by Nancy Gideon
“It’s all right. I’m all right.”
“I just need to hold on to you for a minute. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He pulled her close, letting the shivers shake through her until she finally relaxed on a fragile sigh.
“I was so worried about you.”
“About me?” He was too surprised to respond.
She leaned back to take his face in her palms. “I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.”
His smile was wry. “It’s all right for you to poison me and torture me and break my face, but God forbid someone else should do it?”
“You’re mine, Max. No one hurts what’s mine.”
“I feel so much better.”
“I feel better,” she murmured. “And you feel wonderful.”
Her kiss quickly sidetracked him from her misuse of him. “Is there anything else you’d like to get off your chest? Like my shirt?”
She chuckled. Then her expression grew so serious, his throat seized up tight. Don’t tell me good-bye. Don’t say good-bye.
“I love you, Max.”
His eyes closed. His breath caught. “Tell me again.”
“I’m in love with you.”
“Show me.”
And so she did as she undressed him, as she rolled with him across the bed, holding him, touching him, kissing him, welcoming him inside her with the soft cry of his name. Taking him, strong, greedy, and demanding with her mouth, with her hands, with the hot clench of her inner walls. Not content to let him bring her paradise, but pursuing it at the same urgent pace. Wildly aroused by their shared combat, by the strength of the dark and hotly dangerous lover she held captive with her kisses and the wrap of her long legs, the pleasure was fierce and sweet and satisfying. She came screaming. Then she cradled him, exhausted, in her arms.
Sometime later, Cee Cee stirred with a ridiculous sense of contentment. Her hand moved across the sheet beside her. Finding it cool and empty she flipped over in alarm and was immediately comforted. Max was sitting on the floor next to the bed, eating something that sounded . . . fresh.
“Late-night snack? Anyone I know?”
“The wrapper identified the deceased as Top Sirloin.” He sucked at his fingers, and she realized he was eating it raw. “I can finish this downstairs.”
“No, I don’t mind.” She nestled her head on his shoulder. “I’m not squeamish, for a girl.”
He nudged her with his head. “My girl . . . right?”
There was just enough hesitation for her to smile. She looped her arm about his neck. “Right.”
He made a pleased sound and continued to tear into his meal.
“How did your meeting go?”
“I guess I’ll find out soon enough.” A pause. “Before you start interrogating me, that’s all I can tell you for now. Things are in motion. I’m cautiously optimistic.”
She paused, then blurted, “That’s all I get? After putting it on the line for you, that’s it?”
“Darlin’, you’re a police detective and I’m a thug. That’s going to make for a bit of guarded conversation from time to time.”
She pouted for a moment, but his endearment went a long way toward soothing her temper. “Fair enough. Point taken.” She made herself more comfortable on his shoulder, her hand rubbing lightly across his chest. He’d showered; the dark, springy hair was still damp, and his skin smelled wonderful. She sampled it with small kisses, then sighed, unable to shut off the ever-turning wheels in her brain. “LaRoche called you a pureblood. What does that mean? Or is that privileged information, too?”
“That’s personal, not business, so you can poke around there all you like.”
“So?”
“What?”
“Are you going to answer me? Then no more questions, and I’ll let you ‘poke around’ all you like, too.”
Silence, then a slightly shaky laugh. “I’d take you up on that right now if I didn’t have Mr. Sirloin all over my hands.”
“Go wash them. Or,” her voice lowered, “you can wash me later.”
His breathing shuddered, then he pushed to his feet. “I’ll be right back.”
She sat up to follow him with a lustful appreciation. Moonlight from the open balcony doors caressed the cap of his shoulder, the curve of his flank, the out-turned toes of his bare feet. Watching him move was erotic verse in motion, a strong, aggressive tempo refined by an almost delicate grace.
“You make me hot, Savoie,” she whispered under her breath.
He looked back at her over his shoulder, his grin wide and white.
She’d forgotten about his acute hearing.
He returned moments later, then sank to his knees at her feet and rested his head in her lap. Startled by the incredible trust and humility of the gesture, she sat unmoving, then began to run her fingers through his hair.
“Do you know how odd it feels to have a stranger tell you things about yourself that you don’t know?” he began.
His shoulders were tense beneath the stroke of her other hand. Gently, firmly, she began working the knots from them.
“All this time, I had no idea there were others like me. I thought it was just me—a freak of nature, an abomination. Alone and different. Jimmy never told me.”
To control him—the bastard. She bent to kiss his temple.
“These . . . beings who are like me aren’t men, aren’t beasts, but sort of a blend of both. They’ve banded together to hide what they are and protect their secrets. LaRoche’s group works the docks and does the dirty work of the mob bosses. Since they have no papers, they’re powerless to act on their own behalf. Where would they go? Who would believe them? So they take nasty jobs, huddling together in cheap homes, living in poverty with their human mates. And the more they mix and dilute their powers, the weaker their natural abilities become, until there are no purebloods. Purebloods like my father. My mother. Me. And the one Etienne Legere found to help him claim his fortune. The others, they all have some degree of power, the males much more so than the females.”
“But none like you?”
“No. None like me.”
He closed his eyes, letting his physical self be soothed and calmed by her touch while his spirit prowled restlessly.
“They have no one to lead them, to organize them, to take care of their interests.” He felt a strange unhappiness, even guilt. Because he’d come from where they were, but he’d had advantages they were denied. They’d been virtually slaves to Vantour and others like him. No one cared about these proud, angry, helpless, and frightened people who lived outside the laws of man.
“Do you trust them, Max?”
“I don’t know them. Part of them is as strange to me as it is to you.”
“And the other part?”
“It’s like finding a huge family you never knew you had.”
“Then I’m happy for you, Max. But be careful.”
His chuckle was cynical. “Even in families, there’s no such thing as equal in all ways.”
Family. He still trembled at that notion, but he couldn’t deny his huge relief when he’d dropped his defenses and let them touch him with tentative mental overtures.
He’d immediately wanted to pull back, to close down, to throw up barriers they couldn’t penetrate. But he didn’t. And it was harder just to sit there and let them learn him by scent and psychic signature, than to half-kill them in battle. One was an impersonal show of strength, the other a terrifying display of trust. He had no experience in that and was quickly overloaded with sensations. It was like having all their hands on him at once, touching, pushing, stroking, gripping. Like suddenly having sight and hearing for the first time, and being bombarded by input he’d hungered for but couldn’t control. Greedy for it, dizzy from it, until finally LaRoche put up his hand to motion them back and he was able to breathe. And then the sudden, awful ache of being separate from them, after knowing the embrace of unity.
He didn’t share this
with Charlotte, afraid she wouldn’t understand and yet afraid she would all too well. He needed to adjust, to accept first, before he could tell her about it. And he needed to decide on how to respond to their claim that they’d consider it a betrayal for him to pollute his heritage with one who was not their kind.
His kind. A strange and beautiful notion. He had so many questions.
He closed his eyes, letting Charlotte lure him back to her with her siren’s caress. Her fingers buffed lightly across the back of his hand, the short, blunt-cut nails rasping in sexy little shivers of sensation that nearly blanked his mind to her soft question.
“Does it hurt?”
“What?” For a moment, he was confused. She could be raking through his flesh with talons like Freddy Krueger and he wouldn’t have equated it with pain at this moment.
Her hand curled about his, her touch maddeningly gentle, stroking his palm, gliding up his fingers to their tips, then pushing to spread them so that her fingers could mesh in between. Fascinated by the journey and the incredibly intimate result, he fought to keep his focus on what she was saying.
“When you change form. Is it painful? Does it hurt you?” Her gaze lifted to his, her dark eyes liquid with concern.
He smiled, keeping it light because something strange and powerful was happening within his chest, a tightening that squeezed about his heart like a vise. “Only when I forget I’m no longer on four legs, and try to scratch behind my ear with my back foot.”
She scowled. “Go ahead and make a joke. Laugh at me.”
He pulled her hand up to his lips, pressing a heated kiss on her knuckles in apology. “No, sha. It’s no different than changing an expression.” His voice lowered to a husky rumble. “Would it distress you if it did?”
She tried to maintain her annoyance, grumbling with reluctance, “Yes, it would.” Then her tone quieted, smoothing out like warm silk. “It would very much.”
He fit her palm to the side of his face, liking the notion of her being upset on his behalf.
“Does anything else change when you’re in a different form?”
“Change how?”
“The way you think, the way you feel?”
He smiled slightly. “You mean do I become a slathering beast without a conscience and a taste for human organ donors?” He nibbled lightly on her fingers.
Yes, that was exactly what she needed to know. When he changed, did he become any less the man she loved?
“I’m the same inside; the same memories, the same emotions. My senses are sharper, different. It’s hard to explain. I’m more aware of my instincts. I have tremendous strength and speed. But I’m always in control of what I am and always remember what I do.”
“And you can change whenever you want?”
“No full moon necessary. I control my form: how much it changes, a little or a lot. Whatever I need.” He fisted his fingers, then extended them, now hair covered and claw tipped. Then his hand was back to normal. “From man to beast to the animal on all fours, and anything in between. They’re all elements of what I am that I can change within certain limits, just by visualizing it.”
“Limits?”
He chuckled. “I can’t become twenty feet tall or fit through a keyhole, which might be nice on occasion. But you have to plan ahead. There’s nothing more embarrassing than ripping out of your clothing, only to find yourself in the middle of company with no trousers on later.”
“I don’t know,” she mused. “I rather like catching you without trousers.”
He grinned and relaxed. Her questions conveyed an acceptance that quite frankly astonished him. She was curious, not uncomfortable or recoiling. But then, what else should he have expected from someone who enjoyed poking about in a Y incision with Devlin Dovion?
“When you’re in your full dog suit . . .”—she paused when he chuckled, not offended by her analogy—“you can hear me?”
“Oh, yes. My hearing is excellent, but I can’t speak the way I can in beast form. The change alters my vocal chords. It’s amazing what people say and do in front of the family pet. I’ve had some naughty erotic fantasies there.” His tongue stroked over her knee in a long, wet tease. “If you’d like to wear a red cape, I could be your Big Bad Wolf. Picnic basket optional.”
“Why, Grandma, you’re packing a mighty big picnic basket yourself.”
“I could make you howl at the moon, Charlotte.”
“And you’d never be tempted to gobble me up?” She smiled, but there was a slight edge of worry behind it.
“Only in ways you would enjoy, sha. Only the shape changes—not my feelings for you.”
“A shape shifter. Is that what you are?”
Again, the caution, as if by putting a folkloric name upon it, he would become alien and separate from her. He wasn’t about to let that happen.
“I don’t know yet what we’re called, or if we have a name. I know so little and need to learn so much. I’m many things, detective, and all of them love you.”
His hand settled on her bare calf, kneading in slow circles. “I love your skin,” he murmured. “Its warm color, its softness, its strength, its smell, its taste.” His tongue slid down the length of her thigh until he nipped sharply at her knee. Her hand fisted in his hair. “You have no idea how much you mean to me.”
She angled, parting her legs so he was trapped between her knees.
“Show me.”
His gaze met hers, all smoldery and warmed by desire. Never breaking his intense stare, he strung delicate kisses up the inside of her thigh. By the time he got to where he was going, she was trembling. His eyes drifted shut and he breathed her in.
“I could find you anywhere.” His soft whisper started a quiver in her belly. “Across a room, in the dark, in the middle of a crowd. The scent of you, so hot and warm and . . . mine.”
The slow stroke of his tongue started her body humming, and she waited for a torturous eternity for the touch of his mouth. Soft and teasing, kissing, tugging at the tender folds to reach the slick sweetness of her center. Feasting there with a fearsome concentration that had her falling back helplessly to the mattress. She groaned at the feel of him caressing inside her, wondering wildly just how long a tongue her Big Bad Wolf had, as he seemed to reach all the way to her tonsils. Her hands fisted in the sheets; her bare toes curled atop his thighs as sensation sizzled through her.
The sudden, surprisingly sharp nip of his teeth punched the breath from her lungs and sent her into a hard, rolling orgasm. He came up over her, taking her body with a hard thrust, her breath with a devouring kiss, her senses up into a fierce, tightening spiral until that surging pleasure spiked all over again, punctuated by her hoarse cries.
WAKING TO THE sight of Charlotte Caissie in his bed, her tawny body bare to the covers at her waist, filled Max with bittersweet longing and alarm. All the fierce, heated adrenaline had calmed; that possessive urgency to have her, to hold her, to love her. Now there was just a new day, and with it, a harsh reality. She wasn’t safe with him and he wasn’t safe with her. They could hurt each other emotionally now, as well as physically and professionally. With so much in the balance demanding his attention, he couldn’t afford the distraction she brought into his life.
But what would that life be without her?
I love you, Max.
His heart still shuddered with it, and his mind still couldn’t wrap around the enormity of it. He wanted to shake her awake just to hear it from her again. And again. And again. If only he could hold her here forever, where the outside world couldn’t touch or spoil what they’d shared, where he wouldn’t have to consider the danger swirling about the both of them, where he could enjoy this one thing he’d longed for for nearly half his life: the cherished love of this woman. But that was a foolish wish, and he couldn’t afford to be weak. He couldn’t keep her here, and she wouldn’t agree to be kept. He didn’t think he meant more to her than her work, and to keep her safe, he couldn’t allow himself to consider feeli
ngs above practicalities.
He quickly tugged on jeans and a tee shirt, then trotted downstairs barefoot in search of coffee. After she consumed that first pot, maybe they could continue their conversation without the desperate need to undress each other. But then again, maybe not. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with her, now that she was in his bed, under Jimmy’s roof, or where she would fit into the unsettled chaos of his world. After today, he would have a better idea. Or else he would be dead and it would be a moot point.
As he rounded the newel post at the bottom of the steps, a gun barrel notched up under his chin and a cold voice said, “Max Savoie, I’m taking you in on suspicion of murdering Detective Charlotte Caissie. Unless I blow your fucking head off first.”
Eighteen
MAX ASKED CALMLY, “Would you like some coffee, Detective Babineau, or have you already reached your limit?”
“I’m way past my limit, Savoie.” He looked very fierce and very dangerous. “I’ve been up all night trying to track down my partner. Seems some kids used her car to do some joyriding, and got in a bit of mischief at a convenience store that ended up in a high-speed chase. Totaled the car, sent one of the kids to the hospital and the other to jail. Funny thing was, the blood in the car wasn’t from either of the kids. I think the lab will confirm it’s Cee Cee’s.
“One boy said they found the vehicle abandoned on some back road with the door open and the keys in it. When I took a team out to check, we found evidence of an assault. Cee Cee’s a smart girl. She wouldn’t take a spin with just anybody in her passenger seat. To get the drop on her, it would have to be someone she knew, someone she trusted. Are you following my logic, Savoie?”
“So far, so good.”
“Mind telling me where you were yesterday?”
“I met with my attorney in the city. I can give you his name–“
”I know his name. What I don’t know is what you did to her, you son of a bitch.”
“Nothing I didn’t want him to do, Alain. Don’t blow his head off yet. We’ve just started dating.”
While her partner stared, dumbstruck, Cee Cee came down the stairs wearing one of Max’s tee shirts over her rumpled skirt.
