Jared (43 page)

“Raisa?” Jared’s drawl rolled over her in a familiar
command.

Oh God, she didn’t want to look at him. Jared was an
old-fashioned man, the kind who liked to be stronger than a woman. This was
going to change everything between them unless he could accept it. His grip
shifted to her shoulders. His hands were warm and strong, creating an illusion
of protection and gentleness. She closed her eyes and savored the feeling,
appreciating it all the more for how fleeting it was going to be. He pushed
with one hand, pulled with the other, and she turned. One step at a time, her
heart in her throat. His finger under her chin tipped it up in that gesture
that was so familiar it was another form of caress.

“Is that true?”

“Of course it’s true,” Slade grunted. “Look at what
happened to my energy when she touched me.”

Jared didn’t even glance at the screen. “I don’t give
a shit about your experiment.”

“What do you want to know?” Raisa asked him. “Do you
want to know if I killed someone with my touch?”

“Did you?”

“Once.”

“Who?”

The knot in her throat made it hard to speak. “Your
brother.”

Slade came to his feet. “You’re the bitch who killed
Caleb?”

She flinched. Jared moved. With a slam of his hand to
the center of Slade’s chest, he knocked him back into the chair. It rolled six
feet under the impact, before he caught his balance. “Stay out of it, Slade.”

“The hell I will.” His feet hit the floor with jagged
thumps. “Caleb’s my brother, too.”

“And even if he will, I won’t.”

The new voice jerked her around. Jared swore, catching
her arm. She barely felt his restraint. All her attention was on the man
approaching her. He had the Johnson jaw, the Johnson build, and the Johnson
confidence. Three steps closer and she also saw he had the Johnson temper. His
slate-blue eyes flickered with flames that belied his easy manner.

Wild. The description flashed in her mind. This
brother was the wild one. His lips curved in an easy smile that sent a chill
down her spine. “Is this the little vamp you’ve been looking for all these
centuries, Jared?”

Raisa braced her spine and lifted her chin in a
challenge. “Who’s asking?”

Jace touched his finger to the brim of his gray
Stetson. “Jace Johnson.”

She noticed he left off the “ma’am” that the other men
had tacked on to show respect. She didn’t think it was accidental. Jared pulled
her back to his side. The hairs on her arms stood on end as his energy seethed.
“You’re talking to my wife, Jace.”

“From what I heard, I’m talking to the woman who
killed my brother.”

He took another step forward. His energy reached out.
Behind her, Jared responded to the threat with a gathering of force. If she
didn’t do something, this was going to get very ugly, and for all that Jared
felt he had to protect her, she couldn’t be responsible for him hurting his
brother.

“I also saved his life,” she pointed out.

“Not with his permission.”

“He hasn’t exactly been complaining, has he?”

“Not lately,” Slade interjected, watching the
brothers. Watching her.

“What if I said I didn’t particularly care?”

With one yank of his arm, Raisa was where she didn’t
want to be. Behind Jared and out of the way. “Then I’d say you and I have a
problem.”

Raisa placed her palm in the middle of Jared’s back.
His muscles were knots of preparation, belying the hip-shot stance he’d
adopted. “I don’t know why you’re bothering to pretend,” she muttered for his
ears alone. “No one believes you’re relaxed.”

It carried farther than she wanted. The last thing she
expected was Jace’s snort of laughter.

“She always this blunt?”

Short and to the point, Jared’s answer was simple:
“No.”

The soft clack of a keyboard was the only sound for
the next few heartbeats. The tension in the room was thick enough to cut. Raisa
tried to sort through it, but all she could sense was Jared. His energy
surrounded her, crowded her, distracting her while Jace stared at them both,
doing an assessment of his own.

Finally, Jace broke the standoff. “Seeing how you’re
set on keeping her, I guess I can’t go holding a grudge.”

“Especially as Caleb isn’t dead,” Slade murmured
distractedly.

“He does seem rather content right now,” Jace
acknowledged. He took another step forward and held out his hand. Raisa stepped
up to Jared’s side. He nodded. She reluctantly accepted the handshake. Jace’s
energy poured over her, reaching deeply into the shadows of memory, striking a
familiar chord. The sensation was familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

“Have we met before?”

His smile was pure sensuality. “That, I would have
remembered.”

She blinked at the sheer charisma in his smile. Jace
Johnson was not only wild, he was what, in her day, they would have called a
rogue. A ladies’ man. Confident in his ability to please a woman. “I think I
would have, too.”

Another spurt of recognition flowed over her. She
grabbed Jace’s hand before he could withdraw it, drawing his energy into her,
testing it against the implanted memory.

“Rai,” Jared asked. “Do you want to give him back his
hand?”

“No,” She held on tighter as past met with present in
her mind.

“Care to tell me why not?”

She shook her head as the men stared at her, frowns
forming on their very similar faces. The edges of Jace’s energy overlapped the
memory perfectly. Edge to edge, curve to curve, indent to indent. It was him.
The man to whom Miri had given her heart, her body. The heartless bastard who’d
fathered her child and left them unprotected for the Sanctuary to find and
torture. It was Jace. Rage blocked her vision. Her fangs cut into her mouth.
Her talons stretched for his blood. “You bastard.”

He drew back. She followed.

“Rai?”

She ignored Jared and Slade’s fussing with the energy
device. She only had eyes for Jace. “You horrible, selfish bastard.”

She slapped his face with everything she had. Her
talons caught on his cheek, laying it open. He grabbed for her arm. Jared
yelled, “Don’t touch her.”

“Then call her off.”

“Not until she’s had her say.”

Jace rubbed his cheek, looked at the blood on his
fingers, and narrowed his gaze. “Well, I’m about done listening.”

“No, you’re not.” Raisa’s palm stung from the slap. It
wasn’t enough. She hadn’t hurt him enough. Nothing ever could. Miri had
suffered so much because of him. She took a step closer, the toes of her shoes
touching the toes of his boots. “You left her. She didn’t have anywhere to go.
She couldn’t go back to her pack pregnant, and they got her.” She drew her hand
back to slap him again, caught herself mid-swing, and placed her hand on his
chest. There were better ways to make him pay. “Because of you, they got her,”
she whispered.

She tuned her energy to his.

“He’s Miri’s mate?” Jared asked. He couldn’t have
sounded more shocked if she’d shot him in the butt.

Jace grabbed her arm, hauling her up on her toes. “You
know where Miri is?”

“Don’t touch her.”

“It’s all right.” She gathered her power into a fine
point.

Jared flung Jace’s hand off her. “The hell it is.”

“Jared,” Slade warned. “If you don’t stop her, Caleb
won’t be the only brother she kills.”

Jace knocked Jared aside, catching him by surprise,
sending him flying backward. In a flash his hand was around Raisa’s throat,
squeezing as he propelled her backward toward the wall. “She isn’t going to do
a damn thing but tell me where the hell Miri is.”

Raisa hit the wall with bruising force. Air whooshed
from her lungs, gathering in a painful knot at the constriction in her throat.
She could see Jared coming fast, heard Slade’s warning to Jace, but it didn’t
matter. They wouldn’t be in time to save him. Weak, it was a long process.
Strong, it would only take one heartbeat, and then his wouldn’t work anymore.
God, she wished she could kill him.

Jared’s hand landed on Jace’s shoulder. Jace’s fingers
relaxed on her throat. She opened her fist over Jace’s heart, and let her power
do what it did best. In a hard surge she drew his life from him.

Jace jerked as if shot from behind, a horrible noise
coming from his mouth. Slade called his name. Jace’s grip on her throat
tightened with crushing power, cutting off her air for one second before he
dropped, taking her down with him. She hit her shoulder and her head. Stars
exploded before her eyes. She heard someone call her name, and then Jace’s.
When the stars cleared, Slade was bent over Jace and Jared knelt beside her.
Neither looked happy.

Jared lifted her off the floor, bracing her against
his thigh as his hand went to her throat, his expression one of fury and fear.
His fingers probed the sides of her neck. Fire burned in his gaze. His touch
was gentle. “How badly is Jace hurt?”

“What makes you think I didn’t kill him?”

“I know you, Rai.”

“I wanted to kill him.” She still did.

“But you couldn’t.”

“I made a promise.”

“And because you couldn’t.”

She glared at Jace where he lay on the floor,
unconscious, his hat sitting awkwardly beside his head. “I plan on working on
that.”

Jared lifted her higher against his chest, sliding his
arm under her knees. “You do that, but there’s something to remember.”

“What?”

He brushed a kiss across her head as he stood. “Jace
loves women.”

“So?” She slid her hands up around his neck.

“He was ready to kill you to find out where Miri is. A
man doesn’t go that far off balance unless he’s desperate.”

Raisa glanced over at Jace again. He was stirring.
Slade was hovering over him with his device, glancing at the screen and
muttering “Perfect” about every other second. “Or maybe he’s just pathetic.”

“I take it you’re not bowled over by his handsome good
looks?” She shook her head and rested her cheek on his chest. “He’s not my
type.”

“Now that might be a problem.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s going to insist on being part of the
team that’s heading out tomorrow to rescue Miri.”

MEN with guns were everywhere. Testosterone and energy
flooded the air in an overpowering combination as the Renegades prepared for
the rescue mission. Jace oversaw it all, cold and deadly, single-minded in his
determination to bring Miri home. Raisa could like him for that alone.

Allie came up beside Raisa on the deep wooden porch of
the guest cabin, fanning the air in front of her face as if that could remove
the oppressive aura. “Makes you nauseated, doesn’t it?”

Raisa glanced over at her. “I thought you were told to
stay away from me?”

“Caleb tells me to do a lot of things.” Allie said,
looking totally unconcerned.

“And?”

Allie rested her forearms on the mound of her stomach.
“While he may slip and forget which century he’s living in, I’m pretty much a
twenty-first-century kind of woman twenty-four-seven and make up my own mind
what I’m going to do.”

“It really isn’t safe to be around me.”

“Because you might blow up any second?”

Raisa nodded. “And because I can suck the life out of
you in a second.”

Allie smiled. “Well, I can warp your mind in half that
time, but since I see both of us as being too high up the evolutionary scale to
so mindlessly indulge, I think we’re both safe.”

“You can scramble minds?”

“In most instances it’s a useless skill, but it did
come in handy when the Sanctuary had me.”

“I didn’t know you were a Sanctuary prisoner.”

“They probably don’t advertise it.” She tipped her
head to the side. Her hair swung around her face, catching the moonlight before
adding a shadow to her smile. “I wasn’t the most congenial of guests.”

Raisa rested her hands on the porch rail. “Now, why do
I get the feeling that’s probably the understatement of the year?”

“Probably because you’re an astute woman with
well-honed instincts.”

Despite her worries, Raisa couldn’t help but smile.
Allie had a way about her that was at once confident and wry. “You are crazy.”

“My family certainly thinks so.”

“You have family?”

Allie’s smile dropped away. “Six brothers and a
father.”

Raisa blinked as she absorbed the ramifications of
that. “That must be hard.”

Allie rubbed her belly. “It is. They think I’m dead.”

When Raisa had passed, there had been no one to mourn
her. Raisa couldn’t imagine what she’d do if there had been someone she’d loved
still on the mortal side. “How do you handle it?”