by Jaime Rush
She knew he wouldn’t, not knowing what he did about her. Not Greer.
Greer, who was a good man, even if he did turn into a panther. A good man who didn’t need to get tangled up with someone like her. She stepped back, to catch her breath.
“I’m sorry.” She looked down, her fingers on her mouth because it still tingled. “I can’t do this. I haven’t . . .” She shook her head, still averting her gaze. “Not since then.”
Of course, Greer wouldn’t let her avoid him. He gently guided her face to look at him. “I understand you went through something terrible. Beyond horrible. But it’s time to stop hiding yourself. To stop not letting yourself feel sensuality. Because I can see that you want it, need it.” He rubbed his thumb at the center of her collarbone. “We all need a human touch.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand.”
“Then help me to.”
He wanted to help her, because he’d lost someone to despair. To grief. No, she’d never take her own life. She’d killed parts of her soul, though. He was right; she hadn’t gotten over it. But not for the reasons he probably thought.
She looked up, past him, tears blurring her eyes. “I shut down that part of myself. The only guy I’d ever been with was one of the guys who . . . who raped me.” She forced it out so Greer wouldn’t think she was hiding from the word. “Frankie got high after we’d had sex, and then his two friends came over and got high with him. They were stoned out of their minds, and then they started looking at me like I was a piece of meat.
“They were talking about all having ‘a taste of me,’ and Frankie didn’t stop them. Instead, he said how I could make his friends happy, couldn’t I? They were good guys, did ‘things’ for him. Whatever those things were. I flat out told him no. I didn’t love him, but I thought he liked me enough not to offer me like he owned me. I tried to leave, but he grabbed me, held me down.”
“God, Shea.” His hands grasped her shoulders, tightened on them.
“Somehow seeing me fight them incited him, and he joined in.”
He brushed away a tear she didn’t even know had fallen. “Sick fu—” He held the word back. “If he wasn’t already dead, I’d want to kill him. And then you went to the police and they didn’t believe you?”
“I got the impression the officer thought I was exaggerating. Because I’d had consensual sex with one of them, and there were drugs in the picture, he figured we all had some drunken fun and then I regretted it. He basically told me I wouldn’t have much of a chance of proving it, and I knew he was right.”
“I wish I’d known earlier. Then I would have understood—”
“But I didn’t want anyone to know, don’t you get that?” She pulled away, wrapping her arms around herself.
“Shea, you have nothing to be ashamed of. It happened to you. You were an innocent victim.”
She wished she could feel that way. Bad enough that he knew about the rape. She wasn’t going to get into the rest of it. “Maybe I do need a human touch. Maybe when I look at you, some part of me wants to feel you. When you touched me just now, that was the first time anyone’s touched me since then. It was good, yes, but then I felt . . .”
“Memories?” he asked simply.
She nodded, because she didn’t want to say, No, shame. I felt shame. That if you knew everything, you’d look at me differently.
He slid his hand down her arm. “I want to change that. When I touch you, I want you to feel safe. Cherished. Eventually aroused.” His fingers stroked the skin of her forearm, where she’d pushed back her sleeves. “I’d like to do that for you. And for me.”
“Why? Why would you do that for me? Why me?”
He seemed puzzled by the question. “Why not you?”
Anger surged, a familiar and comforting friend. “Things were perfectly fine before you walked in on me. We were friends, nothing more.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Shea, I caught you watching me sometimes in the mirror, when you didn’t know I could see you. You had a longing in your eyes, a hunger. Until then, yeah, I saw you like a friend, one of the guys, sort of. But that got me thinking. Then I saw how gorgeous you are under all those baggy clothes. You got under my skin.”
“Just because you saw me naked. Come on, I’m not that gorgeous. Besides, you see naked women all the time.”
“Shea, don’t you get it? It’s not that I saw you naked. It’s that I saw you naked.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “That makes no sense.”
“You, Shea. A girl I care about, who I know is sweet and strong and a little bit mysterious.”
“I’m not sweet, okay. And now you know why I keep to myself, so I’m not mysterious.”
“I don’t know everything.” He gave her a challenging look. “But I will.”
“You just said it was a good thing we didn’t take things in that direction. And you meant it; I could tell.”
“I did. But there’s another part of me that’s not so logical. That part wants you no matter how dangerous it might be.”
“Darkness?”
“No. That’s the part that will kill to protect you. The part that wants you, it’s all me, Shea.”
“I’ll be the logical one. I want to go back to the way we were, only friends. Nothing . . . sensual. Can we do that? Because I miss you in my life.”
“This is where you guys went.” The voice, nearly a growl, came from the side of the house where she’d just planted the replacements. Darius wheeled across flagstones that made his chair wobble. “Looking all tense like the last time I saw you two talking. Greer, what the hell are you doing to her? And what’s going on?”
Greer jabbed his finger in Darius’s face. “What’s going on is that you screwed up and put us all in danger!” Darius slapped at his finger, but Greer was faster, pulling it away before he made contact. “If you hadn’t killed that guy, none of these people would know about us. There wouldn’t be an order to get rid of us.”
Darius’s face twisted in a sneer. “You’re just pissed because you weren’t man enough to take care of Shea’s problem. You weren’t out there watching over her, didn’t follow that guy home and find those despicable letters and presents he was planning to leave for her. You weren’t man enough to take care of things.”
Greer fairly bristled. “So killing people makes you manly? Sending the police to Shea’s door, that’s your way of taking care of her problems?”
“All right, I missed the letter. I didn’t plan on them connecting her to him. But they have nothing on her or us, so it’ll fade away. The guy was a sick loser. How hard do you think the cops are going to work to find his killer?”
“That’s their job,” Greer said through gritted teeth. “But it’s the least of our problems. Shea’s father just tried to kill her.”
Now Darius turned to her, his righteous anger faded. “Shea, you all right?”
It was creepy how fast he changed moods. Her arms automatically slid into their protective gesture. “We’re fine. Greer showed up in the nick of time.”
“Of course he did,” Darius said, all that anger back again.
“At least I was man enough to be here when it counted,” Greer said.
Darius morphed to Darkness, launching out of his chair in his human shape, his hands ready to grab Greer, who morphed, too. The two wrestled, rolling across the ground.
“Stop!” she shouted. “We just fixed this place.”
Greer pounced on top of Darius, his fangs hovering just above his neck. “Enough,” he said on a growl. “You and I will deal with this later. Right now we have one more of those bastards out there. My birth father, Frost. If you want to play hero, you won’t waste our energy fighting.”
Darius remained still for a moment, making her wonder if he was going to spring back up again. He moved his arms out, raising them in surrender. Greer stepped off him and morphed back to man. Darius returned to his chair and did the same.
“This is why I mo
ved out!” she said, flinging out her arms.
Darius wheeled toward the front of the house with quick jerks of his arms.
Greer stepped closer to her, his voice low. “No, you moved out to get away from your feelings for me. How’s that working for you?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Just fine.”
She started to walk away, but he pulled her arm, sending her spinning back into his body. She took a step back, but he didn’t release her.
“Because it’s not working for me. I haven’t seen you much in the three months since you moved out, but I can’t get you out of my mind.”
So he didn’t want to let the conversation go. “Surely there’s been one woman or two who’s helped.”
His mouth quirked in a slight grin, as though he thought—thought—her statement was said out of jealousy or a way to find out if he’d been with someone recently. “The date I was going on that night, when I walked in on you, I said good-night to after dinner. I’ve asked a few girls out and then canceled. Because it’s not fair to go out with one girl while you’re thinking about another.”
Damn, there he went, being too good for someone like her. “I don’t care what you do. You can go out with a different girl every night. You can screw your brains out, make her gasp and call out your name in that breathless way.” Everything she’d heard that twisted her insides when she walked past his door and did not pause to listen.
He leaned down in her face. “Well, thank you very much for giving me permission.” Then he laughed, that full-out deep laugh of his. “I know what you’re doing.”
“What?”
All humor fled, and he remained only a couple of inches in front of her. “Shea, you’re not going to shut those feelings out, or run away or turn away from them.” She started to do just that, but he used that damned finger to turn her face back to him. “That’s what you do. And I should let you kid yourself that you have permanently killed the part of you that craves touch.”
He drew his finger down the front of her throat to the hollow at her collarbone. “I should, because I can already feel what Tuck was talking about, that I possess you.” Fire lit his eyes, fierce and protective, setting off her heartbeat. “But I’m not giving up on you. As much as it pains you, that part of you still lives. It lives for me.” He drew his finger down a few more inches. “For my touch. I see it in your eyes, felt it in the way you came up to me a few minutes ago.”
“That was a weak moment. Nothing more.”
He took her hand, the one he was still holding, and placed it against his chest. “No, that was a moment of strength. And you know what? I miss you, too. So let’s stop missing each other. I told you, we’d take it slowly.” His gaze shifted to the side. “We’re being watched,” he said in a lower voice. “I don’t trust that guy. Be careful around him.”
He released her and she nearly stumbled back. He wouldn’t want her if he knew how she’d brought the rape on, what kind of person she’d been then. She opened her mouth to tell him, but Darius yelled, “There’s a car pulling into the driveway.”
Chapter Seven
FROST CALLED TORUS, who answered with, “I hope you have good news to report.”
“I’m afraid not, sir. I can’t get hold of Graves. Have you heard from him recently?”
“Not since I spoke to him this morning, when you informed me about the girl. Which, frankly, I thought was odd.”
“Yeah, me, too. I mean, I thought Graves’s behavior was odd in general. He’d found the girl before I could even tell him her name and address. The guy with her definitely was one of us, but Graves said the girl wasn’t. Very telling that he found two of them and hadn’t reported it to you. He could have called me and we would have taken them out. But no, he’d done nothing. She had Callorian eyes. His eyes. I think she’s his daughter, and he had no intention of revealing her. I forced his hand by taking the phone from him and reporting her to you. He wasn’t pleased about that.”
Finally, he would gain some of the ground he’d lost all those years ago.
“Very perceptive of you, Frost. And very disappointing to hear about Graves, especially since he’s nowhere to be found.”
“We split off, and he was presumably going to take care of the girl. I suspect he warned her. He’s likely gone AWOL, too.”
“First Elgin and Bengle, and now Graves? Graves, of all people?”
Frost’s mouth tightened. Couldn’t believe his first in command was corrupt, huh? “You can count on me, sir. I will take care of these two, and I will try to interrogate the male, ensure he’s the one who killed the man. I feel certain that my, er, visits to Vegas did not result in any offspring. Once these two are dead, this ordeal will be concluded.”
There was no need to tell Torus about his progeny. He would take care of the firefighter quietly and return to their enclave victorious.
“We’re nearing a critical point in our project. We can’t have loose ends when everything comes together. Make it happen.”
Torus disconnected, and Frost set the phone on the seat. A few minutes later it rang again. Torus. “Yes, sir?”
“We were finally able to get a bead on Graves’s cell phone, courtesy of the GPS chip. Go to this address and find out what the hell is going on.”
Frost wrote it down, programmed it into his GPS, and headed off to break up the sentimental father-daughter reunion.
GREER WATCHED THE Lincoln Town Car pull into the driveway.
“Those are the owners.” Shea glanced at Greer. “Good thing you insisted we get the yard fixed now. And helped me. They’re back early.” She put on her professional smile, pulled off her cap and approached the car.
The older couple got out, saying how they were so excited to see the yard, they’d decided to drive home ahead of schedule. Shea introduced Greer and Darius as her crew and led her clients on a tour of her work. She knew the name of every plant and tree, giving them some tidbit of information about each.
He could see her passion about foliage, and her work, in the light in her eyes. Of course, plants didn’t demand anything of her, didn’t press her to face the truth. Still, he enjoyed watching her, the way she twirled a strand of stray hair as the couple raved about the results.
Darius’s energy bristled next to him. “You don’t own her.”
Greer snorted. “No one does.”
“I know what you’re trying to do. Bullying her to give in to your voracious horniness.”
“My . . .” Greer shook his head. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know that every time I see the two of you alone, she looks tense and you’re forcing her to face you. For a guy who has a lot of chicks hanging out in his bedroom, you sure don’t know how to seduce a woman. Probably a guy like you just crooks his finger. ‘I’m a firefighter. Wanna have sex?’ ” he said in a dumb, deep voice.
Greer knew the jerk was trying to rile him, and he wasn’t going to let him. Not with Shea’s clients in the area. “Yeah, that’s exactly how I do it. You figured me out.”
Darius actually nodded, as though Greer’s confession wasn’t a joke. “I figured. But see, Shea knows you. So it won’t work with her. And that must bug the hell out of you. You may have the chick-magnet looks and job, but crooking your finger at Shea doesn’t work. Does it?” Darius looked pleased about that.
“I’ve never crooked my finger or tried to get Shea into my bed. As I said, you know nothing.”
“She’s timid like a mouse. What she needs is a guy who can seduce her, take her in hand—”
Greer grabbed his forearm. “Don’t you dare ‘take her in hand’ or whatever aggressive behavior you have in mind. That’s the worst thing you can do.”
Darius flung him away, nodding like he knew Greer was just trying to warn him away.
“She’s no mouse,” Greer said, hating the analogy for her. “She’s stronger than you think.”
Darius chuckled. “Yeah, she does seem to be resisting your charm.” He waved his fing
ers. “Your magic spell.”
Greer shook his head. The guy was such an ass. “I care about Shea. A lot. Whether she ends up with me or anyone else, or no one, I only want her to be happy.” He met Darius’s gaze, which was filled with disbelief. “Why do you want her?”
Darius’s mouth opened but no words came out. Finally, he said, “Sometimes you know when someone is right. When she infiltrates every cell of your body, every crevice in your brain.” His mouth tightened as he looked in the direction Shea had gone. “When you know you’d do anything for her.”
As deadpan as Darius was when it came to expressing any kind of emotion, the heated way those words came out bothered Greer.
“That sounds more like obsession.”
Shea returned to the front of the house, her smiling clients in tow.
“Shea, we’d better get going,” Greer called out.
She nodded, shook their hands, and headed over. “I know. I get caught up in the whole thing.” She rolled her eyes, then jammed her cap back on. “But if Frost hasn’t found us yet, he probably didn’t know where Ted had gone. Which corroborates what he told me.”
“Still, I think we should go.”
“Go where?” Darius asked.
“Not back to the house,” Shea said. “They know where that is.”
Greer nodded to the sky, splashed with red. “It’s almost dark now. A motel will be anonymous, a safe place to rest and figure out what we’re going to do.”
“I’m not sharing a room with you,” Darius said to him.
“We’ll each get our own rooms.” Greer could already see Shea’s panicked expression over the scenario of everyone in one space. That could be even more volatile now that Darius was intent on winning Shea’s affections. Jealousy prickled over his skin at the thought of it, anger rippling beneath the surface. But he knew Darius didn’t stand a chance with Shea. He just hoped the bonehead didn’t do something to upset her.
FROST FOUND GRAVES’S car, but the doors were locked. Peering inside, he gleaned nothing because of the dark tint. The man himself was nowhere to be found. He’d obviously come here to find and probably warn Cheyenne. What sweet irony that Graves had also broken the rules. It was only fair that he pay the price the other three had.
