Old Dog, New Tricks (2 page)

I was too. But I couldn’t fault Mac’s logic. After witnessing Shaw drink me down one too many times, he’d decided to educate both of us on how not to kill each other via our feeding circuit. We both appreciated the advice. That he felt our lessons were best learned celibate? Well, that was just icing on the cake.

Guess he was trying to make up for all the years of being an absentee parent by smothering me with his fatherly wisdom and concern.

The guard unclipped the radio from his utility belt and called for a relief officer to escort Red to his cell. He refastened it, jerked his chin up and called to my guys, “You can pick her up around front.”

Shaw was out of sight before the guard finished mouthing the last syllable.

––––––––

F
ifteen minutes or so passed while I was patted down for contraband and signed out all official-like. A female guard passed me a baby wipe to clean my face. Scrubbing off all the sweat and blood made me feel human again. Human as I ever got anyway.

A buzzer sounded, and she gestured toward the booth. “Push through the next door on your right, and you’re a free woman.”

I tucked the used wipe in my pocket while locating the hulking male guard. “Hey, Littlejohn, what did Red want in exchange for his cooperation?”

The prison had taken volunteers from a small pool of Mac’s preapproved candidates.

“He got one last taste of fae blood—half-fae blood at least. Any blood will work. He’s been living on pig’s blood for about sixty years now.” He rolled his shoulders. “You got your practice, and he got his last meal. Even trade.”

“Yeah.” I shivered. “I guess so.”

I left before he filled me in on what the others had wanted. Pretty sure I was better off not knowing.

Past the guard booth and the sparse reception area, I walked through a metal detector and startled the new guard on duty with the amount of blood I was wearing. After assuring him I was fine, I shoved through the front entrance. Out on the sidewalk leading into the parking lot, Shaw waited with his hands stuffed into his pockets. The quarter hour since we parted in the yard had given him time to find a slice of calm, and he no longer resembled the whited-out feral incubus the guard had insulted.

No. This was Shaw in cucumber mode. As in
cool as a
. Faded T-shirt stretched over a wide chest. Worn jeans low on his lean hips. Scuffed boots encased his tapping foot. Okay, so
cool
might have been stretching it.

Shaw was always
hot, hot, hot
as far as I was concerned.

Rich mahogany hair curled over his ears. His eyes were molten copper when they met mine, and my gut tightened when his lips hitched in a slow smile that sent warmth spreading through my chest. Heat raced up my arm when he took my hand.

He touched my bruised cheek. “How bad is it?”

“Not bad.” I squeezed his fingers. “Sore and hungry, but I can handle it.”

The sound he made wasn’t a happy one.

I tugged on his hand. “How are you feeling?”

With us bound together and me feeding lighter these days, that meant he was too. Our diet made for shorter tempers and general crabbiness, but when Shaw stepped into me, his arms circling me, his hands sliding into the rear of my jeans pockets to squeeze my butt, I forgot the pain and grumpiness of the past week and let him mold me against him. I had his ear between my teeth and my hand sliding down his chest when I heard rapid static zaps that lifted hairs down my arms.

My father stood three feet behind us holding a stun baton like the ones some marshals carried. It was a twenty-one-inch-long piece of telescoping black metal with a one hundred thousand volt arc running the length of the entire unit above the molded plastic handle. The
click, click, click
told me Mac had powered up in case our necking required a four milliamp intervention.

The stun wouldn’t hurt Shaw, but it would make him think twice before using his mojo.

Wearing a pleased smile, Mac had dressed for our training session in crisp, dark wash denim jeans and a faded Metallica shirt he’d found in my bathroom. His arms hung at his sides, the baton’s hot spot pointed downward, toward the cement.

He flexed his trigger finger again. “Six inches of personal space, please.”

A soft growl pumped through my chest as I leaned my forehead against Shaw’s chest.
No fair
.

Mac took a step closer. “You must not complete the circuit until you have each mastered the control required.”

“Complete the circuit?” I turned my head so I stared at Mac when I said, “You mean have
sex
?”

A pained expression twisted his features, and the soft green glow emanating from his left hand caused his new toy to splutter and go quiet.

“Stop traumatizing your father.” Shaw rested his chin on top of my head and clenched his hands, drawing me closer, forcing a whimper past my lips. “All this is for our own good.”

“Stop sucking up to him,” I muttered.

True, I had almost devoured Shaw when the circuit first snapped into place. Truer still, Shaw’s control had eroded over the past year without regular feedings. Right now he functioned in feast-or-famine mode. And possibly truest, there was a real possibility that sex, which generated its own energy and sated his hunger without poaching from me, was hella dangerous until we found our balance together.

But parts of me—the portions currently pressed against him from hip to chest—were willing to gamble.

He nuzzled my cheek. “I’d rather be sucking up to—”

This time the low growl wasn’t mine. Apparently, Mac wasn’t a fan of dirty talk. At least not where his daughter was concerned.

Shoulders bouncing with laughter, I tilted my head back. “I’m grabbing a shower at the office.”

“I should head back too.” Shaw’s eyes smoldered. “Got to get ready for tonight.”

“Movie night,” I agreed with a nod.

Mac approached us and pried the ruined baton between our chests until we separated.

“There are several showers if I recall correctly,” Mac said thoughtfully.

During his first and only visit to the communal showers, he had worn a dayglow yellow panther-sized cat skin.

Diode
. Crazy to miss someone who never really existed, but there you go.

“Yes,” I answered cautiously. “There are six.”

“Excellent. We will wash and then go to dinner together before your movie night.” He patted my head like I was a good pup who had made her sire proud. “Good thinking.”

Good
was not the word I would have used.
Bad
worked.
Terrible
really fit the bill.

But nothing iced sexual frustration quicker than showering with your father in the next stall.

Chapter Two

––––––––

M
idway into my lather-and-rinse routine, a wide palm flattened against my shower curtain. With a grin hooking my lips to one side, I placed my hand against Shaw’s, and liquid warmth settled in my bones.

The shrill grating of curtain rings sliding over the metal shower bar next door made me flinch.

“Mac.” Shaw jerked his hand away. “You’re naked.”

“And you’re standing outside Thierry’s stall. Why?”

“I—wanted to ask her something.”

“Go ahead.” Mac pinched the edge of thin plastic shielding my modesty and smoothed it flush against the tile. “She can hear through plastic fine.”

A dejected sigh passed Shaw’s lips. “It can wait.”

“I thought so.”

All hopes of Shaw stepping into my stall to help scrub those hard-to-reach places vanished in a puff of hot steam and fatherly disapproval.

“I’ll wait for you outside,” Shaw muttered.

“Thierry,” Mac warned. “Finish your shower.”

I stuck my tongue out where he couldn’t see, because I’m that mature.

Metal rings scraped and plastic shower curtain crinkled next door as Mac reentered his stall.

To avoid any awkward getting-dressed-together moments, I stayed under the spray until I was pruney and a gust of cool air announced his exit from the room. Only then did I slink out to dress in jeans, a purple
I got your back, Pluto
T-shirt and sneakers. Afraid to leave the boys alone together, I towel dried my hair and then French braided it out of the way.

I walked very casually into the main room of the marshal’s office and caught Mable’s eye.

She was possibly the best perk the job offered, and her cookies were
phenomenal
.

Today she wore a coral blouse with puffy sleeves and peach-colored corduroy bellbottoms. The vest buttoned over her curvy figure was a shade of salmon, and her boots were magenta snakeskin. With her powdery white hair pulled back in a bun, her rosy cheeks and her fuchsia glasses, she could play Mrs. Claus for the local tree farm and folks would line up to inspect her shirt for reindeer hairs.

Her bow mouth drew up in amusement when she spotted me. “How are things, dear?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”

“Macsen is a good man, Thierry.” She clicked her tongue. “Don’t give him such a hard time.”

“
Me
?” I squeaked. “You have
no
idea. None. That man—”

“—is your father,” she said patiently.

“Not the point.” I tugged on the collar of my shirt. “He is driving me insane.”

“He loves you.”

The words zinged straight to my heart. “He’s got a funny way of showing it.”

Just because my deadbeat dad was in the running for Father of the Year in everyone else’s eyes didn’t make him a contender in mine. He had never reached out to me. Not once. Nineteen years without as much as a
hello
. Let alone an
I don’t regret your existence, and oh yeah, your mom’s a pretty cool chick too
.

Mac claimed he had watched over me, yet he let me come into my powers ignorant. He let me go through my magical awakening alone, let me kill my best friends and didn’t even offer a shoulder for me to cry on afterward. How did I forgive him for those deaths when I hadn’t forgiven myself?

The best thing Mac had ever done for me was when he wrote the conclave’s unlisted number for Mom on his way out the door and out of our lives. That foresight had brought me to Mable...and Shaw.

Hearing the exhaustion in my voice, I asked, “Which way did they go?”

She pointed at the front door. “They’re waiting in Shaw’s truck.”

I had given her a jar of lemon blossom honey on my way in, so I waved. “Thanks.”

“Thierry.” She hesitated. “How is Shaw?”

I pulled up short. “He’s good.”

“He seems...” she struggled for the word she wanted, “...at peace.”

Tension drained out of my shoulders. “He does?”

A knowing expression crossed her face. “You haven’t noticed.”

I fidgeted with the hem of my shirt. “I’ve been busy.”

“I see.”

I blushed clear to the roots of my hair. “Not
that
kind of busy.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I’m just going to go.” Chin to my chest, I sidled past her with scalding cheeks. “Later.”

“Enjoy your dinner,” she called.

Out on the porch, I sucked in a breath of humid air and shook off the ominous feeling tightening my skin. Shaw had mentioned getting ready for tonight, but movie-night fixings were already at my apartment. We just needed to hit up a Redbox. Mac had made a going-to-dinner-together reference earlier too. With Mable making a third mention of the impending meal, I got the feeling more than food would be on the table.

Mac or Shaw or Mac
and
Shaw must want to negotiate the terms of our upcoming trip.

Well, at least I was getting a meal out of it.

––––––––

T
he ride into town reached funeral-procession levels of somberness. Mac sat between Shaw and me on the bench seat of Shaw’s truck. Mac had changed into another pair of dark wash jeans and a second band shirt of mine liberated from the laundry hamper. The tee came from my vintage rock collection. They were all guy-sized and worn thin as tissue paper long before I owned them. I used them for sleep shirts mostly. Tempted as I was to ask Mac if his dedication to wearing his daughter’s clothes was some kind of scent-marking thing, I had decided days ago to believe it was because of his affinity for music of the era in which I had been conceived, and I had made Shaw swear to never ask questions either.

When Shaw pulled into the parking lot of the Golden Panda and parked, I got a very bad feeling.

Neither man made a move to exit the truck, so I fidgeted. “Did you order takeout?”

“No,” Mac answered.

A cramped minute passed while we sat together, our hips touching and no one moving.

Over Mac’s head, Shaw tried to get my attention by staring a hole into my left eardrum. That was when it hit me, and my simmering temper ignited.

I shifted toward my father, placing my back against my door. “You bound Shaw so he couldn’t spill details about tonight.”

“I did.”

“Why would you do that?” I grabbed him by the upper arm. It was a nasty trick that kept Shaw from telling me what Mac didn’t want me to know. “Undo it.”

He exhaled, and a shiver of magic rippled over my arms.

Shaw gripped the wheel of the truck and revved the engine, but it was too late. A burnt-orange mini Cooper slid into the slot in front of ours, and the silver-haired woman behind the wheel waved. Next to her, a foot-tall ceramic garden gnome with a painted-on grin was strapped into the passenger seat.

Sven Gardener, her gnomian bodyguard, reporting for duty.

I slumped down low in the seat, my knees almost hitting the floorboard. “Get down.” I fisted the collar of Mac’s loaner shirt and tugged. “That’s my mom,” I hissed. “Hurry up before she sees you.”

“We’re here to meet her.” Shaw tightened his grip on the wheel. “Say the word, and we’re gone.”

“We’re meeting her?” I yanked Mac closer. “She knew you were here?”

He peeled my fingers back one by one. “I wouldn’t keep something like that from your mother.”

“You wouldn’t—?” I choked. “In what universe are you a thoughtful ex-whatever-you-are?”