Part of Me (8 page)

“That’s not why I’m calling, Bray,” Aidan was saying.

“What? What do you mean? Is it Caleb? Has he gone off and gotten himself in trouble again?” My youngest brother was another one of our parents’ good deeds. It seemed Gil and Marta Sanchez couldn’t help but take in all the wayward and orphaned children of the Gungi.

Caleb’s father had been a human that had happened upon his mother while on a tour of the forest. Both of them had been in a place where they didn’t belong. His father had raped her and Caleb was conceived. When Caleb was five years old his mother had gone out in search of his father and been killed in the village by a human. That’s when Caleb had come to live with us and that’s when, I suspected, his nightmare of a life had taken
on another meaning entirely—one outlined with bitterness and revenge.

“No. It’s not Caleb.” Aidan went quiet for a second or so which caused me to shake my phone, pull it away from my ear, and look down at it to make sure the call hadn’t been dropped.

“Hello?” I yelled into the phone. “Aidan?”

“I’m here. Mom’s sick,” he said as if he were saying something as simple as, “it’s raining outside today.”

“What do you mean sick?”

“They’re in London, or at least they were. Dad said she wasn’t feeling well after one of their meetings so she went back to the hotel room to rest. When he arrived hours later she wasn’t responsive so he called an ambulance. They called it exhaustion, said her blood count was low and that she needed iron and rest. They’re on their way back to the States now to find a shifter doctor.”

I leaned forward, unable to simply stand holding the phone any longer. My elbows dropped onto the counter, my head hanging low.

“They’re going to Florida?” I asked, not really able to vocalize any of the other junk running rampant in my head right now.

“Dad thinks it’s best if she’s in her own bed and she can see her ocean while she recuperates.”

“Her” ocean was the Atlantic Ocean, which was right off the coast of the home in Key West where we’d all grown up, when we weren’t traveling the world. It was our American home base, as Dad had told us when he first bought the house. It was Mom’s favorite place, second only to the Gungi.

“He’s right. She’ll rest there and she’ll get better,” I heard myself saying because that’s what I needed to happen.

Aidan was a bit more solemn in his response. “Right. So anyway, I just wanted to let you know.”

I nodded. “Yeah, thanks.”

“Hey, everything alright with you? You sound a little off. I mean, even before I told you about Mom,” Aidan said.

I shook my head as if he could actually see me. Then I stood and opened my eyes, frowning down at the soggy mess my cereal had become. “I’m good.”

“Okay, well, when are you and Lidia heading out here? These finals are going to be brutal so you’ll need all the brushing up you can get.”

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. The plan had been for us to leave after graduation and head for the East Coast. But just before the summer kicked off Lidia had started hinting around at maybe not going back for the finals. I tried to dismiss it, talked around it and didn’t really let her go too deep into her reasons, because I hadn’t wanted to hear it,
hadn’t wanted to consider that our lives wouldn’t continue as I’d wanted. Then she’d gone to L.A. and hadn’t contacted me for three months. I knew then that the plan was changing, but I still didn’t want to accept it.

“Just a few things that need to be wrapped up first. We may not make it out until a little later than expected.” It was optimistic, I knew, especially after all that had gone down with Daniel and Kyra, but I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t latch on to the fact that I would go back without Lidia.

“Well, don’t take too long. It’s going to be hard enough getting back into the full swing of things after not actively training for four years. Believe me, I know,” Aidan added with a chuckle.

“Yeah, well, that’s because you were never that good anyway.”

“I can beat your sorry ass. Especially now, I can smell a rogue a mile away.”

“In your dreams,” I commented even though the last of his bragging sort of stuck with me.

We joked for a few minutes more, then both of us agreed to try and get in touch with Caleb to figure out what his status was regarding the finals. Caleb was a fighter, he’d been fighting all his life. Unfortunately, I wasn’t totally sure he
was fighting for the same reasons we were and eventually, that would become a problem.

By the time I finished the call with Aidan I’d almost forgotten about my text to Lidia. Until I saw her reply.

Y
OU’RE RIGHT. WHEN? WHERE?

I frowned. She was agreeing that we needed to talk but I didn’t feel like that was a good thing. Either way, it needed to be done. I could figure out if I was going to like it later.

M
Y PLACE @6

Her reply was immediate.
FINE

Brayden didn’t look good.

Well, not in the normal sort of way.

So don’t get me wrong, when he answered the door wearing nothing but basketball shorts that hung low—I mean, almost porn-flick low—on his waist, ankle socks, and tennis shoes, my throat instantly went dry. After a brief hello he’d turned to go back into the apartment and I’d had no choice but to follow behind him, seeing the line of sweat rolling down his spine, in between the two strongest and deliciously defined shoulder blades ever.

Aside from the lust that moved through my mind like a runaway storm, I could still sense that something wasn’t quite right.

Brayden hadn’t spoken since the hello and he’d walked straight through his living room, back toward the second bedroom
where he kept his weight bench and other workout equipment. He’d always been a workout freak, wanting to keep his body in pristine condition for all the battling he’d presumed he would be doing as an Assembly guard—a fact that had always baffled me since he still ate meat like he might actually die without it.

He was sitting on the weight bench, one elbow resting on his knee while the other arm stretched forward to pick up another weight. Back and forth he flexed the weight as if it were a feather. It had multiple slats on the bar so I knew that wasn’t true, still, I stood watching, mesmerized.

Brayden had a great body, naturally tanned and beautifully sculpted. His black hair was damp, his face serious as he did one rep after another and another. Finally, I figured I’d better speak up instead of staring like some sort of groupie.

“We should talk about this personal thing that’s going on between us,” I started.

My voice sounded really loud since there was no other noise in the room. Unless I counted the occasional release of breath from Brayden and the slight click of the weights as they moved.

Then he dropped the weight to the floor and I jumped.

“Is that what it is, Lidia? A personal thing?”

Okay, he was definitely angry. I knew that tone, just as I knew he’d go for another weight before actually looking up at me
.

“Our entire relationship is personal,” I began. “It’s always been that way. You and I were closer than me and your brothers. I knew that and so did everyone else. When I announced what college I wanted to attend everyone was excited for me, but not you. Then you announced you wanted to come along. I should have stopped you because I knew you weren’t interested in school.”

“There was nothing you could have done or said that would have kept me away,” he said defiantly, honestly.

“And you don’t see how wrong that was? You didn’t realize then that this was heading in the wrong direction?” I inhaled again, reaching both hands up to tuck strands of hair that had fallen from my ponytail behind my ears. “We both should have stopped it when we first felt the change,” I added quietly.

“I don’t mind the change,” was his reply.

I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t watch as he told me about the one thing I absolutely despised about being a Shadow Shifter.

“It’s as natural as breathing, Lidia. It’s what we were made for,” he continued. “And no matter how hard you try to ignore it, or perhaps even run away from it, this will not go away. You know it as well as I do.”

I hated Brayden Sanchez. In this moment I absolutely hated him. So I turned to leave the room, to go into the living room, maybe to run away as he’d just mentioned. I don’t know, it was
just too hard to stand here and tell him I never wanted to see him again, that for my sanity and my well-being I needed to get as far away from him as possible. As tough as I’d always had to be against the people of my tribe and then the human females of this school that in the beginning thought I’d be an easy target, I didn’t think I had the guts to do what I knew needed to be done where Brayden was concerned.

His hands on my shoulders stopped me as he drew me back up against him. My body stiffened, the cat inside instantly awakening.

“I would do anything for you, you know that, Lidia. Anything in this world I could give you or make happen for you, I would.” He spoke softly into my ear. “But don’t ask me to walk away from you, from what’s inside us both. Please don’t ask me to do that.”

My chin dropped to my chest and I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the heat whirling through my body, the desire scraping along the surface of my skin. “I need you to, Brayden. I need you to do this for me.”

He was shaking his head, I knew it without even seeing him. “I can’t.”

“Please,” I whispered, feeling the length of his arousal pressing into my backside.

“It’s not going to work, Lidia. Denial is just not going to work,” he said, turning me around then and staring down at me.

I gasped because his eyes weren’t his. Well, they were but they were his cat’s. I closed mine, holding them tightly shut no matter how juvenile the act made me feel.

“I know who you are even if I weren’t looking at you through cat’s eyes,” he said, leaning forward and kissing each closed lid.

I shivered with the contact.

“And with your eyes closed, you know exactly who and what I am.”

He kissed over my cheekbones, down to my jaw, and my neck.

“You know what we are together,
o meu melhor amigo. Meu companheiro. Parte di mim.
”

My eyes didn’t open, they didn’t need to. When Brayden’s lips brushed over mine, they parted willingly. My hands went to his bare chest, rubbing over damn perfect pectorals as my tongue met his in a heated duel that promised more to come. He held me around my waist tightly, as if he might actually be afraid to let me go. But I wasn’t going anywhere, just like Brayden had said before, I couldn’t.

Not once he’d walked us backward until my back hit the wall and he grasped my butt with hungry fingers. I moaned, deep and long and his fingers pressed into my crevice seemingly right
through the material of my yoga pants. My nipples tingled, my hands clenching against his chest. It was a good thing I wasn’t the long-fingernail type of girl or I might have caused some serious scarring.

“Wrap your legs around me,” he instructed, his teeth scraping along the line of my neck as he spoke.

I did what he said, giving my weight over to him, trusting he wouldn’t let me go, possibly ever. When my ankles were crossed behind his back Brayden pressed closer into me, his hands going beneath the band of my pants, under my ass, until his fingers slid right into my moistness. I sucked in a breath, letting my head loll back at the contact.

“Sweetness,” he whispered. “From now on I’m gonna call you sweetness.”

He could call me whatever he wanted as long as he didn’t stop touching me. “Bray.” I gasped his name when his nimble fingers parted my folds, two thrusting inside my center. Another breath whooshed out of me just before his tongue was dipping inside in search of mine once more. He was kissing me and his fingers were milking me and I couldn’t think straight, I couldn’t figure out why I was going to never see him again, why this was so wrong.

And then there was a knock at the door.

“Ignore it! I don’t know anybody I want to see right now,” Brayden said, pressing his rigid erection against me while his fingers continued their in and out torture.

I’d grasped his shoulders by that point; the ripples of pleasure soaring through my body were so intense I felt like I might actually take off if I didn’t hold on. “But they’re still knocking,” I told him even though the thought of him not touching me anymore was just about painful.

Brayden paused then, looking at me with golden eyes that all but glittered with passion. I couldn’t help it, I leaned in and took his lips, sucking the bottom one into my hungry little mouth, pressing my swollen breasts against his bare chest. Dammit, I wished I were naked, wished we were skin to skin and that there wasn’t anyone ready to knock down his freakin’ front door!

“You have to answer it,” I said after reluctantly pulling my mouth away from his. “They don’t seem to be going away.”

“Stupid bastards,” he muttered. “Probably some damned salesperson…or…” His words drifted to nothing while pulling his hands from my pants.

His body had tensed, his face fixed into a frown. I let my legs down until my feet were on the floor, but I didn’t move right away, I was still too wobbly from the pleasure of his touch. I knew his mind was someplace else, knew that he’d gone
into defense mode and was now all about finding his prey and…I swallowed deeply, looked away from him. I hoped and prayed, but I also picked up the scent, I also knew.

When he grabbed my chin, lifting my head up so that I could look at him, there was something I thought I should say to stop him, to aid him, something. And yet, there was nothing.

“Don’t move until I come get you,” he said sternly, seriously, his gaze holding mine.

“Brayden,” his name was a sigh even as I shook my head.

“Do. Not. Move.” he reiterated through clenched teeth and then he moved away. He left me in that room, to go out there to face an enemy.

I knew it with each inhale, knew from the look in his eyes that this would not be good.