by Nancy Gideon
He closed his eyes and turned his face up to the spray. He could picture those daring dark eyes, ablaze with anger, teasing with promise. Could see the way the silky green fabric cupped those tempting curves the way his hands longed to. But never would.
Giles cranked off the shower and wiped the water from his eyes, eyes blinded by what he could never have. He reached for a towel, winding it about his hips as he walked into his bedroom.
And found Brigit MacCreedy sitting at the foot of his bed.
As calm as could be, Brigit showed him the picture she’d plucked from the wallet he’d left in the back pocket of his jeans.
“Is this your lover? She’s very pretty . . . in a soft, human way.”
Giles crossed the room in three angry strides, growling, “That’s none of your damned business.” When he made a grab for the photo, she laughed, twisting to hold it just out of reach as he demanded, “Give that to me.”
He was leaning over her, arm outstretched, when her palm slid up his moisture-beaded chest to where his heart staggered to a sudden halt.
In a voice as deceptively smooth and harmless as that aged Scotch, she purred, “Are you sure that’s what you want me to give you?”
six
Giles never made a conscious decision to fist his hand in that glorious tangle of red hair, but once he did, everything else spun into an inevitable downward spiral.
He crushed her ripe mouth beneath his. A taste like that bite of Eve’s first apple, impossibly sweet and juicy.
Photo fluttering forgotten from her fingers, she gripped the back of his head to partake just as hungrily in that greedy kiss. Her legs locked about his waist, sealing the tempting heat of her tightly against the demanding throb of his cock. Her lips moved up to whisper, “Forget what I said about you not measuring up,” before a sharp bite to his earlobe sent him into madness.
Giles stood away from her for only as long as it took to rip down her bottoms and loosen his towel. Then, with big hands spanning her waist, he lifted her to ride his hard thrusts.
Everything about her burned, a consuming fever of need. The feel of her gripped about him, the score of her nails upon his back, her avid lips devouring his until he was mindless of everything but her. She was all that was wild and carnal and female as she writhed and moaned and growled upon him.
Feeling the warmth of his own blood from the scratches tearing across his shoulders, he wrestled her off him to toss her face down on his bed. The hem of her shirt hiked up to flash the plump globes of her ass as she came up on hands and knees. He caught her at the waist and positioned himself behind her. Continuing those deep, powerful strokes, he leaned over her arched back to press his face into the fragrant tangle of her hair.
“Is this how you like it?” he panted rough and low. “Is this how your lovers take you?”
Her reply was a keening cry as convulsive pleasure shook her lush frame. In seconds, he followed with a mighty groan.
Sanity seeped back to the sound of their ragged breathing and chime of his cell phone. “Bad boys, bad boys. Whatchu gonna do?”
Giles eased from her, allowing his palms to glide along the dangerous curves of her body one last time before answering the phone. “Charlotte, has something happened?”
His expression locked down tight as he listened.
Brigit rolled over onto her side, her lovely features flushed, her gaze still smoky with desire. The cant of one knee revealed a beckoning glimpse of her sex, drenched and ready from their heated coupling. He reached past her to grab his jeans, concluding the call with a gruff “On my way.”
“You’re leaving?” Brigit’s brows rose in astonishment. “Now?”
He was too busy pulling on his clothes to appreciate the way she scrambled up to her knees. “Get dressed,” he ordered, tone clipped and urgent. “Lock the door behind me. For once, do what I tell you.”
Brigit reached for him, dark eyes clearing in alarm. “What is it?”
He evaded her touch. “That trouble you’ve been so worried about. It didn’t bother to knock.”
It was late, but Tina was reluctant to wake her sleeping son and send him upstairs to bed. They’d started watching the original version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers together after Ozzy finished his homework, and somewhere in the middle of the movie, the eleven-year-old had drifted off, clearly not as riveted to the tense chiller as she was. Perhaps because its scare factor paled in comparison to the nightmare they’d been living for the past months in the rambling former mobster’s fortress. The thought of pod people didn’t seem quite so shocking after discovering their own ability to transform into something far more unnatural.
They were the scary monsters now.
Tina turned the sound down to a whisper, pulled the snuggly blanket about the both of them, and switched off the light, letting the glow of the screen flicker over the deep shadows of the room.
It was nice sharing moments like these with Oscar in the small back parlor where overstuffed furniture created a cozy illusion of home. But it wasn’t their home, and when she took her son up to tuck him into his bed, all she had to look forward to was the emptiness of her own.
She took another sip of her wine and let the loneliness of the night howl through her.
What had happened to that wonderfully normal future she’d begun to build with the man she loved? Oh yes, he’d found out his wife and stepson weren’t human. Alain Babineau, New Orleans detective, decent man, adoring husband, a man once so proud and protective of his close-knit little family, had hardly been able to look at them since.
The move to the old mansion on River Road had been made to keep them safe. That’s what she’d told her son, anyway. But in her bruised and aching heart, she knew different. The door to their happy home, to their treasured life, had been closed to them, shutting them out, and her greatest fear was that it would never open again despite the enticing new wardrobe she’d been so excited to buy.
It was going to take more than a push-up bra and eyeliner to win back her husband’s trust.
The big house was dark, the only other stirrings of activity far removed from their secluded spot. Its halls were steeped in disquieting silence and draped with brutal deeds past. She would never feel comfortable within them, but where else could they go? How else could she provide a sense of comfort and security for her child when all they once knew had been torn away by startling revelation and violence? Max Savoie, the mysterious half brother Oscar never knew he had, had called them family and gathered them close in this new world of danger and intrigue, against threats to her boy both real and potential. But where was Max now that they depended upon him?
Where was the husband who’d made her so many beautiful promises?
A sudden flash lit up the grounds outside, followed by an ominous growl of thunder. The air grew instantly heavy.
Anticipating the loss of power that often came with the fierce Gulf storms, Tina was reaching for her son’s shoulder to shake him awake when a glimpse of movement from the veranda caught her eye. She paused, staring through the window. Was someone out there in the darkness?
She almost dismissed it, thinking she must have seen one of the estate’s many guards on regular patrol. The knowledge of their somber, well-armed presence, their weapons loaded with special silver-coated rounds, was reassuring in Max’s absence. But hadn’t she seen one of those hulking sentinels pass by only moments ago?
A shiver ran through her.
Cautiously, she sank down low so her head couldn’t be seen above the top of the couch, peering over its arm into the blackness beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Another jolt of lightning, this time closer. There, almost out of sight behind the gathered curtains, stood a figure on the other side of the glass. A figure in sleek, unrelieved black, definitely not one of the well-dressed hired men. A man with a disfigured face.
She caught back her cry of alarm and turned off the television. Could he see them here inside the darkened room?
Had he been out there watching them? For how long?
Tina thought of the nerve center of the estate’s security on the far side of the massive building. Would anyone hear her cry for help?
Then she felt it, the prickle of sensation she’d recently learned was a Glimmer. Their instinctive awareness of one of their own kind.
She touched Oscar’s arm, her soft voice urgent. “Baby, wake up. Don’t move. I think we’re in trouble.”
His dark eyes flashed open, glinting as she felt him tense, sensing the other presence. “How many?” he whispered, alert to the danger of their position.
“At least one, right outside.”
A low sound of menace rumbled up through the boy’s slight body. She quieted him with the press of her hand over his. “No. Stay still. Maybe he doesn’t know we’re here.”
Oscar didn’t argue that it was unlikely. If they sensed him, the intruder would certainly be aware of them. How had he gotten over the high walls and onto the well-guarded grounds through the thick net of surveillance cameras? How could he have gotten so close, right up to their very door, without drawing any attention?
Unless he was one of them. One of the assassins from the North. Here for Oscar.
After a quick cut of fright tore through her, Tina bristled at the thought of her child in danger. No way would she let them take Oscar away from her again. But the two of them were vulnerable and alone, she unskilled, Ozzy just a boy.
Quickly, while there was still time, she reached for her cell phone, carefully retrieving it from the table next to the couch. Tucking it under the blanket so the illuminated face wouldn’t betray them, she made the call, refusing to believe he wouldn’t answer when he saw her name.
“Babineau.” Such a curt, impersonal response. Tina was too afraid to let it wound her.
“Is Charlotte with you? It’s an emergency.”
His pause relayed his own hurt that she would request aid from his partner instead of her own husband, but he passed the phone without a word.
“Caissie.”
Tina pressed close to the phone to whisper, “Charlotte, someone’s outside.”
Charlotte’s voice lowered with an intense gravity. “Where are you? Are you alone?”
“Ozzy and I are in the back TV room.”
“Stay put. I’ll have the house security there in seconds. We’re on our way.” The connection severed abruptly.
Help was coming. Alain was coming. She closed her eyes, her arm tightening about the taut figure beside her, listening, waiting, scarcely breathing.
The silence was broken by the sound of footsteps rapidly approaching. Light flooded in from the hall, and they were quickly surrounded. Figures raced past the windows outside on the porch, chasing the possible threat away, yet Tina couldn’t stop trembling. Until her husband appeared in the doorway.
He crossed to where the two of them huddled on the couch. Worry, no, fright tightened his handsome features as he crouched down before them. His words shook slightly. “Are you both all right?”
Tina managed a small smile and a nod, her heart knocking with something other than fear as he briefly touched his fingertips to her cheek. Such a warm, comforting gesture, too quickly withdrawn.
The detective was pulled away when Giles and the other men searching the grounds returned, shaking their heads, reporting that there was no sign of any intruder; no damp footprints on the porch boards, no disturbance to the yielding lawn. It was then that Tina saw doubt flicker in her husband’s eyes. Did he wonder if she’d made it up just to gain his cruelly withheld attention?
Her tone was sharp. “Someone was out there. I saw him there, right outside the window. Both Ozzy and I . . . felt him.”
Alain tensed at her mention of their preternatural abilities. His expression hardened as he turned away from them, moving stiffly around the side of the couch, his back to them, when he drew a harsh breath of surprise.
Tina twisted to look up at him in alarm. “What is it?”
His face had gone pale as he looked to the windows, then back at the floor behind where they were seated. “There wasn’t someone on the porch,” he said quietly.
“But I saw him out there,” Tina argued, confused by his strange expression.
“No. You didn’t. He wasn’t outside the window.”
She came up onto her knees, Oscar following suit so they could look over the back of the couch to what Alain was staring at on the floor with such fixed horror. At wet footprints on the carpet directly behind where they’d been sitting.
“He wasn’t out there,” Alain concluded. “You saw his reflection in the glass.”
He’d been in the room.
Right behind them.
seven
Brigit froze as the doorknob rattled, but that stiffness quickly melted at Giles’s brusque “Let me in.”
She unlocked the door, asking, “What’s going on?”
He shoved his way inside the room before she could get the entire question out, and shut the door behind him. “You tell me.”
She bristled at his harsh tone and held nervously to the edges of the shirt she wore over her string bikini panties. Giles was all taut, fierce business, never glancing down at the spectacular view of her bare legs. Legs that had been twined about him less than an hour ago.
“Tell you what?” she asked, hoping she didn’t know the answer. “I saw the lights from the police vehicles. Is everyone all right?”
“A little late to be thinking about them, isn’t it?”
He gripped the front of her shirt in one huge hand and yanked her up on her toes so he could get nose to nose with her. She’d been mistaken not to think she had anything to fear from him before.
He was no friendly puppy. He was an enraged bullmastiff.
“What’s happened?” she whispered in a small tight voice.
“Someone managed to get past the security and the guards. He got inside the house, into the same room with Tina and Oscar.”
A riot of alarm raced through her. “Were they harmed?” Her question was barely audible.
“If they had been, you’d be dead instead of trying to think of how to talk your way around me. Tell me the truth right now, damn you, before I break that pretty little neck. Don’t even think of lying to me. Tina thought he was here for Ozzy, but he came for you, didn’t he?”
“Did they see him? What did he look like?” Her heart was beating so hard and fast up in her throat, she could scarcely get the words around it.
“One of your kind. Big, dark, with some sort of burns on his face. Do you know him? Did you bring him here?”
Her knees gave way, and for a moment, she simply hung in the armholes of the shirt while Giles glowered down at her. Finally, he gave her a disgusted push so that she collapsed back onto the foot of the bed, where she instinctively drew the rumpled covers up as if for protection. Her body shook hard enough for her teeth to clatter.
“I thought I’d killed him,” she confessed softly.
“Who? What does he want?”
Her eyes rose to meet his fierce glare. “To finish what he started.” Brigit drew herself up, wrapping the blanket about her shoulders to still their shivering as she told him in crisp, succinct detail about her exit from the Terriot compound, not to win his sympathy but to convince him of her desperate circumstances.
Telling him how the driver had thrown her down on the tabletop with the intention of brutally raping her before completing his orders. Of how she’d used the can of aerosol cleaner she grabbed out of the bathroom, thinking to blind him. But his cigarette had ignited on the fumes, sending him howling, stumbling, a fiery torch, while she grabbed her bag and ran for the road to flag down a passing truck.
Claiming she was running from an abusive boyfriend, she’d gotten a ride from a husband-and-wife driving team who’d taken her as far as Texas, where she was given the jacket and enough money for a quick meal. She hitched throughout the next two days, always looking over her shoulder, afraid to
close her eyes.
“I thought he was dead,” she concluded wearily. “I thought I’d be safe here until Silas returned to help me figure out what to do.”
“But he wasn’t dead. You sensed him that morning in New Orleans.”
“But I wasn’t sure.” She cast an earnest look up at him. His features were hewn from stone. “I didn’t think I’d be leading him here.”
“If that’s true, why did you ask me how to get ahold of Silas?”
She had no answer.
“You saw him today, didn’t you? You saw him and still you said nothing, you did nothing, to prepare us for what was coming.”
“I never saw anyone.”
“Don’t you fucking lie to me!” he roared.
She shrank back for an instant, then recovered her poise, sitting up straight, facing him down with an inner fierceness of her own.
“I never saw anyone following us,” she repeated coldly. “And if I had, what was I supposed to do? Tell you? You wouldn’t have been able to stop him. Maybe Silas or Max could have, but not you. What would you have done? You would have put me out on the other side of the gates.” She saw shock and surprise flicker in his eyes, followed by what she knew she’d see. The truth. “Of course you would have. Because I mean nothing to you, and they mean . . . everything.”
He didn’t try to deny it. Finally, he said in a low, flat voice, “I would have kept my promise to your brother, but not at the risk of their lives. You had no right to put them in the middle. None. Go pack your things.”
Fright leaped in her chest. “Why?”
“Because you can’t stay here as long as he’s out there.”
Her voice was a fragile whisper. “You’re throwing me out.”
“Don’t be stupid,” he growled, followed by an impatient “Pack or go without!”
He strode out of the room, and after sucking in a tremulous breath, Brigit scrambled to get her things together.
Giles stomped back into the main section of the house, adrenaline whooshing along an e-ticket roller coaster, making him no one to be messed with. He found a very pale Tina hugging her son in the parlor where every light was ablaze. Babineau and Charlotte were talking with several of the perimeter guards. Giles gave them a nod and went to crouch down in front of mother and child. His smile was gentle, his voice soothingly low.
