Centaur Legacy (2 page)

I remembered teaching Bruce how to
surf. I was only a year older than he was. He must have been around
seven and was terrified of the ocean. I held out a board to him, he
took it and said, “If I drown, Dad’s going to be pissed at you.” He
didn’t drown, and within a couple hours, he was giving me tips on
how better to time catching the waves. Bruce was a natural, but any
time someone complimented him, he always said, “Beau showed me
that.”

Ben was three years younger than I was.
He’d always been a little on the shy side, but at all of my games,
it was his baritone voice I could hear over everyone else’s
cheering me on. It was his shirtless painted body in the stands,
shouting to me. I closed my eyes and could still picture it as if
it were yesterday.

Bart’s first word was “Mom,” his second
was “Bubba.” I was “Big Bubba” to Bart until he was well into first
grade. I’d been helping him with his homework one evening, and I
signed the sheet he needed to take back to school the following
day. When Bart saw my name, Beau Strayer, he asked, “What’s that
say?” I told him it was my name, and he got a sad look saying,
“But, you’re my Big Bubba.”

Could I really just walk away from
them? What would they think of me for not giving everything I had
to finding a Centauride? Giving up on finding a Centauride meant I
had given up on my family.

My eyes clouded as I remembered the
last several phone calls sharing the news of recent betrothals.
None had chosen me. I couldn’t take one more rejection. I couldn’t
keep holding it together as my life unraveled around me. Leaving my
family was more than just geography. If I went through with it and
started a family with a human wife, my human family would never
know my Centaur family.

I looked at the e-ticket staring at me
on the computer. Monday morning I’d be on my way. I considered
hitting the delete key, but a new emotion seeped into my
consciousness: the idea to be free, to love who I chose to love, to
have a career I wanted, to see the world through human
eyes.

San Diego was as good a spot as any,
and the transition might not be so hard if I had a pseudo-family to
cling to. Now I just needed to find a way to break it to my family
that I was done waiting; I was going to start a new life without
them.

(Camille – on the airplane
en route to Dublin, Ireland)

Drake’s ice blue eyes were watching
mine as I wiped the sleep from my eyes. We were on the plane bound
for Ireland. Our escape from Zandra’s had gone more smoothly than I
could have hoped. We were only at Will’s house for a few hours when
we heard she was coming after us, and we needed to get somewhere
safe.

When Drake said we needed to find
Hercules’ arrow, I wanted to laugh. An absurd idea, but if there
happened to be a sliver of a chance that we wouldn’t have to worry
about Zandra coming after us, I was all in.

I’d spent weeks believing Drake was
dead. My grandmother Zandra was a devious and powerful Centauride
who was accustomed to getting exactly what she wanted. She’d staged
the death of Drake and Bianca, leaving me to believe the only way
to escape her was to marry Gage Richardson. Gage and Bianca had
been breaking Centaur rules for years by secretly dating when they
weren’t allowed to. Things got all mixed up way before I’d gotten
into the picture: because of family pressures, Bianca was engaged
to Drake but in love with Gage. Gage and Drake had been best
friends right up until the engagement.

I didn’t understand why Zandra did what
she did. Maybe she had visions, maybe she didn’t like choices I
would make in the future, maybe she was just mean as a snake.
Zandra must have known that her carefully laid out plan of
betrothing me to Gage was going to unravel, so she did the
unthinkable. She staged their deaths and led Gage and me to believe
she had murdered them both. It would have worked if Drake’s mom
hadn’t come looking for him when she did. That’s how I learned he
was alive; we were able to escape.

There wasn’t anywhere I wouldn’t be
willing to go, so long as Drake was with me. My dad, Will, had
chartered a private jet to take us to Ireland. I could get used to
this: all of the seats were plush leather reclining chairs, a far
cry from the few commercial planes I’d traveled on.

One other big bonus was this plane came
complete with a bedroom. I would have been happy dozing in the
comfy chairs, but I much preferred lying next to Drake. His body
heat comforted me after the weeks of mourning I’d gone through.
Unmarried Centaurs were barely permitted to touch in even the most
formal of ways; lying in bed stretched out beside him was better
than any gift I could have imagined.

His gaze held me. He looked uneasy.
Something was on his mind, but after everything we’d both been
through, I shuddered to think what it might be. My heart felt
light; the pain that had been weighing it down for so long lifted
as soon as we were free of Zandra’s estate. My life was beginning
to feel like my own again, and I didn’t want the plane ever to
land. I draped my arm over him. Absent any profound thoughts, I
simply asked, “Did you sleep okay?”

A content grin appeared on his face, “I
awoke to my dream, Cami. Shhhh, I may still be
sleeping.”

“Nice one. You’re smooth. Keep talking
like that and I’ll do my impression of a puppy and follow you
everywhere. Oh wait, I’m already doing that.”

His smile broadened while his hand
began caressing my arm. His touch was lulling me back into a
restful sleep when he asked, “So, was it the sleep deprivation
yesterday, the fact that you thought I was dead, or did you mean
it?”

He didn’t have to spell “it” out; I
knew exactly what he was asking. Last night I’d confessed my
feelings to Drake. I could feel my heart rate pick up speed as I
remembered telling him I loved him and hearing the promise he’d
made to me afterwards. “Insecure much?”

“Only with you.”

I lightly caressed his back in slow
circles with the arm that lay draped over him. “It wasn’t the
exhaustion talking. I love you, Drake.”

He reached over and pulled me up
against him, smothering me into his chest. His voice was tender and
his grip on me tight. “The last time the subject came up, you were
adamant that you didn’t know me well enough to be in love with me.
Before you have a chance to have second thoughts, what do you need
to know?”

I wanted to laugh. He was right. He had
sneaked into my bedroom at Zandra’s house and asked me to choose
him. I’d been so convinced that I didn’t know him well enough to
choose to marry him that I refused to let my mind know what my
heart already felt. In my mind, I had to know everything about him,
every obscure detail, before I could be in love with
him.

At least that’s what I’d thought before
Zandra told me she’d murdered him. Then the reality of the
situation hit me: Drake was kind, generous, protective, sexy, and
he’d been willing to break his engagement with Bianca just for the
chance that I might choose him.

To humans, breaking
engagements was fairly common; it was
much
different for Centaurs. Breaking
an engagement could result in a blood debt and could end a family’s
bloodline. I was threatened with paying the blood debt for my
mother breaking her engagement with Kyle Richardson. An arranged
marriage between Gage Richardson and me had been brokered by his
father and my grandmother; luckily, Gage didn’t want it any more
than I did.

For Drake to want to take a chance on
me the way he did, while he was betrothed to Bianca was the same as
putting his desire for me before his obligation to his family. If
things didn’t work out between us, he didn’t have any siblings who
would carry on the bloodline, and his family’s blood would end with
him.

That’s not the kind of love you can
stumble across at the beach. It was the rip your heart out, put
everything you had to give into another’s hands, and hope that they
love you back. It seriously worked, because once we escaped, I
didn’t need years, or months, or weeks to decide. The details of
his life up to this point were far less important than the man who
lay beside me.

No matter what I learned, it wouldn’t
change how I felt. But there was so much about him I didn’t know,
and I wanted to know everything. Since he was giving me free range
to ask anything, I let my interrogation begin. “You work for your
dad; what do you do?”

“My father owns a residential
construction business. I work wherever he needs me: laying
foundations, hanging drywall, digging ditches, basically anything
except plumbing and electric. The hours suck, it always feels like
I need a shower, and I’m exhausted when I get home at night. Pretty
glamorous, right?”

“Doesn’t sound like much fun. Have you
ever wanted to do anything else?”

“There are good parts, too. At the end
of the day, I can see what I’ve accomplished. I think most jobs
don’t give you the satisfaction of ever really being done. If I
worked at a bank, or in a store, or as a teacher, every day would
be a lot like the previous day. I would never really finish
anything and say, ‘hey, look what I did,’ so from that perspective,
I’ll always want a job building something. What about
you?”

“I don’t have a career or anything. I
was a cashier when I lived in California, but I’ve been gone long
enough that I’m sure I’ve lost that job. Any hobbies?”

“None that I can’t live without. The
weather’s great in South Carolina from September through June, so
I’m usually up for anything. You?” Drake’s hand began caressing my
shoulder. His touch sent shivers through me a second
time.

“I’m used to California, so beach days
in the summer, snow skiing in the winter, movies, dance clubs –
nothing out of the norm. Daniel and I get together around each
other’s work schedules, and fit in whatever we have time
for.”

Drake’s brows raised, “Daniel? Who’s
Daniel?”

I couldn’t believe I’d never mentioned
Daniel to Drake. “Daniel’s my best friend. We’ve known each other
since elementary school.” I could see the questioning look on
Drake’s face – the same one I’d gotten from every guy I’d ever
dated. I needed to elaborate before he’d jump to the wrong
conclusion. “I can see it in your face, so I’ll just answer now.
No, he’s not an ex-boyfriend. No, we’ve never been on a real date
together. No, I don’t have romantic feelings for him. And no, we’ve
never slept together.”

Drake looked like I’d offended him,
“What makes you think I would need that kind of
reassurance?”

“Every guy does.”

Drake’s eyebrows furrowed. “I’m not
like other guys, Camille. I don’t care if your best friend’s a man,
not unless he’s devastatingly handsome, a rocket scientist, or a
celebrity.” He paused for a moment and added, “But for curiosity’s
sake, what qualifies as a ‘real’ date?”

“Daniel isn’t hard on the eyes, but
it’s never been like that with us. We were always each other’s
automatic guest for friends’ weddings, school dances, work holiday
parties, that kind of stuff. I can’t wait for you to meet him. I
should probably call him. I wonder if there’s a phone on the
plane?”

I looked around the bedroom but didn’t
see one. As I moved to get out of the bed, a hand caught my wrist
and pulled me back, leaning me back into the mattress. “Not so
fast.” Drake hovered over me on the bed. His mouth slowly closed
the distance with mine. I’d kissed him since our escape, but this
one was different. This kiss was slow, methodical, deep.

I felt his hand cup the back of my
neck, my mouth molding to his. Having been denied contact for so
long, Drake’s kiss sent sharp shivers through my body. My hands
instinctively began running up and down his silhouette. I was
ravenous, hungry. . . starving for his touch.

The shivers morphed from tingles to
full-fledged desire. I wanted to feel his skin against mine, for
him to gather me in his arms and to stay lost there. Drake rolled
onto his side, his icy blue eyes reflecting the longing I was sure
my eyes were broadcasting to him. Drake brought his hand to my face
and caressed my cheek with his knuckles. His voice was intense when
he softly said, “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

I closed my eyes, savoring all the
fantastic feelings ripping through me. I thought of what he had
said to me last night, “Tell me your promise again,
Drake.”

I kept my eyes closed but could hear
the smile in his voice when he leaned in close to my ear, feeling
the warmth of his breath as much as hearing his words: “I promise
to protect you. I promise always to put your needs before mine. I
promise I’ll never let you go to bed angry, and you’ll never wake
up alone. I promise to love you the rest of my life, and when this
life is over, I’ll spend my eternity in the pasture with
you.”

I wasn’t sure if that was some Centaur
creed or what, but I loved how it rolled off his tongue. Drake had
promised eternity to me. My heart was pounding hard in my chest, my
blood ablaze. I reached over, grabbed both sides of his t-shirt and
tugged it over his head. Drake’s eyes opened wide while the sight
of him nearly took my breath away. My hands were drawn to his
chiseled chest; his muscles screamed for me to press myself against
them. Without hesitation, I stretched over his naked chest as a
gravelly moan escaped his lips. I could feel his heartbeat pounding
in sync with mine, his breathing labored, “Camille, we’d better
slow down unless you think one of the pilots doubles as a
priest.”