by Diana Seere
Finally, slowly, she fell back to earth. She clung to him, pressing her cheek against his broad chest, trying to catch her breath.
Holy mother of oh-my-God.
Edward was holding her, stroking the back of her head and murmuring something unintelligible into her hair. When she had regained a fragment of her normal composure, she smiled and looked up at him. “Well, that was a surprise,” she said, wrapping her arms around his waist. He felt solid, powerful, strong, and the rush of awareness that shot through her told her she wasn’t at all satisfied with what little she’d had of him.
“Indeed it was,” he said.
She waited for him to say something else, such as an invitation to his cabin, but he was silent. The wind from the storm had died down, but the snow was falling more heavily. Although she still seemed immune to the cold, the snow was falling into her face, clinging to her lashes and getting in her eyes. “I guess we should go inside,” she said finally.
“Of course.” He broke away for a few minutes and returned with her jacket. Wrapping it around her shoulders, he said, “What must you think of me? I’ve mauled you in a blizzard. You’ll catch your death.”
She wasn’t feeling cold or dead in the slightest. “I’m fine, but I should get back to the house.” Across the lake, the house’s panoramic windows on the lower floor glowed brightly. It seemed he wasn’t going to invite her to spend the night with him. She was disappointed but could see the sense in going slow. Not only Eva but his siblings and the other families—including those manwhore Nagy brothers—were crawling all over the place.
“I’ll escort you.” He zipped up her jacket for her all the way to her chin, knotted the belt around her waist, and held her hand on his elbow. “Shall we?”
Very civilized for a stroll along a lake in a snowstorm, she thought. Especially after having an orgasm all over him. “I’ll take out my phone again to light the path,” she said, reaching in her pocket.
He stopped her. “I know the way. Just hold on to me.”
Touching him was a pleasure although she was beginning to feel the cold. The snow was now trapped between her back and the coat, melting it into her thin T-shirt. It was a relief to reach the edge of the outer pool deck, with the room to her bedroom just beyond.
“I’ll go into the side door,” she said. “So nobody sees us together.” She hoped he would protest, argue, tell her there was no reason to hide, give her something to indicate that what they’d just done was as irresistible to him as it was incredible for her.
“I apologize for the need to agree with you. It would be for the best. My siblings in particular are relentlessly annoying.”
Oh. All right.
They reached the door. Lit by the house lights, she could now see how much snow clung to his thick hair, even his beard. Amused, she reached up to brush it off. On impulse, she asked, “Same time tomorrow?”
His eyes darkened, if that was possible. “I’d like that,” he said in a very low voice.
Oh. Thank God.
“Then I’ll see you then.” She went up on tiptoes and kissed him quickly on the lips before breaking away and pulling the door open. She knew it would be too tempting to linger another second.
“Rain or shine,” he said behind her.
Chapter 6
“Sir? The Nagy family arrived. You asked to be told.” Ariana, one of the permanent household staff told him, the words delivered with a sympathetic look. The daughter of the head of household, she was young, discreet, and had been a child when Vivien had been killed.
Ready to leave the ranch soon to attend college in the fall, she’d emerged more recently in interactions with the Stantons, clearly coming into her own.
Edward paced in front of a roaring fire in the library off the main wing. He glanced at the clock. Eleven p.m. To say that this had been a long day would be an understatement. “Thank you, Ariana,” he said, letting a sigh escape. For a man accustomed to managing emotions and running wild to release tension, this was too much.
Too many emotions, too many shadows converging.
Her eyes widened with sympathy. “Is there anything I can help with?” Long, auburn hair carefully braided, deep green eyes, with a body that poured out of her elegant uniform like rising dough, Ariana had also been the holder of a deep crush toward Edward in her tween years. Remnants of it remained.
“No, thank you.”
“Your brother suggested you change into these,” she added, pointing to a valet stand that held a man’s suit and cuff links in the small, carved rack on top.
He nodded. “Of course he did.”
She departed, decorum prevailing over emotion.
The same held true for him as he squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and prepared to look into the haunted eyes of Vivien’s grief-stricken mother. He’d hoped for more time, to postpone the inevitable until morning, but clearly the Nagys had other plans.
Just half an hour ago he’d had Molly in his arms, her body grinding against his, musk and need and desire and the intangible lightness of pure want creating energy between them that barely settled, like a fine layer of warmth, on Edward’s skin. He knew her scent covered his mouth, neck, chest and thigh. Mostly his thigh.
Of all the times to face the Nagy family.
And yet to avoid them was impossible, a breach of manners unforgivable under the circumstances.
Dressing quickly, he peeled out of his sweat-soaked cotton clothes and changed into the formal attire Asher preferred. Required, in this case. The suit confined Edward, making him feel awkward, breeding resentment.
The long walk down the hallway from the library to the main lounge felt like each step carried the gong of a church bell, tolling for a deep darkness Edward could not counter with light.
As he passed a set of tall windows, he paused. The sky was a sickly gray, churning with the storm. Perfect. In a moribund sense, the ominous clouds that twisted like knives in a cyclone gave him comfort.
The comfort of the damned.
They did not hate him, he knew. Quite the opposite. Eager to assure and comfort, Vivien’s parents had tried to offer him solace.
But her brothers had different ideas.
Tomas and Gregor blamed Edward for failing to protect their little sister. This would be a grudge match of sorts, a meeting of the unresolved. Edward carried no fear inside, only the abyss of loneliness that comes from knowing there is no right or wrong.
Only pain.
Hesitating before the massive carved oak doors that closed the private wing from the rest of the house, he pressed his palms against the cool, polished wood, then added his forehead, eyes cast down, staring at the tips of his shiny black shoes. Asher had insisted he exchange his flannels and jeans for bespoke wool and wing tips, assuming the formality was a form of respect. Feeling like a double fraud in clothing he never wore, he curled his spine up, forcing his brow against the wood, inhaling deeply, searching for strength within.
It was there. He knew where to find it.
And as he exhaled, pulling back to open the door, he knew that this gathering was unlike any before.
Or, perhaps, he was wrong.
What if this gathering was all too familiar for the older generation? Vivian’s death had turned out to be an aberration, her murderer’s choice of victim a random act.
The theft of shifter serum from Gavin’s lab was anything but random.
All the details washed out of his mind like a sudden squall as he parted the doors and entered the main hall to find Asher shaking hands with a gray-haired man, the gentleman’s arm around the waist of a blond woman with coiffed hair in a tight French knot.
The couple turned, faces lighting up.
Edward’s throat went numb.
“Edward!” Florence Nagy whispered, her mouth spreading in a nostalgic smile, blue eyes heavily made up, her lips painted with a bright red never found in nature. “My goodness, you’ve grown even more handsome over the years! Look at your beard!” The
scent of her signature perfume as she reached up for a genuine embrace made Edward’s nose twitch. On occasion, Vivien had worn the same mixture.
“Florence, so good to see you.” His smile was authentic, his relief spilling through him like a cup running over. Vivien’s mother was here, holding his elbow now, one hand stroking his chin hair, pleased to see him. “I believe you age backward,” he replied, drawing on one of Derry’s famous lines he used with women.
It worked.
She laughed with glee, both palms on his jaw, holding his head with a maternal gesture that made him crave his own mother with a little boy’s yearning.
A man’s rumbling bass replied, jolting him out of the moment. “Have you turned into your flirtatious brother now, Edward? Role change?” Miklos Nagy’s handshake was firm, his hair a bit thinner than it was ten years ago, the skin around his eyes looser. Dark eyes the color of mink peeked out from under the faintly wrinkled skin of a long-lived shifter, but the intelligence had neither thinned nor sagged.
Edward towered over them. The Nagys were from eastern Europe, all fairly short compared to the Stantons, who were rumored to have Vikings in their bloodline.
“How have you been?” His words tumbled with Miklos and Florence’s, all three of them choosing the same polite phrase.
It broke the ice.
Miklos’s bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows turned down. “Sad to see you under the circumstances. The theft. I knew that Gavin’s company was working on a shifter project designed to give us more control over our…” He cleared his throat. “Our biology. And to help with shifter-human relationships. But I had no idea he’d advanced so far.”
Florence peered at Edward with intent. “Neither did you,” she said to him.
Edward shook his head. “No. This is all new to me as well.”
“You never could lie,” Florence declared. “Your face gives away your emotions.”
The stress of seeing them must have unraveled his carefully controlled countenance, the coolly polished neutral expression he’d fought to learn over the years. Struggling to hide his feelings, Edward was grateful when Miklos came to the rescue.
“Does Gavin know who stole the serum?”
“I don’t know. I really only know as much as the rest of you.”
“Humph.” That derisive sound came from behind Edward, making his spine straighten, senses heightened. He turned, knowing he would see Vivien’s eldest brother, Tomas, glaring at him.
He was right.
“I think you’re hiding details from us.” Tomas gave Edward a cold smile and extended a polite handshake. His nostrils widened, and his face went from an expression of polite disdain to one of outright disgust. Edward knew exactly what he smelled.
Edward returned the grip, using strength that bordered on abuse. Tomas gave it right back with an added glare. Dark as Vivien had been light, Tomas favored their father, his Romanian and Croatian roots showing with hair the color of crow’s feathers, a wide, strong brow, high cheekbones and a nose that was a tad too wide to be classically handsome. He’d been in boarding school with Asher at the same time, sharing the formative youth with other rich—or socially connected, in the Nagy’s case—boys from around the world.
Flung together on another continent, away from their families, both with a tendency toward arrogance, Asher and Tomas had developed a special friendship that had lasted for decades. Edward suspected the two would never have become friends as adults, with Tomas being far too irresponsible and self-serving for the grown Asher’s taste in companions, but their bond had been forged at a critical time, and it lasted.
Chocolate eyes, pupils dilated to the point of despair, combed over Edward, sizing him up. Though he was at least eight inches taller than Tomas, Edward had to hold his own. The guy could be intimidating.
Edward was done being intimidated.
“You wouldn’t be here if anyone planned to hide details, Tomas,” he said, drawing on his own inner turmoil and anger toward a man who he now realized should have united with the rest of the family after Vivien’s murder. Instead, he’d worked to divide them all. The corner of Edward’s mouth twitched as Tomas maintained his grip. “Your paranoia is misplaced.”
Miklos watched the men with an air of satisfaction, while Florence glared at her own son.
“Tomas! This is no way to talk to Edward.”
“I’m understandably protective of my family, Mama.”
“Honorable,” Edward murmured.
Tomas’s sharp look forced Edward to hold his eyes, not backing down. “It is more than honorable. It is what a good man does. And I,” he added, with great emphasis, “will never fail.”
Again, Edward thought.
Pulling Edward in for an awkward hug, Tomas whispered, “I know that scent. Enjoyed it more than you.”
Rage, raw and ready, filled Edward like a sudden rainstorm in the eye of a tornado, the edges deadly. Molly, he thought, as Tomas’s eyebrow raised, his meaning perfectly clear.
“Don’t you ever touch her again,” Edward whispered, fierce and low, into Tomas’s ear, barely able to restrain himself from shifting and pinning Tomas to the ground, fangs at his throat.
Tomas grinned, eyes shining, his inner cat showing in the eyes, the lines of his cheekbones, the telescoping of his pupils. “I consider that a challenge.”
“A smarter man would realize it’s a threat.” Edward felt bone crush in Tomas’s hand until at last, the shorter man released his grip, Edward’s steely grasp relenting only when Tomas broke eye contact.
Edward found himself watching Tomas’s hunched shoulders as the man departed the room.
Watching him like prey.
“He’s—he’s tired. It has been a long day,” Florence said apologetically. “We’ve been traveling all afternoon, and—”
“It’s fine,” Edward said, trying to keep the shortness out of his voice, returning to baseline, wondering who the hell he’d just become in those moments with Tomas. “You must be tired.” Taking a deep breath, he worked to turn down the roiling fury within. He gave Miklos a meaningful glance, but the older man was a piece of stone. “I’ll leave you to find your rooms and rest. Good to see you both.”
It was a miracle that he kept his voice steady, step stable as he departed. Edward practically raced to find fresh air, gulping the chilled freshness as if he’d been drowning.
Drowning in emotion.
Run, he thought, the word propelling his legs forward as he remained in human form, jogging down the small, unmarked path to Derry’s place, sprinting up a hill, gripping with agile feet in spite of the stiff shoes.
Run, he begged his body, asking it to do the impossible, to turn back time, to make the tension fade.
Run, he insisted, his heart screaming the word, the echo of the syllable playing against his ribs like a calypso drum.
And then suddenly he turned, caught by the shattering sky that lit up with a thousand fingers of light and the instantaneous absence of pain.
Warmth spread through him, a shockwave that ripped across his skin, through his veins, into his bones, a palpable, visual change in the surface tension of his flesh.
Molly.
He’d just left her, barely holding back from taking her against the boathouse wall, on the ground, dragging her into the dark woods where he could be bold and brave, explore every inch of her, bury himself so deep the rest of the world mattered not one bit, giving her the exquisite pleasure they could find by perfecting a vibration that tapped into the primal force of time itself.
He needed to pour himself in her, to wrap her around him.
“I do not believe what I smell,” growled a deep, livid voice. So hyper-focused on his own teeming need, Edward had failed to notice his eldest brother behind him, sniffing with a series of short sounds that layered a profound disappointment into the air between them.
Edward stiffened.
He stood up straighter.
This was not the body language of submission.
No more.
“Be direct,” Edward demanded, meeting Asher’s eye with a chilled calmness that felt like trying on another person’s clothing, though the fit was perfect. “You smell Molly on me.”
“Molly. The human who works for Eva.”
“Yes.”
“Let us find all the many dysfunctional parts of that sentence, Edward. Molly. The human. Who works for Eva.”
Asher’s biting wit was not amusing. Edward refused to let himself flinch. “I fail to see how her very existence is dysfunctional.”
“You fail to know all the facts.”
His eyes narrowed, body attuned to the way that Asher held himself. Iron backboned and implacable as always, a thin hum of worry, louder than usual, radiated from his bones.
“Illuminate me.”
Asher didn’t expect that response, his eyebrows moving south, body frozen.
“Stay away from her.”
“Why?”
“Because I—”
Edward braced himself, certain Asher would say it.
Because I said so.
But the sudden cut in the phrase surprised him.
“Because I know more about her than you.”
“You likely have a file on her from the security team.”
“That.” Asher waved his hand impatiently. “And so much more.”
“Why would Molly require more than a standard file?”
Asher’s eyelids fluttered slowly, making Edward’s pulse tighten, the speed exhilarating as his heartbeat shot through the stratosphere. Such a reaction from Asher was unheard of.
“We need to talk,” Asher said.
“Why?”
“Because Molly is here for a reason.”
“She’s working,” Edward said.
Asher motioned with his head, the neck bending slightly toward his open office door, down the hallway. “Let’s talk.”
“Not if you’re going to order me to stay away from her.”
