Sundown & Serena (32 page)

I squeezed him reassuringly. “You were
skinned. I gave you my coyote form, so you wouldn’t die.”

“Why?” he choked out. “Why did you save
me?”

“I love you,” I said, enough longing and
feeling in the words to rend my heart.

There was so much I hoped he would tell me,
so much I wanted him to say. Instead, he looked at me in silence.
“When?” he got out finally.

“For a while,” I stammered, thinking
back.

“Since Vince died?” Nick asked.

I didn’t reply

“I know he was going to ask you to be mated
to him, even though some of us laughed at him for it. I’ve seen the
ring that you wear, the emerald ring he got for you.” Nick wouldn’t
meet my eyes. “But my answer is still the same, Serena. I’m not
ready to be mated.”

I felt floored.
I’d have
done it anyway,
I told myself, squeezing the tears back.
It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t love
me.

Then I registered what he’d said. “You
laughed at him, for caring about me? For not just thinking of me
as...as what, a good fuck?”

“I’m sorry,” Nick said in the same solemn
tone. “I should’ve gone after Sar with Kev. Then Vince would’ve
been here with you, and you’d still have both your forms.”

“Just leave,” I said bitterly, pushing him
away. “Leave, Nick, and don’t ever come back.”

Nick gave me an anguished look, but he
grabbed a blanket from my bed, and left.

I cried for a long, long time.
I told you if love was going to hurt, I didn’t want it, God.
This isn’t a blessing, to feel this strongly for someone and not
have them feel the same in return.

That night, everyone stayed away. Everyone
that is, except for my newest lover, Sar’s adult dhamphir son, T. I
heard his knock, and murmured, “Go away.”

The door opened.
Stupid, I
didn’t lock it after Nick left.
T stood there, looking
confused. Then he saw I was upset. “Are you okay?” he whispered,
coming over and holding me. “You’re crying.”

He’s here for his session. Nice as he is,
I just can’t make myself do it.
“No,” I said, dissolving into
tears again. “I’m not okay. I feel like I’m dying!”

“Shh,” he said calmly, holding me. “I’m here,
Serena. Let it out if you need to.”

I blinked at him. “You’re telling me to
cry?”

“Mom says to always let it out,” he said
calmly. “She’s right, keeping it inside hurts. Let it go, so you
can feel better.”

So I cried for another hour, lamenting my
choice in men, my profession, and the day I’d met Devlin Dalcon. In
time, the tears stopped and became sniffling, then sometime after I
fell asleep.

I awoke in T’s arms, in bed. “Are you feeling
better?” he said, brushing my cheek with his hand. “I can bring you
breakfast, if you want some.”

“You can cook?” I said in shock.

T laughed. “Breakfast, sure. My sister Elle
taught me. She said not to expect a woman to be around all the time
to cook for me. And she was right, there usually hasn’t been one,
unless Mom’s home. Though Elle or Cia sometimes feels in a mood to
take pity on me.”

His voice was matter of fact, and not angry
or resentful. I managed a smile for him. “Sure, that would be
nice.”

I expected him to bring me some burnt toast,
and maybe, if I was lucky, some water and undercooked eggs. But he
came back in thirty minutes with eggs over-easy, toast, bacon,
sausage, pancakes, and also a bagel, along with some water, and a
vaseful of black and yellow daisies.

He handed me the tray, and took the daisies,
putting them on the end table.

“Thanks,” I said gratefully. “They’re
beautiful.”

“Mom likes roses best,” T said, shrugging.
“But you look like more of a daisy kind of girl. Sorry they’re not
in a prettier arrangement.”

“I’ve always liked daisies,” I said, digging
into the food with gusto. “Especially those black and yellow ones.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was the only one
besides Nick who’d ever gotten me flowers.

“They’re called Black-Eyed Susans,” T
offered. “Elle said so, anyway. I had Terian teleport down south
just now, to grab me some for you.”

How can T be so thoughtful
of me and Nick be such an asshole?
“You didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to,” T said, reclining beside me.
“We’re intimate, Serena. I think you deserve to be treated
well.”

There was something of Devlin in the way he
said it, and in the manner of how he was reclining so casually on
my bed. But there was a difference in that there was real feeling
behind T’s words, that he meant them and that he cared about how I
felt emotionally, not just as a satisfied lover to whom he was
teaching sexual tricks.

I finished my food in a few moments. I’d been
hungrier than I thought. I put the plate aside, and turned to him.
“Are you visiting Hayden to see your uncle?” I asked. I’d been
going to say see Lash, then remembered with embarrassment that Lash
was in jail. My coworker had gotten framed by Ulysses, and was
doing his month or so of remaining time in the county lockup. Sar
had just accepted Devlin’s explanation, when he’d told her of
Lash’s confinement. Yet I’d scented there was some lie behind why
Lash remained in jail, when I knew that Devlin could have found
many ways to facilitate his escape.
He’s staying
there for a reason.

“To see you,” T said with a boyish grin,
snapping me back from memory to the present. He turned solemn. “I
want to know why you were crying though first, please.”

With halting words, I related what had
happened, all of it, between Nick and myself, adding in what Vince
was planning to ask me, and even how I’d met them, just over a year
ago. When I finished, T held me to him gently. “Please don’t be
sad. Vince loved you a lot to want to make you the promise it
sounds like he was going to make to you. And you saved Nick’s life,
which was very brave, even if he was an asshole who didn’t deserve
the sacrifice you made.”

“I know,” I whispered. “I just feel
stupid.”

“Love makes us all stupid, at least that’s
what Devlin told me once. He said he’d only been in love twice, but
both times it happened, he’d done stupid things.”

I didn’t reply.
Devlin had
been very stupid about a lot of things.
The thought of him
admitting that, however, was surreal.

T gave me a kiss on the cheek and got up.
“I’ll come back tomorrow, if that’s okay,” he said gently as he
started to leave.

“We can now, if you want,” I said, mustering
up a smile.

“Is that what you want?” T said, shooting me
a concerned look. “I can wait.”

I’d been pretending that so many of my lovers
were Nick for months now. The first few times with T, I’d done
that. And I wanted to be with him now, to think of him, and not
Nick. I walked to him, and kissed him passionately. He kissed me
back with abandon, wrapping me tight in his embrace.

Chapter
Fourteen

Over the next few months, a sort of healing
took place. T came to me a few times a week, and I began to look
forward to our times together, the way I hadn’t looked forward to
anything before loving Nick. It wasn’t love, but it was comforting
and good to find some solace in his arms.

Devlin came to me within a week of my break
with Nick, and asked me to consider taking Nick back to my bed. He
offered me double my usual rates as retribution for Nick’s insult
to me, and thanked me again for saving his life. I agreed,
permitting Nick to visit me again but only in animal form. His
coyote could mate with my fox, enough for both of us to get by.
With Vince gone, there was no one willing to pay the money for a
potion to do that for me. And while I could easily afford it now, I
didn’t want to solicit a new animal lover from my client list. I
still enjoyed sex, but I’d had enough of emotional ties. I was not
making any new ones if I could avoid it.

The uneasy truce between Nick and I lasted
until December, when I found out from Titus the real reason Nick
had gone to town the night he’d lost his skin.

The demon was in his workshop in Hayden’s
cellar, working on an animal pelt. I looked closer, realizing it
was a bear skin. “Is that his?”

I’d meant Nick’s, but Titus’s mind was
elsewhere, and he thought I meant someone else. “No,” he rumbled.
“That was sent to his widow. This is Klara’s pelt. Hers was the
only skin recovered that wasn’t claimed by next of kin for
burial.”

I felt a cold feeling. “Who was Klara?”

Titus gave me an odd look, and then his face
darkened, until its normal flushed hue was a dark burgundy wine
color. It hit me suddenly that he was blushing; the odd darkening
was because the color of his blood was black. “She’s the female
werebear who lived in town,” he rumbled. “Some of the men went to
her to be bear for them, sometimes human, too.”

Shock washed through me. Then utter rage. I
turned without a word, and went to my room. Once there, I called
Nick on his cell, and asked him to come to me, pleading it was an
emergency. When he got there a minute later, I slugged him with
everything I had, knocking him to the floor. “You bastard!”

Nick looked up at me from the floor, pissed.
“What’s gotten into you?”

“Tell me I didn’t save you with part of my
soul when the reason you were caught and skinned was because you
were visiting another woman for sex! Tell me that isn’t true.”

Nick got to his feet. “Serena, we aren’t
mated!” His tone was strident. “This is why I don’t want to be
mated, to have a woman telling me I can’t be with anyone I want to
be!”

“Should I get checked for diseases?” I said
sarcastically.

“She got checked as you do, and the same
rules were in effect for her, though she had no one watching out
for her, like Devlin watches out for you.” Nick’s tone was now
neutral. “I wasn’t the only one who saw her.”

Don’t make this seem like
its normal, like it’s nothing!
“I was bear for you!”

“Serena, that was six months ago
.
”

“Yes, it was! When were you last fox for me?
Almost a year ago! If I were like most other werewoman are, I’d
have gone insane by now!”

“I can’t afford the potion’s price on my
own,” Nick whispered. “I’ve never been good with money. And there
isn’t anyone that I feel I can approach to help. These new guys
aren’t as close with me as Vince and Kev were.”

I looked at him, standing there looking so
removed from me, his lame words still echoing in my ears, his eyes
not meeting mine.
God, he’s such an utter
jerk.
“Get out! Get out and don’t come back!”

Nick left, and I wept again as if I’d hadn’t
cried in years.

That night, T came to me, again finding me
crying. As he had before, he held me, and asked me what was wrong.
As before, I told him, leaving nothing out. “Are you free
tomorrow?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Come to me,” T said. “Around midnight. I’ll
send Rip for you, okay?”

I nodded. He kissed my forehead gently, then
excused himself.

As he’d said, Rip came for me a little before
midnight, and teleported me to T’s home. The handsome dhamphir met
me in his large great room, where we shared a glass of wine and
some light double-entendres. Together, we walked out into the
forest, admiring the night.

T suddenly turned to me in mid-sentence, and
bore me to the ground. At once, we were changing forms. In mere
moments, I was looking at him in surprise from all fours through my
fox eyes, because he was fox, also. He was a different type of fox
than I was; a dark color, almost grey, but I didn’t care. I lay
down almost desperately, mewling at him to hurry, hoping he
wouldn’t be too gentle. Then he was on me, taking me, barking out
sharply that I was his, and no other fox’s. And I lost myself in
pleasure and relief, to finally feel whole once more.

Three hours later, he began to change back,
and I changed with him. When we were human, I dressed, and so did
he, and together, we walked back to his home. There, I led T to his
bedroom, telling him gently that Devlin had shown me some secrets
of his, and if he’d permit me to, I’d like to share all I knew of
them with him, by way of thanks for what he’d done for me. He
replied with a smile that he’d learned from Devlin, too, and that
he’d reciprocate, if I felt that way.

We passed that entire night together.

After, things between us were a little
more... serious, I guess is the word. T had me come to him every
week, though he still came to me at Hayden, as well as to visit his
mother, and other family, and he was fox for me every time I
visited him. And after being together as animals, I spent the rest
of the night with him as human, loving him that way until my
strength left me.

When he invited me to spend Christmas with
him though, I was a little apprehensive. “What will your mother
say?”

“She’ll ask me if I’m happy, and if this is
what I want,” he said reassuringly. “And it is.”

But she knows what I do for
my living. So does your father. So does everyone we know.
“You won’t be embarrassed of me?”

“My mother is not embarrassed to be with
Lash, though she isn’t snake,” he replied evenly. “It’s well known
they are lovers now, and that they care for each other.”

“But she’s not a...”
Why
don’t you just say whore? It’s what you are.

“She is also Oathed to my father, and
Devlin,” T said in a calm but concise tone that brooked no
argument. “Please, do not concern yourself. No one will make you
feel ill at ease.”

I agreed, hoping for the best. After
attending church in the early evening, I had Terian, Titus’s son,
teleport me to T’s home.

Christmas at T’s house was beautiful. Theo
and his new werecougar female, Jenny, had brought in an enormous
tree, with the help of Elle, T, and me. We decorated it together
while singing some carols, though I admitted none of us could sing
very well, except T. And when we were done, Theo crowned the tree
with a large star.