Jace (14 page)

“Well, he wouldn’t find it hard to kill you.”

“I don’t go down easy, Miri. And any man whose personal code forbids him to lie would have pretty tight rules about when he could kill.”

“Pack law says he has to kill you if he doesn’t want control of the pack to go to a vampire.”

“Pack law says he can kill Jace, not that he should,” Caleb interjected, watching Tobias in the way he had of doing when he was working on a puzzle.

“What difference does that make?” she asked, pushing against his side.

“About as much difference between a mate being marked and not marked,” Tobias answered, leaning back against the counter.

Miri shifted uncomfortably and glared harder at the were. “That’s none of your business.”

Tobias shrugged. “It is if I decide it’s so.”

Another if. The man talked a lot in ifs. And every one seemed to pluck at Miri’s nerves. Enough so, that Jace was beginning to wonder if he was doing it on purpose.

Caleb sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Hell. What do you want to do?”

“Sit down,” Tobias said.

Jared nodded. “I can go for that.” He cocked an eyebrow at Tobias. “What about you?”

“I didn’t want to get up in the first place.”

Jace shook his head, his sense of humor tickled despite his weariness. “True enough.”

It took about a minute for everyone to calm down enough to resume their seats and when they did, Miri was at the far end of the table on Jace’s lap with a wall of Johnsons between her and Tobias. The were’s only reaction was another twitch of his lips.

Damn, but Jace found himself liking the guy.

Miri turned her head so fast their noses bumped. “I can’t believe you thought that. He’s planning to kill you!”

“That hasn’t been established.” And then he realized what she’d done. “You read my thoughts?”

“Not on purpose.”

Jared laughed. “Jace has always been contrary. Liking a man who wants to kill him is right on course.”

“How did you know—” She cut herself off, acceptance in her sigh. “You’re very good with energy.”

“Yup.”

She glanced at Caleb. “What are you good at?”

“A lot of things.”

“And you?” She glanced at Tobias.

“Upholding the letter of the law.”

Her chin came up. “Just keep the letter of your law off my mate.”

Tobias took a sip of his coffee. “You’re claiming him?”

Miri’s answer was a flash of her canines.

Pretty little weres happy with their mates can’t resist marking them.
The Enforcer’s words came back to him. She was protecting him with every snarl she had, yet Miri hadn’t marked him. And marking was significant. Son of a bitch.

Jace pulled her tighter against him, the tension in her body transferring to him. Where did wolves leave their mark? On the shoulder, the neck? He pictured Miri beneath him as he loved her, her face beautiful with her passion. Projected where her mouth would land. His right pectoral burned. He wanted her mark there.

Jared cleared his throat and Tobias laughed. One glance at their faces and he knew he’d been projecting.

“Just shut up.”

Miri frowned. “What?”

Hell, if he had to project, why hadn’t it been to her? “Nothing.”

Caleb leaned back in his chair. “If we’re done playing king of the hill, can someone tell me what the hell happened tonight?”

“We walked into a trap.”

“Faith wasn’t there?”

“Someone has been there, but we don’t know if it was Faith.”

“Why the hell not?”

“We tripped a booby trap before we could get Miri in to confirm the scent.”

“It was Faith.”

There was no doubting the conviction in Tobias’s voice. Miri certainly didn’t.

“She’s alive.” It wasn’t a question. “She was there until about four hours before we arrived.”

“How could you tell?” Jared asked.

Tobias shrugged. “Part of my special powers.”

“Do your special powers have the ability to tell me who has my niece now?” Caleb asked, almost conversationally, though anyone who knew him could tell he was coiled tighter than a rattler ready to strike.

“No, but the overwhelming scent there was vampire.”

The only vampires Jace knew outside of themselves were Sanctuary. The small expulsion of air Miri made was almost indistinct, yet every eye turned to her. Hell, she didn’t need to hear this. Jace pulled Miri close, as if through the tightness of his grip he could keep her from understanding what that meant. It was impossible.

“You’re saying they have her.”

“I’m saying a vampire has her.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“Maybe not,” Caleb offered. “We’re pretty sure it was a vampire who got her out of the Sanctuary stronghold.”

“He said he was were.”

“A were wouldn’t have had the powers to get a baby out of the Sanctuary.”

Jace held Miri tighter, looking at Tobias again, suspicion licking hot along his control. “But an Enforcer would.”

“Don’t look at me,” Tobias countered. “If I were the one who had Faith, she’d be tucked away safe among the D’Nallys.”

“But not with her mother,” Jared murmured.

Tobias shrugged. “I didn’t know where she was and my first priority would be the safety of the baby.”

“But not the safety of her mother?”

“Had anyone known Miri was alive, her safety would have been a priority. We only became aware of her situation recently.”

“Has my wife been telling tales again?” Jared asked.

Tobias didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. Jace was beginning to think the man’s silences were more important than his words. Apparently, so did Jared.

“I can see my Raisa is a bit overdue to have her butt paddled.”

Miri’s rage slammed into him like a hammer as her snarl ripped into the room. “Don’t you touch her!” Jace caught the back of her shirt just in case she intended to go for the man. She didn’t, but tension was in every line of her body. Her elbow connected with his side. “Let me go!”

Jared merely cocked a brow at Jace. “Hell of a temper your wife has there.”

“She’s passionate about everything she cares about,” he muttered, reeling her in with an arm around her waist.

Miri dug her claws into Jace’s arm, adding new cuts to the old. “Tell her you’re not going to touch Raisa, before she turns me into a pincushion.”

Jared, of course, chose that moment to become uncooperative. “What I do with my wife is my business.”

The claws cut deeper. “Let me go!”

“No.” Miri’s snarls rolled from her throat, punctuated with tiny, high-pitched gasps as she struggled to get free.

“Miri, sweet, settle.” Instead of settling, she struggled harder. Her claw caught on his cheekbone, just under his eye, nicking the skin. He didn’t think she noticed as her attention was all on Jared. “No,” she snarled as her muscles gathered to fight, her gaze fixed on Jared. “I won’t let it happen again.”

It was the first clue Jace had to the mystery of what she locked so deep. Witnesses or not, he wasn’t losing it. “Not let what happen, Miri?”

Sweat poured off her, bitter with fear and stress. Images flashed through his mind: Raisa screaming, agony in her eyes, her pretty face distorted by whatever was happening; another woman, another face, this time blood; men’s bodies surrounding the woman as they held her down. Faces whirling through guilt. So much guilt for surviving, for not being able to give them what they needed so no one else would be hurt. It was as if Raisa’s and the other woman’s screams had gouged permanent holes in her soul. Wounds that would never heal. Aching wounds she hoarded for the time when she could find a way to forget.

A rumbling joined the screams. A chair scraped back. Jace looked up and found the same snarl on his brothers’ lips that was on his own. Not surprisingly, he’d been projecting, but that low rumble was coming from Tobias.

“Not again what, Miri?” Jace repeated.

“He’s not going to hurt her because of me.”

“Son of a bitch.”

Jared came around the table, squatted down in front of Miri, and lifted her chin.

He waited a second, studying Miri’s face, his eyes lit with flames, before he continued. “Nothing will ever hurt Raisa again. I promise you.”

None of the tension left Miri. “You’re vampire.”

Jared cocked his brow at Jace in silent question.

“Just rank yourself around the level of a cow turd. It saves time.”

“If we’re so despicable, why’d you pick one as your mate?”

Without a pause the words came tripping off her tongue. “Mating is not a choice.”

Jace was getting damn sick and tired of hearing that.

“Well, I’m not pack, and for me it is a choice. I waited a long time for Raisa to come into my life, so you can rest easy on one score—it’s my life’s work to keep her happy and smiling.”

“He’s pretty good at it, too,” Caleb offered. “Think it’s been a whole week since she set him on his ass.”

Miri just blinked. Drops of blood dripped onto her shirt, sinking into the pale pink of her blouse. She tugged at her hand. He released it. She reached up, touching the spot. When she stared uncomprehendingly at the red on her fingers, he turned her in his lap, resting his cheek on her hair. “It’s not the Johnson way to hurt a woman.”

“Actually, it’s rumored they spoil their women,” Tobias offered.

He didn’t say that with approval.

Miri just lay against him, unconvinced. “Jared would die rather than harm a hair on Raisa’s head, Miri.”

“Then why did she put him on his butt?”

Jace brushed his lips against her hair. Hair that usually smelled like a clean breath of spring, but which now harbored the scents of panic and fear and stress.

“Because he likes to tease her and because they’ve only been together a few weeks, he can be dense as to when enough is enough.”

“True enough.” Jared smiled. The sternness of his features softened as he pushed to his feet. “And the fact that she feels a need to make it up to me afterward is darn attractive.”

“Figures sex would be in there somewhere.”

“Like it doesn’t with wolves.”

Tobias shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’m not mated.”

Miri slowly straightened. Her gaze locked on the were as if a puzzle piece had fallen into place.

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” Miri asked. “You’re looking for an outlaw. You think he’s here.”

Tobias neither denied it nor confirmed it.

“That’s a pretty damning silence,” Jared offered.

“And here I thought it was just silence.”

“You’ve got an outlaw Enforcer on the loose?” Caleb asked.

“We’re not sure he’s Renegade.”

“How can you not know?”

“Because he’s not one of us,” Tobias answered, an edge to his voice.

“What in hell does that mean? If it walks like a duck and quacks like duck, it’s a duck,” Jared snapped.

“Unless there’s no record of the duck’s existence. Then it can be about any damn thing it wants.”

“Son of a bitch. Things didn’t used to be so complicated back in the day. We had the occasional cattle rustler, rabid fox, Indian raid, but at least we knew who in hell was the bad guy.”

“Feeling nostalgic?” Jared asked.

Caleb finished off the last of his coffee. “Things are changing too fast.”

“Vampire, Enforcer, what does it matter?” Miri whispered. She turned her face into his chest. “How are we going to get Faith back if we don’t know who has her?”

The soft whisper slid into the silence, putting all their fears into the open.

Jace cupped her head in his hand, holding her close, taking her pain into his own, doing his best to shelter her from both. “By not giving up until we find her.”

L
OST
. Miri moaned, holding her stomach against the pain. Her little girl was lost. She’d sent her out into the world because she’d wanted to do what was best, and now her baby was lost in the hands of a monster.

“Don’t go believing the worst, Miri.”

She shook her head, denying the hysterical bubble of laughter that burst against the hard muscle of Jace’s chest. “Why would I have to do that? Imagining the best is bad enough.”

“I hate to be the one to point it out,” Jace said, his drawl low and confident, “but your optimism is slipping.”

“You just noticed?”

“I can be slow on the uptake.”

He’d never been slow on anything, but he was trying to spare her by providing a distraction. She could feel him probing her mind, siphoning off emotion in gentle sips, fighting for her sanity harder than
she
ever could. She licked her lips and took the lifeline he offered. “Why am I in charge of optimism, anyway?”

“Because I’m in charge of kicking ass. Jared’s in charge of search and destroy. Caleb is in charge of planning, and Slade is in charge of survival. That just leaves optimism for you.”

She pushed her hair off her face, but she didn’t push away. Jace was solid. Strong. And he was holding her lifeline. The hope that someday she’d get her baby back, her faith back, her trust back.

“We just might be in trouble.”

“No. We’re not.” He eased her a step away. She resented the cool air that filled the gap between them. She resented the time between them. Resented more than anything that their lives weren’t normal, that their daughter wasn’t here. He bent. She reached. In the next second she was in his arms. “Where are we going?”

“To bed. You need to rest and recover.”

From the abortion or her conversion?

The answer slipped into her mind with the delicacy of a kiss.
Both.

I can’t talk about that with you.

She didn’t have to explain what she meant. He knew.

You will.

She closed her eyes and buried her face in his neck.
No.

Even as she thought it, she knew she would.

Jace nodded to the others. “We’ll catch you all later tonight.”

She looked over his shoulder. Tobias was watching her. As she’d known he would be. “Don’t go anywhere,” he told her.

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

The reminder made her uncomfortable. She spread her fingers wide, covering as much of Jace’s neck as she could. If she didn’t need him so much, she would have ordered the brothers to get rid of the were, but she did need him. She needed everything she could throw at her daughter’s rescue. And an Enforcer was a very big something.

“You don’t need to shield me, Miri,” Jace said. “Tobias isn’t the type to stab me in the back.”

A hitch of her arm between them and she could see Jace’s face. “How do you know?”

“He’s an honorable man.”

“He’s an Enforcer. They’re capable of anything.”

“Capable is not a bad thing, sweet. And if you’d stop wiggling, I’d take you back to our cabin and prove it to you.”

Sex. He was talking about sex. “Do you think of anything else?”

JACE
opened the kitchen door, breathing deeply of the early morning air. Dawn was cracking the shell of the night, pale beams of light filtering through cracks in the darkness and filling them with light.

“After a year of doing without, not hardly.”

The soft puffs of her breath ceased, retracted, started again.

“You don’t have to lie to me, Jace.”

The comment hit him harder than it should. His response was dry. “Let me guess. Fidelity isn’t something vampires are capable of.”

“That isn’t what I said.”

The cabin was next door to the house. Too short a walk in which to get rid of his anger, long enough for him to feel the burn of her disbelief. He skipped the stairs and leapt to the porch.

“You know, with all those negative thoughts you have about me, it’s a wonder you took up with me at all.”

She had the gall to look surprised. “I don’t think badly of you.”

He let her slide down his body as he reached for the door. “Well, if that’s the case, you might want to start communicating something positive before my ego takes any more of a beating.”

She stood there, arms wrapped around her torso as the breeze toyed with her hair, blowing strands across her face in tentacles of darkness. She didn’t push them away. “Your ego seems healthy enough.”

He cleared the hair from her face, enjoying the slide of silky softness against the back of his fingers as he tucked it behind her ears. “That’s because you’re only looking at the surface.”

She blinked. He felt the brush of her mind. It was easy to deflect the probe. Just as easy to understand the source of her frown. If she wanted answers, she could just ask him. If she wasn’t going to believe those answers, then she could just stop wasting time by asking.

Reaching around her, he opened the door. It swung inward on a soft creak. Just inside, the alarm panel flashed. The two steps it took for him to get close enough to push the buttons seemed to put a mile between them. In the old days, her energy would have trailed him, reaching out in subtle tendrils, caressing him, connecting them. But now when he stepped away, he left her behind on the other side of a deep chasm. On the surface that gap looked too wide to bridge. He sent out a whisper of energy; immediately her energy wrapped around it. On the surface. He turned back. Miri was standing just inside the door, smothering a yawn.

“As soon as we get you fed, you can hit the bed.”

She dropped her hand from her mouth. “I’d rather just go straight to bed.”

That wasn’t going to happen. She was too thin, too weak, and too determined to be part of everything going on to stay disabled. “You’ll eat first.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Whether you feel hungry or not, your body needs food.” He grabbed her hand. Her fingers felt very small in his. Her bones seemed very fragile, and her were skin was too cold. “And you need to feed.”

“I do not want to feed from you.”

“I have it on good authority that in cases like this, I get to tell you, ‘Tough.’”

She knew exactly who he was talking about. “No one goes to an Enforcer for social advice.”

“Why not?” He tugged. She planted her feet. “As keepers of the law, I’d think they’d be the perfect ones to ask. Besides, he offered, I didn’t ask.”

“I just bet.” She grabbed at his fingers and pried.

He didn’t actually have to drag her into the kitchen, but he wouldn’t say she went willingly. “I’m only going to feed you. There’s no need for the drama.”

“What drama? I’m following along like a lamb to the slaughter.”

He pulled out a chair. “Seems to me, for a wolfie, you’ve got your predators mixed up with your prey.”

She stood by the chair. “I don’t feel much like a wolf these days.”

“I got that impression.” He motioned. “Sit.”

She did, slowly, as if she was worried about falling. Eyes narrowed, he looked beyond the lines of strain to the life force beneath. “Just how weak are you feeling?”

“What makes you think I’m weak?”

“What makes you think you can hide it from me?”

“What makes you think I can’t?”

“What makes you think I’ll keep playing this game?”

She blinked rapidly and opened her eyes angelically wide. “Wishful thinking?”

He couldn’t help it; he cupped her head in his palm and kissed her hard, laughter and exasperation spicing the moment. He rested his forehead against hers, taking her anxious breaths as his. “You might be a bit down and out, but you sure haven’t lost any of your sass.”

“Did you want me to?”

He rested his forehead against hers. “I never wanted you to lose a damn thing.”

Her lashes lowered, covering, but not hiding, the way her eyes darkened until her irises blended into the black of her pupils and only the D’Nally gold rimmed the outside. Her lips tightened into a full line. She blinked, fighting tears. He hated himself again for not understanding what she’d needed from him back then. For the arrogance that assumed love would be enough. For ignoring her culture and how that would affect her needs. For not putting her first in a way she understood.

“I might have been an arrogant ass a year ago, too full of myself, too confident of you to look beyond my own needs, but there hasn’t been a minute since I met you, that I didn’t love you.”

Her tongue came out and moistened the curve of her lower lip. It wasn’t a sexual gesture, but his starved body reacted as if it were. His cock stretched and engorged, his pulse picked up, his breath quickened. Being were and his mate she had to scent his interest. The tear that had been hovering in her eye dripped down her cheek. He caught it on his thumb; it pooled for a minute before giving up the fight with gravity and sliding down his finger.

“This is not supposed to make you cry.”

“It’s too late for us.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it just doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not the same woman you knew. I can’t be who you want, see things the way I used to.” She shrugged. “It’s just too late.”

She really believed what she was saying. His defection, as she saw it, the torture she’d endured the last year, her fight for her baby, then the loss of the last, they had all taken a toll on her optimism. He knelt down so his face was level with hers. He cupped her cheeks in his palms, placing his thumbs over the scars he knew shamed her. “It’s not all about loss, princess.”

“Right now it is. My pack, my mate, my daughter…”

He stroked his thumbs over her cheekbones. “You never lost me.”

“I know that, now.” Her fingers wrapped around his wrists, a fragile connection. “It was just the illusion of who I thought you were.”

A stable, steady were. He got that. “That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. A little difference keeps a relationship interesting.”

She licked her lips. “I know when we got together, I gave you the impression I was looking for excitement, and maybe I was, but I’ve learned that I’m not really that kind of person. I’m a were to my bones. I need a mate I can depend on. One who doesn’t leave me guessing if he’s coming home.”

The words struck him like a hard rain of body blows. They emphasized more than anything else how much damage had been done to their relationship. The worst part was, he couldn’t blame her. He had let her down. It didn’t matter that it had been unintentional. The results were the same. “I won’t leave you again, baby.”

The sadness of the world was in her eyes as she looked up at him. “It doesn’t matter anymore if you do.”

“You said mating wasn’t a choice.”

“I did.”

“I’m not getting your point.”

“This is not the time for this.”

“It is if I say it is.”

“I don’t love you anymore, Jace.”

The hell she didn’t. He wanted to shove that fact down her throat, force her to face what he knew had to be in her heart, but he couldn’t. Not when she was looking at him like that. Not when she was so weak her hands trembled. He was her husband. Her mate. And no matter how much he’d fucked up in the past, from here on out he was going to be the man she thought he was. “You’re tired.”

The look she shot him let him know she knew what he was doing. “That doesn’t change the truth.” Her gaze did not flinch from his. “Beyond the mating pull, there’s no connection between us anymore.”

He paused, his thumbs centered on the sharp ledge of her cheekbones beneath those wolf eyes that saw so much. “Then I guess it’s going to be up to me to reconnect us.”

Her lower lip quivered. That vibration shivered into his palm, lodging in the nerve endings there, opening a pathway from her to him. He took full advantage of it, lowering his head, bringing his mouth to within a hairbreadth of hers. She didn’t move, didn’t breathe, just sat there frozen so the only thing joining them was the expectation of his kiss. He waited to see if she would be the one to bridge the distance between them, if she could take that first step.

It didn’t happen. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t afraid to take the leap. She might think that mating wasn’t a choice, but it was for him. From the moment he’d seen her sitting on that rock surrounded by trees and wildflowers he’d known this was his woman.

Every time they’d been together, every time their energy touched, it had just reinforced that reality for him. He’d thought it was the same for her. And it had been, but her need had more levels. He hadn’t realized that then, but now that he knew what she needed, he could give it to her. No holds barred. Every way she wanted. Every way she needed.

He closed the gap between them. The firmness of his lips touched the softness of hers, absorbed that softness, reflected it back, every beat of his heart, every bit of his emotion in the incredibly tender kiss he tried to give her. Communicating with his body, reaching with his mind, looking for the connection, he found her caution instead…and didn’t care. After all these months of worry, he had her mouth back under his, her breath mingling with his, her body in his arms, her breasts pressed against his chest. His world was righting itself and that was all that mattered for both of them.

With a shudder, Miri collapsed against him. The scent of her desire perfumed the air around them. It mingled with his, lighter, feminine, perfect. An aphrodisiac unto itself. Jace trusted their need to keep her put, sliding his hands down over her shoulders to just below her shoulder blades. His fingers spanned her ribs as he pulled her down off the chair onto his lap, turning her sideways, resting her thighs across his. Her neck slid into the crook of his shoulder as if it’d been created for just that spot. Which he firmly believed it had. He threaded his fingers through that long glorious hair he loved to feel sliding over his skin. Her head tipped back. His doing or hers? He didn’t know, didn’t care. He was just enjoying the beauty of her face and the surety that she was his as it settled deep into his bones.

She watched him, eyes clouded with desire, darkened with indecision while those full lips parted as if anticipating his kiss. His lips ached with the same expectancy. His head tilted, lowered. Electricity sizzled between them. Miri shivered. Sparks danced over his skin, vibrant electrical impulses shimmering in readiness, as if every bit of desire he had suppressed from the last year had waited for this moment to come back to life, surging forward as the moment culminated in the most delicate of connections.