by Reina Torres
Maggie nodded, slow ponderous movements that were all she could manage at the moment. “You’re right, maybe you could. Better than I did, for sure.” Maggie swallowed and felt her mouth go dry as a bone. “But in facilities like that, it’s a matter of time and numbers. How much time you’re stuck in there, and how many people want to get you.”
Maggie went quiet for a few seconds and had no idea how her words had affected Frances. She couldn’t bring herself to look for fear that the younger woman would see the desolation in her eyes.
“I want to give you a way out of the facility before you find your way in.”
For a long moment Maggie worried that she’d lost Frances entirely. Just before she stood up to leave, she heard the legs of Frances’ chair squeak on the floor. Looking up into her face, Frances searched her eyes. “I’m just going to mess this up too.”
Maggie shook her head. “No, you’re not, Frances. If you’re willing to try this, really give it your best, I know we’re both going to make this work out.” Maggie held out her hand and watched as Frances stared at her hand before she put her hand out and took hold. “Okay?”
“What choice do I have?”
Maggie heard her words, but she saw something else in her eyes. Those beautiful eyes that looked like the desert sand. “You have choices. And your choices brought you here. Maybe it’s time to make some different choices. Instead of doing things on your own… maybe you can accept some help. Try that for a bit?”
Frances narrowed her eyes at Maggie and a low crawling growl purred through her throat. And her eyes, those beautiful eyes went black and then shifted into those of a lion.
Her power crawled over Maggie and yet, she wasn’t afraid.
She was amazed. Looking into a soul as wild and hurt as her own was a special gift.
And as the power subsided from Frances, as it pulled back from her eyes like a wave rolling back to sea, the younger woman’s eyes blinked back at her. “I’ll try.”
Maggie felt relief roll through her. “Good.”
The door behind the bailiff’s desk swung open and the judge entered the courtroom. She was nearly to her desk when Frances’ lawyer jogged back into the courtroom and made a half-hearted dash for the defense table.
The judge didn’t even sit down. She took one look at Frances standing beside Maggie at the table. “Dare I hope that you have seen reason, Miss Billings?”
Frances nodded. And beside her, Maggie smiled. The judge returned the gesture.
“Good.” She turned to look at Maggie. “My bailiff will schedule an appointment with you and Mr. Gamble to discuss the parameters of the release program, and-”
“Your Honor?”
Maggie saw the cautionary look on the judge’s face and swore she could feel Cage’s tension against her back like the heat from the sun. She couldn’t tell if it was comfort he was offering or his own warning, but she wasn’t going to stop. Not when she felt Frances squeeze her hand.
“I’d like Frances to be there at the meeting. She’s going to be responsible for her part in this, and she should be there to know what’s expected of her first hand.”
The judge considered her words… or so Maggie hoped. When the judge finally spoke, it was with the hint of a smile. “I like the way you think Miss Fordice. You’re a pistol and I admire that. Bring Miss Billings to the meeting, she should know what she’s in for.”
Maggie squeezed Frances’ hand back and began to speak, but Frances beat her to it.
“Thank you, Your Honor.”
Everyone could tell that the judge was surprised, but no one made a comment until the judge was back in chambers.
Frances skirted away from the table and stopped short when she found Cage waiting for her on the other side of the bar. Maggie couldn’t help holding her breath to see what would happen.
Cage looked at Frances, and Maggie felt her heart start to melt at the concern she saw there. He’d always been such a hard man to understand, especially when she was a teen with a chip on her shoulder and chaos in her heart, but this man was different.
This Cage made her feel all kinds of warm inside, like he used to, but he also burned her from the inside out with need. A man that was that tough and had a heart for a hard case young girl? That made her all kinds of warm and fuzzy. Wondering if he was warm when he was…
The squeak of the hinge on the gate brought her back to the moment.
“So, now that we’re done here,” Frances turned to look over her shoulder at Maggie and then back to Cage, “are we going to go get something to eat, or what?”
Cage looked up and met Maggie’s eyes over Frances’ shoulder. “You going to come with us?”
“Me?” Maggie touched her hand to her chest and felt her heart pounding a beat under her fingertips. “If you want me there, we can just go to the diner. I can cook something and-”
“No.” Cage shook his head. “We’ll go somewhere you can sit down and enjoy a meal. I owe you plenty for what you did here. I want to do this for you.”
Wow. You could just knock her over with a feather. Cage Gamble was going to take her out for a meal. Of course, it was just a thank you for helping out his foster daughter, but it was a meal, with Cage. Talk about wild-horse wishes come true.
“Well?” Frances gave her a side-long glance. “Are you coming?”
Maggie hoped her smile didn’t look too sappy. “Absolutely.”
Chapter Four
By the time they arrived back home it was after ten o’clock and Frances didn’t even bother to pretend that she wasn’t tired. Before she started up the steps to the apartment she looked back at Maggie and then Cage, all but ordering him to walk Maggie back to her apartment.
Cage gave her a raised brow in answer to her order and managed to stay silent until he heard the front door lock before he turned to look at Maggie.
“You don’t have to,” she blurted out loud.
“I don’t have to what?”
“Walk me back. I’m just across the street.” He knew that, but he couldn’t help and smile at the sweet scent of her desire. It rolled off of her in waves even if she was struggling not to show him how she felt.
“And what if I wanted to walk you?”
She blinked at him a few times before answering him. “Why?”
He could hear her heart pounding in her chest, like a small creature running through the underbrush, a tasty morsel for a big hungry cat. “To thank you, Maggie. For everything.” He saw the surprise on her face and shook his head. “Is that so hard to hear?”
She worried at her bottom lip and damn if it didn’t take every bit of restraint that he had to keep his hands at his side. It wasn’t enough that he had to keep from touching her, he had to fight his jaguar who was more than happy to point out that Maggie wasn’t just attracted to them, they could easily scent her arousal.
When she started to speak, his attention pulled back from his carnal feelings and focused on her answer.
“I’m just trying to help out. If it wasn’t for people like Paulie who reached out to help me,” she shook her head slowly, a shadow flickering over her features, “I don’t know where I’d be right now.”
She shivered and before he could think better of it he reached out and took hold of her shoulders. “Let’s get you inside.”
He was rewarded with a stunned look from Maggie, her eyes widened and her lips slightly parted. But she didn’t say a word.
“Maggie?” He heard the soft growl of his jaguar almost purring through his voice.
“Yes?”
He watched her wince at the sound of her own voice and didn’t want her to be embarrassed in front of him. Before he spoke he tried to find the right words. The polite words. And he could feel his jaguar watching from the shadows inside him. “May I walk you home?’
He could see the protest on her lips. Before she could speak, he smoothed his hands down her arms to gently pass over her elbows. As his hands continued down toward her wrists, he was
barely brushing her skin with his fingertips.
“Let me walk with you, Maggie.”
By the time his hands circled her wrists he felt her heartbeat trembling just beneath her skin. He knew she was reacting to him, but he also knew she’d likely catch a cold if they stayed outside much longer.
He moved one hand down from her wrist and took hold of her hand in his. Leaning closer, he held his cheek a little less than an inch from hers, whispering in her ear. “Either you walk, or I carry you inside your apartment.”
That got her moving with almost a stutter in her step. She clutched his hand and moved along beside him as he walked toward the back of the diner. The parking lot at the back was little more than a layer of gravel worn into the dirt beneath it. If there was a heavy rain, the parking lot turned into a thin lake of water, but the gravel kept it from sucking the cars down into the muck that would form.
When she started up the stairs before him, his gaze traveled down her back and followed the seductive swing of her hips and the well-worn jeans that lovingly cupped her backside.
His jaguar was trying to wrest control from him, needing to taste and touch soon… very soon.
Cage refused, reminding his beast that their need came second to the comfort and happiness of their mate, but the animal reminded him how alone they had been without her.
She reached the landing before him, but he found her fumbling with her keys.
He could only hope her nerves were because she felt the same need for him instead of something else. He didn’t trust their bond because he hasn’t had any time to cement it with her. What could he do, but try?
“Here, give me the keys.”
She froze slightly before the door, the keychain dangling from her fingers.
When she didn’t move, he stepped up at her back and set his left hand on her shoulder and then reached around her body, gently tugging the keys from her hands.
“The one with the red rubber thing around it.”
He quickly turned the ring to hold the key between his fingers and leaned forward to insert the key in the lock. It didn’t take long to twist it open, but it took a long pause for him to realize that the strange feeling rolling through his body was Maggie, trembling against him.
It would have been easy to joke with her about it, he wasn’t a man that found sex something he had to hide or pretend not to like. And the feeling of Maggie’s luscious form pressed up against his front was a sinful delight. As he stood there he leaned back enough to whisper into her ear. “You should go inside, Maggie, or I might think you’re trembling because of me. And then we’ll really be in trouble.”
He felt her sway forward and then she stopped and settled back against him.
She turned her head slightly in his direction, but he wasn’t sure if she really saw him, or if she was only pretending to look. “What kind of trouble?”
Oh, Maggie, he chastised the young woman pressed so intimately up against him, do you know what you’re doing?
He hoped she did, because he didn’t have much resistance left.
“If you stay right where you are, I’m likely to turn you around and take you up against this wall.”
“Out here?” Her voice brushed against his skin as if it was a physical touch. “Someone might see us.”
He smiled, and his jaguar flexed its claws in the darkness. She didn’t say no.
She didn’t say no.
“Then let’s go inside, Maggie. I need to get you inside.”
The mood shifted once they were inside. Dropping her keys onto the top of the tiny dining table, she turned to look at him as she flicked the light switch on the wall. The old fashioned bright light bulbs in the clear glass fixtures was nearly blinding to him as if he was staring into oncoming high-bearms.
When he turned to look at her he found himself stuck in place. He didn’t make a move to walk away from the door. His gaze moved around the room, nothing looked familiar to him and he realized in a rush that he knew little about Maggie beyond her past. He knew nothing about the woman she’d become. He wanted her, yes, but his mate deserved more than a quick tumble in the sheets. What he did for a living might be seen as a bit barbarian for humans, but he knew how he should treat a human woman. He’d seen Devlin and Boone find their mates and he wanted to honor Maggie and show her that he was more than instinct, blood, and fang. She should be treated with respect with time taken to get to know her first.
His jaguar was ready to eviscerate him, but once he’d made the decision, Cage was determined to see it through. “I should be heading back.”
“Do you have to?” He heard confusion in her tone and knew it was his fault. Outside, he’d been only too eager to get her inside and here he was, suddenly trying to get out again.
It startled him to see her looking right at him, straight into his eyes. “I got you home safely.”
“And you didn’t want to stay?” She blinked at him a few times and damn if she didn’t worry her lip again. She might even look a little disappointed, but maybe that was just his wishful thinking.
Or his jaguar pushing for control.
Just watching her teeth press into the fullness of her lip, he wanted to be the one biting it.
Bite her.
He shoved his jaguar aside.
Our mate. It pushed back.
“You want me to stay.” He’d meant it as a question, but it almost sounded like a command.
And Maggie, well she didn’t look like she was arguing. “I do, actually.” Before either of them could say a thing, she’d crossed to her refrigerator. “I just moved back, but my dad stocked the fridge with some basics.”
As she swung the door open he watched her bend over to look inside, he had to grind his teeth together to keep himself from scaring her. “I don’t need anything.”
She stood up with a long-neck bottle in each hand? “No?”
He caught sight of the label and started to salivate. Okay, so he was already hungry being in a room alone with Maggie but add his favorite IPA into the mix and he was a goner. “Yes.”
He followed her to the couch and sat down beside her with a little over a foot between them. She handed him one bottle.
“Can you open it for me?”
Yes… his jaguar sighed, buttons too. Zippers…
“Sure.” He took one bottle of beer and easily pulled the top off of it and tossed it into the garbage pail across the room. When he handed the beer back to her she smiled and handed him the other bottle. He quickly repeated the gesture and rid himself of the cap. Taking a long drink from the bottle he watched her doing the same and nearly drowned in the rush of beer in his throat. He was too busy staring at the way her lips wrapped around the mouth of the bottle to remember to swallow.
He coughed and nearly lost the rest of his beer down the front of his shirt.
Still, he managed to keep hold of it and watch her lower the bottle from her lips, and he didn’t grab her and lay her back on the sofa. So, all in all, he considered it a win.
His jaguar, on the other hand, was pissed. Murderous, really. And he was the target.
“I didn’t know your unit was still tight with my dad.”
“Most of us,” he added.
“Most of you,” she agreed, “I just didn’t know that y’all were this close.”
He turned toward her tucking his leg up on the seat and leaning on the back of the sofa. “It helps,” he shrugged, “I mean, I thought once I left the service I would get as far as I could from the others. I wanted to find a place out in the middle of nowhere and live out my life in peace and quiet.”
She gave him a long thoughtful look. “Too much peace and quiet?”
“Pretty much.”
She laughed and damn, her breasts jiggled under her blouse and he had to hold tight to the longneck of his bottle.
“So,” she looked over at him, her eyes intent on him, half-lidded with sleep or seduction he couldn’t tell, “what’s this club Frances was talking about?�
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“A fight venue. We have everything from boxing to MMA, amateur wrestling, and cage matches.”
She gave him a look that said she caught the irony of the fact that he was involved in that kind of a business.
“This was just my way of putting my bonus to work for me.”
“Bonus?” She sat back on the couch and propped her arm on the back, so she could lean her cheek on the back of her hand. Cage barely resisted the urge to reach out and tug on her hand until she moved closer, but then, he reasoned, he wouldn’t be able to look at her face.
And she was so damn beautiful.
“The bonus from the government for those of us willing to join the program. Like a signing bonus. They were pretty open about the likelihood of us coming back in one piece, or at all,” he felt the words as they scratched through a tunnel of sharp-edged self-loathing in his throat, “I’m surprised your father didn’t tell you.”
“Well, our relationship now is night and day from what it was like when I was Frances’ age, but there’s still a whole galaxy of things that my father doesn’t and won’t tell me. We don’t even talk about that time of his life much. It’s better that way.” A muscle in her cheek twitched, matching one in her temple. “And that’s okay. We’re doing well.” He heard the tentative sound in her voice, the thick swell of her throat with unspoken feelings. She wasn’t comfortable with the direction the conversation was going and he made a note of it. This was a topic he would have to tread lightly on if he wanted to keep things easy between them.
He approached his side of the story with careful, plodding steps. “The military had us in a special unit, because of our special skills.”
Cage watched the words slowly sink in, pressing a line between Maggie’s brows. “Because you were all shifters.”
He chose his words carefully. “Yes, we were shifters.”
“Was my father the only one who wasn’t?”
“No,” Cage knew there wasn’t anything classified in this part of the truth. “When they formed the unit, all of the officer’s directly under him were all perfectly human. Hard cases, yes. Assholes, most of them. They got their messages across quickly.” He swallowed another taste of bile on the back of his throat. “They weren’t going to make it easy on us.”
