[Southern Arcana 3.0] Deadlock (12 page)

His fingers tightened around hers. “I hate not knowing what to do. If I’ll hurt you more leaving you alone, or by giving you what you crave. I don’t want to hurt you at all. Do you have any fucking idea how long it’s been since I didn’t know what to do?”

“You’re too hard on yourself,” she admonished. “It isn’t your job to keep me from hurting, and no one knows everything all the time.”

“It’s my job to keep from hurting you.” He lifted his hand and hers with it, sliding it up until they pressed into the grass over her head. Then he released her and rolled to his side, propped up on his elbow so the bulk of his body loomed above her. “It’s all a damn excuse. It’s my job, and I’d be doing it anyway…but that’s not why I’m doing it now.”

It was the most nonsensical thing she’d heard in a while. “Are you saying you want to protect me?”

“I’m saying I
want
to protect you.” His free hand landed on her stomach, skimming up to skip over her breasts and land on her collarbone. “You’re not scared of me. Even when I’m acting crazy.”

“Because you’re not crazy.” She caught his hand and held it still. “Don’t do this just because you think I need it. It’s not worth it.”

His eyes looked so dark they might as well have been black. “Honey, I thought you were an empath.”

“You know what I mean. If you still think I’m not in my right mind, the guilt would kill you, and I only want you to feel good about this.”

He considered that for a moment, then guided her other hand up above her head. “I’m going to kiss you. Deep. Hard. You okay with that?”

He’d urged her into a position of submission—both hands over her head, her body stretched out beneath his—and it made her shake with anticipation. “More than okay.”

“You want me to stop, you say stop.” One hand curled around both of her wrists, gentle but unyielding. “You want more, ask for it. Okay?”

Carmen pulled against his grasp, not to free herself but to test his strength. He held tight, and her eyes fluttered shut under a wave of need. “Yes.”

His free hand settled at her hip in a possessive grip. Power built in the space between them, a slow, steady rise that mirrored the dark heat in his eyes as he lowered his mouth, lips barely touching hers. “Let me in.”

The command released something inside her, a tension she hadn’t noticed before he eased it, and she closed her eyes again. Honesty was one thing, even a kiss…

Don’t think, Carmen. Feel.

She obeyed, loosening her tight hold on control, gasping when the first waves of empathic feedback echoed off him to heat her own body.

His beard scraped her chin as he closed the distance between them with a shuddering groan. He kissed the way she’d seen him live, reckless arrogance and power and an intensity that bordered on intimidating. Lips and teeth and his tongue stroking her mouth until she parted her lips, then surging forward to taste and take, his hunger and satisfaction twisting between them on the threads of her empathy.

She wasn’t prepared for the depth of her reaction to his satisfaction. Beyond the undeniable physical pleasure of the kiss was a whole world of intimacy, a power she’d flirted with but never really embraced.

She could give him everything.

More, he’d take it. There could be no doubt of that, not with his desires laid bare before her, the hot need for her pleasure dwarfed by the steely craving to be the only one who provided it. Nothing tentative there. Nothing tentative about the way he teased his tongue against hers, his pleasure spiking every time she moaned and arched closer.

It had to stop, even if depriving herself of his touch drove her mad. Carmen turned her head to break the kiss. “Oh God.”

“Shh.” He pressed a kiss to her temple. “How’s the wolf instinct feeling now?”

Curiously silent, all things considered. She’d expected that part of her to be feral, riled up and ready for a ride, but everything in her that still strained toward Alec’s touch was entirely human. “Quiet.”

“She knows she’s safe.” The whispered words stirred her hair. “She ran. I caught. Claimed. Won’t be the last time she pushes a challenge, but it might not be so bad next time.”

She bit her lip to hide a smile. “You’re still convinced that’s all it is? That I wouldn’t usually try to get a rise out of you?”

“Maybe not all of it.” He nuzzled her cheek, working his way down until his teeth closed lightly on the line of her jaw. “In a week or two this magic should settle down, if we’re lucky. Or Jackson will find a way to break it sooner.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“It’s not our first crisis. Don’t think it’ll be our last, either.”

“It’s mine.” Her life hadn’t been easy, but most of the pain she’d had to deal with had been emotional. “Nothing about my family has ever made me feel endangered before.”

His body went tense beside hers, the fingers at her hip digging in for a heartbeat before his hand relaxed. “I’m sorry. I remember what it feels like the first time.”

Pain accompanied the words, an agony that almost sickened her. Her first thought was to shut it out, but that would mean shutting Alec out, and she couldn’t. So she took a deep, shaky breath and watched his face. “What did they do?”

He rolled away from her, landing on his back with his hand still above her head. His fingers curled around hers, an almost compulsive, instinctive movement, and that pain tightened, turned to a free fall of loss. “My cousin killed my wife. Because she was human.”

There was nothing to say, no questions to ask. Prejudice had cost his wife her life, and Alec had been left to deal with an aftermath full of pain and emptiness. That wouldn’t change now, no matter how hard anyone wished.

Nothing to say.

Carmen squeezed his hand. “Tell me about her.”

“Her name was Heidi.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Remember how I said my friend Karl fell in love with a cowgirl from South Dakota?”

“I do.”

“Yeah, the cowgirl was on a date with me when that happened. The worst first date in the history of men and women, and Karl stole her out from under my nose. Guess she felt guilty, because a few months later she introduced me to one of her friends from college. An art major who liked to make sculptures with a blowtorch.”

He already looked lighter somehow, less bowed by guilt. “She sounds like a badass.”

It made him laugh a little. “Only if you pissed her off while she was holding the blowtorch.” His smile faded. “She made it easy to walk away from the supernatural world. To just forget it was there.”

Except it always was for someone like him, no matter what, and his renewed guilt proved he knew that. “I’m learning now that you can’t walk away from something that’s part of you.”

“No, you can’t. You can hide from it for a while. You can tell it to fuck off…” His thumb stroked her wrist. “It’s in my blood. It’s in
your
blood. Maybe I just hate thinking that me and Heidi might not have lasted. Feels too much like saying I didn’t love her enough.”

“You tried,” she said firmly, “and you were happy, right? Beyond that, who knows what would have happened?”

“No one, I guess. No one ever will.” His arm looped around her, as if he needed the comfort of her touch. “My cousin never gave her the chance to walk away from me. He thought I should thank him for that.”

It was barbaric. Unfathomable. She wanted to scream at the injustice of it, but all she could do was stroke her fingers over his skin.
I’m sorry.
It wasn’t enough, but she murmured the words anyway.

Alec’s voice dropped to a rough whisper. “It was a while ago. My cousin went to ground afterwards—even my family couldn’t condone what he’d done. He was a member of a pretty radical group. They thought changed wolves were making us weak, that no shapeshifter should have the right to squander our precious blood on anyone who wasn’t born to the gift. Humans were a thousand times worse.”

“I understand.” Hadn’t Cesar demanded that Carmen’s father abandon her mother for the crime of being a psychic, a human? And what might he have done if Diego had refused?

“The supernatural world is fucked up. All we can do down here is… I don’t even know. Pick up the pieces?”

“I think so.” She was living proof that avoidance only worked for so long, and it certainly never changed anything. “Did you find him? Your cousin?”

“Yeah. With Jackson’s help.” She felt his subtle withdrawal, though his fingers stayed on hers. “I found him, and all the people who’d encouraged him. Who’d been terrorizing other people. And when it was over, I was that crazy bastard no one wanted to piss off.”

Carmen reluctantly slipped her shields back into place, sat up and leaned over him. “And that’s why everyone but Kat tiptoes around you.”

“That’s why.” The corner of his mouth kicked up in a tiny, morbid smile. “Plus all the crazy things I’ve done since.”

“Crazy things?” The urge to kiss him again almost overwhelmed her, so she climbed to her feet and held out her hand. “Surely tackling women and kissing them stupid qualifies, so I won’t argue.”

He accepted her hand, but rocked to his feet with effortless grace without her help. “Nah, that’s on the tame side. Last year I kidnapped a Conclave member’s kid in someone else’s truck.”

Carmen laughed helplessly. “Somehow, the fact that it was someone else’s vehicle makes it sound crazier.”

“He wasn’t thrilled at the time either, as I remember.”

“The owner of said truck, or the person you kidnapped?”

“Neither, I guess.”

“Uh-huh.” She hadn’t released his hand, and now she tugged him toward the path. “Let’s go have a beer.”

“In a second.” He pulled her back and turned her, raising both hands to her shoulders. “You seem steadier today, so I want to try something tonight, after dinner. I want to try to guide you through the change.”

“I told you—I don’t feel that different.”

“Then nothing will happen.” A hint of sadness wreathed the words, perhaps explained by those that followed. “And then you can go home. Get back to your life.”

She would never be the same, even if the magic he spoke of came to nothing. Not after the way he’d kissed her. “I don’t live on another planet, Alec.”

He shrugged and turned back to the path. “I do. A planet where angry shapeshifters kick my doors off their hinges and people need kidnapping and saving and killing. There’s always something.”

In other words, there was no room for her. Unsurprising—and understandable.

And it didn’t matter anyway. It might have been one unforgettable kiss, but his busy, dangerous existence was far from the only reason getting involved with him would be a bad idea. He was inextricably tangled up in the fringes of a world she’d avoided her whole life.

Bad, bad idea.

Carmen caught up with him and slid her hand back into his. “There’s always something—later. Right now, I want that beer.”

She had a day, two at the most, and she wouldn’t waste them.

Jackson had called him five times.

The text on his cell phone’s screen indicated he had four new voicemails, and he’d bet all of them had come from his partner as well. With Carmen happily occupied putting away the groceries he’d had delivered, Alec felt safe enough stepping out on the back porch. Easier than staying in the kitchen with her smiles and her scent and her friendly chatter twisting him up into a confused wreck.

Fucking women was safe. Liking their company was asking for trouble.

He didn’t bother to listen to any of the messages, opting instead to call Jackson back. There was no way the man didn’t plan to yell at him, and he only had patience for one tedious lecture.

Jackson answered the phone with a short, particularly foul curse. “Okay, where the hell have you been?”

“Running.” Mostly the truth, and Jackson wouldn’t be able to tell either way. “She needed to burn off some energy.”

“Her brother’s been here, bitching because he showed up the other morning to quite the domestic-looking little scene.”

The kid should be thanking any God he prayed to that it’d been domestic and not pornographic. “We’re getting along decent enough. Nothing crazy’s happened.”

“Yeah, I told him you’d take care of her. No funny business.”

“That a statement or a question?”

After a moment of uneasy silence, Jackson cleared his throat. “Is there something I need to know?”

Damn it.
His own defensiveness had turned a statement into a question. “If she was stuck here for a few more days, maybe. But if I can’t walk her through a change tonight, then I’m sending her back home. Franklin’s practically shacking up with her roommate. He’ll be on hand if anything happens, but I’m starting to think it won’t.”

“The longer it takes, the less likely it is to happen,” his partner admitted. “Julio says there’s no news on the whys-and-wherefores front. You gonna shuffle her off on Franklin and help him out? He tries, but come on. The kid’s a firefighter. He doesn’t think like a cop.”

Long association with Jackson made it easy to follow the path of his thoughts. A cop might have found Alec’s lack of subterfuge reassuring…but Julio Mendoza wasn’t human. And Jackson didn’t think like a shifter. “Wolves aren’t so great at hiding that sort of thing. Especially if someone’s charging into our territory and questioning our right to have someone. The only way I’m going to convince Mendoza that I’m not the latest big bad wolf come to gobble his sister up is to get her the hell out of my house.”

“Then you’re right, you need to do just that. We can’t get down to real business with you stuck babysitting.”

“Yeah.” He was right. Getting Carmen away from him was the only thing that would give him the focus to find out what had happened to her.

Too bad it was the last thing he wanted to do.

“Still, couldn’t hurt to stay in touch after she goes home. Make sure everything’s all right. You can handle that, right?” Jackson’s voice sounded studiously casual.

Meddling bastard. “Since when do you encourage me to stick my nose in other people’s business?”

He could almost hear Jackson’s shrug. “You’ve taken responsibility for her so far. May as well see it through.”

“I take responsibility for everyone. And I always see it through. So butt the hell—”