by A. C. Arthur
And yet, on more than one of these fronts, I was, and I didn’t know if I had the power to stop it.
***
Zoe would be at work tonight and Dex would most likely appear. When he did I would be right here, to get rid of him once and for all.
I cut the engine and the lights and reached over to the passenger seat to grab my jacket before getting out of the truck. I wasn’t cold, was actually enjoying the chill in the air but didn’t want the patrons of the bar to see the gun I had stuffed in the back of my pants. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use it, hoped that Dex would listen to reason, or good common sense. If not …
Just as I was heading to the front door of the bar I heard noises coming from around the back of the building. The heightened senses of a Shadow Shifter tended to annoy me, and I usually could ignore them, but not this time. There was laughter with an edge to it that I immediately recognized, maybe because noticing the pain in Zoe’s arm yesterday had put me in a hunting mood.
I moved around to the back of the building, taking slow, almost predatory steps. Passing the Dumpster and the two feral cats hanging around it, I made my way to the back. I frowned as I moved because the scents back here were comingling—rotting trash, discarded liquor bottles, urine, and rogue. My fists clenched as my nostrils flared and I turned the corner.
Dex had Zoe pinned to the wall, his face close to hers. Zoe had her hands on Dex’s chest as she attempted once, twice, to push him away. Dex didn’t budge. She pushed harder and he grabbed her by the wrists. And that was enough. I was beside them in no time, grabbing Dex by the collar and pulling him off her. He stumbled back, struggling until I let him break free. My attention immediately went to Zoe.
“Are you okay?” I asked, going to her and touching her shoulders lightly.
She jerked away from my grasp, giving me a look as if I’d been the one roughhousing her. To say I was a little confused would be an understatement.
“He was hurting you,” I replied, feeling even more stupid than I had two seconds ago, if that was possible.
“It’s none of your business!” she yelled. “I’m none of your business!”
From behind I could hear laughter, the same as I had a few moments ago. His eyes were dark when I turned to face him, almost black and I knew that any second now they would switch totally to the eyes of a cat. The putrid stench of betrayal rogues carry with them blanketed the area like one of those itchy-ass wool throws. I rolled my shoulders, readying my body for anything—the fight or the shift, whichever was necessary.
“You heard what the human said.” Dex frowned at me like he knew what I was about to do and conveying that he was also down for the fight.
At his sides his fingers wiggled, no doubt feeling the sting of trying to hold back his claws. Mine didn’t hurt at all. I’d mastered keeping as much of my shifter traits controlled and bound as possible. The pronounced smell, hearing, and vision were a little harder to suppress, but I’d learned ways to ignore them.
“Stop it!” Zoe yelled, coming between us.
She turned to me, her fiery gaze locking with mine.
“I told you this was not your concern. I can handle my own business. So you should go.”
Dex laughed and inside my cat raged. I almost stumbled forward with the force it used in its attempt to break free. I didn’t want to hurt Zoe, couldn’t live with myself if I did. But I definitely wanted to kill Dex for putting his dirty hands on her. The cat inside wanted to be the one to lock its jaws around his neck and hold on until death was the only option.
Zoe was in the way.
I couldn’t shift in front of her, couldn’t risk her knowing how screwed up I really was. I took a deep breath, willing the cat to stand down, taking a couple of physical and mental steps back.
“We’ll meet again,” I said, pointing past Zoe to where a smiling Dex still stood.
“Fuck off, half-breed!” he said.
I moved forward again only to feel the instant sting of heat as Zoe put her palms on my chest. Now I was the one she was attempting to push away. The cat inside me bared its teeth, rearing back at her touch as heat spread throughout my chest. My entire body shook with the two feuding entities. To save us both possibly, I pushed her arms away. “Fine, if you don’t want my help, let him beat you to death. I don’t care!”
I was walking away without looking back, refusing to answer the burning desire to protect her, to keep her safe. It just wasn’t possible to save somebody that didn’t want to be saved, my mind screamed to no avail. I kept right on walking, every step heavier than the last until I was safe in my truck, slamming my palms onto the steering wheel repeatedly.
She wasn’t my concern, she wasn’t my girlfriend. I didn’t have a girlfriend and damn sure didn’t want one. I’d never even been interested enough in another female to go so far as to protect her, especially not from her own boyfriend. That’s just not what I did, it wasn’t how I was made. I was sure my brothers were protective as hell over their mates, but Zoe wasn’t my mate, she wasn’t anybody. Or she shouldn’t have been.
I jammed my key into the ignition and started my truck thinking this would be the last damned time I’d be at this bar. There was nothing for me here, nothing and nobody. There never had been.
CHAPTER 6
Zoe
It was a horrible flashback. As I stood, still reeling from Caleb’s appearance and his subsequent departure at my request, Dex struck.
In the past weeks that I’d known him he’d been very nice, kind of subdued in a lone biker type of way, but definitely a leader among his friends. He’d taken me on simple dates, nothing that I’d find in a romance novel, but fun things all the same. I didn’t feel this out-of-this-world attraction to him, but I continued to go out with him believing that the spark would eventually appear. I’d read enough books to know that it wouldn’t, especially not now.
Dex’s hand fisted in my hair, pulling me back to him all the while yelling something about shadows and minding their own business, and more incoherent words I would later try to decipher. Right now the pain was excruciating, shooting through my skull like a million knives were being pierced into my skin. I didn’t scream though, didn’t have any intention of giving him that sadistic pleasure. For a few seconds my arms just flailed as I tripped over my feet trying to keep from falling to the ground as he pulled me. We were going deeper behind the bar to where there was a gate and then an incline leading into a dark copse of trees that faced the highway on its other side. I knew if he got me down there it would be over.
I reached back then, grabbing his hands to try and still some of the force he was exerting. He was still mumbling something about shifts and revenge and whatever, I stopped listening. All I could hear now was the pounding of my heart as my brain went into overdrive trying to figure out what to do, how to save my life.
The scene was all too familiar to me. How many times had my stepfather dragged my mom up the stairs and back down again? How many times had he used his grip on her hair to bang her head into the side of the bathtub or the corner of the dresser? It was a wonder she still lived and sometimes when I used to stand and stare at her, I got the impression that she really didn’t. That maybe, she thought death would be better. But then he’d take that out on us and she didn’t want that, she’d never wanted that.
The rage I felt for what my mother had gone through and what she might still be going through boiled inside me like piping hot lava and somehow, I twisted in his grasp so that I was now facing him. In this position I could plant my feet on the asphalt and at least fight against his force.
“Don’t fuck with me, bitch! This is all your fault!” he screamed at me.
I didn’t listen to the words, couldn’t afford to be distracted from the matter at hand. I scratched his wrists until I could feel my short nails sinking into his flesh, the moistness of his blood becoming embedded in their length. I couldn’t get him to let me go. I tried shaking my way free but that only caused me more pain.
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The panic of helplessness sliced through my chest and like a video on rewind, I was back in my bedroom when I was twelve years old and my stepfather had come inside after I’d gone to bed. He’d yanked the covers off me then roughly pushed my nightgown up past my hips. I hadn’t known what to do, only knew that fear was a nasty taste like bile in my throat and I hated it. So I kicked and swung until he finally stumbled back after one lucky shot had given him a bloody nose. Before he could come at me again I jumped off the bed and kicked him again, this time in the bulge I’d seen between his legs. He’d run out of my room then, groaning and calling me all kinds of vile names, but he never came back again. But whenever he beat my mother from that point on he would look to see if I was in the room, locking gazes with mine as if he wished he were beating me that way. To this day I’ll never understand why he didn’t come back and beat the hell out of me the way he did my mother.
I stopped fighting Dex back then, just focused on keeping my feet firmly planted for another second or so. My lack of movement must have thrown him off. No, that had been his cell phone ringing. It had been ringing on and off since Caleb had left us alone but this was the first time Dex had attempted to answer it. He released one hand from my hair and I knew that was the only opportunity I was going to get. The moment I heard him speak into the phone I rammed my head into his groin with all the strength I could muster.
My hair was instantly freed as Dex stumbled back, dropping his cell phone. I didn’t wait for any more reaction but turned and ran as if the devil himself were chasing me.
Apparently that wasn’t fast enough because in the next second I felt fingers wrap around my calf, pulling me down. I fell onto the ground, using my hands to break the fall and to keep from busting my face wide open. Turning quickly I began kicking to get him off my leg. My foot caught the side of his face and he reared back, releasing me again. I stood quickly, knowing what would happen if he got up and I stayed down. I was going to run again, but this time I paused and stomped Dex right in the neck. He howled like something unearthly and I did it again, adrenaline racing through my body like fresh blood.
Then common sense kicked in and I got the hell out of there. The pain didn’t hit me until I’d rounded the building. I could see the door to the bar and was aiming for it, but pain escalating from my ankle up to my thigh stopped me and I crumpled to the ground.
All I could remember thinking was, please don’t let him come up behind me, but I couldn’t stop myself from falling, couldn’t stop the pain from taking its ugly hold.
CHAPTER 7
Caleb
I’d just pulled out of the parking spot, finally. Too many conflicting emotions had been battling through my head, keeping my foot off the gas and the truck stuck in park. Eventually, I’d kicked myself in the ass enough to say it was done and put the truck in drive so I could get as far away from this bar as I possibly could.
That’s when I saw her.
She rounded the corner like a flash of light, her torn white shirt almost glowing in the night. She didn’t look back, just kept going which instantly told me she was on the run. But I didn’t give a damn. This was her fight as she’d so decisively put it for me one last time. I wasn’t stopping because I no longer gave a rat’s ass what happened to Zoe.
The second she went down all my bravado went out the window. I slammed on the brakes and tried to jump out of the truck before I’d even gotten the door all the way open. Over the hood of the truck I went sliding, coming down with a thump on the other side and jumping onto the sidewalk just before her head could hit the concrete.
“Zoe, goddammit! You’re so damned hardheaded,” I scolded, all the while lifting her into my arms.
“I don’t want you to hold me. I want you to let me go so I can get in my car and go home,” she whispered, her head falling into my chest so her words were a warm whisper over my neck.
My teeth clenched but I didn’t waver. “Not this time, menina. Not this time.” I said the words while I moved.
Opening the passenger-side door I gently sat her on the seat and fastened the seat belt around her.
“He’ll come for me. I heard him yelling that he would come for me,” she was saying, her head lying back on the headrest, eyes barely opened.
When I looked at her to respond her face was contorted in pain and I growled low and deep, the anger rippling through both me and the cat too much to ignore.
“Shh, menina, I’ve got you,” I told her then rounded the truck again and climbed into the driver’s seat.
I slammed the truck into gear and pressed the gas, turning to get out of the parking lot as fast as I could. I didn’t look in my rearview mirror because I knew what I would see if I did. There was a cat back there, one angry jaguar declaring war on me and on Zoe. “Game on, you sonofabitch,” I mumbled to myself.
***
After the first or second traffic light I’d sped through Zoe moaned and leaned forward in her seat. She was rubbing her right ankle and cursing.
I reached over, putting a hand on her shoulder and tried to ease her back, but she jerked away instead.
“It’s probably a bad sprain and not a break. I can take you to the emergency room …” I told her, trying to ignore the sting of her rejecting my touch, once again.
“No!” she yelled and grabbed my arm. “No hospitals!”
She was squeezing my arm so tightly, her eyes had widened, and the scent of cold, hard fear permeated the air.
“Okay, okay. No hospitals. I’ll take you back to your place then.”
Her grip didn’t lessen but she looked away from me. “He’ll come there,” she spoke quietly.
Fear was thick and choking me into action. So she was not only afraid of that jackass coming for her again at her apartment, but apparently of hospitals as well.
“I won’t take you to your place then,” I told her, using my free hand to touch her cheek, turning her slowly so that she was once again looking at me. “But I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”
I didn’t think, didn’t consider, didn’t waver, but drove straight to my apartment.
CHAPTER 8
Zoe
His hands were like magic, gentle and soothing, careful and steady. I lay on his couch, which was a really soft material that I sank into as soon as he carried me through the door and set me here. I’d been to a few bachelor pads in my time and this one definitely did not qualify. Though the furniture was sparse, what was here, i.e., the couch, was really nice. There were heavy curtains at the window that were probably room-darkening during the day. I figured it was okay that he didn’t like sunlight. That didn’t automatically place him in the vampire/serial killer column.
I noticed the walls were blank as he went to the other end of the couch to switch on another lamp. He had one near the door and this one, and that was all as far as I could see. He also had the couch and a humungous television directly across from it. There was a rug on the floor that looked fancy and possibly expensive and I wondered how it would feel beneath my bare feet. The altercation with Dex may have rattled my mind a bit because I couldn’t control the path my thoughts were taking, and they were really running rampant.
My heart rate had finally returned to normal, but that didn’t mean I was mentally anywhere near that point. My hands still shook and I felt like any minute now someone was going to take a swing at me. But I wasn’t with Dex anymore. I was with Caleb and he was different. At least I’d felt in my soul that he was from the first time I’d seen him.
He’d seemed so lonely, so standoffish, but now, he appeared to be just what I needed. His fingers touched me gently and although there was pain from the injury, there was also warmth from him. Always the heat when he was near and now that he was actually touching me, my mind whirled with emotions like fear, regret, anxiety, and lust. The last was more prominent especially as he was close to my feet now, his back facing me.
“I need to get this shoe off,” he stated.
I’d been so abs
orbed in my surroundings and my rampant feelings, and distracted by his continued touch that I waited a beat before replying, “Oh, okay.”
It was a good thing I knew I had on good socks today. Usually when I slipped on my Uggs I didn’t bother with socks. The moment I heard him chuckle I remembered which ones I’d put on today.
“Hello Kitty?” he said, looking over his shoulder to me.
It was such a sexy look, his dark eyes raking over me, the corner of his mouth slightly lifted and that damned beard that was never too long, just a shadow that drove me crazy with wanting to rub my fingers along his jaw.
At first the look had been playful, for as much as a guy like Caleb could pull that off. His thick brows had arched, his lips turning up ever so slightly at the ends, like he almost wanted to smile. But as our gazes held his expression changed. His eyes grew darker—like the brown turned to black—his jaw was set, a muscle twitching on the left side. It was an intense look, one that made me very aware of the fact that I was lying on his couch and he was leaning over me, his hands rubbing along my skin.
I cleared my throat and searched for a whimsical reply. “They were clean,” was the best that I could do.
Caleb shook his head then looked back to my feet and continued what he was doing, which consisted of him peeling off the pink-and-white ankle sock and touching my bare foot. Now, besides the little gasp at the spark of pain elicited by his tilting my ankle in the other direction, the feel of his hand at the ball of my foot was dreamy. “Yeah,” I said, dreamily, and that’s exactly what I meant.
My eyes closed for a couple of seconds and I almost moaned, his touch was so gentle and yet strong enough to have my breath catching.
“This needs to be wrapped. I think I’ve got a bandage in my room. And then you need ice.”
He was talking but it was about my ankle and not about how he was making me feel so I barely registered all of his words. There was a tug-of-war going on for my attention, the radiating pain from my ankle and the quickly building desire sparked by Caleb’s closeness. So, yeah, the ice sounded good right about now.
