Caleb (22 page)

Jared
leaned back in his chair, rocking it to the edge of tipping over and snagged a
bun. “You started it.” He tossed the pastry to Derek who caught it deftly.
“We’re just playing along.”

Derek
took a bite. “They’re a little dry.”

Allie
reached behind her. The handle of the rolling pin slipped into her palm. “You
do have a compulsion to live dangerously.”

Derek
stretched and she blinked at the amount of muscle that bunched and flowed with
the movement. “You can bury me six feet under when it goes away.”

Caleb’s
swat on her butt had everyone looking at her; Derek smiling, the brothers
frowning.

“What?”
She raised her hands. “It’s not like I’m interested.”

Derek’s
smile broadened as he brought his arms down. His gaze dropped to her chest.
“Are you sure, darling?”

The
pulses of sexual energy coming off Derek made her vividly aware that she’d left
her bra off that morning in deference to the heat of the stove. She crossed her
arms over her chest. Dealing with Caleb was enough. She didn’t need a wild card
like the werewolf tossed into the mix. “I’m sure.”

“If
you change your mind in the future, you know where you can find me.”

Good
grief, along with long life, had the good Lord handed weres an excessive amount
of ego and confidence? “Do me a favor, would you?”

“What?”

She
smiled at him. “Hold your breath until I hunt you up.”

Instead
of taking the comment as an insult, Derek just laughed out loud and the
interest she could sense in him increased. “How long are you planning on
holding a grudge for that first night?”

“That
depends.”

“On
what?”

She
held his gaze. “Your life expectancy.”

More
laughter around the table. Caleb’s hand cradled her hip, his fingers stroking
along the full curve. “Stop flirting with the man, Allie.”

“I’m
not flirting, I’m aggravating him.”

“With
a were, that’s one and the same,” Jace cut in.

Derek
chuckled. Displeasure whipped through Caleb’s energy, blending with the
antagonism she felt toward the big were. Heightening her need to irritate him.

Allie
turned in Caleb’s grasp to glare at him. “What is it with you paranormal men?
When you got in line for long life, did you sneak back for a double dose of
arrogance?”

Derek
reached for another bear claw. “Yup.”

Allie
pushed his hand away from the treat. “I reserve those for friends.”

The
smile left his tanned face. “What makes you think I’m not your friend?”

“Something
about the way you like to toss me into dirty stalls, leave me to the mercy of
my bladder, and then use me as bait.”

“I’ll
own up to the first, but the last was all Jared and the boys.”

“You
could have stopped it.” It still irked her that no one had. Chairs creaked as
weight shifted in them. Tension in the air increased.

“No.
He couldn’t.”

Allie
looked down into Caleb’s eyes, drawn by the certainty in his voice. The uneasy
feeling in the pit of her stomach wasn’t completely due to the return of her
insatiable hunger. “He could have tried.”

“No.”
His hand slid up to wrap around her waist, his fingers warming the turbulence
within. “No more than anyone here would let you die, they couldn’t let me die.”

“Your
brothers don’t even like me.”

“That’s
not true,” Jared cut in.

She
wouldn’t have questioned the statement from Slade or Jace, but Jared? “Oh,
c’mon.”

He
looked at her with those eyes so like Caleb’s, the strength of his personality
hitting her like a blow, the lack of a smile on his face giving her nothing to
hold on to. “You’re one of us now. We can like you as much as we want.”

Which
told her nothing. Caleb pulled her fully into his embrace. Comfort flowed over
her, soothing the fear wedged beneath her resolution to make the best of her
situation. She stepped away. She wanted a good foot between them. She got an
inch. She turned and pushed at his hand.

“You
know I’m not interested in Derek, right?” She ignored the were’s dry “Ouch.”
“It’s just that I’m not used to all this freaking testosterone twenty-four
seven. It’s like being in the middle of a freak-fest.”

“I
know.”

Derek
laughed outright, his throat muscles rippling with the sound. At the base, his
pulse throbbed. Her inner radar leapt to attention, reminding her that not only
was the were big and handsome, he was breakfast on the hoof. “I’ve got a peace
offering if you’ll take it.”

“What
is it?”

He
snagged another bear claw, his grab faster than her prevention. “My mother
wrote a cookbook a while back. I’ve kept it.”

“How
long is a while back?

“A couple
hundred years.”

It
was a measure of how much she’d been bombarded with in the last two weeks that
Allie didn’t even blink at the two-hundred-year reference. “Is it like ‘ancient
cooking devices for dummies’?”

“Yup.
She wrote it for the new brides in the congregation.”

A
werewolf who wrote recipe books for the congregation? “You realize you are all
just totally blowing my TV-induced conceptions of the paranormal?”

“They
could use some shaking up,” Slade cut in, tossing his hat toward the rack by
the door. It hit the edge of the hook and fell to the floor. “You’ve got some
dangerous notions when it comes to vampires.”

Shut
up.
Caleb shot the mental order at
Slade, but it was too late. Slade had Allie’s full attention.

“Well,
maybe you could provide me with some facts, and I could stop speculating.”

Slade
being Slade was happy to oblige. He picked up his hat, dusted some lint from
the brim, and put it on the hook. “What do you want to know?”

“I
want to know how you came to be. I want to know if there are others like Simon
and the D’Nallys. I want to know why I can’t—”

Slade
came back to the table. “That’s a heck of a lot to want to know.”

“I’ve
been saving up.”

Caleb
shook his head at Slade. “Now is not the time.”

“She
deserves answers.”

Allie
glared at Caleb. “Yes, I do.”

Caleb
sighed as Allie leaned away from him. Obviously, he wasn’t going to get much
work with that new gelding tonight. Not with the way Allie was chafing at her
confinement. “She’s got enough to deal with.”

Jared
took advantage of Allie’s distraction to grab a bear claw. “Her change would
probably be a lot easier to deal with if she had some background.”

Of
course, Allie was in agreement with that. “Absolutely.”

The
only security Caleb had to offer her was the illusion he knew what was
happening to her and had it and everything else under control. If she knew they
had no clue as to what was happening to her, if she knew how close the D’Nallys
were to breaching the compound, she’d have no sense of safety at all. “No.”

“Fine,
if we can’t talk about Allie, we’ll talk about you.”

“Jared.”

Jared
ignored the warning, tossed the bear claw to Derek, and turned to Allie. “Did
you know Caleb was changed by a female?”

Allie
perked up. “No, I didn’t.”

Shit,
now they were going to have to relive this, and in doing so, bring up all
Jared’s festering anger. The day was definitely going from bad to worse.

“She
found him after he’d been bushwhacked and jumped him when he was too weak from
blood loss to fight.”

“Damn
it, Jared, when are you going to let it go?”

“When
the devil starts making snowballs in hell.”

Caleb
ground his molars. The night of his conversion welled out of his memory. Weak,
out of his head and in pain from a gut shot, worry for his brothers uppermost
in his mind, he’d watched her step out of the twilight looking like an angel,
long blonde hair flowing past her hips, highlighting the ethereal thinness of
her build and her pale, perfect skin. She’d touched him, her brown eyes moist
with sadness. Warmth had swamped the cold encasing him. He’d embraced it fully
as she lowered her head. He’d taken her bite, thought the ecstasy a sign of
God’s deliverance and forgiveness for the shadier things he’d done to keep him
and his brothers together and alive. When, in that last moment, she’d asked him
if he was sure, he’d said, “Yes.”

And
so she’d changed him, giving him the second chance he’d asked for, even if it
wasn’t the one he’d anticipated. And he, in turn, had passed it on to his brothers.
“The only person to blame for what we are is me.”

“She
manipulated your mind,” Jared snapped.

“I
don’t need you telling me how it was,” Caleb snapped right back. “I was there.”

“When
I find her, I’m going to put her out of her misery.”

It
was an oft-repeated refrain, and Caleb was sick of it. “If you want to blame
someone for being a vampire, blame me.”

Jared
leaned back in his chair. “I’m comfortable with who I have pegged.”

Caleb
sighed. “She was very fragile, Jared. Converting me might have killed her.”

“Obviously
not, as we’re all still vampires.”

“You’re
clinging to a myth. Killing her won’t change us back.”

“Maybe.”
The hate in Jared’s voice spilled into the room. God forgive him, he’d done
this to Jared. To all of them. Not the woman. She’d been innocent. He’d bet his
soul on that. He closed his eyes and remembered her face with its elfin
piquancy, her weakness, the sadness in her eyes. And felt some sadness of his
own. “She needed help.”

Beside
him, Allie stiffened. Too late he realized she’d tapped into his mind. Her
snarl blended with Jared’s “Bullshit.” A mental touch revealed the primitive
jealousy consuming her. Her vampire didn’t like his thoughts on another woman.

“Relax,
Allie. It was a long time ago.”

She
crossed her arms over her chest. Her nails dented her skin, driving the blood
from the area, making deep valleys in the soft flesh. “You liked her.”

He
tightened his grip on her hip when she would have pulled away. “She saved my
life, what wasn’t to like?”

He
ignored Jared’s snort, focused on Allie’s glare. He sighed. “She needed help,
baby, and I didn’t give it. It’s guilt, not lust I feel.”

“Heck,
Allie, you can’t blame a man for his thoughts,” Derek cut in.

That
stubborn chin came up. “Yes, I can.”

The
challenge stood. Around them, the other males stilled. Anticipation thickened
the air. The soft scent of female anxiety drifted over the heavier scent of
lust. His, the were’s, and his brothers.

He
didn’t like the mix, the tension. He stood. Something wasn’t right. “Allie?”

“What?”

He
met the others’ gazes. The way their eyes averted from his told him one thing.
He wasn’t imagining things. “We’re all done with the questions.”

“No.”
Anger, desire, and fear packed that one syllable.

He
backed his first order with a mental one. It was rejected just as summarily.
The longing of the other males reached out, touching the edges of his private
line with Allie. Hungry, needing, wanting. Caleb bent, his instincts screaming
a warning. He needed to get her out of here. Ignoring Allie’s surprised cry, he
tossed her over his shoulder and grabbed his hat. Her fists beat on his hips as
he carried her from the room.

“YOU
are a total ass.”

Caleb
followed Allie up the back staircase, settling his hat on his head. Every step
reverberated with the anger radiating off her. Her lush ass swayed with every
slam of her foot on the wood, each stomp ending with an inviting jiggle that
had his palms itching to capture it. He could smell her blood from where she’d
driven her talons into her palms. She was still having trouble with control. “A
complete and total jerk,” she reiterated.

“The
situation with Derek was getting out of hand.” He couldn’t bring himself to
mention his brothers. “I warned you not to go without a bra.”

She
stomped up three more steps. “It’s hot in the kitchen.”

“Adjust
your body temperature.”

“It
doesn’t work for me.”

“Then
wear a bra.”

She
spun on the landing. “You have no right to tell me what to wear.”

His
vampire reared in answer to the feminine challenge, his human pride right
alongside. He took the next two stairs in one stride. Her eyes flew wide in
alarm. She backed up, her feet shuffling in a rapid slide as she felt behind
her for the wall. He followed. One step, two, until her back hit the sheetrock.
He slammed his hands down on either side of her head, trapping her with his
body. “And you have no right to drool over another man.”