by Nalini Singh
Sliding back the door, he got out and strode across the street.
Talin’s head snapped up the second his foot hit the ground, as if she’d felt the vibration. A chaotic mix of emotions swept across her face, waves of liquid flame: Relief. Surprise. Pain. That ever-present fear.
Her lips shaped his name as he reached her side and drew her to him with an arm around her neck. She flinched at the rough move. He ignored it. “What happened?” he asked the cop and it was a challenge.
The man looked to Talin. “Is this the friend you said you called?”
Talin nodded. “Yes.”
Clay let the lie go. They’d discuss it later. “I’m Clay.”
“Max.” He held out a hand and as they shook, Clay saw the detective note everything about him, from his jeans to his sweatshirt to the fact that he needed a haircut. “You’ll look after her,” the man said as they broke contact.
Clay’s anger quieted at that statement, turned assessing. “What do I need to protect her from?” It looked like Max was the only remaining cop, so whatever had happened, either it had been minor or it had happened long enough ago for the forensics people to have come and gone. Which meant Talin should have called him hours ago.
His protective fury grew anew as Max laid out the bare facts. “Unless someone’s just getting their kicks terrorizing her, Talin’s doing more damage than she thinks.”
“I need to know what you’ve got, so I can make sure the bastards don’t come anywhere near her.” Clay could feel her heart beating as wildly as a panicked bird’s. But he didn’t release her and she didn’t fight to be let go. The leopard calmed.
Max paused. “Officially, I can’t give you anything. But you’re one of Lucas’s top men, aren’t you?”
Clay wasn’t surprised the cop had made him. DarkRiver was a power in San Francisco and it was Enforcement’s job to know that. Mostly because they were Psy stooges, but sometimes for other reasons—like making sure justice was done despite Psy interference.
He made a mental note to ask his contacts about Max, but his instincts said the man stood on the right side of the line. “Yes. I’m with DarkRiver.”
The detective nodded, as if reaching a decision. “Then we need to have an unofficial chat after I finish up today. Anyplace safe from prying eyes and ears?”
“Joe’s Bar.” Isolated near the edge of DarkRiver territory and frequented exclusively by cats, wolves, and their invited guests, it was close to airtight. “You know where it is?” At Max’s nod, he said, “Leave the recorder at home.”
“Funny that. I have a reputation for losing my recorder.” A deadpan statement. “I’ll see you around eight. Talin—you need me, you call.”
“She won’t be needing you.” Clay felt his arm tighten, sensed her panic, but couldn’t control the primitive animal impulse. “We’ll see you at the bar.”
Talin waited until Max had driven away before tugging at Clay’s arm. “Let me go.”
He leaned down until his lips brushed her ear. “I told you to stop flinching.” And then he bit her. A slow, painless nip but there were definitely teeth involved.
Shocked, she couldn’t speak for almost a minute, during which he hustled her across the road and into his large all-terrain vehicle. Its street name was the Tank, though it was far sleeker and faster than the outmoded war vehicle.
She finally found her voice after he dumped her bag in back and slid into the driver’s seat. “You bit me!”
He threw her a scowling look. “I gave you plenty of warning. Put on your belt.”
She was already doing it—out of habit, not because of his order. “You can’t go around biting people!”
He maneuvered the car out into the street. It didn’t surprise her in the least when he stuck to the manual controls, despite the fact that they were on a road embedded with the computronic chips that allowed automatic navigation. But he did engage the hover-drive, retracting the wheels so they skimmed soundlessly over the fog-shrouded streets.
“Clay?” she said when he seemed to be ignoring her.
“How did they get into your apartment?”
The shift in topic didn’t surprise her in the least, not when she knew how protective he was. “I don’t know. The building’s about average in terms of security, but I put in a top-of-the-line system on my door.” Even then, she rarely slept all the way through the night.
“Only on the door?”
“Yes. Why—Oh, the windows. I figured being on the eighth floor was enough.”
“Not against Psy telekinetics.”
“Psy?” She laughed. “Far as I know, teleporting is a major ability. I can’t see the Psy wasting that kind of a resource on terrorizing an ordinary human.”
“Hardly ordinary,” he muttered. “But there are other ways to enter through a window. Any changeling with climbing abilities, or wings, could have done it.”
She hadn’t considered that and now it appeared a glaring oversight. “The blood hadn’t stopped dripping when I arrived.” Shivering, she hugged her arms around herself.
“Was it warm?”
“What?”
“The blood.”
She almost threw up. “What the hell kind of question is that?”
“If they used fresh—”
“Stop!” she interrupted. “Stop the car!”
He came to a rocking halt.
Sliding back the door, she leaned out and retched. Since the only thing she’d eaten over the past twenty-four hours was that burger with Clay, there was nothing much to throw up. But her stomach didn’t know that. It cramped for what felt like hours, flooding her mouth with the ugly taste of bile and tearing her insides apart.
When it stopped at last, she found Clay by her side, one hand in her hair, the other holding a bottle of water. “Drink.”
With her throat feeling like someone had taken a hacksaw to it, there was no way she was going to refuse. The water proved ice-cold. “Where?” she rasped.
He understood. “Iced bottles. All of us carry them—changeling soldiers burn a lot of energy. The water’s infused with minerals and other stuff.”
She nodded and took another delicious gulp. “Tastes good.”
He tugged back her head with the hand he had in her hair. “What the hell was that about?”
She couldn’t bring herself to tell him the complete truth but she forced herself to tell one. Her deadly little secret didn’t need to be revealed. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. “I told you, I hate violence,” she reminded him. “You went too far with that talk of warm blood.”
His hand clenched in her hair before he released it, a penetrating expression on his face. “You had no trouble with discussing the dead boys.”
She clutched at her stomach. “It’s psychological.” She stood her ground, knowing if she gave even an inch, Clay would walk straight over her. “Can we go? There’s…” She nodded at the people peering out the windows of a nearby apartment building.
He ignored her request. “Why didn’t the Larkspurs take you to someone who could’ve helped you get a handle on these things?”
“They did.” She swung her legs back into the car and, closing her eyes, leaned her head against the seat. “I’m too screwed up to fix.”
The passenger door slid shut and a second later, she felt Clay get back into the driver’s seat. “That’s a load of crap,” he said once he had them moving again. “You never were good at handling blood. You almost passed out that time I cut my knee on a fence.”
Her gorge rose at even that harmless memory. Taking another drink, she focused on the piercing sparks of light exploding behind her eyelids. “I got worse. After.”
Silence.
Then, “After me or after him?”
“Does it matter?” She realized she’d drained the water bottle.
“I guess not. You’re still as fucked up.”
It hurt. “Yeah.”
He swore. “Jesus, Talin. Where’s your spine?”
Tha
t made her eyes snap open. “You’re insulting me to get me to react? What the hell kind of a bedside manner is that?” Outraged, she chucked the empty bottle into the pristine backseat. “I almost threw up my guts and you—”
“When did you become such a scared little mouse?” His tone was hard, his eyes trained on the road.
“Trauma, Clay! I was traumatized. It had an effect.”
“So was I,” he said, merciless. “I didn’t deal by sticking my head in the sand.”
She knew immediately that he wasn’t talking about the killing. “You saved me.”
His laughter was harsh. “Years too late.”
“No.” She had to reach him, had to make him see. “Orrin never tried to choke me before.” He’d wanted to watch the life leave her eyes, just like he’d done with those other girls he’d buried.
“He abused you, Talin. Hurt you, touched you, made you suffer through things no little girl should have to endure. So what if he saved the brutal murder for your eighth birthday! I fucking should have stopped him long before that!”
“I never told you,” she cried. “And you were a child, too.”
“I should have known. I’m a cat—I could smell him on you.”
“He was my foster parent. I remember you telling me you could smell their parents on all the kids.”
He didn’t respond. She stared at the dark stubble along his jaw, at the ebony silk of his hair. He was so close and yet she didn’t dare touch him. “Clay?” Talk to me, please, she wanted to beg. He had always spoken to her, even if he didn’t to anyone else.
His fingers clenched on the steering wheel. “Tell me about your life with the Larkspurs.”
Relieved, she took a deep, shuddering breath. “They’re farmers, all of them. Well, Dixie isn’t, but she’s a farmer’s wife. Already has two babies. It’s what she wanted.”
“You like Dixie.”
“Yes.” She smiled. “She’s the baby of the family and so sweet, so gentle. She used to follow me around and hug me every day, as if—I like Dixie.”
“The others?”
“Tanner and Sam run various parts of the farm. It’s a huge operation. Samara—Sam’s twin and older by a minute—organizes the business end of things. Ma and Pa Larkspur supervise everyone.”
“They sound like a happy family.” His eyes were cat bright when he glanced at her. “So why are you still stuck in that room, watching me tear Orrin apart?”
She should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy to escape the past. “I tried to get better. I pretended I was. But I never did and I don’t know why.” Though after her recent slew of medical tests, she could guess at some of it. “Where are you taking me?”
“Somewhere safe.”
She watched the city retreat behind them. “Where?” she insisted.
“My lair.”
Her heart stopped. “I thought you didn’t take strangers there.”
“I’m making an exception.”
It almost made her want to smile. Except…“Don’t. These people who are after me, they’re probably the ones taking the kids. They could follow and hurt you and your pack.”
He laughed and it was a deep masculine sound she felt in the innermost core of her body, a place no one had ever touched. “We’re not some minor pack you can blink and miss. DarkRiver controls San Francisco and the surrounding areas. We’re also allied to the wolves. No one enters our forests without our knowledge.”
“These people are smart.”
“Are you saying we animals aren’t?”
“Don’t pull that racial crap on me,” she said, scowling. “Or I’ll tell you what I really think of big cats who like to growl and bite.”
Clay felt his lips curve despite himself. “Meow.”
To his surprise, a sound that was almost a giggle escaped Talin’s lips. “Idiot.”
And that suddenly, she was his Tally again. Sweet, funny, and strong. So damn strong. The only human being who had ever stood up to him and won. “What happened to you, Tally?”
The laughter seeped out of the air. “I broke.”
Talin noticed the flowers the second she entered the low-level aerie Clay called his lair. Outwardly, it appeared nothing more than a forgotten tree house lost in the spreading branches of a heavily leafed tree. Inside, it proved wide and clean, with a retractable ladder that led up into a second level invisible from the outside.
“There’s a third level, too.” His voice gave away nothing. “I built it so it could be isolated from the ground at a second’s notice. You’ll sleep up there.”
“Oh.” She couldn’t get her mind off the beautiful, feminine flower arrangement. “Nice flowers.”
It seemed to her that his expression softened a fraction when he looked that way. “From Faith. She said I needed color in this place.”
Talin’s fingernails dug into her palms as he named the woman who had been allowed to meddle in his lair—in the lair of a man she’d known as a boy who rarely let anyone close. Even now, flowers aside, the stark masculinity of the place was undeniable. Everything was in shades of earth, with only occasional splashes of forest green and white, from the rug on the floor to the large, flat cushions that seemed to function as Clay’s version of sofas. It made sense, she thought. His leopard probably much preferred to curl up on the cushions.
The image of him in cat form made her fingers tingle in sensory memory. “You have visitors often?”
“No.”
So, this Faith was special. Folding her arms, she watched him as he pulled down the ladder, stepped on the first rung, and threw her bag up to the second level. When he stepped back down, his expression was one of grim determination. “Now, tell me the truth.”
Her stomach was suddenly full of a thousand butterflies. “The truth?”
His eyes turned so dark, they were close to black. “At first I thought it was because you’d grown up, but that’s not it.”
She swallowed. “What?” He couldn’t know. How could he know?
“Your scent.” He closed the distance between them, a graceful, dangerous predator with a mind like a blade. Tempered. Honed. “You smell wrong, Talin.”
“How can I smell wrong?” Dread morphed into honest confusion. “I smell like me.”
He moved around her to her back. She stood her ground, though irrational fear struck again. Memories of blood and—“Ouch!” She tugged her hair out of his grasp. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Snapping you out of panic.”
Her answer stuck in her throat as she felt the heat of his breath whisper along the curve of her neck. He was no longer touching any part of her, but she couldn’t move. Her body remembered his. He’d been the only one who had touched her in affection before the Larkspurs. But her adoptive family occupied a far different space in her heart than Clay. He was a deep, intrinsic part of her, a part she both feared and craved.
“You smell of woman, of fear, of you, but there’s an ugliness below the surface, a badness.”
Her soul curled into a tight self-protective ball. “I revolt you.”
“No, it’s not that kind of badness. It’s just wrong, shouldn’t be there.” He put his hands on her hips. They were big. Heavy. “Scared, Tally?”
She fought her shiver. “You know I am.” Her body might remember his warmth and protectiveness, but it also remembered his capacity for the most bloody violence.
His fingers pressed down a fraction before he released her. She waited for him to face her again. When he did, she found herself looking into eyes no longer the dark green of man but the paler gold-green of leopard.
Unprepared for the shift, she took a stumbling step backward. Her palms hit the wall.
“Why the wrongness in your scent, Talin?”
“I don’t know.”
“Try again.”
She was about to repeat her answer when she realized it would be a lie. Her mouth snapped shut. “As long as you can live with it, what does it matter?”
“Tell me.”
He was a barricade in front of her, an impenetrable mass of stubborn male muscle. Instead of increasing her fear, the display of unvarnished dominance made her anger spike. “No,” she said. “Stop being a bully.”
His face reflected surprise. “Wrong answer.” He came closer.
She went to duck out of the way but he’d already moved to trap her against the wall, his hands palms down on either side of her body. She felt her heart rate speed up, her own palms start to sweat. “Intimidation is hardly going to make me more inclined to tell you.”
He leaned down until his face filled her vision. A long, still pause. “Boo.”
She jumped at the husky whisper and hated herself for it. “Not nice.”
“According to you, I’m a rampaging monster.”
“No, I never—” She shook her head. “I can’t help what my mind feels, Clay.”
“Why?”
“Why not?” she snapped. “It’s my coping mechanism. Deal with it.”
“It’s nothing but a pile of shit.” He pressed even closer, the heat of him an almost physical caress. “And baby, if you’re coping, then I’m Mother Teresa. Now, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I’m sick!” she yelled. “Dying! There, happy now?”
CHAPTER 8
Clay went so motionless she couldn’t even hear him breathe. Her frustrated anger disappeared, to be replaced by a sense of slow horror. She hadn’t meant to tell him, didn’t want him motivated by pity. “Just forget it. It has no bearing on anything.”
He growled at her again and this time it was for real, a low rumbling sound that made her clutch at the wall, even as something long buried inside of her stirred in wary interest. “Stop it,” she said, pushing at his chest. It was like trying to shift a steel wall. He was hard, warm…beautiful. “Clay.”
“Forget it?” His voice wasn’t quite human. “Forget it?”
She wanted to stroke him, had some mad idea it would calm him. Dropping her hands, she pressed her palms back against the wall. “There’s nothing you can do,” she stated in the face of his aggression. “Remember when I used to get sick as a kid?”
