Seeker of Shadows (29 page)

Susanna fit her palm to the side of his face. “Let me show you what I dream about.”

She kissed him, at first with a slow, sweet yearning, treating herself to the taste and yielding softness of his sinfully full lips, then treating him to the seductive swirl of her tongue. He responded but didn’t pursue, eyes closing, breath quickening.

She’d dreamed of him constantly, vividly, but the reality far surpassed those pale interpretations. Dreams couldn’t flood her with sensation, couldn’t flush her with heat and hunger as she learned him again there in the darkness by texture, touch, and taste. Dreams didn’t kiss back. Kisses so drugging and deep they sucked at her soul.

A tender devotion tangled with that hot blast of passion. She feasted on his mouth, her hands worshipping the hard contours of his body. Everything she knew of desire and all the pleasures that came with it, she’d learned from him. He’d taught her trust and temptation and the wild bliss of casting off restraint.
He’d been protector, teacher, lover but all those cherished moments she clutched close in her heart were lost to him.

In his loneliness, he couldn’t find solace in reliving that first dangerous shiver of attraction, those purposeful accidents that brought them into skin-to-skin contact and sent lust and longing into an agony of denial. He couldn’t replay the first touch of their lips, so unexpected, so sweet, so forbidden. Or the chain reaction of reckless stolen moments: secret gazes, hurried kisses, trembling touches that spiraled greedily out of control. He didn’t have the memory of his own heroics, when he’d ripped her from the arms of terror to surround her with his own comforting and possessive embrace. She’d gone to him that night, overcoming his caution and the last shreds of his reluctance to hold him and have him and love him. She couldn’t imagine giving up any one of those precious slivers of discovery.

Yet that was what she’d taken from him.

Perhaps she could give some of it back.

Susanna wore nothing beneath his T-shirt. When she slid her thigh across him, the contact of her moist sex with his ready hardness sparked instantaneous combustion. Without breaking from their urgent kisses, she began to move slowly, suggestively against him until his big hands clamped to her hips to direct the rhythm. She allowed him to guide the intensity toward its inevitable peak, yet when he tried to lift her slightly so he could sheath himself inside her, she hit Pause.

“Not yet.”

He was panting hard, obviously way past the point of no return. “What? Anna?”

They were nose to nose, breathing in each other’s urgent breaths. Her palms pushed up the slick of his chest to clasp the sides of his face, her fingertips pressing firmly against his temples to begin a slow massage. All the while her tongue teased against his parted lips until he groaned aloud.

“Anna.”

“Close your eyes. Trust me, Jacques. Trust me and let go.”

Not understanding, still he did as she asked, not questioning the request or the strangely disorienting pressure she was quickening inside his head the same way MacCreedy had. He closed his eyes and let the tension leave his body.

Letting her essence flood into him just as she took him into her.

Everything changed in that instant. Jacques’s world expanded with shattering flashes of light and heat. And in him, around him, through him was Anna. Her lips on his, her hot, greedy sex clutching his, her thoughts, her emotions, her every sensation exploding until he couldn’t find the separating line between them, because there was none.

Let go, Jack.

Her siren’s whisper tongued his every nerve ending until desire followed with a need so raw, so violently pure it surpassed anything he’d ever experienced.

He let go. He couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t
hold back the beast inside him. Under the silken slide of her flesh over his, his muscles bulged with power as control dropped away, replaced by seething instinct. Coaxed by her lapping kisses, his teeth became fangs, his breath quick, aggressive growls.

She was kissing him, riding him, urging him with hoarse pleas.

Take all of me. Make me yours. Claim me, Jack. Don’t ever let me go.

She hadn’t said the words aloud, yet they streaked through him like lightning, sizzling hot, icy cold all at once, too exciting, too compelling. Too much to resist.

He groaned in mindless ecstasy at the feel of her soft skin against his mouth. Her neck, her shoulder, warm, throbbing with life and temptation. Urges, dark, fierce, on fire, raged inside him, forcing his intentions to escape acceptable boundaries as he bit down hard. Senses swirled at the taste of her. He could feel her pulse pounding through him, taking over the tempo of his own heartbeats. And then that harsh beautiful rhythm became the fierce waves of her climax as she cried out his name.

Jack!

And he lost himself, possessing her, claiming her, coming inside her. Endlessly.

Then all Jacques could hear were his own ragged breaths.

Susanna lay on her stomach beside him, her eyes shut, her hand curving about his jaw, her thumb languidly rubbing over his lower lip.

What had just happened?

They’d had vigorous sex. His body was depleted by it. The scent of their mutual satisfaction lay heavy on the air. Had that been all?

He scrubbed his tongue about the inside of his mouth. No sign of elongated teeth or the metallic sweetness of blood. He looked to Susanna in confusion. She was resting easy, no scratches marring her skin, the T-shirt mussed but not torn. Nor was there any indication that he’d just savaged her neck in the throes of mating madness.

He caught her hand in his, drawing it away from contact with him. Her eyes opened on a tender smile.

“What was that?” he asked shakily.

“Memories for you to keep,” she whispered, her eyes already drifting shut again. “I love you, Jack.”

He lay in the darkness for a long while as her soft breaths punctuated his escalating panic.

Memories?

Almost afraid to check, he reached back into his mind, cautiously searching. And there they were: the images, the sensations, the sounds of them together, consummating that intensely personal moment that bound one to the other. Not a dream, but a memory, the only one he had of his life before New Orleans. Solid, rich with delicate detail, ripe with emotions. Real. A slice from that great emptiness when he was Jack Stone and she was the female he had to possess even if it meant his life.

And in a way, it had.

Only now Jacques knew it had been worth it. Completely and totally worth the sacrifice of everything that had come before to have her.

But how to hold on to her?

Jacques awoke to faint slivers of daylight seeping through a slight part in the curtains. Though the sheets tangled about him still held her scent, he could tell Susanna had left the bed they’d shared some time ago. He relaxed when he saw her bag on the dresser top. She hadn’t gone far.

Even before getting out of bed, he checked to see if it was still there, that precious nugget of his past. Smiling to find the memory nestled safely amongst his years as Jacques LaRoche, he grabbed a quick shower and clean clothes, and went out to find his mate.

Giles St. Clair stood out in the blustery wind, a dusting of early snow dotting his jacket, melting at first contact with the steam from his coffee. He passed Jacques a second cup and they stood for several minutes sipping in silence. Finally, Jacques glanced at the closed door.

“How are they?”

“Charlotte’s scared out of her mind, but she’d never let on. Max hasn’t come around yet. What did you bastards do to him?” His tone was deceptively mild.

“I didn’t do anything to him. They aren’t
my
kind.”

“But they’re
her
kind.”

Jacques didn’t answer.

“Are they going to want him back?” All manner of bad intentions rumbled through Giles’s question.

“If they do, they’ll be disappointed.”

“That was my thought, too.”

Both turned when the door opened behind them. Susanna hesitated, her gaze touching almost shyly upon Jacques’s as she stepped outside and shut the door behind her.

“We should be ready to leave in about ten minutes,” she told Giles.

He swallowed down the last of his coffee. “I’ll go gas up.”

Left alone on the frigid walkway, Jacques and Susanna tested the relationship waters. He managed a smile that was both nervously awed and fiercely possessing.

“You have questions.” She could see them banked and uncertain behind his eyes.

“I do. They can wait until we’re safe at home.”

At home
. His apartment. His bed. The two of them together. Susanna trembled. Instantly, he whisked off his coat, intending to engulf her in its warm folds, even though it meant shivering in his shirtsleeves. She put up her hands in protest.

“No you don’t. That’s not necessary. I’m used to the cold.”

“And I’ve got a bit more bulk to protect me from it,” he argued.

Seeing he wasn’t going to relent, Susanna dropped her arms and let him swaddle her with the coat. Its weight pulled on her shoulders but the heat and his scent had her drawing it close about her.

“Besides,” he rumbled, “it’s the least I can do after you warmed me so sweetly last night.”

“Good morning.”

Charlotte’s greeting startled them. They hadn’t heard her open the door. She looked between them, dark eyes filled with speculation and amusement until Susanna flushed red and muttered something about gathering her things before disappearing into the other room. The detective then turned an interrogative eye to Jacques.

“So?”

“She’s my mate.” A strange exhilaration came over him as he voiced that aloud.

“Ahhh. That would explain the strange noises last night. Thin walls. I thought maybe you were watching something on Animal Planet.”

He grinned wide and shook his head. “Not from last night. From seven years ago.”

Charlotte blinked. “Wow. What are the odds?”

“Was wondering that myself.”

“Wow,” Charlotte repeated as her quick cop brain began processing the sudden change in her friend’s status. “So she’s the one you nailed and bailed on back in the day.”

“It wasn’t my choice,” he growled, insulted by her word choice.

But Charlotte’s thoughts had already jumped ahead to something more intriguing.

“Then her daughter . . . is yours?”

Twenty

T
he question stunned like the sharp crack of a bat to his head.

“Easy, now.” Charlotte gripped his forearms as he listed sharply on suddenly weak knees. “Take a breath.”

He sank down onto his heels, palms pushing into his temples as if trying to shove the square peg of that incredible notion into the round hole of his limited knowledge.

Could it be true?

The timing, the circumstances all fit, but one thing didn’t. He looked up at Charlotte, who’d crouched down with him, his voice low and unsteady. “Wouldn’t she tell me if that was true?”

But then, Susanna hadn’t come right out and said up front, “Hey, I’m the mate you can’t remember from seven years ago! Good to see you again!”

Charlotte’s advice was brusque and to the point. “Ask her.”

They straightened as Giles backed the SUV up behind them and got out to open the rear hatch. He bumped past Jacques with a casual, “Help me load up, Wolfman.”

Scrubbing away his stupor, Jacques went inside the
second room to assist in wrapping Max’s slack form in the hotel bedspread. After Giles left a handful of cash on the nightstand to cover the loss, the two of them carried the heavy bundle out and tucked it into the back end of their vehicle.

“Get your lady,” Giles told him. “Time to saddle up and get the hell outta Dodge.”

Something was very wrong.

Susanna sat quietly in the back, watching Jacques fidget restlessly where he rode shotgun next to Giles.

After talking to Charlotte, he’d burst into the room they’d shared to snatch up his things and declare gruffly, “We’re leaving.” She’d been standing right in front of him yet he’d never made eye contact.

And as they approached Indianapolis, he still hadn’t.

Had the gift she’d given him last night been a mistake? Perhaps the very idea of her tinkering with his mind, implanting information, reminded him all too chillingly of how different she was, that she was of the Chosen, the caste that had subjugated him, that she was the one who’d stripped him of those memories in the first place. Perhaps he doubted they were real, that she’d pushed a falsehood upon him to gain his cooperation so she could escape.

She’d told him she loved him. Had that made no difference at all? Or maybe fatigue was stirring up anxieties where none were warranted.

She’d lain awake beside him for most of the night just listening to him breathe, attuned to his slightest
movement, drawn to his body heat. She’d selfishly thought about waking him with a kiss and lusty caress but remembered all too clearly how only days ago he’d been lying in his own blood. He needed the rest to complete his healing and she needed to decide what she was going to do.

She didn’t want to go back to Damien, but realized her companions were safe only as long as he believed she was with them involuntarily. How much time did that give her?

Jacques was edgy, his gaze flickering from window to window, everywhere but behind him where she sat. She’d never seen him so agitated, so distracted. Finally, he turned on the radio, fiddling with the buttons until he found a classical station.

Susanna smiled to herself, remembering his reaction the first time he’d heard a symphony orchestra. She’d convinced Damien to let her go to a holiday concert provided her stoic bodyguard remained at her side. She’d worn a sophisticated beige sheath but found herself enviously admiring gowns in jeweled seasonal hues of red, green, and gold. And she was more than appreciative of her somber companion’s appearance in a tux. A gorilla in evening wear, Damien had commented with an unkindness that had surprised her.