Swallow (Kindred Book 2) (15 page)

He reclined his seat and stretched out while she navigated the car out of the garage. She drove and he locked his fingers behind his head. When she glanced back, his eyes were closed.

“Don’t go to sleep,” she said, prodding his thigh with a sharp fingernail next to where the gun rested. “It’s dark and I might get lost.”

They used the main gate so rarely that it was a possibility. But she’d spent time walking around, exploring, and was familiar with most of the footpaths in daylight. At night, the environment became much more daunting, and the landmarks were hidden by black shadows and shrouding foliage making them difficult to distinguish. The grounds were vast, driving in them was like driving in the countryside, yet they were on the threshold of the city. Living here, they had the best of both worlds.

He didn’t even flinch. “As long as you don’t drive into the ocean we’re fine. You can swim, right?”

Concerned that she could hit a beast and of what would come of them if she went off the beaten trail, she scrutinized the sinister shapes around them. “Are there wild animals out here?” she asked. Brodie did next to nothing to tend the grounds. The whole place was basically a natural habitat for anything that wanted to live in the woods nestled by the shielding cliff.

“Other than me?” he asked, cracking one eye open for a brief moment and putting the gun in the door well so he could twist into a comfortable position. Although he was joking, she did relax. Brodie could handle anything that came at them and he was armed, making him virtually invincible.

Zara did manage to find the gate and used the fingerprint pad under the steering wheel to unlock it wirelessly. This was the first time she had ever driven herself out the gate and her heart hammered the whole time. It was odd, but the pressure of ensuring they weren’t seen and that the gate closed behind them made her think of Art.

He watched over his flock and even though he wasn’t here, she didn’t want to let him down. She still missed him, his guiding hand, and his help with Brodie. Art was easy to talk to and he was honest. Without him, it was her responsibility to try to cultivate that kind of openness with Brodie and she had no one to help her.

Since he was drunk and she wanted him to open up, she took advantage of him. “Have you killed anyone for free?” she asked, trying to prove to him that she wanted to be a part of every part of his life, even the parts he’d withheld from her thus far.

“Yeah, your last boyfriend,” he muttered, still snoozing in his reclined seat.

“Vince?” she asked, wondering how and when he’d gotten to her ex.

He sat up and grabbed the back of her neck, drawing her attention to his glare. “I meant the fucker Tim Sutcliffe. Who the hell is Vince? What’s his social security number?”

“Do I know your social security number?” she asked. Her lover was easily riled and she was learning that she didn’t have to mimic that quality in order to be with him, so she remained calm, finding that was the best way to temper his outbursts. Though her actual question was moot because he probably didn’t have a real social security number. Whether he did or not would remain a mystery because he was too busy scowling at her to answer. “It’s not a question I ask before sleeping with a man is my point. It sorta kills the mood.” She didn’t even know Brodie’s real name before sleeping with him.

“I’ll find him,” he grumbled and settled back in his seat.

She exhaled a laugh and focused on the road. “Why do we care where he is? He obviously couldn’t handle me. I’m not still with him. He wasn’t man enough… Are you man enough, Brodie McCormack?”

Peeking over her shoulder, she was drawn in by his tired eyes. “You are too naughty for most men,” he said, reaching over to pull up her jacket so he could massage her bare thigh. “You’re buck naked under that coat. You’re so hot, baby, and I don’t tell you that enough. I’ve got myself a prize.”

He left his hand on her leg, but let his head fall back again so he could close his eyes. “Are you leaving early in the morning?” she asked. He nodded. She second-guessed her decision to bring him out so late because she didn’t want him to be tired when he had to be focused. Except their relationship was important too, it was vital for his well-being and for the Kindred’s work. “Will you let me come?”

“I left you hanging in the garage, huh? Pull over and I’ll fix that right here.” He bent in her direction and tugged open a few buttons on her coat, but she took his hand from the sensitive flesh near her core when his fingers tried to slide home.

With a laugh hiding behind her lips, she interlinked their fingers. “I meant will you let me come to New York with the Kindred?”

He sounded disappointed, either by the request or by his misinterpretation of it, and shook his fingers out of hers. “Thad will only hang with us for a couple of days. He has a real job to get back to.”

“What’s Zave’s story? He’s sort of freaky.”

“He’s punishing himself,” Brodie yawned, and she smiled out the windshield.

She’d asked him once why he didn’t manipulate information out of her when she was tired and sex-sated, and here she was figuring out that it was the best way to inveigle information from her man.

“For what?”

Still sleeping, he looked so relaxed. She glanced from him to the road, wishing she didn’t have to concentrate on driving. “He was a wild kid with a big brain and didn’t take orders from anyone, no one could control him.”

Which married with what Thad had said about days of indulgence. Zave certainly didn’t come across as a partier. “What changed?” she asked, because he was anything but wild.

His expression didn’t move as he inhaled. “The same thing that always happens in my family,” he said, “family tragedy. After that he became a recluse.”

Most families had their share of skeletons. While Brodie and his family had been blessed with natural aptitude, they didn’t have the best of luck in other areas. Having lost her own mother when she was a teenager, she understood how loss could alter a person’s priorities almost overnight.

She kept driving and talking. “Thad is a happy guy, sort of like his mother. Bess is sweet.”

“She’s a treat,” he muttered, probably getting tired of the questions.

Being out on the road gave her mind time to process and sort these new facts. “Do Zave’s parents live in his house too? And I thought your dad built the twin houses for your mother?”

“He did. Zave bought the other one from my father. And his parents are dead. He has no siblings.”

The family history questions were irritating Brodie because he was scowling again, and she’d need him to be in a good mood if she wanted him to open up when they got where they were going. “Just you and Grant left with that fraternal bond,” she said, wondering how he’d react to that relationship while in this intoxicated state.

He sat up straight and seemed to grow alert in an instant. “Is that where we’re going?” he asked, almost elated. “Oh, baby, that’s a gift. Get me into his apartment while he’s asleep. I’ll teach him the consequences of letting my girl get hurt.”

Rolling her eyes, she didn’t want to encourage hostility, so a laugh became a tsk. “We’re not going to punish Grant,” she said.

They weren’t far from their destination. From the way he examined the view with decreasing patience, she’d guess that he knew where they were going.

“White Falls,” he murmured as they began their final ascent to the highest point of the coast near the city.

He said nothing else for the rest of the trip, and when they got to the top, she turned off the car and sat quietly staring out onto the inky ocean.

Brodie broke the silence. “Is there a point to this?” he asked, rubbing his hands on his thighs and lowering his gaze with renewed discomfort in his voice.

Revealing himself or any vulnerability was tough. Having made the decision to be more proactive about encouraging him to share, she wasn’t going to pull back on the throttle now even if it was plain that was what he wanted her to do.

“You and Grant, you were up here the day your parents died.” That much of the story she knew.

He nodded once but wouldn’t focus on the windscreen. “Art brought us. We trekked up from the beach. Grant hated the whole day. He wouldn’t stop bitching. It was arid, it hadn’t rained for days, and… he was teaching us how to make fire and how to control it.”

Treading softly, she was humbled and overjoyed that he was talking to her about such a sensitive topic. But she kept herself passive and sedate. She didn’t want to scare him quiet, by gushing or overreacting to him sharing.

She took off her seatbelt and twisted her body toward his. “Art was?”

“Yeah,” he said. His eyes flicked up to one side to focus on the dark mass on the water that was McCormack land. The peninsula was visible from up here, which was why Brodie had brought her here in the first place.

“The light you saw… right on the end of our peninsula? It’s where the dock is… my mom had it installed to guide my dad home. He and his buddies used to go out fishing… least that’s what they called it. What they liked to do was smoke cigars and talk business.”

“She worried about him,” Zara said, encouraged by that. Art had told her that Melinda McCormack had her husband pussy-whipped, now Zara understood that adoration went both ways.

The distance in his eyes became acute. “She was out with him that day on the boat. The light beacon was on at the dock in case they came back after dark. No one was there, at home. We were building a fire up here, but Grant was using the binoculars to try and find them.”

So Art and Brodie were playing caveman, and Grant was seeking his parents, probably desperate to get home. Brodie would have been enraptured with his idol while Grant was seeking salvation.

His attention fell and there was tension in his shoulders. Her intention hadn’t been to upset him. But she was gratified that he had chosen to open up to her with little persuasion. “And he saw the boat explode,” she said, that much was in the papers. The boat went up ten miles from shore. Little wreckage was recovered according to the press she’d read, most of it had washed up on shore at the foot of the cliffs or on the McCormack peninsula.

He shrugged off the melancholy and settled back in his seat. “The night I brought you here was the first night I’d been back since that day. The beacon light hadn’t been on either, we weren’t even sure it was going to work.”

It wasn’t on tonight, she had only seen it on that one time. She’d spent so much time working inland on the McCormack estate that she hadn’t spent any time on the other side of the house, closest to the water. Zara resolved to check out the docks and the beacon the next time she was exploring.

“It’s a beautiful glow,” she said because the light had been brilliant.

“Blue isn’t traditionally used by mariners and lighthouses,” Brodie said, more comfortable relaying facts. “But my dad chose it because it was my mom’s favorite color.”

Breaking the tension of the conversation was the best way to ensure she got more information from him, so she leaned closer and smiled. “Mine’s purple.”

His eyes softened as they flicked to hers. “Want me to change it?”

Her heart thumped, that was an almost inadvertent admission on how he felt about her. Keeping the sparkle in her smile, she chose an indirect route. “Your dad loved her.”

“Yeah,” he exhaled, and his hand drifted to the door where he fingered the gun then let it go to crack his knuckles. “Why are we here, Zar?”

His impatience and irritation made him edgy, but she didn’t see his intoxication anymore so she took his hand and leaned over to guide his face around to her. “Because I want to know you from the beginning, beau. There’s nothing I don’t want to hear.”

He still looked pissed, so she knew she’d pushed him far enough tonight, and she didn’t want him to rebel by pushing her away. So, unbuttoning her coat, she pushed him back into his seat and climbed over to straddle his lap.

The discomfort vanished from his face and he grew cocky. “Now we get to the real reason why you wanted out of the house. You got a thing for screwing outdoors?” he asked, scooping his hands inside her jacket and parting it wide to expose her naked form as he curled his hands around her narrow waist. “You should’ve told me. The estate’s your playground, don’t ever forget it.”

And he was her playmate. “This is for you,” she said, sweeping her hair out of the way then pushing his forehead back and to the side so she could close her lips around his throat.

Undulating her hips against his fly, he grew to a solid mass under her stimulation with little time. “This fucking body’s for me,” he said, skimming his hands up to cradle her breasts.

“Yes, it is,” she said, tracing her lips up to suck hard on his neck.

He hissed and snatched her wrists to thrust her back against the dash. “Leaving your mark, baby?” he snarled, wearing a glare reminiscent of the wild beast he’d claimed to be.

His arousal was her goal and she was getting him to a full steam fast. “You didn’t get the full high school experience,” she said. He didn’t let go of her wrists, but let her lean forward to splay her hands on his chest and kiss his neck again. She nuzzled her way up to his ear. “You get a girl in your car, drive somewhere private… far out of town, all alone… and take advantage of her…”