Someone snickered close by--one of the crew members she supposed, but she didn’t look. She was too busy gauging Jesse’s reaction.
He sent her a thoughtful glance. “It’s the name of the ship.”
“I got that,” Erin said dryly, following him as he strode across the deck and down one level via a set of narrow stairs carrying the luggage he’d brought with him.
One bag was for her and contained clothing she suspected had been purchased specifically for her since everything fit her as if it had been. Jesse hadn’t said so and he’d certainly led her to believe that he hadn’t gone after her to rescue her, but it seemed evident that he’d expected to return with her.
Or maybe his last girl friend was just conveniently of the same size?
Unfortunately, she hadn’t paid that much attention to Juliette.
“We’ll stay in this cabin.”
“We?”
Jesse dropped the bags and turned to study her for a long moment. “Unless you get seasick, in which case I’ll sleep on deck.”
There was a gleam of teasing humor in his eyes when he said it. Erin wasn’t immune to it, so she simply chose to ignore it. “I guess it’s a good thing you weren’t around while I was pregnant then because I spent six months puking my guts out,” she said tightly, looking the cabin over with jealousy gnawing at her insides. “I hope you at least changed the sheets.”
She could hear his teeth grinding. “There’s nothing between me and Juliette, chère, not like you’re thinkin’ anyway. This is her yacht.”
Erin relaxed fractionally--enough to shrug as if she didn’t particularly care. “She makes enough money as a vet to afford something like this?” she asked in surprise.
When Jesse said nothing, she turned from her examination of the cabin’s appointments to look at him questioningly. He looked--irritated. “I gave it to her,” he said reluctantly.
“You?” Erin gasped, so stunned by the discovery that Jesse could afford something this expensive and give it as a gift that she was distracted momentarily from her jealousy, but only briefly. “And there’s nothing between the two of you?”
Jesse grimaced. “She’s my sister.”
“Your sister!” Erin echoed, but then her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You mean really your sister? Or are you just referring to her as your sister because she’s one of what you call the brethren? She is a Lycan, isn’t she?”
He looked torn between amusement and irritation. “She’s my half sister--by blood.”
Erin wasn’t entirely convinced. Looking back, she really couldn’t recall anything Juliette had said or done that had led her to believe she was Jesse’s lover. She had been very possessive, but Erin supposed that could’ve just been a sisterly reaction to having her brother drag in a female that had been involved in his captivity. Maybe it was nothing more than that Juliette hated her for the same reason Jesse did?
Or maybe Juliette hated her because she wasn’t Lycan?
The crew, Erin discovered without a lot of surprise the following morning, was Lycan. She knew because they were some of the same men that had been involved in the raid on the government facility. Almost a dozen of Jesse’s pack had accompanied them on the trip, twice the number needed to crew the ship and more than enough to fill the crew quarters. Those who hadn’t been able to find quarters below settled in the other guest cabins, which Erin supposed explained, at least in part, why Jesse was bunking with her.
Possibly, it was also because she was the only female on board. She didn’t know if Jesse had made the decision to protect her from any unwanted attentions or not, but she was relieved to discover they all seemed to consider her his property and off limits even though the situation made it impossible for her to be sure of whether he would have chosen the arrangement otherwise or not.
She offered to help in the galley, not because she was such a great cook but because she didn’t particularly relish the idea of being cooped up in the cabin all day with nothing to do. She knew nothing at all about boats. She supposed she could’ve offered to swab the decks or something, but Jesse spent most of his time on deck and she didn’t want him to get the idea that she was hanging after him.
He’d made it fairly obvious, in spite of the fabulous sex they’d had at the safe house, that he wasn’t even close to forgiving her, or falling beneath her ‘spell.’ She ended up sleeping by herself most of the time because Jesse only came to the cabin to sleep when she left it.
She was relieved about that--at first. After a few days at sea she’d had time to do a lot of thinking, though, and she wasn’t too stupid to see that her situation was precarious. Supposing they did find Joshua and rescued him and Jesse was relieved of all doubts that the baby was his, she had to wonder if, after going to so much effort to rescue him if Jesse would willingly part with him. It seemed to follow that if Jesse was willing to risk so much for the baby when he wasn’t even sure it was his that he wasn’t just going to give the baby to her and walk away.
They could fight over him, or she could try to make some sort of peace between them and they could stay together.
She wasn’t entirely certain how she felt about them all living together, but it didn’t take a lot of thought to realize both she and the baby would be better off with him than without him. The government wasn’t just going to give up when and if they managed to wrest Joshua away from them. They would come after her and the baby again. She would be on the run, possibly forever, unless she could at least make a truce with Jesse that would make it possible for her to live among the Lycans and have their protection.
That wasn’t going to be easy when Jesse was avoiding her.
She couldn’t even find out where they were going, much less discover what plans Jesse had for her future or even if he had any.
He’d said she was his. She hadn’t been in any state to really soak that in at the time he’d said it and she’d thought he was just talking man talk anyway. Men tended to be territorial. It seemed reasonable enough to suppose that Lycan males were at least as territorial or more so, but she didn’t feel terribly reassured by the claim made in the heat of the moment.
For all she knew, he might not even remember he’d said it, much less feel that way now that the thrill was gone.
Physically, he was attracted to her, or at least he had been. She didn’t place a lot of faith that that was an enduring situation either, particularly when he seemed to feel just the opposite about her on every other level.
For her own safety and Joshua’s, she was just going to have to swallow her pride and try to woo him. Now was the time. Now might be her only chance. If they did find and rescue Joshua, she was going to be focused on the baby on the trip back and caring for him wasn’t going to give her a lot of time to seduce Jesse.
If she couldn’t convince him that he was wrong about her and/or to keep her and the baby close, then she was going to have to try to steal the baby from Jesse and she would be on the run from both the government and the Lycans.
Looking at it that way, her pride was the last thing she needed to be worried about protecting.
The plan was easier conceived than executed. Jesse was wary. He didn’t trust her, at all, and he was highly suspicious of her motives when she tried the tactic of smiling at him encouragingly whenever he looked her way and ‘accidently’ happened upon him after searching for him all over the ship.
Hanging around the cabin while he was in it was a bust, too. He either slept through it, pretended he was sleeping, or, occasionally, he would slant an irritated glance at her through half closed eyelids for disturbing his sleep.
She’d spent too much of her life being a scientist and not nearly enough being ‘just a woman.’ The scientific studies she’d read on the mating ritual didn’t seem to be that much help and, despite Jesse’s snide remark about her lack of virginity, she didn’t really have a lot of personal experience to draw from. She’d had a few boyfriends, but she hadn’t been the aggressor in those cases. She had
no idea of what to do when he wouldn’t allow her close enough to even attempt to flirt, but it was obvious to her after only a few days that remaining passive and trying to encourage him to come to her wasn’t going to get her anywhere.
Would it help, she wondered, to try to arouse his lust and keep him so busy expending it that he didn’t have time to think about the lack of any other common ground in their relationship? She wasn’t certain that it would, but then she was willing to try anything except that she couldn’t quite get up the nerve to simply strip down, crawl into the sack with him, and molest him while he was sleeping. He’d be vulnerable then and easy enough to manipulate, she knew, but the sticking point was that that kind of behavior was completely uncharacteristic for her. The more she thought about it and tried to work up her nerve, the more unnerved she became.
After almost a week at sea, she discovered that Jesse spent much of his nights in the main cabin of the yacht, a large cabin that was used as the living area and dining hall combined. She’d already ‘strolled’ the upper deck for nearly an hour looking for him when she decided to go below and see if he’d taken over one of the other crew members’ bunks. Hearing voices and an occasional chuckle in the main cabin, she’d frozen in the corridor for quite some time, trying to decide whether she had enough nerve to casually stroll through the room filled with men in search of Jesse. Was it even worth the attempt when he was so surrounded that it wasn’t likely she’d get the chance to try to draw him into conversation?
Finally, trying to act casual when she felt downright faint--as if she was entering a bear den instead of a room full of men--she decided she could pretend she was looking for something to read.
The moment she stepped into the doorway, all conversation died and she found herself staring at nearly a half a dozen men. Jesse and Tavian had a large map spread out on the table before them and had obviously been studying it before she came in. Billy Ray and three other men whose names she’d heard but couldn’t remember were grouped around the other end of the long table with playing cards in their hands.
Despite her intention to try to behave casually, she checked in the door way when they all looked up, as if she’d been pinned to the frame. Panic washed through her. Her mind went blank and refused the simple order she forced through it to ‘act natural.’ After many moments, enough to assure them all that there was nothing casual about her entrance, she managed to force herself to move forward instead of whirling on her heel and dashing back to her own cabin. Every muscle, bone, and tendon in her body protested the mental order to move, though, and she felt horribly awkward and self-conscious as she focused on the cabinet that she knew held books and magazines and headed toward it.
Behind her, she heard movement as the men shifted in their seats. To watch her, she wondered? Someone cleared their throat. “I’ll take two.”
She heard the slap of cards on the table and a miniscule amount of relief went through her.
“I think we’re going to have to risk following the coast line of the mainland if we want to make time,” Jesse said slowly. “They know we got Dr. Wagner. They’ll also know we had the chance to question him. They’re bound to be expecting us. I can’t see any benefit to us in giving them more time to prepare.”
Mainland? What mainland? Erin wondered as she knelt in front of the cabinet and began to shuffle the books and magazines absently. She hadn’t seen a sign of land in days. She was fairly certain they’d been heading south, south east, though. Cuba?
There wasn’t a great selection of books and magazines. Even if she’d been really interested in finding reading material she would’ve been hard pressed to find anything to her taste. Did the woman never read anything but medical journals and animal magazines? Cripes! Talk about obsessive! The selection of books wasn’t any better. Those were about animals too.
Finally, more for something to do with her hands than anything else, she picked out a couple of nature magazines and took a copy of The Call of the Wild, closed the cabinet, and stood once more. After studying the couch speculatively for several moments, she decided she’d had enough excitement for one night. Her heart simply couldn’t take planting her ass on the couch and pretending to ignore the room full of Lycans while they pretended to ignore her and stared holes through her when they thought she wouldn’t notice.
Without glancing toward any of them, she tucked the book and magazines beneath her arm and headed out again. She was shaking so badly with reaction by the time she’d gotten to the end of the corridor she was grateful to reach her own cabin again.
Dropping the reading materials on the floor by the bed, she stripped down to her panties and t-shirt, crawled into the bunk, and pulled the covers over herself. She was running out of time and she was completely out of ideas.
Chapter Ten
“Ain’t never seen two people mope so much in all my days. Dere ain’t nobody here gonna bother you, chère. Why you always hidin’?”
Erin had been so deeply in thought she hadn’t noticed the man who’d stopped beside her even when his shadow blocked the uncomfortable glare of the sun. His voice penetrated her abstraction, though, and her head jerked upwards. “Excuse me?”
Tavain shook his head and moved to settle one hip on the railing. “He tole you you were his woman, right, chère?”
Erin blushed to the roots of her hair. She didn’t have to say anything. Her reaction was enough.
Tavian chuckled. “No need to be so shy about it, chère. It’s a natural ting. An’ we’re not like the humans. We know when a female’s been marked by one of our own. She’s off limits.”
Erin blinked. “Marked?” she echoed.
Tavian chuckled again. “Did you tink doze were just love bites, little girl? Naw. For sure he mark you. Else how else he fine you, huh? Once done, cain’t be undone neider. So why you mopin’ here when your man waitin’ below, huh? An’ why he always look like somebody been torturin’ him every time he look at you?”
As embarrassing as it was to be caught up in such a conversation with a man--Lycan--she barely knew, Erin was too intrigued by what he’d said, and too desperate for someone to talk to to send him on his way. “I guess that’s because he hates me,” she muttered.
Tavian grunted. “You tink dat, chère? He hate you? Shore did go ta lots of trouble for a female he hate, doan you tink?”
Erin shrugged. “He didn’t come after me. He came to destroy the research facility, and to get the baby.”
“So--not finding baby boy, he sling you ober his shoulder and take four or five bullet holes to get you out of dere cause he hate you? Baby girl, dat doan even make sense to me, especially since I know different. I been tryin’ ta keep my nose outta his business, but seems to me the two of you ain’t got enough sense between you to work dis ting out widout a little push in de right direction.”
Erin couldn’t help but smile. “I suppose he confided in you that he was madly in love with me?” she asked doubtfully.
He shrugged. “Sort of did. It was me and Billy Ray find him after doze government boys fill him full of holes. Never seen anybody so shot up. Lycan or not, I was wonderin’ if he was gonna make it. He was outta his head for a while dere, babblin’ ‘bout that place--an’ you. Mostly you. Finally figured out he was hurt more inside than those bullets did damage. He love you so much de thought that you betrayed him was what was killin’ him. Had to start to hate to git through it.”
Erin felt a lump form in her throat. She grimaced. “I doubt it’s a love/hate thing, whatever you’re thinking. He hates all of us, equally, or maybe me a little more than the others, but I didn’t betray him, whatever any of you think. They used me, too. I’m not trying to claim that I’m completely without guilt, but it wasn’t me that did those things to him. It wasn’t my idea and there was nothing I could do to stop them.”
Tavian gave her a hard, penetrating look. “You set him free.”
Erin looked away guiltily, staring at the swells along the side of the ship. She cle
ared her throat uncomfortably. “That was as much for my sake as his. I couldn’t escape and I knew they wouldn’t stop until they were completely satisfied. And when they were done with us they would’ve either buried us in some government prison somewhere forever or killed us, probably the latter.”
“You love him?”
Erin felt her face redden again. “I don’t really know how I feel about him, to be honest. I just don’t want him to hate me.”
He studied her thoughtfully for several moments. “Some men, dare a man’s man. All de men look up to dem, wanna be like them, follow dem through hell if dey ask it, dare just natural born leaders. Some men, dare a woman’s man and all the women’s just migrate in dare direction when they come around. Jesse, he’s both. Everybody love Jesse. I doan tink you’re an exception.”
She didn’t think she was either. “I haven’t had much chance to see the lovable side of him--except from a distance,” she said wryly.
“So try a liddle bit harder,” he said testily.
“How?” Erin demanded hopelessly.
He shook his head. “Women are supposed to know these tings.”
Erin gave him a resentful glance and looked away again. “Well, obviously I don’t.”
“You got ta see somethin’ to want it. Quit hidin’.”
“I haven’t been hiding,” Erin retorted irritably. “I just don’t feel comfortable walking up to people I don’t know and trying to carry on a conversation with them.”
He grasped her arm and hauled her to her feet. “You know me. If you let him ignore you, he will. You have to make it so’s he cain’t ignore you.”
She wasn’t entirely comfortable, at first, even around Tavian, but after a few days she became more so. With no other plan to follow, she decided to take him up on his suggestion, though, and made it a point to move about the ship more openly, stopping whenever she saw Tavian to talk, whether he was with a group of the others or not. She found it was easier each time and began to feel less uncomfortable and more able to actually join the conversation in progress. Inevitably, whenever she joined any group, Jesse left, but although she was disappointed at first, she realized fairly quickly that Tavian had been right.
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