Powerful Awakening [L.U.S.T. 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (13 page)

Now was not the time to explain that. “One answer at a time, my sweet.”

She nodded and seemed to accept that, but her hands moved to the front of his shoulders and he felt a gentle push. “Will you move now, please? Then I’ll tell you.”

She didn’t believe him. By all the powers in any realm, how could he make her believe him?

He hesitated a moment, dipped his head to brush his lips to hers for what he suddenly feared might be his last kiss, then pushed himself off her. He stepped back, shoving his softening cock into his slacks, and bent to snatch her blouse off the floor. “Do you want this?”

She sat up, staying on the top of the desk, and took the shirt he held out for her. Rather than putting it back on, she draped it over her lap. Her arms worked behind her, catching the cups of the bra he hadn’t fully removed, and refastening the clasp between her breasts. Then, she curled her fingers around the edge of the desk and met his gaze.

“I’m one of a few shifters left of my kind. We’re nearly extinct.”

The wheels in Michael’s head started to turn, files of information collected over the decades opening to expose what he knew of the many beings that roamed the various realms. He knew of only one species nearing true extinction, only one that would explain her question and his. “You are a were-chameleon?”

She swallowed hard as she nodded and he could see she still feared for her life even though she had trusted him with the truth. “There are others out there.”

“But you are of the breed that has the ability to not be sensed by others with the powers to do so.” He knew of them, though he had never come across one. Or, at least, he didn’t think he had. Their ability to keep their powers camouflaged even from the strongest of beings would have prevented him from knowing even if he had been talking with one face-to-face.

Like you have been doing with her since last night.

Chrystal heaved a heavy sigh. “That ability comes with a heavy price.”

Michael smiled comfortingly. “They all do, my sweet. Your price is that you cannot sense others with power, as well.”

“Not usually.” Her sultry lips dipped into a frown. “So, why can I sense you and Andrew?”

Michael lifted an intrigued brow. “You can sense him, too?”

“He’s a lycan.” She said it with such certainty he knew for a fact she hadn’t learned the truth about Andrew any other way than from her own powerful instincts. “I knew there was something when I met him, when I first looked into his eyes, but I didn’t know what. I wasn’t certain until…”

“Until you made love with him,” Michael finished for her. His mind reeled, the wheels in his head spinning and catching over the information she was giving him. She was a shifter, a very rare breed that lived in as much grave danger as they did safety due to their given powers.

“There’s a connection with Andrew, something I can’t explain. I feel it when I’m with you, too. It allows me to sense both of you, what you are in your nonhuman forms, but it’s more than that.”

It is your soul, sweet Rebecca. It is your soul inside this truly amazing, new, and powerful creature the Gods have brought to me and Andrew.

“Andrew should be here for this conversation, my sweet.”

She puffed out a frustrated breath. “Then summon him, or whatever you want to call it. You can do that, right?”

“Only at this distance because of that connection you speak of. He is no longer in the club.”

“How do you know that?” She waved a hand dismissively. “Stupid question. He left me here!”

Michael’s lips twitched. “I sensed his presence leave the club shortly before you entered this office. I assure you he would not have done so if he did not believe you were safe.”

“Where did he go?”

“Of that, I cannot be certain. For a walk, perhaps.”

“Well, get him back,” she ordered sharply. “Please,” she added, almost as an afterthought, her tone softening.

Michael couldn’t help but chuckle. “I will try, my sweet.” He lowered his shields and instantly felt a rush of power so strong it made him stumble back a full step.

“Michael, what’s wrong?”

He dimly heard the concern in Chrystal’s voice as the gush of energy gave way to Gideon’s demanding words.

Michael, where the hell are you?
Anger of the beast Gideon usually kept in careful check pulsed through the connection.

I am right here, brother. What has happened?

The found Andrew. He’s been attacked.

Fear, both new and remembered, slammed into Michael’s gut like a fist. It was a horrid sensation he hadn’t felt since that fateful night when Rebecca had been killed and he had believed Andrew had been slain, as well.
Where?

Follow your fucking spidey sense
, Gideon snapped.

Michael felt a pop in his head as Gideon broke the connection.

“Damn it, Michael, will you tell me what’s going on?”

Michael’s vision cleared as his gaze landed on Chrystal. She’d put her shirt back on and now stood barely a foot away from him, worry and frustration alight in her eyes.

“Andrew is in trouble. I have to go.” He stepped back, fully intending to be gone before she could blink, but the hand she shot out and fisted around his forearm stopped him.

Her expression turned livid. “You’re not going without me and don’t you dare pull any vampire shit and leave me behind.”

“Fine.” Michael yanked her into his arms and pulled the vampire shit anyway, taking her with him.

Michael’s vampiric power knocked Chrystal’s equilibrium out of whack. She stumbled as he set her on her feet on the sidewalk of a seemingly deserted street. If not for his hold on her, she likely would have fallen on her ass.

“Are you okay, my sweet?”

“Yeah, just give me a second.” Feeling steadier with each breath, she glanced around, her attention falling on two men a few feet away, and she realized they didn’t have a second. Andrew lay flat on his back on the sidewalk with Gideon kneeling at his side. “Oh, Gods.” Horror rushed through her as she spotted the blood all over Andrew and the concrete around him.

Her gasp drew Gideon’s attention her way. His eyes widened slightly at the sight of her, then his gaze flicked to Michael. “She shouldn’t be here.”

Michael made a disbelieving sound. “Try telling her that. She is more stubborn in this life than she was in the last.”

Chrystal glanced up at Michael and frowned. “When we get through this, you and Andrew are going to explain those little comments like that the two of you keep making.” She shot a pointed look at Gideon. “Especially when he seems to understand things better than I do.”

She stepped out of Michael’s embrace, keeping her gaze on Gideon for another moment. Blood covered his clothing, as well, but a cursory glance down his body didn’t reveal any wounds.

She walked on legs that now carried her easily and quickly to Andrew’s side. His eyes were closed, his shirt shredded, but parts still seemed to cling to his body. Deep lacerations marred his chest and side. She spotted a chunk of what she could only determine to be flesh near his head and bile rose in her throat. “Tell me that doesn’t belong on him somewhere.”

Gideon stifled a sound that might have been laughter. “I’d say it really belonged in him, but he was too much of a wussy to swallow it.”

“I would rather not have any part of that fucker digesting in my body, thank you very much.” Andrew sounded weak and in terrible pain, but his eyes fluttered open. A small smile tilted his blood-stained lips when his gaze locked on Chrystal. “Sweetheart, you shouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah, I already tried that argument and lost, buddy,” Gideon muttered. “Apparently, we aren’t concerned about her seeing or knowing more than she should anymore.”

Andrew chuckled, then grimaced. “She’s not stupid. She’d already figured it out anyway, hadn’t you, sweetheart?”

Chrystal ignored his question and asked one of her own. “You’ll heal from this, won’t you?” She dropped her gaze to his wounds, swallowing the urge to vomit as she studied the lacerations. Already, they appeared to be shallower than when she’d first spotted them.

Gideon pushed to his feet. “He’s working on it. We’ll get him back to the club. He can finish there.”

“This was the doing of Nikolas’s pack?” Michael asked, drawing all attention to him.

“The were-bear they call Marlo,” Gideon answered. “That’s the one that attacked Andrew. I got to the other one, a were-cat, before he could jump in on the fun.”

“Where did they go?” Chrystal turned to her right, then left, her gaze scanning the empty street. There were houses lining both sides and what appeared to be an old warehouse of some sort near the end, but all appeared to be abandoned. “Hell, where are we?”

“Nearly everything on this street was condemned by the city over a year ago,” Michael told her. “It is on the city books to be demolished. An investor from New York, whose name is escaping me at the moment, has intentions of redeveloping this area.”

“He’s got his work cut out for him,” Gideon commented. “As for the were-fucks, they ran off with their respective tails tucked between their legs, licking their wounds.”

“You followed Andrew when he left the club.” Michael didn’t phrase his words as a question, but more a realization.

Gideon shrugged. “You said Nikolas might be sending the pack after him. Dumb ass was stupid enough to leave the club where we could’ve watched over him.”

“I don’t need a babysitter.” Andrew’s arms shook as he struggled to sit up.

Chrystal snaked an arm behind his back, helping to support his weight.

The smile he gave her this time held a little less pain than the last. “But I did appreciate you showing up when you did,” he told Gideon.

“You could’ve handled it,” Gideon said, pure confidence in his voice. He held out a hand, offering to help Andrew up. “Another second or two and you would’ve turned that were-bear into hamburger meat and sold the were-cat to the Koreans for their medicinal tonics.”

“Yeah, well,” Andrew said, closing his fingers around Gideon’s wrist as Gideon did the same and pulled him to his feet. “I’m glad you were here to help anyway.”

“Yeah, well,” Gideon repeated, a boyishly mischievous grin splitting his lips as he glanced to Michael and Chrystal, then back at Andrew. “I’m glad your stupid ass finally came back where it belongs.” He turned his attention to Michael. “Why don’t you take him to the house. The club can deal without you for a night.”

“I can take myself there.”

Chrystal skimmed her gaze down Andrew’s front and noted with great relief that his wounds were nearly completely healed. She pulled her focus up, sliding it to Michael when she heard him make a sound that might have been laughter.

Michael shook his head. “Stubborn lycan,” he muttered.

Gideon slapped his brother on the shoulder. “That does seem to be one of your requirements when it comes to attraction.”

Michael rolled his eyes at Gideon, then leveled his gaze on Andrew. “Do you remember how to get to the house?”

Confusion clouded Andrew’s eyes even as they narrowed on Michael. “Are you talking about the house you had back then?”

Michael nodded. “It is not the same house, of course, but the land is in the same place.”

Something passed between the men Chrystal didn’t catch. They could’ve been mind-speaking with each other for all she knew. One way or another, tonight they were going to tell her everything if she had to grab them both by the dicks and threaten to cut them off.

“You take Chrystal with you.” Andrew snaked an arm around her waist, pulled her close, and planted a quick kiss on her lips before he used his hold to gently propel her toward Michael. “I’ll meet you there.”

* * * *

Andrew took each step that led him to the front porch of the lavish plantation-style house slowly as he studied the place. It reminded him a lot of the one Michael’s parents had owned. Painted a stark white, four large columns extended from the roof to the floor on the front porch. Six large windows, three up and three down, with pine green shutters flanked two entrance doors, the top one with a small half-circle deck extending beneath it. He’d noted a fireplace chimney stretching up the left side and the silhouette of another chimney on the rooftop near the back of the house when he’d arrived on the property.

Judging from the amount of land on either side, he determined the house had been built on nearly the exact spot Michael and Gideon’s small three-room house had stood before the outbreak of the Civil War. The main house, then known as the Delacroix Plantation, had graced the land further to the west of where its near replica stood now.

Still living in the past, he thought as he reached the front door. He didn’t bother to knock. Michael would know he was here. Stepping inside felt like stepping back in time, but with the modern amenities of the twenty-first century. Hardwood floors shined beneath his tennis shoes as he moved through the foyer, heading instinctively to the front parlor.

He found Chrystal and Michael there as he’d expected. Chrystal had curled up on one end of the sofa, her legs tucked under her sexy ass, and Michael appeared to be pouring drinks at the bar on the far end of the room.

Chrystal was saying something he didn’t catch when he walked into the room, but she cut herself off short when she spotted him, leaping off the sofa and racing into his arms. “There you are. What took you so long?”

“If I were to guess, my sweet, I would say our Andrew probably took his time outside the house.” Michael turned from the bar, two snifters of brandy laced in the fingers of one hand and a wine glass of what appeared to be blood in the other. “It has been a very long time since he has been to this property.”

Chrystal gazed up at him. “How long is a very long time?”

Andrew glanced at Michael, saw the man’s almost imperceptible nod, then looked at her again. “At least one hundred and fifty years.”

“Damn,” she breathed, but Andrew didn’t hear even a hint of shock in her whisper. “Talk about a long time.”