Rhyannon Byrd - Primal Instinct 04 (10 page)

Yeah, when he looked at it that way, he’d gotten off
lucky, all things considered. Thanks to her stepsisters, she understood enough
about the clans to save them all a lot of arguing and headaches.

And who knew? Maybe he was getting worked up over
nothing. After all, what were the chances that she was going to be anywhere
near as tempting as his imagination believed she would be?

So stop getting so jacked up. After you bed her, you
can forget about her. Just like you’ve done with all the others.

As far as game plans went, it wasn’t much, but Aiden
was willing to give it a go. He’d screw her a few times, making sure the itch
was scratched to the point that it bled clean, and God willing, once he did,
he’d find out that Olivia Harcourt was the same as every other woman he’d ever
had, even with that goddamn “Eve effect” going on. Then he’d be able to leave
her behind, and get on with his life, searching for the next Marker…and then
the next.

The plan should have brought him a measure of peace,
but it didn’t. Instead, Aiden’s gut twisted tighter, and he swore something
foul under his breath. Christ, when had he become such a bloody head case?

“You okay?”

Jarred out of his thoughts by her question, Aiden
caught himself staring at her mouth. He could feel her embarrassment, thick and
hot in the air, but he couldn’t seem to look away, fascinated by the sensual
shape, the impossible softness. Not for the first time that night, he found
himself wondering if she’d actually kissed him back when he’d taken her to the
ground back at the house. Or if he’d just imagined it. And if she had, why?

Frustrated at himself for mulling over it like an old
woman, he forced out a gritty admission. “I don’t want to leave you out here
unprotected.”

She glanced around the quiet parking lot. “Do you
really think it’s dangerous?”

Shrugging his shoulders, he said, “The odds are
unlikely that they could track us this quickly, especially with all the rain
that was coming down, but I also don’t see the point in taking unnecessary
risks.”

She nodded, already undoing her seat belt. “Then we’ll
go in with you.”

“That was the plan,” he murmured, already unfolding
his long body from behind the wheel. Aiden opened the back door and reached
inside for Jamie, who was slowly waking up. When he unbuckled her from her car
seat and lifted her into his arms, she cuddled against his chest as if it was
the safest place in the world for her to be. Looking half-asleep, she gave him
a shy smile and ran her pudgy fingers along his arm.

“Pwetty,” she whispered, touching her little fingers
to his tattooed forearm.

Blinking, Aiden choked back a gruff burst of laughter.
God only knew he’d been called a lot of things in life, but pretty wasn’t one
of them. He slid a laughing look toward Olivia, and found her watching them
with a strange smile on her face. “You’re going to have your hands full with
this one when she hits sixteen. She’s already a charmer.”

“Don’t I know it,” she groaned, giving a soft shake of
her head that sent the fiery strands brushing against her cheeks.

Thinking of Olivia raising Jamie alone and without
help, he suddenly found an uneasy frown working its way into his expression.
“She’s gonna need some big, mean-looking daddy to beat off all the boys.”

“I’ll beat them off. With a shovel, if I have to.”

Aiden lifted his brows at the forcefulness of her
tone. “It’s a huge responsibility you’ve taken on, raising her by yourself.”

She reached up and ran her hand down Jamie’s back, her
own expression one of fierce determination. “We’ll manage.”

“Well,” he rasped, “the good thing is that you don’t
have to manage on your own anymore.”

She sent him a startled, questioning look that made
something in his chest go tight. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve got friends now, Liv.”

For a moment all she did was stare back at him, her
eyes wide…wary. She looked somehow afraid to believe him, and equally afraid
not to. “Do I really?” she asked, the soft, whispered words nearly silent
beneath the gentle rasp of the wind.

“Yeah,” he muttered, knowing there was no way out of
this. He was just going to keep sinking deeper, but man, there had to be worse
ways to go. Right?

“You’ve got friends who can be ruthless as hell when
they need to be,” he told her, holding her misty gaze. “So stop worrying so
much, because we’re not about to let anything happen to either one of you.”

OLIVIA HAD MEANT TO TELL Aiden she wouldn’t need all
their luggage, but by the time she’d recovered from hearing those low words on
the Watchman’s lips, he’d already paid for a suite, tucked Jamie up in the
room’s king-size bed and headed back out the door. Jamie was snuggled into her
pillow, half-asleep, so Olivia found the bathroom and quickly splashed some
water on her face, while silently lecturing herself for being such an emotional
sap. God, the guy told her she wasn’t alone anymore and she almost bawled like
a baby.

But there was no denying how good it had felt to hear
those words. Even from a man who’d already admitted he didn’t like her…kind. It
probably made her fifty different kinds of pathetic, but she was honestly too
tired to care.

When he came back a few minutes later, she walked into
the small blue-and-cream living room…and could only blink at the fact that he
was carrying all of Jamie’s and her luggage at once. The bags must have weighed
four hundred pounds combined, and the muscles in his arms were bulging against
the seams of his T-shirt, yet he hadn’t even broken a sweat.

“What the hell do you have in here?” he grunted as he
tossed the heaviest bag onto the striped sofa.

“Um, my books are in that one.”

Surprise shone in his eyes. “Christ, woman, how many
books do you need?”

“Don’t you like to read?” she asked defensively.

“Well, yeah.” He arched one tawny brow, adding, “But I
don’t usually feel the need to travel with an entire library.”

Aware of the warmth burning in her cheeks, Olivia knew
she should have shown a little more restraint when packing, but damn it, she
loved her books. It no doubt seemed crazy to someone like Aiden, but she’d been
leaving everything else behind. Her furniture. Her job. Her life. At least her
books had been something she could take with her. “You don’t have to make a big
deal out of it, Aiden. All I did was put in a few favorites.”

“A few favorites?” he repeated with a low bark of
laughter. “Okay, this I gotta see.”

Realizing he was going to look inside, Olivia
screeched, lunging for the suitcase. Aiden was too fast, though, and as he
lifted the top section, his low whistle blended with her groan. “Liv,” he said
with a wicked, lopsided grin curling the edges of his mouth, “I’m shocked.”

“Yeah, right,” she muttered.

He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth,
clearly enjoying himself, his hazel gaze teasing and bright. “What would the
other teachers say?”

Olivia rolled her eyes. “Oh, honestly. There’s no
crime in reading erotica, Aiden. So stop making such a big deal out of it. I
wouldn’t have expected you to be such a prude.”

“But books like these?” he teased, waving one of the
trade paperbacks in the air.

She shrugged, smoothing her hands down the front of
her sweater, doing her best to school her features into an expression of cool,
womanly confidence. Rolling one shoulder, she said, “What can I say? Women have
needs, too, you know.”

He gave her one of those fallen-angel kind of smiles.
One that was slow and smooth and dangerously suggestive. Then he winked at her.
“Just for the record, if you ever need help with those needs, you just give me
the word.”

“That wasn’t a come-on,” she said primly, the heat in
her face flaming hotter. “And I don’t happen to need a man’s help.”

From one instant to the next, his eyes shot from
playful hazel to deep, golden amber, the glow burning brighter…hotter, as if
someone had cranked up the gas. “You like to go it alone, then? Wow. Kinky.”

Olivia gritted her teeth. “No…I just…what I mean is, I
don’t need—” She broke off with a sharp sound of frustration, knowing that
anything she might say was only going to make it worse.

His voice turned deeper…huskier. “Not that the idea of
you getting yourself off doesn’t do it for me. Because it does. But you know,
Liv, there are some things that are just better when you let someone else lend
a hand.”

It took a moment before she could think of a suitable
response, the provocative words dazing her, as if she’d just been dealt a
sensual jolt of pleasure. They hit her low in the abdomen, where she felt hot
and empty, a heaviness there that felt like a gnawing, aching need. Finally she
wet her lips and managed to say, “I realize this might come as a painful shock
to you, Aiden, but I disagree. Actually, to be perfectly honest, I think the
whole sex thing is a little overrated.”

He winced, pulling his hand down his face. “Now,
that’s just not fair,” he muttered, his rough voice sounding somehow pained.

“Fair?”

“Comments like that are the equivalent of waving a red
flag in front of a bull. Just makes a guy want to charge in and prove how good
the ol’ sex thing can really be, when it’s done right.”

Ignoring the loaded remark, Olivia opted to steer the
conversation back into safer territory. “So do you like to read?” she asked,
following him as he picked up two of the suitcases and carried them into the
bedroom.

He sent her a look over his shoulder that said he
would let her get away with avoiding the sex topic for now—but not forever—and
said, “Yeah. I’m a big Rowling fan, as well as Koontz and King.” Setting the
bags on the upholstered bench at the foot of the bed, he turned to face her,
his thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his jeans. “But I like to play, as
well.”

She arched a brow in perfect imitation of his own.
“Play what?”

“Piano.”

“Are you serious?” she said with a quiet laugh.

He smiled a little, as if to say he knew how hard it
was for her to reconcile the idea of a guy like him being cultured enough to
play the piano, and guilt had her lowering her gaze, her face prickling with
shame. She took a deep breath, knowing she should apologize, but when she
lifted her gaze again, her mind stuttered to a jarring stop. Aiden was pulling
off his T-shirt, his muscular arms raised in the air, his biceps bulging as he
shamelessly revealed his enticing abs, followed by the smooth, sculpted planes
of his chest. Olivia’s jaw dropped, while drool collected in the corners of her
mouth. She might have even whimpered a little, but hoped the hungry sound had
been only in her head. Working for her voice, she somehow managed to ask,
“Wh-what are you doing?”

“Getting ready for bed.” He tossed the T-shirt over
the back of a chair, then reached for the top button on his jeans.

“Whoa,” she breathed out, holding up her hands. “Stop
right there, buddy. You are n-not sleeping in here.”

His eyes smoldered under the heavy weight of his
lashes. “Why not? You got a snoring problem you don’t want me to know about?”

“No,” she practically growled. “I do not have a
snoring p-problem. I j-just—”

Before she could finish, Jamie rolled over in the bed.
Sounding half-asleep, her niece said, “Livie never snores, but she talks in her
sleep. Weal loud.”

“Is that right?” Aiden asked with a husky, impossibly
sexy burst of laughter, his long fingers scratching lazily at his chest.

Olivia sighed, then pushed her hair back from her
face. “Jamie, baby, you need to go back to sleep. Okay?”

“Okay,” Jamie said around a wide yawn, while Olivia
walked to the far side of the bed, leaned down and kissed her cheek, making
sure the blankets were tucked in around her body. “Can I have a story?” Jamie
asked. “The one you tell about the princess and the dragons?”

“Of course you can, sweetheart.” With her back to
Aiden, she sat on the edge of the mattress, her tension easing as she smoothed
Jamie’s soft curls back from her forehead. “Once upon a time,” she said, “there
was a…”

WHILE OLIVIA WOVE a magical tale of fire-breathing
dragons and a princess named Jamie, Aiden went into the living room and called
Noah over his unit’s secure line, letting him know where they’d stopped for the
night. He wanted to grill the guy about Kellan, wondering just how reckless the
Lycan had been during their earlier fight with the Casus, but knew Kell would
be in the truck with Noah…and able to hear anything he said over the phone.
Better to wait until he could get the human alone.

When he was finished with the call, Aiden walked back
into the bedroom just as Liv was moving to her feet. He leaned his shoulder
against the wall and watched her, taking a moment to simply enjoy the way she
gazed down at the little girl with such love. When she shifted her gaze toward
him, he was careful to keep his voice soft as he said, “I’ll pull the sofa in
here and sleep on that, so you and Jamie can have the bed. But I’m not sleeping
in the other room. We need to bunk down together for safety. It’s stupid to
take unnecessary chances, especially when I don’t have any of Kellan’s gadgets
on me.”