Fear the Heart (Werelock Evolution Book 2) (12 page)

I was presently dependent upon Alcaeus to manage my transformation, and beyond that, the Reinosos were now my only protection against the Salvatellas. I’d essentially been backed into a corner, forced to side with the lesser of two evil werelock clans.

Ultimately, I decided I’d at least use the phone to check my own cell messages, and to call my best friend, Bethany, tomorrow, as I’d promised to check in with her when she’d dropped me off at San José International Airport a week ago.

Alex and I were alone in the guest bedroom, and I stood closer than was probably necessary as I watched him key his number, along with Alessandra's, into my contacts, under the guise of not knowing exactly how an iPhone worked, my current cell phone being an older Samsung model. I had an iPad though—so it wasn’t as if I was an Apple virgin.

Not for the first time, I noted he had very nicely formed, strong hands and long fingers. I flushed remembering the way those tanned hands had felt massaging my breasts earlier that morning in the gardens.

Jesus, it was as if my mind was only capable of returning to thoughts of depravity lately!
It had been gradually doing so more and more, all day long.

Feeling unsteady on my feet, I swayed, and my shoulder brushed up against his bicep. I shamelessly inhaled his scent into my lungs, closing my eyes to fully relish its hypnotic decadence. When I opened my eyes, I belatedly realized he’d stopped explaining the features of the phone and was staring down the side of his shoulder at me, his expression unreadable.

“Sorry,” I murmured, allowing my heavily lidded eyes to feast upon his stunning appearance. He was wearing a button-down shirt and dress slacks, and while this was more clothing than my pervy she-wolf wanted to see him in, he looked undeniably sophisticated—positively
gorgeous—
dressed as he was.

“Don’t be.” He drew in a long, steady inhale of his own, his eyes darkening to black as he brazenly scented me right back.

After a lengthy, heady pause, he went back to explaining my new phone to me. Once he was satisfied I knew how to contact him, he offered to help me access the Wi-Fi at Alcaeus’ house on my iPad. I got the sense he was just trying to kill as much time as possible with me. And strangely, I was more than okay with it.

As soon as I was connected to the Internet, I plopped down onto the bed and excitedly logged into my email account, a certain giddiness overtaking me at being reconnected with my own world again—if only virtually. Alex offered to help me unpack my things while I checked my emails. I wanted to let him, just to keep him and his scent around a little while longer, but knowing how silly and desperate that would be, I was about to decline his offer when I glanced up to find he’d already begun putting my things away for me. So I thanked him instead.

He smiled and responded with a simple and yet somehow devastatingly sexy, “You are welcome, Milena.”

I sighed, trying to ignore the way the sound of his baritone voice spoke to my nether regions as I set out to sift through my emails. There was a ton of junk mail, six emails from Bethany, a dozen or so more from other friends, two from my mom’s estate attorney, and two from the lady I’d recently been in contact with at the bank after I could no longer afford my mom’s mortgage payments.

A sense of dread settled in the pit of my stomach, but I opened the bank emails first. Though it would suck, after everything else I’d lost and all the heartache I’d encountered since coming to Brazil, I knew losing my childhood home to foreclosure was the very least of my problems right now.

It was with great confusion that I read and reread the first bank email, confirming that they had received my wire from
Bank of Brazil
, satisfying in full the balance due on my mortgage. The second email included an attachment, an executed Satisfaction of Mortgage, officially acknowledging that the mortgage had been paid in full and was no longer a lien on the property. The email text indicated that the document would be recorded shortly with the County Recorder of Deeds, and a copy of the recorded document sent to me for my records, in order to fully clear the title of the property, which was now in my name, as sole owner. I blinked and reread the emails.

“Why?” I questioned aloud as Alex returned from storing my emptied suitcase in the closet. “Why would you do this? There’s no way I can pay you back. Why would you do this?” I asked, tears forming in my eyes.

He looked both startled and dismayed. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“My house. You paid off my mom’s house! The mortgage balance was well over four hundred thousand dollars, Alex. Why would you do this?”

He shook his head. He looked puzzled. “I didn’t—”

“He didn’t do it to upset you, Milena,” Alcaeus said, waltzing into the bedroom and jumping right into our disjointed half conversation. “He just didn’t want you to have to worry about losing your family home while dealing with everything else you have on your plate right now.”

Alex frowned at his brother. “I didn’t pay off—”

“He didn’t want you to know it was him,” Alcaeus explained to me, once again cutting off his little brother, who appeared more perplexed than ever. “And he wouldn’t think of you ever repaying him one single penny. Count it as recompense for all of his awful behavior toward you,” Alcaeus suggested with a broad grin.

Alex scowled at his brother. “Just what the fuck—”

“I assured him you wouldn’t be mad, Milena,” Alcaeus interrupted Alex again, giving me a pleading look. “
C’mon
”—he waved a dismissive hand—“you know he sucks ass at apologizing. Consider this Alex’s attempt at a
long-overdue apology,”
Alcaeus said, emphasizing the last three words with a raised brow to his brother. “Besides,” he said brightly, “the arrogant fucker is loaded anyway, so it’s barely the beginnings of a decent apology, as I see it.”

“Alcaeus?” Alex gave his grinning brother a meaningful glare.

Alcaeus held his hands up, backing himself out of the open bedroom door. “Hey, the funds came out of
your
bank account, little bro. Time to man up and take responsibility for your more redeeming actions.”

Alex rolled his eyes before scrubbing a hand over his tired face, chuckling without humor. He seemed at a loss.

I didn’t know what to say either. So I just stared at him, waiting for him to speak first. He appeared so thoroughly flustered, so oddly embarrassed by the situation. Had he really expected I wouldn’t guess it had been him when the funds were wired from
Bank of Brazil?

“Alcaeus is right … that you don’t … you don’t owe me anything, Milena.” His speech was awkward, stilted.

Crap.
He was completely adorable when he got all nervous and tongue-tied.

“I don’t want you to be upset by this … or to feel beholden to me in any way for it. Do you … do you understand?” He cocked his head, regarding me through squinted, anxious eyes.

I couldn’t speak. This was possibly the most endearing he’d ever been, and I didn’t know how to handle it.

Alex had bought my house for me! And if he’d bought my house for me, didn’t that mean he’d expected at some point that I would go back to live there?

What’s more, the email from the bank indicated the wire had been received last Friday, the very day after my arrival, which could only mean he hadn’t truly planned on keeping me hostage here forever after all.
Right?

He’d actually intended all along to let me go home at some point! For some bizarre reason, that knowledge both relieved and saddened me.

“Al is wrong … in that this isn’t meant to forgive anything.” He tugged at the back of his neck, his flushed face angled toward the ceiling. “I just … I would never try to buy your forgiveness like that. Not really my style.”

In truth, it wasn’t his style to seek forgiveness, period.
But I chose not to voice that thought. Instead, I tossed my iPad aside atop the bed and darted across the room to him before I lost my nerve. Straining up on tiptoe, I managed to just peck the side of his chin before backing up several safe paces.

The expression on his face was priceless. He looked shocked. And outrageously pleased—like I’d just gifted him ten houses rather than a simple peck on the chin.

“Thanks. For the iPhone, for unpacking my things … for helping me connect to the Internet … and for …”—my shoulder self-consciously crept up to my ear—“for buying me the house I grew up in.”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing.”

A crazy fit of emotional, almost maniacal laughter overtook me then. My mom had killed herself over the years trying to hold onto that stupid house. It was so much more than nothing.

“You’re such an asshole. It’s hardly nothing, Alex.”

His eyes instantly flew wide, and his face fell. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know, I know,” I stopped him. “I didn’t mean it like that either. I just …” I exhaled, “I hate how you can be such a dick … and then turn around and be so sweet.”

“Milena, I’m s—”

“But I can’t hate
you,”
I confessed, rolling watery eyes at my own bold and foolish admission. “Part of me feels like the world’s greatest imbecile for that. And yet I can’t stop believing that somehow you’re capable of being so much …
more
 … so much …
better
 … than who you’ve been.”

I winced at the stupidity of my own words, as startlingly truthful as they were. “Though I have far less cause to believe in you than not … I do.”

“Milena,” he breathed, “I swear I’m trying …” He licked his lips, his hand rubbing absently against his chest, as if it ached. “If you’ll just give me more time, I know I can be better than who I’ve been. Please?” He took a step closer. “It hurts so much anymore to disappoint you.”

“Then don’t.” I took a step back, not trusting my she-wolf—or myself—to be able to respond appropriately to the way in which he was looking at me.

He nodded after an uncomfortable beat, looking utterly crestfallen. “If you need me for anything … anything at all, don’t hesitate to contact me, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed, while trying to tamp down the inexplicable inner panic I suddenly felt, sensing his imminent departure.

For a mad second I desperately wanted to ask him to stay, my mind racing as I tried to think up any manner of excuse I could conjure as a reason for him to remain in my presence for just a little while longer. But my prideful, rational side prevented it, stubbornly sealing my lips in the final moments that he stood surveying me expectantly.

“I’ll be sleeping right outside tonight,” he added quietly. “So if … if you need anything …”

I nodded, hoping my strained smile offered some reassurance that I was going to be fine as it occurred to me I might actually need a lot of things from Alex. Things I could hardly express, much less ask him for.

***

I slept fitfully, my chest aching continuously. On top of that, my head was throbbing. Several times I woke up feeling like someone was knocking on my skull with a hammer. As the night progressed, it seemed as if they were growing more impatient, and therefore less gentle with their incessant banging.

I knew Alex was faring no better, as each time I awoke, I heard his wolf baying outside my open window below. I suspected he was somehow sensing at least in part what I was feeling, and I felt a little guilty for making him suffer too.

After several hours of tossing and turning, I’d just managed to fall into a reasonably comfortable, light sleep, when a painful burning sensation seared sharply straight into the back of my head like a laser, and I screamed myself awake.
Awakening the entire house in the process.

Alcaeus was the first to burst into my bedroom, leaping cat-like onto the bed to crouch overtop of me, naked but for a white sheet tucked haphazardly around his lower torso.

I was still screaming bloody murder, sitting upright and clutching my head, when he grabbed my face in between his hands and tilted it back for his inspection.

“Shh-shh … stop, stop, stop, Milena,” he crooned. “Shh—it’s gonna be okay, just calm down so I can have a look and fix whatever is wrong, all right? Relax and let me in, please, sweetheart?”

He must have hit me with a powerful punch of his calming mojo then because my entire body sagged back down to the mattress, and I was so relaxed I barely even registered the sounds of crashing downstairs, or noticed when an anxious, shirtless Kai barged into the room next, flipping the lights on and crowding over me in the small space that remained next to Alcaeus on the left side of the bed, demanding to know what had happened.

They exchanged quick words in Portuguese and then I felt them both gently probing around inside of my mind. The pain was gone, and my eyes had just fluttered shut when I heard more panicked voices filing into the room. My absolute favorite scent wafted over me, accompanied by the sound of Alex and Guadalupe quarreling in Portuguese.

“She’s fine!” Alcaeus announced to the newcomers, his tone distinctly annoyed. “We were handling it, Alex. There was no need to break my front door down.”

“Handling it? She’s been suffering discomfort for hours, Al! What the fuck took you so long?”

“I was sleeping. I’m a heavy sleeper.”

“I know! That’s what fucking scares me!” Alex pushed his way through to occupy the scant remaining space on the bed to my right.

Alcaeus cursed and relinquished my inner head to Kai, who I sensed inspecting me still, diligently checking for injury.

“What happened?” Alex demanded. “Scratch that,
who
happened?”

“Who do you think?”

“Fucking imbecile!” Alex groused. “Did he manage to cause any harm?”

“No, she’s fine,” Kai confirmed, withdrawing from my mind.

“You hear that, Lupe?” Alcaeus called over his shoulder. “She’s fine, you can go on back to bed.”

I hadn’t managed to catch so much as a glimpse of Guadalupe with their three hulking, shirtless forms crowded over me. In my state of lassitude, their combined heat and scents were quite overwhelming. Alex’s fingers were combing through my hair, dragging along my scalp. I could feel my whole body warming—every inch of my skin flushing, my belly tightening.