Jared (21 page)

“I can’t tell you.”

“You just expect me to go along with this?”

Grief and guilt threatened her mental shield. She
shook her head.

“I know you can’t.”

Raisa pushed emotion aside and focused on building
Jared’s image. She didn’t have his hair right. It was too short. She lengthened
the ends, concentrating on making every strand perfect, knowing she had time.
It was going to be a long interrogation. Now that Jared had his passion under
control, he’d want to know why. His honor would insist he find out what he
needed to do to protect the weres and his own people from the threat he’d
allowed into their midst. Her. She just hoped she could be as strong as Miri.

“Who’s Miri?” he asked again, obviously latching onto
that thought.

She winced at the coldness of his tone and the
impossibility of her situation. She was a rather pathetic threat. She hadn’t
even managed to get one piece of lousy information before she’d gotten caught,
but Jared wouldn’t believe that. Wouldn’t be able to believe that just in case
he was wrong. When it came to vampire wars, even she knew assuming that she was
telling the truth was a deadly mistake. Despair broke her breath. “I can’t tell
you.”

Jared shook her. Her head bumped against the wall.
“Don’t you even fucking try it.”

She blinked as her energy came surging back at her.
She’d been reaching to him for comfort, instinct overriding logic. She was even
more pathetic than she’d thought. “I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as you’re going to be.” He shook her
again. “And get that Goddamn picture out of your head.”

She’d been projecting her thoughts, too? Dear God,
what else had she lost control of? She checked the energy radiating from the
implant the Sanctuary had put in her. It was masked, exactly what she’d
programmed it to be. Apparently, her subconscious, while misguided, didn’t lose
touch of the important things.

She didn’t remove the image, just blocked his access
to it.

Jared’s curse whipped around her along with his
energy, which was pouring and sliding against hers. He was going to have to do
a lot better than that if he wanted her secrets. Sanctuary torture had refined
one of her skills. If there was one thing Raisa knew how to do, it was how to
direct and redirect a mind probe until the intruder left with only the image
she wanted them to have.

To the Sanctuary, she was a not-so-bright blonde with
scattered thought patterns that were easily manipulated. To Jared . . . She
sighed. She didn’t know what she was to Jared. She’d slipped up quite a few
times the last few days. For sure she wouldn’t get away with the ditzy blonde
routine. She decided to take this in steps. Her shirt was cutting into her
underarms. “If you’re not going to kill me, could you put me down?”

“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with you yet.”

She opened her eyes, holding the mental picture she’d
built at the ready, gasping as she met his gaze. Hatred, pure and simple,
deadly and cold, blasted out at her. She clutched her mental image like a
security blanket and maintained the same calm voice. When faced with a deadly
predator, it was best not to show emotion. “Then let me clarify. If you’re not
going to kill me now, could you put me down? The shirt is hurting my arms.”

“Good.”

She didn’t doubt he meant that. It was natural that
he’d want to hurt her the way she’d hurt him. Maybe more as she’d struck him in
the emotions, and Jared wasn’t a man who let anyone close. Tears burned her
eyes. If only he’d stayed asleep, she wouldn’t have had to hurt him like this.
She blinked rapidly. His gaze raked her face. He swore, swung her away from the
wall, and set her down a good distance from the safe. “Don’t fucking move.”

He didn’t have to worry. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Her legs were shaking so badly, she could barely stand. She caught herself on
the edge of the desk. She watched as he resettled the boards with careful
precision. A couple of seconds later, the taint of her energy was wiped out.
This time she blinked for another reason.

“What are you doing?”

Jared levitated the filing cabinet back. Again, all
traces of their presence was removed. He turned back to her. His hand lashed
out. She closed her eyes, bracing herself for the pain of the blow.

But his hand clamped behind her neck, dragging her
against him. “You don’t say a fucking word about this to Ian, Creed, or anyone.
You don’t think about it, you don’t do a Goddamn thing that would clue them in
to the fact that you’re anything other than what you seem.”

She licked her lips as her heart raced out of control.
He was protecting her. “And what’s that?”

It was pointless, but she really did want to know how
he’d seen her. “A sweet little vamp with a big heart in need of protecting.”

Those damn tears stung again. That was such a nice way
to see her. It made her sound so much more than the weak woman at the mercy of
circumstance, which she always ended up being.

“Thank you.”

He shoved her toward the door. “For what?”

She glanced at the hard implacability of his face.
“For seeing me that way.”

“I never said I did.”

Yes, he had. At least, for a little while. He’d told
her that with every touch and every concession to her requests, but she knew
better than to rub his face in it. She dropped her gaze. And sucked in a
breath. He was aroused. “Oh.”

She stumbled on the threshold. Jared grabbed her arm
and then steered her down the hall. Instead of heading to the bedroom, he
shoved her into the living room. He kept pushing until she fell, face forward
over the back of the couch, so wildly relieved that he still wanted her that
the knock at the door never registered until she heard a gasp and felt the whip
of foreign male lust. Jared’s hand at the back of her neck kept her pinned when
she would have jerked up straight. His body shielded hers from view. “Get out.”

“Sorry.”

From the corner of her eye she saw Creed’s hard
expression and then Ian’s amused one before he closed the door. Jared kneed her
thighs apart and stepped between them before she could close them. A trill of
fear and excitement went though her as his shaft notched to her center. She
braced herself for the painful thrust that was coming, his need to dominate and
punish crashing over her.

Oh God, not like this.

His thoughts thrust into her mind with the brutality
she expected from his body. Exactly like this.

Except he didn’t move, didn’t do anything, just loomed
over her, his big cock threatening her with the ultimate disrespect while he
sucked hard breaths into his lungs.

And then he moved, his free hand coming around to her
breast, his lips to the back of her neck.

Mine.

It was a sigh of acceptance she didn’t understand. She
couldn’t help her flinch as he slid his hand between the lapels of her shirt
and wrapped his fingers around her nipple, expecting the bite of pain, finding
instead a gliding invitation to pleasure. She didn’t move, didn’t breathe,
didn’t do anything but freeze as he did it again and again. While her mind
stayed frozen, her body didn’t. It softened and pulsed to the rhythm he set,
arching into his touch, the softness he offered, piteously grateful for the
reprieve, this chance to pretend one more time, answering his call with the
helpless response he’d drawn from her from the instant she’d met him.

I’m sorry.

His hand left her breast and went lower, tucking
between her stomach and the couch until she was resting on his palm. His
fingers pressed into her slick folds, finding her clitoris, and then rubbing
gently, persistently.

That doesn’t change anything.

I know.

You can trust me.

No.

You will.

She might have been able to hold out if he had been
rough, but surrounded by his pain, her guilt, and the persuasion of his touch,
she didn’t have a prayer. Passion rose to his command. Her body softened,
entreated, and gladly accepted him into her heat. Her energy soothed over his,
surrounding him in her apology, her passion.

His curse exploded into the room as his shaft glided
into her body—not violently, not reverently, but resolutely. She gasped and
then arched back as his finger stroked pleasurably, driving her to seek more.
She wasn’t picky; anyway she could get him worked for her.

The thought intruded again—a simple statement of fact.
You’re mine.

Yes, she was, but it wasn’t the same as before. There
were walls between them, a resistance to her energy, but there was passion and
gentleness and maybe a slight hope that they could recover from this. Raisa let
the passion roll over her, consume her, taking the energy he fed her—pure
animalistic lust with no emotion coloring it—and mirrored it back as she rode
his desire to the waiting climax.

As it shimmered before her, he leaned over her back,
dominating her fully with the sheer size of his body and the force of his
personality. A carnal possession that everything feminine within her relished.
His wrist brushed her mouth.

Feed.

She shook her head and tried to turn, wanting the
intimacy of his chest. A dip of his shoulder prevented the instinctive twist.
Again his wrist tapped her mouth.

Feed.

At the same time that he pressed his wrist against her
mouth, his hips pushed against hers in a compulsive drive for completion. His
fingers were equally ruthless, driving her passion before them, giving her no
choice but to succumb. Her climax exploded through her in a screaming array of
brilliant energy—his, hers, together—for an instant in perfect harmony.

The sound never left her throat as his wrist was
shoved into her mouth. She bit down, instinct driving everything now. She
convulsed around him, her body jerking wildly under the command of his, her
mouth working on his flesh. The echoes of her climax faded as Jared’s began.

“Oh no, you don’t, Raisa,” he said when she would have
wiggled away. Not “Rai” or “sunbeam,” but “Raisa.” “You’re not fucking up
everything now.”

She saw the line of her back through his eyes, felt
how the image of feminine submission drove his lust, how the tight grasp of her
sheath burned him with the same friction it burned her. Felt his balls draw up
tight as she took his blood, felt his satisfaction as her clit tingled under
his touch. And felt her own vicious hurtle back to climax as he tugged and stretched
the eager nub and manipulated her emotions to follow his. As he drove into her
one more time, her “God, yes!” echoed around them as she accepted his seed, his
dominion, his utter right to do with her what he wanted. Because she’d betrayed
him when all he’d done was help her. And because all he wanted from her was her
pleasure.

She was his mate, and she’d betrayed him. She owed him
this. Owed him everything. As his fangs sank into her shoulder, holding her
pinned for the last burst of his seed, he drew from her, completing the ritual.
She reached back and cupped his face, giving him the softness he so badly
needed, expecting his rejection, accepting it when it came. Offering herself
again with her energy, wincing as he ruthlessly shoved it back.

Dropping her head against the back of the couch, she
let the tears fall.

When he was done feeding, the act that completed the
bond between them, his big chest pressing into her back with each breath, she
simply asked, “Why?”

HE pulled from her and straightened her shirt over her
hips, the same calm efficiency in his movements as in his voice.

“Weres scent emotion.”

She stood, her body still trembling from the
possession of his, her emotions still bouncing between hope and despair. “And
your point is?”

“I want them to scent something other than your
duplicity. Your pleasure works well.”

He was using words to hurt her now, to put distance
between them, the way he hadn’t been able to when he’d made love to her. For a
man like Jared, who valued his strength and his honor, his weakness for her
would eat at him. And she could expect to pay the price. “Yours didn’t hurt,
either.”

He waved her toward the bedroom. “Get dressed.”

She didn’t like his tone. “Why?”

“We’re leaving.”

A spurt of resentment slowed her steps. She wasn’t his
slave. She didn’t have to blindly follow his orders. “For where?”

“Home. And the hell you don’t have to blindly follow
my orders,” he snapped, obviously reading her mind.

She paused in the doorway. He was right behind her.
“Let me clarify. I won’t blindly follow your orders.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“I have lots of choices. You don’t know how stubborn I
can be.”

His hand in the middle of her back prodded her toward
the bedroom. “Maybe you just don’t know me.”

The thought that she might not terrified her. She
turned her back on him. Rage and another emotion she couldn’t identify, and he
couldn’t control, slammed into her, making her stumble as surely as if she’d
been pushed. Jared caught her arm. Her head snapped around as he jerked her up
short. Another hot retort teetered on her lips. It died after one glance at his
expression. His rage she could handle, but that other something she’d
felt—pain, blinding pain. Neither of them was in control of that.
Instinctively, she reached for him, wanting to take that wildness into her,
soothe it, calm it. With a coldness that encased her hope in ice, he rebuffed
her effort. His gaze met hers. “Be advised, Raisa, if you try any of your games
in my home, I won’t be so lenient.”