by Vivi Andrews
Two dozen fat turkeys lined the banquet tables that filled the Pride Hall, along with all the fixings, half a dozen hams, and a trio of massive beef roasts. There would be even more food in the main dining hall. The pride had grown too large to all fit into one space—even one as large as the Hall—and many of those with small children had chosen to eat at the other, quieter hall, though Grace’s family was here, front and center. When the celebration descended into a rowdier party—as it inevitably would—the families would move over to the dining hall along with those who wanted to continue feasting.
Grace figured she could make her escape then. She wasn’t much in the mood for festivities today.
Dominec wasn’t here.
Not that she’d expected him to be. She was reasonably sure he’d never attended one of the holiday feasts and he wasn’t likely to start now when he’d been avoiding her all week, but she couldn’t help looking up every time the door opened to see if it was him.
The meal was over. The ceremony honoring Rachel was complete. Tables were already being shoved to the sides of the room to clear a dance floor. He wasn’t coming.
She should go find him. He’d cut himself off from anything resembling family ever since he’d lost his, but she hated the idea of him alone today. If he wouldn’t come to the party, she would bring the party to him.
Except that wasn’t what he wanted. He’d made that more than clear by running out on her.
Again.
And by avoiding her all week.
She always pushed. She always ran at problems head on. She didn’t know how to leave well enough alone. But when was it too much? Should she be respecting his wishes and leaving him be? The idea stirred a violent protest in her, but she couldn’t exactly force him to let her in.
“Grace.”
“Hm?” She turned, only realizing when she saw Kelly standing beside her chair that he must have said her name several times. The table where they’d been sitting was being moved—and she was sitting there, staring off into space, in the way of everything. “Sorry.”
She scrambled to her feet and helped Kelly collapse their chairs and drag them over to the stacks forming to one side of the raised platform that served as a stage.
“Dare I ask what you were thinking about?” he asked wryly.
She shrugged. “Pride stuff.”
The lie came easily. And she found herself wondering how many times she had lied to him without even noticing. Little things, yes, but all designed to keep part of herself away from him, keep that safe distance. He didn’t know her, but how much of that was her fault?
Her mother appeared, crossing the stage with Honor and Faith in tow, and Grace climbed the steps to meet them with Kelly at her heels.
“We’re heading over to the dining hall!” her mother sing-songed cheerfully—all happiness, not even sparing a pinched glance for the fact that Grace was wearing jeans rather than a dress.
“Have you had a good time?” she asked and her mother beamed at her and Kelly equally.
“Oh wonderful. Wonderful,” her mother repeated, her laser gaze taking in how close Kelly was standing to Grace. “Everything is wonderful. But we’ll be off now.” She hugged Grace and Kelly in turn.
Around the room, other pride families were splitting off. The twins hugged Kelly, and Grace had to pry the pair of them off him to take her turn. Her mother laughed as she collected the girls, winking at Grace and Kelly. “You kids have fun now.”
Her mother was delighted with her. Not disappointed. Not confused. Just openly delighted. And it was because of Kelly. Part of her wanted to be irritated that she needed a man for her mother to be happy, but another part had to wonder if she was being overly obstinate by pushing away her mother’s idea of happiness.
Grace watched her mother go, waiting until she was out of the building and well out of earshot before she turned to Kelly. “I haven’t really given us a chance, have I?”
His eyebrows flew up toward his ever-present cowboy hat. “No, you haven’t,” he replied, visibly surprised by her candor—which reminded her again about how little she let him see of her.
She gave him the flip and easy parts of her. The parts that diffused tension and kept everything copasetic. And then she was mad at him because that was all he saw.
“I’m sorry.”
They were standing in the shadows at the back of the stage, out of the way as their pride mates set up speakers and cleared tables. Kelly tucked her hair behind her ear. “I’m not asking you to be sorry, Grace.”
No. He was just asking for a shot. Something he had earned and she’d never given him. She was too busy throwing emotional energy after a man who had a habit of physically running away from her as fast as he could. She always called others on their self-sabotaging bullshit, but no one had called her on hers.
She might be able to go the distance with Kelly, if she just got out of her own way.
She opened her mouth to tell him just that.
And the door opened.
She knew she shouldn’t look. It wouldn’t be him. But in spite of the protest from her brain, her head turned toward the sound.
And there he was.
Dominec Freaking Giroux.
He hadn’t dressed for the occasion. One of his typical black T-shirts stretched over the muscles of his shoulders, the long sleeves pushed up to reveal the bronzed muscles of his forearms. The black leather jacket he’d just shrugged out of dangled from one finger and his standard black cargo pants hung low off his hips.
He’d be commando underneath. She knew now that Dominec never bothered with underwear.
The light was bright and festive in the Pride Hall. No shadows for him to fade into, but he didn’t pull his usual routine of canting his face so everyone was forced to look at his scars. Instead his eyes scanned the room as if he was looking for someone.
When his gaze hit her, it stopped—
And so did the world.
A room separated them, but when he looked at her like that, his black gaze hungry and crackling with heat, they might as well have been the only two people on the planet. Dominec hadn’t needed to be shown who she was. He’d seen. She could lie to him and he would just laugh, seeing right through to the heart of her. She didn’t know how he did it. She only knew it roused something in her soul that had been asleep her entire life.
“I guess that answers that question.”
At Kelly’s wry words, Grace wrenched her gaze away from Dominec, her head whipping back to the cowboy. “What question?”
Kelly just shook his head, lowering his eyes. When he looked up again, she saw resignation in them. “You’ve never looked at me like that, Grace.”
“I’m sor—”
“Don’t apologize. That really won’t help. And it won’t change anything. Everything I wanted from you that you weren’t able to give me… It’s him. He’s your mate. Like Amala said. She saw it right away, didn’t she?”
“No. I mean, yes, that’s what she thought it was, but it wasn’t like that—”
“It wasn’t. Meaning now it is.” Kelly shook his head ruefully. “You were never going to see me, because all you see is him. Hell, Grace, all you had to do was tell me you were with him and I would have bowed out.”
“I’m not with him,” she protested. She didn’t know how to be with him. But Kelly was right. She couldn’t see anyone else when Dominec was in the room. And it wasn’t fair to Kelly to pretend otherwise. “It’s complicated.”
“Yeah. With him it would have to be.” The cowboy swept his hat off his head and rubbed a hand up the back of his neck through his blond curls. “If he isn’t good to you, I’ll kill him. Even if I have to enlist help from half the pride in order to take him on, I’ll do it. So tell him he ever hurts you, I hurt him—with the help of however many people I need to hold him down.”
; She smiled, caught between being amused and honored that he meant it. “You’re a good guy, Kelly Mather. Way too good for me.”
“Yeah, see, that’s where we always disagree, Grace,” he said, propping his hat back on his head, tilted all the way back. “I never thought there was such a thing as too good for you.”
Chapter Forty
She was with Kelly again. Of fucking course she was.
“I’m leaving.”
Mateo grabbed his shoulder before he could move. “Oh no, you don’t. You’re my wingman for the next five minutes. Come on. Pretend you’re charming. There are females here who don’t know you well enough to know any better.”
But he didn’t want someone who didn’t know him.
He refused to look toward the stage as Mateo dragged him toward a cluster of likely looking females. Anger twisting unchecked in his gut, he wasn’t in the mood to play wingman, but if his main job was to make Mateo look better by comparison, he was sure to succeed. The scarred, surly bastard was not what any woman wanted.
Grace wanted you.
He evicted the thought from his head. Grace was up on the stage with Kelly, standing far too close to him, speaking far too intimately, driving spikes through his brain every time he glanced that direction, though he told himself he was not looking.
Music began to blast through the speakers on either side of the stage and the girls Mateo was wooing squealed in unified delight. Dominec cringed, wondering if five minutes had passed yet. Mateo seemed to be doing fine with the squealing girls. The pack of them were migrating to the dance floor where a crowd of shifters were already bouncing along to the song—some pop bullshit about bad romance. As if some fucking pop princess had the first fucking idea what a bad romance really was.
While Mateo was distracted, Dominec edged toward the door. There were too many people here. It was fucking claustrophobic in the Pride Hall. Why anyone enjoyed these celebrations was beyond him. If he could just get out into the cold calm of the night, he’d be able to breathe again. And he wouldn’t have to keep fighting the urge to look up at the stage—
She was gone. Kelly too. Slipped off somewhere private so they could be alone, no doubt. Dominec felt a growl burning in the back of his throat and pushed through the crowd, no longer being subtle as he shoved toward the door.
“Dominec.”
A soft hand caught his arm. He whipped around, snarling.
And there she was.
Her jeans were snug and dark, hugging the sleek muscles of her legs until they disappeared into the tall, brown leather boots she wore. Her shirt was some kind of lacy, low-cut thing that clung to her curves, draping delicate purple fabric over her breasts. Her short blonde hair had more curl today and her eyes seemed darker, rimmed by black, which made the pale blue of her eyes stand out even more. Her lips were shiny and pink from some kind of gloss.
What did that gloss taste like? Would her lips still be shiny after he kissed all that glittery coating away?
“Hey.”
He grunted in reply.
“I’m glad you came,” she said over the music. “I’ve been hoping to talk to you.”
Dominec barely stopped himself from grimacing. It may have been years ago, but he was married long enough to know honey, we need to talk was never a good start.
They faced one another, standing not far from the door, far enough from the speakers that they weren’t deafened by the music, but the steady thrum of the bass provided an illusion of privacy. For once they were in a room full of shifters and no one could overhear them. No one even looked their way—all the shifters in the pride too caught up in their own frantic quests for fun to notice them.
But that didn’t mean he wanted to talk about whatever Grace needed to discuss with him here.
The music shifted, a slow, bluesy number beginning to slink from the speakers.
He jerked his chin toward the front door. Grace tilted her head toward the dance floor.
“You wanna dance?”
No. If he put his hands on her, he didn’t want it to be in front of half the pride. And he wasn’t going to put his hands on her again at all. For what remained of his sanity, he needed to step away.
But she caught his hand, taking his jacket and tossing it onto a pile of them on a table near the door. She drew him toward the dancers who were swaying slowly to the sultry beat. Turning to face him, she placed the hand she was holding on her hip, grabbed his free hand and set it on her other hip, and linked her arms around his neck. She stepped into him, her breasts brushing against his chest, and his hands moved over her hips with minds of their own. It felt entirely too right, holding her like this. A lost piece of himself clicking home.
But she wasn’t his.
“I saw you with Kelly.” His head bent close to her ear, the words came out more of a growl than he intended.
“I’m not with him anymore.” She spoke softly and he found himself holding her closer—so he could hear. No other reason. She leaned against him, tipping her face up so they were cheek to scarred cheek, whispering into his ear, “You’re the one I want to be with.”
The words were as seductive as the way she moved in his arms, smooth and subtle and inviting. But he didn’t dare accept what she was offering—no matter how tempting it was.
“It’s too dangerous to be with you,” he whispered. “I lose my vigilance when I’m with you and I can’t allow that. I lose myself in you.”
She pulled back enough to study his face. “Dominec—”
“No,” he insisted, staring straight into her blue-on-blue eyes. “I can’t, Grace. You make the world go away.”
Grace closed her eyes, concentrating on the music and the feel of Dominec’s arms around her as they swayed so her knees wouldn’t buckle at the impact of those words. They were ridiculously romantic, but right now she needed to ignore the sucker punch of gooey emotions that rose up when he told her she made the world go away.
To him that was a bad thing. A mark against her. So she would shelve how hearing it made her feel and focus on winning the argument and her way back into his arms—by whatever means necessary.
“You mean in bed?” She smashed down her ego before it could get carried away with being so hot in the sack she made the world go away.
He grunted something she decided to take as affirmative.
“What did you do when you had sex before?”
“I didn’t.”
Okay wow. With those bald words her heart stuttered again. It must have been years. And he had trusted her enough—before he ran like hell. Running from the good as well as the bad. “When was the last time you let yourself be happy?”
His expression darkened to glowering anger and she knew she’d slipped and asked the wrong thing. She hadn’t thought, the question escaping before she could censor it. Memory wasn’t somewhere he wanted to live. She thought he wouldn’t answer, but, his expression black, he growled a single name. “Micah.”
The raw admission tugged at her heart. A decade later, his grief was still an open wound that had never been allowed to heal. As much as she wanted to heal him, she knew that was beyond her. All she could do was give him something to feel beyond anger and fear and revenge. Something good.
“Do you want to get out of here?”
He was pulling her toward the door before the last word was out. She didn’t slow him, didn’t bother trying to steer him toward the pile of coats. As warm as she felt, she didn’t think she would need her jacket.
Outside the Pride Hall, they entered one of those perfect winter nights where the world seemed hushed and full of promise. Dominec’s hand was hot around her as he stopped, glowering at the snow falling delicately around them.
“Where are we going?”
“To your favorite place in the pride,” she told him. Somewhere he would feel safest. Somewhere he w
ould be most at ease and least likely to worry about the danger of losing himself in her.
Dominec nodded once, decisively and began towing her through the pride, so quickly she found herself half-jogging to keep up, even with her long legs. They wended along familiar paths, passing several bungalows that were brightly lit and bursting with the laughter of shifters who had slipped away to celebrate in smaller groups. The pride was alive tonight. Even the soldiers on the perimeter would be taking shorter shifts so they could all enjoy the party as well. Grace had even scheduled herself for a shift early the following morning—but she had hours yet before she was on duty. Hours to spend with Dominec.
She clued in to her surroundings. When she realized where they were heading, her heart did a slow roll in her chest. The man might not have a traditional approach to romance, but he was melting her tonight.
Her office. He was taking her to her office. His favorite place in the pride.
They mounted the steps together and then he surprised her by playing the gentleman and holding the door for her. She slipped inside and he followed, fastening the latch on the door behind him. She went automatically to the desk, flipping on the lamp there rather than the blaring light of the overhead.
She knew she should just keep her mouth shut, but she couldn’t help asking. “This is your favorite place?”
He shrugged, unembarrassed. “It’s calming.”
Calming. It was heady stuff, knowing she was the one who brought him back from the edge. It probably shouldn’t be a turn on, but it was.
Dominec folded his arms, glaring at each of her comfy, over-stuffed couches in turn. “I should go.”
He was a grouchy, cantankerous bastard. And she lov—or rather, she liked that about him. She’d been translating fear into anger for as long as she could remember. She hated feeling scared—so it just pissed her off. And now, when Dominec snarled at her and glared at her couches all she could see was the fear he was masking.
