Bound by Moonlight (17 page)

He just needed to hear her voice. Having another man’s family under his roof wasn’t the same as having the woman he loved in his arms.

He turned and abruptly found himself face-to-face with Tina Babineau. She was pale as moonlight with her fair skin and white nightgown. He could sense her turmoil and need to be comforted, but she wasn’t
his female. In a loose interpretation that would drive Alain Babineau over the edge, she was his stepmother. That made him smile, and hers was a faint echo in return.

Tina walked to the rail and leaned her elbows upon it. Max joined her there, close but keeping a wary distance.

“I never knew who Oscar’s father was,” she began quietly. “When I was fifteen, I did something foolish. I was looking for adventure; I left the protection of my adopted family and lost a week of my life that I can’t remember. When I was found, I had a beautiful string of pearls around my neck, like the ones you gave to Cee Cee. And I was pregnant with Oscar.”

Max went cold. Apparently pearls were his father’s thank-you gift of choice.

“I never knew my real family,” she continued, “And the mother and father who raised me are gone now. I feel like I’m losing everything I love all over again.”

He laid his cheek on the top of her head, promising, “You won’t. Alain loves you and Oscar too much to let you go.”

“Knowing what we are? How could he, Max? How could he possibly?”

“Mama?”

They turned at the sound of Ozzy’s sleepy voice.

Max freed one arm to include him, drawing them close. “I’ll keep you safe, both of you.”

He enveloped them with a soft, warm Glimmer, smiling as Oscar returned it like a hard squeeze. He was surprised and heartened when Tina’s slipped
around them both, the hesitant whisper of a gentle breeze.

A fierce obligation to them filled him. A mother like his had been. A child like he had been. His family.

And there was nothing he wouldn’t do for them. Starting tonight.

C
EE
C
EE ROLLED
over, pulling the covers over her head, hoping to shut out the lovey-dovey sounds of Babineau’s nightly call to his wife.

She was beat. Her feet throbbed all the way up to her shoulders. Even a long, scalding shower hadn’t shed the ick factor from all those leering eyeballs. Her mood was raw, her body achy, and listening to kissy-kissy stuff was just about grounds for homicide. Especially when she suspected that the sentiments weren’t sincere.

Alain was in over his head, drowning in avoidance. He might pretend all was well on the home front, but she could see the strain in his expression. And since it was her fault, she stayed carefully neutral.

She breathed a sigh of relief when he finally said good-bye and went into their tiny bathroom. Geez, it was like rooming with a teenage girl. All the misery. All the drama. None of the gratification. She should know; she felt the same way.

She rolled restlessly onto her back and stared at the ceiling, frustration gnawing through her. With Max. With her partner. With the case. With her lack of any life. She was grouchy, snappish, felt bloated in the skimpy outfits she shimmied in nightly, and she wanted chocolate.
Lots
of chocolate.

They’d found out nothing beyond the circumstantial. All the girls had danced and turned tricks for Manny Blu, starting at this club. But they’d yet to single out any suspects they liked from the customers. Manny himself kept his distance. He did a nightly walk-through to check the take and to feel up some of the younger talent. Either he wasn’t their man or he was out of the market until the next phase of the moon. Vice was all over him, but he never varied from his routine, and there was no room in his schedule for the ritualistic torture and murder of his employees.

The girls grew nervous when the subject came up. They either knew nothing or were too afraid. They pretended nothing was wrong, as if acting that way would make it so.

If she and Babineau didn’t come up with something substantial soon, they were going to get shut down.

And where would that leave Kelly Schoenbaum?

Thoughts of her colleague’s young daughter haunted her sleep. She’d wake drenched and quaking from nightmares Babineau never mentioned to her. Nightmares in which she was that helpless, terrified victim, where even though she begged for him, Max never came to her rescue.

Why hadn’t she called him?

Solid relationships were the exception in her profession. The danger, the hours, the stress, the temptations, and especially the worry, wore away the strongest foundations until they crumbled. Her own parents were a fine example of failure.

She was looking at Max Savoie for the long haul. That was a ride very few of her peers rode all the way,
and they didn’t have the obstacle that she and Max had between them.

Watching Babineau struggle shook her deeply. His love for his small family was almost deifying. To see it fracturing now made her wonder why she was so accepting. When she started considering how Max wasn’t driven by the human code of conscience or conduct, that opened the door to all sorts of unpleasant worries. Especially when she kept remembering his speaking of killing her coworkers.

It’s what I am.

Was she completely blinded by her lust and love? Too blind to see the truth? That Max had never changed from being what he was when he stood behind Legere, that he still ran the biggest criminal organization in the South behind his sweet promises to her that he’d reformed?

No. She wouldn’t believe it. The insinuations of headline-hungry sensationalists like Karen Crawford were nothing over the word of the man who gave her life meaning. The man who would do anything to keep her.

Including hide his objectionable agenda?

That damned envelope of evidence. Illegally procured, provided without a trace. Like before. An unexpected gift presenting her with exactly what she needed to get the job done. She’d taken it that first time, smothering her misgivings, because it not only gave her what she wanted, it also gave her a clear path to loving Max Savoie by absolving him of guilt. And she jumped at it.

But that didn’t change the fact that she’d covered up crimes he
had
committed.

Would you break your laws for me?

When she’d said yes, she’d given up any control she might have had over their relationship. And with her, it was all about control: of her situations, of her choices, of her emotions. All that changed the moment she’d let Max into her heart. There was no more black and white, right and wrong. And the loss of those rigid certainties upset the sturdy blocks her life was built upon.

He knew she loved him. He knew she would surrender her honor, her very life to protect him. He had her living out of his house, out of his pocket, parading before the media at his side. Though her pearl chain was very attractive, she feared she was becoming the attack dog on his porch, just as he had been for Jimmy Legere. And it was chafing.

She rubbed at the scars on her shoulder, proof that there was nothing natural about what was between them. Their union was altering her physically and mentally, making her into something not quite human.

He was swallowing her whole, consuming her heart, her thoughts, her physiology, for fuck’s sake! She’d just wanted to be his lover—not the Bride of freaking Frankenstein.

And yet here she was, bound heart and soul, and considering the huge step from sharing drawer space to sharing forever.

Max had literally brought her back to life. She would be dead if he hadn’t infused her with whatever weird abilities she’d received with his savage bite. When they’d battled the pack of Trackers to rescue Oscar Babineau, one of them had literally smashed her
spine and internal organs beyond surgical repair. Yet they had repaired themselves.

And through the power of his devotion, he’d mended her wounded spirit.

Now she was scared to death that she was losing her identity to him, because she just couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t
not
fall in love with him.

So she didn’t call, although she thirsted for the sound of his voice. She stayed away, but that didn’t lessen her hunger for him, even if only in dreams.

Dammit, Max, what am I going to do about you?

She could almost hear his voice whispering through her subconscious.

Love me. Be with me.

A slow sensation of warmth began at her feet, so subtle and soothing, she hardly noticed it at first. By the time it reached her knees, they were moving helplessly between her sheets. By the time it scorched along her thighs to pool like lava between them, she was trembling and breathless. Her body bowed as the heated intensity gathered, quickening until an earthquake of pleasure radiated from her molten epicenter. She moaned his name, thrashing in need.
“Max.”

But he wasn’t there.

And he hadn’t been invited to manipulate her psyche, any more than he’d been asked to tamper with her cases.

Her eyes flashed open, wild with upset and frustration, and she gave him a massive psychic shove. “Back the fuck off!”

Inside the bathroom, the shower stopped.

“Did you say something?” Babineau called through the closed door.

“I said make sure you turn the lights off.”

She collapsed in the cold, sweaty sheets, trembling in the dark.

M
AX SNAPPED BACK
in his chair, reeling from what felt like the smack of a shovel against the side of his head. For a moment he didn’t know where he was.

“Max?”

He blinked his eyes open, coming back with a jolt, to see Jacques LaRoche regarding him curiously. “What?”

“Your nose is bleeding.”

He lifted his hand to his nose, and it came away red.

His woman packed a punch!

He’d been someplace between a daydream and a doze when he heard her, clear as the clinking of nearby glasses on a waitress’s tray.

Dammit, Max, what am I going to do about you?

He let his spirit reach for her and was startled by the unhappiness and despair rolling from her into him.
Oh,
sha.
Don’t hurt on my account.

Drawn closer by the power of her emotions, he could see her through the static distortions. Not the way he’d view her if she were sitting across the table from him, but the impression of her, her inner patterns, her signature Glimmer and unique scent.

His passions shuddered. He could almost feel her. The sleek curves, the taut skin. Could hear her quickening respirations as she grew more and more aware of him and began to respond to his presence.

Then that defensive slap that knocked him on his empathic ass as if he were trespassing.

And then he picked up other things. The scent of a man’s fresh scrubbed skin, and the sound of Alain Babineau’s voice.

She was in bed, under the covers, and he was coming out of the shower.

It’s just the job
, his intellect reminded him.

She’s my mate—mine alone!
his instinct roared.

“So, we’re agreed then?”

Max blinked, pulling his thoughts together, but it was like scooping up sand into a single pile—everything kept trickling away.

Focus.
What had they been talking about?

He looked at Jacques, a mass of muscle and brute force, the epitome of what they’d been bred to be. Powerful, fierce, linear, and loyal.

Max trusted maybe three individuals: Charlotte, Giles St. Clair, and Jacques LaRoche. Charlotte was his link to his dreams, Giles to his past, and Jacques to his heritage. He didn’t make attachments easily, had never truly had a friend, and never a lover before Charlotte. But suddenly he had this unexpected trio in his life who had gotten close enough to win his affections. It made him nervous and uncertain. And grateful. They were sort of like family, too.

LaRoche frowned at his hesitation. “If you’ve got doubts about Philo, don’t. He’s like my own brother, particularly now.”

Philo Tibideaux. His brother was dead, and Max was the one he blamed for it. How could he trust someone who carried that kind of pain in his heart?
LaRoche swore his redheaded friend would never strike against Max’s leadership.

Philo had gathered a cadre of like-minded clansmen who would stake out an invisible perimeter around the city. They planned to watch and wait, alert for any sign of infiltration or threat.

A futile gesture, Max could have told him. Trackers wouldn’t be seen or even sensed unless they wanted to be. And they were already inside the city. Max could feel them breathing down his neck.

He’d gone out trying to reestablish the brief connection with the mysterious figure from the park. His vast ignorance about who he was, and what he was capable of, was a danger to his whole clan. The need to learn more burned like a fever. He’d made himself visible, vulnerable, trying to lure the other shifter out— but nothing had happened.

It spooked him. What were they waiting for?

“I have no problem with Philo or with what he wants to do. And I wouldn’t try to stop him if I did. He has a right to do what he thinks best to protect the clan.”

“It’s important to him, Max. It’s his only way to fight back against what they did.”

And Max, again, saw the hapless, harmless Tito Tibideaux as he lay in Dev Dovion’s drawer, battered, tortured, and dead. Not because of Max, but because of Oscar Babineau. Oscar, who couldn’t claim the same allegiance of the clan, whose only protector was Max.

If anything happened to him . . .

“You all right?”

“What?” Max responded blankly for the second
time. Now Jacques was squinting at him, certain something was wrong. He managed a quick smile. “Got a lot on my mind, with this and the Towers so close to completion.”

LaRoche nodded and took another sip of his beer, then gave a satisfied sigh. “I can’t wait to entertain in my new digs. Quality
femmes
shy from a fella who lives in a ratty trailer smelling of last week’s socks.”

“More like last week’s sex,” Max muttered. “At least you’re getting some.”