Old loyalty new love, p.11
Old Loyalty, New Love, page 11
“I’m the same,” I insisted, “without the exchange of cash.”
“Well, then,” Jon sighed, “maybe I’ll try bottoming just this once.”
“No,” Roman stated coolly from the other side of me. “Not a chance. That spot’s already taken.”
“Is it?” Jon baited him.
“Would you like to test my resolve?” Roman warned, his voice icy.
When I turned to him, I couldn’t hide my smile. I felt better with him there, next to me. My expression must have pleased him, because the fight went right out of him and he took hold of my hand, rolled it over on the bar, and laced his fingers through mine.
“This is not helpful,” I clarified, flexing my fingers, sighing deeply.
“Oh, you lied.” Jon trilled gleefully, his surprise and delight in his voice. “I love that.”
He was the oddest man, both vile and somewhat charming at the same time.
“Jon,” Roman began kindly, “I think Owen would love you to save him from the ladies auxiliary, who want him to help with the spring cotillion.”
Jon stared at Roman, visibly stunned, but the richest man in town didn’t see him. Roman’s gaze was locked on my face.
“I’m supposed to be seducing you, Mr. Howell,” Jon said with a seductive chuckle.
“Sorry,” he sighed. “But I only offer up my ass to this man.”
I choked, and Jon hooted out a laugh before he patted Roman’s shoulder and left us.
“Roman, you can’t say things like that.” I coughed some more. “It’s not you.”
“It is so me,” he promised as he lifted my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles.
“People will see,” I whispered, wanting to pull free but unable to bring myself to do so.
“I don’t care who sees. You’re with me, and I want to go home. Now.”
“Your godfather won’t like it.”
“I informed him that he’s no longer welcome at L’Ange, and I already called Arman and Linus so there’s no mistake. They won’t allow him on our property.”
“Your father would be hurt.”
“My father would approve,” he countered. “If he’d known the kind of man Vinson was, he would have never asked him to be my godfather. I suspect he’s livid right now.”
“Livid in heaven.”
“Yes. Even angels get angry. Read your Bible.”
I exhaled deeply. “You’re supposed to let me go.”
“Whyever would I do that?”
“Because it’s for the best,” I implored. “I’m really no good for you.”
“You’re deluded, but I’ll let it slide since you’re my mate.”
“Oh for the love of God,” I groaned, trying to shake his hand loose. “You are not my mate.”
“Who’s not your mate?” Raisa demanded gently as she slid in beside Roman and took his hand in a tight, hard clench.
I was surprised.
“What?”
“How did you know he… likes that?”
“Oh please.” She made a face. “Quade, he’s the mate of a jackal—even more, the mate of an alpha. If he couldn’t be mauled and struck and handled roughly, he’d never have lasted. We’re animals, and that nature is as dominant as the human part. We do everything, bruising without even meaning to. It’s how we are.”
And it was, but we were fortunate we were alone at one end of a very long bar and she was speaking in a conspiratorial whisper and no louder. There would have been stares and questions otherwise.
“Again I ask: Who’s not your mate?”
Roman was waiting to hear my answer as well.
I shook my head. “Never mind.”
“I want to go home,” Roman announced suddenly. “Raisa, please corral Josephine from her slew of admirers so we can depart.”
“Absolutely,” she agreed, squeezing his hand for a second before putting hers on my face. She had tears shimmering in her eyes. “Thank you for welcoming me back into your life. I’m so happy to be here.”
“Go get your kid,” I groused at her, which made her sniffle softly, smile, and wipe away a stray teardrop before she left us.
“I can’t wait to get home,” Roman remarked. He stepped into me, leaned, and dropped my hand, only to wrap both arms around my waist.
“Everyone can see you,” I complained for the second time. “For crissakes, Roman.”
“It’s over, Quade,” he said before he closed his eyes. “I’m not hiding from anything anymore.”
I could only imagine what that meant.
Chapter 8
ON THE way back to the château, Roman’s phone rang, and after a quick conversation, he hung up and twisted around in his seat so he could see Raisa.
“That was Akiko, and she said the transfer is underway. Since my company is footing the bill for the move, she went ahead and chartered the medical transport this evening,” he informed my sister. “Tomorrow you can drive into Rockport and visit your husband. They’ll alert you in the morning as soon as he arrives.”
She grabbed his wrist and forearm he’d rested on the back of his seat, and held on tight as she leaned close. “Thank you, Roman,” she rasped. “I don’t know what to say so you understand what this means.”
“I already know,” he soothed her.
“I had to make a choice—leave my mate to protect my child or remain at his side and risk Josephine’s safety.” She inhaled sharply, swallowing the tears I could hear clogging her voice. “I know what he would have said—he would’ve made the same choice I did if the roles were reversed, but still… it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Walking out of that hospital room nearly killed me.”
“I have no doubt.”
“But,” she whimpered, her voice breaking, “now my girl is safe and so is my mate, thanks to what you’ve already done and what my brother is about to do.”
He bent and kissed the back of her hands.
“My life is yours, Roman Howell. Whatever you want or need, you tell me.”
His smile was wicked, and I could see that even out of the corner of my eye. “All I want is your brother.”
“Done,” she promised.
They were ridiculous. “You both need to—What the fuck is this?”
“Ohmygod,” Josephine gasped from behind me.
A big black SUV sat parked in front of the gate that led up to L’Ange, and two men stood in front of it.
“Jesus,” Raisa hissed out. “I’m so sorry, Quade… they must have followed me out here.”
“Everyone stay in the car,” I ordered as I stopped the BMW and faced Roman. “Do not get out for any reason. Do you hear me?”
He swallowed hard, pressing his hands together, I was sure, instead of grabbing hold of me.
“Lock the doors as soon as I get out.”
“I will,” he answered.
As I opened the door, his breath caught, but he made no other sound.
Once I was standing beside the car in the rising wind, my suit jacket flapping around me like a crow’s wings, one of the men opened the back door of the black Chevy Suburban, and a third man got out.
He was smaller than I had expected, only an inch taller than Roman, and leaner. His long blond hair fell thick and curly to the middle of his back, and a queue held it out of his eyes. I watched as he lifted his face to the wind to catch my scent. Striding forward, I pulled off the jacket and let it fall on the paved road before starting on the buttons of my dress shirt.
Another man got out of the back, and he was armed with a machine gun.
“Guns?” I called over to them.
The blond man whom the door had been opened for, the one who had not moved, lifted his hand, and the guy with the weapon slowly lowered it.
I kept walking, finished with the buttons, and let the white dress shirt fall behind me as I had the jacket.
“My alpha doesn’t want to see you back home, Mr. Danas.”
I stopped to toe off my black dress shoes and then my socks before I started forward again.
“And even though we’re going to do this without guns… it will still end the same.”
He had no idea what he was talking about. “You don’t have an alpha.”
“We most certainly do,” he argued. “So if you hand over our pack members, we’ll leave peacefully.”
But they had broken the peace with their arrival at my home.
“You’re not a true alpha,” he mistakenly informed me.
I nodded before I took a breath and unbuckled my belt, unzipped, and yanked until I was naked in front of them.
Only then did they start disrobing.
They all yelled when I charged forward, leaped at the last minute, and landed on top of the SUV, fully shifted, crushing the top of it with my weight. Metal crumpled, glass shattered, and everyone froze.
I expected them to shift and come at me all at once, but instead they only stood and stared, eyes wide, mouths open—their shock evident.
As close as I was to them now, faces began to take shape, and I started to remember who I was looking at. Guys I had grown up with, gone to school with, played soccer and baseball and football with, and eventually drank and partied with. The man closest to me… the blond… we had been friends. But that didn’t stop his surprise from turning to fear or his order for everyone to grab their guns and shoot.
Two distinct regrets flooded my mind. The first, that I wished they had acted like jackals, like shifters, instead of men. And the second, that Roman was going to see me killed. I should have left before he did.
I leaped down and whirled on the leader, driving him back hard into the side of the ruined Chevy Suburban with my paws on his chest. On my hind legs, stretched out, I was looking down at him, the man’s face at the end of my muzzle.
“Fuck.” He heaved out a breath, slowly, carefully, then lifted trembling hands to my head and sank his fingers into my hair. “Wait!”
“I…,” Another of the men began moving forward, and I felt a hand in the thick hair behind my head. “We… I—I can’t even think.”
The blond’s name slid into place in my brain: Tucker Flynn.
“Quade.” He ground out my name. “Please let me talk to you?”
Shifting where I stood, my paws became hands, and I gripped his shoulders tight as I stared into his eyes and remembered more about him. My friend Tucker.
He shivered hard, and I realized he was having a hard time standing. I let go of him, took a step back, and he sank down to one knee. The four others were quick to follow his example, and then I had five men showing respect in front of the gate of L’Ange in the bone-chilling December wind.
“Tuck,” I husked out.
When he gazed up at me, his smile was blinding. Right then, I knew I was in no danger. Pivoting to face the car, I saw that Roman had the passenger door ajar, and he was standing there, beside it, out in the open, against my express order.
“Roman!”
“Do you think you could put on some clothes now?” he yelled over to me. “I would love that!”
Under the interior lights inside the car, Raisa was crying and laughing at the same time, her hand over her daughter’s eyes because I was, in fact, naked.
“Now!” Roman called out again.
I threw up my hands and started walking back toward my pants.
TUCKER, AND the four men who had made the trip out from Phoenix with him, were sitting in the hall, obviously in awe of the château, when I came down the grand staircase. Roman and Raisa had kept them company while I changed and packed a bag. Josephine had gone up to bed at her mother’s request. Tucker and the others had made it clear that they were no threat to Josephine, but Raisa was taking no chances.
Everyone got up when I closed in on them. I dropped my duffel on the settee beside Raisa, grabbed Roman’s arm, and walked him into the small sitting room that opened out onto the breezeway.
If you continued out the door and down the path, you would reach the converted pool house that had at one time been a greenhouse. Roman’s mother had kept and cared for rare and delicate orchids, but after her death he had donated them to botanical gardens all over the world. It was not his passion, and imagining the plants dying made him ill. Turning the huge building into a pool house had been inspired.
“Where are you going?” he railed at me as I swung him around to face me.
“To Phoenix,” I said, releasing my hold on his bicep.
“Not without me,” he said indignantly.
“Oh, you are so not going.” I glowered at him and crossed my arms. “That was never the plan.”
“Yes, it was. I have to go,” he reasoned, his gaze beseeching. “I want to see where you grew up and—”
“No.”
“Quade,” he said, dropping his voice low as he put his hands on my hips. “We can’t be apart.”
“You’ll be fine. Linus and—”
“I don’t care about that,” he said, stepping closer. “I’m not scared. I’m twenty-seven years old, Quade! I don’t need a babysitter.”
“I know,” I said, lifting my hand to touch his face but then thinking better of it.
“What are you doing?” he almost whined, sounding frustrated with the whole situation. “Since when don’t you put your hands on me whenever you like?”
“Listen to me,” I instructed, my voice hard. “Everything just changed, do you understand that? I thought I was going back to a community of shifters that didn’t want me. But from how Tucker and the others reacted, how much they didn’t want to fight, I have an entirely different picture of my old pack.”
“Which means what?”
“It means that after I challenge Ray,” I said softly, “I might need to stay and help rebuild their hierarchy so the new alpha can step in.”
“They’re going to want you to be the alpha,” he assured me.
“Some of them, yes, but not enough. I’m still gay, and for a lot of them, that won’t work.”
“But you saw those men,” he argued. “They were ready to eviscerate you, and then you shifted and showed them how big and strong and beautiful you are, and they nearly wet themselves.”
I chuckled. “Please don’t repeat that version to anyone else.”
“Quade!”
He was so cute all pissed off and puffed up that I couldn’t resist. I curled over him and wrapped him up tight.
“You are the king of saying one thing and doing another,” he commented as he sighed happily, nestling comfortably against me in the circle of my arms.
“I know.” I felt guilty.
“And you’re afraid your father still hates you and he might be horrible to me and you can’t even stand the thought of that, can you? Him being mean to me.”
“No,” I rumbled, tipping his head so I could press my nose down into his shoulder and inhale his scent and carry it in my memory when I left.
“You realize you’re the only one who looks at me and sees something worth having beyond money or status. You’re the only man on the planet who actually wants to go to bed with me, who thinks I’m sexy and who I believe means what he says.”
“There are lots of—”
“We don’t lie to each other, Quade,” he reminded me. “So don’t.”
“If you believe what I say when I tell you that you’re desirable, why don’t you believe me when I tell you others will want you too?”
“Because it’s nonsense,” he rasped, burrowing against me. “But I don’t care.”
“Why don’t you care?”
He lifted his head and caught me in his gaze. “Because you’re the only one I want, Quade.”
I sighed deeply and realized I had said no to him at the same time I had him clutched to my heart.
“You’re such an idiot,” he said, before he slid a hand behind my neck and eased my head down.
“You’re not going to Phoenix,” I whispered as he wrapped his arms around my neck.
“You have three days before I get on a plane and come after you.”
“I’m still going to have to—”
“Enough,” he said, shushing me. “I don’t want to hear anything but ‘yes, Roman, I’ll be home in three days.’”
My lips hovered over his. “Yes, Roman, I’ll be home in three days.”
“Good,” he whimpered before I kissed him.
I really had to stop ravishing the guy I was trying to leave.
Chapter 9
IT FELT strange to be back in Phoenix after so many years.
“Quade?”
I turned from staring out the passenger-side window to Tucker.
“Please thank your mate for taking care of the car for us,” he said from the driver’s seat. “That would have cost us a mint.”
“Well, I’m the one that caved in the roof, so it was the least Roman and I could do.”
“Yeah, but I forgot to thank him before we left your… castle.”
There were corrections to be made: Roman was not my mate. L’Ange was not my home. But it felt like too much to contradict at one time, and I was already, that fast, feeling the strain of separation.
I had flown back on the same plane with the others, but we didn’t sit together. They were all in coach, and I was alone in first class. Roman only flew commercial if his favorite pilot was on vacation, and I had gotten used to traveling by private jet. Riding with lots of people grated on my nerves, and even though I realized how elitist I was being, I couldn’t stop the anxiety from eating at my stomach. Fortunately, the plane wasn’t full, probably because it was the red-eye, so no one bothered me, even the flight attendants, and I was left alone with my thoughts.
Raisa, like Roman, had been insistent about accompanying me to Phoenix, but I had been equally insistent that she not. She felt that since her husband was okay, she should put herself in danger with me. I finally appealed to the mother and wife in her. She needed to stay at L’Ange with her daughter and go to the hospital the following morning to see her husband.
“Promise to call,” she said, the tears welling in her eyes, bottom lip quivering as she stood in the foyer saying good-bye to me.
“Why are you upset?”
