Protection: A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance (26 page)

T
essa startled
. When she felt the motorcycle begin to lose significant speed, she forced her eyelids open. She guessed that they’d been on the highway for almost two hours, but it could have been five. Tessa had no immediate way to find out. She was wrapped around the warm, hard body of a sexy Shifter, and the motorcycle was still traveling fast.

She wasn’t sure how she’d managed to nod off during the trip. After they’d turned off Magazine St., Tessa had been worried that Jace was going to kill them both. Every half minute or so, she was forced to envision her death. Perhaps plastered to the side of a big truck, or crushed against a house as Jace peeled through someone’s yard. But the hit had never come.

When they’d reached the highway, Tessa let out a relieved breath, though Jace was still weaving between lanes and driving faster than anything Tessa had ever experienced. He drove like a maniac for nearly half an hour before slowing to a somewhat more reasonable speed. Somewhere after that, she’d slipped into a light doze.

A moment of panic overtook her. She was with a strange man. No, not a man. A Shifter. He’d turned into a wolf before her eyes. He’d bossed her around, dragged her through half the French Quarter, through a hail of bullets. He’d… he’d kissed her, touched her. A slither of heat filled her stomach, and she wasn’t sure if the sensation was desire or fear.

She shook her head. Fear had no place here, in a world where the Legion held Camilla for ransom. What would she do, try to escape? She had no idea where she was. For all intents and purposes, at this moment Jace Copeland was her only ally.

Even if she could move, she didn’t know where her purse had gone. All her important possessions were inside it. Wait, no… The purse strap was snug around her neck, and the strap for Jace’s satchel too.

She sighed. None of it helped, purse or no purse. She was too exhausted to care much about escape just now.

Tessa stretched a little bit, and cringed. Her left shoulder had fallen asleep at some point, but with the slightest movement, fiery pain radiated through her body. Tessa bit her lip to stifle a moan. Something painful was happening to her shoulder under the jacket, but she wasn’t about to investigate. At least she couldn’t smell her own blood anymore.

Jace hadn’t been able to talk to her during the ride, but he had taken to tapping his hand against her thigh. At first she’d been confused, because he’d tapped her over and over. Her first thought was to wonder if he was using Morse code. Her second thought was to wonder who the hell knew Morse code.

Then Tessa had realized he just wanted to know that she was still conscious, so she’d touched his hand in return. He’d relaxed a little and returned to driving, but kept up the tapping every ten minutes or so. Tessa thought it was kind of sweet, under the circumstances.

She was taken with him for a moment… at least until she remembered that they were fleeing a group of angry werewolves. Also, she had a gunshot wound. Both legitimate concerns, in Tessa’s mind.

Jace’s big hand squeezed just above her knee this time, and she noticed that they were turning down a smooth but unpaved road. Huge trees arched overhead, filtering out most of the sunlight. Ahead Tessa could see a row of neatly arranged clapboard buildings set off to the side of a big building, a barn or very large garage.

Tessa examined the buildings lining the main strip of the town, if it could even be called that. There were several small retail stores and an old-fashioned service station. A diner sat on the far side of the shops, but it didn’t appear to be open.

The whole thing reminded Tessa of a movie sound stage. The buildings were in place, but the details weren’t right. The town didn’t seem lived in. Maybe the whole town shut down on Sundays or something?

Her mind raced. Was this the Den Jace had talked about? It didn’t look very magical to Tessa.

Wherever they were, it seemed that they had arrived. Tessa felt Jace squeeze her knee again, and she slid her hand over his, squeezing back. The sensation soothed her, and Tessa shook herself. It was not the best idea to get attached to someone she was going to betray in a matter of days.

She probably ought to be jumping off this motorcycle and running to seek medical attention. Only… her shoulder hurt, and she didn’t really know who she’d be running to, anyway. Jace had brought them way outside the city, and there was only one other person in sight.

They rolled to a stop outside the garage. A burly red haired man glanced up at them from where he sat reading the paper. He squinted in the early afternoon sun, and then nodded to Jace. Somehow the town’s single occupant made things even more eerie. She wished she could be free of the helmet. She wanted to ask Jace the questions burning in her mind, but he wasn’t paying much attention to her at the moment.

Looking at the mysterious man and the building he was unquestionably guarding, Tessa figured that Jace wouldn’t answer her questions anyway.

Tessa had assumed from the building’s appearance that it was an older-model mechanic’s garage, but the redheaded man wasn’t dressed as a mechanic. He was absolutely enormous, 6’7 if he was an inch. He was dressed in a white cotton t-shirt and a black kilt-like garment, which somehow suited him. He looked as impassable as a brick wall, perfect to be guarding something… even if that something was a random garage in the middle of nowhere.

The man looked her over for a moment before asking Jace something. His words were muffled through the helmet, and Tessa itched to take it off. Jace nodded in response, and the other man bent to roll up the garage’s wide steel front door. Tessa startled when Jace started up the motorcycle again. He used his heels to push the bike forward, past the strange man and into the garage.

Tessa wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Maybe a car on a lift, or at least a tool bench of some kind? But rather than seeing wrenches or whatever mechanics used, there was…

Tessa could only conceive of what she saw as a layer of light gray mist. The mist covered the entire back wall of the garage, a swirling blanket of fog from top to bottom, side to side. Tessa gaped. The fog baffled her. One one hand, the fine hairs on her neck and arms stood on end, a definite warning. One the other hand, the fog seemed to… beckon, somehow.

This was the first moment in Tessa’s life in which her heart and mind could not agree. The fog was eerie, much more so than watching Jace and McDonough shift into wolves. The mist was hard to look at. It seemed almost two dimensional, like a movie being projected onto the wall. Tessa did a double take to check for a projector set, but there was nothing feeding the mist. It was just there, flickering and bright, and somehow alive.

Tessa felt the door roll down behind them, and just like that Jace was driving right at the wall. Tessa gasped as they hit the wall, closing her eyes and throwing her good arm up for protection. It took several full seconds for her to realize that they weren’t ever going to collide.

There was an uncomfortable sensation, sort of like slipping on a wet floor. Her stomach dropped out, and she knew she was going to land on her ass. This was going to hurt.

The impact never came.

Instead of a painful collision, Tessa felt… nothing. She opened her eyes, blinking bright rays of sunlight blinded her. The motorcycle thrummed down a quaint little country road, a mirror image of the one that had led up to the garage. It was a well-traveled road, with light forestation to either side. Huge mossy oaks draped across the path. It was picturesque, with perfectly gray Spanish moss and gorgeous greenery. It was… spring? It was definitely late spring here.

Funny, it had been a damp, sticky summer day until they’d entered the garage. Hadn’t it?

Yes, she was sure of it. She remembered the sun baking down on her back as they rode up from New Orleans. But here, it was the most beautiful spring day she’d ever seen. A big, robin’s-egg blue sky lay all around, with a big, bright sun shining down. Birds chirped, and Tessa saw a bunch of bunnies sitting by a cluster of oak trees. It felt a little as if the bunnies were watching her.

It reminded Tessa of the moment in The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy woke up in a Technicolor world. Every single color was brighter than it should be, every creature thriving and happy to be alive. Jace drove down a broad dirt path, but there wasn’t a mote of dust in the air. She could see every emerald blade of grass, make out the perfect shape of each leaf in every tree. She could see… everything.

The branches of the oak trees curled around the path just so, making a natural photo frame. In middle of the frame stood a massive white manor, with several large buildings to each side. If Tessa had Googled the words “southern plantation house”, this is the first image that would pop up.

She stared as they approached the house, more stunned by the moment. Neatly trimmed dark shutters decked the windows. Rose trellises dotted the front garden, and beautiful white dogwood trees, and bright clusters of red and white bougainvillea bushes.

The road broadened as they reached the main house. Tessa was all eyes, absorbing the gothic manor. It was perfect down to the last detail, a house that would make the ladies at Southern Living drop dead from envy. The main house was flanked on both sides, one building all glass and steel, the other a big wood structure that looked like a post-modern hunting lodge. There were several immaculate brick buildings one each side too, each one covered in ivy and oozing collegiate charm.

Tessa loosened her grip as they pulled close to the main house, but Jace didn’t slow down. He rode right up on the manicured lawn, veering between the main house and the hunting lodge. They came out onto a broad grassy circle, dotted here and there with oak trees and picnic tables. All the buildings surrounded the grassy area, making Tessa think of the “quad” at her college. This was a gathering place, a common area.

Jace blew past the quad and all the big buildings. Tessa reached forward to squeeze his hip, but he just patted her hand and continued on. Tessa watched the road, trying to memorize the path they were taking, but she couldn’t seem to focus.

At last, they came to a stop in front of a tidy gray bungalow. Jace cut the engine. The place was one of the most beautifully crafted small homes she’d ever seen, with perfectly shuttered windows and a pleasing bed of hyacinths, divided by the footpath from the road to the house. It took Tessa a second to realize that Jace was waiting for her to get off the motorcycle first.

She grimaced. Moving was going to hurt.

Tessa gritted her teeth and began to unseat herself. The pain from her shoulder was awful, yet not intolerable. Her main issue was swinging her stiff leg up and over the bike to dismount.

As soon as she was off the bike, Jace did the same, looking natural as he did so. No saddle soreness for him, it seemed. He turned to Tessa and pulled the helmet off her head, for which she was thankful. She took a deep breath, realizing she’d been breathing in Jace’s smell the whole way here. Even his helmet sweat smelled nice, which was preposterous. He smelled like fresh, dark soil and spicy maleness.

Tessa was silent for several beats, uncertain what she should say.

“Are you okay?” Jace asked. He looked at her with serious concern, as if she might have some kind of brain damage.

Tessa blushed, nodding. She shouldn’t be thinking about Jace’s smell like a giant weirdo.

Don’t think of them as people, it makes it easier, James had recommended.

Yet here Tessa was, thinking about Jace’s scent and general dreaminess. James would have scolded her in the harshest terms.

They’re savages. They may seem human on the outside, but inside they’re killers. Every last one.

James’ voice echoed in Tessa’s head. The words turned her stomach a little bit.

Tessa wasn’t like James. She didn’t think that Shifters were less than human, but that didn’t mean she should be lusting after them, either. Look what had happened when she’d eyed James up. And that had been nothing but innocent flirtation…

It must be the gunshot wound. Loss of blood could make you feel all sorts of weird things.

Chalk it up to fever, she decided.

“Tessa?” Jace asked, reaching out to touch her uninjured arm. She jumped, though his touch was gentle. Her blush deepened, and she shook her head to clear it.

“I’m fine,” she said.

Jace frowned and shooed her up the porch steps into the house. They stepped into the house’s living room, and she was aware of Jace’s towering body just inches behind her.

Tessa was struck all over again by his height and muscled frame. He was big and solid and imposing, but there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. It was like hanging out with a male supermodel-cum-lumberjack, and Tessa didn’t know how to handle being around him. She looked away, examining the house instead of its owner.

The room was done in white paint and chestnut wood. Though she didn’t know him well, it seemed to Tessa to be a very Jace sort of place. She looked Jace’s gorgeous chocolaty eyes and hair, and thought that the room even brought out his coloring.

The living room of the house was furnished in a simple style. A massive desk, a sleek leather couch, and several sets of shelves crammed full of books. All done in the same dark wood, accented only by the white walls and a floor-to-ceiling sliding door that let sunlight stream in the room. No color, no frivolous touches. A bachelor’s home, but also a quiet sanctuary. No woman would live in such a Spartan manner.

It fit Jace well, Tessa thought. Quiet, dignified, but not sterile. Just… masculine and unassuming.

“I’ve got to look at your shoulder,” he said, jogging her from her thoughts.

Jace held his arms wide, herding her into the living room. She sat on the couch, and he sat next to her. He tugged the leather jacket off, every tiny movement causing Tessa a wealth of burning pain. She bit her lip, and looked down at the floor.

“Can you lift your arms up without too much pain?” Jace asked.

Tessa tried, but tears welled up as soon as she tried to move her left arm above her waist. Jace caught her frustration and shrugged, as if she shouldn’t be too worried.