Hierarchy (15 page)

Nanna had patted her and kissed her temple. “You’re too soft hearted, honey, but I wouldn’t have you any other way. He deserves a lesson, at the very least. Any boy who treats any girl with so little respect for her feelings as a human being deserves a lesson in manners. How else are they to learn to curb their beastly instincts?”

She hadn’t thought any more about it—not that. Her grandmother had comforted her, been supportive, and that had been all she’d really needed to take the worst of the pain away. She recalled now, though, that he’d been absent from school for several days the following week and he’d been pale and withdrawn when he’d come back. He hadn’t looked at her or spoken to her again, but then she hadn’t expected him to or wanted him to. He’d moved away with his family at the end of the year.

Now she wondered if her grandmother actually
had
made his dick turn purple and black.
Something
had knocked the wind out of him. He’d been an arrogant jerk before—

even directly after their ‘date’—not that she’d been able to see past his good looks and charm when she’d fallen for him to notice or particularly care about that less pleasant side of his personality. In point of fact, she’d, mostly, seen it as ‘manliness’, admired it even though some of the things he’d said and done bothered her. There’d been a hint of a cruel streak she’d willfully ignored.

Was that evidence that her grandmother had had some magical abilities? Or had it been just what she thought at the time? Nothing more than an attempt to draw her out of her despair and distract her?

She struggled to think if there was anything else that even suggested her grandmother used magic, but aside from the fact that everyone talked about her green thumb, she couldn’t think of anything at all and, as impressive as her grandmother’s gardens were, that wasn’t magic. It was just hard work and good gardening skills.

She supposed it was possible her grandmother had magic skills and she hadn’t known. Nanna had told her there was a secret side to everyone that no one else knew because people guarded that side very carefully and rarely allowed anyone to glimpse it.

Did it really matter now anyway? It didn’t change the way she felt about her grandmother in any way, but it did make her wonder what her grandmother had intended for her—if she’d intended anything at all. She’d always said that the ‘sight’ was merely a window into the future that she had the gift of being able to look through. She couldn’t
control
it. She couldn’t even say, absolutely, that it would come to pass because the future
could
be changed.

The big question, she supposed, was if what was happening to her, had been happening almost since she’d gotten to the city, was the future her grandmother had seen for her and urged her to seek? Were any of the three the ‘special someone’ her grandmother had foreseen as the father of her children? And if so, was that all she’d seen?

Tiring of her thoughts after a while, she got up and searched for something
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besides the robe to wear and finally found a gown to sleep in. There wasn’t a sign of panties or bras! That couldn’t be an oversight considering the ungodly amount of clothes in that damned closet! Clearly, Caleb had no intention of allowing her two much in the way of ‘armor’.

It was disconcerting that she could feel so naked without them. Worse, the glide of the satin over her skin with every movement she made, even breathing, seemed to sensitize her skin preventing her from actually coming down completely from the buzz of arousal Caleb had left her with. Between that, the strangeness of being in such a place, and her uneasiness about Caleb’s motives, she didn’t think she could sleep, but even though she slept fitfully, she did sleep.

It was early morning when she woke. She stumbled out of the bed as soon as she’d roused up, heading for the bathroom. Her morning ritual roused her to enough alertness to figure out what had produced the sense of urgency she’d felt the moment she woke and she rushed a little drunkenly into the closet. Tossing off the gown she’d slept in, she grabbed the short T and jogging shorts she’d discovered in her search the night before. She’d found a pair of tennis shoes, too, but, thankfully, Caleb hadn’t stolen her own shoes and those were well broken-in.

When she was dressed, she dashed out of the French doors and across the balcony. The land, she saw, dropped away from the back of the house, which was why it seemed so unnervingly steep a drop, or least part of it. She still didn’t think it was enough of a fall to hurt her.

She hoped it wasn’t. Girded by her determination and lulled by the dregs of sleep she hadn’t been able to completely throw off, she went over the balcony railing without pausing to consider it, lowered herself as far as she could with her arms and let go before anxiety over it had time to overcome her. The soles of her feet stung when she landed and she felt a twinge of pain in her knees and ankles, but she picked herself up, brushed the debris from the flowerbed from herself and darted toward the closest line of trees.

Whatever he was, the glow she’d seen in Caleb’s eyes the night before indicated that he was a creature of the night—just as Constantine was, and Luke. Luke wasn’t confined to the night like Constantine seemed to be and she had no way of knowing whether Caleb was or not. It seemed the safest bet, though, that the daylight would be her best chance of escape.

She discovered a path through the woods when she’d reached the trees. Stopping for a moment to catch her breath, she peered around the huge tree that blocked her view of the mansion, searching for any sign of pursuit. As relieved as she was that she didn’t see any, she wasn’t convinced she hadn’t been spotted. As soon as she caught her breath, she began to jog along the path, glancing into the woods from time to time for any sign of a road, or a building that would indicate a road.

It would’ve made things a lot easier if she could’ve gotten to the car she’d arrived in, but she hadn’t thought that it was likely she would escape that way. She just needed to find a public road, she assured herself. Once on it, she should be able to catch a ride with someone either into the city to collect her belongings or out of the city to lay low for a while. She didn’t particularly care which.

She’d been jogging almost fifteen minutes before it abruptly dawned on her that Caleb had said he’d take her on a run to get some exercise. She didn’t think she would’ve remembered it then, since she’d been convinced at the time that he was just
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toying with her, except that she heard a steady pounding sound behind her and that abruptly clicked with the memory and the fact that she’d been following a well worn trail.

“Shit!” she exclaimed under her breath, glancing around a little wildly. There wasn’t a lot of underbrush beneath the trees. She thought she could get through without any problem, but could she manage it without making a lot of noise?

The pounding behind her was growing steadily louder while she wavered and she finally plunged off the path and moved as quickly and quietly as she could from the trail, thinking it might be best to simply hide. Once he’d passed her, she could get back on the track, she reasoned, and then she wouldn’t run the risk of getting lost in the woods.

She’d barely found a likely hiding spot and crouched behind it, however, when she heard a thundering crash in the underbrush. Something BIG was heading straight for her.

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Bronwyn’s heart leapt into her throat at the first crash and nearly choked her. For several moments she was too frozen to react at all, but her instincts kicked in abruptly with a surge of adrenaline and she leapt up and ran as fast as she could.

She had no idea—no thought—of where she was going. She lost sight of the trail in a matter of minutes. No matter how fast she ran or how much she wove in and out of trees and veered in first one direction and then another, the crashing sounds of pursuit stayed with her.

Eventually, when she was so winded it was only sheer determination and terror picking her feet up and planting them again, she burst through the trees and into a small clearing lush with wild flowers. It didn’t occur to her to dash back into the cover of the trees. She bounded across it, trying to leap over the thigh high wildflowers.

A sudden roar cut through the stillness, turning her knees to water. Unable to help herself, Bronwyn whipped her head around to see what it was that had roared. She nearly swallowed her tongue when she saw it—a huge monster of a lion—an African lion! Babbling with terror, she looked wildly around and tried to dart toward the trees, a vague idea of climbing one having sprouted in her mind. The lion cut her off, herding her toward the other side of the field. Something heavy butted her in the back before she reached the other side and she lost her balance and sprawled out. It was on her, hot, heavy, panting before she could get her knees under her. She tried anyway, shoving at the weight and drawing her legs up. It nudged her in the side with its great head, toppling her onto her side and rolling her to her back.

She lay where she fell, her eyes bulging until they felt as if they would pop from her head, panting for breath, expecting any second to feel its teeth ripping into her as the mighty lion moved over her. His lion lips curled upward almost in a lion smile as he stared down at her. Several moments passed before her terror subsided enough for her to actually see the face above hers and realize that he was staring her straight in the eyes.

A golden, hooded gaze met hers that was suddenly so eerily familiar Bronwyn thought fear had unhinged her mind. After holding her gaze for many moments, he released a heavy sigh and dropped to his belly, nuzzling his face against her belly and breasts.

She wanted to scream, to grab two handfuls of his tawny mane and shove him away. She was paralyzed, however. All she could manage to do was stare at the beast and fight for breath.

Goosebumps leapt up on her skin as his breath brushed her bare belly and goosebumps leapt on top of those when he …
licked
her, dragging his hot, rough tongue from her belly up to her neck and pushing her short top with it. She sucked in a sharp breath and held it. He lifted his head, met her gaze for a long moment, and then returned his attention to licking her.

She couldn’t decide if he was trying to bathe her with his tongue or if he was trying to decide whether he liked the taste of her enough to eat her. The moment she
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tried to inch away from him, though, he planted a huge paw on her shoulder and pinned her to the dirt.

Play dead!
her mind screamed, the first semi-rational thought she’d managed since he’d tackled her.

She squeezed her eyes closed.

He licked her breasts and belly, lifting goosebumps, stimulating her nerve endings until she felt like she was being eaten alive by fire ants. She tried not to think about it, but it seemed the harder she tried to close her mind to that hot, rough tongue, the more her mind focused on the feel of it as he lapped her as if he was lapping up a dish of cream—with loving determination not to miss a single drop. Her nipples, mindless bits of erectile tissue that they were, stood erect and blood flushed them, making them so exquisitely sensitive it took all she could do to lay still while he licked them over and over until she was a mindless mass of nerve endings, in such a fever that she’d completely lost touch with fear.

She flinched instinctively when she felt him nuzzling at the waist of her shorts.

Insane or not, bad move or not, she rolled onto her belly and tried to crawl away.

It turned out to be a bad move. He’d snagged her shorts with one of his claws.

He had them down to her thighs before she felt the warning breeze, then the heat of his breath. She sucked in a sharp breath as he plowed his nose into the crack of her ass.

He could have the damned shorts! She shot forward as his nose touched her sex, leaving the shorts behind, and tried to get to her knees again. He bumped her with his head as he had before and toppled her. That time, however, he shoved his head between her legs the minute she hit the ground.

The first slice of his rough tongue along her cleft brought her upright. Without even looking at her, he placed a huge paw in the center of her chest and shoved her flat.

She squeezed her eyes tightly closed again when she discovered she couldn’t get away from him, but she couldn’t even
begin
to try to play dead. He’d clearly discovered a taste that appealed to him—a lot. He nudged her thighs apart and lapped at her clit with such dedicated industry and plowed his tongue into her sex, lapping at her passage, until her body exploded in ecstasy in spite of every effort to fight it off, despite the absolute certainty that it was wrong on too many levels to count.

She tried to muffle her cries out of sheer self-preservation and shame, but he kept lapping at her and she continued to convulse until she couldn’t contain the scream clawing at her throat any more. He stopped when she screamed, nudging her limp form with his head until she rolled over. The minute she did, he caught her around the waist, dragged her up until her knees were under her and mounted her.

She grunted as he plowed into her, but she was still too weak from her orgasm to do more than rest her head and shoulders limply against the ground while he pumped into her. She came again, harder, and was barely conscious when he finally dismounted. She didn’t even have the energy to get her butt out of the air. He settled beside her, dragged her over until she fell against him and released a contented sigh. “That was …

delightful,” he murmured in the lazy, rumbling drawl that had become too familiar.

Bronwyn managed to crack one eye open enough to look at him. He was in human form again, completely naked and completely unconcerned about it. “That was
you
chasing me!” she managed to get out in an accusing tone.

“Mmm,” he murmured complacently. “Did you enjoy the morning run as much
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as I? I did promise!”

“You scared me half to death! I thought you were going to eat me!”

He chuckled. “I did. It was delicious, by the way. The tastiest cream I’ve ever sampled.”

A shudder went through at the reminder. She would’ve liked to inform him that she hadn’t enjoyed it, but she thought he might know it for a lie. “Why did you do it?”

He looked at her in surprise. “Because I wanted to. What other reason might I have?”

“But … Constantine said you couldn’t use your magic against me!”

His lips flattened. “If I could I would make certain I didn’t hear that name again,”

he said dryly. “As it happens, it appears that I can’t … at the moment.”

“But … you were in the form of a lion!”

He studied her for a moment in bemusement and began to laugh. Bronwyn sat up and glared down at him indignantly, which only seemed to make him laugh harder. He grabbed her, though, when she tired to leap up and stalk off, dragging her beneath him.

He caught her arms when she planted her palms on his chest and tried to shove him off, manacling them to the ground on either side of her head. “I told you I was Raja.”

That comment deflated some of her anger. “A Raja is a lion?”

His eyelids slid half closed. “The king of beasts,” he murmured in a rumbling growl.

“So … you’re saying that form is your natural form?”

“Hmm,” he murmured disinterestedly, nuzzling his face along her neck.

“So this form isn’t?”

He grunted again instead of responding, biting down on the side of her neck and sucking at it.

“So you’re using magic.”

“No,” he contradicted her, shoving downward to capture the tip on one breast, plucking at with his lips. “The ability to shift forms is apart from that … just as it is for the lycan … and the others. Do you really want to waste time discussing this now?”

“Luke’s natural form isn’t human either?” she asked with a touch dismay.

“I don’t know Luke. I don’t want to know Luke and I certainly don’t want to discuss Luke while I’m making love to my mate.”

“I’m not your mate.”

“Of course you are. I just mounted you in true form.” He hesitated. “If he’s a true blood, the human form is not his true form. Satisfied?”

“You think I’m your mate because you mounted me in your true form?”

“No. I know you’re my mate because you are.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

Bronwyn didn’t know whether she was more irritated or amused. She chuckled wryly. “You are an arrogant ass!”

“If you say so, dearest,” he drawled without concern. “But a handsome, virile arrogant ass, you’ll agree.”

Bronwyn couldn’t help it. She knew he was dead serious and that was what was so funny about it. She laughed.

He lifted his head and fixed her with a chiding look. “I’m in the middle of
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something here. Pay attention.”

She looked at him with mock contrition. “Yes, dearest,” she murmured dutifully.

He tilted his head, studying her for a long moment. “That has a nice ring to it.”

He shifted upward to match his face to hers. “Try darling.”

Her lips curled. “Yes, darling.”

He dipped closer and nipped at her lips before lifting his head to study her again.

“If you meant it, what would you call me?”

He seemed serious for once. She studied his face, considering it, trying to imagine what sort of love words would come to her mind if she loved him. “Honey.”

He looked a little startled. “Really? Why honey?”

“I don’t know—because Nanna loved me and she called me honey. It means love to me, I guess.”

“Then that is what I should call you. You’ll have to think of something more appropriate for me.”

“How about love? Yes, my love?”

“That’ll do. Remember, that’s what you’ll call me when you fall in love with me,” he murmured, covering her lips and ending the conversation.

Crazy man
, Bronwyn thought absently as she felt his heated kiss send her senses reeling. His tongue wasn’t nearly as delightfully rough in human form, but it felt good stroking hers in mock intercourse, roused languid heat from the ashes of her previous climaxes. His hands felt wonderful as they glided over her.

She wasn’t certain it wasn’t magic he wielded against her. He managed to awaken her senses to clamoring need again with no more than a few languid kisses, the stroke of his hands, and the restless brush of his body along hers.

She gasped with pleasure as he found the mouth of her sex with the head of his cock and impaled her with his massive shaft, expelled a tight breath as he drove deeper and began to stroke the sensitive walls of her passage. He seemed in no hurry, seemed to enjoy slipping in a leisurely cadence along her channel, building the warmth slowly to an inferno.

She held still, relishing it to begin with and then began to move with him when she felt her body temperature rise, felt the tension begin to grow rapidly tighter and tighter. He increased his pace. Shifting a hand beneath her, he tilted her hips forward to receive him, and she went off like a roman candle, gasping and shuddering her ecstasy.

When he’d ridden out his own passion, he shifted away from her to study her face. “I’m sure I look like hell,” she murmured without opening her eyes.

“You look like a woman well and truly fucked, sweeting, and I find the look infinitely appealing,” he murmured, laughter in his voice.

She felt her lips curl in response. He planted a kiss on her smiling lips and surged to his feet. Bending, he scooped her limp form up to cradle her against his chest.

“Breakfast will be cold. We’ll have to order another while we get cleaned up.”

The comment made Bronwyn abruptly aware that she wasn’t wearing anything but the short T. “My pants!” she exclaimed, trying to struggle out of his arms.

“You don’t need them. We’ll have to have a bath after rolling around all over the ground.”

“But … I’m naked! I don’t want to be dragged into the house naked! What if somebody sees me?”

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“I’m not dragging you and Yancy won’t look.”

“Caleb!” Bronwyn said, glaring at him. “I want my damned pants!”

His brows lifted in surprise but after studying her for a moment, he returned and found her shorts.

“Thank you,” she said, somewhat ungraciously when she’d stepped into them, then muttered in an under voice, “I’ve got come dripping down my leg.”

Caleb grabbed her, tossing her over his shoulder and allowing her to slip until she was dangling by her ankles. She screamed, grabbing at him. “What are you doing, you crazy man?”