Skin Deep (20 page)

Kiera tried to hide her excitement as Cain led her up the stairs with a blindfold over her face. She’d laid in bed all day, claiming she was tired, trying to avoid him as much as possible, though it didn’t seem to bother him in the least. He made her promise not to leave the room and popped in occasionally with a dazzling heartbreaker smile on his handsome face.

When he’d come to fetch her, she had it all planned out, exactly what she would say to deter him. To tell him she wanted to stay in bed and not participate in whatever he was going to show her. One look into his sparkling green eyes had taken the words right out of her mouth.
I’m so weak.

“Oh my goodness!” she yelped as she tripped over one of the steps. He steadied her and lifted her off the ground and not setting her down until they reached the top step.

“Okay, you can take it off now.”

She reached up and removed the red silk tie from around her eyes. Nothing could have prepared her for the scene in front of her. There were vases filled with roses everywhere. The average-looking living room had been turned into a romantic suite, like she had only seen in movies. Her hand snaked out to touch the petal of a rose.

“Wow. I don’t even know what to say.” Her gaze flitted around the room, taking everything in. There were hundreds of candles covering every surface, making the room glow with a dreamy ambiance. “How many roses are there?” It was probably a dumb question, but it was the only thing that came to mind.

“Fifteen dozen. I was going to pull the petals off and scatter them across the floor like they do in the movies, but I, uh, well, they all looked so damn nice, you know?”

Her heart fluttered. She’d seen this man rip another man’s head off for trying to hurt her and yet he couldn’t bring himself to destroy the beauty of a few roses. “You did all this for me?”
It doesn’t matter, Kiera, you can never be with him.
If her subconscious could be slapped, she would have done so without thinking. She wouldn’t let anyone, not even herself, ruin this for her.

Her gaze lit on an array of pillows and blankets scattered before the crackling of the fireplace. The days had turned chilly—at least that’s what the weather said. Kiera hadn’t been outside in over a week. A wave of bitterness swept over her. Killer or no, she hated being somewhere that wasn’t her home. She missed the softness of her bed and the colorful warmth of her walls.

“Of course. Only you.” The rumble of his voice next to her ear sent a shiver through her body. She looked at him now, for the first time since she’d removed the blindfold, and wished she hadn’t. His utter perfection took the words from her mouth, tore them from her very soul and left her breathless and wanting—needing—him like a lifeline at the million-dollar question. She didn’t have one. She’d used her
ask the audience
weeks ago and now it was up to her to make the decision alone.
What decision? There is no decision to be made. It’s done.

Her eyes scanned his form, clad in designer jeans that hung low on his hips and a black V-neck shirt that accentuated the bulging muscles of his torso.
Heaven.

“Come on, let’s sit.”

She let him lead her to the makeshift pallet in front of the fire.

“Stay here and don’t move a muscle.”

“And if I do?”

A blindingly handsome half-smile spread across his face. “Then I’ll have to punish you.” He turned away as her cheeks heated. She watched his perfect behind disappear into the kitchen, only to return seconds later with a platter of food. She smelled it before he placed it in front of her. The enticing scent of the chicken teased her nostrils.

“Oh my gosh, is that Gourmon’s Chicken?” She vaguely noticed the nod of his head as she took in the steaming plates before her with baked chicken, steamed rice, green beans, and a Little Debbie oatmeal cream pie. Her eyes bulged. Gourmon’s was her favorite place to eat in the world. “How did you know?”

“Maryline told me.”

Kiera thought back to the conversation she’d had with the woman earlier in the day. Maryline had been vague and sounded a little worried about her, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about this.

“She didn’t want to tell me. Not at first, but I convinced her.”

Kiera lifted her eyes to look at him awash in the glow of the candles. “How?”

“Well, I, uh …” Cain focused his sharp gaze on the fire, staring into its depths, as if controlling it with his mind. “I told her the truth.”

“The truth?” The words slipped from her mouth on an exhale of air.
What could he mean?

“Yes.” He seemed almost embarrassed. There was a quirky expression on his face, as if he was searching for the right words to say but was fighting a war against himself.

“That I love you.”

Cain held his breath as he stared at Kiera, waiting for her response. It was impulsive, he knew it was. He hadn’t planned to tell her that way. Hell, he hadn’t planned to tell Maryline when he’d gotten on the phone with her after Ryder left. This whole plan to do something nice for Kiera was just that—
a plan to be nice.
The idea had started with a couple of candles and a few roses, but before he’d known what he was doing, he’d purchased all the roses from two different flower shops and practically every candle in Wal-Mart.

The call to Maryline had been impulsive when he realized he hadn’t factored in food for the evening. To say she was reluctant was a damn understatement, but he wouldn’t tell Kiera that. The she-wolf’s voice broke into his thoughts.
“Enough is enough, Cain. Just let Kiera come stay with us. Post the guards around our house. Let her stay with people who care about her. Don’t play games with her, like she’s one of your back-door bitches.”

It was after that he’d said the words.
“I love her.”

It was Ren who’d made him think of it at all. Telling him Kiera could never love him had made him realize that his heart beat a million miles an hour just thinking about her. A part of him was certain Ren was wrong. The way Kiera looked at him, the way she responded to him, meant something. She had to feel something.

He’d been standing in line at Wal-Mart when he’d told Maryline this—back for the second time, buying more candles, standing between an old lady and a mom of four at the checkout counter—and didn’t realize until a kid started crying and the old lady quickly shoved her groceries in her basket that he had yelled the words. Or maybe howled them at the ceiling like a damned dog.

Never was it something he’d planned. The words had been like a draft of cold air flushing his senses clean.
I do. I really love her.
It was an emotion he’d been hesitant to accept. Even earlier in the afternoon, he had shied away from the idea, but it was true. He had loved Kiera all along. He didn’t care that she wasn’t his
feorh
. He wanted her regardless. No soul mate shit could change that.

“This is wrong. You don’t really feel that way about me.” Her words were like a glass of demon blood, burning him.

“I do.” He reached for her, but she scrambled away from him.

“No.” Kiera shook her head, closing her eyes with a look of disgust.

She doesn’t want you. Never wanted you. She doesn’t even know the horrors of your past and she still doesn’t want you.
“So, I’m good enough to fuck around with, but that’s it, huh?” Bitter realization flooded through him.
Ren was right.
“That’s why you don’t want to fuck me. I’m not even good enough for that, am I?” he shouted at her, not believing this was really happening.
I love her and she doesn’t love me. Doesn’t even want to give me a chance.

“This was all a mistake.” Her words were like a lance in his heart, sending the tiger in him into a frenzy. She rose to her feet, her body clad in a soft white nightgown, as she backed her way to the stairs.

“No … how can you say that?” Cain was shocked by how pathetic he sounded. Who was this person he had become? When had he allowed a fucking woman to get the best of him? A strangled growl tore from his throat as he stood and kicked his foot into the closest end table, sending candles and roses toppling to the ground. A crystalline vase shattered at his feet. Droplets of water exploded across the linoleum floor.

He turned to look at her, but she was gone.
Of fucking course she is. Did you really think she could love you?
The snarling of his subconscious had him diving for the closest glass of roses and sending it shattering into the nearest wall. Earlier, just thinking about tearing the petals off the roses had bothered him.
Fucking sap.
Now he wanted nothing more than to destroy every single one of them. To tear them apart, erase their very existence, and purge himself of
her
memory.

The buzzing of his cell phone had him digging in his pocket. Ren’s name flashed on the screen.

“What the fuck do you want?” he thundered into the phone.

“Whooo! Chill it down now. Just wanted to see if we could come back over now since shit finally hit the fan and your romantic getaway is officially null and void. Blaise and Sparrc don’t have shit to eat over here and I’m so damn tired of
Call of Duty
. Does no one play
Spyro
anymore?” The smart phone crumbled in his powerful grip. The screen shattered into a thousand pieces, slicing his hand. The physical pain was a delicious outlet for the agony that raged inside his body.

“I swore I would never fucking do this again … never love …” He grabbed another jar of roses, his blood smearing the clear glass as he sent it flying into the wall.

Soft steps on the stairs had him spinning around, his gaze meeting Kiera’s. He stared at her thin form glowing in the firelight. There was a look on her beautiful face that he couldn’t understand.

“There’s something you need to know,” he found himself saying, though he couldn’t explain why. The sudden urge to tell her what had happened was overwhelming.

“Cain, I—”

“No. You need to hear it.” If he told her what he’d done and saw the revulsion on her face, he could spend the rest of eternity pretending it was this story that made her reject him. “The plague came when I was around two hundred years old. The world was in turmoil, people were dying on every corner, inside every home. The black sores that riddled their flesh were terrifying.” He remembered the faces of the children in their sickness and fought back the bitter feeling that swept across his body. “Weres were supposedly immune, especially our Tiger strain. Since we were all pure, all
Born
, we didn’t worry. Not until my youngest sisters came down with the symptoms.

“Lana and Kalissa. They were only six and eight, not yet frozen into immortality. We all denied they could get infected. It was impossible. There was no way they could have contracted it. Our bodies were made for endurance, stronger than any human.” He bit off the last word as he relived the pain, letting it infuse his body. “But they died anyway.”

He remembered being out there as the rain poured down on him and his father while they dug the small graves. The water fell from the sky, hot and thick with humidity, as it pounded around them, but they said nothing as they struggled through the task Cain never thought he’d have to do. It was only when they were shoveling the thick black mud back into the holes, covering up the little girls whom he’d loved more than life itself, that he’d heard his mother screaming from the house.

“My older sister, Aurora, got it next.” He’d run back through the rain, his father only one step behind him, to find his sister inside. She was coughing up blood into the pale flesh of her hand, hands that only got paler. “Aurora was sick for over a month before my mother got her first symptoms.”

“Your mom, too?” The softness of Kiera’s voice next to him had him glancing over, alarmed that he hadn’t heard her move. A delicate hand touched his arm and he felt his knees weaken beneath him as he stumbled back and sat on the couch.

“It was worse for them because they were Immortals. They suffered for more than a year. We thought it would pass.” He ran a hand through his hair. “My father searched all over the world for a witch-doctor, a Gypsy, someone—anyone—to help.” That was when he’d met Ren. She was the only one who agreed to help his father, though he realized now it was probably out of her own morbid curiosity.
They’re not going to make it. Leave them,
she’d said. Her words had bounced around in his head, shocking him. He could never leave them behind. Ren had left with a shrug of her shoulders, not caring either way. His father had searched more, though Cain suspected he did it because he didn’t want to be home, didn’t want to be responsible for them.

“When he found nothing, my father wanted to leave them there to die. To fucking die alone. It didn’t make sense to me. She was his
feorh
, the other half of his fucking soul, and he just wanted to leave her.

“That’s when I realized something was wrong. My father had never been cold to my mom. Never a day in his life had he looked the other way when it came to anything about her.”