Promises Reveal

by Sarah McCarty

  He already had that covered. He’d started arrangements the day after Evie had said how much she hated the house. “Agreed.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “You agreed to that awfully quick.”

  Since she seemed to have forgotten about the buttons, he took over for her. “I’m inspired. Next.”

  “You can’t leave me at night without telling me where you’re going, no matter how pretty you think I am when I’m sleeping.”

  He smiled. “Done.”

  “You have to keep your promise to help those weaker. Especially women like Nidia.”

  He spread her shirt off her shoulders, revealing the pink of her corset and the white of her camisole beneath. Pink and white were fast becoming his favorite colors. “Nidia won’t take help, even if you offer it to her.”

  Evie ducked his gaze.

  He sighed and pulled the ribbon free of the camisole, sliding it across Evie’s chest, smiling at the rise of her blush. “What?”

  “I kind of made her promise.”

  “What kind of promise?”

  “She saved my life in that alley. In return I told her at any time she could come to you and me and ask for anything and it would be granted.”

  He didn’t have a problem with that. Evie was his world. Nidia could have anything she wanted whenever she wanted it. “Done.”

  The ribbon spilled down her chest and over her nipple. Even though there was no way she could feel the contact through her camisole, Evie shivered and her nipple puckered. His cock jerked with the same enthusiasm. She had very pretty breasts, sensitive, perfect for loving. “What else?”

  “I want to live in Cattle Crossing.”

  Now that was a surprise. He looked up. “I was thinking of taking you to Paris.”

  She was shaking her head before he finished. “Maybe for a vacation, but this is home. I want our children to live here. I want to live here.”

  It was his home, too. At first home had been a hard concept to wrap his mind around, but he was rather attached to it now. “Done.”

  “Which brings me to the next thing. And this is a big one.” Her flush deepened. “I don’t want you to . . . keep yourself from me anymore.”

  He had to think on her meaning and when he did, his balls pulled up tight. “You want me to come in you?”

  Her breath caught, and she licked her lips. For a second, her gaze became unfocused, as if she were imagining it. “Is it really bad of me to say . . . a lot?”

  After this, she’d be lucky if he didn’t keep her constantly full. Skimming his fingertips up her side, he smiled ruefully. “Not from where I’m sitting.”

  She turned her breast into his palm, teasing him the way she always did with that smile and bold spirit of adventure. “Good.”

  He flicked her nipple with his thumb, taking advantage of her subsequent arch to slide his hand beneath her shoulder blades and pull her up into his kiss. “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  He kissed the corner of her mouth, nibbled the bow of her upper lip. “Then open your mouth, Evie darling. Take me, my kiss, my promise, my love.”

  Tears dripped down her cheeks, but Brad wasn’t worried. Those were what Jenna called happy tears.

  “For how long?” she breathed, pulling him closer.

  The petal-soft silk of her sheath closed around him, accepting him, welcoming him, inviting him deeper. Into her body, into her love, into her life. This was his woman, the gift he never thought would be his. The woman that understood him, fit him, was perfect for him. The woman who could have anyone she wanted, but who’d chosen him. He could never be close enough. “Forever, Evie. I’ll love you forever.”

  Epilogue

  THREE MONTHS LATER, Evie stood on the porch of her new home waiting for Brad to come in from settling the horses. They’d bought Elijah and Amy’s old place with Elijah’s blessing. Though Elijah had said to burn the belongings, Evie had packed them away. All except the hope for the future. Evie liked to think that stayed. Their old house was now a home for women in need. Ruth had moved in, helping the women settle, giving them a motherly figure to look up to and stories about her grand love to give them hope. She seemed to enjoy the job.

  Dorothy, Pearl, and Millicent taught the women skills they’d need to survive—cooking, sewing, nursing. Elijah provided protection. Which was a good thing, because a lot of men refused to believe they weren’t welcome to come sneaking around the back door.

  The barn door swung open and Brad stepped out, dressed in his usual black. She waved. He smiled and nodded. He smiled a lot more lately. Genuine smiles. The only issue left over from his childhood was Brad’s worry about what kind of father he’d be. Evie shook her head. He would be wonderful, but that was something Brad was going to have to prove to himself, and she could let him. Just like he’d let her prove to herself that she was lovable.

  A wind kicked up. She pulled her wrap about her, warding off the chill of fall. She’d finally talked to her mother about her father. It hadn’t been a comfortable conversation, and in the end, the explanation for her father’s withdrawal was so simple. Thanks to a rough spot in their marriage during which her father had worried her mother had been unfaithful, he’d started doubting everything, including whether Evie was his. Unfortunately, since he couldn’t look at her and not think that she might not be his, he’d just stopped looking at her. Pearl was convinced he would’ve come around if he had had the time. Evie wanted to believe that, too, so she was trying. Sometimes the way to make things happen was just to believe that they would.

  “I waited for you.”

  Brad climbed the porch steps, his gaze shadowed by the brim of his hat. As he scooped her up in his arms, she plucked the hat off his head. She wanted to see the love in his eyes.

  “So you did.”

  She looped her arms around his neck. “What do I get for my reward?”

  He stepped over the threshold into the house. “Me.”

  “Perfect.” Pulling herself up, she kissed his chin. “I’ve got something for you, too.”

  “What is it?”

  “Carry me to the bedroom and see.”

  His hair fell over his forehead and he smiled that rakish smile. “I can already tell I’m going to like this present.”

  Yes, he was. When he put her down just inside the bedroom, she pointed to the floor. “Stay right there.”

  Reaching around behind the door, she pulled out a sheet-draped painting. “Open it.”

  He did, with the efficiency that marked everything he did. He stared at the painting of himself naked, rendered just as precisely as before but with one . . . big difference. When another few seconds passed and he didn’t speak, she wondered if she’d gone too far.

  And then he laughed—a real laugh. The kind he was indulging in more and more often. He hooked his arm around her shoulder, pulling her into his side. “I don’t even want to know where you got that idea.”

  “The barn can be a wonderful source of inspiration.”

  “The hell you say. Now I’ve got to wonder about the competition.”

  “You could do that or . . .” Stepping away, she unbuttoned her dress and let it fall to the floor. She was only wearing a sheer camisole and stockings beneath. She climbed into the middle of the big bed while he watched her with an intensity that stroked over her nerves with the tease of a touch. “Or you could make me forget all about it.”

  His boots came off, first the right and then the left. “Did you forget your mother’s coming over, expecting stew and biscuits in a couple of hours?”

  She leaned back on the bed, drawing her leg up while easing her camisole strap down. “Then I guess you’ll have to be quick as well as thorough.”

  Buttons flew as he ripped his shirt off, exposing all that delicious muscle she loved to feel moving against her. “Is that a dare?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Turn the page for a preview of

  Sarah McCarty’s next novel

  Wil
d Instinct

  Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!

  THEY WERE COMING.

  Sarah Anne stared down the hillside, her night vision casting the trees and rocks in contrasting black and white touched with glimmers of silver. Through the shifting mist, she watched bits of deeper darkness weave through the natural shadows. Wolves. Their hiding place had been discovered. There was nowhere left to run. She and the other women would have to make their stand here. Beside her, her five-year-old son, Josiah, a wolf to the core, snarled. His small canines flashed white in the night. Sarah Anne dropped her hand to his head, desperation pulsing through her like a living nightmare. She had to keep him safe.

  Her two-year-old daughter, Meg, as human as her father, was tiny, delicate, ever so vulnerable. She clung to her brother’s hand and gave name to the emotion scenting the interior of the cave. “Mommy, I’m scared.”

  So was Sarah Anne. “There’s no need to be afraid. We’ve prepared.”

  Three women. Two werewolf, one human. All armed with a few guns, ammo, and a mother’s drive to protect. They were going to hold off ten were-soldiers. They didn’t have a prayer.

  “Are they the McGowans?” Teri asked from behind her.

  “No.” The promise of help from the Boudine pack had just been another shimmering illusion. Sarah Anne was on her own the way she’d always been, ever since the day it became evident that her tainted genetics had left a mark. She’d come to the human world to avoid persecution. It had found her anyway. And now endangered her children.

  Teri spun on her heel. “I’ll get the guns.”

  Sarah Anne exchanged a glance with Rachel. Teri had no idea what they faced. The guns would delay, but not prevent, the inevitable.

  “We should probably tell her.”

  Sarah Anne shrugged. “She already thinks werewolves are monsters. No sense proving it and removing all doubt. Not when we have to fight.”

  “She wouldn’t be here at all except for her pregnancy.”

  “She wouldn’t be pregnant at all except for them.” With a wave of her hand, Sarah Anne encompassed the encroaching scum. She wouldn’t call them soldiers. Wolf soldiers didn’t rape. Wolf soldiers had honor. Integrity. They protected women. They didn’t abuse them.

  Behind them a shotgun cocked.

  “I told you before what happened isn’t your fault.” Teri stood with her feet apart, the rifle and a shotgun looking awkward in her small hands. Dark red rows of newly healed scars peeked out from beneath her light green mock turtleneck. Shame flooded Sara Anne anew. Right behind it came guilt.

  “They wouldn’t have found you if not for me.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  Teri handed the rifle to Sara Anne. Being human, there was no way Teri could understand the sense of unity and responsibility that was part of werewolf culture. What one member of the pack did, all did. What wrong one committed reflected on them all.

  “I still feel guilty.”

  “Well, don’t. I wouldn’t trade our friendship for the world.”

  The lie was in her scent. If Teri could, she’d go back in time and erase the friendship that had exposed her to the wolves who’d breathed her scent, recognized her as a potential breeder, and raped her, responding to instinct rather than logic. Half-blood children had no worth. Sarah Anne couldn’t blame her any more than she could bring herself to dispute Teri’s claim. The woman had just regained her emotional feet. And strangely, the pregnancy had provided the vehicle.

  “So what’s our plan?” Rachel asked.

  “Same as before. Shoot as many as we can.”

  Teri smiled a cold smile. “That works for me.”

  Sarah Anne cast Teri a glance. If she was terrified, she was hiding it well. “Remember, shoot for the organs and the brain. Do as much damage as possible on each individual. Wolves don’t go down easily.”

  Only a catastrophic series of injuries could bypass a werewolf’s ability to heal.

  Teri smiled. “I’m good with that.”

  The scars were the tip of the iceberg when it came to the injuries Teri had sustained. Sarah Anne could easily believe she was fine with anything that had to do with taking out a male wolf. The shadows glided closer. Still only ten as far was she could tell. It might as well be one hundred.

  “Rachel.”

  “I know.”

  She needed to say it anyway. “Don’t let them get my son.”

  Rachel placed her hand on Sarah Anne’s arm. Her scent, her energy, all radiating comfort. Sarah Anne didn’t know how Rachel held on to hope. “Things aren’t going to be that bad.”

  They already were. “Take Josiah, shift, go out the side entrance, and then run like hell.”

  Rachel grabbed Josiah’s hand. “Maybe I can carry—”

  Sarah Anne shook her head. “We already discussed it. You can’t carry Meg, and she can’t change.” Like her mother. “She’ll never be able to keep up.”

  Meg hearing her name, sensing the tension, puckered up and stamped her foot. “I want ’Siah!”

  Every instinct in Sarah Anne echoed Meg’s cry. She wanted to keep her son with her, within reach, where she would have a hand in his fate. Sarah Anne pulled Meg against her thigh, rubbing her hands up and down her daughter’s tiny ribs. How was she supposed to make this choice? She stared at the figures getting closer, the wind carrying the taint of their scent, and she knew. She just did. “Josiah’s going with Aunt Rachel.”

  “No.”

  She met Josiah’s stare. Someday he’d be an Alpha, maybe a Protector, but right now he was a baby and staring down his mother was beyond his capacity. But not by much. “You go with Rachel, Josiah. You do everything she tells you and you make your father proud.”

  His little feet planted shoulder width apart. A snarl rumbled in his chest as his nostrils flared, scenting the warning of danger riding the wind. “I’m not leaving you.”

  Sarah Anne blinked at the flash-forward to the man he’d someday be. His father would have been so proud. Smoothing her hand over his rich, chocolate-colored hair, she blinked again, this time in an effort to hold back the tears. “You have to go. Rachel needs protection, too, and I don’t have anyone else to send with her.”

  His chin set. “She can stay here.”

  He also had his mother’s stubbornness. “No, she can’t. She has to take an important message to Pack Boudine.”

  “I do need you, Josiah,” Rachel interjected.

  His chin trembled. He suddenly became her little boy again. Her little boy who was trying so hard not to be scared as she asked the impossible of him. Meg hugged her leg and looked up, blue eyes big with the belief that her mother could work miracles. “Please, Mommy?”

  Sarah Anne heard the faint swish of brush against clothing as the soldiers approached. They were out of time. She grabbed Josiah, bending to hold her son and daughter close in her arms one last time—her life, her future—breathing in their familiar scents, playing over in her mind every good memory she could find, bonding them together in that moment, just in case there wasn’t another. “Remember who you are, Josiah.”

  He nodded against her leg, the tear he wouldn’t let her see seeping through the thin denim of her jeans. “I’m Protector.”

  “And Stone. Don’t ever forget that or think it’s not a valuable part of you.”

  Another nod.

  “We have to leave, Sarah Anne,” Rachel interjected quietly.

  With one last squeeze she let Josiah go. “Be careful”

  Rachel put her hands protectively on Josiah’s shoulder as she met Sarah Anne’s gaze, a small, strained smile on her face. “I’m the careful one, remember?”

  Sarah Anne did remember, along with many other things.

  Teri looked out the entrance. “It’s now or never, guys.”

  A bolt of pure fear stabbed through Sarah Anne. Josiah’s escape out the side entrance had to be perfectly time so he wouldn’t be seen or scented, and even with perfect timing they only had a scant
chance of success. Sarah Anne felt so empty without the sturdy body of her son. She wrapped her arms around Meg, the weight of impossibility straining her voice, as she lifted her daughter up. “Run very fast, Josiah.”

  He nodded, looking like a little boy again as he asked, “And you’ll meet us at the south ridge come morning?”

  Nothing short of death would keep her away. “That’s the plan.”

  It was enough for him. She caught Rachel’s hand as she turned away, tugging her around. She had to say it. “Thank you.”

  The words were so paltry compared to the emotion backing them. If they got out of this alive, Rachel could ask anything of Sarah Anne that she wanted and Sarah Anne would grant it.

  Rachel inclined her head. “Anything for the Alpha female.” “I’m not Pack.” Even after seven years, it still hurt to say that.

  Rachel, grimaced. Teri looked at them both and shook her head. “If Pack means family, then I think we’re it.” She hefted the shotgun. “Now, if nobody objects, I’ve got some damage to do.”

  “YOU CAN’T FAULT them for courage,” Garrett murmured as a woman and a boy slipped out the side entrance of the cave, shifted, and then started to run perpendicular to the hillside, blending into the night, the female shielding the cub. The gun-fire from the interior picked up in a rapid spate, no doubt in a hope to keep the main group pinned down.

  Beside him, Cur snarled as two bigger shadows slid into the night behind the woman an child, “Can’t fault them for a damn thing, but I’ve got a hell of a bone to pick with those SOBs hunting them.” He touched his hand to the transceiver attached to his ear.

  “Daire, you’ve got two friendlies in fur heading your way.”

  Daire’s distinctive gravely voice rumbled over the connection that linked all five Protectors on this mission. “I’ve got them.”

  “They’ve got company following.”

  Daire’s satisfied growl proceeded his, “Good.”

  “Nice to know his reputation isn’t inflated,” Cur grunted over Garret’s private frequency, swinging wide to cut off two soldiers heading up toward the side entrance.