People were rushing into the room. She could see them, barely illuminated by the hallway lights. Inside the hotel room, it was dark. But she could see the distinctive outlines of SF tranquilizer guns.
No, she thought.
A shadow moved on Cole, pressing one of the tranq guns into the back of his head. “Randall,” said a voice. “I’d recognize your stink anywhere.”
Dana knew that voice. She blinked, and she could see his features in the darkness. “Davis?” she said.
“Jesus, Gray.” It was him. Brady Davis, one of the other trackers. She and Avery had worked with him for years.
“But how are you…? You’re not dead?”
“I was out the night of the attack.” Brady’s eyes found hers. “The fuck are you doing? I’m only glad Brooks is dead, because if he saw this, it would kill him.”
Guilt rose up in Dana’s gut.
Cole chuckled. Somehow, he was still rock hard, and when he laughed, she could feel him inside her. “Okay, we get it. We’re captured by the big, bad SF. You gonna give us a second? We’re a little… indecent.” And then, as if to punctuate that point, he thrust into her again.
Dana cringed. This was probably the most embarrassing moment of her entire life, and—of course—Cole had to make it worse.
Brady moved the tranq gun to Cole’s forehead. “How much damage do you think one of these darts would do at close range like this? You think if I pulled the trigger, you’d survive?”
Cole considered. “Yeah, maybe not.” He ran his hands over Dana’s hips. “So, um, now what?”
Brady looked down at their bodies and then out at the other SF agents. There were three others—four total, counting him. He cleared his throat. “Uh, well, why don’t you, um… get off of her?”
Cole was grinning, clearly enjoying this. “Did you say ‘get her off,’ because I’d be happy to oblige, but it turns out she’s not big on having an audience.”
Dana wanted to punch him. Why was he dragging this out? They were caught. It was awful enough already without his stupid quips.
“You not understanding that my finger is on the trigger, and you could be dead in two seconds?” Brady growled.
“No, I don’t think I’m getting that, exactly,” said Cole. “There’s no way I’m going to be dead in two seconds.” He flicked his glance down to Dana. “Sorry about this, beautiful.”
Sorry about what?
Cole’s features twisted.
Holy fuck, he was shifting. He was shifting, and his fucking penis was still inside her.
She yelped, scooting away from him, disengaging. She did not want wolf dick in her. Not if she was human. Not even Cole’s.
Brady pulled the trigger on his tranq gun, but Cole’s wolf head was not in the same place as his human head had been, and the dart flew past harmlessly. It stuck in the wall with a thwap.
Cole lunged onto Brady, knocking the gun out of his hands, his teeth going for Brady’s neck.
“Cole!” she screamed. “Not Davis. Please!”
Cole paused, his jaws gaping, centimeters from Brady’s exposed skin.
Oh! He stopped.
But the other agents had their guns raised.
“No!” she screamed at them. “Stop!” Before she knew what she was saying, “Stop, or Cole will kill Davis.”
Now they froze. They all looked at her.
She grabbed the sheet from the bed, covering herself. “Put down your guns. All of you, put them down.”
They hesitated.
“Davis?” she said.
“Gray, you never used to be such a bitch.” Brady’s voice was strained.
“The only thing keeping him from ripping out your goddamned throat is me,” she said. “So, I wouldn’t be so insulting.”
Cole’s teeth came down on Brady’s skin. Not breaking it, just pushing against it.
Brady whimpered.
“Tell them to put down their guns, Davis,” she said. “Tell them.”
“Do it,” Brady gasped. “Do what she says.”
The other SF agents all set down their tranq guns.
Dana was shaking. She picked one up, she aimed it at one of the agents. Then she pulled the trigger.
One of the others went for the guns, but Dana was faster. She put a dart in each of them.
They staggered, dazed… And then they fell down, unconscious.
Gathering the sheet tighter, Dana went over to Cole and Brady. “Okay, Cole, you can move.”
Cole didn’t.
“Cole, we’re not killing him. He’s my friend.”
Cole retreated, closing his mouth. But he whined and gave her a reproachful look.
Dana put a tranq dart right in Brady’s chest.
* * *
“How do you think they found us?” Cole was shoving phones and clothes back into his backpack.
Dana yanked a shirt over her head. “I don’t know, Cole. They’re trackers. They followed our scent.”
“We were in a fucking car.” Cole slung the backpack over his shoulder. “You can’t track the scent of a car.”
She stepped over the bodies of the SF workers. “Well, maybe the guy that checked us into the hotel did recognize us.”
“Maybe.” Cole ran a hand over his hair. “We need to find someplace we can lie low.”
“Okay.” She picked up her own backpack. “Well, where were you living before? They never found you there.”
“Yes, they did. That’s how they captured me. That’s how all this shit got started.”
“Oh.” She bit her lip.
He looked up at her. “No, I think I know where we can go.” He held out his hand to her. “Come on.”
She put her hand in his.
He tugged her close, kissing her hard. “Sorry we got interrupted,” he whispered.
She shoved him. “You know what? Do me a favor? The next time people walk in on us while we’re having sex, can you not be a dick?”
He laughed. “Are you listening to yourself? The next time people walk in on us? You think it’s going to be a running thing?”
She gritted her teeth. “Sometimes, I just really, really…”
“Hate me?”
She sighed.
He kissed her again.
She let him.
* * *
Cole lounged in the passenger seat of the car. He’d driven for hours, and then Dana had offered to take over. Glad of the rest, he’d surrendered the keys. But now that he wasn’t driving, he had nothing to concentrate on, and he was stuck here with his own thoughts.
He considered striking up a conversation with Dana, but he wasn’t sure what to talk to her about. He knew that they didn’t really agree philosophically, and that was pretty much the only thing he ever made small talk about. Well… that is to say that he didn’t really make small talk. Recently, he hadn’t been doing much talking at all.
He realized that he and Dana didn’t talk much. Sure, they talked, but it wasn’t friendly talk. But then he didn’t make friendly talk with anyone. He wasn’t even sure how to do it.
So, he didn’t try.
He stared out the window, watching the blandness of the interstate. Cars, pavement, sky.
He closed his eyes, resting his head against the headrest. When he did, one of the pictures of Dana’s little girl flashed in front of his eyes. She had been tiny in the picture, only a baby. She had been lying on her stomach with her face up, grinning a toothless grin at the camera, obviously delighted about something.
And Cole had seen his little sisters in the baby’s expression. Not just one of his little sisters. All of them. They all had that same smile, that same expression.
Cole really couldn’t tell if Piper looked like him exactly, but she looked like… looked like his family.
When he’d seen that picture, that had banished the last of his hopes that it was all some mistake—some manipulation—some lie. No, it was true. He’d made that little girl. Part of him had gone into Dana’s body and twined up with some part
of Dana, and a baby had grown in her.
He’d missed the whole thing.
He hadn’t even known Dana was pregnant, not until after the fact. Right after the incident at Hunter’s Moon Farm, he’d been angry with her, and he hadn’t paid any attention to her. It was only later, nearly a year later, that he’d done any checking on her. That was when he found out about the baby. Found out that she was married to Avery.
He remembered it had hurt him. He’d felt as if she betrayed him all over again. Even though he knew he shouldn’t have expected anything else from her. He’d told her that he’d leave her alone, and that he’d let her find happiness. She was happy. That was that.
He glanced sidelong at Dana, who was squinting at the road. The sun was in her eyes.
He lowered the sun visor.
She laughed. “Oh. Thanks.”
“No problem,” he said.
She grinned. “You gonna tell me where we’re going?”
“Just stay on this road for now. I’ll tell you when we get closer to the exit. Besides, I won’t remember what number it is until I see it.”
“Okay.”
They were quiet again.
Cole examined his fingernails. “What’s she like?”
“Who?”
He felt like he was going to choke on the name. “Piper.”
She turned to him sharply. “Uh…” She went back to the road. “Well, she’s a toddler. She’s, you know, energetic and playful and, um, kind of bratty sometimes.” She shrugged. “She’s a normal little girl.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Okay.” Don’t ask anything else, he told himself. Let it go. It doesn’t matter. Your sperm made a baby, but it doesn’t mean anything.
“She, um… she likes dolls a lot. She names them all Laura. I don’t know why. I guess she likes that name. She’s really smart. She remembers things, and she’s really articulate for her age. She talks up a storm. Um, she… likes to sing songs. She’s pretty good at carrying a tune, but sometimes she gets the words confused, and she’ll just sing the same words over and over and over again.” Dana laughed a little bit. Then she wiped her eye with her palm. “Oh, God, Cole, we have to find her.”
“Shit,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make you cry. We don’t have to talk about her.”
“No, it’s okay.” She took a deep breath. “I mean, you want to know about her. Of course, you want to know about her.”
“No, it doesn’t matter.” But he felt like he was choking on those words too. This was so confusing. He didn’t have any desire to have children. Just because this one existed didn’t mean…
Except it did. Somehow, it meant that he cared.
He’d told himself he was only looking at the pictures out of curiosity, but it was the strangest sensation to look at her. Because, even though they were only pictures, they made him… feel things. Things he didn’t quite understand.
Cole had known for a long time that he didn’t feel the way other people did. He wasn’t sure exactly when his emotions had gotten broken. He thought he’d been a relatively normal child. Of course, he’d grown up in a cult, and he’d never really had a normal family life. His father had a harem of women, and they all had children. He wasn’t close to his father, but he was close to his mother, and he had a good relationship with his half-brothers and half-sisters.
So, it must have been later. Maybe when his father forced him to kill Tasha after he mated with her. Maybe that was when he got warped. Something in him… something shut down after that happened.
He didn’t notice it at first. It was only later, when he was older, that he began to realize that he didn’t see things the way other people did. It seemed to him that other people were weaker than he was. They formed bonds to people and things, and those bonds made them vulnerable.
Cole wasn’t the least bit interested in forming bonds or in being weak.
But then he’d tried to kill Dana, and he couldn’t. And then he did have a bond. Maybe he’d always felt something for her. But he didn’t think it was the same kind of bond that other people had.
Well, he knew, for instance, that other people didn’t try to kill the people they were connected to.
He thought of the scar on Dana’s belly. He thought of the way it had felt to have his claws inside her, her voice shrill as she begged for her life. And then he thought of the previous afternoon, Dana lying on the bed. He had his mouth on the scar. He thought of whispering to her that she should say it again, say that she was his.
He didn’t think he’d ever get tired of hearing her say it.
The sensation from looking the pictures…
It wasn’t the same, but it was. He wanted Dana in a different way than he wanted the baby, obviously. But there was the same desire to… to possess, to belong, to be possessed.
He wanted the baby to be his. Or, he guessed she wasn’t a baby anymore, she was a little girl, but he wanted to protect her, to hold her, to know her.
And it frightened him.
“Are you sure?” Dana glanced at him again.
“Sure about what?” He could no longer remember what they’d been saying.
“Are you sure it doesn’t matter to you?”
“Yeah.” He squared his shoulders. “You know, I could drive again, if you want.”
She let out a frustrated sigh. “Cole, stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Avoiding the subject. You haven’t even told me how you feel about it.”
He looked down at his fingernails again. “I don’t feel anything.”
“You’re not angry with me for keeping it from you? For pretending the baby was Avery’s? That doesn’t bug you?”
He picked at his thumbnail. “I don’t really get angry with you, Dana. Not the way I get angry at other people, anyway.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that it’s fine. I’m not angry.”
“You really don’t feel anything at all?”
He picked harder. His finger started to bleed. “No. Nothing at all.”
She grimaced. “Sometimes I wonder if you really are a monster.”
He flinched. He rubbed furiously at the bead of blood on his thumb. “Fuck you,” he muttered.
“What?” She turned to look at him.
“Watch the road.” His nostrils flared.
She whipped her gaze back to the windshield. “I thought you said you didn’t get angry with me.”
He clenched his hands into fists. That only made his thumb bleed harder. “You know I want…” Screw this. He didn’t know how to say this out loud.
“What do you want?”
His throat was dry. It was burning. He tried to swallow, and he had no saliva. “You… I…” He punched the dashboard.
“Cole?” She glared at him. “What the hell?”
“The only time I don’t feel like a monster is when I’m with you,” he said. “And you don’t…” He shut his eyes and slammed his head back into the headrest. “Never mind. Forget it.”
She was quiet.
Then he felt her hand on his, her fingers curling around his own.
He opened his eyes.
She was staring at the road, biting her lip. “I’m sorry I said that,” she whispered. “You’re not a monster, Cole. I don’t think I could feel the things I feel about you if you really were.”
He squeezed her hand. His throat burned even harder, but she was touching him, and that was good. She’d reached over and touched him voluntarily. She had touched him. “You feel things about me?”
She squeezed back. “You know I do.”
They drove in silence for several long minutes, and Cole thought they might be the best minutes ever, just sitting next to her, holding her hand, her words echoing in his brain.
He could have left it there. Maybe I should, he thought. But he foundered onward, trying to find the words to say what he wanted to say, to make his tongue and teeth form them. “I, uh… I might feel somethin
g.”
“About?”
“About…” His throat was on fire. It was burning down into his chest. He tried to pull his hand away from hers. Never mind. Fuck this.
She tightened her grip. “About being Piper’s father?”
“Yeah.” His words scraped against his throat.
“What?” she said quietly. “What do you feel?”
“It’s, uh… It’s good?” He made it a question. He wasn’t sure if it was okay for him to say that.
She smiled at him. Tears were glittering in her eyes. “Good, huh?”
He did pull his hand away this time. “I didn’t mean for you to cry,” he said gruffly.
“They’re not bad tears, Cole.” And she grabbed his hand again.
* * *
Eventually, Dana did let Cole switch with her and start driving again. She sat on the other side of the car, and watched his face, feeling puzzled and confused by him. She’d seen Cole emotionally vulnerable a grand total of three times.
Once in the southern SF branch, when he’d come to her apartment to apologize for his part in killing her mother in the Brockway massacre. He’d told her everything that had happened to him growing up on Hunter’s Moon Farm, all of the horrible things that Jimmy had done to him. She hadn’t meant to care about him then. Hadn’t meant to do anything with him ever again. She was angry with him, hated him for hurting her. But after seeing him like that, well… something in her couldn’t hate him anymore. Not the way she wanted to.
The second time was only the day before, when they were making love in the rain, when he’d been trembling, unable to hold off his orgasm, burying his head in her breasts and promising to die for her.
And the third time was just then, when he’d told her that he didn’t feel like a monster with her, when he’d confessed that he was glad to have a daughter.
Dana was frightened.
She’d been afraid of Cole before, afraid of what he would do to her, what he would convince her to do.
This fear was different.
She was afraid now because she was slipping. She was being sucked down, down, down by an undercurrent of emotions towards Cole. They were tender, and they were sweet, and they were…
No. She was not falling for Cole Randall. She couldn’t allow herself to do that.
She couldn’t trust him, for one thing. He would hurt her, and he wouldn’t even care. Or would he? Would he really? Maybe she was blind. Truly, she did trust him. She trusted him with her life, and she’d put her life in his hands more times than she could count.
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