With Everything I Am (8 page)

“You can’t, honey, not for a while,” was his scary response.

“I want to go home,” she repeated.

“You need to stay with me. When this is over, I don’t know where we’ll settle. We’ll talk about it when that happens.”

When
what
was over?

And…

He didn’t know where they’d
settle?

What was he on about?

She didn’t care and she wasn’t going to ask.

Instead, softly she enquired, “Callum, how much for you to take me home?”

“Honey, you can’t
go
home,” he reiterated.

“I’ll give you a million dollars.”

She held her breath and waited.

He was silent.

Oh no. Had she gone too high too fast? Or would he get angry knowing she’d low-balled him. She was, he had to know since she was his mark, seriously loaded.

While these thoughts flitted through her brain she felt his body shaking under hers.

She lifted her head and saw he was smiling. The shaking of the body was him silently laughing.

“I wasn’t being funny,” she told him, losing patience.

“You think I’ve kidnapped you,” he told her.

Her mouth dropped open (again).

“Sorry?” she asked after she’d closed it.

His head tipped down and he nuzzled his temple against hers in that tender way she told herself she hated (when she absolutely didn’t) before saying, “Baby doll, I haven’t kidnapped you.”

All of a sudden she was angry because he called her “baby doll” and the fact that this man, in real life, did that was the worst cosmic joke of all.

Maybe this made her stupid, but she didn’t care.

She yanked her head back.

“Okay, Callum, this is what I know,” she stated. “Two guys break into my house, they grab me, discuss raping me and, suddenly, even though it’s the middle of the night and I haven’t made a noise, you’re there to save the day. Instead of calling the police or an ambulance as I’d lost consciousness, you take me out of the city to a remote cabin in the woods. A cabin which conveniently has brand new clothes and toiletries, all that perfectly suit me. You’re all sweet, but bossy at the same time, and I know your game. You’re not my rescuer. You know I’m wealthy. Name your price, give me your phone, I’ll arrange the money for you, no problem. Then you take me home so I can get on with Christmas and you can go to the beach or find someone else to con.”

He studied her a moment seemingly unperturbed by her understanding of the situation and the blunt way with which she informed him of that fact and replied, “All right, Sonia, now you’ll listen to what’s
actually
going on.”

“This should be good,” Sonia muttered sarcastically.

“No, it won’t be good,” he returned severely. “It’ll probably freak you out, it’s likely you won’t believe a word I say but it’s also the truth.”

She glared at him.

He sighed.

Then he spoke and committed sin number three.

Furthermore, he was right. What he said freaked her out. But the way he said it made her know he believed it, which made it all the worse.

“Last night, two men broke into your house. I knew they were going to do it because I had intelligence delivered to me eleven hours earlier informing me of the plot. I am, for the sake of you understanding this, the leader of a gang that has hundreds of thousands of members across the world. They were soldiers from another, rival, gang.
You
, little one, are important to me.
They
know this and wanted to take you from me. What they did broke a treaty that was fragile at best. Now we’re at war.”

Sonia was no longer glaring at him.

She was gawking.

She wanted to stop the questions from coming. She just couldn’t.

“You’re the leader of a gang?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered.

“That has hundreds of thousands of members?”

“Yes.”

She stared at his handsome face.

He was good-looking. No doubt about it.

But he was crazy as a loon.

For some reason, she carried on, “I’m important to you?”

“Very.”

“Why?” Her voice was getting shrill. “You barely know me.”

“We’ll get to that later.”

She blinked, shocked out of her skull then idiotically continued, “What do you mean they ‘were’ soldiers? What happened to them?”

“Last night, I executed them.”

Sonia gasped at this news and then tensed, ready to flee.

His arms closed tight around her, negating any attempt to flee.

He was too strong, she knew it and in an instinctive effort at self-preservation, she gave up.

“You killed them,” she whispered, horrified that he’d do such a thing and equally horrified that he’d tell her he did it so… very…
calmly
.

They were not good men. They were menaces. Not menaces in a getting drunk and getting in fights, being too loud at baseball games, catcalling and doing kissy faces at women when they walked by kind of way. No, they were a much,
much
worse kind. She knew this. She’d sensed it about them more than once. And they were new, the menacing presence had only been around for a short while but she knew they’d been tracking her for weeks. And they’d invaded her home and discussed raping her.

But
executing
them?

“They touched you,” Callum replied.

“I know.”

“They intended to violate you.”

“I know!” she shouted and regardless of his strength, the fact that he could subdue her easily and even harm her, she started to struggle in his arms.

His hand slid into her hair and twisted.

She stilled at the onset of pain which was gentle but if she moved, it would get worse.

His eyes were still tawny when he brought her face to his.

And his expression was fierce and ominous and very, very frightening.

“You’re my mate, Sonia, my
queen,
” he announced, his voice the exact same as his face, his words, quite simply, were mad. “You were destined for me before you were even conceived. I’ve been waiting for you for longer than you can imagine. And they touched you
before
I touched you. They committed high treason and for that alone their execution was just. But they
fucking touched you before I touched you
and for that their deaths were
not
quick.”

Sonia found she was holding her breath.

Callum didn’t seem to notice.

“I’ll explain more as the days pass but this you know now. You’re mine, Sonia Arlington. You’ve been mine for centuries. You have a week… one week… to get to know me and understand the ways of my culture. I wish it could be longer but because of what happened last night, my people are at war. I’m their king, they need me. I have no time to give but, regardless of that fact, I’m giving you one week. I’ll use it wisely and I suggest, strongly, little one, that you do as well. This will go much better for you if you do.”

“What?” she breathed in spite of herself, not understanding even
half
of what he said and not knowing which part of “what” she was asking because there was so damned much!

“What?” he repeated.

Her mind focused on one point in many. “What will go much better?”

He brought her face closer. “At the end of this week, baby doll, we’re flying to Scotland. We’re having the mating ceremony and, from that point on, you’re bound to me in the eyes of my people’s laws as well as yours until you die.”

She’d obviously asked the wrong question.

“You’re…
what?
” she shrieked. Yes, right in his face.

“I’m binding you to me.”

“You’re…
binding
… me… to… you,” she repeated, enunciating each word with clear, open, horror.

He ignored her horror.

“Until you die.”

She tried to rear back.

His hand in her hair, his arm around her body and his strength that would make Hercules jealous made this effort moot.

So instead she whispered, “Oh my God.”

He ignored that too and stated, “You may have noticed you have no shoes.”

Sonia blinked yet again.

Then she nodded.

Callum continued immediately but on a different subject, “I’m going to finish outside, the storm is already here. They’re forecasting snow, maybe several feet. The electricity can go out here easily and the insulation isn’t the best. We need the fires. We could be snowed in by nightfall. I need to get us sorted.”

With that announcement, he stood, picking her up with him. Somewhere in her fogged, distracted, ravaged, oh-my-god-what’s-happening-to-me mind, she noted that no man had ever picked her up easily like that (or, at all) and held her to his chest like she weighed no more than a sack of feathers.

He turned and tucked her sideways back in the chair, her knees to her chest, the soles of her feet in the seat.

He leaned in and put a hand on either arm of the chair.

“You take some time, come to terms with what I’ve just said. If you have questions, we’ll talk more after lunch.”

She stared at his back as he walked through the cabin and out the backdoor.

Then she twisted her head to look out the front windows and saw that snow had started to fall.

Heavily.

Then she realized she’d not make it very far in a snowstorm without shoes even if she managed to escape.

And she
had
to escape.

Because she was stuck in a cabin with a murdering madman who thought she was his queen and intended to bind her to him until she died.

Then, to her shame, Sonia felt a single tear drop from her eye and trail down her cheek as her extreme fear overcame any courage she might have been able to muster.

That tear was joined by another.

Then another.

And then more.

Chapter Five

Mismatch

Callum finished splitting the logs and stacking them on the back porch in which he’d fitted the storm windows that morning while Sonia slept.

He was concerned about the storm. The snowfall was forecast as heavy and this could knock out the broadband and interfere with his cellular reception. Further, if anything should happen and he was needed, he didn’t want to be snowed into the cabin. He could transform and get out but Sonia couldn’t.

At any other time, he’d be thrilled to be snowed in at their cabin. Since buying it decades ago, he’d spent a goodly amount of time there. Regardless of the fact that his title came with castles in Scotland, England and France, a mansion on the East Coast of the US and his entitlement to take over any Territorial Mansion while traveling, he’d toyed with the idea of talking Sonia into settling in their cabin for a long spell after he’d won the war. At least until they started having pups. It reminded him of the years he spent in the Canadian Rockies and he liked its intimacy, the dense forest that surrounded it, sensing and smelling the plethora of wildlife all around.

She’d once told him she loved it there which was one of the reasons why he bought it. The other being that
he
loved it there and it was the only place that was
theirs
not to mention she thought she was in a dream when she was back.

He figured she wouldn’t be hard to sway to his way of thinking.

This was the only thing that brightened Callum’s morning.

On that thought, he walked into the house, removing his gloves and tossing them on the counter in the kitchen.

However, upon entry, his eyes went directly to Sonia.

She didn’t look to him. In fact, she didn’t move.

She was seated where he left her, curled up, her neck twisted to look over the back of the chair and out the window at the falling snow.

He had, for one shining moment that morning, thought she’d also felt their connection, just as all wolves do instantly, and he could gratefully dispense of this charade of courtship, claim her, mate with her and install her at his side.