Connor (15 page)

"I wish it hadn't happened at all," Allie replied, staggering over to look into Con's face. His colour was improving. He had gone so pale and clammy when the blood was pumping out of him. But now his skin looked almost back to normal. How was that possible?

Connor woke to find himself in a dark room. Quickly he took inventory of the sensory impressions around him. He was in a soft bed with linen that had a high thread count. It smelled freshly washed but didn't have that starchy hotel fragrance. The room didn’t smell like a hotel either. Or a hospital.

Why would he think it was a hospital?

He dismissed the question and moved on. What part of the room he could see with his head turned to the side, looked very posh. Not HQ then. As he breathed in more deeply, to get additional information, his body instantly tightened. Blood and Allie. Was she hurt?

He tried to sit up but his body felt as weak as a kitten's. What was going on? Had someone drugged him? He struggled harder to sit up, to get off the bed and get to his mate. If someone had hurt Allie he'd kill them!

"Con, lie still. Everything is okay. Lie still."

She was standing at his bedside now, looking down at him with concern and…something else he didn't want to guess at. If he let himself believe it was love then he'd have her kicking his legs out from under him again when it turned out to be nothing more than worry for a friend, or acquaintance, or whatever-the-feckin'-hell she thought they had going on here.

But he still wasn't reassured by her words. He smelled blood.

"Blood. You hurt?" he croaked out, surprised his voice sounded so rough. This is what he sounded like when he'd taken a beating in the cage. It didn't happen often, but it had happened. Sometimes his fighting skills, without letting his cat out, weren't enough to win.

"Your blood, Con. You were shot as you were about to enter Cam's house. I should have found a way to get the information to you sooner. But it'd only been an hour or so since Hall had told me he was going to have you removed. I thought we had time."

Connor tried to sort through her words to make sense of them. The first piece of information fitted with a flash of memory now surfacing. He'd been shot. In the chest. He remembered the excruciating pain before he blacked out. Allie had been walking towards him and he'd been overjoyed to see her again. And she seemed happy to see him, too. No sign of the annoyed scowl from earlier in the day, when he was getting in her way, keeping her from her work.

"This a hospital?" he croaked out again.

"No, one of Cam's bedrooms. After what I did…Well, we didn't want to have to field questions, and you seemed okay."

"I was shot in the feckin' chest and I wasn't wearin' Kevlar." Now he was starting to get pissed-off. How could she say he was okay when he'd felt the bullet plough through his chest? He should be dead.

Maybe he was. Maybe this was Heaven. He should be in a lot of pain if he'd been shot. Instead, he just felt weak.

"Yeah, you were, but I kind of…"

"Kind of what?" he demanded, really losing his temper as fear rose to overtake him. He didn't want to be dead. He had too much to live for now. But if he was in Heaven how could Allie be there? Unless she died too?

"Healed you."

That stopped him dead in his tracks. Healed him? She healed him? How? How could a PI, with no medical training that he knew of, heal him?

"You know how when I bit you there was no mark left when I licked the wound closed?"

He nodded silently, unsure what he'd say even if he could find words to string together.

"Well, it seems I can do that with bigger wounds, too. I'm not sure what would have happened if the bullet hadn't passed right through you, but it did, and somehow licking you sealed all the wounds. You lost a hell of a lot of blood, but we replaced that, so I think you're fine. If you're still in pain…"

"I'm not. A bit achy, like I've got the flu or something, but no real pain. How did you do it?"

"I gather I licked the open wounds." She grimaced in disgust. "Then I spewed up all the blood again."

"You
gather
?"

"Yeah, well, my cat took over. I didn't know what I'd done until I'd finished and Alyssa was drawing me away from you. They told me what I did. And this healing thing won't work on any other Son but our mate, so Alyssa discovered when she tested it out with Cam."

"Cam was shot too?"

"No, no. He just let Colt nick him so Alyssa could try healing him. It didn't work. Not even a little bit. Of course, I might be a better healer than she is, but I wasn't up to testing that theory out right then. Or since. The very thought of blood makes me want to vomit again."

"How long have I been here?" He waved his very heavy arm around to indicate the room.

"Only since lunch time. It's about ten now. Are you thirsty, hungry? I can go down to the kitchen and get you some soup. We decided you aren't to have anything heavier until we're sure there are no internal injuries."

He was ravenous, he realised suddenly, and so parched his lips had dried out. But the idea of her leaving him, even for the amount of time it would take to get him food, was out of the question.

"I'm okay. A little water if you have some?" He had noticed a jug on his nightstand, so that meant she didn't need to leave him.

She bustled over to the jug and poured him some water, and then helped him sit up so he could drink it. When he'd finished he couldn't get horizontal fast enough. Feckin' hell, he must have lost just about all his blood. Maybe he should eat to rebuild it. He was no use to anyone as he was.

"So, do you think you could have healed Cam if he'd been the one shot?" he managed to ask the question that was now eating him up inside.

"I don't know whether my saliva has any more healing properties than Alyssa's, but I doubt I could have done for him what I did for you. My cat was…"

"Was?" he coaxed her to go on.

"Going crazy thinking you were dying. I was going crazy. It wouldn't have been the same if it had been Cam. Don't get me wrong, I'm really warming to the guy, but it's nothing like I feel for you. I just wish you didn't have to nearly die before I realised the truth."

"The truth?" He felt like one of those parrots that mindlessly repeat back at you what you've said. But he didn't want to put words in her mouth. He needed to hear her say what he thought she was going to say. Girding his loins in preparation for disappointment and pain, he waited for her to tell him what that truth was.

"That I'm your mate. And it's not just a cat thing. It was me who was panicking when you first got shot. I couldn't have stood it if you'd died. And you came too damned close to death for comfort."

He let the words percolate through his body, mind and soul, healing emotional wounds he'd only vaguely sensed were there.

"Does that mean no threesome?" he finally managed to say.

Her laughter soothed him. "You sound disappointed. Had the idea grown on you? Were you looking forward to getting naked with Cam?"

He didn't want to laugh because his chest hurt a little when he did so. But he couldn't stop himself. "Not disappointed, just checking I have all the deets right."

"Oh, okay. Well, no, there'll be no threesome. The only man or cat I want to get naked with is you. So you don't have to fight for me. I'm all yours. If you still want me, that is. After a near death experience maybe you've changed your mind?"

Where he found energy, he didn't know, but his arm snaked out so he could wrap his hand around the nape of her neck, pulling her face down to his. Then he kissed her deeply, ecstatically. If it took him nearly dying to have her see what she was to him then he was glad it had happened. He didn't know how long he could have held out waiting for her to realise the truth. He was not a patient man.

But he was a pathetically weak man, right now, so even though he wanted more than just kisses, his body wouldn't allow it. After a long, blissful moment, his hand fell away and he broke their lips apart.

"I'm so feckin' weak I need nappies and a dummy," he grumbled.

Hearing her laugh again was reward enough for what he'd intended as crack.

"You're incredible, you know that? Less than ten hours ago you were as good as dead. Now you're complaining because you can't have your way with me?"

"I like the sound of that.
Have my way with you
. A very old fashioned, but totally appropriate saying." He grinned up at her and then closed his eyes, the world beginning to spin.

"Con?" her urgent voice had him opening his eyes again to reassure her.

"Just dizzy. Loss of blood will do that to you. Come lie beside me, lass. I need to feel you close."

Concerned that she might hurt him, Allie nevertheless eased herself down, full-length beside him, resting her head on his shoulder gently. Never had such a simple gesture felt so right. His mate was at his side. The feistiest, stubbornest, cleverest lass on God's green earth, and she was his.

"What are you smirking at?" she challenged, stroking at his bandaged chest.

"Do you think we're pre-programmed to appreciate the traits our mates exhibit? I mean, except in superficial ways, us clones are pretty much the same. So why would we not be attracted to the same traits in a mate? But we're not. Or I assume we aren't, based on you and Alyssa. You two girls couldn't be more different. And though I like the songbird, she doesn't have the backbone I admire in a woman. Or the independence. Only you have those traits. I just think it's odd."

Allie nodded and looked up at him. "I think you guys are more different than you think. You're basically twins, identical twins, or triplets or whatever the hell a hundred identical siblings are called. But from everything I've heard about identical twins, they tend to have different personalities. Often almost opposite personalities. You might even say the differences are your Souls at work. Your unique Souls all moved into identical houses on the same block, but each of you make that house reflect your uniqueness."

He chuckled and then groaned when it hurt. There was definitely some bruising internally that would take a while to clear up, but nothing bad. It must have been a high velocity bullet in a high calibre rifle that took him down. It was amazing that the bullet hadn't hit bone and been deflected back into the body. He was a lucky bastard all round, as far as he was concerned.

"You okay?"

He kissed her hair in reassurance. "More than okay. But that theory doesn't take into account the mating instinct, or whatever you want to call it. Why was I drawn to you, even before I knew you? And the more I get to know you, the more you 'fit' me. I mean, if this was just the cats at work, surely personality traits wouldn't figure into it. It'd all be about biological necessity…" He was losing the train of thought as her slim, dark hand played with the white bandages on his chest.

"I don't know. But you're right. We do seem to fit. Maybe that won't be the case in the long-term, but right now…"

"Alyssa and Colt fit too. It's like he needed a sensitive, damsel-in-distress type. He's always had this
defending the weak
thing going on ever since he was a kid. Me, not so much. And she's kind of clingy. That would drive me nuts. But he loves it. Makes him stand taller and stronger, somehow. But they didn't know those things about each other when they connected. They had about two minutes together after he saved her from rapists. But that was all it took. They both just knew."

"But maybe it was the whole saving and being saved thing that made them connect."

"From what I gather, Colt was always saving someone. And he never obsessed over any of them. I never asked if any of those others were pretty girls, but I don't think it would have mattered. Not unless one of them was a mate. And what were the chances of that? In fact, what were the chances of Colt being just where he needed to be that night to save one of our mates? A mate whose personality fitted perfectly with his."

"You're starting to sound all fatalistic here, my pragmatic mate." Allie poked at him lightly as she teased.

"You're the one who talked about different Souls inhabiting identical bodies. What if the whole reincarnation thing is true? What if our Souls, yours and mine, were fated to come together again? Wouldn't it make sense that you'd get to be one of the females for our males? Might this whole mate thing have less to do with our cats and more to do with our Souls being fated to meet, and when we did, we immediately recognised each other? It kind of explains things better than the whole biological necessity idea."

Allie kissed his shoulder. "You're being very romantic right now. Must admit I didn't expect that. But I kinda like it."

"Why'd you hold out on me? You felt it just as powerfully as I did, and yet you were so feckin' determined to push me away."

It was her turn to groan. "The whole
love at first sight
thing isn't very practical, you have to admit. I could feel my cat accepting her mate, but
I
wasn’t my cat. It scared me. I didn’t know her, didn’t trust her. She was as much a stranger to me as you were. And though your sexy bad boy vibe was very appealing, I couldn't see it lasting between us. You're too strong, just like my cat is too strong. I was sure you'd end up turning me into a Stepford Wife. I wanted to please you. I had this urge to do anything I could to keep you in my life. And that just ends up going wrong.

"My parents were good people, if you discount the fact they gave me such a stupid name. And they loved each other. But my mom was this little home-body, right down to the pipe and slippers routine when dad came home from work. It's like she had no identity of her own. I saw the girls at high school doing the same sort of things: wearing what pleased their boyfriends, rather than what pleased them; never holding an idea in their heads that their boyfriend wouldn't approve of. It was pathetic and scary. And I never wanted to be like that."