Honored Vow (18 page)

I sighed deeply. “Sounds like Yuri.”

“I was just floored. I mean they could have—they could live here with you and Logan, they are both related to the only nekhene cat in a thousand years.”

“But all they see is a gay man,” I told him. “And that’s fine, because gay is a word that can be used to define me. It’s not all I am, but it is a facet of the whole.”

“They don’t understand,” he said, shivering.

“And that’s okay,” I sighed, patting his hand before I stepped away from him. “Because I have a family of my own that accepts and loves me.”

“It still has to hurt Jin, be honest.”

“I am,” I assured him. “They left me for dead, and the only one who came to for me was Crane.”

“Crane?”

“Yeah. He replaced them all—mother, brother, father, there’s only him now.”

“Your father said that he was glad that your grandmother didn’t live to see the abomination that you grew into.”

I chuckled. “Well, it would be funny for him to know that my grandmother, his mother, is the one that told me that it was okay that the first person I ever had a crush on was one of the khatyu in the tribe.”

“She knew you had a crush on a guy?”

“Yes, she did, because I told her.”

“What did she say?”

“She said what she always said—that my love was a gift, and whoever was lucky enough to get it should count themselves blessed.”

“She sounds like she was wonderful.”

“She was.”

He cleared his throat. “Can I ask what happened to the guy you had your first crush on? I might know—”

“He died a long time ago.”

“How?”

“I mean, to me.” I smiled gently. “He was one of the men who beat me when I turned into a reah for the first time in front of others.”

“Oh God, Jin, to have someone you—”

“My parents are the bigger tragedy,” I assured him. “My brother…. But you’re getting upset over ancient history.”

“You’re lying if you say it doesn’t bother you.”

My eyes flicked to his, and he shivered.

“I’m sorry, my reah, I forgot my place for—”

“It’s fine; you can believe what you want. But what’s true is that I’m the reah of my tribe and I don’t have time to live in the past. I have people to take care of, a best friend to help heal, and a mate to defend. I have people who love me now; I don’t have time to worry about people who wish I was dead.”

He studied me, looking for a lie on me. But he wouldn’t find one. I had closed the door on my past, finally, when my father had first visited me after Logan and I were mated. The door had been sealed in Sobek after both my father and Crane’s had spoken to the priest. I wished that after I knew the hatred that lived in both men’s hearts, Crane had not fallen into their hands. I would give anything to have kept him safe.

“Oh God, Jin.”

If I had only been able to safeguard him… what I wouldn’t have given to protect my friend.

“Jin!”

My head snapped up, and I turned toward the kitchen as Yuri emerged.

“Yes?”

“Your power,” he said, scowling at me, squinting before he tipped his head behind me.

Turning, I found Danny in his panther form, wrestling with his clothes, trying to get free.

“Oh shit,” I groaned, going to my knees, reaching for him.

He hissed at me, and I flicked him on the nose.

“Jin, be careful,” Yuri growled, crossing the room fast even as Danny went limp under my hands, having rolled over on his back, paws in the air in complete surrender.

“Of what, the deadly housecat here?” I scoffed, rolling my eyes at my sheseru.

“All cats are dangerous,” he told me, dropping down to one knee, rubbing Danny’s chin, hard, then his cheeks, and finally his ears. “Even sweet little kittens like this.”

I heard Danny’s loud purring, watched him run his chin over Yuri’s hand and finally curl his body around the man.

I squinted at Yuri.

“What?”

“He’s all cat right now and can’t understand a word, so I’m gonna ask you, what’s with all the attention?”

“He’s cute.” Yuri gave me a lopsided grin.

“Is he?”

“Very.”

“So, uhm,” I said, chuckling. “What are your intentions here?”

He ended by rubbing Danny’s ass, which of course made him lift it, wanting more. He was a panther—I had forced his shift out of my frustration, which had translated to sexual heat, and now Yuri had spent long minutes petting him, which had over stimulated him. My sheseru was also bigger and stronger, and Danny was showing him the depth of his submission.

Yuri stood up, and Danny let out a whine of protest that came out as a very resentful meow. My sheseru was right, he was very cute.

“He doesn’t want me,” Yuri told me, his eyes on mine. “He wants Mikhail. I get that, he’s handsome, I’m not—it makes sense.”

“Yuri, you—”

“Stop.” He smiled at me. “You are my reah, you see me as no one else does. I know my value to you and to my semel. I have a good family, great friends, I lack for nothing. I don’t need you to extol my virtues; I live well in my skin.”

“Yes, but—”

“I’ve had women in my bed; I’ve had men as well. Someday I’ll find my mate, and he or she will love me as I am. Until then I am content. Someone should tell Danny here, though, that as much as Mikhail doesn’t give a shit that his semel is gay, or his maahes, he himself is as straight as Crane is. Mikhail’s lust runs only to women. Danny’s gonna get his heart diced up if he’s not careful.”

“I think it’s like you said, Mikhail’s not caring what people do in their own bedrooms is giving Danny the wrong impression.”

“Agreed.”

I rose and, as always, even on my feet, had to tip my head back to meet Yuri’s eyes. “I think if you let him know what—”

“I have no illusions about what Danny thinks of me,” he said, smirking. “You shouldn’t either.”

I didn’t want him to think of himself as lacking, because he wasn’t, in any way.

At six five, the man was massive. He was not the rippling muscular that Logan was; his body was not cut and chiseled. He was built, instead, like a tank, like a mountain. Yuri’s biceps were as big as some men’s thighs, so that what you noticed first was the space the man took up, how he seemed to fill any room he was in. Second, you saw his face. He had deep-set eyes, dark cobalt, a long straight nose, and dark, full lips. I had always seen the beauty in the man, but from seeing the reaction of others, I understood that I was in the minority. I saw Yuri clearly, but most people saw only his size and strength.

“You—”

“Besides,” he said, giving me a sly grin, “I don’t want a boy, I want a man.”

And the way he said it made me squint at him. “Do you have someone in mind?”

“I might.”

He might?
“Who?” I asked, being a total girl at that moment and not giving a damn.

His eyes narrowed, and I knew I was going to have to dig, but we were interrupted.

“What happened?”

We both turned to Crane as he came walking into the room.

“I fucked with Danny,” I said, grimacing.

His smile was endearing because he was looking at me like he always did, like I was a total idiot. “Brilliant.”

“Yeah, well,” I said with a shrug. “It was an accident.”

“Come here.”

Mikhail, who slept like the dead, finally woke up as I was crossing to Crane. I asked him to herd Danny up to his room, as Yuri was already striding across the room toward the front door.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve got another hunt tonight,” he told me. “Christophe very kindly sent up six of his panthers who have never met me to help.”

“And told them to do what?” I was concerned.

“Kill me, if they could,” he told me from the door.

“Yuri—”

“Jin.” He was exasperated, and some of it was at me, but some was because of what he had almost confessed to me, and all of it together was making him snarly. “I need to practice, and I can’t do it with any of the panthers in our own tribe because Logan makes sure that everyone comes to our gatherings so no one hasn’t fuckin’ seen me.”

And I knew that. The last gathering we had, over the long Memorial Day holiday, had seen more than four hundred people coming and going at different times. It was like a fair. There were booths for food and drinks—all free, of course—and dancing, and, of course, hunting. Yuri had led most of the hunts himself, and everyone knew the sheseru and sylvan of the tribe of Mafdet as they strolled the grounds. Normally, they traveled together, Yuri loud, the extrovert, and Mikhail reserved at his side, the introvert. Taj was there, too, always with a woman on each arm. I had watched it all from my balcony, content to breathe in the smells, see everyone enjoying themselves, instead of trying to walk the grounds of my own home when it was open to the entire tribe.

At the gathering before the Memorial Day one, in August, I had tried to take part, but I had been stopped every five feet, sometimes ten, by people who wanted to talk to me and touch me. And I had enjoyed seeing my tribe, wanted to know them all, see them all, but it had gotten to a point, after the discovery that I was a nekhene cat, that it was too much. Logan didn’t like me being constantly pawed, Mikhail didn’t like the grabbing at me, and then, on the final day of the gathering, on that Monday night, I got stuck in the middle of people pushing and shoving to reach me, and when my hair got yanked and my clothes torn, I lost my footing for just a minute and was pulled to the ground. Yuri’s yell had been frightening. Everyone froze, and he lifted me free, set me on my feet, and took my face in his hands to look at me. Even with me assuring him that I was fine, I was thrown over his back in the fireman carry and taken to the house. Logan had appeared when I got out of the shower.

“No more.”

I was towel-drying my hair, having changed into sweats and a T-shirt and warm wool socks that Delphine had made me. They were bright fuchsia and neon lime green. “So I don’t get to see my tribe anymore? I don’t get to attend gatherings?”

“People can come to the house, stand in line if they want to see you, and offer their regards. We’ll make it so all the gatherings from now on are three days long, start them all on a Friday, but, Jin—I won’t have people so frantic to put their hands on you, so excited to see you, that they end up hurting you. I won’t.”

I went to my armoire and opened the door, took a brush from the shelf, and walked it to Logan. Turning, I presented him with my long, thick black hair.

“Why’re you being nice to me?”

I turned to look at him over my shoulder. “Because I want you to change your mind. One bad encounter does not—”

“It does,” he said, cutting me off, hand in my hair as he gently tugged with the paddle brush. “I won’t have you hurt, Jin, because your tribe loves you so much that they can’t stand to not touch you.”

“A reah needs to be accessible.”

“A reah stands at the side of their mate and doesn’t question him.”

I scoffed and heard the answering groan.

“How did I know that wasn’t gonna fly?”

Standing there, letting him brush my hair, I closed my eyes, reveling in the ministrations of my mate. When he pushed my hair aside and I felt his lips press down onto my shoulder, I shivered hard.

“I can’t have you hurt, Jin, I’ve failed you once already. I—”

“You’ve never failed me,” I told him, turning in his arms to look up into his golden eyes. “I’m a powerful werepanther, Logan. I don’t need anyone to protect me; I just need you to love me.”

“And I do, you know that,” he said, putting his hands on my hips, pulling me close, his thigh pressed to my groin, leaning forward until our foreheads touched. “But I know you won’t use any of your considerable power to extricate yourself from members of your tribe. So because you don’t want to hurt them, they’re going to end up hurting you. Do you get the problem?”

“Yes.” I smiled, enjoying the closeness, his hands digging into my hips, the sound of his breathing getting shallow, and the way he pushed against me with the now-hardened bulge in his vintage jeans. “I think the semel-netjer needs to claim what’s his.”

“I’m not some mindless brute that just wants to fuck his mate when—”

“If you take me, you’ll know I’m fine.”

“I—” He took a breath, and I saw his pupils dilate with need. “Jin.”

I loved him flustered, torn between duty and desire; he was so serious most of the time that distracting him was all kinds of fun. And of course I would never try if what he was supposed to be doing was important—I was the mate of a tribe leader, after all—but to keep him from the last gasp of a gathering was really not that big of a sin.

My pheromones filled the room. “Fuck me.”

“Jin,” he growled, and I smiled before I lifted my head, and he claimed my lips in a rough, mauling kiss.

He was all hands, my sweats and underwear stripped away, the T-shirt yanked off over my head. Only the socks remained as he hurled me down on our bed, face-first onto the comforter. I lifted to my hands and knees, and when he touched my ass, spread my cheeks, I moaned out his name.

“My reah,” he rasped before his tongue slid over my puckered hole.

“Logan!”

“Again?” he teased me.

I had made a mistake. I thought I was seducing him when it was really the other way around. “You let me think I was corrupting you,” I managed to get out.

“Yes.”

My whimper was embarrassing, would have been if this were anyone but my mate. As it was, I was myself, honest with what I needed, wanted, and held nothing back.

“I love the way you taste,” he told me and plunged his tongue inside me deeper, licking and sucking, swirling, thrusting, the long languid stroking slowly driving me right out of my mind. When he added his fingers, pressing, pushing, grazing over my gland, scissoring inside over and over, relentlessly, words were lost to me. Only grunts and growls and whimpers and whines escaped me as my muscles clung to the invading flesh. No one but my mate had ever taken such time and care to open me up; no one but Logan had ever wanted to.

It went on and on, and I knew without even giving voice to the question that Logan Church loved exercising his power over me, loved watching me come apart.