Jared (29 page)

“Ah, but we have Slade.”

She smiled slightly as she reached for her turtleneck.
“Well, everything will be all right, then.”

She was so cute when she was humoring him. “We think
of him as our secret weapon.”

“Do I look like I’m arguing?”

He waved his hand. “You reek of skepticism.”

She turned her back. His shirt slid off those slight
shoulders beneath the fall of her hair. The shirt continued the slow glide
down, revealing the hollow of her back above the low-slung waist of her jeans.
He took the necessary step forward to catch the shirt before it hit the floor.
He dropped it on the pack and caught her hips in his hands as he knelt,
pressing a kiss into that sweet, feminine hollow. He slid his right hand along
her addictively soft skin, cupping her abdomen, connecting the points of her
hip bones with the heel of his palm and the tip of his finger as he pulled her
into the caress. Her grip dropped to his forearm.

“Jared.”

He stood, letting his arm travel upward, along with
his body, until her breast rested on the shelf of his forearm. Such a small,
dainty gift. His gift from whomever decided which men got blessed. His
heart-bruised gift, who didn’t understand her importance to him. Brushing his
lips over her hair, breathing her scent into his lungs, he drawled, “I made a
mistake with you, Raisa, and you’re going to have to forgive me for it.”

He felt her heart jump, scented the spice of her
uncertainty.

“You can’t order someone to forgive you.”

He smiled into her hair. “Then consider it a request.”

“What mistake did you make?”

“I leapt to conclusions.”

The tensing of her muscles was infinitesimal. “You
caught me red-handed.”

“But I never asked at what.”

She waved her hand as she added another layer to the
wall she was trying to build between them. “Does it matter?”

Yeah. It mattered. The tip of her ear tucked neatly
into the seam of his lips. He gave it a little nip, then a kiss, before he made
her a promise. “I’m going to take care of you, Raisa. From here on out you can
count on that. You first, with nothing between us. Whatever your secrets are,
you can trust me with them.”

She went absolutely still against him. Just for a
heartbeat, but he felt it. Then she patted his arm and pulled her turtleneck
over her head as if nothing was amiss. “Thank you.”

This was one instance where he was not willing to be humored.
Turning her around, he walked her backward, staying close so she couldn’t bring
her arms down, couldn’t untangle them, just had to face him with those pretty
breasts exposed, her vulnerability exposed, her fear exposed. He didn’t look
any lower than her face. He pinned her hands with one of his, the other he
cupped under her chin. “The only thing you’re accomplishing by hiding whatever
it is you’re hiding is to endanger us both.”

“There’s nothing I can tell you that you don’t already
know.”

Not an out-and-out denial but a hedge. “Do you really
think word games are going to put me off?”

“I would never think that.”

He raised his brow. “And yet you thought it was worth
a try.”

She tugged her hands. He just stared at her, waiting
her out, not letting her go. She sighed and sagged back against the rough stone
wall.

“Does this mean our moment is over?”

“Are you ready to confide in me?”

Her lip slipped between her teeth. She bit down,
driving the blood from the plump flesh, leaving it pale. “I can’t. I promised.”

Someone else. “This Miri?”

She nodded.

He pulled her lip free. “Some promises aren’t meant to
be kept.”

“I can’t.”

“Then how about we talk about something else?”

The relief in her expression showed how little she
knew him. “How did you end up at the Sanctuary?”

Pain flashed through her eyes. The slow blink allowed
him a glimpse of humiliation before her gaze ducked his. “I was handed over.”

“By whom?”

She shook the hair out of her face. Her gaze fastened
on a point over his shoulder. “My boyfriend at the time.”

She said it with such calm, as if it hadn’t mattered,
didn’t matter, but that would make three times in her life the people she’d
trusted had betrayed her. A person didn’t just walk away from something like
that without scars. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “You get used to it.”

“Sunbeam, no one gets used to that.”

She frowned. “How would you know?”

“Because I know what it feels like to have a choice
like that taken away by someone you love.”

Her head canted to the side and the frown deepened to
twin furrows between her brows. “Who hurt you like that?”

“My brother turned me.”

“Against your will?”

“It wasn’t Caleb’s fault. He was still crazy from the
bitch who turned him while he was dying.”

“You blame her for your conversion?” She sounded
surprised.

“She knew what she was doing. Caleb didn’t.”

Jared had seen it a thousand times in his head. Caleb
down on the ground, gut shot, delirious with the agony and blood loss. And in
the falling twilight, she approached. A shadow separating from the
dark—faceless, cold, ruthlessly taking advantage of Caleb’s inability to fight.
Changing him and then leaving him clueless as to how to deal with the
conversion. How to deal with the first hunger that had turned him savage
because he hadn’t known what he’d become. Hell yes, he blamed the bitch, and
when he found her, she’d pay.

She licked her lips “Maybe she felt sorry for him.”

He didn’t think so. “And it snows in hell.”

“Were you there?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t—”

He cut her off. “I know.”

“There could be other reasons for what—”

“There aren’t, and all your color-it-pretty views
can’t paint it any differently than it was, because if she’d cared anything at
all about anything except her own amusement, she would have given him a choice,
respected him when he made his decision. At the very least she would have told
him what he’d become rather than leave us all to find out the hard way.”

Raisa paled. “He didn’t know what had happened?”

“No.”

“That must have been awful.”

“We got through.”

“I don’t see how.” Her big brown eyes searched his
face, sympathy shining from her, reaching from her, as if after what had
happened over two hundred years ago, he would still need comforting today.
Jared didn’t want comfort from her. “In the end, there’s no choice involved.
Life goes on.”

“And you went on.”

“Yes. Which doesn’t get you off the hook.”

She wiggled in his grip. “My arms are getting sore.”

“No, they aren’t.”

He’d been monitoring her very carefully.

“There’s a rock digging into my spine.”

“I can fix that.” He pulled her forward and then
slipped his hand between her spine and the wall, easily finding the protruding
rock and protecting her from it. She took the move one step further, snuggling
those hard tipped breasts into his chest, casting him a glance from under her
lashes so hot it singed his short hairs.

“I’m cold.”

She was no more cold than he was. With the small
amount of blood he’d given her earlier, she could easily regulate her
temperature. He had a hard time containing his smile. “What you’re bucking for
is a spanking.”

She rubbed her hips against him, touching her tongue
to her full lower lip, leaving it there for a breath-stealing, tempting second.
“Promises, promises.”

He kissed her because he couldn’t help it, his mouth
fitting to hers naturally, his tongue easing between the lush curves of her
lips, tracing their sultry shape, tasting her, letting her feel his teeth,
anticipate his bite. Drawing out the moment for as long as he could before
ending the connection with a soft kiss. She was so full of sass and fire. And
so determined to distract him from his questioning, he almost felt guilty for
continuing. Almost.

“What happened to you at the Sanctuary?”

Rai blinked at him, clearly not yet back on stable
footing. Her energy slid over his in a clear invitation that everything in him
rose to accept. His cock throbbed, and his senses opened fully to her presence,
taking in her scent, her uniquely feminine essence, the rhythm of her heart. If
the flick of her satisfaction hadn’t touched the edge of his consciousness, he
might not have been able to resist.

He repeated the question.

Raisa frowned up at him. “You were much more fun when
you were kissing me.”

“Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll get back to the
kissing.”

She sighed. “No, you won’t. You’ll just order me to
pack up. And my arms really are beginning to hurt.”

He lifted her up and dropped her hands around his
neck. Her legs wrapped around his waist. He braced her against the wall.

“Watch the rock.”

He shook his head. He’d already compensated for it.
“Now, no more excuses; tell me about the Sanctuary.”

“There isn’t much to tell. I’m not even sure why they
wanted me. They took tests initially, and then they just locked me in a room.”

“For how long?”

“Four or five years, I think.”

He tried to imagine that, being locked in a room for
years on end. He couldn’t. He needed wide-open spaces and room to roam. Then he
tried to imagine being a small woman constantly sick and in pain, locked in a
room with Sanctuary males as her guards. Unfortunately, he could all too easily
imagine that. He cupped her face in his palm and forced her to look at him.

“Did they hurt you?”

“Nothing happened that I couldn’t handle.”

Which didn’t tell him a damn thing. She had a tendency
to think she could handle a lot more than she could.

“Now is not the time for playing word games.”

The thought of a man, any man, forcing her ate at him.
He should have been with her. He should have been there to protect her. He
should have met her earlier.

“I wasn’t aware that I was.”

Tightening his grip on her hair, he held her gaze to
his. If she wanted blunt, he’d give it to her? “Did they rape you?”

“Do you really think that’s the worst thing they do to
a woman?”

“No.” Jared had seen the bodies of the women the
Sanctuary had finished with—broken, perverted shells of the vibrant women
they’d once been. He touched the nape of her neck, feeling the obscenity of the
implant. “But I figured it was a place to start.”

Her fingertips massaged the tops of his shoulders in
an unconscious effort to soothe. He didn’t think she was even aware of making
the effort. He was beginning to understand that about her. It was her nature to
make peace, comfort, nurture. An inner prompting that commanded everything she
did. The same way it was his nature to war, command, and fight.

“There were a few attempts, but they ended when my reputation
got around.”

For what he couldn’t imagine. “Care to explain?”

To his utter shock, she blushed and averted her gaze.
“I’d rather not.”

Now she had him intrigued. “Why?”

“Because you might think twice about being intimate
with me again.”

“Honey, there isn’t a force in this world that could
make that happen.”

“Men always think that.”

The weariness with which she said that sent a chill
down his spine that ended in his balls. “Just exactly what was this
reputation?”

“You know that I can manipulate energy, right?”

He nodded.

“Well, there’s all kinds of energy.”

“I’m not getting your point.”

She held up one finger in front of him and slowly,
deliberately curled it downward.

If he hadn’t been holding her, he would have crossed
his legs. “Son of a bitch.”

“Exactly.” She shrugged. “After the first few times,
they were content to slap me around a bit and then just brag about the rest.”

And now he wanted to kill somebody. He probed her
mind, not caring about finesse, needing the images of the men who’d touched
her. He had a glimpse of faces swirling together, expressions of shock, anger,
and horror blending into a collage of images. Enough to know there had been
more than a few.

Her talons dug into his shoulder before she shut him
out. “No fair, cheating.”

“It’s a husband’s right to protect his woman.” His
fingers unclenched from her hair, letting the springy curls wrap around his
hand, letting them bind her to him. “Even when that woman makes it difficult.”

That soothing touch rose to his nape. “I don’t need
protecting from the past.”