by Riley Storm
“I want you to fuck me now,” she said, pulling back just enough to look him straight in the eyes.
Blue met hazel. They were locked on, totally lost in one another. Kincaid’s hips rose and fell, driving the air from her each time he thrust deep. Her eyes watched him, noticing the way his face twitched and the pleasure on his face as he did the same to her. It was that most intimate of moments, where all guard is dropped and the truth of a person is revealed.
Haley liked what she saw. A lot. Kincaid was a good man. There was dark in his past, and hurt at the corners of his eyes, but in his core, at the depths of what made him Kincaid, there was nothing but good. She saw this, and once more felt at ease with her decision.
“Yes,” she urged, watching him intently. She was enjoying this, but her body was spent. Her attention now turned to him. She wanted him to gain the same enjoyment, the same closeness she was currently feeling.
“Haley, I’m going to—”
“My stomach,” she urged, biting her lip, letting her eyes go big and round.
His face tightened, sharp lines growing sharper and she watched, thoroughly aroused simply by looking at him as he withdrew swiftly and emptied himself onto the exposed skin of her stomach and up to her chest. The heat of it made her gasp in surprise, which delighted Kincaid.
After he was spent, his face finished contorting, he half-sank, half-fell onto his side, bouncing the bed slightly as he collapsed next to her. Haley turned her head, still watching him. It never ceased to amuse her how soft and cuddly men became after sex. Personally, she thought it was adorable.
Kincaid nuzzled up next to her, kissing her neck, her cheek and her ear. “I’ll get you a towel,” he said, still half out of breath.
“No,” she said, reaching out to hold him tight.
“Are you sure?”
“Normally I’d say yes,” she told him with a smile. “But…I don’t want you to go. Not yet.”
Kincaid kissing her cheek, his free arm coming around to stroke her forehead. “I’ll stay as long as you want me to, Haley.”
She smiled happily.
“As long as you want,” Kincaid echoed.
She wanted to fall asleep, just like that, in his arms, feeling safe and secure, but with their fiery session over, the rest of the room came into focus again, and she was reminded of where they were, of the predicament they were in. Most importantly, she was reminded that she had exactly no idea what the hell they were going to do next.
“Hold me,” she whispered, pulling his arm in tight, needing his presence more than ever.
28
He eased the floor plate back into place as quietly as he could, hoping it wouldn’t disturb her. Pausing, he listened for sounds that he’d awoken Haley, but the soft breathing from through the doorway below continued unabated.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Kincaid crept down the last of the stairs, depositing the contents on the counter. It wasn’t precisely early, but the two of them hadn’t gotten to bed until very late, and he wanted Haley to get as much rest as possible. Things were bound to get more intense as they put the pressure on the people trying to frame him, and he needed her in top shape.
Other than getting them some breakfast with cash he’d left stored in the safe house, Kincaid had spent most of his morning trying to wrestle the various pieces into some semblance of a picture, with almost no luck.
They had plenty of angles to work with, but no matter how he turned them, nothing seemed to fit the puzzle. They were missing a key piece. In his mind, it was the piece that held it all together, linking the various puzzle fragments.
There was the Canis attempt to frame him.
The dead rogue mage Samuel Girard.
The restaurant.
Krawll’s attempt to kill him.
Laurent Canis, Reaver of High House Canis.
Somehow, all of those things came together. Probably. It was entirely possible they were completely unrelated, but he doubted that. Occam’s Razor said that the simplest explanation was often the correct one.
Now, if only I had a simple explanation.
To add to his frustration, after their escape from Ursidae Manor last night, Kincaid knew he would be locked out of all his accounts, and unable to access any of the resources of his House. That left them with one black SUV, around twenty-thousand dollars in cash, two sets of ugly brown sweatpants, and a week’s worth of non-perishable food.
How was he supposed to use that to unravel a mystery so far becoming more and more obscure the more they learned about it? His frustration was mounting, not to mention his pain.
Nothing physical, by now he’d long recovered from the tickling Kvoss had given him. The Assassin might be an excellent killer, but he was not adept at torture, that was for sure. Kincaid had dealt with worse.
No, the pain he felt was the insult to his honor—to have to not only escape from the custody of his own family, but to know that they believed so firmly in his guilt that they would come after him relentlessly, using whatever method they could to track him down. That cut deep, in a way nobody could see and only he could feel.
Kaelyn is on your side, that’s all that matters.
It might be all that spared his life if they caught up to him, but it wasn’t going to be enough. Her position as head of High House Ursa was still shaky. She’d only come to power because the King, her mate, had been killed during the uprising.
Normally, the succession would fall to the Knight of the House, a position not of blood, but designated by the sitting ruler. Whether the ruler chose to step down, was killed, or simply died of natural causes, the Knight would be the next ruler of the House. The problem was, the Knight had been killed as well.
Normally, Kaelyn, as the mate to the ruler—whether it be the Queen to the ruling King, or King to the ruling Queen, it mattered not—would normally never be allowed to take the throne. With nobody else to assume the position, however, she had stepped up and taken the reigns. So far, no one had seriously assailed her seat, but until she had secured more allies, Kincaid could not count on her help.
He was on his own.
“Kincaid?” Haley called softly from the bedroom.
Well, maybe not completely on his own.
“Hey,” he said, leaning against the door frame and gazing in at her. “I got us some fresh breakfast. I figured you might like that better than more tuna or granola.”
“Coffee?” she asked fuzzily.
“Ready to go. Probably cooled to the perfect temperature by now.”
Sitting up, she yawned and stretched, arms raised high above her head. The covers fell away, exposing her breasts to him.
“I see you checking me out,” she teased, not covering up.
Kincaid shrugged. “Wasn’t really trying to hide it. You’re gorgeous, and I enjoy seeing you like this.”
Haley blushed, but not as strongly as she might have, not after the night they’d shared. A lot had been revealed about them, and he’d seen every inch of her, explored every bit that he could touch.
“How about that coffee?” she joked, making a shooing motion as she slipped from the bed, giving him one last eyeful of her deliciously soft skin before he left the room.
Chuckling to himself, he prepared her coffee as per the instructions called to him through the door while she dressed and got ready.
“What possessed you to get up so early?” she asked, covering another yawn. “And did you really brave the outdoors in that getup? You let people see you?”
“Just the drive-through lady,” he said, earning him a quiet snort. “As for why I’m up? I couldn’t sleep, Haley. Too many things running through my head.”
She nodded, resting her head on his shoulder, both as comfort to him, and also out of tiredness, he was sure.
“Did you manage to get anywhere?”
“No,” he said unhappily. “I spent too much time being angry that my own family is convinced I’m a traitor.”
“It’s not a personal t
hing,” she said, turning her head so she could kiss his shoulder through the sweatshirt. “They’re just looking at the evidence in front of them, that’s all. After all, you told me someone is a traitor, and they all know it. If you saw this evidence for someone else, you’d be acting on it as well.”
Kincaid didn’t like it, but she was right. Although he prided himself on seeing everything, with the way he’d been acting, if Kincaid were someone else, he’d assume he was guilty as well. More evidence was needed to disprove the allegations against him. That was the only way he could sort this out.
Haley sighed and snuggled up closer to him. “We’ll figure it out.”
Nodding, he couldn’t help but realize that the frame job wasn’t the only thing he needed to figure out. Whatever this was, between him and Haley, he needed to come to a conclusion soon. It was obvious neither of them had expected it to go down this path, but things had boiled over into physical interests the night before, and though he couldn’t be sure, he didn’t take it as a one-time-only sort of event.
Just another layer of confusion for him to sort through. Emotions were not his strong suit, especially his own.
Do I have emotions about this? Feelings? Or is this just a proximity-based attraction, given that she’s both smart and beautiful?
The thing was…he didn’t know. Nor did he have the slightest clue about how to proceed with her from there, other than to keep acting as he had up until then.
“What are you going to do next?” Haley asked, taking another sip of coffee and standing upright again.
Thanking her silently, he brought his mind back to the big issue. Solve that, then he could spend time figuring out just what the hell was going on between him and Haley, without worrying about Kvoss breaking in at any moment and going for this throat.
Haley frowned at him when he didn’t immediately answer. “You do have a plan, don’t you? We escaped from jail, fled across the city to live in the projects. You had better have an idea of what we’re going to do next, Kincaid!”
“We need more clues.”
“Right. Okay, I’m no super-sleuth, but I’ll drink to that.” She had some coffee. “How do we get them?”
“The restaurant,” he said, trying to sound more decisive than he felt. “It’s the only thing that seems to have a connection, without having shown it yet.”
Haley sighed. “Let me guess. You want to go break into the restaurant and snoop around, don’t you?”
Kincaid knew how she felt about that. About breaking the rules, of circumventing the law, and causing damage and mayhem in general. She found it abhorrent, and likely wouldn’t want to support him in it—which made it a good reason that he didn’t have that in mind. Not this time. It was time to try something a little less…obvious.
“Not quite,” he told her with a grin. “Here’s what I’m thinking…”
29
“Why couldn’t you have just broken in?” she complained, trying for the tenth time to shift into a more comfortable position.
Kincaid, seemingly completely at ease in the cramped conditions of the SUV, just grinned. “I’m playing by your rules. I thought you’d be happy.”
She glared at him. The big vehicle was more than spacious enough for riding around in, but after six hours of sitting in it without getting out to stretch, she was going stir crazy. How the hell did he manage to continue looking so calm and collected?
“Wait, so you’re not happy about this?”
Sighing, she squirmed around some more. “I’m not answering that question.”
Kincaid chuckled.
“It’s not funny.”
He waggled a raised hand. “Weeellll, it kind of is,” he said, a big smile on his face. “I try to do something to make you happy, to impress you, and now I’m in trouble for it. Come on, you have to admit there’s just a little bit of irony there.”
“Only because you’re not dying of discomfort.”
“Not true,” he countered. “I simply am ignoring it. Shoving it to the side. I have larger priorities right now than a few hours of discomfort, and if they reveal to us what we need, well, then it’s worth it, isn’t it?”
Haley thought about that. “Yes. But I still want to get out and stretch.”
“You could try the trunk?” he suggested, pointing between the front seats, over the back row and into the spacious rear.
“Rude.”
Kincaid threw up his hands in defeat. “Just trying to help. But we can’t get out of the car. We need to keep an eye on the restaurant, just in case we see someone we know. This is how we’re going to get our break. I can feel it. Whoever it is, they know we’ve escaped by now, I’m sure of it. So, they’ve got to be wondering what we’ll do next. Our goal is to outwait them.”
“That could take days,” she moaned, covering her eyes. “How am I supposed to handle that?”
“In silence?” he quipped.
Haley glared at him even harder. “Ha ha. Very funny. Guess who’s sleeping on the couch tonight?”
Kincaid stuck out his tongue. “While we wait, why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself?”
She froze. What? Why did he want to know more about her? “Umm. Like what?” she squeaked out, stalling for time.
“I don’t know. Hobbies. Pets. What are your parents like? Are you from here originally? Gone on any vacations lately that were awesome?”
“Oh. Like that. Umm. I don’t have any pets,” she admitted. “Though I always wanted a dog. Not like, not one of those little yappy rat-dogs though.”
“So what, like a Rottweiler or something?”
She laughed. “No, I’m not big enough to control one of those. I was thinking something medium-sized. Like a spaniel of some sorts. We had a Brittany spaniel growing up. Beautiful reddish-brown and white coloring. Such a wonderful puppy.” She smiled at the memory. “She passed away in my final year of university while I was at school. I haven’t had the courage to get a pet since, it hurt too much.”
Kincaid reached out and squeezed her hand. “I understand. She sounds like a wonderful dog.”
“She was. Why, one time when I was younger, my parents left me at home under the care of my grandparents, while they went away for a weekend with some friends to a cabin. And they told my grandparents they’d left a ham in the sink, defrosting.” She started to giggle. “Imagine the confusion when they went to prepare dinner, and there was no ham. They started blaming me of course, though I wasn’t exactly the type known to do that, but I was only ten or eleven, so you never know, I guess?”
Kincaid was grinning. His face was fixated on the restaurant, but his eyes, those beautiful blue-gray eyes, kept glancing over at her repeatedly.
“They found it the next day, half-eaten and wedged down the side of the couch!” she explained, laughing loudly. “Somehow, this dog had gotten up onto the counter, stolen the ham, eaten half of it, and then buried it away.”
He joined in her laughter as the image of the wily ham-stealing dog blossomed fully.
“I haven’t thought about that story in years,” she said as she calmed down. “I miss that dog.”
“Why don’t you have another one then?” Kincaid asked, turning to look at her for a moment.
Haley thought about it. “I guess I just never felt the time was right. A dog is a big commitment. Not as much as a child, perhaps, but a big one anyway, and I suppose I never felt ready for it.”
“I understand.”
“What about you? I would imagine pets are probably not so welcome in an environment around massive bears?”
“Basically. Though you’d be surprised at the number of stray cats that seem perfectly at ease living on the property. So we’re not unused to them. But no, I’ve never had a dog before.” He started rubbing his chin. “Though if we all started adopting them, and naming them after Canis shifters, that would be a hoot.”
Haley giggled at the image. “Yes, yes it would.”
“What do you do for fun then? What
are your hobbies?”
She mulled it over and came to a depressing conclusion. “I don’t really have any,” she admitted. “I like to read. I enjoy wine. Now that I say it out loud though, that sounds like the makings of an alcoholic.”
Kincaid renewed the smile on his face. “I doubt that.”
“I wasn’t serious,” she admitted. “Still, maybe I should take up something in my spare time.”
“That would be good. What would you do?”
“Maybe paint,” she mused. “I’m not really a sporty person, but there are paint nights around town, and groups and such. I’m sure I could get involved in something that way.”
“That sounds good. I could use some new wall décor.”
“Ha.” She stuck out her tongue at him.
“See, this is productive. Time well spent out here. We’re getting to know one another.”
She lifted her eyebrows in disbelief. “Really? This coming from the guy with basically superpowers, who also tells me there are people running around who can use real honest-to-God magic. Do you realize how much I don’t know about you?”
“I can’t use magic,” he countered.
“That’s…I didn’t mean. Argh! You know what I meant,” she pouted.
“I know. You only have to ask questions. If I can explain, then I will. But you’ve seemed remarkably calm about it all, to be honest with you. I…I’ve been unsure on how to approach it. To ask you how you’re taking it.”
“I’m still having a hard time accepting it, and I’ve seen you change multiple times. Hell, I rode on your back while you ran through the forest like a wild man. Except you were a bear, larger than anything that should exist. It…I don’t know,” she admitted. “It’s scary, to think about in depth. Like…just how much else don’t we know? Have you and your kind always been around?”
“Not always,” he admitted. “The first records come just before the fall of Rome.”
“The fall of Ro…that was like, fifteen hundred years ago,” she gasped. “Like, what was it, the 400’s or something?”
