by Nancy Gideon
He released his breath with a slow shiver, and surged off the porch to join his company.
AFTER LAROCHE HAD tapped the kegs and the tables were licked clean, the music started and Tito’s wake got into full swing. Sensing the uncertainty of the house staff, Cee Cee remained up on the porch, a buffer between them and the strange group of revelers dancing on the lawn. Cee Cee understood their unnamed alarm because she felt it every time she stepped into Cheveux du Chien. In their funeral finery, standing humble before God, they could pass for ordinary men and women. But when the coats and shoes came off and the inhibitions let down, a glimpse of what lay beneath those tame, glossy surfaces began to show. With their glowing eyes and quick movements, with what could have been a trick of moonlight but wasn’t, making their teeth seem sharp and their features feral, they looked like what they were…not quite human.
Everyone who’d worked for Jimmy Legere had heard stories about Max Savoie, about the strange, silent boy he’d brought with him out of the swamps to live among them, though not really one of them. By the time he was a withdrawn, soft-spoken teen, rumors flew in hushed whispers of the things he’d done, and how. Sheer nonsense, of course, those tales of shape-shifting viciousness right out of folklore, spread just to make Legere’s enemies nervous. Rumors Max propagated simply by not denying that they were true. He kept to himself, at Jimmy’s beck and call, still, intense, dangerous without ever having to prove anything. And by the time he was an adult, just being in the same room with him could make stalwart men break into a sweat.
But no matter how much Jimmy’s staff feared Max Savoie, they adored Jimmy and loathed his sneaky cousin Francis Petitjohn. Jimmy treated all his employees like family, taking a genuine interest in their concerns and cares, making it a point to remember birthdays and anniversaries, and slipping them an extra something in their pay whenever there was a need. His relationship with Max was more father to son than master and servant, though Max was blindly obedient to his every wish. And Max had loved him to the very limit of his life, ready to sacrifice it, it was said, when his involvement with police detective Charlotte Caissie led to a fracture of trust between them.
When it came to choosing between Francis Petitjohn, who had seen the chance to slay Jimmy Legere as his means of seizing control of an empire, or backing the lost and despondent Max, they’d pushed aside their caution to take Savoie’s hand. And not one of them regretted doing so, no matter what Max Savoie might be. Because he took care of his own, when Petitjohn would have taken advantage of them.
But tonight, as he circled through the gathering on the moon-drenched grass, it was clear that Max was among his own kind, with those fierce, bright-eyed beings masquerading as human. And they were afraid—of the quicksilver creatures and of Savoie.
Aware that the men who served Max without question that morning now milled about, muttering worriedly, Cee Cee wondered if Max knew what was stirring up on his porch. She felt that prickly fear that he’d often described as flaming torches and windmills as the townsfolk gathered to attack what was unlike them.
And Max wasn’t making things easier.
He was behaving differently, aggressive, tense, and fierce as he stalked through his clan. The men gave him room. The women gave him their undivided attention. Cee Cee watched him dance with them, the way he moved, so sleek and graceful, inviting the touch of their hands, the brief sway and rub of their bodies against him. Enjoying their overtures a bit too much, seemingly indifferent to the fact that she was observing him from the porch of the home he’d asked her to share with him.
Enough.
She left the house staff to fend for themselves, storming down the steps, striding across the grass with one destination in mind. Until her arm was gripped and she was spun into Jacques LaRoche’s firm embrace. He overcame her instinctive resistance to being handled by simply hanging on until she calmed and accepted his closeness, following his lead stiffly through the steps of a dance.
“I wanted to thank you again for all you’ve done, detective. Max tells me you planned everything.”
Everything except her boyfriend sniffing up every skirt.
“I was happy to do it for…Philo.”
LaRoche laughed. “Put your claws in, detective. You’ve got nothing to worry about. He’s just testing his boundaries a little.”
“What he’s testing is my patience.”
He chuckled at her temper. “He can’t help it, Charlotte. It’s what he is, and they know it.”
“What is he?”
“Coming into mating season, and they all want to make it with the Big Dog. They can smell it on him—the sweat and aggression.”
“I—I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t get all riled up about it. It’s our nature to seek out a strong and compatible mate to breed with, to test all the wells, so to speak, before deciding to plunge in.” A chuckle. “Now I’ve shocked you.”
She glared over at the pretty woman dancing with Max, at the way her eyes teased and invited. Irritation bristled up the back of her neck. “But isn’t that Philo’s girlfriend? If he knows what’s going on, why does he put up with it?”
“The same reason we all do. Max is stronger. He’d kill anyone who interfered. This is the only time in our life cycle when we’re not quite in control. Instinct controls us. It’s his right, and the women’s, until he’s bonded. He can take whomever he chooses and none of us would get in his way. It’s not personal, Charlotte. It’s biology.”
“Not personal,” she sputtered. “What are you saying? That if Philo objected, Max would kill him over a woman he’s not even interested in? That’s crazy!”
“It’s the strongest behavior bred into us, and it’s impossible to break from. Don’t take it lightly, Charlotte,” LaRoche warned. “And don’t hold him accountable. He can’t stop it, any more than he could stop the phases of the moon.”
She was horrified. She was furious. “So I’m supposed to look the other way while he plows his way through this field of potential mates? I don’t think so.”
LaRoche sighed, his patient sympathy almost as disturbing as Max’s behavior. “We’re not talking promiscuity or flirtations here. This is a need ingrained in him from birth. It’s a chain reaction that begins the minute we males have sex for the first time.” He made an amused sound. “I wouldn’t have figured Max for this late a bloomer, but I guess he’s got you to thank for that. He can’t not act on it, Charlotte. He’s not making a conscious choice. You’re his choice. We all know that.”
“So I’m supposed to just humor him until he gets it out of his system? Exactly how long will that take?”
“It’s not a casual phase, I’m afraid. It’ll last until he bonds. Until then, it might be easier if you didn’t see him.”
“No,” she said instantly. “No way. These are your ridiculous rules. I don’t have to play by them and I don’t have to tolerate them.” She spun away and right into Max.
His hands gripped her upper arms with a pressure that made her wince as he looked not at her startled face, but at LaRoche. A low, threatening vibration started up from his chest, and Cee Cee was immediately aware of what a deadly and direct creature he’d become.
“Max. I was just explaining things to her so she could understand,” LaRoche began.
“What things?”
That harsh growl wasn’t like Max. Nor were the high flush of color and hot glitter of his eyes.
LaRoche shrugged nonchalantly. “That you’re not yourself. That you feel like your head’s about to explode. Like you want to rip mine off right now without knowing why. I’m not stepping in, Max. She’s yours. I’m not challenging you.”
“Walk away, Jacques. Now.”
“Anything you say, Max.” He slid a look to Cee Cee. “Be careful. Don’t provoke him.”
“Don’t provoke him,” she muttered, casting a sour glance up at the dark, compelling features. “Well, oh King of the Beasts, have you been enjoying yourself provoking me?”
/> “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied gruffly.
Cee Cee gave him a closer study. He was breathing hard and fast. His eyes were wild, glazed. Almost like he was on a roaring drunk, only she hadn’t seen him take a sip all night. Her hands ran up and down his chest until he began to focus on her, then his gaze flared bright and hot.
“Why don’t you dance with me, Savoie, and maybe I won’t be so disagreeable.”
He reeled her in until their bodies pressed close but he could still watch her through those strangely lit eyes. He smiled but it wasn’t Max’s smug smirk of conquest. It was a baring of teeth. Beneath her palm, his heart hammered as if trying to break through his rib cage. Though his movements were fluid, his body was tensile steel wound to snapping.
“You’re scaring your friends, baby. I want you to stop it.”
“They’re not my friends. I pay them to tolerate me.” He never blinked. “Am I scaring you?”
“I’m not afraid of you, Max.”
“Maybe you should be.” He moved so fast. One instant he was staring down into her eyes, and the next his teeth scraped her throat.
She forced herself not to flinch as he lightly licked and nibbled her neck. Her hand lifted to stroke through his hair, soothing, calming.
“If you frighten me,” she explained casually, “we won’t be having great sex later.”
“I can have all the great sex I want.” He was nuzzling her collarbone, snuffling up her scent. “With anyone I want. A perk of being King of the Beasts.”
“Really? How nice for you. Is that what you want? To have great sex with all these panting females? Would you rather I just went home so as not to spoil your fun?”
He regarded her through fever-bright eyes. “You’d do that? You’d do that for me?”
“Sure, Max,” she purred. Then she snarled. “In your dreams.” Her elbow socked into his rock-hard middle, but he didn’t even flinch.
Grinning that fierce primal smile, he pulled her in tighter, continuing to move to the tempo of the music, but his movements were blatantly controlling and sexual.
As furious as she was, Cee Cee was also aroused. Heat pooled at the apex of her thighs, pounding with its own primitive beat. And because she wasn’t afraid of him, his ferociousness excited her almost as much as it angered her.
“Let’s get this straight,” she bit out. “There is no way in hell I am going to stand for you working your way through those twenty-odd flavors. No way, Savoie. You are mine, and I don’t pass around free samples.”
“Yours?” Something dark and unpleasant fired in his eyes. She could practically see their conversation at his office replaying in his head. Could feel him stiffening as he recalled finding her and Jacques together at the club, keeping secrets from him.
“How quickly you fling commitment into my face when it’s to your advantage. And what are you going to do about it, detective? Threaten to run away? Hide in your safe little apartment and lock me out? Cower there like your little rodent friends? As if you could keep me away so easily.”
His arrogance grated against her temper and she got right into his face. “No. No running. No hiding. You step out of line and I’ll beat the crap out of you.”
She hoped he’d smile at her audaciousness, and he almost did. Then his mouth thinned and twisted. “I let you do that once. I won’t let you again. Just like I’m not going to let you dictate what I choose to do. I’m not on your leash, detective. And this is my yard. You don’t get to pee in it.”
Her elbow flashed up, clipping him under the chin. Max saw stars but his grip on her never lessened. With a brisk shake of his head, he fixed his stare upon her again and Cee Cee realized her mistake. She was angry almost to the point of abandoning rational behavior. Max—cool, reasonable, restrained Max—had just slipped beyond it.
He leaned into her face to growl softly, “Let’s take this someplace a bit more private.”
He cuffed her wrist within his strong fingers, forcing her to keep up or be half dragged as he strode toward the shadows of the untended garden. Though fuming and humiliated, she was also aware that some here would step to her aid if they thought she was reluctant, which would endanger them. So she trotted at his side without a struggle, staggering on the high heels as they caught in the soft earth.
Out of sight of their company, he tossed her down onto one of the stone benches beneath a winter-barren arbor. Before she could scramble up he slid one leg across her thighs, straddling the bench, trapping her beneath him. His arms braced on either side of her, forming an effective cage. She shoved him, squirming, but her wriggling only made the light in his eyes burn brighter, hotter.
“Let me go, Max. Now.”
“If you wanted me to let you go, you wouldn’t keep coming back to me.”
His vanity made her want to howl. She settled for punching him in the gut hard enough to earn a surprised, “Oof.”
“To Max, yes. But not to you, you—”
“Mobster, killer, monster. You forgot lover, detective. I’m that, too. What are you afraid of, Charlotte? Afraid I won’t come back to you? Afraid I might find one of them more to my liking?”
That’s exactly what she was afraid of.
“Why are you acting like this? There’s no way in hell I’m going to put up with it and you know it. Let me go, you conceited bastard. If you go ahead and roll around with them, I hope you find one who suits you. Because I won’t take you back. I will not take you back.”
He went completely still. Even his breathing stopped. Then he moved in, leaning closer until she could see the frantic patches of gold and crimson swirling in his stare.
“Liar,” he whispered against her mouth.
She tried to hit him, but he had her pinned between the brace of his arms, his intrusive size containing her easily.
“What are you trying to prove, Savoie?” she snarled up at him. “You’re bigger, you’re stronger. I can’t take you. I can’t stop you from taking me, if that’s what you want to do. But I’m not going to like it, and I’m going to hate you for doing it.”
He stared at her for a moment, then laughed, a soft indulgent sound. “I don’t believe you.”
He buried his face against her neck, his tongue making a slow, wet sweep along that taut curve where he would taste the hurried race of her heartbeat. Angry, wanting; mostly wanting. She wrestled one hand loose, grabbing a fistful of his hair to twist, then to knead fitfully as she whispered, “Max.”
She sought his mouth and ravaged it. Her fingers closed about his wrist, directing his hand under her dress where he began tearing at her stockings, his movements rough, impatient. He invaded her with a quick thrust of his fingers as her body arched, channeling his aggression into desire until her breath came in hard, hurried gulps as he brought her to a powerful climax.
While she hung on him, dazed and gasping, he told her with low, gruff certainty, “You won’t ever leave me, Charlotte, and you’ll let me do whatever I want to do. Because you need this. You need me. Because you have nowhere else to go.”
The surprising cruelty of his words slapped the lingering pleasure away. All she could do was stare at him, eyes wounded and welling for a brief instant, before her fist connected forcefully with his cheekbone. She flung him off her and scrambled shakily to her feet. While he lay unmoving on his back, hand to his eye, she kicked out of her shoes and headed for the house.
“You can’t run from me, Charlotte,” he shouted after her.
Then, alone in the darkness, he whispered with desperate urgency, “Run, Charlotte. Run far and fast, and don’t look back.”
Six
IT ROSE LIKE a fever all day, burning through Max’s veins, searing his thoughts, feeding the headache that throbbed relentlessly, dry kindling to the flame. Strange sensations. Hot and surging, swamping his control with sudden harsh urges. Violent. Sexual. Frightening and exciting. Concentration was gone, burnt in the firestorm of compulsive desires.
He strugg
led with it, alarmed and repulsed by the visceral rips and ebbs of mood that spiked when he’d found Cee Cee and LaRoche together. He had almost convinced himself he had it conquered. While holding Charlotte in his arms as she wept, it receded, forced into abeyance by the sheer magnitude of his feelings for her. But then the music had started and something in the beat, something woven almost subliminally beneath the tempo, moved to the same compelling pulse in his temples. Then it was in his blood, that hard, urgent hammering, so hot he could barely breathe as he moved among those who seemed to understand better than he did why he was not himself.
The women. His awareness of them rose in subtle, dizzying waves until he was drowning. Scent and heat fed the voracious hunger, building a blinding rage of need. This greedy, desperate drive had nothing to do with his mind, nothing to do with his will or his wishes. The animal inside him distilled down to a raw, basic compulsion to mate. Not just with the woman he’d chosen in his heart and soul. But with every nameless, faceless female that crossed his primitive radar. He wanted them all. And he wanted them now.
And why not?
He was the King of Beasts. Their Shifter King. Who would stop him?
Who, indeed. And with a very tasty right hook.
Max got to his feet slowly, off balance. With his first step he stumbled, tripping over Cee Cee’s discarded shoes. He gave one an ill-tempered kick before he could stop himself, and knew a sullen satisfaction as it flew into one of the fountains. He picked up the other one, turning the patent leather with its lethal spiked heel in his hand, slipping his fingers down into the wickedly pointed toes where her warmth was still held in the insole. Her scent clung to him, heavy and exotic, and the beast within him growled back to life with a new focus. A small bit of reason in the back of his brain hoped frantically that she had hopped into her muscle car and roared back into the city, where she would be safe from him.
