The Breed Casstiel's Vow (13 page)

“I’m sorry for bringing it up, we don’t have to talk
about it, I don’t even know why I brought that up,” she apologized profusely,
while silently hating herself for having such a big mouth.

“Don’t ever be sorry for wanting to know me,” he
whispered, caressing the side of her face.

Heat spread through her body as she forced herself not
to pull away from his touch.

“Let me hold you and I’ll tell you the story,” he
bargained, spreading his arms wide.

Tessa hesitated for a fraction of a second before giving
in to those electric eyes and big broad shoulders.

His arms locked tightly around her and she felt comfort
wash over her.

“My parents were betrayed and killed by our own people,
by members of the Breed,” Casstiel began grimly.

A shiver ran up her spine at the idea of anyone
betraying Casstiel or Sebastian. She thought about stopping to comfort him, but
it wasn’t sadness in his words, it was rage.

“When my parents
immigrated
us
to America in the early eighteen hundreds it was a time of hate and suffering
for the Breed. Wars erupted internally over power and territory. America was so
new and fresh to
us,
everyone wanted to own it for
themselves. The Breed battles raged, and they didn’t care what humans were
killed in the crosshairs,” Casstiel’s voice became distant, lost in memories of
the past.

“My parents wouldn’t stand for
it,
they refused to see the Breed tear itself apart over greed. So as a family we
rallied for peace; we went through packs and covens talking sense into our
people, and quelling the fires. It was my parents who started the first embassy
here in New York,” he continued.

“You’re kidding?” she blurted out, as usual having no
social grace.

“My mother designed the whole thing from the ground up,”
he smiled fondly at her.

“That’s incredible,” she sighed in wonder.

“She was incredible,” Casstiel nodded his head in
agreement, “but not everyone thought so. Many of the leaders of packs and
covens hated her and my father for all their meddling and peace loving. When
Sebastian and I went to meet with other Breed members to discuss opening
embassies across the U.S., they attacked. They came to our home under pretenses
of settling their differences and discussing peace, and were welcomed in with
open arms. It took seventeen of them to slaughter my parents.”

He rested his chin on her head when his voice began to
shake, and she cuddled in deeper.

 “My brother made it back to our house before I
did. When I finally got there, there was a note taped to the front door, all it
said was ‘they will be avenged’ in Sebastian’s hand writing. I took a few
sentimental possessions from the house, then burned it to the ground and went
following in his footsteps.” 

“He hunted them for years, picking them off one by one.
I usually got their days after him, only once was I able to beat him and have
my own vengeance. He became a machine for his revenge, never stopping, never
slowing down. It took thirty five years to track and kill them, but in that time
my brother had carved a name of fear into the hearts of the Breed, becoming a
legend for his cruelty.”

“I… I never saw Sebastian like that… he’s always been
cold, but I never imagined him as a killer,” she stammered, a chill washing
over her at the thought.

“That’s because he’s not a murderer. He didn’t kill
those people for fun, and once the last one of them was dead he quietly took up
the dream my parents had but hadn’t gotten to achieve. He started the shelter
for victims of the Breed and has run it ever since,” Casstiel explained.

“We tried to get him to run the embassy at first instead
of me, but he refused. He has very little love for the Breed anymore, and would
rather help its victims. Let’s change the
subject,
I
brought you here to get to know you not discuss the ghosts of the past.”

“I’d rather talk about you,” she murmured as she felt
him press his lips to the crown of her head.

“Would it be such a bad thing if I got to know you
Tessa?” his strong fingers turned her chin to look at him.

“I don’t think it would be a bad thing,” she shied her
eyes away from him.

“Then tell me about yourself… Tell me all of your
favorite things,” he insisted, a smile spreading across his face.

“All of my favorite things?” she laughed, “Like what, my
favorite color?
My favorite food?”

“Sure,” Casstiel agreed, “then you can move on to your
favorite places and movies, and all the songs you love and why, then tell me
all of your fondest memories.”

Tessa laughed at the absurdity of his request, but
stopped when she saw the seriousness on his face.

“You’re joking right?” she asked still amused.

“Why would I be?” he cocked his head at her.

 “It would take weeks to tell you all that,” she
finally scoffed, shrugging off his request.

“Well then you’d better start now, we’ve only got five
hours until sunrise,” he replied.

Tessa rolled her eyes at him, not really sure why she
was fighting the idea of talking about herself so much. Was she just afraid to
get attached to him, or was it because she had spent her life so closed off and
separated from other people, she felt like she didn’t have very much of a life
to tell him about?

“Well if you don’t want to talk about yourself then I
guess I’ll have to find something else to do to entertain myself,” he replied,
a wicked grin spreading across his face.

“We could go back to walking,” she suggested,
desperately trying to ignore the sexy teasing tone in his voice.

“No I think we’ll stay here,” he purred in her ear, then
slid his hand along her lower calf.

Tessa’s heart exploded in her chest. This was it, go
time.

 He leaned forward so that his breath set the skin
of her neck on fire, and let his fingers wander.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as he traced
an agonizingly slow path down around her ankle and began to climb back up, his
hot breath teasing the nape of her neck.

Just keep it together… this is what you came here for…
just do it…
she gave herself a frantic
mental pep talk.

A shiver raced up her spine as he crossed over her knee and
began to climb up her thigh.

“I love the face you’re making right now,” he chuckled
deeply into her ear, and she pressed her eyes shut tighter, fighting for air.

You can handle it… you haven’t had sex in ages… don’t
chicken out…
she thought desperately to
herself.

“Ok! Ok! Ok! I was born in Michigan in 1987, my
dads
a philosophy professor and my mom’s a stay at home
wife, my favorite color is blue, and my favorite food is Chinese!” she shouted
out in one breath as his finger hooked the hem of her skirt and began to drag
it upwards.

“Hmmm…. I guess that’s a start, keep talking,” he paused
just inches from her panty line.

Tessa tried to calm down her breathing and think, but it
was impossible with him touching her so seductively.

“I can’t think when you’re touching me,” she gasped as
his fingers played across the top of her thigh, leaving a trail of goose bumps.

“
Mmm
maybe you just want me to
keep going,” he nuzzled her neck and slid his fingers towards her inner thigh.

She didn’t know what she wanted anymore, her brain and
her body were all over the place with thoughts of what could happen in the
dark, under these trees.

“Umm… ok…. I love camping, and reading and… and…” she
felt like she was going to hyperventilate, “I’m a good poker player but I’m terrible
at telling jokes.”

Casstiel laughed heartily and took his hand off of her
thigh.

She let out a massive sigh of relief and unwound some of
the muscles that had tensed into knots at his touch.

“I don’t want you to pass out,” he teased and kissed her
lightly on the side of her forehead.

She gave him an evil glare and shoved her skirt back
down.

“I am serious though,” he replied, “I brought you here
to get to know you Tessa, really know you, and I don’t want to leave until
you’ve given me a better glimpse of who you are.”

Somehow, despite all the negative insecure thoughts she
was having, when she opened her mouth to speak to him, the words flowed out. It
was easier to talk to Casstiel than it had ever been to talk to anyone in her
life, and somehow that realization made her more nervous than her thoughts of
sex.  

“So what was all that about?” Jax asked looking into the
rear view mirror to meet Nora’s eyes.

“What do you mean?” she answered nonchalantly, not
wanting to spill all of Tessa’s business to a
stranger.           

“You guys just seemed like you really wanted to separate
us,” he sighed in an all too knowing way, “I get the feeling we won’t be seeing
them at the club.”

“It’s good for Tessa to be wild for once in her life,”
she finally spoke up, the secret would be out in a matter of hours anyway,
“She’s never been to a big city before, and she’s never had a one night stand,
the girls practically a virgin. She needs to have a crazy night.”

“Wild for a night?”
Kain
scoffed from the passenger seat, his wide set shoulders looking cramped in the
shiny black corvette.

“Don’t act like your boss isn’t out with a different
girl every other night,” Nora rolled her eyes, “girls can do it too.”

“That’s not what he meant,” Jax said, suddenly sounding
very serious as he merged them onto the freeway.

“What? You think Tessa’s gonna turn into one of those
crazy overly attached girls? Don’t
worry,
she’s not
the stalker type. In a few days we’ll be back in Boston and this will just be a
cool story she can tell later on,” Nora quickly defended her friend, she would
make sure Tessa didn’t think too deeply about tonight.

Jax shot Kain a very pointed look.

“What is it?” she snapped, her irritation now sky
rocketing, “look if you’ve got anything bad to say about my friend you came to
the wrong person to talk to.”

“We don’t have anything bad to say about her,” Jax was
quick to reassure, “it’s just that…”

“What? Is there something wrong with your boss? He’s not
gonna tie her up and whip her is he?” she demanded, wishing he would make his
point already.

“Nope that would be me,” Kain gave her a smile, and she
noted that he was unbelievably good looking when wearing one across his lips.

Jax merged over to the exit lane then looked to Kain
again, almost as if to get his opinion.

“You’re the one doing all the talking, don’t look at me
man,” Kain snapped then firmly looked out his window, refusing to look in his
friend’s direction.

“Ok can someone just tell me what the fuck is going on?”
Nora growled from the back seat, all she wanted to hear was that Tessa would be
safe and sound at the end of the night.

“I don’t think Cass is interested in making this just a
one night thing,” Jax finally spoke awkwardly, as if he were stepping over some
sort of invisible boundary.

 “As in he’s going to want to take her out every
night until we leave?” she asked cautiously, hoping that this conversation
wasn’t going to go where she thought it was.

Jax looked over helplessly at Kain.

“Don’t even look at me man, you’re the one that wants to
tell Cass’s business,” he replied, his spine ridged with irritation.

“As in he might want to make this situation a little
more… permanent,” Jax gave up and crossed over to enemy lines.

“Be more specific,” she felt like someone had thrown a
bucket of ice on her. He couldn’t actually be talking about the
bond,
she refused to even consider the thought.

“We’ve never seen Cass act like this
before,
he’s always been the play boy type like you said. He’s never cared about a
woman in a romantic way, or wanted anything from her that was more than one
night, but lately he’s only been sleeping with girls that look REALLY similar
to your friend, and as soon as she showed up his whole attitudes been
different,” Jax rubbed his hand across the top of his spiked hair as he stopped
the car at a red light, “He didn’t push her during the questioning, he’s
protective and defensive over her even though he doesn’t know her.”

“You can’t be serious,” she replied in shock, not
wanting to hear anything else they had to say, “the bond can’t take place that
quickly can it?
If he’s been going after girls that look like
her than that’s probably just his type.”

It couldn’t be the bond. Breed members mistook lust for
the bond all the time; look what had happened to her because Billy had mistaken
the bond. 

“I mean he hasn’t flat out said he’s bonded with her,
but we know our boss pretty well, he’s a hard ass. I’ve never seen him act
sweet or gentle to anyone before, it sounds weird even saying ‘sweet and
gentle’ in the same sentence as Cass,” he stomped on the acceleration, “I mean
he’s Sebastian’s brother, could you see him being nice and cozy with anyone?”

Nora almost laughed out loud at the idea. Sebastian
certainly had never struck her as the gentle
type,
honestly she had never even seen him crack a smile. 

The rest of the car ride was spent in tense silence. The
bond was such a powerful and dangerous thing, people changed when they bonded
and not always in a good way.

It was one of the things she feared most in the world,
and the biggest reason she had happily lived inside the shelter with Memphis
for so long; if she didn’t meet anyone else from the Breed her risk of bonding
was zero. 

When they finally pulled up to the valet parking of the
club Kain all but flew out of the car.

“You opened this can of worms, so now you can babysit
her,” he called over his shoulder,
then
disappeared
into the throng of the crowd.

~

“So your brother got all the athletic genes then?”
Casstiel smiled as he wrapped his arms tighter around Tessa’s middle.

“Yeah, in our family he’s the only one who could ever do
anything sports related. I’m a hockey fan, but that’s the extent of my sports
knowledge. I can’t even tell you the difference between a quarter back, and a
line backer,” Tessa laughed, the sound chiming like bells in his ear.

“Don’t feel bad, I don’t know anything about sports
either, my parents raised us to be more interested in art. If you want sports
info Jax is the one to talk to, that’s how him and Kain became best friends,
playing football together in elementary school if I remember right,” Casstiel
replied, his fingers unconsciously gliding across her bare knee.

He couldn’t help but touch her, being here in such an
important place to him made him never want to take his hands off of her again.
Now that he had his mate, he never wanted to let go of her.

 “So you never joined any clubs or teams?” he
asked, wanting to pry as deeply into her life as she would let him.

“Anything that involved having to spend more time with
people than I absolutely had to
was
a no go for me,”
she shrugged her shoulders.

“You’ve always been a shy little hermit then?” he teased
as he kissed the top of her forehead.

This time she didn’t shy away from the affection. She
was slowly becoming used to his small touches and caresses, finally enjoying
his attention on her.

“Honestly I really have been. Maybe I sound like a
coward but being by
yourself
is so much easier and
safer than being surrounded by other people. I never needed to rely on anyone
but myself, I was never let down by anyone, never had my heart broken or my
trust misplaced,” she spoke to her shoes as she gave him the first real glimpse
into her heart.

No matter how many times she told him the way she had
kept herself all these years was nicer she couldn’t mask the loneliness in her
voice as she spoke. Her heart might have been safer on its own, but it longed
for companionship.

“Being alone is scary for most other people, but for me
it’s just comfortable. When I’m alone there’s no one judging me, it’s just me,
myself and I,” she smiled up at him, trying to reassure him that she really was
fine.

She didn’t have to say that she was sad, or that despite
having a loving family she had been lonely for years; he didn’t need to hear
her say that her heart was fragile and her hope all but nonexistent, he could
read it all there in her eyes.

He turned his body so he was facing her and placed his
hands softly on either side of her face.

“I’ll never judge you, and I’ll never abuse your trust,”
he promised her, and meant it.

She tried to pull away, to back out of the seriousness
of the conversation, but he wouldn’t let her. He stared into her eyes trying
with every fiber of his being to let her know that she was safe with him, that
he would make sure she was never alone again.

 Here in the place he had spent so much time
finding himself, redefining who he was after his parents were murdered and his
life had changed forever, in the place he had never brought another person
because it was too raw and personal to him, he made a silent vow to her.

He would love her more than she thought possible, he
would do anything in his power to make her happy, no matter the cost to him,
and he would restore her faith and trust in herself.

~

Tessa didn’t understand what was happening, she thought
she had come out here to have a wild fling with a sexy stranger, but instead
she felt like something intimate and real was passing between them.

She couldn’t understand why he was saying what he was
saying, or why he was staring at her so intensely; was it pity? Or had he
honestly begun to care about her in the few short hours they had spent
together?

She tried to break away from the contact, tried to sever
the tension in the moment, but he wouldn’t let her. He held her face firmly in
his hands, forcing her to look at him; forcing her to stare into his incredibly
blue eyes, his strong nose and full lips, and the hard cut of his jaw line.

Lust is what she should be feeling as she stared at all
the masculine beauty before her, at this ragingly powerful predator clothed in
the body of a god, but it wasn’t. She felt something stir in her deeper and
more powerful than lust could ever hope to be, and for the first time in her
life she wanted to lean on someone, wanted to trust and depend and believe.

“You… you don’t even know me,” she whispered, clinging
desperately to her defenses despite how swept away she was feeling.

“I know that you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever
met, yet somehow you can’t seem to see it, I know that you’re braver than most
grown men, yet you think you’re weak and helpless,” he pulled her closer to
him, refusing to break the eye contact.

“Stop it… you don’t-”

 “I know that your laugh is contagious and makes me
want to laugh, I know that your smile makes my knees weak, and that when I hear
your heart beating faster my hands
start
to shake. I
know that sitting here with you, sharing this moment with you, makes me want to
be everything you need Tessa,” his voice was so intense, so raw and real as he
spoke she couldn’t take it.

Her head was swimming, trying desperately to keep up
with what he was saying, to understand what he meant; but she was lost, utterly
lost, in the look in his eyes and the wish that this all wasn’t just a dream.

She didn’t understand the things he was making her feel,
or why he was doing it, but she didn’t care anymore, her defenses were buckling
under the seriousness of his gaze.

He pulled her closer still, barely an inch between them,
she could feel the steady warmth of his breath tingling against her lips; he
was waiting for her to come to him, for her to close that last inch and make
the kiss.

She tried to tell herself that this would be a normal
kiss, that there wasn’t anything to be afraid of; but somewhere deep inside of
her she knew that this was going to be a defining moment, that somehow this
kiss was going to change everything.

Sucking in a deep breath she closed her eyes and felt
the cool breeze gently swim across her face, listened to the leaves rustling
over head, and felt the searing intensity of Casstiel’s stare as he waited for
her.

She let out the deep breath she had been holding, and
throwing all her defenses to the wind, leaned forward.

Heat rushed through her lips and down every nerve ending
in her body, causing her to tremble.

His lips were soft against hers, but she could feel the
intensity behind his kiss, felt like she was drowning underneath it.

She could feel that he was holding back so much,
purposely making the kiss slow and tender,
guiding
her
easily through it instead of over whelming her. Could he tell how little
experience she really had?

Slowly he laid her back onto the blankets underneath
them, one of his hands softly cradling her head while the other cupped her
face.

Part of her wanted to touch him, to take his clothes off
and speed everything up, but part of her wanted to lay there and be kissed by him
forever.

Strong and slow and sensual, his kiss made her lips
tingle and her body tremble. She felt like there was a message behind it, but
she just couldn’t understand what it was. She had thought he just wanted to
have a one night stand with her, but everything he was doing said something
different.