Jace (6 page)

His thumb pressed on her lower lip, sliding inside. His taste flooded her mouth. As if her very soul had been starving for this moment. The hunger rose.

“No, there isn’t.”

Against her will, her tongue touched his skin. The inner cry of bliss rolled through her. Her lids dropped as she shuddered. Cells that had lain dormant, parts of her she thought long past the point of demise, rose and screamed in happiness. Everything in her said to lean in to Jace, hand him her cares, her worries, the responsibility for their daughter. Fall into his arms and just let him hold her until all the trauma of the last year went away. She shoved at his hold. “Let me go.”

He did, getting to this feet with that smooth grace that used to make her heart flutter. She was used to coordinated men, but Jace moved differently from weres. There was a lightness to his movement that made her think of cats rather than canines. From this angle, he looked so much bigger, so much more lethal. So damn invincible.

“I’m going to feed.”

“There are patrols all over the place.”

“That’s what I’m hoping.”

Good God, he was going to feed from the Sanctuary!
“You’ll be killed!”

“Then that should save you some trouble.”

“But it won’t save our daughter.”

“Then I guess you’ll have to pray I live a bit longer.”

She had been. Every day since she’d met him, she’d prayed for that. Even after she’d been taken and it had become clear that rescue wasn’t imminent, she’d prayed until she’d been ashamed of herself for clinging to hope. “I guess I will.”

“Soon you’re going to go through conversion. We can’t stay here and I’m too weak as I am to get you to a safe place. I need to feed.”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

His gaze took in her appearance. She felt every new imperfection, every mark left on her from the last year. “You’re the only thing that could.”

She tried a different tactic, unwilling to just let him go out there into danger. “I’m a were. Weres don’t change.”

“What makes you so sure?”

She didn’t have an answer.

He tucked her back against a far wall. “That’s what I thought. The way I see it, there has to be something more than just leadership succession and pack hierarchy that has weres stressing about their women mating with vampires, and whatever it is, I don’t want you exposed and vulnerable when it occurs.”

Great. More trouble. Stress drove her talons into her palms. “I could have done without that piece of knowledge.”

“I imagine you could, but you wanted to know.”

“No, I didn’t.”

He moved toward the entrance. “Well, that’s what happens when you argue. All kinds of unpleasant things get brought up.”

How had she forgotten how irking his sense of humor could be?

He looked back over his shoulder. “You seem to have forgotten a lot of things.”

He’d read her mind. She’d heard that happened between mated vampires and weres, much easier than the practiced links some weres could make. It wasn’t at all convenient to know it was working that way between them. Not now. “Not on purpose.”

“You sure?”

No, she wasn’t. She folded her arms across her chest.

A smile tucked into the creases around his eyes. “You can get back to me with that answer.”

It was a rhetorical statement. She found herself nodding anyway. Damn, was she really that programmed?

The hint of a smile had slipped to a frown by the time Jace got to the opening. His energy reached out and pushed against her, a mental order to stay put that he backed with a low verbal order. “Remember, if I don’t return stay put until just before night and then head to the D’Nallys’.”

“What makes you think I’m going to stay here?”

He cut her a glance. “You’re not a day walker anymore. Leave now and the sun will turn you into a crispy critter before you make it halfway anywhere.”

He disappeared through the opening.

You’re not a day walker anymore.

He seemed awfully sure of that. It could be a trick to make her stay put, but Miri didn’t think so. One thing about Jace: he never lied about important things. Just always delivered the blunt, unvarnished truth no matter how much it hurt.

She placed her hand over her abdomen. Inside, she could feel the lingering heat of his healing. And beneath it, a disturbance that shouldn’t be there. She closed her eyes and focused inward, trying to identify the source, but there wasn’t just one spot. The discord was more generalized than localized. She spread her fingers wide in an attempt to encompass the whole of what was happening. Understanding was slow in coming, but when it did, she had to sit down. She was Jace Johnson’s mate. And it was changing her.

JACE
slipped back into the crevice, energy vibrating within him. Sanctuary vamps might be on the wrong side of right, but they had potent blood. They also had vindictive natures, and it wasn’t going to take the patrols long to find the bodies of the two men he’d fought and then fed from. He needed to get Miri out of here.

Miri.

He called mentally again. Nothing. The same nothing he’d run up against every time he’d probed for her. Either the woman had learned to block him or she was in trouble. As much as he wanted to believe the former because it would mean she was safe, Miri was too smart a woman to endanger them all with a tantrum.

As soon as he entered the cavern, Jace knew Miri was in trouble. She lay curled on the ground, hands over her abdomen, face as white as a sheet. Her ribs heaved with short pants of breath. The two steps it took to get to her were two steps too many. He dropped to his knees on the dirt floor.

“Shit.”

“That’s my word.”

“Wolf females don’t swear.”

“I’ve decided to pick up your bad habits,” she whispered in a strained voice.

“Because we’re mated?”

He lifted her off the cold ground. She whimpered and shivered. Neither sound nor motion was as strong as he thought they should be. The way she collapsed against him told him more than words about how bad this was.

She turned her cheek in to his throat. “Because I’m sick of being nice. Nice people get squashed.”

He brushed his lips across her forehead. “I like you nice.”

“I rest my case.”

She was determined to hold on to her grudge. Another shudder rippled through her. The change was beginning. Ah, hell. He opened his palm across her back as her teeth bit into the tough leather of his jacket. “I know you’re hurting, sweet, but we’ve got to get out of here.”

She tilted her face up. He caught her head on his palm, supporting her when she would have overbalanced. “You’re done ticking off the Sanctuary?” she asked.

“For the moment.”

“Okay, then.” Bracing her hand on his knee, she levered herself up. Without the support of his hand in the middle of her back, she wouldn’t have made it. She was that weak.

She bit her lip and swayed. “I’m ready.”

The overpowering nausea rolling through her spilled over onto him. “How long has this been going on?”

She swallowed hard, once, twice. If anything, she got a bit greener. “Since about ten minutes after you left.”

Damn. He tucked his hand under her chin. Lifting her face. “If you need to puke, you might want to do it now.”

“I’m not vomiting.”

“I’m going to have to carry you over my shoulder to get where we need to go.”

“Where are we going?”

“To a safe place.” At least, he hoped it was safe. And that it was still there.

She glanced over at the crevice. “What’s wrong with here?”

He pointed up to the aperture in the ceiling. “The sun will fry us.”

Biting her lip, she looked around. “It might not reach the corners.”

Like he would chance her to a “might” and a glimmer of hope. He shook his head. “We’re leaving.”

“And for that I need to vomit?”

“The only way I can move fast enough to beat the sun is to carry you over my shoulder.”

Her hand clutched her stomach, her eyes widened, and she looked at him again. “I…can’t.”

Because he was there. “This is not the time for modesty.”

“Tell my modesty that.”

He stood, holding her hand, drawing her with him. Her flesh was too cold. Damn it, he didn’t know how this would go for her, but if it was anything like what he had gone through when he converted, he wanted her surrounded by the best of medical knowledge. He wanted her safe, coddled. He wanted that haunted look out of her beautiful brown eyes. He wanted the last year back.

“You going to puke?”

“No.”

“Good enough.”

He scanned outside the door. Still nothing. It was now or never. “C’mon.”

He went through the opening first, holding her hand in case she got stubborn, mildly disappointed when she didn’t. As soon as he broke free from the crevice, Jace scanned again. To the left about a hundred feet the patrol was coming back. Fast. With a “Hold tight” he had Miri out and into the clear. As she stumbled forward he bent down, placed his shoulder in her abdomen, straightened, and took off.

It was natural that his palm fell to her buttocks. The desire that surged through him at the contact wasn’t. They were in danger. If he didn’t get them both away now they were going to end up as Sanctuary dog meat. And yet, right alongside the adrenaline that came from danger rode the hot lust only she inspired.

Miri swatted his back. “You’re sick.”

Obviously, some thoughts he wasn’t good at concealing. He patted her buttock. “Only around you.”

He angled down the mountain, heading toward home and safety.

She dropped her head against his back. “Lucky me.”

T
HEY’D
found a new way to hurt her. She frowned. Before there’d never been any malice in what they did. She was just another experiment to be brought to its conclusion. They applied force when necessary to get the compliance they needed, but it had never gone deeper than that. It had never been personal. This, however, felt very personal. The fire burned up from her gut, spreading outward, a living, breathing agony that fed on itself in an ever-growing twist of agony. Enough so, dear God, that she wished she knew what they wanted so she could give it to them.

She cried out. There was no reason not to. They’d know all they needed about her level of pain from the electrodes attached to her skull. It fed reams of biofeedback into the machines lining the room, to the point that hiding her distress didn’t prove anything. They didn’t care if she screamed blue murder. All they cared about were the readouts on their screens. Though, if she screamed so that it grated their nerves, they might gag her. But it was never the first scream that did it, or even the fifth.

The next agonizing burn brought out more than a whimper. It brought out her frustration, her helplessness, her sheer fury at being trapped, unable to escape, unable to let anyone know she needed to escape. Just trapped. Endlessly trapped. She tilted her head back and screamed. As loud as she could, with everything she could.

A hand clamped over her mouth. “Shh, Miri.”

Her eyes flew open. Jace’s face filled her vision. This close she could see the flecks of blue in his gray eyes and the tiny flickers of vampire power lighting the edges. And deep within her, that irrational stupid part of her she’d tried to kill off surged to greet it.

“You’ve got to be quiet, princess.”

With a start she realized she was still screaming. She might not care if the Sanctuary scientist saw her scream, but it mattered that Jace just had. She caught her breath and inhaled slowly through her nose, but the tears that spilled over her cheeks were beyond her control. A dream. It had been a dream. She wasn’t trapped there anymore. She was free. She closed her eyes and struggled with the breadth of that reality.

“Miri?”

She opened her eyes. Jace frowned down at her, his hand going to her stomach. She felt the press of his energy, the warmth from his touch, and the pain abated. The crease between his brows deepened. The lights in his eyes increased to golden swirls. His muscles bunched. Understanding came quickly. He was taking her pain into himself. She grabbed his wrist and pressed his hand away from her mouth. She managed an inch. “Stop it.”

The growled order didn’t even cause his brow to flick. The rough pad of his thumb smoothed along her jaw as he asked in a soft whisper, “Now, what would be my incentive to do that?”

She followed his example and kept her voice barely audible. “You wouldn’t have to feel the pain.”

Another stroke along her jaw. “Not much of an incentive from where I’m sitting.”

The muscles in her stomach contracted. A bead of blood—vampire sweat—formed on Jace’s temple. He had no right to make this sacrifice for her. She didn’t want to be obligated to him. “I don’t want this from you!”

“Tough.”

His voice echoed in the small chamber. A look around showed they were within a shallow cave formed by an overhang of rock. A rotting tree that had fallen years ago from the looks of it, covered the access point. If it shifted just the slightest they’d be trapped. His grip on her jaw tightened. Like she was.

“I don’t need this.” Yanking on his wrist, she snarled, “I don’t need you.”

He didn’t flinch, just stroked his thumb along her jaw again, reminding her of happier times before she’d known how differently he saw her than she saw him. “You need me to find our daughter.”

She slowly closed her eyes. Yes, she did. And she needed to keep that in mind when dealing with him. She couldn’t afford these rushes of emotion, the bursts of anger. “I’m sorry.”

His curse disturbed the hair on her head, creating an annoyance that welled much larger than it should have. His grip tightened before gradually relaxing. “I think I’d rather have you mad at me than—”

“Than what?”

This time his fingers closed around the point of her chin, bringing her gaze to his narrowed one. “Than sucking up.”

She threw his own word back at him. “Tough.”

A blinding flash of pain shot through her, catching them both by surprise. Another curse from Jace and then the agony ceased.

He released her chin. “Sorry.”

He was sorry? It took her a minute to figure it out, her mind preoccupied with the expectation of agony and the hope it had ended, but when logic kicked in, it wasn’t difficult to do. Jace was a man who did things one way and one way only. The right way as he saw it. The lapse in concentration that let that brief agony through bothered him. He, no doubt, saw it as a failure. A break in his control. And he was a man who valued control. Her stomach muscles contracted again, her body tensing at the vaguely disconnected feeling, but the promise of pain never materialized. At least not for her. More blood beaded on Jace’s face. She wanted to wipe it away. She wanted to slap him. “Why do you have to be so noble?”

“My dad raised me right.”

“Your father died when you were young.”

“He was the kind of man who left a legacy.”

Her father had been that kind, too, before he’d been killed by humans. Her mother had followed quickly as all bonded mates did. And then she’d been all alone. Without the support of her pack, she would have gone crazy when faced with such crushing loneliness, maybe even taken her own life.

“Am I dying?”

He didn’t answer right away.

Fear became the only truth. “You have to tell me.”

His lips firmed to a flat line. “No.”

“No, you won’t tell me, or no, I’m not dying?”

Another of those pauses that made her uncomfortable. He shifted her against him, blood from the pain he was taking for her dripping to her shoulder. “Just no.”

Fear spread to panic. If she died, no one would get Faith. No one would know where she was. No one would care, and her little girl would live all alone with no family, no pack, no protection. And when her heritage made itself known, the Sanctuary would find her very easily.

Faith was already five months old. Anytime now, the people taking care of her would begin to notice her differences. The glowing of her eyes when she got angry. Her need for red meat. Or maybe even blood, she realized. Faith was half vampire. Miri closed her eyes against the overwhelming panic. Were or vampire, it didn’t matter. Whatever traits Faith exhibited would mark her as different and call attention to her. Miri couldn’t let that happen.

She clutched Jace’s hand. “If I die, you have to promise me you’ll get Faith.”

A strange looked crossed his face. His thumb brushed across her knuckles, settling into the middle hollow. “Faith. Is that what you named her?”

He didn’t know their daughter’s name. The enormity of what that implied floored her. If she died, Jace wouldn’t know what their daughter looked like, wouldn’t know who to look for, wouldn’t recognize her if he saw her. Miri was the only one alive who knew who Faith was.

“You can’t let me die.”

“I hadn’t planned on it.”

He didn’t understand. “You can’t die, either.”

“The most I figured was that we’re going to spend a damn uncomfortable day.”

“Promise me I’m not dying.”

“I promise.”

He said that too easily. Too fast. This time the burn seared deep, past his block. Her canines cut into her lip. The scent of blood lay heavy between them. His. Hers. Familiar in an elusive way. She dropped her head to his chest, grinding her forehead against him. “We smell like Faith.”

His laugh strained the silence. “I’ve never heard it described that way.”

He still didn’t understand. She took the blood from her lip, smeared it across his temple, and then held it under his nose. “Our daughter smells like this.”

He went rigid, not breathing in, not breathing out. She rubbed the mix of their blood against his upper lip, pressing hard with her hand, her mind. “This is who our daughter is.”

A shudder went through his big body. He grabbed her hand, breathed deep, and then drew her fingers into his mouth, licking the blood off, his gaze never leaving hers, his energy threading through hers in heavy tendrils. His gaze lit the dark with pinpoints of gold. “Tell me about her.”

The shake of her head was at the pain that stole her voice. He took it as something else.

“It’s going to be a long time until night, Miri.”

“So?”

“So you can spend it making me pay, or you can spend it sharing memories of your daughter with the one person in the world who’s as desperate to hear them as you are to share them.”

Desperate? “Don’t you think that’s laying it on a bit thick?”

“I’ve been looking for you for a year, Miri. I didn’t know if you were alive or dead, and then I find you covered in blood and our daughter missing. If you think I’m anything close to stable, you’re in for a surprise.”

“You left.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Anything that she would have said to that was lost as the burning agony spread through her. All she could do was dig her talons into his muscle. The coppery aroma of fresh blood scented the air. She had to be hurting him. He didn’t say a word, just held her closer as she rode it out.

“Is it supposed to be like this?” she gasped.

His gaze never wavered. “I don’t know. I’ve never converted a wolf before.”

“Weres don’t convert.” The elders always hammered that fact to the young of the pack. It was an absolute.

“They apparently do something. I just wish I could control it.”

The scent of blood grew stronger. His, hers—there was no sorting it out anymore. The pain twisted deeper. “Oh, God, I want to scream.”

Jace placed his palm over her mouth. “Scream away.”

She shook her head, the darkness pressing in as his shadow fell over her. She couldn’t make out anything around her, but she knew he could see her and she wouldn’t scream in front of him. She bit his hand instead. His cheek dropped to hers, the skin sliding on her tears and his sweat. “Tell me about our baby, Miri.”

She had to wait a minute to get her breath. And then she had to wait to get past the agony in her soul to bring the memory forward. “She was so little. I only had a few minutes to get her out.”

His mind touched hers, asked permission, entered. “What did she look like?”

“Like a…red, wrinkled version of us.”

He kissed her cheek. “She damn well better look like you.”

“She has black hair and my mouth, but…your eyes.”

Even with him taking most of the pain from her, it was bad.

He jerked. “There’s really something of me in her?”

How could he doubt it? She felt his mental probe and was helpless to refuse the need within him to know something of his child. She mentally shared with him her first glimpse of her daughter’s face, her first impression of her personality, the one touch she’d allowed herself of that super-soft skin, the one kiss she’d permitted herself before she’d sent her away.

As he pulled the image she gave him into that fierce well of emotion she could sense seething beyond the calm he gave her, she stroked his neck, sliding her fingers around the back to his nape, stroking the spot she knew soothed him. “Judging from the way she fussed when she wasn’t held the way she wanted, she got a lot of your personality.”

He flinched away. His hand caught hers, but not before she felt the irregularity. A scar? “What happened to your neck?”

“Nothing to worry about.”

She yanked her hands free of his and scooted up. He blocked her with an arm across her shoulders. Her back scraped against something spongy. The scent of wet wood overcame the scent of blood and—she leaned closer—burned flesh. “Oh, my God!”

He’d been burned. And only one thing burned a vampire like that. “You were in the sun.”

“For a bit.”

For a bit. As if that was nothing. Any sun was devastating to a vampire. How long had it taken him to find this spot “How badly are you burned?”

“I’ll heal.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“I know.” He folded her arms against his chest, holding them with one hand surrounding hers. She wiggled her thumb free, checking the back of his hand. The skin was rough there, too. She’d assumed he’d gotten her here before the sun had come up. “You were burned because of me.”

“I was burned because of bad timing.”

“How long were you in the sun?”

“Not too long.”

She told herself it didn’t matter, that it changed nothing, but that was a lie. “‘Not too long’ meaning not long enough to kill you?”

She felt his smile against her hair. Only Jace would smile now. “Pretty much.”

He would think that way. Jace and his brothers defined “tough.” “When we were together before, did I mention how much I hate the big macho-man thing you and your brothers have going?”

His lips brushed her hair and his tense laugh vibrated through her. “I think you were too distracted to bring it up.”

She rolled her eyes. “I would not have been that distracted.”

Which wasn’t exactly true. From the moment she’d seen Jace standing in the moonlight by the pool where she was bathing eighteen months ago, she’d been drawn to him. So much so that she hadn’t called for help when he approached, hadn’t resisted when he’d drawn her into his arms, hadn’t protested when he’d kissed her. Just responded with that instinctive drive to submit to him that a female wolf experienced with her mate. To give him whatever he wanted. Being with Jace had been addictive. When he’d asked her to meet him again in secret, she had. When he’d asked for her virginity, she’d given it, so caught up in him that she’d ignored all caution and tradition. Way too sheltered to understand what she was doing, she’d opened her heart and mind to Jace’s, welcoming him as her mate with total abandon, assuming he saw her the way she saw him. Assuming that “mate” meant the same thing to him as it did to her. Nothing had mattered but being with him, being his. She’d wanted to give him her mark, the final act of commitment for a wolf, the final act necessary to complete a vampire/were mating; and she had intended to take his blood in return. She’d thought it so fitting, an act so perfect its symbolism rose in her mind more powerfully than the taboo of a wolf woman doing such a thing.