by Kamryn Hart
“What is this?” she asked. She hadn’t asked Nick because she hadn’t cared when he was asking her all of his questions. She was thinking only about Ethan.
Ethan replied, “I promised you answers, so get ready for them.”
Why was he being so cryptic? Why wasn’t he telling her everything? She was ready to spill out her heart and soul, but he wasn’t.
Abruptly, Ethan snaked one of his hands to her back, riding the edge of her jeans the entire way until he touched her SIG Sauer P938 and took it. He examined it without a word while his other hand was pressed firmly on her hip.
He hummed and slowly placed the pistol back where he found it. Then he carefully covered it back up with her hoodie. It made Emily shiver. She felt it in every part of her pelvis. Her knees shook, and she tried to push away the strangely erotic feeling Ethan gave her from his simple touches, but it was hard. It was always hard. He made her wet, her thighs clenched, her heart beat just a little faster.
Emily cleared her throat when she remembered they had an audience. The wolves in the room looked solemn. Willow looked sad. She was the easiest to read. Emily wondered what about this reunion warranted her looking sad.
“I want to talk to you alone,” Emily said.
“That’s fine,” Nick replied.
Ethan held out his left hand, palm up. He had the same mark as Nick and Gwen. The same mark as her. Emily took it.
“Come with me,” he said.
No words had ever sounded sweeter.
Chapter 8
EMILY WANTED TO HOLD Ethan’s hand forever. He didn’t say anything about that weird mark on her waist, but she had the utmost faith that he would. She was blinded by her happiness to be with him, to touch him. Any intentions she might have had about demanding explanations took a backseat to that.
“That your car?” Ethan asked as he exited the mansion with Emily.
“Sure is,” she said with unmistakable pride in her voice. “Picked up that Impala soon after I hit the road looking for you. It was in bad shape. The owner told me I could have it if I fixed it.”
“And you fixed it?”
“Hell yeah, I did. It took some time away from searching, but it’s been worth it because I can go wherever I want. When I have car problems, I can fix them myself.”
Ethan smirked. “I pretty much know shit about cars. Too bad I’m not eager to learn like you.”
Grinning, Emily slipped out of Ethan’s grasp, ran through the mostly shoveled snow, and opened the passenger door to her 1967 Impala and gestured Ethan inside like she was a chauffeur, which she supposed technically she was. She wasn’t leaving her car here anyway. She didn’t know where they were going, but she hoped it was far away from the Alpha—no offense. She wanted privacy. Maybe that privacy would end up being in her car. She was fine with that.
“Vintage as hell,” Ethan remarked.
“You know she’s beautiful,” said Emily.
Ethan looked right at her when he replied, “She is indeed.”
He wasn’t being subtle at all. Emily knew that compliment was for her. She felt it in the quickening of her heartbeat and in the trembling of her thighs.
Emily cleared her throat. “Get in and I’ll drive us wherever you want to go, or we can talk in the car.”
Ethan gave her an overly showy bow that made her smile. “Thank you kindly, pretty lady.”
Try as she might to roll her eyes sardonically, Emily’s smile gave away the fact that she adored his quips.
She shut the door for him, walked around the car, and got in the driver’s seat. She thought they’d get back to this easy back and forth dialogue, but the air in the Impala was cold, colder than the frigid air outside. Ethan was staring out of his window, blatantly refusing to look at her. There was a lot on his mind if he couldn’t keep up his playful charade. Maybe it wasn’t fair to call it a charade. He was a playful guy by nature.
She didn’t understand. And she stayed silent with him.
When the engine roared to life, Ethan broke the silence. “I’ll tell you where to go.” However, he still wouldn’t look at her.
Nodding her head, more for herself than him, Emily pulled away from the mansion and followed Ethan’s instructions to that downtown area. There were houses there in the same style as the farmhouses, though they were smaller. Ethan instructed her to park in front of one of them.
“This your place?” she asked, peering through the windshield.
Suddenly, Ethan was on the porch. She hadn’t heard him get out of the car. She took a reflexive look to her right to find the passenger seat good and empty. When she looked at the porch again, Ethan was staring back at her with eyes as gold as gold could be. But then he blinked, and his eyes were their normal dark brown.
“Coming?” he said loud enough for her to hear as he nodded toward the door.
Emily cut the engine. She was about to get out and join him, but then her door opened and he was right there waiting with an outstretched hand. “Stealthy,” she commented.
“You have no idea.”
His eyes flashed gold again. She was pretty sure she heard a purr in there somewhere. It could have been her imagination, but what he was insinuating couldn’t be. If it was possible for sex to be in someone’s voice, then it was definitely in his. She warmed at the thought of what he could mean. Her pussy throbbed. Damn, she was thirsty for him. The way her body reacted to him made her feel like a sex addict when in truth she hadn’t had sex since high school when she tried to deal with her loneliness of never being allowed to be that physically close to her boys.
“Ethan.” She let out a shaky breath.
He took her hand since she hadn’t offered it. His touch was a deep warmth she felt down to her toes. Then he tugged her out of the car and into his chest for the briefest moment before twirling her out of the way so he could shut the car door.
That was when he refused to look at her again. His grip on her hand tightened and he led her up the porch steps. He opened the burgundy wood door and placed his hand gently yet firmly on the small of her back, ushering her inside and quickly shutting the door once again.
There was something different about him. Well, there was a lot different. He was older, stronger, fuller, she had already noticed that. What was that she kept seeing in his eyes, though? The spark that went with his playful nature was absent. Maybe she hadn’t been wrong earlier. Maybe playfulness had become his facade.
“Is this your house?” Emily asked again as she looked around the cute cabin-style living room. It didn’t look lived in exactly, but it was cozy. It was way more inviting than a huge mansion could ever be, even if they had the same basic woodwork.
Ethan’s arms were around her, unzipping her coat and taking it off for her in one smooth motion. “Apparently,” he replied, as he hung her coat on the coat rack. “They gave it to me. I guess that means it’s mine.”
She raised an eyebrow at him because that was a weird explanation and because he was still touching her, hand at her waist, teasing up the edges of her hoodie, pressing his fingers into her skin. “Can’t stop touching me?” She said it to tease and to invite, but it amounted to him disengaging and leaving her cold. There was so much heat when he was touching her, but as soon as he wasn’t, it was like where he had touched froze over.
He sauntered over to a wood-framed couch and plopped down unceremoniously. He slouched the same way he always used to, but it was a lot more exaggerated. He looked tired. Really tired.
She half expected him to tell her to sit on the chair instead of on the couch next to him. He didn’t, so she sat next to him like she wanted to. There was a cold, dark spiral of doubt growing inside of the happiness that had been filling her heart to overflowing. She couldn’t keep pretending like everything was perfect. It obviously wasn’t. And she could handle that. She was with Ethan again, and that was all she needed. She could handle hard stuff. She’d welcome hard stuff if it meant helping him.
“Ethan, how have you been
? What have you been doing all this time?” she dared to ask. They were alone. He said he would tell her what happened to Mason. It was time they talked. They needed to talk.
He wouldn’t quite meet her gaze. He kept his eyes lowered, like he was staring at her right shoulder or maybe her neck.
Instinctively, Emily grabbed his leg and moved it so it was crossed over her knees. Ethan didn’t protest, but it did get him to look at her for real. She held his leg there, demanding the closeness it was obvious the both of them craved. Then she stuck her finger in one of the holes and brushed his skin.
“Fuck, stop,” he said immediately.
“Does that tickle? It’s your own damn fault. I never understood why you like to wear threadbare clothes like this.”
“They’re more comfortable.”
“And an invitation for poking and tickling.”
“Damn it, Emily,” he moaned, and it actually sounded like he was in pain.
He reclaimed his leg, hunched over until he was practically a ball, and rubbed his left cheek, the side of him she couldn’t see, furiously like he had an itchy mosquito bite.
“Talk to me so I’ll understand,” Emily implored.
“About what happened to Mason.” Ethan’s voice was barely louder than a whisper. “It was my fault.”
She instantly rebuked him. “It wasn’t.”
“It was!” He grabbed the back of his head and this time he was a ball. His forehead kissed his knees, and he shook like he was experiencing internal seismic activity.
He was wrong. She knew he was wrong, but she’d let him say what he needed to say.
Emily placed her hand on his back and lightly scratched, trying to comfort him without crowding him.
“It was about more than being a shifter,” he murmured when the shaking subsided. “Mason wanted you safe from shifters, but he was more worried about the bad ones.”
Ethan sat up and brushed his hair back again so the long strands were out of his face. He turned his head and looked her in the eye. “Five Claws. They were all shifters. The boss was my father.”
Emily bit her lip. She knew next to nothing about Five Claws other than what she needed to know to stay far away from them and out of trouble. Her parents figured the less she knew the better. Apparently, Ethan and Mason felt the same way. Especially because of this revelation. Ethan was in deep with Five Claws then. But how? Ethan was too nice. He was soft, the softest boy she had ever met. It wasn’t that he lacked physical strength, but his heart was bigger than most. That made it a bigger target. It caught more bullets. The fact that he could be the son of a sadistic murderer like the Five Claws boss, Liam Street, was a cruel joke from the universe. The cruelest.
But now it made sense. Five Claws had more to do with Mason’s death and Ethan’s disappearance than she had guessed. Mason’s death had been written off as an isolated incident, but she knew it wasn’t that. Mason, Ethan, and Five Claws couldn’t have all vanished or died on the same night. It was too big of a coincidence. But this was every horrible thing she had feared.
Ethan winced and turned toward her. He sat up straight and grabbed the bottom of his holey hoodie and shirt underneath, rolling them up high enough to reveal some of the tattooed skin underneath. She glimpsed another Moon shape on his waist like hers, but that wasn’t what he wanted her to see. He wanted her to see the scar of five perfect claw marks marking his left pectoral, over his heart. She was told if she ever saw this mark to run far away. Some Five Claws members flaunted it by walking around shirtless. She had never seen Ethan shirtless so she never knew.
Hesitantly, Emily held her hand out to the gnarled gashes. Her fingertips brushed against the ridges of scar tissue and in between to smooth and untouched skin. Her thumb brushed his nipple, and he shuddered underneath her touch. He grabbed her hand, holding her away from him, and dropped his shirt and hoodie to cover his enticing skin. Then he let her hand go.
“Mason knew what I was right away. When we first met, I was being cruel to a shop owner—or trying to be. I was never good at the whole ‘being an intimidating bad-ass’ thing. Mason stepped up like the brawler he was.” Ethan huffed a laugh. “He beat the shit out of me. Then he actually felt sorry for me and dragged me out of there.
“He told me I sucked at being a Five Claws and fucking accused me of being a poseur, told me to cut that shit out and make something of myself. He said we were friends now, and he was going to look out for me. He was so… kind to me. And I fell hard. He found out the truth soon enough, that I was, in fact, the pussycat son of the big bad jaguar boss of Five Claws. But it didn’t change anything. Mason stayed with me, and we kept our relationship a secret—except for when it came to you. It was always hard to keep anything from you.”
Ethan’s eyes softened when he looked at Emily. That simple look warmed her heart. Who needed a fireplace when Ethan’s gaze held an instantaneous warming magic?
“We never wanted to keep anything from you. I wanted to tell you everything, but Mason told me what a stupid and selfish idea that was. He pointed out you were human, that you didn’t heal like us, and that if I cared about you, I’d leave you out of it. I tried to, but I couldn’t stay away from you. Mason knew it even though I thought I was hiding it.”
He sighed. “We got away with that secret for months. No one got hurt. You didn’t know the most important details. I was the happiest I had ever been because I had Mason and you. I didn’t need anything else as long as I had the two of you. Then things started getting out of control.
“Outsiders, shifters, came to Brooklyn and put serious pressure on Five Claws. Five Claws never dealt with pressure from anyone. They ruled Brooklyn.”
Emily remembered. Those were scary times. She and Mason were never allowed to walk anywhere alone and she always covered for Mason when he went out with Ethan. Sometimes he’d sneak out and she had no idea where he was. She wished she hadn’t done that now. She didn’t want to be a tattletale, but maybe he would have still been alive.
Then again, it was like Ethan said. When Five Claws wanted something, they took it. Just because she and Mason had lived in an area Five Claws didn’t usually cause trouble in, didn’t mean they were any less of a problem. Their parents would have moved them all out of there in a heartbeat if they could have afforded it, and they did try to do something about Five Claws, but like most protesters, they were quickly silenced. Emily never did find out why, but she knew it was Five Claws’ doing. She was too worried about college and keeping Mason and Ethan’s secret. She was going to get a good job and move them all out of there. She didn’t realize how close to zero the time bomb was. If only she had been as resourceful then as she was now. But no single human could be a match for a crew of shifters. Maybe she would have just ended up dead, too.
She hated thinking about it.
“Liam was pissed to hell,” Ethan said. “I should have told Mason to take you and your parents far away from me, from Brooklyn. But I was selfish, scared to run, bound to a terrifying Alpha, and I was a stupid kid. Five Claws had their fangs deep in everyone around. Probably none of it would have worked, but I just—”
Ethan clenched his hands into hard fists, transforming his tan skin white. Then he took a deep breath and released them. “You and Mason kept me breathing. You kept my heart beating. Staying away from either of you would have killed me. I was convinced of that. I couldn’t think logically when I realized how much I needed you both.”
Ethan grabbed his head like he was in pain again. Emily wanted to hold him in her arms. She would have, but somehow she knew he would withdraw from her again if she tried. So she bit her tongue and only touched him with a single hand.
“I tried to be careful. I did. Liam was always more interested in other things, squashing any kind of resistance, making examples of people, taking what he wanted. I thought he wouldn’t pay any attention to me. He never did because I was a failure of a son to him. But when those outsiders started stirring the fucking pot, he cracked down
on me, harder and harder, until I made a fatal mistake.
“I snuck out to see Mason one night like I promised I would, but I was followed. Everything went to hell. Liam ordered his right-hand man, David Fletcher, to kill Mason, and he did. The outsiders arrived, and the whole place became a war zone. It was a bloodbath. And then the leader of those outsiders gave me the opportunity to finish Liam off for what he did, so I finished it.”
“Ethan,” Emily’s voice cracked. She was doing her best to stay strong for him, but seeing the anguish in his eyes was too much. This strange dance of closeness and distance was too much.
She grabbed him and hugged him tightly. Ethan let out a shallow breath and trembled against her. He didn’t push her away. He rested his head on her shoulder.
“The entire gang was wiped out,” he said. “Except for me. The outsiders won, took me with them, and I’ve stayed with them ever since.”
“What?!” Emily shouted. She pushed Ethan away, but only so she could see his eyes. “Who are these shifters exactly? What kind of terrible things are they making you do? We’re getting in my car and leaving. We’re leaving this all behind and starting over.”
Ethan’s eyes widened ever so slightly. “Why don’t you hate me? Why aren’t you cursing me out and leaving? I killed Mason. I did it.”
“David and Liam did it, Ethan.”
“Because of me!”
“No!” Emily bellowed. “You listen to me, Ethan Street. That’s your name, but you aren’t your father. You loved Mason. I know how much you did. I saw it when you were with him. I saw it when you talked to him. I loved him, too. We loved each other and we had something special. Even though I was left out of most of it, I’d like to think I was some kind of anchor for the both of you.”
“You were,” Ethan confirmed.
“I knew Mason before you did. He changed little bit by little bit as we got to know each other. He changed again when you came along. He was happy. Really happy. And so was I. When it was the three of us, when I had you both, I felt complete somehow. Even when the two of you were keeping secrets. I can’t explain it, but I know the three of us were always meant to end up together. But our time was too short.”
