A Bleacke Wind (Bleacke Shifters Book 3) (14 page)

Now that Nami didn’t have to drive a bus for a living, and didn’t have to worry about money, maybe they could finally talk her into trying again. Or to at least go for longer, natural curls that would be gorgeous on her and take years off her looks. Perhaps they could talk Beck into sweet-talking their stubborn older sis into trying something new. If anyone could, he could.

“You girls and your hair,” Nami finally joked, and then Malyah relaxed.

Nami turned to go.

“Hey, sis? You lose a little weight?”

Nami stopped in her tracks. “Why?”

“Those slacks look looser on you than they did when you bought them.” And Malyah would know, because she’d been the one to convince Nami to buy them, and had been with her when she tried them on.

Nami looked down. “I don’t know. I don’t step on a scale anymore, you know that.” She smiled. “Beck loves me just the way I am.”

Not exactly obese, their sister was well-rounded in the right areas. Unfortunately, years spent sitting and driving a county bus hadn’t helped Nami keep the extra pounds off around her midsection. Malyah and Lu’ana were busty with booties to match, but had kept their midsection creep at bay so far.

Speaking of booties…
Oooh, maybe Joaquin and I—

Focus!

She felt herself blush, her cheeks heating. The last thing she needed was for Nami to think she was hiding something.

It was all she could do to keep herself from reaching up and rubbing at the mating mark on her right shoulder, hidden by her T-shirt. Nami might not be a wolf, but she was damned perceptive.

Especially when it came to her younger siblings.

“Don’t be late to dinner,” Nami warned, wagging a finger at her as she once again turned to go. “I think you’ll really like the rest of Dewi’s family. Everyone’s been very nice.”

“Yeah.” Malyah realized as she said it that it had come out with a little too much pleasure.

Nami stopped and turned again.

Oh, crap.

Nami’s gaze narrowed. “Girl, what is
up
with you?”

“I’m just really tired and the time change has me messed up,” she said. And it wasn’t a lie. Her walk and romp with Joaquin had worn her out, on top of everything else. “I can’t wait to get to bed tonight.”

Again, not even a lie.

Just not exactly what Nami would think she meant, either.

Nami’s tone gentled. “You could have brought Steve with you,” she said. “We could still buy him a ticket and fly him out here, if you want.”

Malyah shook her head. “No, I’m good, sis. Really.” She had to struggle against the nervous laugh that wanted to bark free. “I don’t even know if we’ll ever get serious. We ain’t even slept together yet.”

Thank goodness.

Malyah would have been feeling
really
guilty right about now if that’d been the case.

And if Nami did fly the man out here, she suspected Joaquin would rip him a new one.

That
thought filled her with sexy heat, that she knew for certain her man would absolutely fight for her.

Which compounded the heat coursing through her, to think of Joaquin as
her
man.

“I thought you were serious about him?” Nami asked.

“No. Never said I was.” And that
was
the truth. “You and Lu’ana really like him and have been pushing me to get more serious with him.” Malyah shrugged. “He’s okay. He’s a nice guy.”

“I still think you should give him a chance.” She turned and headed out, again. “See you at dinner.”

“See you.”

Malyah closed the cottage door and leaned against it, her pulse racing, relief filling her.

Whew!

If she’d been that rattled dealing with Nami now, alone, how was she supposed to get through dinner with her and…

Holy. Shit.

Without Joaquin right in front of her, without anyone in front of her, she had time to reflect on the seismic shift her life had just taken. She slid down the door, sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees as she burst into quiet tears.

Insanity. This must be what insanity feels like, because how can I be in love with a guy I literally do not know, and believe he and my soon-to-be brother-in-law and his friends and family can turn into fricking
wolves
?

Still, her heart couldn’t lie. Thinking about Joaquin again made her want to run out the back door and try to find him.

Dragging herself up off the floor, she went into the bathroom and picked up her clothes, shoving her nose into her shirt.

Yes, there was the scent of him, faint but unmistakable. And if she was to smell her panties…

Okay, I need help.

No, what she
needed
was Joaquin.

Then she remembered his admonishment to her.

Crap.

She dropped her dirty clothes back onto the floor, washed her face and hands with soap and water, and then used the rosemary again. Forcing herself back into the bedroom and away from the lingering aroma of
him
, she dug clean clothes out of her suitcase for dinner and got dressed. She used more of the rosemary and then went to unpack the rest of her clothes, fix her hair, and put on makeup.

She still had plenty of time to kill.

She tried setting up her laptop and catching up on Facebook, but even that couldn’t distract her. She found herself wanting to go back into the bathroom to sniff her dirty clothes.

This is stupid.

But even though the guest cottage had a small over-under washer and dryer unit, she couldn’t bring herself to wash her clothes and thus eliminate her problem.

Her whole body ached, and not just in the post-great-sex kind of way, either.

It ached at a cellular level, at soul level, wanting Joaquin back in her arms.

I. Just. Met. Him.

It didn’t matter. Logic had sailed out the window.

And she damn well knew it.

Then again, the fuzzy parts of her mind, dreams and nightmares and hazy things she’d learned to not think about, were suddenly clear again. Like the fact that Nami and Beck barely knew each other before they’d announced their engagement, even though for some reason Malyah thought they’d told all of them they’d been dating for a while. And, at the time, she’d even…believed it.

But not now.

Snippets of a scene of being abducted from her apartment, taken to a filthy crackhouse, being tied up.

Being rescued, by Dewi and Beck and others.

Things that she thought were flashes of nightmares were suddenly solidifying in her mind.

Dewi and Beck and Martin and Ken rescuing her. Specifically, Dewi coming in and freeing her. Cold-cocking the guy who’d been in the room with her and who kept feeling her up while she’d been tied to the chair. Then, memories of Dewi talking to her before everything went fuzzy again…

She closed her eyes, fists tightly clenched, fingernails digging into her palms.

These were all things she’d have to deal with later when she didn’t feel two seconds away from a mental breakdown. Right now, she needed to get her emotions under control.

And then figure out how to try to fake her way through dinner without giving things away in the process.

Chapter Twelve

Joaquin blew through Jack and Moraine’s front door almost at a full run, barely pausing to call out a greeting to them as he ran for the guest room. He had an en suite bath, fortunately, and immediately stripped and got the water going.

Moraine knocked on his bedroom door. “Peyton called. He said we’re all invited over to dinner tonight. I’m guessing you’ll ride with us?”

Relief. “Yes, thanks,” he said.

“You all right?”

“Just took a little too much time walking around the woods, more than I meant to,” he called back. “I’ll be ready in a few.”

Technically the truth. He had taken more time walking around than he’d planned.

He just didn’t say
why
.

He buried his clothes in the hamper with his other dirty clothes and resisted the urge to sniff them and smell
her
scent on them. Then he jumped into the shower and thoroughly scrubbed himself from head to toe, including shampooing his hair twice. When he finished and dried off, he used way more deodorant than he usually did.

He didn’t know if he could pull this ruse off, but with the focus on Dewi and Beck and their weddings, as well as pack business, maybe he and Malyah could slide under the radar for a few days, at least.

When he was ready he emerged from his room and met up with Jack and Moraine in their living room.

Jack, an Alpha, cocked his head. “What’s up with you?”

Shit.
“Just really tired and stressed out,” Joaquin said.

Again,
not
a lie. He’d hoped to spend at least one day doing nothing but finding himself a quiet spot in the sun somewhere well away from everyone and curling his wolf self up and going to sleep for about twelve hours straight.

Not happening now. Not with Malyah as his mate.

If he curled up somewhere for twelve hours straight, it would be with her in his arms.

And they probably wouldn’t be sleeping.

Correction, they
definitely
wouldn’t be sleeping.

Every cell in Joaquin’s body cried out to rejoin her. He couldn’t imagine the hell Beck went through trying to locate Nami after letting her get away the first time. Badger had told him that story during their flight from Florida. That and other stories, catching him up fully with the latest events.

Beck’s a better wolf than I am.

Hell, he couldn’t even wait to claim Malyah despite the circumstances dictating it would be better to wait.

It’ll serve me right if Beck and Dewi clean my clock over this.

“Well, you’ve been through a lot,” Moraine said. “You’ve earned a break. When was the last time you had any time off?”

“I don’t know.” He usually didn’t take time off. He was an Enforcer. Between himself and Ramirez, they had a lot of territory to cover. He was usually on the move. Anytime he got to lie down and sleep a full night without having to answer his phone—although up until now very minor shit, in retrospect—was like a mini-vacation.

Taking whole days off, much less several in a row, wasn’t something he’d done. Yes, he could have requested someone cover for him while he took time off. Dewi herself had told him that. It was standard practice.

He didn’t like to do that.

He felt guilty enough he hadn’t been able to save Felicia Escobar’s life.

Fifteen fucking years old, and to die like that when she’d been guilty of doing nothing more than walking home.

Just because some fucking animal wanted to rape her and discard her like garbage.

Worse than an animal, because most animals didn’t rape and kill for fun.

He’d never get that image of her out of his mind, of how he’d found her.

Of the sounds of her mother’s wails when he’d brought her body home to them. The anguished sobs of her father and siblings.

Of him feeling like he’d completely failed the people he was sworn to protect, no matter how irrational that feeling was, or how he’d been cleared of any responsibility for the events by Dewi and Peyton.

It didn’t matter.

Someone had died on
his
watch. One of
his
people.

Yes, he’d plunged in to track the fucker down. In retrospect, he should have waited to take blood in private. But his rage and desire to finish it then, to cause the bastard’s family the kind of agony that Felicia’s family had endured, had overpowered him.

He couldn’t fix it, but he wanted to make it as right as he could. Blood for blood.

Death for death.

No, it didn’t bring back the vibrant fifteen-year-old who’d smiled at him from pictures in the family’s living room.

But it had brought a small measure of satisfaction to his own soul. That the fucker wouldn’t be able to do it to any other girls.

“You did the best you could,” Moraine said. “I talked to Gillian a little while ago. Once the Muster is over, they’re going to have you stay there until they can get a new identity set up for you. No one blames you for what happened.”

“You’re wrong there,” Joaquin said. “I blame myself.”

* * * *

At least Joaquin had a good excuse for not talking during the drive over to Peyton’s. Jack and Moraine simply assumed he was in a funk over what had happened in Mexico.

Joaquin was actually running through countless scenarios, at lightning speed, of how to deal with tonight, with anything that might occur.

Including the worst-case scenario that he’d have to fess up in front of everyone and formally present Malyah to Peyton as his mate.

He didn’t want to do it like that. He wanted to be able to get with Peyton in private and do it that way. Quietly.

Without Beck wanting to rip his head off and shit down his neck in the process.

He also didn’t want to look like he was trying to upstage Beck and Dewi and their weddings, either.

On top of everything else, that was the last perception he wanted floating around. And Sadie would no doubt be here at some point this weekend. He wanted to avoid her as much as possible. That was water so far under the bridge it wasn’t even visible any longer, but it wouldn’t do any good to go rocking the boat, either.

Wow, I’m just full of fraking metaphors today.

As they approached Peyton’s house, Joaquin’s pulse raced, eager to see Malyah again. Hell, he was practically drooling.

Cool. Calm. Stay focused.

They could get through a couple of hours. He’d say he wanted to go for a run that night, alone, to clear his head. That would be the perfect excuse to cover his absence.

Then he could sneak into Malyah’s cottage, spend the night with her, and clear out before daybreak. That would give her time to get cleaned up before they went out for their brunch, and give him the cover to get back to Jack and Moraine’s.

And then he’d make himself scarce for the day. No use tempting fate.

When Jack parked in Peyton’s yard, it was all Joaquin could do not to scramble out and race into the house. Taking a deep breath and hanging back, he played it cool, slowly following Jack and Moraine as they walked up to the front door and rang the bell.