Primal Desires

by Susan Sizemore

  Jason sat down on the bed and stared at her. “You’re taking this calmly.”

  He wasn’t. The agitation that boiled off him made her head hurt.

  “I begin to suspect a cultural problem here that I have no clue about.” She pulled up a chair to sit down, rested her folded hands on the smooth silk of her nightgown, and kept her tone reasonable and as academic as she could manage. “Walk me through this, please. I have been given to understand that vampires are matrilineal.” Jason nodded. “Women are heads of households, and all children belong to the mother and are part of the mother’s Clan, no matter who the father is, whether they’re bonded or not.”

  “That is correct.”

  “And it is not only customary, but necessary for the viability of the species, for vampire women to have children with several vampire males. They reproduce this way until they acquire a bondmate, and after the bonding they only have children with the Prime who is their bondmate.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, so, Sidonie is not bonded.”

  He gave her a hot look that made her shiver all over. “I am.”

  Sofia refused to give in to the strong urge to forget about everything and throw herself on the man. “You’re working on being bonded. I believe the process of mind-soul-body integration takes some time.”

  “We’re working on being bonded,” he answered. “You and I. Sidonie Wolf has nothing to do with it.”

  “No, she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to have anything to do with you sexually. I’d cheerfully kill her if she did. She simply wants you to contribute your DNA to conceiving a child that will be totally hers. She wants to take the sex out of an ancient custom and put a modern spin on it. She wants a sperm donor—that’s all.”

  “All?”

  He stood, with grace that barely covered his outrage. For a moment Sofia shrank back in her chair. It was like having a furious giant standing over her, but she didn’t give in to the intimidation for long. She met his gaze, Wolf Tamer to Beast Master, and after a few seconds of mutual glaring Jason resumed his seat. He hadn’t calmed down at all, though. This was so not going well.

  “I really don’t understand why you’re angry.”

  He crossed his arms over his bare chest. “You want to pimp me out to stud, and you wonder why I’m angry?”

  “Oh, please. That’s just male ego talking. I thought you were better than that.”

  “I am Prime!”

  “Good for you,” she snapped as her own temper flared. She shot to her feet and glared down at him this time. “Aren’t you the person who recently pointed out that this is the twenty-first century? What’s wrong with vampires using alternate fertility methods?”

  “That’s sick and disgusting and utterly—”

  “Mortal?” she questioned sarcastically.

  “Yes,” he snarled back. “If Sid wants a baby, let her do it the right way—instead of using you to try to get to me.”

  It wasn’t that she really wanted him to be Sid’s sperm donor, but she saw the other woman’s point, and her desperation. “Jason, you’re being old-fashioned.”

  “In this, yes. I belong to you.” He grabbed her shoulders hard. “And you’re mine. Conversation closed. Do you understand?”

  Chapter Forty-three

  J ason knew instantly that he hadn’t phrased that right. He took his hands off her shoulders, terrified that he’d left bruises, and clasped his hands tightly behind his back. “I’m sorry. I—”

  Sofia turned away from his apology. She walked to the patio door and he let her go, realizing that the hurt he’d caused her wasn’t physical.

  “You aren’t my property,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  She stopped and rested her head wearily against the glass door. “I am not ready for this. I am so not ready for this.”

  He moved up behind her and put his arms around her waist. Though she tensed at his touch, he took it as a good sign that she didn’t move away. He buried his face in her thick hair and breathed in the scent of her. He didn’t understand why being near her brought him peace, even now, when she was so agitated, but he accepted this gift she brought to his life. He hated that the last thing Sofia was feeling right now was peaceful and longed to help her.

  “I’m not ready for this,” she repeated in an anguished whisper.

  “For us?” he asked, dreading the answer.

  “For everything. For life. Everything’s changed so fast. Everything is so different! I’m used to being alone, to being unwanted, to having a father who’s a murderer and…” Her voice trailed off into a long, strangled moan.

  Her tense muscles went suddenly limp, and she threw her head back with a tortured wail.

  Jason quickly turned her around and pulled her close.

  She shook like a tree in a storm, sobs racking her.

  My father! Daddy!

  I know. I know.

  She cried and cried, a lifetime’s worth of grief pouring out of her. She bled inside, battered by pain.

  Her pain cut through him. He wanted desperately to make it stop—but no. She needed this.

  Sometimes pain could be a gift, no matter what it felt like at the time. So he held her, and loved her and waited, hoping she could come to terms with all she’d lost.

  When she sagged against him, he picked her up and sat on the bed with her cradled on his lap.

  After one last huge shudder, finally Sofia lifted her head. “My father went to prison for killing feral werewolves.”

  “Yes.” Jason used a tissue to wipe her wet face.

  She took the tissue from him and blew her nose. Then she scrubbed her hands across her cheeks. When he rose to carry her into the bathroom, she said, “I can walk.”

  He ignored her and didn’t put her down until they got to the sink. He stood back while she splashed cold water repeatedly on her burning face and handed her a towel when she straightened.

  “You’re too good to me,” she said. “I’m a blubbering fool.”

  “You needed the release. Feeling any better now?” He already knew the answer to that; her broken heart beat inside his body. He would do anything to make her whole.

  She looked at him, her dark eyes full of bleak hopelessness. “He did the wrong thing for the right reason.”

  Jason nodded.

  “He’s serving life in Gull Bay Supermax.” She swallowed fresh tears. “He did it for me.” The bleak expression left her eyes, but the hurt remained.

  Jason crossed his arms. “I see. You won’t let yourself grieve anymore, but you will blame yourself for the choice he made. Don’t do that, sweetheart. He wouldn’t want you to.”

  “That selfless bastard,” she spat out. She threw down the towel and marched out of the bathroom.

  He followed her into the bedroom and watched her pace restlessly around the room. He knew a caged tiger when he saw one. An angry caged tiger.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  She turned to him. “Can’t you read my mind?”

  “Sometimes it’s wiser not to.”

  “This isn’t justice,” she said. “This isn’t fair. What am I going to do?”

  “Visit your father,” Jason suggested. “Let him know you know why he did what he did. Let him know you forgive him, and that you love him.”

  “Of course I love him. I’ve hated his guts, but I haven’t stopped loving him. Believe me, I tried.” She went back to pacing. “I wonder if I could hire a lawyer and get the case reopened with new evidence.”

  “You can’t mean that.”

  “Why not? Even if every werewolf in the world comes after me for outing them, I don’t care.”

  “I’d care. I’d have your back, sweetheart, and I’d have to kill a lot of nice werewolves defending you.”

  She saw his point and kicked a chair leg in frustration, then winced. He felt the blood racing through her and the wild pounding of her heart.

  “This is life and death we’re talking about, Sof
ia. You are in my world now, and our secrets cannot be revealed.”

  She nodded reluctantly and began pacing again. “I know. But something has to be done! I cannot—will not—leave an innocent man in that place.”

  “He is not innocent,” Jason reminded her.

  She stopped moving, her fists bunched at her sides. “Why did he have to kill them? Why couldn’t he have—”

  “He was a father defending his child. I’d kill any monster that threatened my child.”

  “All right. Maybe the question is, why did he have to get caught? Where was his cleanup crew to make sure the police didn’t know anything supernatural occurred?”

  “That was—unfortunate.”

  “Something has to be done,” she declared. “We have to do something to help him.”

  “I don’t know what.” He hated the way she felt, desperate and close to breaking again, her control a brittle and fragile shell. “We’ll think of something,” he promised.

  “We could break him out of Gull Bay.”

  He might have laughed had this not been so deadly serious. “Sweetheart, this is real life, not some show on the Fox network.”

  She countered, “Vampires, werewolves, skinhead biker bad guys? Don’t talk to me about reality, Jason Cage.”

  “Okay. Point taken. But how could we—”

  “Wait. I think I’ve got an idea. Vampires. And werewolves.” Sofia laughed. “It’s crazy, but it just might work. Of course it’ll work! It has to work.”

  He caught her enthusiasm. “What have you got in mind?”

  “Do you know anything about the security at a place like Gull Bay?”

  “Do you?”

  “I know as much as anyone on the outside can know about Gull Bay.” She shrugged. “As much as I tried to forget about my father I couldn’t stop myself from doing websearches about where he is. I didn’t want to know, and I couldn’t bear not to.”

  “That is understandable.”

  “Is it? Anyway, Gull Bay was built specifically to house Level Four offenders—the worst of the worst. It’s located in an isolated spot in northern California. My father’s in the Security Housing Unit, which means he spends twenty-three hours a day alone in a cell. Only the staff are allowed into the SHU, except for routine searches by drug-sniffing dogs. The dogs and their handlers are brought in from police units outside the prison. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

  Jason shook his head. “No.”

  “You and Cathy in wolf form can go in as one of those canine units.”

  He began to get an inkling of what she had in mind. “You want to use our strength and telepathic abilities to break your father out.”

  She nodded. “I remember how you psychically made the cops at the motel go away. All you have to do is go into Gull Bay, make everybody in the place forget Daddy ever existed, and bring him out.”

  By the Goddess, the woman didn’t know what she was asking! But she deserved to have her father. And he would do anything for her happiness. He wasn’t going to tell her what it might cost him, though.

  He forced a confident smile. “It’s so crazy it just might work.”

  “Good. Let’s go talk to Cathy.”

  When she started toward the door, he turned her around and pointed her toward the bed. “You’re exhausted. I’ll go talk to Cathy. You get some rest.”

  Chapter Forty-four

  S ofia lay with her eyes closed while Jason got dressed, and she tried to go to sleep after the door closed behind him. She’d never felt so drained; her muscles burned with weariness. Yet her mind raced, and after a while she couldn’t take the thoughts chasing around in her head any longer. She wanted Jason to come back and began counting the seconds he was gone.

  When she grew disgusted with her neediness, she got out of bed, put a matching short robe on over her black nightgown, and went out onto the patio. A few breaths of brisk night air helped clear her head. She stared up at the beautiful night sky until she heard a footstep.

  “Can’t sleep?” Sid’s voice asked out of the darkness. The vampire stepped onto the patio. “Me, either. With all the psychic turmoil flying around the place, I doubt if anybody’s asleep.”

  “You’ve been crying,” Sofia observed.

  “You, too.”

  Sofia nodded. “I hate living on an emotional roller coaster.”

  “It’s been a rough week.”

  Sofia recalled their earlier conversation by the fountain. “I talked to Jason about fathering the baby. It didn’t go well.”

  Sid wasn’t disappointed. “That’s okay. I think that plan’s pretty much on hold for the moment, anyway.” She looked concerned. “Did you two have a big fight over it? Is that why you’ve been sending out so much hysterical energy?”

  “There was a bit of stress during that conversation,” Sofia answered, “but my hysteria came from something else.”

  Sofia explained to Sid about her father, and the plan to save him. She thought Sid would be pleased by what she told her, but the vampire woman looked worried when Sofia was done.

  “What’s wrong?” Sofia asked. “Don’t you think it will work?”

  “I think that Jason Cage might be the wrong person to ask to break your dad out of Gull Bay.”

  Sofia was confused. “Why? He agreed with the plan.”

  “He’s Family, and the Families have different rules about dealing with mortals than the Clans do. The Families do not directly interfere in mortal matters. He got in deep trouble for trying to save the world once already. I don’t think his people will take kindly to his interfering again.”

  Sofia sank weakly onto a patio chair and she swore—at life, at herself. What had she done?

  Totally miserable, she looked up at Sid. “I saw how determined he looked when he left. I don’t think I could stop him now even if I begged him. How much trouble have I gotten him into? What do I do?”

  “Talk to Lady Juanita,” Sid advised. “Maybe she can think of something.”

  “If you’re looking for Jason, he just left,” Cathy said when Sofia entered the central meeting room.

  “I know.” Sofia tapped her forehead. “It’s impossible for me not to know where he is.”

  There were several others in the room with her cousin. Mike and Harry Bleythin, Antonia, and David Berus were there, along with Lady Juanita and several people whose names Sofia couldn’t remember.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Cathy told her. “We were discussing a plan to rescue our missing relatives.”

  “Cathy’s come up with something we believe will work,” Harry said. “We want to know what you think of it.”

  Of course they had more than one crisis to deal with. Sofia felt almost selfish for putting her concerns first, but Jason’s well-being meant more to her than anything else—even more than her father’s freedom. She closed her eyes and tried to bury the pain of the loss beneath its usual layer of scar tissue.

  “Are you ill?” David Berus was suddenly beside her.

  “No.”

  Everyone’s concerned attention was now on her. She tried to smile reassuringly at them, but couldn’t manage it. Cathy, Mike, and Harry all came toward her, but she gestured for them to sit down.

  She wasn’t used to asking for help, but for once, she didn’t hesitate. She looked to the Matri. “Lady Juanita, I did something that’s going to get Jason in terrible trouble, and you have to help me stop him. Please.”

  The Matri didn’t show any surprise. “But the plan to help your father sounds workable.”

  “After we made a few suggestions and alterations to it,” Mike added.

  Cathy gave Mike an annoyed look. “Mike means he insisted he be the one to go into the prison with Jason.”

  Mike brushed a hand through Cathy’s hair. “I’m not letting my mate anywhere near a bunch of dangerous convicts. Besides, I owe Jason one.”

  “You don’t understand,” Sofia said. “Jason will be in terrible trouble if he does this. His people
will punish him, and he knows it. He’s being noble, which is lovely, but I can’t let him go back to jail for breaking somebody else out.”

  “Of course, he’s Family,” Lady Juanita said. “He’s so much like one of us that I’d forgotten the restrictions he lives under.” She looked steadily at Sofia. “My dear, because he is Family and I am Clan, I have no authority to forbid him to do this.”

  “He’s doing what’s right,” David said.

  “His Matri won’t see it that way,” Mike said.

  “True,” David looked at Sofia sympathetically. “You and I may not approve of the way the Families choose to deal with mortals, but they have their own good reasons for their policies.”

  “Well, I think my uncle deserves to be broken out of jail,” Cathy spoke up. “Come on, people! Let’s think of a way to get this done.”

  “The solution is perfectly simple,” Antonia said. “Isn’t it, David, my love?”

  David looked at her and laughed. “I am Clan Prime. Rescuing mortals is what I do.” He told Sofia, “I am not as strong a telepath as Jason, but my ability will suffice for the assignment. May I offer myself as the means for righting the wrong done to your father?”

  Sofia’s heart sang with gratitude, and she threw her arms around the big, blond vampire. “Thank you! Thank you, thank you!”

  “She agrees,” Antonia said. “Now get your hands off my bondmate, young lady.”

  Sofia quickly stepped away from David. “But what do I tell Jason? He isn’t going to back off from going through with this mission.”

  “You need not tell him anything,” Lady Juanita said. “All you have to do is go back to your room and do what comes naturally to a bonding couple.”

  Everyone laughed, but Sofia protested, “I can’t lie to him. That wouldn’t be right.”

  “You don’t have to talk to him at all,” Cathy said. “All you have to do is screw his brains out until the mission’s accomplished.”

  “You’re already dressed for it,” Mike pointed out.

  Sofia had forgotten she was only wearing a skimpy nightgown and robe, and she blushed. Jason had told her that the reason they kept being distracted by lust from other matters was because of the bonding. She hadn’t understood at first, then the need had proved as inconvenient as it was wonderful, and now she saw how this distraction could help them. This wasn’t manipulating him, it was saving him.