Reign: A Royal Military Romance (48 page)

“Emily, why don’t you walk Nathaniel to the door,” said her father, in a tone of voice that said it wasn’t a suggestion.

Quietly, she stepped forward, put her hand on his arm —
Why does she get to touch him and not me,
thought Leah — and they walked into the hall, out of sight of the rest of the family.

Cleaning up in the kitchen, Leah could hear them talking. Or, at least, Nathan was talking, not much more than the usual goodbye pleasantries.
I had a lovely time, I’m so glad that you could come
, that sort of thing.

Nothing that conveyed the sort of pure light and heat she felt when she so much as looked at him, even if he couldn’t even be bothered to acknowledge her presence.

Finally, the front door opened and shut.

Alone for a moment in the dining room, Leah made a split-second decision and bolted for the door as well.

N
athan stepped back
into the cool night air and felt relief wash over him in a wave.

That was, by far, the worst first date he’d ever had in his whole life.

Not only had it been with someone fifteen years younger than him — someone who was, for all intents and purposes, still a child — but the entire time, he’d barely been able to stop thinking about her older sister. It was like she radiated something, some
drug
, and with her around it was almost impossible for him to think about anything but her scent, her beautiful eyes, the possibility of taking her in his arms and carrying her to the sofa in the next room and then taking her frumpy dress off—

“Hey!” shouted a voice, and Nathan turned, surprised.

There she was, stomping through the slightly overgrown front yard, her hair a wild mess.

She was
alone
, and if he’d learned anything from his ordeal that night, it was that unmarried Whitehorse women were
not
supposed to be alone with adult men.

“Leah,” he said, standing still in shock, almost afraid that if he moved he wouldn’t be able to control himself anymore.

“Oh, so you
do
know my name,” she said, stomping up to stand right in front of him.

Her cheeks were flushed again. Her eyes were bright, but most distractingly, her chest was heaving, pressing up against her dress with every breath.

“Of course I know your name,” he said. “You took a tart straight from my mouth at your—” he couldn’t make himself say
betrothal
— “at your party.”

Something in her softened, her lips parting just the tiniest bit.

“Why do you hate me?” she asked, her voice suddenly no longer angry. She just sounded sad, and a little wistful, and Nathan felt like a giant hand was crushing his heart, just to hear her that way.

“I don’t hate you,” he said.

“You wouldn’t even look at me,” she said, her tone bewildered and confused.

“That’s not true.”

She snorted and looked away, her jaw working.

“Why would you think that?” he said.

His stomach worked itself into a knot at the thought.

Hate was the polar opposite of how he felt.

“You can’t even make eye contact with me when I’m talking,” she said. “It’s like you’re pretending I don’t even exist, and I want to know
why
.”

Nathan felt awful. It was completely true. He’d been doing his best not to look at Leah over dinner, because he was afraid of what his bear might do. Every time he saw her, even from the corner of his eye, he wanted to grab her and take her far away, somewhere that her family wouldn’t be around, where she wouldn’t be engaged to someone else, and where he could sink himself into her sweet, soft flesh...

“You’re doing it now,” she said, her arms crossed in front of her generous bosom. “You’re staring at the woods behind me.”

Nathan redirected his gaze back into her eyes, two perfect pools of blue. He felt like he was falling into them, drowning, the rest of the world utterly inconsequential.

Her lips parted, just a few millimeters, and it was all he could do not to press his own against them.

“Nathan, what is this?” Leah whispered softly, still staring up at him.

She can feel it too,
Nathan realized.

“I was afraid of what I might do,” Nathan murmured.

Her forehead wrinkled, just a little, and she finally broke their gaze.

“It’s because I can’t think about anything else when you’re around,” Nathan said, the words coming out fast and hard, like she’d broken their gaze and unstoppered a spout. “I can barely hear or see anything but you. It’s like you fill the air and you distract me from everything else.”

Now she wouldn’t look at him at all.

“When we met it knocked the wind out of me,” he went on, feeling like a balloon with the air rushing out, but it felt
good
to admit it to her, to at least clear the air. “I didn’t know what had happened, but when that asshole shot a hole in the ceiling, I was ready to take on every single shifter in that room before I let one of them hurt you. I’m sorry, Leah, I know it’s not supposed to be like this. I know I’m ruining everything. You’re supposed to be getting married to Ian and here I am making a total ass of myself.”

Leah didn’t say anything, and she wouldn’t look at him directly, but she bit her lip and he saw her eyes brighten.

“Don’t cry,” he said. “Please don’t cry. I’m leaving, I promise.”

“Wait,” she said.

Nathan thought his heart might stop.

“I thought it was just me,” she whispered. “I thought you wouldn’t look at me because you couldn’t stand me.”

“Not at all. Not even close.”

They paused for a long moment, staring into each other’s eyes. Nathan felt like he was falling endlessly, head over foot, into her, and he never wanted to come back up.

“I was so jealous I thought I might explode,” she said. “Of Emily, for getting you.”

“Not a chance,” Nathan said. “Not a single chance.”

Gently, his fingers almost trembling, he put one hand on her chin, his fingertips just barely brushing her soft, pale skin.

“What do we do now?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.

“Can I kiss you?” He’d never asked permission before, but he’d never even been
near
someone like Leah before.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes sliding closed.

Just as Nathan bent down, his lips nearing hers, there was a shout from inside the farmhouse.

“Leah!” Jonah Whitehorse’s voice boomed.

Leah’s eyes flew open, only inches from Nathan’s, and now they bordered on terror.

“I have to go,” she said.

Then she gave his hand a quick squeeze in her own and ran back across the unkempt lawn, barefoot, to her front door, giving him one last glance before rushing inside.

Nathan was left standing in the driveway, open-mouthed and utterly unsure of what to do next.

* * *

I
nstead of going home
, Nathan rode his bike around for a while. Though Fjords was in a fairly flat little area, the mountains were only about thirty minutes outside town and before he knew it, he was on a two-lane mountain road, climbing higher and higher, the air getting chilly even in the summertime.

Muscle memory and sheer habit wanted him to turn toward Seward and head back to its seedy bars, but he didn’t go. He’d already proven to himself that there was nothing there for him anymore. Cruise ship women were a thing of his past.

All he could think about was Leah. He’d finally touched her, really
touched
her, and her skin had felt like rose petals and lava under his hands, soft and liquid and hot all at once. Nathan hadn’t known that just
touching
someone could feel like that, not to mention the rest of her.

The logical part of his brain knew it was probably a good thing that Jonah had called her back inside, because he didn’t know if he’d have been able to control himself. In another few minutes he’d have had her skirt up around her waist, her back in the grass.

He tried to imagine what it sounded like when Leah moaned in pleasure and a chill went down his spine.

I have to see her again
, was all he could think.

He wasn’t stupid. He knew that she was going to marry someone else in, what, five more days? He also knew that her father was an absolute tyrant, and that she’d grown up obeying his every command.

But somehow, none of that mattered.

He
had
to see her again, and that was the one thing that he knew for certain. Everything else he’d figure out one way or another, but there was that one simple, soul-deep desire.

He had
to see her again.

* * *

I
t was late
, nearly midnight, when he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. Caller ID told him it was Brock, and so he pulled over to the side of the road, cut his engine, and answered it.

“Yeah?”

“Where are you?”

“I took a ride around the mountains,” Nathan said.

Brock was quiet for a moment. They had known each other for a long time, and Brock understood what that meant.

“So you didn’t hear the pandemonium,” Brock finally said.

Nathan began to get a bad feeling about this call.

“No. What happened?”

“One of the bride’s redneck cousins caused another ruckus,” Brock said. “Again.”

Nathan flinched when he heard Brock called Leah
the bride
.

“Oh.”

“He got drunk, picked a fight in a bar, shifted near humans, and then knocked over a traffic light on his way out of town.”

“Damn.”

“I need you to do something about him,” Brock said. “I talked to him and to Jonah about this after the engagement party, but it seems that we need something a little stronger.”

Nathan had that awful, crawling feeling in his gut, the feeling he got when Brock was asking him to do something really bad.

“How much stronger?”

“Rough him up and leave him in the woods. Couple of broken bones. They usually learn after that.”

Unbidden, Nathan thought again of Kaitlyn, of that horrible
snap
sound.

He was quiet for a long time, staring at the yellow lines on the road.

“Nathan?”

“I don’t think I can, Brock,” he said, slowly.

He thought of Leah, of her perfect, beautiful face staring up at him. How could she love someone who put her cousin in the hospital?

“Why not?” asked Brock.

Nathan was quiet for a moment, trying to figure out what to say.

“I’d like to start being a better person,” he said.

He didn’t say,
I want to be someone that Leah could love
.

To his surprise, Brock chuckled.

“For Emily,” Brock asked. It wasn’t a question.

“Well, you know,” answered Nathan. He didn’t want to lie to his alpha, but he didn’t want to give himself away.

“Understood,” said Brock. “I’ll find someone else.”

Then he hung up the phone, leaving Nathan straddling his bike, on a road in the dark.

His refusal had gone surprisingly well.

L
eah knew
that she was in trouble the moment she opened the front door to the house, her father standing at the other end of the short hallway, simply glowering.

For one moment she felt a flare of anger at the whole situation. She was thirty-two years old, and even though she’d grown up in this clan and did things their way, how many other thirty-two-year old women could still get in trouble with their fathers?

“What were you doing?” he asked. He stood perfectly still, the only hint to his fury the line sunken between his brows.

“He left his phone on the table,” Leah said, brushing her hands together like she was wiping them off. Her heart was still beating so hard she was certain her father could hear it, but hopefully he’d think she was just afraid of him.

“I didn’t see it there.”

Leah shrugged, trying to act nonchalant. “It was sort of peeking out from under his napkin. I wanted to get it to him before he left.”

The chasm between his eyebrows got shallower. It was working.

“You should have had one of your sisters accompany you.”

“I didn’t think of it, daddy,” she said, walking forward in the hallway. She was out of the danger zone now, she could tell.

He still glared, but less severely.

“It was just the front yard, daddy. It was nothing.”

Coming right up to him, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed his beard-covered cheek.

“You know that I don’t approve of you being alone with men.”

“I know.”

He stepped aside and let her through to the kitchen, and Leah felt her insides go droopy with relief.

If he’d caught her actually touching Nathan, there’d have been hell to pay. Not only had she been in physical contact with a man she wasn’t at least betrothed to, but she was
already
betrothed to someone else.

Leah was playing with fire, and it had to stop, and she knew it.

“So?” rang a voice from the kitchen, shouting over the clatter of the dishes.

Leah stepped into the room to see Abigail, Rebecca and Emily all standing by the sink. The dishwasher was already running, but it never fit everything, so one sister was washing, one rinsing, and one drying.

Emily, on drying duty, just shrugged.

“He’s kind of old,” she said, noncommittally.

Even at twenty, she obviously knew better than to badmouth someone who might wind up her mate. That was the constant push-pull of being in the Yukon clan. On the one hand, they were expected to fall in love with their mates at first sight, recognize the other half of their soul in someone else.

On the other hand, their fathers usually arranged marriages with men they barely knew. No one ever
asked
if the women felt that spark or that pull, it was simply assumed that, since a man had been chosen for them, they did.

Leah was finding out what happened when the universe had other plans.

“Nathan’s not bad,” she said, stepping up to the counter. She began putting leftovers into the fridge.

“He isn’t a very good conversationalist,” said Emily. “Daddy kept asking him questions and he just looked like a deer in the headlights every time he had to answer.”

That’s because Daddy’s not normal
, thought Leah, but she didn’t say it.

“He probably wasn’t prepared,” she said out loud.

“Then why come over here at all?” Emily said. Though the girl was shy in front of strangers, she was a firecracker with her sisters. Like right now.

“Beats me,” said Leah.

Stop defending him
, she thought.
What if they catch on?

“You guys want any more pie before I put it away?” she asked, sneaking a forkful herself.

L
eah spent
most of that night and the next day trying to tell herself that it had been nothing. Somehow, both she and Nathan had gotten the wrong idea, and sure, he’d touched her in the front yard, but that was it.

She probably wouldn’t even see him again until her wedding, and at that point, it didn’t even matter, right?

Ian was her partner, her husband-to-be and her soulmate, and that was
that
.

She just wished thinking that didn’t make her feel quite so awful.

At six on the dot, Ian’s SUV rumbled up their driveway to pick her up for their date. It was a little strange for a groom-to-be to only spend a little bit of time with his soon-to-be wife — in Yukon City, the two usually spent most of their time together for that week, chaperoned of course — but Ian seemed very busy with his import-export business.

Leah was waiting in the sitting room on one of the blue couches, trying not to be too nervous. She waited for him to come to the door, as was proper, and then opened it under her mother’s watchful eye.

Ian stepped inside and handed her a small bouquet of flowers. Carnations, not her favorite, but he’d learn what she liked, right?

“You look lovely,” he said perfunctorily, but Leah still blushed. She didn’t get many compliments, especially being the heaviest of four daughters.

“Thanks,” she said. “Would you like to come in?”

Most of Leah’s family was pretending to be busy in the nearby rooms, so she walked him through them and Ian shook hands with everyone. He remembered most of their names.

See
, thought Leah, trying to warm herself to the man she was going to marry,
he’s made an effort. You should appreciate that.

She was really, really trying.

Finally, Ian looked at his watch, then at Leah.

“Grab your sister, our reservation’s at seven,” he told her.

Leah blinked. “My sister?”

“Emily,” he said. “It’s a double date. We’re meeting Nathan there.”

Leah nearly broke into a grin, and her heart turned over in her chest. It was only years of training that let her keep the same facial expression.

“No one told me.”

She saw the muscles around his eyes tighten just the tiniest bit.

“Just get your sister and let’s go,” he said, the friendly joviality suddenly gone from his voice.

Leah felt something small and ice cold settle in the pit of her stomach, but she went to go find her little sister.

The drive to the restaurant was mostly silent.