by Sara M Zerig
“Did you feel like—” Chloe began.
“What happened back there?” Ritt spoke at the same time. They had made the short drive in silence and were now parked before her townhome. There was something of a stare-down between them, neither wanting to be the first to speak up.
“I had the feeling someone was watching us,” she said finally.
“So did I,” Ritt revealed. “I don’t feel it now, though.”
“No,” Chloe concurred.
Ritt fell silent again, and that’s when it hit her. It had been a strange evening—her fire-cracker eyes, the mutual feeling of being watched—and yet, it all wasn’t as bizarre as it should have been to either of them. Chloe was already used to some weirdness in her everyday life. Was Ritt?
She tested the waters. “You know, the fact that you’re not more weirded out by all this is weird in and of itself.”
Ritt flashed a devilish smile. “Ditto.”
There was something. Whatever it was, it was strange enough that he couldn’t be forthcoming to just anyone about it. It could be as strange as her own secret or stranger. She leaned toward Ritt to kiss him, casting out a mental line as she did, breaking her own rule of not probing.
Careful.
Oh, now you show up? Chloe answered the unwelcome voice in her mind.
Ritt’s lids slid to half-closed as Chloe’s lips touched his. There were vibrant colors then hazy flashes of scenery going by fast. She deepened their kiss, and the images sharpened. She felt hyper-aware of her surroundings, on the lookout for other people that she did not want to see her.
She was running on a desert plain in the dead of night. She felt hungry. She felt dangerous. Someone—no, something—was running beside her, but she could not see it clearly. The creature halted, and so did she.
Ritt broke the kiss, and Chloe locked eyes with his. Gold bands rimmed the irises of his eyes for a split second. Ritt glanced away and then back to her; his eyes were brown again. She moved back. It had happened so fast she could tell herself that she had imagined it.
“You’re hiding something.” It was less of an accusation and more a statement of fact. “Something that makes your eyes turn gold when your inhibitions are lowered, which is almost never.”
Ritt went still. He wasn’t exactly angry, but he was unhappy, disappointed. He scanned their surroundings from the car. But they both knew they weren’t being watched now.
“You won’t tell me, will you?” Chloe guessed.
“No,” he confirmed, staring out the window.
“But you want me to tell you my secret,” she jabbed.
Ritt shot her a sardonic look. “I think I’ve figured it out. How long have you been reading minds?”
Chloe was quick to correct him. “I don’t read minds. It doesn’t work that way. I pick up on people’s feelings. Sometimes I see things.”
“See things? What things?”
“Personal things, traumatic things … visions from the past. It usually happens when someone is upset.”
“I wasn’t upset.”
“You are now,” Chloe said with an awkward half-laugh. Ritt wasn’t amused. She confessed, “I went looking for it this time.”
Ritt didn’t follow. “Looking for what?”
“For whatever you’re hiding. I don’t do that often,” she added. It struck Chloe that there was no apprehension, no nervousness, no sense of impending doom—not like all the other times she wanted to tell someone and then chickened out. “I’ve never told anyone all this before.”
“No one?” Ritt prodded.
“I almost told my dad once, when I was little. And I’ve wanted to tell Nikki many times.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Each time, just when I was about to tell them, I felt strongly that I shouldn’t.”
“Because they wouldn’t believe you?”
Chloe shook her head, searching for the words to explain something she didn’t fully understand. “No, like it would hurt them to know it, somehow. Like they would be … I don’t know … unsafe.”
Ritt seemed to get that. She tried again. “That’s my secret. Your turn.”
Ritt pulled her into his lap. The warmth of his hands on her and his masculine, musky scent made her weak in the knees. He brushed the hair from the side of her face, his voice low. “If I tell you now, you would be unsafe. I can’t have that.”
Chloe had every intention of questioning that further. Later. Her lips sought his, her hands drawn to his chest. Ritt grasped the side of her jaw and continued the heated kiss, his other hand firmly at her hip.
This time, Ritt was first to come up for air. “No, Chloe, no more regrets.”
“No regrets, I promise,” she enticed.
“No,” he repeated softly. “Not now.”
The words were gentle, but they stung a little. He planted a goodnight kiss on her forehead and ushered her off his lap, out of the car, and to the front door. Chloe knew he wanted her, too, knew he was only responding to her feeling that they had moved too fast the first time. It felt like rejection anyway. She locked the door behind her, pride wounded.
Ritt returned to his Jeep, eased the seat back, and settled in. If someone was watching them earlier, they could show up here tonight. He had no intention of leaving Chloe alone, but he couldn’t go inside with her either. As it was, the scent of her arousal lingered just enough to make him damned uncomfortable. He would spend the night violating his mate a half-dozen different ways instead of watching for whoever was watching them.
He went through what he knew. Chloe wasn’t human, but she didn’t know that yet. She didn’t even suspect it, despite her unnatural looking eyes and empathic abilities. But why would she? She didn’t know that human-looking non-humans existed.
Ritt only knew of the shifters: wolves, cats, and, if he was to believe his mother’s tales, dragons. Most people in the family laughed that notion off as too fantastical for even a shifter to believe. To Ritt’s mind, weredragons were no more fantastical than the idea of werewolves and werecats were to humans. Was it such a stretch that there was some other group of non-humans like Chloe?
There were too many unknowns to sort through on his own. It was generally accepted that the older shifters knew things—other-worldly type things—that they didn’t share with the younger generations. Kent, the patriarch of the family, was said to be over one hundred years old. Although Kent would never confirm it, Ritt didn’t doubt it. If there was some other secret non-human race, the elders of his family might already know about them.
Aaron summoned the lightning to illuminate their surroundings. There was only one building within the rural area Abby had given them to work with. It was a dance club right off the highway, and it was busy. Aaron and his father split up; Aaron monitored the main entrance while Aidan covered the employee exit at the back. They each had pocketed a cloaking stone. As long as they stayed in the shadows, the stones further obscured their unusually large forms.
His mother and Abby stayed back to work a spell to watch over this location from the Coven Realm, should it be a place Chloe frequented. Aaron had kept watch for two hours, when the activity at the entrance picked up. He summoned a small scrying mirror in the palm of his hand.
“Closing time,” Aaron relayed to Aidan through the mirror.
Small groups of young people exited through the double doors in predictable spurts and then quieted. All human. But his sister was close by, somewhere. Would he recognize her? Wisp told his parents she’d have eyes like his and his father’s. Those eyes would set her apart from the humans, but he would have to be very close to tell.
Would she have realized any powers yet? It could happen at any time before adulthood, but in the Coven Realm, the young were prepared for it and then trained to develop their natural talent. Would being raised human repress his sister’s gifts?
A couple of stragglers came through the doors, a young woman holding up a taller, inebriated young man.
“I
’m telling you, her eyes are like freaky, sparkly, green! Look again!” He waved his phone before her face.
The girl struggled under his weight, pushing him to stand upright. “You’re killing me here. Can you at least try to walk?”
The boy pitched forward. Aaron grabbed him by the back of his jacket before he hit the ground and caught the phone as it fell from his lax hand. The young woman craned her neck to look up at him. He probably shouldn’t have stepped out of the shadows, appearing in his full size. The average human male was 5’11,” and Aaron was 6’6”.
He employed his friendliest expression to temper his off-putting size. “Your boyfriend is out.”
She gaped a moment more before responding. “Oh, he’s not my boyfriend. He’s just my friend. I mean we used to date, but we don’t anymore. But I promised to take him home. He always drinks too much.”
“That was nice of you,” Aaron complimented, thinking how fortunate it was that she was talkative. He eyed the photo on the phone. The eyes were blurred, but the rest of her came through clearly, and it was clearly Chloe. She had his mother’s face and white hair, and eyes like his and his father’s. She looked to have been caught off-guard when her picture was taken.
He gestured with the phone. “Her eyes are strange.”
“It’s blurry but yeah, obviously contact lenses. Poor girl, she got embarrassed and took off. Not that I blame her—taking her picture was rude.”
“Do you know the other girl next to her?” Aaron asked.
“No.” She motioned to the unconscious body in Aaron’s grasp. “Can you help me get him in the car? I can’t carry him myself, and I can’t just leave him here.”
“Of course.” He followed her to the vehicle and settled the Earthen man inside, discretely pocketing the cell phone. Aaron had bid her goodnight when she half-yelled, “Wrestling!”
“Pardon?”
“You’re a professional wrestler, aren’t you? I should probably know who you are, huh? But I don’t watch that stuff.”
“You should get your friend home,” he suggested, neither confirming nor denying her suspicion.
“Yeah, I should. Hey, thanks again!” she called as he disappeared into the shadows.
The girl drove away, and Aaron called to his father through the mirror in his palm. “I have something.”
Chapter Eight
Chloe didn’t know why she awoke so early. It was 5 AM when she rolled out of bed and spied Ritt’s Jeep from her bedroom window, right where it was when he’d dropped her off the night before. Had he spent the night there? She threw a sweatshirt over her PJs and headed outside. Ritt was awake, and she could tell from the creases under his eyes that he hadn’t slept. He lowered the window, and she leaned in to kiss him.
“Come up.”
“I’m fine,” he protested unconvincingly.
Chloe opened the door for him. “You need to stretch. You need rest.”
Ritt followed her upstairs, quietly past Nikki’s closed door into Chloe’s room. She led him to the unmade bed. “Lie down.”
Ritt complied, pulling her down with him into a kiss. She broke the kiss and attempted to roll to the side, but Ritt held her in place atop him. “I’ve been thinking about this all night. I told you I had no reason to go anywhere until we figured things out between us, but that isn’t really true.”
Chloe began to recoil when Ritt clarified, “I already know.”
“You do?”
“In my family, we know instantly when we meet the one person we’re meant to be with—our mate. You are my mate. There is nothing too strange or too scary to keep me from you.”
“You mean … like a soul mate?”
Ritt gave a half-smile in answer. Chloe stared back at him, awestruck. She had spent so much time and energy combatting this—countless hours of over-thinking, avoiding, and down-playing her own feelings. Now the man Chloe once thought she could never really have was in her bed, declaring her as his soul mate.
See? Soul mate.
Yes, thank you. I’ve got this.
“I’m not saying this to scare you,” Ritt went on. “If it’s too much for you right now, I’ll give you space. But I’ll never be far.”
Chloe told him what she should have admitted to herself months ago. “I don’t want space.”
Ritt’s expression was unchanged, as if he already knew that. He had known all along, probably. “You want to know everything about me? Then come home with me, today.”
“To your apartment?”
“To Arizona.”
“Today?”
“I can’t tell you anything more until you meet my family. You already know too much.”
She did? How was that possible? She didn’t really know anything. There were a few pieces of a puzzle before her, but they didn’t fit together.
You should go.
Chloe gave in. “OK.”
“You’ll go?”
“I’ll go, but only if you get some sleep.”
“Don’t let me sleep for more than an hour; it’s a long drive.” Ritt settled back. “And wake me if you see or hear anything … off.”
Chloe nodded half-heartedly, and Ritt closed his eyes. She set the timer on her phone for an hour and a half, the perfect amount of time for a power nap. While he slept, she showered, dressed in jean shorts and a T-shirt, and packed a small bag for the weekend.
Nikki would still be sleeping for a few hours after they left, she figured, so Chloe sent her a text. Nikki was a heavy sleeper; Chloe wasn’t worried the text would wake her. She stared at the blank box a while. It was such an absurd message to convey, really. Chloe opted to embrace it and inject a little humor only Nikki would appreciate, with a liberal use of emojis.
RMR the guy I wuz avoiding but left w/ last night? Driving to AZ w/him to meet his family. SRSLY. Will call soon.
P.S. No tequila!
Ritt stirred in her bed a few minutes before the timer ran out. “Are you sure you got enough sleep? I think we have time.”
“Come here,” Ritt beckoned to her. Chloe stepped to the bed, and Ritt rose to his knees, pulling her close. “We have time. And I have a lot to make up for.”
Chloe’s stomach tightened in anticipation, her cheeks flushing. Ritt brushed his knuckles gently against the side of her face before slipping his hand to the base of her head and kissing her deeply. She breathed in the spicy, musky scent of his skin.
Ritt pulled away from the kiss and stared back at her. There was a controlled desire in his eyes, unlike their first time. He kept his gaze on hers as his hands moved to her waist. She could feel the warmth of his hands through the thin cotton top as he glided the material up over her ribs, over her breasts, to her shoulders. Chloe finished the job, pulling off the shirt and dropping it to the floor. Ritt’s lips curved as his eyes settled on her bra.
Chloe blushed. His hands were on her again, trailing up over her abdomen and around to her back, where he unclasped her bra. The garment fell away, and Chloe began to feel self-conscious, over-exposed before him.
“Baby, you are so beautiful,” Ritt whispered. His hands cupped her breasts, a thumb toying with one nipple. Chloe’s head fell back involuntarily, a soft gasp escaping through parted lips. She dropped her eyes to find him watching her, his passion still controlled while hers spiraled. Holding her gaze, he brought his mouth to her breasts. Mesmerized, she watched as he suckled gently at one then kissed his way to the other.
A fire exploded within her. She pulled at the button tab to her jean shorts, and Ritt moved his hands to her hips to help. The shorts slid down her legs, and Chloe quickly stepped out of them. Ritt leaned back, drinking in the sight of her clad only in white lace panties. “I’m overdressed.”
Chloe helped him pull his shirt up over his head, revealing a perfectly smooth, deeply tanned, hard chiseled chest and flat muscl
ed abs. She pushed him gently back on the bed, her hands at his waistband. He lifted his hips, assisting her in the undress. Chloe pulled the black jeans down his long legs to the floor. She reached for his boxers, but Ritt stopped her, guiding her into the bed and rolling atop her, his thighs straddling hers. A hardened length straining inside his boxers belied the determined restraint in his eyes.
They eyed each other silently a moment then Ritt nudged her thighs apart with his knees. He traced her skin with his fingertips, from her abdomen to one hip, and back again to the other hip, his hand slipping lower over the lace, to palm her sex. Chloe gasped at the sensation of his hand, warm and firm, massaging her core through the undergarment.
He moved back and tugged off her panties, tossing them over the side of the bed. He brushed the bud of her sex with his thumb before lowering his mouth there, his hands on her hips, her hands at his shoulders. Chloe moaned as his hot mouth took hold of her, tasting her in leisurely strokes of his tongue.
He raised his head and peered down at her smugly. She tried again for his boxers and was again denied, his hands gently pushing hers away and then settling back to her hips.
“Need something?” Ritt teased huskily.
Chloe glared up at him, and he chuckled. This was not the same Ritt who took her virginity. There were no gripping, possessive caresses, no grinding, insistent kisses. Chloe had an epiphany: she didn’t like controlled Ritt half as much as she liked Stairwell-Ritt. He was toying with her, pushing her desire to the limits while keeping his own in check. So.Not.Fair.
Ritt may have been her first, but Chloe wasn’t entirely unschooled in the art of seduction—or self-satisfaction. She lowered her lids and lifted a hand to one breast, sliding her other hand down her body toward her sex. Ritt’s eyes flared. In one quick motion, he captured her wrists and pinned them to the mattress over her head.
