Something Secret This Way Comes: Secret McQueen, Book 1 (7 page)

“What became clear? At the moment nothing is clear at all here.” I waved a hand around my head to illustrate my continued confusion.

“Let me try to phrase this in a way that won’t frighten you.”

“That’s probably not the best way to start.”

At least he wasn’t speaking to me like I was a child anymore.

“The thing is, while we have genetic explanations to make things easier for us to understand, there is still something primal and magical about being a werewolf. I was Awakened when I was thirteen, and it was like having a light turned on. I was roused from a sensory-debilitating sleep that day, and I haven’t looked back since. I see and hear better, I taste things more purely, and my sense of smell…well, you know how our noses work.”

In truth, since I was born this way I really had no frame of reference for what human senses were. I also had difficulty telling my werewolf and vampire abilities apart as some of them were so similar. I just nodded.

“As wolves, we feel things on a deeper level than humans. Connections between members of the pack are richer and more intense than anything human couples could understand. Within the old families in particular these bonds are almost unbreakable. We have come to understand it as a unique matchmaking system, one that has been built into our bodies.”

Now I was not only confused, I was getting nervous about the look in his eyes and the heat in his voice. As he spoke, something inside of me began to uncoil and rise in response to his words. I was drawn to the edge of my seat as though the thing within me wanted to carry me right across the desk.

“I don’t understand.” My breath was raspy and confessional.

“Among the oldest werewolf families there is a phenomenon known as soul-bonding. It is a measure by which the kings of our race pick those who they can truly trust
.
There is a call put out by the beasts inside of us that is meant for a select few to hear. It was how I chose Desmond to be my second. His wolf answered the call of my own when we were still very young, before either of us had even been turned. The call is the reason you felt me on that patio tonight. You knew who I was without having ever seen my face. It is why you could taste me in your mouth without having ever had trace of me there before.” The last part was said in the tone of a familiar lover, and I licked my lips.

This felt powerfully intimate, and I was leaning up against the desk now, as was he, the both of us swaying towards each other like trees whose branches longed to intertwine.

“You’re saying we’re soul mates?” As much as I would have liked to smother that last word with sarcasm, my voice would not allow me to.

“Soul-bonded,” he corrected. “I’m saying your body wouldn’t have reacted to the simple touch of anyone else in the world as it did to mine.”

“Y-you felt that?”

“The more you embrace what you are rather than shutting it out, you will find you can also feel what I’m feeling when we are together. I have been told it can make certain situations incredibly fulfilling.” His tone left no doubt of what he meant.

I shivered but felt the urge to remove my jacket. Leaving it on meant I could get up and walk out of the room at any moment, and my life would stay the same. I could ignore all this new information and choose to go on living my pseudo-normal, pedestrian existence. That life, mind you, was filled with executing vampires and other ghouls, and regular meetings with both a vampire liaison and my more frightening partner. My life was anything but typical. I could not deny that it was also very lonely.

If I removed the jacket, it meant I wanted to stay with him longer. To stay meant I had to accept some of the things Lucas was telling me. I would be allowing this man, a relative stranger, into my life simply because he told me we were meant to find each other. That we were destined by a mistake of birth and blood-borne pathogens to be together. Staying or leaving should have been such a simple choice.

But as Lucas rose from his chair, his eyes never leaving mine, I knew nothing would ever be simple again. I couldn’t deny the effect he had on me and I no longer wanted to. I’d been spending so much time with the dead I had forgotten what it felt like to be with the living. I’d ignored my own physical desires to such an extent I often forgot I had them.

He rounded the desk and moved towards me, and I was painfully aware that not only did I have the same desires of any sane woman looking at a man this beautiful, I had urges equal to those of an animal who had just discovered her mate.

He stood next to my chair and spun the seat so it turned to face him instead of the desk. My knees grazed his shins. He looked down at me, one hand on either armrest of the chair, and my breath caught in my throat. Heat radiated off us both, making the air between us stuffy.

I believed in vampires and werewolves, so why not believe in soul mates?

I took off my jacket.

Chapter Ten

I had told Mercedes that I hadn’t come here with the intention of bedding Lucas. I reminded myself of this over and over as he ran his beautiful, long fingers down my bare arms. Everywhere his skin touched mine it felt like fireworks exploding under the surface. I’d been with enough men in the past to consider myself a woman of average experience, but this was unlike anything I’d ever known could exist. I worried, perhaps foolishly, that I might be brought to the edge of orgasm while sitting in a chair as he grazed my arms.

He smiled as if he’d heard my thoughts. Maybe he had? I had no idea how this soul-bonding thing worked. His hands cupped my face, one trailing fingers through the loose curls of the ponytail on my shoulder as the other traced my jawbone with one thumb. He lifted a handful of my hair to his nose and smelled it.

His thumb stopped moving, breath catching in his throat and eyes growing wide.

“You smell like death.”

My whole body coiled like a compressed spring, ready to burst from my seat and away from him. I was terrified that he could tell what I was. If he could read my thoughts, the guilty rambling occurring there at the moment wasn’t helping my case any.

Then I remembered my gun. I remembered Henry Davies. I had a perfectly reasonable and somewhat honest explanation for smelling the way I did.

“I’m a bounty hunter.” I wrapped my fingers around his wrists and pulled his hands away from my face. After the next bit of my speech I didn’t think he’d still want to jump my bones. “Most of the work I do is for the local vampire council, executing rogue vampires.”

He took a step back, and I noticed for the first time he was barefoot. He tilted his head to the side as I spoke, a habit that made me picture him in his furrier form.

“Vampires aren’t the only thing I hunt. I also do private contracts.” I searched his eyes, hoping he understood the meaning of the statement.

“You’ve killed werewolves.”

He was a smart one, at least. It pleased me to know werewolf matchmaking hadn’t saddled me with an idiot for a soul mate. Although I was certain this confession period was going to make him less fond of me.

“Yes.”

“Were they killed because of someone’s hatred towards our kind? Some private vendetta?” His expression shone with rage.

I shook my head solemnly. I didn’t want to tell him the next part. “I’ve killed two werewolves. The first was the pet of a rogue vampire, and he tried to rip my throat out when I came for his master.”

Lucas sat on the edge of his desk. It did not escape my notice that he was now outside my reach. “And the second?”

“The second…” I looked around the room, like I might find the right words floating overhead. “I told you earlier I’d met another werewolf who knew my name. That’s part of what makes the second kill so difficult to explain. I want your word that what I tell you doesn’t leave this room and you won’t retaliate.” I could tell he didn’t like it, but he nodded, his mouth fixed in a grim line. “My second werewolf kill came at the request of an alpha in Albany.”

“Marcus?” Lucas was taken aback at this. I, for my part, was shocked he immediately knew the man who had hired me, though I suppose any good king would know who worked under him.

“Yes. He came to me because a new wolf within his territory wasn’t abiding by the laws. Your laws. This wolf was using his newfound strength in human form to force himself on local women. Marcus was worried it would bring your people to the attention of local authorities. When the boy attacked Marcus’s human daughter, things came to a head.”

“Oh God.” Lucas looked away from me. “Why didn’t he come to me? We have ways to handle these things.”

“Marcus didn’t ask me to kill the boy, I need to make that clear. He asked if I could use my
unique
abilities to make the boy leave the Albany territory. The boy sealed his own fate by thinking he could best me in a fight.”

The tension in his jaw and the furrow of his brow told me my news had hit him harder than either of us had anticipated. I had been killing my own kind for six years. I’d seen the look of betrayal and grim determination on the faces of the council as they placed death warrants in my hands and sent me to kill their brothers. I was a suitable means to an unhappy end, but everything was handled in a businesslike fashion.

When Marcus asked me to deal with the werewolf in his territory causing such trouble, I didn’t see it as a business arrangement. I had only seen the father of a ruined daughter. Not until now, looking at the despair on Lucas’s face, did I realize the death of one wolf could impact the entire pack. That the king himself would mourn the death of one. Or that Marcus’s vendetta would hurt him as well.

Neither of us said anything for a long time. Muted tones of early sunrise had started to filter in under the blinds, and I was thankful they were closed. The sunlight wouldn’t kill me the way it did a real vampire, but it would be difficult to explain why I had third-degree burns rather than a tan.

In spite of the drawn curtain I felt a familiar sense of panic. I needed to go home. I had to get back to the safety of my basement apartment, with its thick gloomy shades, where daylight never penetrated.

“Lucas…”

He raised a hand to silence me. I could imagine what he was thinking. I had the right smell, the right taste and the right name. For all intents and purposes the only thing keeping me from being his perfect soul mate was my own stubbornness. Then I dropped the bomb—
Oh by the way, dear, I kill monsters.

“Do you remember his name?”

“Pardon?”

He fixed a hard glare on me, his sorrow overcome by anger, and his voice quivered with an uneasy mixture of the two emotions. “The boy you killed.” It sounded so filthy the way he said it. “Do you remember his name?”

The way he asked it told me a lot rested on my response, possibly my very life. I might not be human—I was paid to be a killer and I could be more of a monster than those I killed—but I was not without a soul.

“William Reilly. His name was William Reilly.”

Lucas nodded. He must have already known the name. I didn’t remember the names of everyone I’d ever killed, but I remembered the ones I felt bad about.

This had gone from precoital intensity to feeling like after-school detention in the span of seconds. I for one was ready to be done with it.

“If there’s nothing else, I mean, if you’re done with me…” I inclined my head towards the door.

“For tonight.” He kept watching me as I rose to leave. “I’m sure this has been more than enough for one evening.” His phrasing implied he hadn’t totally written me off, but I was going to get out of here while I was still in his good graces.

“Secret?” He apparently wasn’t quite done.

I stopped halfway to the door, turning to look at him. He padded towards me, and I admired the flashes of bare stomach his open shirt granted me. As he approached, once more the taste of him filled my mouth. I wondered what I tasted like to him. I sighed in spite of myself when he placed one large hand on each of my shoulders.

His blue eyes were so close to mine I saw a circle of gold around each iris, and I imagined again what he must look like as a wolf. I felt the urge to eliminate the distance between our mouths.

Only in the company of supernatural beings is it normal for moods to shift so suddenly.

“I forgive you,” he said.

It wasn’t forgiveness he was giving me as much as a royal pardon. The proud part of me wanted to tell him to stuff it, but the Secret who was accustomed to the rigid formality of the vampire council nodded with mute acceptance. He’d needed to do it, and as his subordinate I needed to accept.

I turned again to leave, but he held on to me, his hands stronger than I’d anticipated.

“You will have dinner with me. Tomorrow night.” He looked at the watch on his wrist and laughed, then corrected himself. “Tonight.”

“Umm.” It hadn’t sounded like a request, but the look on his face told me he was still expecting a response. “Okay?”

The coming night was shaping up to be as relaxing as the previous one had been. Meet with Holden and the Tribunal. Explain to Keaty about my new puppy fan club. Deflect Mercedes’s questions about Lucas. Have dinner with my billionaire soul mate in his penthouse.

Yup. Sounded like a totally average Thursday.

Chapter Eleven

The sky was dark gray and overcast when I got outside. I still needed to find a cab in a hurry, but at least I didn’t have to hide the smell of my own burning flesh. While the driver shuttled me westward to Hell’s Kitchen, I called Keaty to tell him I was fine and asked him to call Mercedes for me.

Safe in my apartment, I staggered into my bedroom, which was a promising pitch black. Because of the danger posed by even one errant beam of sunlight, I couldn’t trust curtains to protect me during the day, so I’d bricked the small window closed, telling my landlord it was to keep burglars out.

Collapsing onto my bed, overwhelmed by the daytime exhaustion that rendered vampires dead during daylight hours, I fell asleep straight away.

I was back in Central Park.

I knew the moon was full without seeing it, because I had the unsettling sensation something liquid and hot was burning under my skin, looking for a way out.