by Zoey Marcel
Jade wept harder and squeezed his hand. “If I could take your place, I would. You’ve touched a lot more people than I have.”
“Jade, don’t be a dirty girl.” He winked playfully at her, stealing her heart again before his expression turned grave. “It wasn’t long enough. I waited too long to tell him how I felt, and I met you when my time was already running out.”
“You told Stetson how you felt? How did he take it?”
“Like he takes everything else.” Doc took a somewhat deep breath, seeming weary. “It was too short. Make sure Patrick is taken care of.”
“Who’s Patrick?”
“The little imp who kicked me in the crotch.”
She smiled. “The donkey shifter?”
“Yes, I hired him to work at the ranch. He needs the money. He means a great deal to me. Tell him I love him and I’m sorry.”
“I will, and I’ll look after him,” she promised. “Doc, please let me claim you. What could it possibly hurt now?”
“If it means that much to you,” he whispered, “but don’t expect a miracle. The donkey claimed me and I didn’t heal. I doubt a bite on the shoulder is going to do me any good either, but be my guest.”
She moved the collar of his hospital gown aside and kissed his shoulder. The skin felt clammy with sweat, but his flesh was frigid and ghostly white.
“I’ll try to be gentle. Please don’t yell or they’ll think I’m a cannibal when they see me gnawing on you.”
Doc smiled.
Jade felt her eyes change and her canines dropped. She nipped his skin gently, pricking it with her teeth. The mark would be small, but she didn’t want to hurt him in this dire condition. His blood pooled into her mouth, metallic and strange. It tasted different than when she’d bitten Kellan and Sawyer. Their coppery blood had been addicting, but Doc tasted sick and tainted.
A pitiful wolf whimper vibrated in her throat that one of her beloved mates was dying. She’d already lost Bane and Sawyer had left. She couldn’t bear to lose Doc, too.
She lapped up the blood, pleased the small laceration was minor. She waited for signs of his recovery. Nothing.
“Maybe it just takes time,” she suggested. Please don’t leave me.
Doc didn’t look surprised, but his face was as sad as hers probably looked. “I didn’t think it would. I’m too far gone, but I appreciate the thought.”
“Please don’t leave me, Doc. I need you.” She started to sob uncontrollably onto his hand. “You’re my mate. I love you so much.”
“I love you, too, darlin’. It’s getting harder to breathe and everything’s growing fuzzy.” His eyes closed, and she saw a tear trickle down his face. “Just kiss me one more time and then leave. I want you to remember me how I was, not like this. Please.”
Jade sniffled and wiped away the tears, but a treacherous torrent of new ones only supplanted them. She bent over and gently pressed her lips to his cold ones. She stood, trying not to let him see her cry as she showed him the jade heart locket around her neck.
“I’ll always wear it and I’ll never forget you,” she murmured.
He gave her a grateful, loving smile and a glint of emotion shone in his dull eyes. “You’re a good woman, Jade. The best.”
“Thank you,” she said in a broken whisper. She walked out as the tears poured down her face.
* * * *
Stetson saw Jade leave Doc’s room, blubbering like a raincloud, and he had a bad feeling that Doc was gone. He got up and went into Doc’s room, dying inside when he saw his best friend’s eyes open, but the light was gone. A full minute passed and he didn’t blink or breathe.
Stetson squeezed his eyes shut as the floodgates opened. He clenched his fists in anger. He was furious with Doc for leaving him, pissed off at himself for letting the voices win and keep them apart, and he was angry with whoever was welcoming Doc’s soul into heaven or hell or some unknown place.
Stetson roughly brushed the tears from his face, angry that he was crying. He gently closed Doc’s lifeless eyes with his fingers. The tears wouldn’t stop, and now some god-awful noises accompanied them. His hurt and rage at everyone and everything surfaced, clenching his heart like an oppressive fist that refused to let go. Years of disappointment and hell had hardened the once-soft organ to stone. But now the thing ached and bled again, reminding him that it was made of flesh and he was vulnerable.
“I should have told you,” he murmured in despair as he held Doc’s cold, limp hand. “I should have found a way to let you touch me.”
His fists balled into beacons of rage again and he wanted to hit something. He wondered if Doc could still hear him. He’d heard that hearing was the last sense to go, but regardless there was some shit that needed saying.
“My life has been complete shit.”
The tears made his chest burn with pain. He damned the ache and the consuming bitterness that came with it. He was just so fucking angry. Somebody needed to die for this and all the hell he’d been through, but not Doc. Never him.
“You were the only good thing in my life. My one constant when I hit rock bottom. You’ll never know how much you meant to me. How much you’ll always mean to me.” His eyes burned like an inferno and the pain there was like the knife stabbing him in the heart. “Even in the blackest hour when I pleaded with whoever was listening to take my life, you were the anchor that kept me from going completely insane. You were my comfort that night. Every time I was about to take my own life your face came to my mind and I couldn’t go through with it.”
The damned wailing sounds came and went as he spoke. His body trembled with blinding sorrow and then tensed with the wrath of injustice. He had a serious fucking problem, but it was incurable, so why apologize for it?
“I’ve been hurt by a lot of people in my lifetime. Mostly by the people I trusted.”
Their faces passed through his mind one by one, branding him and testing his pain threshold, but mostly the memories just pissed him off. His eleventh-hour confession choked him up and broke his voice.
“But if you leave me alone like this, if you take away the only light I’ve ever known, you’ll hurt me worse than any of them did, and I’ll never forgive you for that.”
And still the dreadful silence flipped him off with its cold, brutal indifference to his misery. Desperation propelled him to his feet in a turbulent motion. He looked down at the only man he’d ever loved.
“No. You’re not going anywhere, Doc. You’re a fucktard if you think I’m going to let you leave me.”
He leaned over Doc, noticing the bite mark on his right shoulder. Jade must have claimed him, yet Doc still died. The knowledge depressed Stetson further and made him angrier still. What the fuck was the point of being meant for someone he could never have?
“I’ll never be what you need me to be, and I can’t give you what you want.” His eyes changed to embody the monster within, and the fangs of his inhumanity lowered. “But I’ll convert to any religion I have to or sell my soul to the devil to save you.”
He clamped his sharp teeth into the dead man’s shoulder, pouring his heartache, his wrath, and his need out on his fallen mate. He prayed to God. He bargained with Satan, and he cursed every obstacle that plagued his doubting mind.
Get up, you son of a bitch! Don’t leave me, damn you!
He tasted blood and drank it, growling with hunger and then resentment at the flavor that was tainted with the illness that had claimed his life. Stetson bit harder, roaring deep in his chest. He felt his fangs pierce through muscle. He locked his jaw and felt his teeth graze bone, so he let up some.
Doc, don’t fucking do this to me! I love you. Now get your ass out of bed!
Tears poured down his face and soaked Doc’s skin. Stetson felt the muscle contract slightly, and a savage gasp tore out of Doc’s throat. Stetson unlocked his jaw and pulled away in time to see Doc’s eyes fly open, and he started coughing, but there was no blood. His eyes closed as he struggled to breathe and the
color gradually reentered his face.
Thank you.
Stetson didn’t know who he was thanking, but he owed somebody big time. He walked out of the room and saw Jade bawling into her hands. “Jade.”
Her head lifted and her face was saturated with moisture. Her eyes were red and she looked like crap, but bloodshot eyes and mussed hair couldn’t hide her beauty. She would smile when she saw Doc alive, and Stetson couldn’t wait to see it.
“Come here.”
“No.” She buried her face in her palms and wept.
He sharpened his tone to let her know he wasn’t fooling around. “Jade, get your big ass over here, now.”
Her head flew up, and he wanted to laugh at the fire of indignation in her eyes. She jumped to her feet and marched over to him. “I’m falling apart over here and all you can think to do is insult my ass, you son of—”
He turned her head so she could see Doc looking around in bed.
She gasped and ran over to him. “Doc! You’re alive!”
Doc grinned when he saw her, and he looked healthy and strong again. He held her long and tight, but his eyes lifted to meet Stetson’s while he embraced her.
Stetson offered him a smile and then turned and walked out of the room. He could give Doc life and offer him a smile, but it was all he could give him. Mate or not, they couldn’t ever sleep together. Even though he’d been too caught up in the heat of the moment earlier with Jade and accidentally claimed her, he couldn’t ever take her to bed with him either.
Whatever force had raised Doc from the dead, it couldn’t fix Stetson’s issues. It could bring a man back from beyond the grave, but nothing would ever heal a living man who was deader inside than Doc had just been.
Chapter Sixteen
Ivy Covington pretty much sped the whole way. She’d put on a short, flirty burgundy dress that fell just a little above her knees. She’d put on some strappy sandals and curled her long brown hair.
Wesley’s Hummer had apparently broken down in the desert before he reached their rendezvous, so she went to pick him up. She saw the yellow Hummer and smiled. It was a great-looking ride, and it made her laugh when she saw what looked like a machine gun attached to the top. Obviously it wasn’t real or he’d have been shot or arrested for having it. She was surprised having a phony gun on his Hummer didn’t land his butt in jail.
Boys will be boys.
She parked her car and got out, smiling when she saw the shadow of his head in the Hummer. When she got closer the driver’s side door opened. Her breath caught when she saw legs extend and combat boots plant on the ground. There he was. Wesley Morris, the love of her life. In a second they would hug and kiss and—
Ivy froze when she saw the man getting out of the truck. It wasn’t Wesley. “Brutus!”
She took off, but he was on her in a flash and brought her back to the front of his vehicle.
“I missed you, my priceless one. You sound incredible when you orgasm and scream my name.”
“Oh God!” She covered her mouth, shuddering in fear and humiliation. He’d heard her over the phone, panting and pleading for permission to come and then the way she’d screamed his name in ecstasy when he provoked her to climax with his seductive words.
“I came so hard for you when we got off the phone,” he told her happily as he ran his big hands up and down her arms, raising gooseflesh in his wake. “I knew you wanted me, and now you know it as well.”
She felt cheapened and dirty. Betrayed and devastated. “You sounded like Wesley. How did—”
“I can imitate his voice, my Texas rose,” he said in a voice uncannily like Wesley’s.
Her eyes welled and her heart broke all over again. “You tricked me. You bastard, I thought he was alive! You tricked me just to get me here so you could get in my pants?”
She pounded her fists against his chest in rage, wishing she were strong enough to hurt him as much as he’d just crushed her.
His voice became his own again and he grabbed her swinging arms to still her. “I told you I would never let you go. Your puny Wesley Morris is dead, and Jade Flowers soon will be as well.”
Ivy choked on a sob and struggled. “No!”
“Yes, my dulcet female. You are mine and mine alone, little one.”
“Little one.” A light came on, and she shook her head. “You called me that on the phone. I should have known.”
“I am grateful to you for creating me with such an invincible system and regenerative genetics. My recovery after the explosion was swift and remarkable.” He angled her chin and stared down into her weeping face. “Do not despair, my beloved virgin. You have no need for tears.”
She snorted angrily at this. “Don’t I? You fucking lied to me. You made me believe that my first love was alive, and it was all lies.”
He cupped her jaw when she tried to pull away from him. “It was not all deception, Ivy. I have all of Wesley’s memories now. I told you the truth when I said he intended to propose to you upon his return.”
Her eyes lidded in tearful misery.
“His final thoughts were of you when his plane went down. He had tears in his eyes.” Brutus changed his voice back to Wesley’s. “‘Please, God, don’t let me die. I wanted to marry her.’”
“Oh God, don’t!” Ivy wailed and pulled away from him. “Don’t ever use his voice again. I can’t stand the pain of hearing it.”
Brutus switched back to his own voice. “Why do I possess the inferior’s memories, tiny one? Did you program them into me?”
She shook her head, trying to breathe and grasp the unforgiving reality once again. “No. I didn’t. After I constructed the machine part of you, I got to work on the top human layers. I cloned you from the DNA of two men. Wesley was one of them. It was just supposed to make you look a little bit like him, not give you all his memories and feelings.”
“My feelings are of my own creation.”
She shook her head in disgust. “Brutus, you’re a machine.”
“I am only half-machine and half-human. You said so yourself,” Brutus scolded her. He turned her body slowly toward his, making her shiver beneath his masculine touch. He gently cradled her jaw and coaxed her to look into his eyes. “Who was the other man whose DNA you gave me?”
Ivy quivered at the only memory she had of the monster. “Years ago before Jade lived with me a criminal broke into my house. He was a wanted man, but I didn’t know it at the time. He’d been stalking me for a while, leaving flowers on my doorstep with explicit notes and making obscene calls, telling me that he was going to rape me.”
“I have his memories,” Brutus informed her in a dark tone that chilled her and scared the tiny hairs on her arms upright. “I never lived his life, yet I have memories of the women he assaulted and strangled. I know the rush he felt of forcing them to accept him and the power he felt snuffing out their lives. It was akin to a drug for him. I do not share his need to hurt the female sex, but everything within me desires you and you alone.”
She met his obsessive eyes and grew cold and then warm over the unnatural depth of ardor that radiated from him.
“I adore you to the point of madness, Ivy Covington,” he told her. “My body aches for you to the point of suffering, and I worship you to the point of violence.”
The words were terrifying and somehow moving. No one had ever spoken to her like this before.
“Naturally I desire your consent, darling woman, but my obsession with you compels me to have you, by force if necessary.” He stepped forward, pressing his body into her. His eyes darkened when she shivered and he growled at the way her breath caught. “I will worship you as my goddess or enslave you as my possession. It matters not to me, only that I have you. And I will have you, my precious girl.”
Ivy let out a faint gasp at the strength in his hand when he tugged on her hair to force her head back. His erection pressed insistently against her tummy, and the heat of it sizzled through the thin fabric of her dress.
&
nbsp; The fleeting question floated in her mind, what was it like to lie with a man in bed and feel a hot, stiff cock moving inside of her?
Cold chills of fright chased away her tingly curiosity, and she felt dead inside again. Wesley was dead and this crazy creeper had her right where he wanted her. Alone in the dark in the middle of nowhere. No one knew where she was, and she sure as hell wasn’t strong enough to take Brutus.
His thumbs raked across her breasts, causing her nipples to firm and zing with sensation.
“I remember the criminal’s last night on earth when he broke into your house.”
Ivy shuddered and the air escaped her lungs when he slipped the buttons on the front of her dress free of their holes.
“He endeavored to assault you in your bed, but when he started to undress you shot him. What happened after he died?”
She swallowed when his hand slipped between the divide in her dress and his fingers dipped into her bra to play with her tit. “I called the police.”
“And you took a sample of his blood before they got there?”
“Yes,” she said shakily as Brutus planted kisses along her jawline. Each contact his lips made with her skin induced hot trembles that made her question her sanity. He was a freakin’ machine. Well, half machine, anyway. Was she really so lonely and vulnerable that she was getting aroused by him?
“Why?” Brutus asked.
“He was huge and muscular like a bodybuilder. I figured with his perfect genes he’d make a good cyborg someday.”
Approval filled his tone as he kissed each of her fingertips, searing her with his warmth. “You consider me perfect?”
“Physically, yes.”
“What was the criminal’s name?”
“Allan Sloane. He shot a sheriff in Wyoming, but they caught him and sent him back to California. He broke out of jail there and then started stalking me before I shot him. I really don’t want to talk about him right now.”
