Prince of Power (House of Terriot Book 2)

by Nancy Gideon

  Agitation stirred up a host of mixed emotions. Anger over what they couldn’t change. Fear of losing her. Desperation at the thought of being alone. His helplessness fed the need to hold on to what he had and hang on tight. She stiffened when his arm banded her shoulders, resisted as he pulled her down to him, but she finally relented as he held her close, trying to surround her with all the mysterious things crowding about his heart. A sense of peace settled inside him as he breathed in the scent of her hair and released it on a sigh.

  Mia tensed at that sound, pushing to get away.

  “Mia,” he murmured softly, “Just let me hold you.”

  “Don’t!”

  The protest in that single word was fringed with anxiousness. Instead of complying, he hung on tighter, determined not to let the moment escape them.

  “Don’t go. Stay with me. I want to be more to you.” He remembered what Sylvia had told him. “Trust me. Let me be your friend.”

  Her palms snaked up between them, levering against his chest as she squirmed for distance. “You’re not my friend. You’re a Terriot. The only thing your kind has ever given me is pain and loss.” She shoved hard, forcing that detachment. “No,” she decried against all the tenderness, the compassion, and care of the night before. “I don’t want a warm fuzzy relationship with you. Not my thing. What’s wrong with what we have? Just great sex. No complications. No one gets hurt.”

  Too late for that.

  “Just sex.”

  Some of her frantic resistance fled when he echoed her conclusion. Mia studied his suddenly unreadable features, seeing everything there she wanted. But a ferocious inner demon refused to let him breach those last defensive barriers she’d built. She couldn’t lose control, not to any male. If anyone could take it from her, she feared he was the one. The worst possible one to get a toe hold. She didn’t want to hurt him. She couldn’t bear to lose him!

  “Colin, I don’t need a girlfriend to confide in. I don’t need a shrink to tell my troubles to. I don’t need a daddy or another boss. All I want you to do is what you do better than anyone I’ve ever known. Make me so exhausted I’ll be too tired to think of anything but how good you feel inside me.”

  The lengthy silence grew until he finally broke it with a very Colinesque quip. “It’s good to be appreciated for something.”

  Mia started to smile because she thought he was joking and was relieved to put the awkwardness behind them.

  His good hand gripped the back of her neck, jerking her down into his hard and aggressive kiss. He rolled above her, excitingly impatient and buried himself with a force that made her gasp then moan.

  It was the same Colin Terriot, gorgeous face above hers, delicious firm body laboring to bring her pleasure, but . . . something had changed. She wasn’t sure what as he quickly and more than satisfactorily brought her to climax. As he continued in pursuit of his own release, she finally got it. What made him different was no longer there. There was no passion behind what he was doing. No true emotion or investment. Just sex. She could have been any of the scores who had come before her and gone without his notice.

  Alarmed and disturbed, she caught his head between her hands, pulling him down into her avid kiss. He responded, which should have been, but wasn’t enough, so she pushed him back, just staring up at him with an awful sense of loss until he recognized she’d caught on and ended the charade.

  He pulled out without finishing.

  Determinedly, she gripped him with her hand, trying to encourage a little more enthusiasm. He allowed it for a few uncomfortable seconds then rolled off and away from her.

  “Sorry. Guess I’m just not up for a performance this morning.”

  He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded ambivalent, and eager for her to leave. Something that had never happened to her before.

  “Not up for it? Since when?”

  He shrugged, reaching down for the pants she’d stripped off him in a passionate hurry just hours before. “Maybe since almost dying. First time for everything.” He pulled them on awkwardly with one hand. “Thanks for setting me straight. I get it now.”

  “Colin.” She broke off. What could she say?

  “If what you want is someone to screw you blind, no problem.” He was smiling. There was no obvious change in his voice or expression, but his stare was empty. “Everyone’s got to be good at something, and you’ve discovered my one true talent. Action without reaction. I guess we’re alike in that.”

  “Colin, I’m sorry.” Her words were painfully inadequate.

  “Don’t be. You didn’t hurt my feelings. They’re all below the waist.” He gave up trying to zip and button with just one hand. Turning at the sudden knock on his side door, he strode shirtless and barefoot to answer it.

  The last person on earth he wanted to find in his courtyard while he had a naked Guedry in his bedroom was his king.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Cale?”

  “Hey, brother.” Cale looped him into an easy embrace that lightly bumped their brows together. “Hope I didn’t get you up.”

  “No. I’ve been up for a while,” Colin mumbled as Cale pushed past him into his little house to give it the once over.

  “This is nice. Gimme a tour?”

  Oh, hell no! “What you see is what there is.”

  Smirking, Cale glanced down. “What I’m seeing is more of you than I care to at this time of the morning. Or any time.”

  Aware that he stood there with his zipper wide open, Colin tried to tackle the issue again with no greater success. “Sonuvabitch! I can’t even put my own junk away!”

  Cale cleared his throat. “If I offer, as your brother, to give you a hand, you won’t take it in a creepy way, will you?”

  Colin relaxed with a snort of a laugh. “No more than you did when you woke up at the Saint without your clothes on to find out I’d—”

  Cale put his hands to his ears. “No, no, no! Don’t be going there. Returning the favor.” A sharp upward jerk of his jeans, a quick tug of his zipper, a button and a wince-inducing swat. “There you go. All tucked away and presentable.”

  “Thanks, honey.”

  Cale grinned. “Don’t mention it . . . to anyone. Ever.”

  “What are you doing here at this time of the morning, bro?” Colin asked uneasily as Cale dropped down on the sofa to make himself comfortable. He couldn’t very well toss his brother and king out the door.

  “I’m heading home and wanted to see how you were doing first. Things I arranged for get taken care of?”

  “You arranged this?” Colin raised his hands, letting the difference in them speak for him. In comparison to his left, his right was a nightmare. “I’m doing awesome.”

  Cale ignored his sarcasm. “All in one piece. That’s good. How’s the pain?”

  At the moment, that was a difficult question to answer, but he muttered the expected response. “Gone. Like nothing ever happened.”

  “I wanted to see if I was being a fool to leave you here.”

  Shoulders squaring up, Colin bit out, “Lose your faith in me because I can’t zip up my own pants?”

  “No, because you could have died, and I’m not going to lose any more of my brothers if it’s not safe for you here. You’ve got a target on your back as it is as a Terriot.”

  Colin rubbed a ragged earlobe. “At least I’ll be harder to spot.”

  “Someone’s gonna pay for that, Col. You’ve given enough. I was thinking Wes could—”

  “If you’re thinking of bringing Wes here to finish my job and send me home in shame, you might as well finish me right here, right now.” He took a brain-cleansing breath to back down his outrage and continued to make his case. “If I leave, they’ll think we’re weak and all talk. They won’t respect any of us if they think we’re that easily broken. I’m a Terriot. We don’t bend, we don’t break, and we don’t run. Not from anything. It’d be kinder for you to just put me down right now than to ask me not to act like a prince in our House.
I’m not afraid of them, and next time, I’ll be ready to bring hell down on their doorstep.

  “Don’t you do this to me, Cale. Don’t you sideline me while I can still stand on my own hind legs and howl.” He paused for a hard swallow. “Unless you don’t trust me to take care of things. That’s something else altogether.”

  The long beat of silence brought Colin’s worst fear home. He felt something from his king he’d never experienced before. Doubt.

  “You’re my brother, Colin,” Cale began carefully. “If you say you can handle it, I believe you.”

  Belief and trust weren’t quite the same thing.

  “You’ll have Rico and Kip here to back your play. You can count on MacCreedy and Savoie to do the same,” Cale told him as he rose from the couch. “But if you get in over your head and you’re too damned proud to ask for help, I’ll come back here and haul you home with your tail between your legs. Don’t think I won’t. I never thought of you as stupid. Don’t prove me wrong.”

  “Thanks for the confidence.”

  Cale flashed a smile at Colin’s wry response. “You’ve got it. What you do with it is up to you.”

  Colin allowed himself to be dragged into another bro-hug, realizing the exact second things changed. His king drew a telltale sniff and turned quickly toward the bedroom.

  “Who’s here with you?”

  “I have company. Is that a problem?”

  Cale eyed him shrewdly, reading his body language the same way he had the air and the scent on his skin. Coming up with the worst possible conclusion just as Mia Guedry sauntered out of the bedroom. She was smart enough not to come to Colin’s side but rather hung back to eyeball the Terriot king from a judicious distance.

  “Hello, Cale.”

  Cale’s teeth flashed. “Ms. Guedry. You and my brother strategizing?”

  A smile just as insincere. “Something like that.”

  His narrowed gaze slid to Colin. “Anything you need to tell me, brother?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  Cale nodded rather stiffly. “Okay. I’ll just say good-bye then. We’ll talk again. Soon.” That crackled with promise. He nodded to the dark-haired beauty. “Ms. Guedry.”

  Mia watched him pace, holding tight to her own reactions.

  “Why would he think that? That I would let down our clan? My family?”

  She didn’t want to say it, but someone would. Better it be here, now. “Because of you and me?”

  He stopped and stared at her for a timeless moment, brows drawn. His announcement held the strength of a punch. “There is no you and me.”

  She hid her dismay behind a cavalier, “You don’t need to be so insulting about it.”

  Her reply had no impact on his agitation. He started the restless travels again, not ready to look at the big picture. When he did, would he accept what he saw or rebel against it? Against her?

  “I’ve devoted my whole life to them. I’ve given them everything. My father, my brothers, the girls. My home. My life. I would have given them my life! And this is what it means to them? These doubts? These questions? What have I ever done to deserve this from them? What?”

  She’d heard this from him before when he was low and drunk. This was not that. He vibrated with indignant fury. Something she could use to her benefit.

  “Nothing. Nothing,” she repeated for emphasis, still not coming closer even though she wanted to. “They don’t deserve you, Colin.”

  “Leave.”

  “What?”

  He turned on her impatiently. “Take off. And don’t show up again without an invitation assuming you’ll be welcome, because that might not be the case.”

  This was what she’d demanded from him when he would have given her much, much more. Her sudden alarm and insecurity had ruined that when she pulled away in panic. She’d rebuilt this wall, so, without another word, she gathered her things, slipping by him without a look or a touch on her way to the door. He didn’t stop her from closing it quietly behind her.

  The fact that she’d gone skimmed over the surface of Colin’s raw emotions while the sense of injury to his honor continued to boil and chafe.

  He doesn’t trust you.

  That quiet whisper came out of nowhere, but before Colin could shake it off, it took noxious root.

  Trust! Cale was a fine one to toss that into his face after what he was doing! That betrayal made his imagined disloyalty where Mia was concerned laughable in comparison. Maybe the question wasn’t whether Cale trusted him enough to include him in their family’s circle. Maybe it was whether or not he considered his brother still worthy of being called his king!

  He stormed into the kitchen, reaching out of habit for the coffee maker, hitting the pot with his non-functioning fingers. It teetered on the edge of the counter then dropped, shattering on the tiles. Cursing, he bent to sweep up the pieces, cutting his numbed hand without realizing it. After dumping the glass into the trash, he ran cold water over the oozing tears, watching the blood spin in a widening circle before going down the drain.

  The same spiral his life was taking.

  A dull ache at the back of his skull began to rise and throb, fueled by frustration and loss. Mia. What was he going to do about Mia?

  She doesn’t love you. She’s using you.

  He knew she didn’t, knew she was, and that truth ate through him more viciously than her clan’s acid. Maybe he was pushing too hard, too fast, in everything. With Mia, with this situation between their clans. With his fierce denial that everything was fine, that he was fine.

  He knew it wasn’t, that he wasn’t.

  He turned off the water and leaned against the sink, shoulders shaking. The thought of moving forward with any of his plans was too much. The irony of surviving crushing physical pain to bear the brunt of this emotional torture wasn't lost on him. Maybe he should just go home, get stronger, get well. Get over it!

  Going back to their mountain wasn't going to improve his miserable existence. There, he'd be reminded on a daily basis. The respectful murmurs of "my prince" hiding who the hell knew what. Mockery? Deception? Treason? To drink and debauch his days and nights into nothingness? Waking up alone. Tahoe offered less than the nothing he already had. Reminders of his hollow title, his shallow soul, his grief and regrets. Here, at least there was a challenge, a task, a chance to rise, not only above his clan's doubts but above his own.

  He'd been given a second chance. Would he squander it the way he had all that had come before it?

  He's not your father! They're not your family!

  His head lowered until his forehead rested against the cool sink basin. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so damned sorry!

  Yes, you are. A sad, sorry sonuvabitch, no good to anyone, worth less than nothing. Who'd care if you lived or died? Your king? He has other brothers to replace you. Your mother? You're dead to her. Your sisters? They've forgotten you. Mia? She's used you from the very first night. Look at you? Maimed, weak, whining, broken. Useless. Why do you fight so hard when no one cares if you live or die?

  "That's not true!"

  The sound of his own angry voice startled Colin from drowning in the sinister whisper of his own doubts. He wasn't going to lie down and let the world walk over him. He'd prove what kind of man he was here in New Orleans. He’d build a home for himself on solid ground, not upon the disintegrating ruins of past mistakes.

  And he'd be happy. Dammit, he deserved to be happy!

  Kinda hard, though, when he'd just shown all his dreams to the door. And that wouldn't change with him crying into his kitchen sink like a daytime TV housewife.

  Colin straightened and exhaled heavily.

  She doesn't love you.

  Maybe not. Not yet. But she would.

  And what would you sacrifice to have her? Your hand? Your family? Your life?

  His answer blew across his reasoning like a bracing winter chill.

  Anything.

  Silas MacCreedy wasn’t surprised to find th
e Terriot king at his door. Cale strode in as he held it open, instantly on the attack.

  “What’s going on with my brother and Mia Guedry?”

  Silas closed the door behind the seething cyclone and said mildly, “They’re sleeping together. I didn’t think that was news to you since it was going on before you left.”

  “And you didn’t do anything about it?”

  “Me? Why would I do anything about it? He’s not my brother. She’s not my sister. And unlike some others I could name, I haven’t found them naked on the floor of my living room!”

  Cale had the good grace to flush at that. “Still, I left him here to negotiate with you, not to have sex.”

  “I’m not having sex with him! Or her either, for that matter. They’re adults. You’d have to be blind not to see they’re attracted to each other. Hell, the only thing I was concerned about was him and Rico killing each other over her.”

  “Him and Rico? Are all my brothers’ brains behind their zippers?”

  Silas drawled, “Did you really want me to answer that?”

  Cale plopped down on the couch, head in his hands. “Is there anything else I should know?”

  “Nothing comes to mind.”

  Cale met his gaze directly. “Do you trust him?”

  “Who? Colin?” His brows furrowed. “You don’t?”

  “I’ve been having my doubts. Do I have a reason?”

  “About your brother, Prince Colin Stick Up His Royal Ass Terriot? No. Not in a million years. We don’t exactly see eye to eye on things, but I’ve never taken him for anything but a loyal, straight shooter. Obnoxiously so. Why do you think you do?”

  “He was seen talking to James. He’s been acting strange around me since Turow got hitched.”

  “Think that might be because he’s boffing a Guedry right under your nose and thinks you might decide to kill the both of them?”

  “Maybe,” Cale considered and shrugged. “Are we doing the right thing here?”

  “I thought so. Don’t you?”

  “Not if it’s going to cost me half my family!” He exhaled heavily. “They almost killed him, Si. If his reflexes had been any slower, they would have burned off his face. He’d have died if Bree hadn’t stepped in.”