by Holley Trent
“I’m a lot messed up. You know why I got attached to Belle duty and why I’m not on the ranch taking turns keeping an eye on that hellmouth like everyone else?”
“Why?” She turned a bit toward him, pulling one long leg beneath her bottom.
“Because when I was in Afghanistan, something spooky attacked me. Just me. Nobody else in the unit. Happened almost every night at the end. Got to the point where I couldn’t sleep because of it.”
“What was it trying to do?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, but it scared the piss out of me. Hannah didn’t want me near your hellmouth because she was afraid I’d freeze up or pass out or something. There are some things you can’t take down by putting bullets through them, and I guess the things you have coming out of that portal count.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, well. Everyone has something in their life that comes along and takes them down a peg, and I guess that was mine. Your goddess has been counseling me in her free time.”
“I don’t imagine she has much.”
“Exactly. I’ll take what I can get, though. Maybe one day, I can be levelheaded about it.”
Belle picked at the cuticle of her thumb and chewed the inside of her mouth.
Steven kept on driving, not offering any words, and not expecting any from her, either. He knew what it felt like to not be able to unburden himself, even when he’d had the opportunity to do so. Telling Hannah what had happened to him had been a beautiful relief that had made him feel lighter than he had in years, but even he hadn’t been able to share at first. She’d made the invitation for him to talk, and he hadn’t been able to unlock the words for another day or two.
“If Claude can’t fix me, they’re not going to let me leave,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“They’re not going to let me leave. I was going to leave as soon as I had the money ... and after I made the voice go away.”
“Well, honey, you’ve got to admit you’ve got it pretty good here. And what voice?”
“Maybe it looks that way. You’re an outsider looking in. And the voice belongs to something inside the hellmouth. I need to see what it is before it closes. When I was running to it yesterday, that’s what I was doing—seeing if it was something worthy of rescue, and only I can do it for reasons that won’t make sense to you. You’re not a Cougar.”
“Shit.” He pounded the steering wheel softly. “Well, tell me about why you want to leave, and we’ll go back to the other thing in a bit. Maybe I can help you find some perspective.”
“What is there to say? It’s been something I’ve been thinking about ever since Sean set out for his years of wanderlust.”
“You’ve got itchy feet?”
“No. I just want to be untethered and able to come and go as I please.”
“Are you saying they didn’t let you do that before you became a little weirder than usual?”
“I moved off the ranch as soon as I could, but my brothers have a pretty long reach. Nobody in town messes with me. I can’t even get a date without the guy asking up front if one of my brothers is going to rough him up if they find out.” She added in a mutter, “Assuming I find anyone worth dating.”
He ignored that last bit, happy though it made him. It’d suit him just fine if she were single for the next ten years or so. Hell, even five. Two, if he were being honest with himself. He wouldn’t feel guilty about lusting after a woman who could legally drink.
The fuck is wrong with me?
He let out a breath and adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. “So, they’re protective.”
She scoffed. “Understatement.”
“Come on, can you blame them? They look at you, and they see a baby. Hell, I look at Hannah sometimes and see that, and I’m only a little over two years older than her.”
“Hannah’s twenty-nine.”
“Still. I’m protective of her, as much as she’ll let me be. She hasn’t always been so good about vocalizing her limits as far as that goes, but she’s persistent now, and she helps me figure out when to back off. She might have to give me a few good smacks every now and then, but she’s doing it from a place of love.”
Belle laughed, and he couldn’t be certain, but he thought it was the first time he’d heard that genuine sound coming out of her.
He guffawed. “For real? The idea of me getting beat up by my little sister is funny to you?”
Belle laughed so hard that she had to clutch her chest from all the wheezing.
“You really are cruel, Belle Foye.”
“I’m sorry.” She put her hand up and giggled uncontrollably. “Oh, gods,” she wheezed. “Just the mental image—it’s funny if you really think about it.” She laughed a little more and finally nudged away the tears that beaded at the corners of her eyes. She sighed. “Really, I’m sorry. I dunno. I think your relationship with Hannah is a lot more casual than I have with my brothers. You see each other as peers and equals, but my brothers are always going to see me as the kid who came along much later. I think Mason was around fourteen when I was born, and the other guys aren’t that far behind him.”
“We’re just on two different sides of the same fence, the way I see it. Hannah would probably tell you her situation sucked balls. Y’all can sit down and have it out, figure out which of you really had it worse.”
“But at least she’s autonomous now. No one’s telling her what she can or can’t do.”
“Besides her alpha and her goddess, you mean.”
“Come on, Mason gives her lots of space because he doesn’t want to fight with Sean, and for the most part, Lola stays out of Hannah’s way and lets her do what she needs to get done without interference.”
“Okay, so Hannah’s a self-starter. I’m sure you could find some way to demonstrate that you are, too. That’ll certainly get Team Testosterone off your back.”
“I wish, but I don’t think it’ll happen.” Belle ground her palms against her eyes and settled a little lower in her seat.
“You all right?”
“Yeah, just tired. Face feels a little numb. I always feel like that after ...”
She let the words trail off, but Steven didn’t really need her to connect the dots for him. He got it. She felt funny because something was in her. In spite of her discomfort with the idea, Claude was going to be the first person she saw. If Steven had to sing, dance, and lie through his damn teeth so the entire ranch didn’t find out what was wrong with her, fine. He didn’t want that woman suffering with her shit the way he had with his. He hadn’t had anyone to help him when he came home, but there was no reason she had to work out her possession problem on her own.
It would make him happy just to see her smile. It seemed she didn’t have a lot of reasons to lately, and that was a shame, because a woman with a smile like hers shouldn’t have been hiding it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Belle ducked behind Steven when Claude stepped into the barn and let out a long sigh. “Jesus,” she whispered and patted down the wild hair sticking out in her periphery. “Every single time he comes here, I look like I’m recovering from flu.”
Steven chuckled low. “It’s all right, dew drop. You look pretty good to me, not that my opinion’s worth spit.”
“Change that ‘p’ to an ‘h,’ and that’s what you’re full of.”
“Have I lied to you yet?” Reaching blindly behind him, he found her forearm and gave it a tender squeeze. It may as well have been an outright solicitation for the way her body was responding to it. That desperate cat inside her practically stood up on her hind legs and waved her paws for attention, and with Belle’s brain being in the disordered state it was, she couldn’t remember why it was that she wasn’t supposed to let him touch her.
If he’d been a Cougar, he might have been able to smell her scent changing—a surge of adrenaline and pheromones—but fortunately, he was oblivious.
Still, he was standing too da
mned close. It was taking all the self-control she had to not lick the guy again, and this time, she couldn’t say it was just because she was curious about his scent. It would be because in spite of her brain’s insistence that she leave the guy alone, her body was like, “Nah. He’ll do.” And she’d do, and do, and do him some more.
Claude cleared his throat.
Oh.
Just that quickly, she’d forgotten they had company. Belle peeked around Steven and found Claude standing about ten feet away with his arms crossed and one eyebrow raised.
She sighed again. It was probably a good thing he was there. He was stopping her from breaking her own rules of heat, and the first one was still “Don’t fuck that guy.”
Steven held out a hand, which Claude stepped forward to shake. “Steven Welch. I feel like I know you already as your exploits have become some of Ellery’s favorite boozy-time stories.”
“Claude Fortier.” He groaned. “I imagine some of those stories are pretty embarrassing. My wife keeps me on the straight and narrow now or at least 90 percent of the time.”
“How is Gail?” Belle asked weakly.
“I’m sorry. I hear Belle’s voice from somewhere in this drafty building, but I certainly can’t see her.”
“Dick.” She sidled around Steven and put up her hands in a gesture of defeat. Then she patted down her hair some more.
“Hello to you, too, chéri. And Gail is fine. You can go see for yourself. She’s at your mother’s with Ellery.”
“I’ll do that.”
It was damn near impossible to meet the man’s gaze. It wasn’t just because he was hot—he had the tall, dark, handsome, and supernatural thing down pat—but he just knew too damn much, and she was pretty sure the ex-incubus could see right through her. He wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to think he was the cause of her current distress, but all the same, she didn’t want so many people to know how close to shattering she was.
Claude rocked back on the heels of his ratty Chucks and folded his arms over his chest again. “So, what is the nature of this covert meeting? Hannah wouldn’t be specific.”
“Hannah doesn’t know the specifics,” Steven said. “Hell, I don’t even know. I just thought it’d be easier for Belle if half the ranch didn’t know something was up.”
“Well, something’s up. I can tell that from here.”
“How?” Steven asked.
Claude shrugged. “Some things can’t be easily explained. I’m the son of a fallen angel and a voodooienne. Things that are instinctual to me require some effort for others.”
“Can you fix it?” Belle asked.
“Probably with no trouble.” He waved her forward. “Come here.”
Obviously she didn’t move quickly enough because Steven pressed a hand to the small of her back and gave her the tiniest little nudge. “Go on. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”
She believed him. She didn’t know why she believed him. Maybe it was because she just had to believe someone, and he made it easy.
Or maybe it’s because he lied for you.
His life probably would have been a lot easier at the moment if he hadn’t. He might have even been able to get rid of his babysitting chore if he’d told her brothers that the person grabbing him wasn’t Belle. Sean would have probably locked her in his inescapable basement.
With one more encouraging nudge from Steven, she stepped forward and put her hand in Claude’s.
He turned it over and ran his calloused thumb over her palm. His expression was brooding and intense, and although he was looking at her, he didn’t seem to see her.
She glanced over her shoulder at Steven, who gave her the barest nod.
“It’s all right,” he said.
It was true that he hadn’t lied to her yet, so she’d believe things would be okay for as long as he did. At the moment, he probably had the better perspective. Objective and not impacted by stress and hormones.
She looked back to Claude, who drew his hand back and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans.
“It’s not hostile,” he said.
“It’s not?”
He grunted and shook his head. “It’s not a demon. It’s spirit, and I know spirits as well as I know demons.”
“Really?” Steven said. “I might have some questions for you later, then.”
“Happy to help.” Claude looked to Belle. “It tethers itself to you and waits for opportunities to move you.”
“So it’s right here? With us?”
“In a manner of speaking. I suppose the clearest way to describe it is that it’s between one realm and the next.”
“What does it want?”
“Help.”
“Mine?”
Claude grunted again. “Shifters—Cougars especially, from what I’ve heard—are sensitive to these sorts of possession. It may have been that you were the easiest to step into.”
“Well, that’s a feather to add to my cap, for sure.”
Steven gave her a nudge. “Hey. Don’t be ashamed of things you can’t help.”
She put her hands up again and groaned. He was right, but rationalizing it was hard all the same. She was a Foye and a born Cougar. She was supposed to be stronger than that. Her brothers had been the ones doing the majority of security work around the hellmouth for the past year, and they hadn’t once been possessed as far as she knew.
“How do we find out what it wants?” she asked. “So it goes away?”
“Well, answer this first. What made you think to ask me? That is to say, how has it been making itself known to you?”
“I didn’t think that was what it was until yesterday. Before then, I just ascribed it to ... uh ...” She glanced to Steven and then back to Claude. “Hormone stuff. For the past week, I thought I was having blackouts because I was going into heat and sometimes my blood pressure drops really low at certain parts of the cycle, but I kept coming to and finding people grabbing me. Fighting me. And ... the voice. There’s a voice coming out of that portal, and it’s so clear to me. It’s asking for help and calling me by name. I assumed that was why I was heading toward it today. I do that when I’m lucid, and apparently, I’m also compelled to go to it when I’m not myself, as well.”
“You hear the voice now?”
She shook her head. “Not at the moment.”
“Huh.” Claude rocked back on his heels again and ground his teeth.
She didn’t know him all that well, but that couldn’t have been a good sign.
She looked up at Steven, who gave her a squeeze.
“Come on, man. Give her something.”
Claude’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, how discreet do you need to be? This place is crawling with outsiders right now. If you don’t care how many people know what we’re trying, that’s one thing, but if you’re trying to rid yourself of the tagalong without the entire ranch finding out, that may pose some problems.”
“I could take her home,” Steven said.
“You could, but then you won’t find out why that spirit is so keen on Belle getting near the hellmouth.”
“I’ve already been inside it,” Belle said quietly. “I didn’t get far enough in to see anything, but it took me a while to get back to this side. Mason, Hank, and Ellery got me out.”
“So, likely, you weren’t in there long enough to see or do whatever the spirit would have you to,” Claude said.
“It was long enough to know that place sucks. The air was thick with misery. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it made my gut lurch and skin prickle.” Belle put her forehead against Steven’s shoulder and inhaled his comforting scent.
He smelled nice. Familiar and safe. Qualities she tended to discount with Cougars, but he wasn’t a Cougar. Maybe that was good.
“What do you propose she do?” Steven asked.
She didn’t realize what she was doing until his voice rumbled against her chest, but it was too late to pull away. He’d looped an arm around her and was ski
mming his fingers in a light circle against the side of her waist. It seemed an almost affectionate gesture, and she couldn’t move. Affection was hard for her to come by, which admittedly was her own damned fault. Practicality often stood in the way of soft things.
“It’s a weak spirit,” Claude said. “If it were a little stronger, I might have been able to communicate with it as it is. I could possibly engage with it more easily from a trance state. But as I said, Belle, if you don’t want people in your business, it’ll be harder to coordinate. I’m here at the ranch right now for a specific purpose, and if I hole myself up for an hour, people are going to want to know why.”
“I understand.”
“That doesn’t mean I won’t do it. It just means you’ll need to distract the others while I work, and you will have to tell Gail. If I’m in that realm too long, she’ll get pulled in, and it’ll be that much harder to rouse me. She’s my anchor.”
“You all right with that?” Steven asked softly.
She appreciated the sensitivity, but he didn’t need him to treat her like she was going to break. “I don’t know. I’m not used to being asked. Give me a minute to process it.”
“Take as long as you need.” He cleared his throat and rubbed her back, and she wondered how the hell she was supposed to do any thinking when he smelled so good and felt so nice.
Should step away.
Instead, she tucked her hands into the back of his pants, because that made thinking so much easier.
Damned inner cat ...
But since her hands were there, she didn’t see the point of withdrawing them. Seemed like it would have been such a wasted opportunity.
“You’re asking for trouble,” he whispered and rocked her a bit in his embrace.
“I’m not asking for anything. You shouldn’t have been nice to me. I would have left you alone.”
“Well, damn. It’s like that, huh? I’m not seeing a good reason not to be nice if you’re gonna be sweet.” He gently removed her hands from his waistband and pulled Belle to his side. “So ...” he said to Claude. “How do you think the Wolfpack’s gonna do this year?”
Claude snorted. “Gods, don’t tell me you’re one of those.”
