She drifted for an endless time, aware of little beyond the harsh pulsing of her blood in her veins and in her ears. Jesse lay bonelessly atop her, however, and after a time she began to grow uncomfortable under his weight. When she began struggling to shift to relieve the pressure against her ribcage, he rolled off of her and onto his back on the bed beside her.
She grew cold the moment his heat left her. Shivering, she rolled onto her side to look at him.
He was staring at the ceiling, she saw, and wondered what thoughts were going through his mind.
His expression told her nothing.
Doubts, unwelcome and certainly not summoned, began to creep into her mind. She wasn’t sorry it had happened. She had never tried to lie to herself that she was physically attracted to Jesse--at least not since the episode in the bayous. Her body had been humming for his possession ever since and it was a relief on many levels to have worked that burr from under her skin.
But was he sorry he’d caved in to his own needs?
After a few moments, she slipped from the bed and went into the bathroom to clean up and dry off, shrugging into the shirt he’d brought her to put on.
It was his shirt and even clean a faint trace of his scent clung to it.
Her traitorous body hummed to life again.
Frowning, trying to ignore the fresh provocation, Erin returned to the bedroom. Jesse, she saw, had climbed beneath the covers. He rested on his stomach now, a pillow gathered beneath his head. His bare back and arms, browned from the sun, and his flesh supple and toned with muscle snagged her gaze, made her belly tighten.
There was no denying he was a beautiful--specimen of a male--whatever he was.
Swallowing her wayward thoughts with an effort, Erin moved to the bed and climbed in, rolling onto her side so that she was facing way from him. The silence between them hung heavily, though. She knew he wasn’t asleep.
She didn’t think he was.
She knew she should just let well enough alone.
They’d come together in explosive, wonderful sex. If she just kept her mouth shut, they had that much going for them.
Finally, mentally kicking herself, she gave up the struggle to let sleeping dogs lie. “Why did you come after me?”
He remained silent so long she’d begun to think he wouldn’t answer her at all. When he finally did answer, she regretted, as she’d known she would, opening her mouth.
“The objective of the exercise was to destroy the research the government had been doing on the Lycans--and to get my son.”
Chapter Nine
Erin was surprised at how much that comment hurt. The pain angered her, or maybe it was just anger at herself for being so stupid as to give him the opening to slice a little deeper?
Struggling to catch her breath at the suffocating weight of the pain, she tried to focus on what he’d said about Joshua, tried to fan the faint glow of hope his interest in the baby spawned. “I haven’t seen him since he was a few days old,” she managed to say finally, voicing the fear that had never been acknowledged but was never far away. “I’m not even sure I’d recognize him if I saw him.”
“If he is my son, I will know him.”
It took several moments for that comment to penetrate her misery. The moment it finally did, Erin rolled over and sat up. “You are such a complete fucking asshole! You know that? If he’s yours? If?”
Jesse lifted his head and turned to look at her, his face a mask of surprise.
Erin’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t try to pretend that just slipped out!” she growled.
Anger glittered in his eyes. “Exactly how am I supposed to be so certain he is mine, chère? We weren’t exactly dating at the time.”
“We were fucking, though, weren’t we? The last time I checked, that’s the way it was done.” She realized she wasn’t being completely reasonable. On the other hand, it was still insulting to have her character questioned. She wouldn’t have suggested it was Jesse’s baby if there’d been any doubt in her mind.
It dawned on her abruptly that she actually hadn’t suggested Joshua was his, much less told him point blank. He had assumed the baby was his and she had said nothing at all.
At least, he’d talked as if he believed the baby was his and she had assumed he had no doubts that Joshua was his.
Obviously, she’d been wrong.
“You were no virgin,” he growled, his own temper thoroughly aroused by now.
Erin abruptly dismissed the temptation to admit that she’d been wrong to pick a fight with him over the baby’s paternity. “And you were?” she gasped indignantly.
“That’s not the point.”
She knew it wasn’t, but she was beyond feeling reasonable by now. “Right. That’s what’s really eating you, isn’t it? It isn’t doubts about the baby. It’s wondering how you stacked up! Men!” Turning away from him abruptly, she pounded the pillow into a ball and flopped down on her side with her back to him.
“Tell me if he is mine, chère.”
Erin ground her teeth. “Oh, I just know you’d believe me … like you believed everything else I tried to explain.”
He grasped her shoulder and pulled her onto her back. “Did I get you pregnant? Or did they do it? Do you even know yourself whose sperm they used?”
Erin stared at him in stunned silence for several moments as that slowly sank in. In spite of all she could do her chin wobbled. “You weren’t accusing me of … of anything?” she asked a little weakly, suddenly feeling like a complete ass.
The darkening of his skin told its own tale. He had doubted. He had thought terrible things about her. Maybe part of his suspicions had been based on the possibility that they’d experimented on her and she didn’t know who’d fathered the child, but she could see his distrust of her ran bone deep.
“I wasn’t artificially inseminated,” she said wearily, trusting his hand away and rolling onto her side away from him again. “Believe what you want to believe. I don’t care.”
It was a lie, of course. She did care and worse, she strongly suspected, unless he was totally dense, he knew it was a lie. She didn’t know why or how or when she’d begun to care what Jesse thought of her, but she did.
* * * *
The sun was already setting when they arrived at the docks. Erin hadn’t been told where they were going. She resented it, but then she assumed they were going after the baby and she didn’t really care where she had to go, or how far.
The vessel she was led to--she wasn’t certain whether it would be called a ship or a boat--was obviously privately owned.
The name Juliette was scrawled across the bow.
Erin gave Jesse a cold glance.
He pretended he hadn’t noticed, grabbing her arm and hurrying her up the gang plank when she stopped to look the boat over. “Juliette?” Erin said questioningly when they’d reached the main deck. “This wouldn’t be the dog lady, would it?”
Someone snickered close by--one of the crew members she supposed, but she didn’t look. She was too busy gauging Jesse’s reaction.
He sent her a thoughtful glance. “It’s the name of the ship.”
“I got that,” Erin said dryly, following him as he strode across the deck and down one level via a set of narrow stairs carrying the luggage he’d brought with him.
One bag was for her and contained clothing she suspected had been purchased specifically for her since everything fit her as if it had been. Jesse hadn’t said so and he’d certainly led her to believe that he hadn’t gone after her to rescue her, but it seemed evident that he’d expected to return with her.
Or maybe his last girlfriend was just conveniently of the same size?
Unfortunately, she hadn’t paid that much attention to Juliette.
“We’ll stay in this cabin.”
“We?”
Jesse dropped the bags and turned to study her for a long moment. “Unless you get seasick, in which case I’ll sleep on deck.”
There was a gl
eam of teasing humor in his eyes when he said it. Erin wasn’t immune to it, so she simply chose to ignore it. “I guess it’s a good thing you weren’t around while I was pregnant then because I spent six months puking my guts out,” she said tightly, looking the cabin over with jealousy gnawing at her insides. “I hope you at least changed the sheets.”
She could hear his teeth grinding. “There’s nothing between me and Juliette, chère, not like you’re thinkin’ anyway. This is her yacht.”
Erin relaxed fractionally--enough to shrug as if she didn’t particularly care. “She makes enough money as a vet to afford something like this?” she asked in surprise.
When Jesse said nothing, she turned from her examination of the cabin’s appointments to look at him questioningly. He looked--irritated. “I gave it to her,” he said reluctantly.
“You?” Erin gasped, so stunned by the discovery that Jesse could afford something this expensive and give it as a gift that she was distracted momentarily from her jealousy, but only briefly. “And there’s nothing between the two of you?”
Jesse grimaced. “She’s my sister.”
“Your sister!” Erin echoed, but then her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You mean really your sister? Or are you just referring to her as your sister because she’s one of what you call the brethren? She is a Lycan, isn’t she?”
He looked torn between amusement and irritation. “She’s my half-sister--by blood.”
Erin wasn’t entirely convinced. Looking back, she really couldn’t recall anything Juliette had said or done that had led her to believe she was Jesse’s lover. She had been very possessive, but Erin supposed that could’ve just been a sisterly reaction to having her brother drag in a female that had been involved in his captivity. Maybe it was nothing more than that Juliette hated her for the same reason Jesse did?
Or maybe Juliette hated her because she wasn’t Lycan?
The crew, Erin discovered without a lot of surprise the following morning, was Lycan. She knew because they were some of the same men that had been involved in the raid on the government facility. Almost a dozen of Jesse’s pack had accompanied them on the trip--twice the number needed to crew the ship and more than enough to fill the crew quarters. Those who hadn’t been able to find quarters below settled in the other guest cabins, which Erin supposed explained, at least in part, why Jesse was bunking with her.
Possibly, it was also because she was the only female on board. She didn’t know if Jesse had made the decision to protect her from any unwanted attentions or not, but she was relieved to discover they all seemed to consider her his property and off limits even though the situation made it impossible for her to be sure of whether he would have chosen the arrangement otherwise or not.
She offered to help in the galley, not because she was such a great cook but because she didn’t particularly relish the idea of being cooped up in the cabin all day with nothing to do. She knew nothing at all about boats. She supposed she could’ve offered to swab the decks or something, but Jesse spent most of his time on deck and she didn’t want him to get the idea that she was hanging after him.
He’d made it fairly obvious, in spite of the fabulous sex they’d had at the safe house, that he wasn’t even close to forgiving her, or falling beneath her ‘spell.’ She ended up sleeping by herself most of the time because Jesse only came to the cabin to sleep when she left it.
She was relieved about that--at first. After a few days at sea she’d had time to do a lot of thinking, though, and she wasn’t too stupid to see that her situation was precarious. Supposing they did find Joshua and rescued him and Jesse was relieved of all doubts that the baby was his, she had to wonder if, after going to so much effort to rescue him if Jesse would willingly part with him. It seemed to follow that if Jesse was willing to risk so much for the baby when he wasn’t even sure it was his that he wasn’t just going to give the baby to her and walk away.
They could fight over him, or she could try to make some sort of peace between them and they could stay together.
She wasn’t entirely certain how she felt about them all living together, but it didn’t take a lot of thought to realize both she and the baby would be better off with him than without him. The government wasn’t just going to give up when and if they managed to wrest Joshua away from them. They would come after her and the baby again. She would be on the run, possibly forever, unless she could at least make a truce with Jesse that would make it possible for her to live among the Lycans and have their protection.
That wasn’t going to be easy when Jesse was avoiding her.
She couldn’t even find out where they were going, much less discover what plans Jesse had for her future or even if he had any.
He’d said she was his. She hadn’t been in any state to really soak that in at the time he’d said it and she’d thought he was just talking man talk anyway. Men tended to be territorial. It seemed reasonable enough to suppose that Lycan males were at least as territorial or more so, but she didn’t feel terribly reassured by the claim made in the heat of the moment.
For all she knew, he might not even remember he’d said it, much less feel that way now that the thrill was gone.
Physically, he was attracted to her, or at least he had been. She didn’t place a lot of faith that that was an enduring situation either, particularly when he seemed to feel just the opposite about her on every other level.
For her own safety and Joshua’s, she was just going to have to swallow her pride and try to woo him. Now was the time. Now might be her only chance. If they did find and rescue Joshua, she was going to be focused on the baby on the trip back and caring for him wasn’t going to give her a lot of time to seduce Jesse.
If she couldn’t convince him that he was wrong about her and/or to keep her and the baby close, then she was going to have to try to steal the baby from Jesse and she would be on the run from both the government and the Lycans.
Looking at it that way, her pride was the last thing she needed to be worried about protecting.
The plan was easier conceived than executed. Jesse was wary. He didn’t trust her, at all, and he was highly suspicious of her motives when she tried the tactic of smiling at him encouragingly whenever he looked her way and ‘accidently’ happened upon him after searching for him all over the ship.
Hanging around the cabin while he was in it was a bust, too. He either slept through it, pretended he was sleeping, or, occasionally, he would slant an irritated glance at her through half closed eyelids for disturbing his sleep.
She’d spent too much of her life being a scientist and not nearly enough being ‘just a woman.’ The scientific studies she’d read on the mating ritual didn’t seem to be that much help and, despite Jesse’s snide remark about her lack of virginity, she didn’t really have a lot of personal experience to draw from. She’d had a few boyfriends, but she hadn’t been the aggressor in those cases. She had no idea of what to do when he wouldn’t allow her close enough to even attempt to flirt, but it was obvious to her after only a few days that remaining passive and trying to encourage him to come to her wasn’t going to get her anywhere.
Would it help, she wondered, to try to arouse his lust and keep him so busy expending it that he didn’t have time to think about the lack of any other common ground in their relationship? She wasn’t certain that it would, but then she was willing to try anything except that she couldn’t quite get up the nerve to simply strip down, crawl into the sack with him, and molest him while he was sleeping. He’d be vulnerable then and easy enough to manipulate, she knew, but the sticking point was that that kind of behavior was completely uncharacteristic for her. The more she thought about it and tried to work up her nerve, the more unnerved she became.
After almost a week at sea, she discovered that Jesse spent much of his nights in the main cabin of the yacht, a large cabin that was used as the living area and dining hall combined. She’d already ‘strolled’ the upper deck for nearly an hour looking for hi
m when she decided to go below and see if he’d taken over one of the other crew members’ bunks. Hearing voices and an occasional chuckle in the main cabin, she’d frozen in the corridor for quite some time, trying to decide whether she had enough nerve to casually stroll through the room filled with men in search of Jesse. Was it even worth the attempt when he was so surrounded that it wasn’t likely she’d get the chance to try to draw him into conversation?
Finally, trying to act casual when she felt downright faint--as if she was entering a bear den instead of a room full of men--she decided she could pretend she was looking for something to read.
The moment she stepped into the doorway, all conversation died and she found herself staring at nearly a half a dozen men. Jesse and Tavian had a large map spread out on the table before them and had obviously been studying it before she came in. Billy Ray and three other men whose names she’d heard but couldn’t remember were grouped around the other end of the long table with playing cards in their hands.
Despite her intention to try to behave casually, she checked in the door way when they all looked up, as if she’d been pinned to the frame. Panic washed through her. Her mind went blank and refused the simple order she forced through it to ‘act natural.’ After many moments, enough to assure them all that there was nothing casual about her entrance, she managed to force herself to move forward instead of whirling on her heel and dashing back to her own cabin. Every muscle, bone, and tendon in her body protested the mental order to move, though, and she felt horribly awkward and self-conscious as she focused on the cabinet that she knew held books and magazines and headed toward it.
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