Beast Untamed: Beasts of Bodmin Moor, Book 3 (14 page)

“We’ll be so sorry to see you go,” Talia said, and the look on her face said she meant it. She reached out and hugged Erin so sincerely that Erin’s already tightly strung emotions wobbled even further. “But don’t you dare disappear before we can throw you a send-off party.”

Naomi stepped around the counter and pulled Erin into a hug too. “I really wish things could have worked out for you.”

Again, Erin saw sincerity in Naomi’s eyes and felt her own moisten. “So do I.”

She’d never wished for anything more.

* * * * *

“It could never go anywhere. You’re best just walking away.”

Nathan glared across the table at Caleb, and while knowing his friend spoke only what he’d been telling himself since Erin had left early that morning, he couldn’t quite stop the venom from rising up from his chest.

“Yeah? I just bet you told yourself that every time you watched your brother bang Talia. Didn’t stop you though, did it?”

Caleb’s fingers tightened around the cards he was holding before he placed them facedown on the table. “You’re mixed up, so I’ll let you have that one. You won’t get the chance to take another shot.”

Nathan laid down his own hand—a shit one, which just about summed up his day—and rubbed his hand along his neck. “Yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Out of line.”

Since Caleb’s primary duty as leader was protection of the pack, Nathan knew he had to step down a little from his high horse. Keeping their community safe had become a priority as far back as the seventeenth century, when their Irish community, which had likely grown complacent about such matters, was betrayed by a human who infiltrated the pack. Their members had been forced to leave Ireland and scatter throughout mainland Britain in the hope of living peaceably, and secretly, within local communities once more.

For over three hundred years they had managed to do so. Nathan could hardly blame his friend for ensuring it stayed that way.

He scrubbed his hand along his neck again. “This damned female has got me turning fucking cartwheels.”

“Thought you said it was finished?” Tynan suggested unhelpfully, tapping a finger against one of his cards. “If that’s so, your cartwheel-turning days are over, my friend. You need to get yourself back in the field, pronto.”

Nathan gritted his teeth. Why on God’s green earth did he ever spill his guts to these two? They were so freaking loved-up with their females, they thought everyone was floating around on little pink clouds of unadulterated bliss.

“Since both of you are dishing out such brilliant and achingly obvious advice, why don’t you take it a step further and tell me I’d be best off sticking with shifter females in future?”

“It would make things less complicated.” Caleb picked up his cards again. “That way if you get hung up on a female, you won’t have to get yourself all knotted up ending it because it can’t go anywhere.”

“Why can’t it?”

Nathan hadn’t planned to ask the question, although it had been echoing in his head for most of the day. He looked up at his friends and found his answer in their almost identical expressions.

“Do you actually need a response to that?” Caleb said, his jaw hard and gaze narrowed. “Even an achingly obvious one?”

Nathan shrugged, determined to make his friends spell it out. Shit. He didn’t know what the hell he was doing baiting them like this. All he knew was that he needed to hear the answer vocalized so it would solidify what he knew was right.

“Seems I do.”

Caleb put his cards down again and leaned back in the chair. “You can’t mate with a non-shifter,” he said. “You can’t put your mark on a human.”

“
You
did.”

If it were possible, Caleb’s jaw tightened even more. “You’re pushing it, friend.”

Nathan leaned forward, matching Caleb’s glare. “I don’t like being told there’s one rule for the leader and another for the rest of us.”

When Caleb moved forward, Tynan slammed his palm on the table. “Okay. Let’s break this up, shall we? Nathan, you came in here tonight spoiling for a fight. If you want to talk this out, fine. If you just want to bitch and start challenging—”

“Shit.” Nathan pressed his fingers to his eyes. Then looked up at Caleb. “Out of line. Again.”

Caleb nodded, obviously recognizing it was as near an apology as he’d get from Nathan, and went to Tynan’s refrigerator where he got out three more beers. He placed them on the table, one in front of each man. “Looks like we have a serious problem.” He unscrewed the top of his bottle, sat and eyeballed Nathan. “Why don’t you tell us what level of serious we’re actually dealing with?”

Nathan squeezed his eyes shut and wondered when in hell he’d taken such a wrong turn and ended up with his guts in a screwball mess. “She gets to me.”

“Yeah. We already figured that out.” Tynan unscrewed his own bottle top. “The question is how much.”

Since both men stared at him with meaning clear in their expressions, Nathan didn’t even try and smokescreen them. “My eyes for one. It’s getting fucking impossible to stop the change.” He reached for his bottle and turned it around in his hands, letting the chilled moisture cool his suddenly clammy palms. “Last night… Shit. Last night, I nearly sank my teeth into her neck.”

He heard Caleb inhale sharply as the man leaned back. “Feared as much.”

“It was almost impossible to stop. Something fired inside me, from the belly.”
From the heart
, although no way was he admitting that to his friends. It had been hard enough admitting it to himself. “It felt like it had always been there, like some kind of sleeping fucking dragon. I got one sniff of her after we…well, it was as if something took me over.”

Caleb and Tynan exchanged a glance.

“I’m going freaking crazy, right?” Nathan said, hoping to hell his friends would confirm his assumption. But when they looked back at him, he knew even before they spoke that he was screwed.

“She’s human,” Caleb said as if he needed reminding. “That means we’ve got to involve the Principals. I need to call a meeting of the Council.”

“I’m not spilling details of my personal life to the Principals,” Nathan snapped. “There’s got to be some other way.”

“There isn’t,” Tynan said. “Mating with a human is unprecedented. At least it is for those of us who aren’t leader. ”

No sooner had Tynan said it than he and Nathan looked at Caleb.

After long moments, when silence echoed off the kitchen walls, Caleb drew from his beer bottle. He swallowed, then put the bottle down but kept his fingers clasped around it. “My situation was different. And yeah, as leader, I could bend the rules.” He held up his free hand, cutting off Nathan who started to object. “I know it’s not right, but it’s how we work. But even my bending the rules required the agreement of the Council. And that means we need a meeting to discuss how we deal with this.”

Mortified, Nathan leaned his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands. “How the freaking hell did I manage to get myself into this shit?”

Tynan chuckled and patted him on the shoulder. “You fell in love, my friend. It happens to us all.”

Love? That hit Nathan harder than the whole mating-and-needing-to-mark-Erin deal. Although it was inevitable. When a male wanted to mate and mark a female, it meant that female was his for life. Surely it shouldn’t come as such a surprise that he loved Erin.

The intense pain he’d felt since their argument last night and when he’d watched her leave his home early this morning was damn near incapacitating. If it wasn’t down to the fact he was in love with her, he bloody sure didn’t want to experience anything that went deeper.

He raised his head and met his friends’ knowing smiles, but in their eyes, he saw concern for his situation. “I’m not sure she’ll want anything to do with me after last night.”

“That’s your department,” Caleb said. “Just let me know if and when you want me to call that meeting.”

Chapter Twelve

Late next morning, Erin called in at the supermarket to pick up some provisions. She’d intended to speak with Sandie and give notice that she’d be leaving at the end of the week, but her boss had been off sick with a heavy cold. Erin had decided to write her a note to explain that she was leaving and thank Sandie for the opportunity she’d given her. When she got home, she would call Kay and update her friend with her new plans.

Packing the two grocery bags in her car, Erin felt a pang of loss so deep, she almost doubled over. She really didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want to leave her new friends. She didn’t want to leave Bodmin.

Mostly, she didn’t want to leave Nathan. The thought of never seeing him again cut like nothing had ever done before. She wasn’t at all certain she could bear it. But she would, of course. There was no other option.

Unable to stop herself, Erin drove out of town and toward the part of the moor where Nathan lived. She had an overwhelming urge to be near him, to be near the place he called home. The house he had built on the beautiful Cornish moor.

Remembering he had a state-of-the-art security system, Erin parked up a distance away from his entrance so as not to be seen from the house. She knew he would probably be hard at work in his home office, but she wasn’t about to take the chance he could spot her sitting out there like some lovesick idiot.

She glanced up toward his bedroom. She could almost feel him lying beside her in the huge bed. Feel his arms around her, holding her tight while his warmth seeped into her soul.

In that moment, with memories flooding her lonely heart, she could no longer stop the tears she’d been trying to hold back. With her hands on the steering wheel, she lowered her head and wept.

* * * * *

When Erin arrived home later that afternoon, Willa wasn’t at the door to greet her. Erin’s initial thought was that her girl must still be making up for that loss of sleep after her nighttime adventure at Nathan’s.

The first real indication that something was wrong came when Erin stepped into the kitchen and saw Willa’s empty bed.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and a shiver ran down her spine. She hurried through to the lounge.

And froze.

On the sofa, facing the door, sat Justin.

“Hello, Vanessa. Or perhaps I should refer to you as Erin now.”

Through the shock and the fear came an overwhelming dread. “Where’s Willa?”

He crossed one leg over the other, taking an easy posture as he settled back against the sofa. The look in his eyes was anything but relaxed. They gleamed dark and ominous. He took them off her just long enough to glance around the room. “I have to say you’ve come down in the world. Setting yourself up in a hovel like this?”

Erin forced herself to breathe, to keep her emotions from controlling what she said, what she did. She tamped down her fear and looked Justin straight in the eye.

“There’s no reason for you to be here, Justin. There is nothing left between us, there hasn’t been for a long time.”

“You ran out on me,” he said, his tone matching the darkness in his eyes. “Nobody does that.”

“I’m sorry.” Placate him, she thought. Feed into his vanity. That was the only way she had ever gotten through to him, even marginally. But that was when she’d been in no position to do anything else. When she was under his direct control. Now, things were different. And damned if she’d kowtow to him anymore. She’d come too far to back down now.

“Actually, I’m not sorry. Not for a moment. Yes, I ran out on you, and I’d do it again. In a heartbeat. What you did was unforgivable.”

He huffed out a laugh. “Always so fucking dramatic. By the way, I’m not sure I like the hair.”

Erin resisted the urge to lift her hand to her head. “Well, I do.”

Justin flicked at his trouser leg. “Not that it was a particularly useful disguise, if that was your intention.”

Erin swallowed.

“Do you remember Leo Ackerman? You met him briefly eight months ago. No? Well, he remembered you. Took quite a shine to you, in fact. Luckily, you made such an impression that he looked past the short hair and shabby waitress outfit, but then a body like yours takes some forgetting.”

Someone had recognized her? Here? In Bodmin?

“Well, Leo?” Justin went on. “We go back a ways. He was on holiday with his wife. She’d wanted to visit the area to see some local inn that a famous writer had used in a novel. Leo called to tell me he’d seen you here. What were the chances? At my request, he stayed with you awhile. Tracked you.” Justin’s gaze narrowed dangerously. “Told me you were fucking some big guy with an attitude.”

Her blood, already chilled, ran cold in her veins.

“But I’m willing to overlook your indiscretion,” he said, checking out his fingernails. “And everything else you’ve done.”

“I’ll never go back with you, Justin.”

He met her gaze. “That would be your choice, Vanessa.”

She swallowed down the ever-growing lump in her throat. “Then…why are you here?”

“Why am I here?” He laughed again, settling back against the sofa. But there was pure malice in his expression. “I’ve come for my dog.”

Every fear she’d been battling came to the surface as Erin searched frantically for any sign of Willa. “Where is she? What have you done with her?”

“I haven’t done anything with her.”

The word he left unspoken rang like vicious bells in her head.

Yet
.

“I swear to you, Justin. If you touch her, if you hurt her again…”

“Now that’s up to you, isn’t it?”

Erin took a step toward him, pressing a hand to her temple to ease the tension that moved in so fast, she could hardly move her head. “What do you mean? What do you want?”

Justin uncrossed his legs and slowly eased himself off the sofa. “I think what I want is more than apparent.”

Cold terror gripped her. “I won’t let you touch me again.”

He grabbed her chin and held it roughly between his thumb and forefinger. “I’ll touch you,” he grated inches from her mouth. “I’ll do whatever the fuck I like to you. And to that mongrel you’re so fond of.”

Erin slapped at his hold. “You touch me, or you touch Willa, and I’ll—”

“She’s my dog, in case that fact has slipped your mind. Legally, she’s my possession. I can do whatever the hell I like.”

“You’re a bloody monster. I should have called the police. Had you up on charges.”

“You do that,” he taunted. “And good luck with proving you’ve got any claim to that dog.” He gripped her arm and yanked her up close. “They’ll see a man who provided his fiancée with everything her heart desired. A beautiful home, designer clothes, first-class trips abroad. He even bought her a cute little puppy to make her happy.”

It made her sick to her stomach to know that he was right. On the surface, he’d given her everything. She would never be able to prove her claims against him, which was one of the reasons she’d chosen to run rather than stick around and place those charges against him.

Erin shoved at his chest. “Just give me Willa,” she pleaded, hating herself for the victim-mode she was again forced to adopt. “Please, Justin. Don’t hurt her again.”

“Like I said, that’s up to you.” He strolled to the doorway, straightening his suit jacket as he went. “You’ve got until five tonight. You’re either ready to leave with me, or I’ll make sure you never get to see your precious dog again. And if you run? I’ll find you once more. And next time I won’t give you the chance to make things right, because there’ll be nothing left to bargain with.”

His threat screamed loud and clear. She could have interpreted his words as meaning he’d give Willa away, as he’d threatened to do once before. But the darkness in his tone, the malicious gleam in his eye indicated more than that.

Nausea swam in her stomach and edged up toward her throat. She grabbed his arm. “Where is she?” Her demand was rewarded with an imperious look as Justin glanced down at her hold. “For pity’s sake, Justin. Tell me where she is.”

He laughed. A hollow, sadistic sound that brought back memories she had allowed to begin to fade. Here in Bodmin, with Nathan, they had started to diminish beneath the brief respite she had enjoyed.

“Until five,” he reminded her. “Or I’ll do a whole lot more than tie up that mutt in the backyard.”

He’d barely finished his sentence when Erin was through the kitchen and yanking open the door to the yard.

Willa sat forlornly by the back wall, muzzled, and tied with an old piece of rope to a post.

“It’s okay,” Erin soothed, unfastening the knot around Willa’s neck, her fingers clumsy and trembling. “It’s okay now, baby.” She tore off the plastic muzzle and threw it aside.

She dropped to her knees, wrapped her arms around Willa and simply clung. When Willa started to lick her and wiggle free, Erin released her. She stood on unsteady legs, her heart hammering and blood thundering hard through her veins.

The bastard wasn’t going to touch either her or Willa. Not again. This time she’d really disappear. Despite what he’d threatened, he would never find her. She’d live the life of a hermit if she had to. Justin wouldn’t find her again.

She brought Willa inside, uttered more soothing words, gave her a couple of biscuits and then hurried upstairs. Knowing she had just over two hours before Justin would be back, she slammed clothes into her suitcase and gathered her toiletries together. She had to get away before he came for her, for Willa. She had no way of knowing if he’d be watching the cottage, expecting her to flee again. But she couldn’t worry about that now. She had to at least try. Going back to Justin was unthinkable. These last few weeks in Bodmin had given her an indication of what life could be like, what it should be like, and no way could she ever contemplate returning to her old life.

Her suitcase packed, Erin went from room to room tidying as best she could. It had been so kind of Kay’s aunt to loan her the cottage, the least she could do was leave it the way she had found it.

In the kitchen, she emptied the fridge of perishables, wiped it clean and then packed up Willa’s things.

She jerked at the knock on the door, her whole body cold at the thought Justin had come back earlier than he’d warned. A glance at the clock told her she had well over an hour before his deadline, but she wouldn’t put it past him to play those mind games with her that he loved so well.

She glanced at the back door. There was a rear entrance to the cottage, but it went along a lane at the back and came out in the main road where Justin would be waiting. Besides which, she had to get to her car, which was in full view of the front door.

With nothing left but to face Justin, Erin marched to the door determined to make him keep to his original timescale. She would say she wasn’t yet packed and had things to do. All she hoped was that he wouldn’t insist on waiting inside while she took care of those things.

She didn’t bother to glance through the sitting room window but swung open the door, prepared to do battle.

Her intake of breath came a moment before her heart started hammering and her pulse kicked up. How was it, no matter what the circumstances, Nathan could take her breath away and rock her to the very core?

“We need to talk.”

Right then, Erin didn’t think she could utter a word, even if her whole world hadn’t already been tumbling down around her feet. He looked even more rugged and handsome right then, even with a seriously pissed-off expression and a hard-edged look in his eyes. His whole demeanor seemed in direct contrast to the bunch of cornflowers he held at his hip.

Erin had the urge to throw herself into his arms and hope that just being in them would make everything else go away. The yearning inside her, the need and desire, was almost overwhelming, and she ached so badly for him that she wondered if she could stand it.

“I… I can’t talk right now,” she managed, keeping him on the threshold and staring at his chest so he didn’t see the longing in her eyes. “Maybe another time.”

“This can’t wait.”

He looked over her shoulder, and his gaze narrowed. Erin went cold, realizing that she had left the suitcase and packed bags at the end of the hallway.

“What’s going on?”

There was no point hedging around the situation. She couldn’t meet his eyes and felt blood heat her cheeks. “I’m leaving.”

There was a long silence and Erin looked up as he said, “You weren’t going to tell me? You didn’t think you owed me an explanation?”

She hiked her chin. She was so damned tired of men making demands of her, expecting her to dance to their tune. “I don’t owe you anything. My life is my business. I don’t have to explain my actions, and I don’t have to answer to you or to anyone.” God. Her heart was beating so fast she feared it would explode from her chest. “What gives you the right to come here and spout off your demands? We had sex, Nathan. It lasted longer than we both expected, but it’s time to move on. You made it clear you felt that way the other night. So why don’t you just—”

“What the fuck’s going on, Erin?”

His voice was low, his tone resolute. Erin stared at his chest again. At the deep gray shirt beneath the dark leather jacket. She had that urge to throw herself at him again, or grab hold of his shirt and just yank him to her. She wanted him surrounding her, swamping her. She wanted to lose herself in everything he was.

“Like I said, I’m moving on. It happened faster than I anticipated, but something came up.”

She prayed he’d just accept what was done was done, cut his losses—maybe even welcome them—and leave.

“What came up?”

Damn. Why couldn’t he just go?

She hesitated, not knowing what to say, how to explain. She couldn’t tell him the truth of course. She had a feeling he’d do the macho male thing and confront Justin. That would only make things far worse than they already were.

“You need to talk to me, Erin. I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on.”

Which meant he’d still be here when Justin arrived. Stubborn, infuriating male.

Some part of her loved him for it, but a bigger part was terrified. She didn’t know what his meeting Justin would unleash. Her only path was to try and convince him that their brief relationship had run its course, that she didn’t want him anymore and was moving on to greener pastures where she could start putting down roots and build her career.