with that kiss, and she didn’t like it.
Jaxer grinned, his expression softening into something Cary could almost have mistaken for real emotion. Except the faery rarely expressed his true feelings outwardly.
“I’m relieved you’re okay,” he said. “And you looked so cute scowling at me through the door, I couldn’t resist.”
“In future, resist,” said a deep voice from Cary’s still open doorway.
Her heart tripped over itself to keep up with her suddenly rushing pulse. Exactly two hours had passed since she’d last seen Deacon at the hospital, when he’d put her in a taxi and sent her home. Though she’d secretly hoped to see him again, she hadn’t really thought he’d show up at her door.
The fact that he could find her house at all was a testament to the fact that she did want to see him. Which would be embarrassing if he knew about the spell on her home and how it kept people she didn’t want around from finding her sanctuary.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t actually prepared to see him yet.
“Hi,” she said, because the mere sight of him made her brain short circuit. No one should look that good this early in the morning.
“Hi,” he said back.
The sound of his voice sent a giddy jolt of excitement through her entire body. Geez. Still? She still couldn’t be around him without her body immediately overheating with lust? This was just so wrong. Something truly weird was going on with her.
He rescues animals.
The ridiculous thought kept spinning through her head, confusing years of well-honed instincts which kept her from trusting spectacularly handsome preternatural men. She’d met more than her fair share since becoming a Protector. Hell, she was mentored by one. But every one of them had been a grade A pain in her ass, and on more than one occasion, they’d tried to kill her. Not circumstances which encouraged trust. Out of self-preservation, she’d developed an immunity to charm and good looks.
But Deacon was…different. He rescued animals for a living. Last night, he’d gotten her yummy non-hospital coffee when she’d sighed at the prospect of the available sludge. He wasn’t trying to kill her, which was a definite bonus. And he rescued animals for a living.
What the hell kind of preternatural sex god did that?
It took Jaxer’s voice to pull her out of her thoughts. Which was really embarrassing.
“Deacon,” he said, his tone overly cheerful. “Glad to see you safe and sound.”
“Don’t ever send me in as bait again,” Deacon said without glancing away from Cary. “Next time, I’ll take the wizard out without all the pretense.”
“We had to know what he was doing with all the shifters,” Jaxer said. “More could have di
ed otherwise and you know it.”
Deacon ignored him and asked Cary, “How are you feeling?”
She shrugged then winced. “The painkillers the doctor gave me are wearing off. What’s all this about other shifters and Sheldon?” Deacon had told her the part about Jaxer looking into Sheldon for months. He hadn’t mentioned “all the shifters” being killed.
Jaxer opened his mouth but Deacon cut him off, avoiding her question when he said, “You should be in bed if you’re in pain.”
“I was resting on the couch, gearing myself up for bed, when the doorbell rang.” She glared at Jaxer who raised a guiltless eyebrow. “Now tell me more about what’s happening with the shifters.”
Deacon eased inside and closed the door. Like Jaxer, he didn’t even have a jacket on. But his jeans and wool sweater were at least mildly more appropriate to the weather than Jaxer’s silk shirt and linen trousers. Portland, Oregon wasn’t exactly the tropics in November.
“You shouldn’t have made her get up,” Deacon scolded Jaxer.
The faery rolled his eyes and lounged against the wall, managing to look casually elegant and relaxed in her tiny living room.
“She recovers fast,” Jaxer said, a note of annoyance in his voice. “No need to play the mother hen just because she saved your life.”
“She needs to rest. Go home. Let her recover in peace.”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” she said. “What’s going on with the shifters?”
“Don’t worry about it, sweetie,” Jaxer said with a smile. “I’m taking care of it.”
Sweetie? Maybe Jaxer had finally gone insane. Or she had. It was hard to tell at the moment. She really did need to rest.
She headed toward the couch, ignoring both men, hoping Jaxer would listen to Deacon. He never listened to her when she told him to go away. But this had been a night and a morning of firsts, so she could always hope.
