Midnight Touch

by L Ann

  Shaun’s smile faded as he looked at her. Cassie sensed the change in him, the sudden coiling of tension in his body where it was pressed against her.

  “Shaun?”

  He hesitated, took a swig of beer. “I didn’t think this would come up yet. But … fuck …” he scrubbed a hand down his face. “It’s something you’re going to hear about if you spend enough time with my family. I should have considered that.”

  “Is it what you wanted to tell me?”

  “Yes ... no … partly. Fuck, I don’t know.” He placed his bottle down and stood up.

  “You don’t have to tell me …” Cassie said, looking up at him, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to rest comfortably now until she knew what had him so agitated.

  “No, you need to know. And you need to hear it from me.” His eyes tracked over her face. “I just … fuck, Cassie. You’ve been through too much already. We’re just getting started and this … hearing this might change your mind.”

  “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad, surely?”

  The look he gave her suggested it could, and it was.

  “Let’s go for a walk.” He reached down and pulled her to her feet. Keeping hold of her hand, he grabbed their beer, and headed toward the trees.

  Guiding her through the trees, Shaun caught movement to his left. He tensed, then relaxed feeling his brother’s presence brush against his mind. Close on its heels, he caught the scent of a woman – Gemma – and mentally shook his head. He should warn Gemma not to get involved in the games Deacon liked to play, but he knew his brother well. And the more the girl resisted, the more focused he’d become.

  He glanced through the trees, and saw Deacon prowling forward, his eyes intent on the woman in front of him. She stood, her back to him, looking toward the house and he moved up behind her unnoticed. Shaun shifted his body, ensuring he was between Cassie and whatever was playing out between Deacon and Gemma and kept walking, deeper into the forest.

  “There’s a lake just through those trees,” he pointed ahead of them. “Have you ever been there?”

  Cassie shook her head. “The forest didn’t belong to us. It would have been trespassing.”

  He could feel her eyes on him, waiting and he took a long drink from his bottle. “I was in rehab.”

  “Rehab?” Her gaze fell to the beer bottle in his hand.

  “Not alcohol, drugs.” He heaved a heavy sigh. “I don’t even know where to start with this. I hadn’t planned on talking about it yet, so I’m just gonna … you know ... spill it out and hope you don’t run.”

  Who was he kidding? It wasn’t like he could walk away from her now.

  “It started because my cousin …” he avoided saying his name. It has been so long since he’d voiced it and he couldn’t bring himself to right then. “He’d got involved with a group of people he shouldn’t. They arranged underground fighting … you know, or maybe you don’t … cage fighting for money. Last one standing wins kinda thing. The more fights you won, the higher the prize. Problem was, the more you won, the more important you were to the people who ran it. And they made it very difficult for a fighter to leave.”

  What he couldn’t tell her was that both he and his cousin had been investigating the rumour of Hunters forcing Shifter-fights. They had been trapped and caught, then forced into the ring by the Hunters. They had been forced to fight in both human and wolf form. Forced to stay in the ring until one of the combatants stayed down – dead or defeated.

  “He managed to get word to me, asking for help. I should have gone straight to Mac, but stupidly thought I could handle it myself. Da- My cousin got me inside, hooked up into a fight and I started to work my way through the ranks.”

  And wasn’t that a twist on the truth? His cousin, Damien had been caught first. They had broken him and he started feeding the Hunters with information on how they could take Shaun unaware. Capture him like an animal. He’d woken up in a cage, chained up like a dog.

  “We were told if we both made enough money, we could buy ourselves out of the ring.” He paused to take a drink, feeling the darkness trying to swamp him as he recited the ‘official’ version of what had happened.

  The humour usually evident in his voice had completely disappeared, leaving behind a stark bleakness that pulled at Cassie’s heart.

  “So, I signed up to fight.”

  Or, more accurately, was forced to fight or die.

  “And I was good at it. But the matches really take a lot out of you, and after a month or so of fighting two or three matches a night, three times a week, I was exhausted. Physically drained. But we were raking in the money fast and Dam … my cousin almost had enough to buy himself out of the ring.”

  The Hunters had promised if Shaun could bring in $200,000 in three months, they’d let his cousin go.

  “The people who organised the ring offered me a solution. A new drug, experimental, made from the belladonna plant. Poison to humans, but extracted and mixed with other things, it gives the ability to stave off the need for sleep, a bit like an upper. They assured me it wasn’t addictive. It sounded like the perfect solution. And I was so tired, I swallowed it whole. Take the drug, perform in more fights, make more money without burning out.” He paused and laughed bitterly. “Best laid plans and all that. The drug is addictive, and I took it more and more often to stretch out the times between sleeping. Until I was going three or four days without shutting down.” He fell silent, gazing through the trees.

  Another lie. How many of them was he going to tell? He hadn’t willingly taken the drug. Not at first. They told him he was too good to sit out and, the first few times, had injected the drug into his veins. Then they decided that was too easy, they wanted to see him fight, so they’d pin him down and pour it down his throat – using his inability to stop them as a means to break him … and break him they did.

  By the fifth dose he’d stopped fighting and started begging for his next fix.

  “Shaun?” She curved her hand around his where it gripped the neck of the bottle. His head tipped, eyes finding hers. The moonlight reflected in them, making them glow a soft yellow.

  “A couple of days after I hit that two hundred thousand, my cousin tried to buy his way out. They decided he was too valuable. We made the ultimate tag team and they decided to run some paired matches. A little like the wrestling does it, only with more blood. They matched us up against a pair of …” he broke off, searching for a way to explain it. He couldn’t tell her they’d been matched up against two bear Shifters, or that the drug had taken away his ability to shift. “A pair of guys who were twice our size and fresh. We’d already fought two matches that night. We didn’t stand a chance.”

  His eyes sought out hers and the pain in them took Cassie’s breath away. “My cousin was dead before the first round ended, a broken neck. I don’t know how I got through it. I don’t remember much about the rest of the fight.” Other than blood and teeth and claws.

  “When I came back to myself, I was in a field in the middle of nowhere – no phone, no clothes, no fucking clue where I was. I guess they decided without my cousin’s presence, they couldn’t keep me in line. “He sucked in a deep breath, finished his beer. “Anyway, I found my way back home, made some excuse as to why I’d been out of contact for three months and tried to fall back into normality. But I couldn’t get the image of my cousin on the floor of that cage out of my head.” His voice had dropped to a whisper. “I was jonesing for a fix. I couldn’t sleep I couldn’t …” shift … “I just couldn’t get through the day. I put feelers out, to see if anyone knew anything about the drug I’d been given and found a dealer. I knew I had a problem. Fuck, I knew I had to stop, but cold turkey wasn’t the way. I told myself I’d reduce the dosage, try and do it properly, convinced myself I was going to get clean.”

  He stopped talking, closed his eyes and took another breath.

  “I went to a hockey game with Deke. I was exhausted, sleeping less than a couple of hours a nigh
t. It’d been almost nine months since I first tasted the drug. I couldn’t sleep properly, couldn’t stand the nightmares or, at least, that’s what I told myself. The medical report says I had a drug overdose and, I’m not gonna lie, that’s exactly what it was.”

  Shaun fell silent again and drew her through the trees to stand at the lake’s edge. He felt Cassie’s fingers curl around his.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I misjudged the amount, took more than I realised. About thirty minutes into the game, I felt my eyesight change. There was something wrong with it, I couldn’t see properly. Then the convulsions started. Deke got me out of the crowd as soon as he realised something was wrong.” He used their clasped hands to draw her back against his body and rested his chin on the top of her head. “I spent six months in our family home in LA, detoxing. Another six months avoiding the family, except Deke and Mac.” His arm slid around her waist, palm resting on her stomach as they both looked out over the lake.

  “I hadn’t written any music in over a year. Until that night in the bar the other week, I haven’t sung or played an instrument since hanging out with Gabe and Seth. The family kept trying to get me to go meetings, staged interventions, and every single time they did I felt myself slipping further away, needing to step back.” His words were barely louder than a whisper. “I couldn’t breathe, Cass. Couldn’t think. Everywhere I turned, someone was asking if I was okay, watching to see if I was going to relapse.” His lips twisted into something not quite resembling a smile. “There isn’t a quicker way to drive me into doing something than to keep asking me if I’m not doing it.

  “Mac knew what was happening, how close I was to going out and hunting down a dealer. Deacon was a constant shadow and it reached the point where I never left the house. I was going crazy, cooped inside like a caged animal, but too scared to go outside in case temptation hit.” She felt his chest expand against her back as he took in a deep breath. “Then this place came up for sale and Mac said he was thinking about relocating the family. He suggested I come down, check it out. Take some time to get back to nature, to reset.” His laughter was soft, the tension seeming to ease from his body.

  “Coming here was like a breath of fresh air, as stupid as that sounds. Mac was right. I needed space, somewhere I could just breathe and relax. I started writing again, picked up a guitar for the first time in a year.” His eyes opened, and he turned her in his arms. “And then you showed up. I didn’t know what to make of you.

  “For the first time in months, something outside of my own existence interested me. I was curious about you, about your life, about your problems.” He leaned forward, nuzzled his face into her throat and inhaled deeply. “And you smelled incredible. I spent three days driving myself crazy, thinking about driving back into town to find you and see if you tasted as good as you smelled.”

  Cassie gave a shocked laugh.

  “For the record, you tasted better than I could even imagine,” he murmured. His teeth nipped at her throat. “And I can’t wait to taste you again.”

  “Shaun …” she breathed his name, desire sparking.

  “Okay lovebirds, break it up!” Deacon appeared beside them. “The sun has set, it’s time to party.”

  Cassie felt Shaun tense, his expression guarded as he first looked at his brother and then back toward the clearing. She reached for his hand and wrapped her fingers around his, drawing his gaze to her, and she could see him pulling the mask she’d seen him drop while he told her his story back around himself.

  “We could just stay out here by the lake, if you want,” she offered, and Shaun smiled, the tension easing.

  “They’d only hunt us down and drag us back.” He slung his arm around his brother’s shoulders. “What were you and Gemma talking about?”

  Deacon stilled and looked at Shaun. “When?”

  “I saw you as we were walking through the forest. You were all big bad wolf sneaking up behind her.”

  Deacon laughed. “Oh, that. She fucking punched me, man.” He rubbed his jaw. “Girl’s got a lethal right hook.”

  “She did some self-defence classes a few years ago,” Cassie offered. “She lived in New York for a year, someone jumped her, stole her purse and her phone. Thankfully he didn’t hurt her … but she moved back home shortly after and signed up for some classes. Said she was never going to feel that vulnerable again.”

  Deacon’s eyes narrowed. “She never told me that.”

  “Why would she?” Shaun asked, and Deacon huffed a laugh.

  “Why indeed?”

  A shout went up when they entered the clearing from where the remaining members gathered around the fire pit.

  Asher sat strumming a guitar, and Cassie frowned trying to place the song.

  “Werewolves of London, Asher? Really?” Shaun laughed, taking the bottle of beer Deacon offered.

  Asher shrugged, grinning. “Why not? Gonna join us?”

  “Fucking hell,” he breathed, seeing Deacon pick up a second guitar. “Am I being ambushed?”

  “It’s been ages since we’ve all been together like this,” Asher pointed out.

  “Fine, whatever.” Shaun pulled Cassie over to the log they’d deserted earlier and sat down. He tugged Cassie down in front of him, his legs either side of her body, while Deacon grinned, his fingers dancing over the strings of his guitar.

  “Songs round the campfire is like a family tradition for us,” he told Cassie and launched into the opening bars of I Miss You by Blink 182.

  She could hear Shaun singing the words softly behind her, so low only she could hear him, breaking off to laugh when Deacon and Asher got caught up in a friendly competition of who could play the most complicated riffs.

  The rest of the family drifted closer, settling onto logs or sitting on the ground in a circle, occasionally singing along when they recognised the songs.

  Cassie lost track, each song moving seamlessly into the next – She Talks to Angels by The Black Crowes, Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin and more.

  At some point, Gemma settled down beside her and leaned close.

  “They’re really good,” she whispered.

  Cassie nodded, wordlessly, and leaned her head against Shaun’s knee. She felt his hand settle onto her shoulder and squeeze gently.

  “As much as I’d love to stay out here all night,” he said, as the sounds of the guitar faded, “it’s been a long day, and Cassie still needs to take it easy.” He reached down to take her hand in his, stood and pulled her to her feet.

  Deacon whooped as they walked toward the house. “My boy is going to get some tonight!” he called out. “Make him howl at the moon, Blondie!”

  “God, you’re so crass!” Gemma snapped at him.

  “For fucks sake,” Shaun laughed beneath his breath.

  “Are you?” Cassie asked.

  “Am I what?

  “Going to get some?”

  Shaun didn’t answer her until they were indoors. He stopped on the stairs and turned to face her. “That is completely up to you. Did what I tell you put you off?”

  “No.” She moved up another step, so they were eye level with each other. “But I might need a reminder of what you have to offer. It’s been a while.”

  “Is that right?” A smile ghosted across his face and he cupped her cheeks to tip her head back slowly, giving her time to move away. When she stayed where she was, he lowered his mouth and covered her lips with his. He kept the kiss light, barely touching, his tongue flicking out to taste before quickly withdrawing again.

  Cassie swayed toward him, her lips parting on a sigh, and Shaun took advantage, his tongue darting in to tangle with hers. He felt her fingers spear through his hair and she moved forward until she was pressed flush against him.

  “Cassie.” He groaned her name against her lips and dropped one hand from her cheek to curve over her hip and pull her into direct contact with the hard evidence of his arousal. His mouth followed the path of her jaw, down her ne
ck and nipped at the pulse beating frantically against her throat. “We need to at least make it to the bedroom.”

  He felt her nod, but she made no move to stop him when he tugged her top up, over her head and threw it to one side.

  “I dream about you,” he whispered, and bent his head to capture one taut nipple between his teeth. “About this.” His arms wrapped around her waist and lifted her off the floor.

  Cassie couldn’t say later how they made it to his bedroom. Shaun’s concentration was focused solely on teasing the sensitive buds of her nipples with his teeth and tongue, while they walked backwards along the hallway. But they did, and he kicked the door closed behind them before lowering her to the mattress. He wasted no time peeling of her jeans and panties, leaving her naked before his glittering gaze.

  She didn’t stop him when his weight settled above her, his knee parting her legs and the fingers of one hand sliding down her body to discover the slick wet heat waiting for him. His teeth closed over one nipple, and he bit gently, drawing the hardened tip deeper into his mouth as he pushed one finger inside her. A second finger joined it and her own hands curled into the mattress as she arched her hips to meet his thrusts.

  His breath warm against her skin, she felt Shaun move until his tongue laved across her other breast, lapping against her nipple, teasing it into a peak. She whimpered, feeling the pressure build and Shaun lifted his head.

  “Can you take another?” he whispered, and she nodded blindly, then moaned when a third finger pushed slowly inside, stretching her, filling her. “Feel that?” Another nod. “This is us. This is real.” His thumb flicked over her clit and Cassie whimpered again.

  “Shaun …” His name was a plea on her lips.

  “Don’t hold back.”

  His fingers moved, pumping in and out, hitting a spot deep inside, triggering that point of no return, and she cried out, her back arching. His fingers dropped away, and she shook her head, reaching out to snatch them back, only to find them replaced by something bigger, longer, harder. His hands curved over her hips, lifted them up and he slammed deep inside with a groan of satisfaction.