by Nancy Gideon
Where was Max?
Had she expected it to be easy having him here so close and yet so agonizingly far away? Bad enough watching him in that antiseptic clinic cell, a prisoner of his own panicked madness, raving, raging, out of control. Worse was having him here in the lush, sexy surroundings he’d built for them to share, temptingly near yet impossible to reach.
A bargain made in heartbreak hell.
Though she might be tortured by cherished memories, he was not. She was nothing to him but a protective port in his emotional storm. And that knowledge was driven home like a stake through the heart every time they were together. Every time he stared at her through those cool green eyes without the slightest flicker of response. Every time he took that distancing step back to evade the casual graze of her hand. Every time he lay next to her in the night and silence created a force field of discomfort.
Tripping over him every minute of the damned day only emphasized how much she wanted, needed him back.
And underlined how far away he was.
Praise from Publisher’s Weekly for the “By Moonlight” series:
“A paranormal romance series with intriguing characters and zippy action . . . Gideon masters the tension required to keep her complex and engaging story moving.”(Starred review)
“Vivid writing, plot twists and a satisfying ending will keep readers coming back to Gideon’s magical NOLA.”
“Rich and complex. Enticing new dimensions to the Shifter world keep things fresh. Gideon delivers well-crafted prose and page-turning tension.”
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Nancy Gideon
All rights reserved. No part of this book or portions thereof may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Cover Design: Patricia Lazarus
Interior Design: Rebel Ink Designs
ASIN: B00O4507KK
For Sandra Hoover,
The only one who loves Max more than I do!
Acknowledgements
It takes a village to build a dream. My foundation is my critique group, the PotLs, talented authors and awesome friends without whom I’d have never drafted this novel. To the architects who took my designs and helped me make them stronger: Patrish, Elizabeth, and Sandra. To the carpenters and electricians who put everything together and turned the lights on: Cover artist extraordinaire, Patricia Lazarus; copy editor to the stars, Laurie Kuna; the fabulous Darynda Jones for stepping up in a pinch to fan girl; and, my virtual assistant dynamo, Florence Price/Rebel Ink Designs.
For all those who’ve made my “By Moonlight” world their home, make yourselves comfortable, and enjoy! You’re the reason I get up at 5:00 a.m. to turn on the computer.
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
PROLOGUE
She should have stayed away.
She’d tried. For days, she’d tried by comforting herself with the fact that he was near. But it wasn’t enough.
She couldn’t work, couldn’t sleep or eat until she saw for herself that he was safe. Until she assured fractured heart and frantic mind that her world could go on spinning toward the future that they’d planned together.
As she approached the viewing window, her tough facade crumbled. What if there was no improvement? What if he wasn’t now or never would be any better? No. She’d seen him overcome greater odds when no one else could have. She squared up her shoulders and pushed fears away. Those bastards wouldn’t beat him. Not while either of them could draw a breath.
The small, sealed room appeared empty, just the jail-like austerity of bolted down bed, toilet and sink. She moved closer to the glass, leaning up against it, straining the way one might to get a glimpse of a shy, exotic creature at the zoo. He had to be there. She frowned slightly. After the extreme measures they’d taken considering who and what he was, he couldn’t have esca—
Something slammed against the glass in front of her. A dark shape rose up so suddenly and hit with such force, she reeled back, pulse leaping.
The ravaged, sweat-drenched figure fogging the barrier between them with labored breaths was barely recognizable as her beloved. He must have been crouched beneath the observation window. For a long moment, they stared at one another, unmoving, unblinking. Then she exhaled with a shuddering relief.
Max.
“I’m here, baby.”
She’d expected him to react to her firm, confident claim. And he did.
He lunged, clawing, snarling. The glass shivered but held. Contorted features revealed what writhed beneath the skin, beneath the façade of humanity he usually wore. Something savage and preternaturally powerful, capable of shredding her with one swipe of elongated nails or razor-sharp teeth.
He howled and roared and raged, those fierce, blazing eyes seeing threat, not the woman he’d cherished and vowed to protect to the limit of his life.
Stunned by his aggressive violence, it took a moment to react, to place her palm on the glass as she said his name softly in an effort to calm the madness and reach the man. But her voice provoked a greater frenzy, making him attack the separation keeping them apart, scratching, bashing, beating against it in an attempt to reach her with something other than fond reunion on his fevered mind.
Then he froze, going suddenly still. His head whipped around, attention pulled toward the upper corner of the room where a plume of mist began to spread downward into a thickening fog. He turned back to her then, not to plead or repent, but to redouble his vicious efforts.
Tears clouded the sight of him staggering, stumbling and finally falling under the effect of the paralyzing gas. Even subdued, he fought, chest jerking with agitated gasps, hands clutching convulsively until palms tore and bled. There was no sign of the man she loved within this raving, tortured animal, and that forced her to face an agonizing truth.
Perhaps that man no longer existed.
Her friends were right.
She should have stayed away.
And as she turned and strode from the room, struggling to hold her heart together, all she could hear were the last words he’d clearly spoken to her, a sentiment not of love but of warning.
Don’t trust me.
CHAPTER ONE
You’re special, blessed.
The Shifter king.
Max Savoie looked out over the city of New Orleans as those words whispered like a caressing Gulf breeze. From the patio of his penthouse apartment, he surveyed a kingdom stretching from the gleaming spires of the business district that dazzled against the breaking dawn to
the slow, lazy curve of the Mississippi far below, yet he felt none of the pleasures of rank or rule. He didn’t know what he felt. About the city, about the posh high rise he owned, about the woman inside.
Because he didn’t remember them.
But some things, he just knew.
The mysterious scent reached him even before the sound of her approach. He recognized it on a visceral level. Voodoo Love. A special blend from a perfumery in the Quarter. It teased about the edges of his awareness, inciting a prickle of response. His breathing quickened. His skin heated. Anticipation spurred his pulse to a gallop. But when he turned, those eager reactions died. Because all he saw was a stranger.
Charlotte Caissie. Her friends called her Cee Cee. A detective with the New Orleans police department. She carried her shield and gun the way most women did lipstick and a designer clutch, effortlessly, as a defining part of who she was. Tall, curvy, her stride confident even in those four-inch heels, she was fiercely striking from flashing dark eyes and café au lait skin to her short leather skirt and zebra striped blouse. Gorgeous, lethal, and in love with him.
She’d arranged for him to be released into her care five days ago but the opulent penthouse was no less a confining cell. He couldn’t leave without an escort and she held the keys in a fisted hand. For his own safety or her peace of mind?
There was nothing aggressive about her gaze when it touched on his. Her broken heart was in her eyes, but only for a moment. Then she smiled and played the game they settled into every time they were together, that of polite, carefully neutral guests forced out of necessity to share the same space.
Only he wasn’t pretending.
“You’re up early. Have trouble sleeping?” Her voice was low, husky, as sultry as her looks.
“No. I slept just fine.” A lie to placate her. That was part of their domestic charade, too. He noted the way she was dressed, the addition of perfume and makeup. “Are you going in to work today?”
She continued her approach, coming near, but not close. Not close enough to touch. For his peace of mind, not hers. She leaned against the rail beside him, and for a minute, they appreciated the view in silence. He almost relaxed, because on some intrinsic level the two of them together was comforting. Until she spoke again and reminded him of his situation.
“I’ve got an early briefing. I shouldn’t be gone very long. Giles is stopping by to keep you company.”
To keep an eye on him was what she meant. Max had no reply. He’d accepted the restrictive terms. He’d had to in order to get free of the sound proof walls of the Institute where he’d supposedly been recovering from a serious motorcycle accident. What was broken hadn’t been bones. At least here, out in the open air, the relentless scrutiny was a bit more tolerable.
But he didn’t have to like it. Not when her wary caution weighed upon him like the cuffs on her belt.
There was a cursory knock and the main door opened, emitting Giles St. Clair and an enticing smell. Seeing them on the terrace, the big man joined them with his offering.
“Beignets, fresh from Helen’s kitchen. A taste of these should have you missing home.”
It would take more than powder-covered pastries.
Max forced a smile and murmured, “Your relief is here, Detective.” And it was a relief to exchange her unsettling company for the one person from his shrouded past that he vaguely recalled. He clung to that familiarity like a life ring in a sea of unknowns.
Max hadn’t meant to upset her, but most everything he said or did, or didn’t do, tended to on some level. She stepped briskly away from the rail, moving to embrace Giles briefly and to snatch one of the deep-fried puffs from the bag. She whispered something as he lowered his head, and he nodded. Max didn’t need to eavesdrop to get the gist of their conversation. Watch him. Don’t let him out of your sight. See if you can stir up any of his memories. Be careful.
They didn’t trust him. Not for a minute. It was there in every guarded word and uncertain glance.
Don’t forget he’s dangerous.
That last warning forced him back into his protective shell of silence. Better he watch and wait and observe, just as they were, until he figured out how and where he fit into this blank slate of existence that had been forced upon him.
No. Not entirely blank. Maybe that would have been better, easier than trying to sort through the chaos that flooded his head. Bursts of fractured conversations, tattered images flying about like photographs caught up in a hurricane wind. Always just out of reach, whirling, churning, refusing to fit together. Hiding the answer he desperately sought.
Who am I?
The question sat with a familiar frustration upon his heart, as if he’d asked it more times than he could remember. For far longer than the months since his rescue.
What he was had been defined for him. He’d absorbed all Giles had told him as if listening to a fairytale. Or horror story. A shape-shifter. Not just a shape-shifter, but the shape-shifter. The Prophesied One, the one his clan believed would free them from their distant kinsmen in the North, those feared boogeymen who had stolen his identity. An ironic thought that this outcast group would seek to follow him when he couldn’t find his way to the home where he’d been raised. Raised by a mobster whose criminal empire he’d inherited, whose bloodied bank accounts paid for these lavish rooms that now were his physical prison. His link to that human enterprise was Giles St. Clair, who most likely was bringing Legere Enterprises International business to his door.
A door that opened to Nobody Home.
As Cee Cee went inside the apartment that encompassed most of the twelfth floor, Giles settled companionably beside him. Taller even than Max, with shoulders worthy of the NFL, he offered a good-natured smile that reached deceptively mild blue eyes in the only face Max remembered. There was nothing good- natured or mild about the sturdy human when he chose not to be. Giles was all grit and determination. And loyalty, even at the risk of his own life. He’d proven that to Max already.
“Hey, boss man. You’re looking more like yourself.”
“Now if I could only remember what that was like,” Max murmured, making his companion laugh.
“I see you have your sense of humor back. That’s a good thing.” Giles offered the open bag, and Max took one of the pastries, chewing carefully as the confectioner’s sugar was carried away on the breeze. He’d known each bite would melt on his tongue, but anticipation wasn’t quite as good as delicious reality. He put eating at Helen’s table on his very short list of things to do.
They were distracted as Cee Cee, draped in a long, exquisite black raincoat and an all-business attitude, stopped at the open patio doors.
“Behave yourselves,” she called to Giles with a warning point of her finger, that gesture conveying the same seriousness as her police-issue barrel.
“Yes, ma’am. Like angels.”
She scowled at Giles’s somber reply and muttered, “I feel so comforted. Let me amend that to don’t do anything stupid.”
Giles crossed his heart. “On my honor.”
She squinted at him, but finally gave a reluctant nod in the face of his affable smile. Even though Max could scent anxiousness swirling about her as clearly as her perfume, she overcame it to walk away. When they heard the outer door close behind her, Giles turned to Max, that grin still in place.
“What say you and me go out for a ride? There’s some people we need to talk to. You up for the exercise?”
Out into the vast unknown, where nothing and no one was recognized for who they were and what they meant to him. A slash of paralyzing fear made him hesitate, but only for an instant.
“I am.”
There was nothing to learn within these confining walls. What Max needed to discover was out there. Perhaps Giles could help him. Perhaps he’d have to slip out from under his guardian’s watchful care. He had only one goal, and it had nothing to do with former mobster business or with ties to his shadowy clan.
It had to do with
taunting words that pierced through the tangle of his mind.
I can bring those memories back.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Letting the elevator doors close between her and where instinct told her to remain was one of the hardest things Cee Cee had ever done. But she couldn’t give in to the panic banging within her chest. It was time. They both needed the separation. Tension between them had thickened like a bubbling rue until she’d had no choice but turn down the heat or risk irreparable scorching. She was no cook, so she knew once something burned it couldn’t be made palatable again. Time to step out of the kitchen before the damage was done.
She took a breath and let it out in a shaky stream. So this was how a new mother felt when leaving her infant for the first time. Only Max Savoie was no helpless child. He was better now but no less the ticking time bomb, capable of just about anything from lethal tantrum to sudden disappearance. He had the resources, the skill, and the necessity. How could they stop him if he decided to be difficult? Strap him down and fill him with drugs? Would that make them any different from those who’d tortured him?
She wouldn’t lock him away again. He didn’t deserve that from her. And he wasn’t about to allow it.
The noise and rowdy confusion of an NOPD briefing was just what she needed to escape the painful frustration her personal life had become. A life that went contrary to everything solid and dependable that she found in this room. Diving headfirst into her workload had always been her remedy, an RX of selfless dedication to problems bigger than her own. And though it was the last place she wanted to be, a world away from where her heart beat, she needed the saving distance to clear her head before she lost herself to despair.
Bumping elbows and insults with her team, Cee Cee pushed inside the crowded room to find a seat. She was surprised by a wave from her partner, who gallantly whisked his cheap suit jacket off the chair saved next to him. She slid into the reserved spot and gave Silas MacCreedy a nudge.
