The dark philosophers li.., p.13
A Prime's Passion, page 13
Brow furrowing, she asked, “What do you mean?”
“Well... ” Her skin felt impossibly soft against his touch. “You came to me last night. I think it’s safe to say I... scratched the itch.”
Her cheeks flushed but she didn’t look away. “Your point?”
“Is that all you plan to let happen? Was it simply to get my scent on you so people would know I hadn’t turned away from you?”
She set her jaw. “I wasn’t thinking anything past the fact that I wasn’t going to walk back onto these lands and have people thinking I’ve gone ten years without anybody touching me because I’m still a fucking pariah. I do have some pride.”
Ouch. He had some pride too—actually, too damn much of it, and she was savaging it under one small foot.
“So, I’m assuming any man would have done it.”
She slanted a look at him. “The man you sent to tell me about my father interrupted me and a very, very attractive man assigned to Air Command. If he’d waited even ten more minutes, I wouldn’t have been in the bar—I would have been in my apartment, wrapped around a sexy lieutenant who never ever thought to call me a fucking leech.”
Jealousy, so ugly and vicious, tore jagged claws through him, wanting out. He resisted the urge to hook his hand over her neck and drag her to him, tell her that nobody would ever lay hands on her but him.
That was a claim of possession he could have made ten years ago.
Now he had to earn the right to call her his.
“I guess that answers that. But tell me... ” He squeezed her leg, letting his hand settle a bit higher than it needed. “Do you think people will miss the fact that my scent is now embedded in your skin?”
She opened her mouth but snapped it shut without commenting. “What do you want, Niko?”
Everything.
But she wasn’t ready to hear that. Even if she wasn’t still so reluctant to even just speak with him, he would have known she needed time to learn to trust him again. The missing mating mark was proof enough of that.
But he couldn’t convince her of jackshit if she planned on disappearing as soon as the traditional Therian grieving and burial was done. He needed her here and he needed her talking to him so he could figure out what was going on in that head of hers.
Once, he would have known her thoughts just by looking at her.
“Niko?” Frustration edged the words.
“I’m just trying to figure out what your plan is,” he said. “I mean, if you’re planning on disappearing in a few days, I need to make sure I spread the word that people understand you’re not tied to me.”
Her nostrils flared. “You just now pointed out the fact that your scent is all over me.”
“Sweetheart.” He somehow managed a casual smile. “If we play right, we can easily have people thinking that was only sex. It’s not like sex between consenting packmates doesn’t happen. You know that.”
Her lids flickered at the words only sex.
He refused to let on how much that simple reaction meant, refused to think about how much that simple reaction meant. It shouldn’t have meant anything. A week ago, he’d still been so angry with her—
That’s why it means something, dumbass. You never would have been angry with what you thought was a betrayal if she didn’t mean so much to you.
When she didn’t respond, he pushed a little more, although he kept his tone easy. “If you want, I can go ahead and spread the word now that you and I resolved our... issues amicably and have parted ways.”
She inclined her head.
He took that to mean she was listening.
“It would be easiest, I think, that once I let the right words drop to the right people, if I went back to my normal habits. I’ll bring a lover of mine to the mourning. That will leave you free to find a companion for the night—”
“My father is dead. I’m expected to show up at his mourning celebration, despite the fact that I haven’t seen him or most of my family in a decade, and you’re suggesting that I find a fucking lover for the night?”
The heat in her voice, combined with the way her eyes had narrowed when he’d mentioned bringing a lover himself gave him some hope—it was precious little, but little was better than nothing.
She still cared.
She didn’t want to.
But she still cared.
“ It makes sense, Zee. We’re tactile creatures. We give and take comfort in touch. If you’re not comfortable looking for a male on your own—”
She struck.
Niko felt her claws tear into his flesh, felt four distinct gouges in his cheek, felt the hot well of blood and smelled the iron of it.
And he also felt the vivid, bright splash of satisfaction at the glare she leveled on him.
“The day I need you to find me a fucking lover is the day I’ll need you to run me down my own prey when I decide to go hunting,” she snarled, a threat of a growl underscoring every word. “Am I understood?”
“Of course,” he said in a polite voice. Reaching into his suit, he pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it to the bleeding wounds. “I mean no disrespect, Zee. You’ve been gone from Appalachia a long time.”
“And who on earth is at fault for that?” she asked waspishly. Turning her head, she stared outside. “I’m not going to walk in there with your scent on me and make it clear I’m already looking for another lover to warm my bed.”
The satisfaction he’d felt at her show of spirit, and the jealousy, faded. “Zee, we take lovers, all of us. We need contact. You know that.”
She gave him a dull look.
“Maybe it’s that easy for a pure Therian, Niko. But you don’t have something... else living inside you. That part that makes me a leech demands more control.”
“You’re not a leech,” he snapped, his control breaking.
“No,” she said, her voice faint.
He didn’t feel the rush of pleasure he would have expected, though. How could he when she’d gone pale again? The delicate sweetness of her scent had soured slightly, a sure sign that uneasiness was working its way through her veins.
“What’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer right away and he had to bite back the urge to snarl at her, demand she speak to him. That would do nothing but insure she figured out damn fast that he felt anything but casual about this conversation.
Letting go of her knee, he reached up to cup her cheek. “I know we’re not... friends like we used to be. But I don’t like to know that you’re hurting, Zee. You can’t tell me you aren’t. I sense it in you. You’re unsettled, too. What’s going on?”
“I’m fine, Niko,” she said gruffly, voice raw and more husky than normal.
“You’re not.” This time, the echo of a growl came through and when her gaze shot to his, he gave her a hard look. “The Prime is meant to care for those he’s charged with protecting, Zee. That includes stubborn wolves who somehow managed to keep to themselves for ten long years. But you’re not alone now.”
The fringe of her lashes lifted and she gazed at him, the green of her eyes so sharp and clear, it almost hurt to hold her gaze. For a Prime who’d been groomed from birth to lead, it was a rather dazzling thing to admit. Both his father, the past Prime and his mother, the product of a union between the female Prime of the European Therians and her Russian lover, had claimed he’d tried to stare them down before he was even a toddler.
“What do you want from me, Niko?”
Chapter Sixteen
“I’m just trying to figure out how we should handle the next few days,” he said and it wasn’t a lie, but the specific truth wasn’t one he wanted to share. Yet. “But I can’t figure out what to say unless I know if you’re planning to stay or leave.”
Stay or leave. It seemed like such a simple choice when it came down to that.
“This isn’t my home, Niko. It never has been.”
There was a sting along her senses that told her he didn’t like her words, but she had no idea if it was Niko responding... or the Prime.
What does it matter? She couldn’t help but wonder, then she couldn’t help but wonder if he’d even give her a hint that would let her figure out the answer.
To her surprise, he did.
“It was meant to be.” His blue eyes glowed with a shocking level of intensity.
For a moment, all she could do was stare. Then, with a humorless laugh, she looked away. “A lot of things were supposedly meant to be, but they never came to pass.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw his hand open then close into a tight fist but when he spoke, he sounded calm.
“I made a number of mistakes, Zee. I can’t undo them. I’m well aware of what a fucking mess I’ve made of things.” He glanced into the rearview and side mirrors, not bothering to use the car's onboard system—he’d never been one to trust the automated sensors and controls all vehicles came equipped with. Seeing he had a clear path, he whipped the car onto the road. “I’m doing what I can to make the situation tenable for you while you’re here. But operating blindly won’t make it any easier.”
HER COOL WORDS, I’ll make that decision after the mourning ceremony, still rankled twenty minutes later when he pulled the car in front of the big house. The rain had finally stopped, but the clouds remained, leaving the sky murky and gray as they climbed from the car.
He’d sent word ahead that he wouldn’t address any pack matters outside of dire emergencies for the next three days, leaving his lieutenants to take lead on urgent matters.
But short of ordering the entire pack to clear the area, he’d known he wouldn’t have any level of privacy here. Especially not once word got out where he’d gone—and why.
Boone and his other two top men in the area would have curtailed any trouble that had arisen, and he knew he could count on his men, and calmer heads like Alison’s, to keep those with hotter tempers from forming any sort of unwelcome committee for Zee.
But nothing short of an outright order from the Prime would clear this land.
The big house and the miles of property that stretched around it were pack lands.
Niko, as the Prime, called the place his home, and each of his lieutenants had rooms there as well, as they often had to spend long hours with him dealing with pack issues. Two of his lieutenants, Shale and Aspen, didn’t have their own homes as yet. They were the two who preferred to take the longer-ranging jobs in his territory and neither had seen any point in building their own homes yet.
Aspen was still out on her trip down on the southern perimeter, checking in with the packs in that part of the territory, while following up on a lead about the assassination of Niko’s father.
When Niko stepped out of the truck, he caught a familiar scent that indicated Shale was in the area.
That was a good thing. Shale had never met Zee and he had never been the sort to let other people dictate how he formed opinions—he did it himself, once he met a person.
And, Niko knew, Shale was an insightful bastard and would know in a heartbeat what was going on between them. Or at least what was going on as far as Niko was concerned. The big bastard saw far too much, and far too easily.
Another scent came to him, the threads tied with yet another that wasn’t as familiar, but he’d come up against the owner far too recently to have forgotten it.
Alison was here, and so was Liam.
He turned to look at Zee over the car, words to warn her rising in his throat. But she had her head tipped back, lips slightly parted.
He heard the soft inhalation of air—then she was running, tearing across the ground.
Niko heard the front door open and caught the sharper, clearer bite of that third scent only a split second before he heard the boy say his sister’s name.
Then they were wrapped around each other. Liam stood a good head taller than Zee and bent forward protectively, but she was holding him as much as he was holding her.
Turning to give them what privacy he could, he caught sight of Shale as the big man emerged from the trees, shirtless, wearing only a pair of jeans. His skin, a smooth golden brown bequeathed to him by an ancestry that ranged from the Cherokee native to this part of North America to the Pacific Islands and Africa, with a solid mix of Scotch-Irish and German thrown in—or that was the way Shale described it. Niko had only met Shale’s mother, a petite, pretty woman with skin shades lighter than her son’s but hair of pure jet black and eyes that made him think of mist-swept moors and fairy rings.
She’d remarried twenty years earlier and was living in New Zealand, rarely leaving the place. Shale traveled to see her several times a year and came back with stories and holophotos of his half-siblings, all of whom shared his smile.
“Well,” Shale said, his voice accented softly with the music of Ireland, the country where he'd lived for the first twenty years of his life. “That’s a pretty sight, if you don’t mind me saying.”
Niko followed Shale’s sharp green eyes back to Zee, how she held her brother—and despite the fact that Liam was taller now, it was clearly Zee who controlled the embrace, comforting the youngest of the Day clan.
“You’ve never much cared if I minded you saying something or not,” Niko pointed out. “Don’t know why you’re bothering with niceties now.”
Shale flashed him a smile, his teeth shockingly white against the burnished, deep bronze of his skin. “Because it’s the courteous thing to do,” he said with a quick wink. “And my ma raised me to be courteous. Not all of us are mannerless heathens, you pathetic bastard.”
Niko flipped him off but was grateful for the distraction. It gave him a chance to breathe.
And Shale—the well-mannered heathen—noticed. Green gaze narrowing, he canted his head to the side and studied Niko, eyes flicking to the still healing furrows running down the left side of his face. Nobody with any knowledge of Therian predators would have a hard time guessing what had caused such marks—and for them to be on a Prime and no dead bodies left to show who had left such an injury, it meant the strike had been a result of a personal disagreement.
“Already went and pissed her off, did you?” Shale sounded amused.
“If I tell you to fuck off and shut up, will you do it?” Niko asked irritably.
“Well, if I do that, I can’t offer wise counsel. You look to be in need of it. You’ve got this dumbfounded look about you, mate, like you’ve taken a few hits to that impossibly hard head of yours, Niko.” Lashes lowering, the big man breathed in deep, then released his breath, a sly smile curving his lips. “And then some. It’s curious that you went after her yourself. You could have sent Boone. Fuck me, I was in West Virginia until yesterday. I could have fetched her if you just wanted her here for her father’s wake. Plus, she doesn’t know me—less likely to hate me on sight.”
“Careful, Shale,” Niko warned. He was in a shitty state of mind anyway and the last thing he needed was one of his men trying to goad him.
Shale just gave him a smug smile. “You better introduce me. That is, assuming you plan on having one of your men with her at the ceremony. She’s not a known entity here, after all. She’ll need an escort and you can’t be doing it while tending to your other duties.”
“I... ” Niko stared at his friend and one of his top men as awareness dawned. As the Prime, he wouldn’t be merely mingling at the wake, although he doubted the farewell celebration would be anything like a wake in Appalachia usually was. Considering Day’s heroic rescue of the children, there would be some who spoke for him, but Niko would be facilitating the evening.
And Zee...
I don’t have a pack.
This isn’t my home.
Shale was right.
She couldn’t roam around on Appalachia pack grounds without an escort. He wasn’t worried about her being a possible threat, but that wasn’t the only reason the rules existed. As an outsider, others might see her as a threat. Or an invitation. Not that Niko thought many—if any—in his pack would dare try to walk that line, but he wasn’t so arrogant as to believe that all of his people were all good, upstanding citizens.
No, he had some troublemakers and a couple of outright assholes. Most of them stayed in line because they were too afraid of him not to—a Prime’s justice was swift, and depending on the offense, could be final.
“Fuck it. You’re right, you big Irish bastard,” he grumbled. But then he nodded at Shale. “Come on. I’ll put you with her. She’ll be more comfortable with you. There’s no... history.”
NIKO WAS A GOOD-LOOKING man—one of the sexiest she’d ever seen, and Zee knew she was biased.
But the man walking next to him across the grounds as they came her way wasn’t just good-looking. Even beautiful didn’t fit. He was ... transcendent.
Like some sort of ancient god come to life. Skin a rich, deep gold stretched over a frame that had to be close to six and a half feet—he was even taller than Niko, with wide shoulders, a toned chest that tapered down to a narrow waist and long, long legs. His eyes were so shade of green so deeply mysterious, it made her think of foggy mornings back in Massachusetts, when she’d go for a run and come across one of the rolling fields, cloaked in mist so thick, anything more than fifteen feet away was lost to the naked eye, like a gateway to another world. His hair was dark, not quite black, she didn’t think, and something about the way he had it clubbed back made her think the thick mass would curl if left free.
Oh, yes. He was a treat to the eyes.
And she knew she was in serious trouble, because neither her wolf nor her Fae self did much more than take in an appreciative look before focusing back on the scent of the man that was hers—or at least, the one her body thought was hers.
Liam moved close enough his shoulder brushed hers, then, in a show of support, he took her hand. “The big guy is Shale, one of the Prime’s lieutenants.” He lowered his voice even more. “In all honesty, he’s the only one who isn’t an asshole, if you ask me.”
Although he had lowered his voice, it hadn’t been enough, clearly, because the big man flashed a grin at them. “Thank you, Liam. I like you too.”
