Chosen by Fate (24 page)

Suddenly, her body went limp, sinking even farther into the mattress.

“Caleb?” The way she said his name almost broke his heart. Confused. And sad. And just a little grateful. Like she’d been in pain and he’d taken it away.

Before he could get off her, her chest started jerking in stuttering bursts. Small whimpers wrenched out of her despite her best efforts to contain them. He wrapped his arms around her, trying to comfort her, then realized what he was doing. How he must be hurting her. Swiftly, he pulled away from her until he was sitting beside her on the bed. Rather than easing her pain, his distance seemed to unleash a torrent of emotion in her. Her whimpers became louder until she was sobbing in the long guttural moans of someone in torturous pain. Her body started to shake, and feeling helpless, Caleb stroked her back over the fabric of her T-shirt and tried to make soothing sounds.

Minutes went by, and her voice became hoarse long before she started to calm down. Her body slowly stopped shaking, with only an occasional hiccup evidencing her still-raw emotions. Caleb smoothed his hands over her hair, knowing from experience that this kind of touch caused her very little pain, if any.

“Better?” he whispered.

She nodded her head, then let out a breathy sigh before burrowing closer to him.

“Was it the mage?”

She stiffened and tried to pull away, but Caleb wouldn’t let her. Far more quickly than he would have thought possible, she gave in to him. He decided to push his luck. He knew about the mage who’d taken her. The experiments that had been conducted on her body. Hell, he’d seen the videos himself, and there was no way he’d make her talk about that.

But he’d had no clue how the mage had captured her. At least not until the day after Knox’s wedding, when he’d been chasing her down and had a chance to think about things during his time on the road. To think about her obvious dislike for felines and her reaction to Mahone’s news about their mission.

The only reason she’d harbor that kind of hatred for an entire race was if one of their kind had betrayed her and betrayed her bad.

“It was a feline who betrayed you to the mage, wasn’t it?”

To his surprise, she didn’t stiffen again or attempt to pull away. “You’re a smart one, O’Flare.” Her voice sounded drowsy—his mind was still boggled by the notion that she’d slept. Her defenses, for once, seemed to be down, and he vaguely wondered if it was fair to question her now. But with Wraith, he had to take every advantage he could.

“Who was it?”

She shrugged. “Just a female I’d befriended soon after my transitioning. I learned later that she’d brought him four others. They . . . they didn’t make it.”

Now it was he who stiffened. “What do you mean, they didn’t make it? Wraiths are immortal.”

He saw her mouth twist in a sneer of self-loathing. “I mean they went crazy. Lost their minds. Maybe I did, too,” she whispered.

Now he pulled back and without thinking, hooked her chin to force her to look at him. “You’re not crazy. You’ve dealt with more than anyone should have to, and you’ve done the best you can. And if you can’t catch it yourself, that’s admiration you hear in my voice, Wraith, not pity. I’m sorry you were betrayed, but you have the team now. You have me. I know that doesn’t mean much to you, but—”

Before he could finish his thought, she reached out and pulled him down on top of her again. “It means more than you can know,” she said.

All at once, he was aware that she wore nothing but a thin white T-shirt and a pair of panties. Which was more than the single pair of boxer shorts that he wore. At some point, her legs had opened so that she cradled his hips against the warmth of her body, and his erection was rock-hard against her.

He lifted his head and stared down into her face. Her eyes, which seemed less filmy than normal—again, he caught glimpses of blue—immediately focused on his mouth. When her pink tongue peeked out and licked her bottom lip, he groaned and tried to move off of her. “I need to get back—”

“No, Caleb. Don’t leave me. Please.”

He flipped on a lamp. She automatically flinched back from the light. This close up, her eyes were definitely blue, while her skin was less so. In fact, she had a pink flush on her cheeks. One that was duplicated on the visible parts of her body. What the fuck . . . ?

“What’s going on, Wraith? Your eyes? Your skin? You look . . . you look—”

Human. Almost alive. He wanted to say it, but he didn’t dare.

She’d been calm just a few minutes ago, but now she seemed jittery. Disoriented. She reached out for him. “Kiss me, Caleb,” she breathed. “Please.”

He shook his head. “Wraith—”

“Please, Caleb. You touched me a second ago . . . You touched my chin. You touched me and it didn’t hurt. I don’t . . .” Her voice broke. “I don’t know how. But it didn’t hurt.”

Her words were like a punch in the gut. Could it be true? Was she somehow changing back to her human form? Was that why she’d slept? Had the wraith’s curse of pain left her body?

Slowly, he bent down and kissed her. The tender foray seemed more significant than intercourse. In fact, the gentle penetration of his tongue into her mouth felt like being welcomed home.

She opened her mouth immediately, sighing with relief as if she’d been waiting for him for a lifetime. He kissed her with long, smooth strokes of his tongue. She tasted sweet, like the cinnamon gum she preferred, but when he backed away he could taste the salty residue of her tears mingled with his blood. It jolted him enough that he let her arms go and tried to back away.

She wasn’t herself. And hadn’t he just sworn that he was through with this? With her?

“No.” She murmured the word and wrapped her arms around his neck. “No. Don’t go.”

“You were dreaming, Wraith. Having a nightmare. You’re obviously upset. You don’t want this. You made that more than clear earlier.”

She looked at him steadily. “I do want it, Caleb. Please. I know what I’m doing.”

She leaned up and initiated another kiss. Hesitantly sought his tongue with hers. When he didn’t respond, she backed away, looking hurt. “Don’t you want me, Caleb?”

Caleb laughed and closed his eyes for several moments. Did he want her? More than his next breath. When he opened his eyes, she was still looking at him uncertainly. He reached down and cupped her breast, and she gasped in pleasure. But when he wrapped his hand around the back of her neck to pull her close, he saw her flinch and immediately thought he must be hurting her.

He pulled away. “I’m sorry, Wraith. I can’t. Besides, we need to talk.”

“Why talk when we can—”

“Wraith. Didn’t you hear what I said about your eyes? And you were sleeping.”

She stiffened. “No. I was just resting—”

“You were more than resting. You were asleep and having a nightmare.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Is it?” He was watching her closely. Suspiciously.

“You think I lie about not being able to sleep, Caleb?”

“No, but what’s going on?”

“I don’t know. I guess it was a fluke. Or maybe a wraith needs to recharge every ten years or so. Who knows?” She stared at him as if seeking something in his expression. When she didn’t find it, her expression hardened. “Thanks for waking me, but if we’re not going to fuck, can you leave?”

Caleb clenched his teeth with fury and frustration, wondering why this kept happening to him. “Wraith, you know I want you, but I just can’t . . .” As much as he wanted her, her sudden change of heart seemed unbelievable given the way she’d pushed him away earlier. Combined with the shock of knowing she’d slept, that she was changing, it troubled him. Told him to proceed cautiously.

“Yeah, I know. You don’t want to hurt me, even though I told you the pain is gone. So why does it hurt when you’re pulling away?”

He sucked in a breath. “We can talk—”

“Leave, Caleb. Please.”

It was the way she said please that did it. She needed some space. So did he.

“We’ll talk in the morning, Wraith.”

I
t took Lucy several minutes and some bullshit about not being dressed to get herself composed. Now, standing in her hotel doorway, Dex looked at her with his moody hazel eyes, and she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw no judgment or recrimination in their depths. He had a stack of files tucked under his arm, which she assumed was the intel they needed on the clubs. She opened the door wider and motioned for him to come in. Even though her flesh was burning and the cramps were getting worse, she forced herself to act as if everything was normal. It wasn’t that tough given that she’d had years of experience.

“Any word from Mahone?” she said.

“No. He’s gone back to D.C. We’re on our own.”

She nodded her head at the files. “Are Caleb and Wraith on their way?”

“No.”

Lucy paused and turned to look at him, confused. “Don’t you think they should be? We all need to get up to speed.”

“They can get up to speed on their own. Right now, we need to get a few things settled, Lucy.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He looked at her chidingly. “Sure you do, sugar.”

“Look, if this is about the one-on-one touch training I asked Mahone about—”

“As a matter of fact, it is. You know O’Flare isn’t going to do it, Lucy. Even if he got it into his head to do it for your benefit and the mission’s, Wraith wouldn’t let it happen. She couldn’t. The connection between those two is too strong, no matter what the other thinks.”

“Wraith seemed to convince Caleb otherwise.”

“Yeah, she’s a trooper. We already know that. But then again, so are you.”

The admiration in his voice made her even more ashamed. She was a liar, that’s what she was. A liar and a slut, just like her mother. Just because she didn’t act on her need for sexual release didn’t mean she didn’t crave it with every ounce of her being. When she was in heat, anyway. Which seemed like always. “What do you mean?”

“I know you . . . have feelings for Caleb, Lucy, but nothing would have made you do what you did without a greater reason. A reason that was making you desperate.”

Fear made Lucy tense. Oh God. Had Dex guessed about her secret? If he had, she didn’t know what she would do. She hated her body’s weakness. How could he ever respect her if he knew what she was? Praying that he was just fishing, she said, “I just don’t want to mess things up for the team because of my own inexperience.”

“It’s more than inexperience, isn’t it?”

She said nothing.

“Lucy,” he said softly. “I know.”

No. No, no, no. “You know what?”

“I know you’re a feline. That you’re in heat. And that’s the reason you think you’re going to endanger the mission. Because if you don’t get some kind of sexual release beforehand, that’s all you’re going to be able to think about.”

“I don’t know what . . .” She swallowed her words because looking at Dex’s face told her they would be useless. Unable to look at him, she sat on her bed and stared at the carpet. “How do you know? Did Mahone . . .”

Dex walked up to her, crouched in front of her, and thumbed her chin up so she couldn’t avoid looking at him. “I suspected right from the beginning. I’m a dog. We can sense a cat more strongly than others. Makes sense, right? You gonna be honest with me now?”

“You’ve got a good nose,” she said bitterly.

“It’s okay, Lucy. You’re still the same mage I liked and respected the day I met you.”

She pulled her chin away from his grasp and stepped around him. “The same whore, yes.”

Dex snorted. “A virgin whore. That’s a new one.”

“Stop it. You know what I mean. What my destiny is!”

“What? Sexual pleasure? You’ve fought your nature for a long time, haven’t you? Why?”

She whirled on him. “Because I don’t want to be a prisoner to my sexuality, just like the rest of my race.”

“It’s part of you, Lucy, and it doesn’t make you a whore.”

“Just like being a were is part of you? Come on, Dex, if you could get rid of that part of you, be either fully human or fully were, wouldn’t you do it? Instead, you’re caught right in the middle, just like I am. Not wanted by either race because you’re different.”

“The felines don’t want you?”

“Not as I am. Not when I’m a mage
and
I reject my sexual urges. They think it’s unnatural. A rejection of what they are. And they’re right.”

He nodded. “Okay. So let me ask you this. You’d trust Caleb to touch you. Will you trust me?”

Stunned, she stared at him. “You can’t mean . . . I wasn’t going to ask Caleb to . . .”

He shrugged. “I’ll admit it’s a little weird. I know you don’t feel that way about me, and I don’t feel that way about you. But I care about you, little one. And I want to help. The only way you’re going to keep others from guessing about your little problem and be able to do your job in those clubs tomorrow is to gain some physical release. I can do that for you.”

Her confusion was genuine. “Why would you want to?”

Dex laughed long and hard. He actually wiped his eyes when he was done and shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous, Lucy. It might not be a romance between us, but you’re incredibly beautiful.”

Dex thought she was beautiful? “So you find me attractive?”

“Who wouldn’t? How about you? Is the thought of being touched by me unsavory? I’m not pretty like O’Flare. I’m rougher. With touch and words. Hell, I really am part dog . . .”

“Don’t you dare put yourself down!” Lucy strode up to him until she was toe-to-toe with him, having to look up a long way to meet his gaze. “Not when you’re being so generous with me, Dex. You’re extremely attractive, and any female would be lucky to have that kind of gift from you. But I . . . I don’t know. What about when you’re gone? What if I become dependent on needing release? Then I could turn into the very thing that I hate . . .”