Bad Blood (Book 4 of The Warden series) (29 page)

She chuckled. “I was better in a day and half. I was past my prime conception time, but that didn’t matter to me by that point. Vince knew immediately what he had to do. They were hiding out in a hotel just to be safe.” She winked at him.

“I admit that I was mad,” she continued. “I considered hurting Cori. I considered hurting both of them, but I stifled that rage into a more appropriate ladylike revenge. I simply checked into the hotel with them.” She smiled broadly and arched back taking in the memory.

“The first night I arrived I stood outside their door for a while so he could catch my scent. He made up some excuse about getting ice, or whatever. He tracked me to my room. I was pleased to see that he had not bothered to bluster or beg. He simply came in and sat on my bed. He made it very clear that he would cooperate with me as long as I did not hurt Cori, which included telling her the truth, or breaking my promise of seeing her again. I had no intention of breaking my promise, nor had I intended to hurt her by that point, but he didn’t know that.”

Leona rolled onto Ethan straddling him. She eased herself high on his legs so he could feel her against him. He cursed himself and wondered once again if he could fight off a pregnant fem-wolf after already fighting Callin. That was probably a mistake.

“I should have thanked Cori for what she did for me. Vince was a very willing participant for me after that. He made sure all my desires were satisfied. I’m sure if he were alive to defend himself he would say he did it to protect Cori, but of course we both know he didn’t leave unsatisfied either.”

Ethan could see the pleasure she was deriving from this moment. Not just the sinister joy of telling her wicked back-story, but physically as well. Reliving the memory of forcing Vince to betray Cori was turning her on. That was the moment that he truly hated her. It was also the moment that he was conversely turned off by her.

“For a week and a few times after they left the hotel, I was not more than a hundred yards from her when I was fucking her boyfriend. He made simple excuses of getting ice and soda. He would even run out to buy her flowers.” Leona laughed. “And all the while he was slipping away from her, he was slipping into me.”

She ground her body against him and he was relieved that he felt nothing for her. His body albeit still a man’s body, with a man’s hormones, it was in fact for the moment impotent. “Do you know what the best part is? I get to relive that same torture with you.” She leaned in and bit his earlobe before whispering to him. “I’m going to fuck you whether you want to or not, and then you can decide if you are a good enough husband to lie to Cori about it or not.” She giggled and leaned back.

She took him in and noticed that his hands were neither pushing her away, nor pulling her forward. He was sitting blank faced, with his hands at his sides. “Are you playing the conscientious objector?” She smiled as she started to unbutton his pants.

“Something like that,” he said with a cold stare of indifference and disgust.

“Good, I like…” He almost laughed when her hand slipped into his pants and found the last thing she expected. She glared at him and took a more aggressive hold on the focal point of her revenge plot.

He didn’t stop her. He hoped that Cori wouldn’t begrudge him the amusement of watching a woman desperately trying to manhandle him into formation. In frustration, she even offered oral stimulation, which only made him laugh. His laughter finally broke her and she backhanded him.

The searing pain was phenomenal and he knew he would need to tread lightly around her temper to keep from losing his teeth. He tucked himself back into his pants and shook his head at her. “It won’t work.”

“It was working,” she said. “What did you do? No man could withstand that much attention. I don’t care how much he loves his wife!” Her teeth were bared and he could tell she wanted nothing more than to rip him limb from limb for insulting her sexual prowess with his flaccid response.

“Yes, it was working. You had me on the hook and I was in danger a being the man I had so vehemently promised my wife I wouldn’t be. However, after speaking to Danato I realized that it was not my morals that were at risk with you, but my body. So before I left, I took a trip up to Mezula. You don’t know her I’m sure, but she’s my in house love doctor. She’s an eight out of ten on the scary scale, but she definitely fights for love when it’s honest.

“I told her my predicament, and she told me that she had just the right spell. She gave me the ingredients and instructions in the form of strawberry picnic sex and I was bestowed mental control of my lower half.”

“What?”

“Yeah, she’s that good.”

“You can’t tell me that you don’t want me.”

“For a minute there, when we were kissing, yes, I thought I wanted you, but if you think that I could ever want a woman that is turned on by the misery she causes others, especially my wife, you are wrong. Leona you disgust me, and now…” he waved his hands over his pants. “I can show you just how much.”

She stared at him shocked by the banishment. She touched her belly, either to console herself, or remind herself that she was still attractive to some men.

“Leona,” he said still a prisoner to his gallantry when it came to women. “I think you should seriously consider Callin’s proposal of shared custody. He may be in prison for a few months, but I can’t see any reason why you should turn down an offer that devoted just because you’re afraid of being consumed by your love.”

Her eyes widened hinting at how dead on his impression of her was. “You don’t know what I feel?”

“Actually, I do. Anyone who has ever tried to fight their own love knows what that feels like. I don’t pretend to understand the social implications of a queened pack, but it sounds to me like you love your children with indifference to their fathers. Isn’t it ideal to raise those children with their fathers?”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“You’re a powerful, beautiful, charismatic woman. Imagine if that energy was honed to guide the growth of your family instead of plotting revenge.”

“You say such nice things, for being disgusted by me.”

“You
are
a powerful, beautiful, charismatic woman, but you’re
acting
like a bitch.” She raised her chin to that offense, but didn’t vocalize her objection. “You need to stop flaunting your own self-importance and actually make yourself important.”

She didn’t respond to any of it, but she didn’t outright attack him either. She sniffed the air. “There’s pizza left in the kitchen. It’s probably cold, but I can imagine fighting with Callin made you hungry.”

He nodded. It
had
made him hungry.

“You should eat. You can stay here tonight. I’m sure Callin won’t mind. I will go home though. I don’t imagine I will see you after this, but if you see Callin…please tell him I am sorry for…acting like a bitch,” she said pointedly.

Ethan smiled a dismal smile. “I’ll tell him. You know you can visit him. I’m not sure Danato would sanction an overnight stay, but I think I could talk him into a few visits a month, especially if you are bringing Lynnius.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said. “Goodbye Ethan.” She stomped upstairs to collect her baby. He made his way to the kitchen and collected his pizza until he heard the door slam.

He scarfed down a few slices in the living room, but without electricity and the overhanging feeling of being an intruder, he blew out the candle, locked up, and headed out to his car. Fueled on pepperoni and about three hours of sleep, he drove to the train station to wait for the first one out. He was free of his gilded cage, but all he wanted was to be back in it as soon as possible.

50

Ethan arrived back at the prison in a truck belly full of live chickens. He was given the option of waiting for the next truck, but that would have put him out another twelve hours, and as it was, even with driving overnight to the train station, he had only shaved of a few hours from his trip.

By the time he arrived in the late afternoon, he smelled like chicken shit, and looked like an imploded pillow. He would have been annoyed by it, if he wasn’t insanely tired. He stopped for a quick round of jibes with the dockworkers. When the levity dragged on longer than he had tolerance for, he mentioned Danato might tar and feather him for real if he didn’t report. They waved him off immediately.

Ethan was still surprised by the amount of fear the Danato conjured in his employees. He supposed they didn’t know him as well as he did, but then again, there were people with tenors of twenty years here that still took on the same cowardice attitude to his presence. Perhaps they knew him better than Ethan realized.

With that in mind, he should have headed up the short stairway to Danato’s office, but he didn’t. He took one look in that direction and turned right to the exit. Danato didn’t want chicken crap on his office chair even if it was a 1980s reject vinyl number. He decided to wash up and change before checking in.

Outside he breathed in the cool arctic summer. The downfall to living so far north was that summer was only a hiccup in the otherwise shivering climate. It lasted only a few months, and the really comfortable temperatures were only weeks. Never the less there was beauty in the landscape with or without piles of snow. He was always amazed at the variety of birds that flourished here. The grasses though incomparable to the beauty of a forest, were prolific. They reminded him of lying on a picnic blanket making love to his wife. That was definitely a beautiful scene.

His smile from that memory didn’t fade as he entered the house. He let the door slam as he jaunted to the stairs for a long overdue bath. He added up the hours on his stakeout, plus his time in the chicken truck, and the solution was sounding unhygienic.

“Ethan?”

Ethan swung back around on the first landing, and peeked down to the living room. Cori was lying on the couch in her previous usual jeans and t-shirt. The bold print on the front read:
I’m not a slut, but you are a dick!
It was one of the many t-shirts Danato had banned from entering the prison facility upon pain of death.

She looked a little disheveled like she had been spending the day tossing on the couch. He couldn’t tell at this distance, but he suspected she might have been crying at one point. “Hey, sweetness, why aren’t you at work? I thought Belus was going to be keeping you busy while I was gone so you didn’t worry about me.”

She gulped and looked down at something in her hands he couldn’t see. He came down the stairs. She tossed the book in her hands on the coffee table. He squinted to read the cover. “Is that the hobgoblin lineage? Bloody hell what did you do to endure that torture.”

“Self-inflicted,” she said standing up, “Ethan, I…what are you covered in, and what is that smell?”

“Sorry, I took the chicken truck home. I couldn’t wait any longer to see you.”

She smiled, but it quickly faded. He had hoped to have a loving embrace as their reunion, but she stayed on her side of the couch while they spoke. He didn’t press it since he smelled like fodder and chicken shit. “What’s up with you? Why aren’t you happy I’m back? You were so sad to see me go.”

She forced a smile, but he knew whatever she was feeling was beyond even his ability to cheer. “I’m extremely happy your back.” He saw her tears well in her eyes.

“Cori tell me what’s wrong.” He leaned on the couch. If he had to strip down so she would let him hold her, he would.

“I had a little incident with Efrat while you were gone.”

“Oh my God.” He came around the couch ignoring his own stench to check her over. He kept himself at arms distance, but he examined her for bandages or bruising. “Did he hurt you?”

She sighed. “Only my sympathy for humanity in general.” She chuckled. “So, yeah, but nothing that I can’t get over in time.” She backed away from him. He started to wonder if she was only doing it so she wouldn’t cry. She had long since lost her ability to hide her feelings from him. It had left him with many wet shoulders, but he preferred it to be his shoulder than someone else’s.

“Is everyone else okay? Did…you kill him?”

She laughed heartily at that. “Um…actually I kind of saved the bastard.” Her laughter left her with a smile, but it was wrought with worry. “I take it you haven’t checked in with Danato yet.”

“No, I didn’t think he would appreciate my stench.”

“He will want to talk to you and me regarding the details of my incident,” she said it mechanically like this was a statement Danato himself had told her. “I would rather just tell it all with him, if you don’t mind,” she added when Ethan started to formulate a question on his lips.

“Sure,” he said not being able to hide some disappointment at her avoidance, “he’s mad at you isn’t he?”

She shrugged. “He wants to be. He should be, but…it’s just very complex and I spent all last night telling Danato.”

“Telling him?”

“My side of the story is little different than his perspective. We’ll get to that, but I have a favor to ask you.”

“Anything.”

“I need you to take me to see Efrat.”

Ethan took a step away from her. His mouth opened as wide as his eyes, but he didn’t find the words to speak for several seconds. “Cori, that makes no sense. You hate him, why would you want to see him?”