Authors: Celeste Anwar
They could fight over him, or she could try to
make some sort of peace between them and they could stay together.
She wasn’t entirely certain how she felt about
them all living together, but it didn’t take a lot of thought to realize both
she and the baby would be better off with him than without him. The government
wasn’t just going to give up when and if they managed to wrest Joshua away from
them. They would come after her and the baby again. She would be on the run,
possibly forever, unless she could at least make a truce with Jesse that would
make it possible for her to live among the Lycans and have their protection.
That wasn’t going to be easy when Jesse was
avoiding her.
She couldn’t even find out where they were going,
much less discover what plans Jesse had for her future or even if he had any.
He’d said she was his. She hadn’t been in any
state to really soak that in at the time he’d said it and she’d thought he was
just talking man talk anyway. Men tended to be territorial. It seemed
reasonable enough to suppose that Lycan males were at least as territorial or
more so, but she didn’t feel terribly reassured by the claim made in the heat
of the moment.
For all she knew, he might not even remember he’d
said it, much less feel that way now that the thrill was gone.
Physically, he was attracted to her, or at least
he had been. She didn’t place a lot of faith that that was an enduring
situation either, particularly when he seemed to feel just the opposite about
her on every other level.
For her own safety and Joshua’s, she was just
going to have to swallow her pride and try to woo him. Now was the time. Now
might be her only chance. If they did find and rescue Joshua, she was going to
be focused on the baby on the trip back and caring for him wasn’t going to give
her a lot of time to seduce Jesse.
If she couldn’t convince him that he was wrong
about her and/or to keep her and the baby close, then she was going to have to
try to steal the baby from Jesse and she would be on the run from both the
government and the Lycans.
Looking at it that way, her pride was the last
thing she needed to be worried about protecting.
The plan was easier conceived than executed.
Jesse was wary. He didn’t trust her, at all, and he was highly suspicious of
her motives when she tried the tactic of smiling at him encouragingly whenever
he looked her way and ‘accidently’ happened upon him after searching for him
all over the ship.
Hanging around the cabin while he was in it was a
bust, too. He either slept through it, pretended he was sleeping, or,
occasionally, he would slant an irritated glance at her through half closed
eyelids for disturbing his sleep.
She’d spent too much of her life being a
scientist and not nearly enough being ‘just a woman.’ The scientific studies
she’d read on the mating ritual didn’t seem to be that much help and, despite
Jesse’s snide remark about her lack of virginity, she didn’t really have a lot
of personal experience to draw from. She’d had a few boyfriends, but she
hadn’t been the aggressor in those cases. She had no idea of what to do when
he wouldn’t allow her close enough to even attempt to flirt, but it was obvious
to her after only a few days that remaining passive and trying to encourage him
to come to her wasn’t going to get her anywhere.
Would it help, she wondered, to try to arouse his
lust and keep him so busy expending it that he didn’t have time to think about
the lack of any other common ground in their relationship? She wasn’t certain
that it would, but then she was willing to try anything except that she
couldn’t quite get up the nerve to simply strip down, crawl into the sack with
him, and molest him while he was sleeping. He’d be vulnerable then and easy
enough to manipulate, she knew, but the sticking point was that that kind of
behavior was completely uncharacteristic for her. The more she thought about
it and tried to work up her nerve, the more unnerved she became.
After almost a week at sea, she discovered that
Jesse spent much of his nights in the main cabin of the yacht, a large cabin
that was used as the living area and dining hall combined. She’d already
‘strolled’ the upper deck for nearly an hour looking for him when she decided
to go below and see if he’d taken over one of the other crew members’ bunks.
Hearing voices and an occasional chuckle in the main cabin, she’d frozen in the
corridor for quite some time, trying to decide whether she had enough nerve to casually
stroll through the room filled with men in search of Jesse. Was it even worth
the attempt when he was so surrounded that it wasn’t likely she’d get the
chance to try to draw him into conversation?
Finally, trying to act casual when she felt downright
faint--as if she was entering a bear den instead of a room full of men--she
decided she could pretend she was looking for something to read.
The moment she stepped into the doorway, all
conversation died and she found herself staring at nearly a half a dozen men.
Jesse and Tavian had a large map spread out on the table before them and had
obviously been studying it before she came in. Billy Ray and three other men
whose names she’d heard but couldn’t remember were grouped around the other end
of the long table with playing cards in their hands.
Despite her intention to try to behave casually,
she checked in the door way when they all looked up, as if she’d been pinned to
the frame. Panic washed through her. Her mind went blank and refused the simple
order she forced through it to ‘act natural.’ After many moments, enough to
assure them all that there was nothing casual about her entrance, she managed
to force herself to move forward instead of whirling on her heel and dashing
back to her own cabin. Every muscle, bone, and tendon in her body protested
the mental order to move, though, and she felt horribly awkward and
self-conscious as she focused on the cabinet that she knew held books and
magazines and headed toward it.
Behind her, she heard movement as the men shifted
in their seats. To watch her, she wondered? Someone cleared their throat.
“I’ll take two.”
She heard the slap of cards on the table and a
miniscule amount of relief went through her.
“I think we’re going to have to risk following
the coast line of the mainland if we want to make time,” Jesse said slowly.
“They know we got Dr. Wagner. They’ll also know we had the chance to question
him. They’re bound to be expecting us. I can’t see any benefit to us in
giving them more time to prepare.”
Mainland? What mainland? Erin wondered as she
knelt in front of the cabinet and began to shuffle the books and magazines
absently. She hadn’t seen a sign of land in days. She was fairly certain
they’d been heading south, south east, though. Cuba?
There wasn’t a great selection of books and
magazines. Even if she’d been really interested in finding reading material
she would’ve been hard pressed to find anything to her taste. Did the woman
never read anything but medical journals and animal magazines? Cripes! Talk
about obsessive! The selection of books wasn’t any better. Those were about
animals too.
Finally, more for something to do with her hands
than anything else, she picked out a couple of nature magazines and took a copy
of The Call of the Wild, closed the cabinet, and stood once more. After
studying the couch speculatively for several moments, she decided she’d had
enough excitement for one night. Her heart simply couldn’t take planting her
ass on the couch and pretending to ignore the room full of Lycans while they
pretended to ignore her and stared holes through her when they thought she
wouldn’t notice.
Without glancing toward any of them, she tucked
the book and magazines beneath her arm and headed out again. She was shaking
so badly with reaction by the time she’d gotten to the end of the corridor she
was grateful to reach her own cabin again.
Dropping the reading materials on the floor by
the bed, she stripped down to her panties and t-shirt, crawled into the bunk,
and pulled the covers over herself. She was running out of time and she was
completely out of ideas.
Chapter Ten
“Ain’t never seen two people mope so much in all
my days. Dere ain’t nobody here gonna bother you,
chère
. Why you
always hidin’?”
Erin had been so deeply in thought she hadn’t
noticed the man who’d stopped beside her even when his shadow blocked the
uncomfortable glare of the sun. His voice penetrated her abstraction, though,
and her head jerked upwards. “Excuse me?”
Tavain shook his head and moved to settle one hip
on the railing. “He tole you you were his woman, right,
chère
?”
Erin blushed to the roots of her hair. She
didn’t have to say anything. Her reaction was enough.
Tavian chuckled. “No need to be so shy about it,
chère
. It’s a natural ting. An’ we’re not like the humans. We know
when a female’s been marked by one of our own. She’s off limits.”
Erin blinked. “Marked?” she echoed.
Tavian chuckled again. “Did you tink doze were
just love bites, little girl? Naw. For sure he mark you. Else how else he
fine you, huh? Once done, cain’t be undone neider. So why you mopin’ here
when your man waitin’ below, huh? An’ why he always look like somebody been
torturin’ him every time he look at you?”
As embarrassing as it was to be caught up in such
a conversation with a man--Lycan--she barely knew, Erin was too intrigued by
what he’d said, and too desperate for someone to talk to to send him on his
way. “I guess that’s because he hates me,” she muttered.
Tavian grunted. “You tink dat,
chère
? He
hate you? Shore did go ta lots of trouble for a female he hate, doan you
tink?”
Erin shrugged. “He didn’t come after me. He
came to destroy the research facility, and to get the baby.”
“So--not finding baby boy, he sling you ober his
shoulder and take four or five bullet holes to get you out of dere cause he
hate you? Baby girl, dat doan even make sense to me, especially since I know
different. I been tryin’ ta keep my nose outta his business, but seems to me
the two of you ain’t got enough sense between you to work dis ting out widout a
little push in de right direction.”
Erin couldn’t help but smile. “I suppose he
confided in you that he was madly in love with me?” she asked doubtfully.
He shrugged. “Sort of did. It was me and Billy
Ray find him after doze government boys fill him full of holes. Never seen
anybody so shot up. Lycan or not, I was wonderin’ if he was gonna make it. He
was outta his head for a while dere, babblin’ ‘bout that place--an’ you. Mostly
you. Finally figured out he was hurt more inside than those bullets did
damage. He love you so much de thought that you betrayed him was what was
killin’ him. Had to start to hate to git through it.”
Erin felt a lump form in her throat. She
grimaced. “I doubt it’s a love/hate thing, whatever you’re thinking. He hates
all of us, equally, or maybe me a little more than the others, but I didn’t
betray him, whatever any of you think. They used me, too. I’m not trying to
claim that I’m completely without guilt, but it wasn’t me that did those things
to him. It wasn’t my idea and there was nothing I could do to stop them.”
Tavian gave her a hard, penetrating look. “You
set him free.”
Erin looked away guiltily, staring at the swells
along the side of the ship. She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “That was
as much for my sake as his. I couldn’t escape and I knew they wouldn’t stop
until they were completely satisfied. And when they were done with us they
would’ve either buried us in some government prison somewhere forever or killed
us, probably the latter.”
“You love him?”
Erin felt her face redden again. “I don’t really
know how I feel about him, to be honest. I just don’t want him to hate me.”
He studied her thoughtfully for several moments.
“Some men, dare a man’s man. All de men look up to dem, wanna be like them,
follow dem through hell if dey ask it, dare just natural born leaders. Some
men, dare a woman’s man and all the women’s just migrate in dare direction when
they come around. Jesse, he’s both. Everybody love Jesse. I doan tink you’re
an exception.”
She didn’t think she was either. “I haven’t had
much chance to see the lovable side of him--except from a distance,” she said
wryly.
“So try a liddle bit harder,” he said testily.
“How?” Erin demanded hopelessly.