Charming (Exiled Book 3) (17 page)

“Hello,” said the tall, pale hybrid next to Charming.

“Hi,” Ana replied in a voice so small she didn’t recognize it as hers.

“Excuse me a minute,” Charming said to Snow.

He approached Ana, leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Hey. I need a little
private
time with Snow. Could you maybe give us the apartment for an hour or so? Were you going out? I’ll get somebody to drive you.”

Ana backed away and said, “Going out? Oh yeah. A friend from the bakery is meeting me downstairs.”

Charming didn’t know how to read the expression on her face. “Okay. Be careful. And thanks again for picking up the food.”

Ana tried to make her mouth say, “Sure,” on the way out, but she couldn’t tell whether she made an actual sound or not. She closed the door behind her and saw the elevator go blurry behind tears. She hated crying with a passion. That’s why she had a strict personal policy against watering of eyes, but the harder she tried to pull herself together while stabbing at the down button, the more emotional control slipped away from her.

When the apartment door closed behind Ana, Charming looked at Snow and said, “Come on. Let’s eat first.”

When he stepped into the kitchen and saw the dim lights, the lit candles, the flowers, the table set with pretty things, and the pots and pans which meant that Abel had not been the one to do the cooking, he froze. Gestures of romance are recognized universally, including interdimensionally. When a woman cooks for a man, she’s sending a message. When she cooks for a man and makes everything, including herself, pretty, she’s sending a message that can’t be misinterpreted even by the dimmest of dunderheads.

“Wow,” said Snow. “You fucked up.”

“Snow…” Charming began without taking his eyes away from the table.

“Never mind. I’m on the way out.”

For a few seconds after Snow left, Charming stayed rooted in place. As soon as he’d walked into the kitchen, he’d realized what the look on Ana’s face had meant. Hurt. She’d gone to some trouble to make it plain that she had feelings for him and he’d rubbed her nose in it. That realization struck his heart like a lightning bolt. It clouded his vision and almost brought him to his knees.

He knew he liked Ana. He knew he was attracted to her sexually in a perpetual blue balls sort of way. But until that moment, he hadn’t checked in with his feelings to recognize that he
more
than liked her. He’d known she was infatuated with him, but he hadn’t given it much thought because most of the human girls were.

His body jerked when his lungs suddenly sucked in a big breath. He hadn’t known he was holding his breath, but the violence of it spurred him to action. He ran for the elevator, leaving the apartment door standing open. It seemed to take forever to get down to the street. When he rushed out onto the sidewalk, he looked both ways. Ana wasn’t in sight, but he did see Snow.

“She went that way.” Snow pointed straight ahead.

Charming nodded and crossed the street into the park just as he started to feel big rain drops, punctuated by the sound of their individual plopping on the cement. It was almost dark and the thick cloud cover was bringing on the night even faster, but when he scanned he found a slash of red that looked like a watercolor with the rain suddenly began coming down hard. He moved quickly, looking every bit the predator he was, but kept disguised most of the time.

She was heading for the big pond in the middle of the park.

He ran with one thing in mind, that Ana was hurting and he’d been the one to inflict the wound. His own chest hurt. He tried to dismiss the fact that he’d heard that mates feel each other’s pain, but the idea persisted. He’d also heard that males felt more relaxed when they were with their mates and that, when separated, their focus was often on when they would be reunited.

He didn’t think he could be stupid enough to be sharing a home with the female whose chemistry aligned with his own so perfectly that they were a mated match and not know it, but stranger things had happened. His thoughts were so focused on not being involved with a human that he could have overlooked what was right in front of him and, apparently, that’s exactly what he’d done.

Those were the thoughts that raced through his mind as he raced through the pouring rain. When he was close enough to be heard by a human, he shouted, “Ana!”

She turned and, even at a distance he could tell she was shocked to see him chasing her. To his surprise, instead of changing course to move toward him, or waiting for him to catch up, she turned and ran. Of course that excited the predator in him all the more and, with a growl, he increased his speed.

The last thing in the world Ana wanted, after the supreme humiliation that had been visited upon her ‘romantic evening’, was for Charming to know she was crying about it. If she didn’t have high coloring, she could claim her wet face and clothes were because of the rain. But the rain wouldn’t account for a red nose or puffy eyes. She didn’t have to look in a mirror to know what she looked like. She’d known since she was a little girl that she was an ugly crier. It was another good reason to never do it.

It made no sense to Charming that she’d tried to run. She had to know there was no chance of escaping him. He was hybrid, human probably mixed with puma and uncertain speculation as to what other enhancers were thrown into the stew.

When he got close enough to reach out and touch her, his brain screamed.
Mine.

In one fluid motion he pulled her to a stop, spun her around, and pulled her into his embrace. She tried to fight him, partly because of anger and partly because of the shame of being caught crying over him. But the harder she fought, the tighter he held her and nothing in his life had ever felt so right as Ana in his arms.

When he said, “Ana. I’m here,” she stilled. When she involuntarily hiccupped another sob, he repeated it, “I’m here.”

Hearing it the second time, she slumped against him and let the last tears fall on his chest while he came to terms with the fact that he’d fallen. Hard. For a human.

He felt her heart pounding against his body and knew that what he wanted more than anything in the world, even more than securing the future of his people, was to keep and protect the little human female in his arms.

“Let’s go home,” he said. When she nodded against his chest, he leaned down. Putting one arm underneath her knees he lifted her up and started walking back the way they came.

“You can’t carry me all the way there.”

He chuckled. “You have a lot to learn about your mate, Ana. I could carry you all day without tiring.”

“Mate?”

He chuckled. “You remember the first day you made cookies. I tasted them and then asked you to marry me.”

“I said yes. Then you brought another woman home to screw right in front of me.”

“I was joking about marrying you then. I’m not joking anymore.”

She was quiet for a long time, enveloped in the sound of the rain and Charming’s steady footsteps.

He jiggled her a little. “You there?” he asked quietly.

“Yes,” she answered just as quietly. “What changed?”

“I guess I came to love you and was too dumb to know it happened. I suspected I needed you because I looked forward to seeing you at the pub every night.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. But I didn’t know what those feelings meant. Can we still have dinner together?”

“We’re soaking wet. And I look like shit.”

With her head resting in the crook of his neck between his head and his collarbone, she could feel it when he shook his head. “You don’t look like shit. You’re the most beautiful female in Farsuitwail.”

“That’s ridiculous. First, I’ve seen the hybrid women. They’re all Amazon princesses. Second, you can’t see me right now. Not that that’s a bad thing. Believe me, I’m not complaining about that.”

“First, I don’t know what Amazon princesses means. Second, I don’t have to see you to say you’re beautiful. It’s not all about how you look, you know. You’re beautiful because you just are.”

“Stop it! You’re going to make me cry again. And I just got it under control.”

He chuckled. “You made me Shepherd’s Pie.”

“I did,” she said.

“Did you know it’s my favorite?”

“Of course I knew.”

“Because you’ve been paying attention to me. I’m a lousy lover. I couldn’t tell you what your favorite food is. I guess I’ve been paying attention to your eyes. And your mouth. And your tits. Especially your tits. Not your food.”

“You are a lousy lover because you’ve never made love to me. You’ve never even kissed me.”

Ana could see that they were almost back to their building.

“We’re going to fix that, Ana. We’re going to go upstairs and take off these wet clothes. I’m going to dry you off with clean fluffy towels. All. Over.” She felt her thighs clench together.

“Then what?” she asked, sounding more breathless than she intended.

“Then we’re going to light your candles… or we would except that I may have left them burning. Then we’re going to feed each other Shepherd’s Pie. While you sit in my lap wearing nothing but a towel.”

Her nipples hardened when she pictured that.

“Then what?”

“Then I’m going to take you to my bed and learn every inch of your body. And you’re going to be glad that I haven’t gotten laid since you arrived. Because I’m really, really, really focused.”

It was her turn to chuckle. “Is that what you call it? Focused?”

He set her down in front of the door because he couldn’t figure out how to open it any other way. “Yeah.” He leaned down so that she could feel the heat of his breath on her face.

He went through the door in front of her then picked her up again as soon as they were on the other side. When they reached the elevator bank, he said, “You push the button.”

When it opened, he stepped inside, still carrying her in his arms. A hybrid couple got on before the door closed.

The big male smirked at Charming. “Evening, Leader.”

The female with him winked at Ana. They got off on the third floor and could be heard laughing before the door closed.

Charming leaned against the back wall with Ana safely in his arms. When she tilted her face up to look at him, his tongue came out and wet his lips. He brushed a soft kiss over her mouth once, twice, before Ana pressed for more. With a groan his tongue plunged into her mouth and she began to squirm in his arms, trying to get closer somehow.

The door made a dinging sound when they arrived at the top floor. They broke the kiss so they could exit and find the sacred privacy they both craved.

“You left the apartment door standing open,” she said.

“I was desperate,” he answered. Then grinning he added, “And focused.”

“We’re dripping. We should take these wet things off before we leave a trail of water everywhere.”

“You did look edible in this dress. And I’m a lummox for not getting that you did this for me.”

“You are a lummox. Now can I see you naked?”

He laughed. “Only if you promise to lie if you don’t like what you see.”

She scoffed. “Fat chance of that.”

He turned her around and unzipped the dress as she slid off her shoes. She let the dress fall onto the tiled entry with a splat and began tugging his shirt up so she could pull it over his head. He helped, laughing, but when she began fumbling with the metal button of his pants, he pulled her in for another kiss.

She broke away, breathing heavy. “Pants.”

He tried to toe off his boots, but his socks were wet and they wouldn’t come off. So he had to sit down on the floor and pull.

“While you’re doing that, I’m going for towels,” she said.

She hurried to the bathroom and made the mistake of looking in the mirror. After a highly appropriate gasp, she closed the door, and locked it, glad she had insisted on doorknob locks. She looked like a drowned rat with smeared red lipstick. Not a good combination.

Rummaging through drawers for something that would take lipstick off, she realized that Rosie had bought an obscene amount of girly cosmetics. She finally found makeup remover wipes just as Charming was knocking on the door.