She could hear the birds when they stopped
making sounds and knew that he was close. Andi heard branches breaking close by
too, and wondered if he was right next to her. Being as still as she could,
controlling her breathing, she closed her eyes and waited for him to find her.
Needed for him to find her.
The wait was killing her. And she was sure
that he was right there, waiting for her to make a small sound so he could
pounce. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she moved so she could look out
and screamed again when he was sitting there waiting.
Come here. We’ve had enough play.
Andi moved out of the
rocks and started toward him.
No, lean back on the stone there. He wants to
eat you while you stand there.
Lying back against the biggest stone, Andi felt
sexy, her body beautiful. And when the cat’s big head moved between her legs,
she opened her thighs for him and cried out when he licked his thick tongue
over her clit.
He fucked her with his tongue, the texture of
it bringing her twice before he told her to lie down. As soon as she was down
on her back, her knees bent and her pussy open for him, her big cat moved over
her, his mouth and tongue doing things to her that he’d not been able to do while
she’d been standing.
Come for us. Come and fill us.
She let go of the
scream she was holding. It felt like it was the string that her climax had been
held to. As soon as she cried out that she was coming, she felt her body
release. It was magnificent, the way her body tumbled over and over into a
pleasurable abyss. Every time she came, every release she had, he told her to
come again. To fill their needs too. And when the cat licked her thigh, she
knew that he was going to bite her hard and that it would be a marking.
His teeth seemed to tear into her. Andi tried
to be brave, not scream, but when he jerked at her flesh, his mouth tearing at
her instead of just biting, she screamed again and again until she knew that
Mac was with her. His body seemed to be protecting hers when he was over her.
“You’re ours.” She nodded, knowing in that
moment she was in love with Mac. “I need you, baby. Are you still in pain?”
“No. Please, take me, mark me as he did.” He
filled her, his cock not just entering her but seeming to become a part of her.
And when he began moving, his big body slamming into hers, Andi wrapped her
legs and arms around him to hold on. “I love you, Mac. I love you so much.”
He didn’t slow but seemed to be faster, his
cock thicker. And when he licked her throat, right where she knew her pulse was
pounding, he sank his teeth into her and she did the same to his shoulder,
tasting blood as it filled her mouth.
Sucking on the wound, filling her mouth over
and over with his essence, she knew that he was loving it. When he came twice
more, cum filling her as he had her heart, Andi licked along the wound at his
shoulder and for some reason wasn’t surprised when it sealed. This time when
she came, darkness swallowed her and Andi thought if she were to die right now,
she’d be happy and content.
When she opened her eyes, Mac tightened his
hold on her when she started to move. At his nod, she looked in that direction
and saw the family of deer having their dinner. It was the most beautiful thing
she’d ever seen.
The buck was watching. Not them but
everywhere. He’d look around, nibble on grass then look around, maybe not
knowing that there was a cat nearby, but not taking any chances that his family
would be harmed. Always on alert for his family. The fawn and her mother were
having dinner at their leisure. Nothing seemed to disturb them, but Andi had a
feeling that she was just as on guard as her mate.
They’ve been coming out at night since I’ve
moved in. When winter comes, we’ll put out something for them so they can
survive. Sadly, the deer population around this area has been about wiped out
with hunters.
Andi
asked Mac if he planned to let more come in.
Yes. Right now there are three
families here. Also a wolf pack that are not shifters. A bear and her cub too,
but I’ve not seen much of them. On Riordan’s property there are several
families of deer, but he doesn’t hunt them either.
Storm told me that Rogers and Bethany were
bears. Will they run with the two that live here too?
He told her no. Bears
were not a social group, and shifters and bears didn’t seem to get along as
well as shifter bears did.
Should I not go out here alone?
There are all kinds of shifters on all of our
lands. Most of them are friends with Storm, and she lets them roam their land
because they keep an eye on things. Same here too. If you see someone on the
land, I don’t want you to assume that they’re friendly, but don’t shoot them
either.
The deer took off at some sound that they
heard. Mac rolled her to her back and looked down at her. “Did you mean it when
you said that you loved me?”
“Yes. I love you. I didn’t know, but I do
now.” He kissed her, his cock at her thigh stirring enough to have her turning
toward him. “Make love to me, Mac. Right here.”
He watched her face and thought that another
man could not love a woman as much as he did her. When he was between her legs,
his cock thick at her entrance, he told her he loved her as he entered her
slowly. It felt wonderful, this way he was making love to her.
Each stroke of his cock brought her closer to
him. Each time he touched his mouth to her body, she felt heated by it. His
fingers on her skin seemed to brand her, in a way that made her feel loved and
cherished.
“I love you, Andi. With all that I am.” She
nodded, too overwhelmed by everything to speak. “Marry me. Make me the happiest
man in the world.”
Her climax took her. All of her. Not just her
body but her heart and soul too. And she knew that it belonged to one person.
The man filling her again. Screaming out, she told him yes. Yes. Yes, as she
fell into a darkness that welcomed her like a babe to a mother’s bosom.
Waking once, she realized that she’d been
carried home at some point. Her body was held by Mac, the room awash in
darkness. When he spoke to her, his voice soft and sexy, she smiled at him.
“You said yes, by the way. Several times, as
a matter of fact.” Turning in his arms, she looked at him, seeing his eyes
shining in the moonlight. “I’m going to hold you to that. And in the morning
we’ll go and apply for a license. All right?”
“Yes. I think that’s a great idea.” Rolling
so that her back was to him, his chest felt warm against her backside. “Then
when we get home you can convert me. I’ve decided that I want to be able to
mark you like you did me.”
“We should wait a few days, at least until we
get your aunt squared away. You’ll be out for several days, and I don’t want
her coming here and trying to hurt you.” She turned back to him again. “She’s
making trouble for you and Jim. Riordan told me when we got back to the house. Jim
is going away for a few months, so we’re not worried about him, but you…we want
you to stay with one of us at all times.”
“What is it she’s doing?” He asked her if he
could tell her in the morning, and that way they’d be fresher. “Is it bad, Mac?
Is anyone in your family going to be hurt by her too? I can go away.”
“No, you won’t. And so you know, you’re as
much family to them as I am. My family has this. We’ll make sure you’re not
hurt.” Nodding, she rolled to her side again, thinking of all the things her aunt
could do to her now that she’d found happiness. “I love you, Andi. We’re going
to be just fine.”
She hoped so. Finding love was the greatest
thing that had ever happened to her. She didn’t want to lose it so soon after
getting it. When Mac wrapped his arms around her, she closed her eyes. She just
hoped that her dad stayed out of this too.
Mason had been going to see George Collins
every day for a week now. He was pleased with the results of his mind control. Working
with Browning again had been a blast, and he hoped that he’d be able to
continue to do things much like this for her. He even liked her mate. Riordan
was a good man. When his name was said, he had a feeling that he’d been called
to a couple of times and grinned at Mac.
Mac was…he liked him a great deal. There was
something about him that let you think that he was too calm and cool to ever
get upset. But he was pretty sure, much like his mate, that he had a temper
just below that charming show of teeth that would hurt whoever unleashed it.
“I asked if you’re sure about this thing.
That he’s not going to bother us again.” Mason nodded and looked over at Andi. She
did not deserve what had been happening to her since birth. “She’s afraid of
him.”
“And with good reason.” He said her name, and
she looked at him finally. “Are you afraid of me too?”
“No. I have no idea why, but I’m not. I would
be afraid if we weren’t on the same side. I think, and this is just me, but I
think you’re one scary vampire when you need to be.” He assured her that he
was. “And this thing you did to my dad, it won’t…I don’t know, it won’t go
away?”
“Not in his lifetime. When he thinks of you,
he’ll get a pain in his head. Which, I must confess, is not nearly as much pain
as I would like for him to have. Then if he continues to think of you in any
way, or even your brother now, then he will get sick with his head pains. It
will become so bad if he persists that he will have a brain hemorrhage and die.
I do not want him coming to you with ill intent again. And he will not.”
When Andi nodded, Mason looked at Storm Browning.
He supposed her name was no longer Browning really, but Harrison. But she’d
been the first of the two names long enough that it had stuck. She was the only
reason he was alive now, and not ash beneath the shoes of mankind.
“Andi, he’s tried to do the same to your aunt,
but she’s…well, evil I guess. More so than your father.” Andi snorted at
Browning, and Mason smiled. He would bet anything these people did not know
half of what this girl had lived with, even in the last five years. He figured
that she needed to tell them, if not for them to be aware but so that she could
get it out of her heart and mind.
“You should tell them everything.” Andi
looked at him, and he could see her fear. “They will not judge you, though I
have no idea why they would even think anything badly toward you. But they
should know everything your aunt is capable of. I know some, but not all. Some
things…some of them I would bet not even her brother knows about her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He
said nothing but watched her. When she got up to pace, he looked over at Mac
and could see that the man was completely in love with his mate. Good, things
would go much better if they were in love. “She’s evil, you know that.”
“I do. But they don’t, not really. They can
think it, but you know for a certainty that she is, don’t you? I’ve seen things
in her mind that frighten even me. Knowing that this monster has been allowed
to roam the earth makes me want to go out and drain her. I won’t; her blood,
I’m sure, would be nasty and bitter.” Andi nodded and he had to smile. “Tell
them, Andi. Tell them what she did to you the week before you left home all
those years ago. The reason you left home.”
He wasn’t sure she was going to answer him. Or
to tell them what he’d found out. When she’d called Hester a monster, Mason
thought that any monsters alive would have been insulted to have been put in
the same category as her. Lynn and Sally entered the room and all the men stood
up.
These two women had been entertaining him for
days now. With their permission, he’d been resting during the day in their old
home’s sublevels. The house was in need of some very big repairs. And he’d been
having some work done on it while he was there, in payment for them letting him
stay. Lynn winked at him when she handed him a rose from her garden.
“I have no idea why I thought of you when I
saw that.” He looked at the rose and knew the origin of the rose and even the
breeder. “I just love roses, and I’d completely forgotten that there was a
garden here until Riordan hired a gardener. Do you know what it is?”
“I do, actually. It’s called Madam de
Watteville. It was first bred by Jean-Baptiste André and discovered by a woman
by the name of Margaret Furness a few years later. She found it in a garden
that started around nineteen hundred near Mildura on the Murray River in Australia.”
He looked up, thinking he’d given too much information about a rose, when Sally
asked him what the name of the family home was and had he visited. “The home
was called Kombacy, and yes, but a gentleman never tells when or why he
visited.”
They laughed, as did he. When he put the
pretty little pink and white tea rose in his lapel, he noticed that Andi was
still at the window she’d paused at. He wondered if she had any idea how
beautiful she looked there.
“I’d been ready to move out for weeks. But
every time I did, something would happen. Mostly it was my money that would
come up missing, or…or I’d have to heal. I was forever—” Andi looked at him as
she continued. “I guess you know that I didn’t fall all those times. That I was
beaten, sometimes so badly that I would end up in the clinic. Never the
hospital. They asked too many questions. And I would lie. I think they knew
what was going on, don’t you?”
“I’m sure of it. But they, like you, were
terrified of Hester. She had made everyone’s life a living hell with the
information that she would hold over them.” She nodded and he told her to go
on. “They have to understand her.”
“The week before I was moving out, I had
taken all my money and put it in the bank. I was nineteen then, and someone had
told me that I could open an account without their permission, nor did I need
them to sign for me. All that time before, I’d been told by them, my father and
aunt, that I had to be twenty-five. That without their co-signature that I
would never be able to have an account. I never checked on it because if they
were right, and I did have an account, it would have done me as little good to
have it as it was for me to keep hiding it at home. So when I got the account,
the first thing I did was open me a post office box as well. Nothing that I had
was going to be going home again.” Mac got up and went to her, holding her in
his arms as she continued. “I had packed up what little I had—there really
wasn’t that much—and had taken it out of the house a little at a time. I worked
for a diner then, and he’d been nice enough to let me stash things there until
I got ready to move in.”
Mason could feel the sorrow in the room. They
loved her as well. And Mason would bet that if Hester came here now, any one of
them would lay down their life for her. And then Browning would break her neck
and bury her in the back yard without missing a beat.
“Go on, my dear. Tell us what happened when
you got ready to leave home.” Bri took her husband’s hand into hers and held
him. The two of them, the Harrison elders, were the nicest people Mason knew.
And that was saying a lot. “You tell us so that when the witch comes here we
can all kick her bottom.”
“Ass. Under the circumstances, let’s call it
what it is. We’ll kick her ass.” Browning winked at Ordan—Riordan’s father—and
then looked at Andi again. “You tell me what she did to you and I’ll make a few
calls and that will be the end of her. I am not without contacts.”
“I don’t want you to kill her. I want her to
suffer, but I want her to suffer for the rest of her life.” That was what he’d
been hoping for. The woman to take a stand. “She beat me with that cane of
hers. Beat me so badly that I had to have ninety-four stitches in my back and
some in my legs. She hit me in the head, on the legs, and belly. I don’t even
know when she stopped because at some point, I lost consciousness. On top of a
concussion and a torn up ankle, I was black and blue from the beating too. But
I left, hobbled out of that bed and to the front of the house, where I flagged
down a perfect stranger to take me to the hospital. And when I got there, I
called the police.”
“And they couldn’t do anything about it,
could they?” Andi shook her head at Sally. “Of course not. If you had beaten
her, the police would have been all over that. I’m betting that she has this
little black book that she keeps notes on about people. We saw that once,
didn’t we, Lynn? Watching one of those police drama things, remember that?”
“You’re going to have to narrow it down a
little more than that. You have every cop show and drama recording every time
one comes on. I swear to you, Sally, you could be a detective with all the
information you get from those things.” Stormy told her that they were usually
wrong about some of the stuff. “Oh, what do you know, Stormy, dear? Your idea
of dealing with someone is to pull out your gun and shoot them. I’d like a
little conversation before I just snap their necks like a twig.”
The room was silent. Mason was sure that even
Lynn was surprised by her comment. But then Andi laughed, hard. Then Ordan and
his wife. Soon the entire room was laughing, and Mason thought it was the best
medicine for what was going on.
~~~
Mac wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say
to Jim, but he’d come to see him when he asked. Ennis was with him. They were
going to go pick up a few things on the way back home for dinner for Andi, as
she was cooking for them all. Then they were going to help them rearrange
furniture that had been delivered before he’d left.
Jim came out of the room he’d been waiting in
and stood there looking like a lost child. Mac watched him, dressed in clean
clothing and a jacket that looked brand new. He had sent someone shopping for
him when he’d been notified that he was without certain basic items. Even a
toothbrush wasn’t in his things. Jim looked much younger than Mac thought he
actually was.
He was too. His IQ was that of a nine or ten-year-old
boy, the doctors said. But he had the ability to work at a single task better
than most adults could. They had a name for it, but for the life of him, Mac
didn’t remember what it was. When Jim sat down, playing with his zipper on his
new jacket instead of looking at him, Mac wondered what he was supposed to do
now. Ennis told him to go carefully, the man had been though a great deal in
the last few weeks. So when he started talking, Mac wanted to tell him to slow
down, but he did before he could say anything.
“They’re giving me a job where I can make my
own money. And I don’t have to share it with anyone but keep it for my own stuff.
I have a place to stay too, but I have to have someone living with me so I don’t
forget to do things on my own. At least until I can prove to them that I won’t
go out and get myself tangled up in the wrong kind of people anymore. I can’t
drive no more either. I don’t do so well with that, and they took away my license.
But Stormy, she told me if I wanted to bitch about it too much I could go and
live with Hester and she could cart my ass around if I wanted her to. I don’t
think she’d want to even if I did. I really like Stormy. She’s nice and mean
too. But she said she won’t lie to me, and if I be good, she won’t kill me
either. I sure hope I don’t make her want to kill me.” Jim finally looked up at
him. “I want you to tell my sister something for me, please.”
“You should tell her.” Jim shook his head and
said he wasn’t ready for that yet. “Why not? I’m sure she’d like to hear from
you.”
“No, she won’t. Not yet anyway, the doctor
told me. I have to see him every now and again so I can work on myself. And I
don’t know what to say to her yet. I’m not…I need to get me together where I
can be a better brother to her. I’ve not been so far.” Mac said nothing but
noticed that Ennis had left the room. “They’re going to send me to this school where
I can learn a trade. The doctor said I should have been worked with when I was
younger and I might have been a better adult. He blames my dad and aunt for
that.”
“Do you?” Jim looked at his zipper again but didn’t
answer. “How old are you, Jim? I know that you’re older than Andi, but I don’t
think anyone ever said.”
“I’m thirty-one. But my mom hurt me…. No, I’m
not to say that any more either. It’s not true. There was an accident at birth
and I had the cord thingy wrapped around my neck and the doctors couldn’t fix
it. It wasn’t her fault like Dad told me. And Aunt Hester told me that it was
my fault too, but I know that it wasn’t now. It weren’t neither of our faults,
just something that happens. But they did me wrong by not helping me.” He
looked up from the zipper. “I have new clothes, thanks to you. When I lived
with my dad, he would make me steal things to get new. And sometimes he’d take
me to the place where people would donate bags of things for people like us.
Poor. But I don’t think we were poor, were we, Mac?”
“Not from what I’ve been able to find out, no
you weren’t.” There had been an insurance policy when their mom died. George
hadn’t been able to cash it in, no matter how many times he’d tried, when the
kids were younger. But he’d been able to live off a settlement from it. But
when Jim and then Andi had turned twenty-one, that had stopped too. The
benefactors were her children. And when they turned twenty-one, they were to
get the money and no one else. But no one had bothered to cash it in. And after
talking to Andi, he was pretty sure that no one had even told either of them
about it. So the money had been sitting waiting for someone to take care of it
since. “Money has been put into an account for you for your care while you’re here,
and then when you go away for a while. When you need things, you’re to call me
or Andi and we can have it taken care of. There is more than enough money for
you to get just about anything you need.”