Deceiving the Protector (23 page)

Lia’s breath caught. Tate
could
have mentioned the Alpha’s mate could do that. Something else she’d have to take up with him once she got her hands on him.

Betha pouted. “She never sets anyone on fire anymore. Not since she had the baby. She’s turning into the most boring Sibile I’ve ever met.”

Jade sighed. “I also spend a fortune in ear plugs.”

That much, Lia had no trouble believing.

“So now that you belong to Resurrection—” Jade leaned forward, eyes twinkling with interest, “—may I ask what you intend to do with your wayward mate?”

“You mean besides knock some sense into him?”

“An event, I admit, I wish I could watch.” Jade’s smile tempted one on Lia’s face as well.

“Believe me, you aren’t going to want to see this. When I get done with him, Jensen Tate is going to know exactly what hit him.”

Tate drove, one hand on the wheel, the other rifling through his hair. Again. He was going to end up furrowing bald stripes into his head if he kept this up. But he couldn’t help doing it one more time.

He knew he had to leave, but the need to bond had his skin trying to drag him back across the miles. It had only been a few hours but he already missed her so much that the ache in his chest made it hard to breathe. No smart mouth telling him to shut up, no sly grins or saucy looks through golden lashes. No green eyes crackling with mischief or glittering with mirth as she demanded stories. But the thing driving him craziest was missing the scent of her so much that everything else smelled dry, dusty and sour. Musty. Like someone had taken spring away.

Him
.

Guilt and failure rode him like twin whips across his back. She’d looked so hurt before he left. Angry. Worse, confused. Maybe he should go back. Bring her with him—

No, she was safer this way. Betha and Pale would make sure she was protected until Pale took both her and Jade back to Resurrection. She might have been out in the world, but she didn’t know anything about surviving in it alone. Pale had promised to fly, which made the most logical sense. The less time either of their mates were out in the open, the better.

The old highway stretched out ahead, a black ribbon with virtually no traffic, surrounded by sloping hills full of tall grass gone gold in the endless sunshine. No point in checking the navigation screen mounted to his right. He pretty much just had to point the car west until he hit 218 Humboldt Lane, Horton, Iowa.

She’d remembered that address for a reason and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. If she’d ever gotten free, that was the first place she’d go. Where she and her sister had been trying to get back to. It didn’t matter that there was nothing for them there. Foolish or not, it was all they knew. The only place to start tracking a young girl who could be anywhere. If she was even still alive. One way or another, Lia needed to know.

If he was able to keep his wits about him, he might even be able to learn something about this Shifter Control Task Force. First thing he’d done after hitting the road had been to call his secretary and get her going on the research. If anyone could do some stealthy computer run-downs, Mari was it. She hadn’t been too thrilled with his request to track down a ninety-five-year-old woman in Horton, Iowa, with only a first name to go by, either, but luckily for him, he’d long ago learned to ignore Mari’s snarls.

He flicked his gaze to the rearview mirror, his eyes drawn behind him as much as the rest of his body and soul, only this time there wasn’t a blank reflection of his forward view. This time, there was a car back there. A small black speck of a thing.

It didn’t take long for the speck to get bigger.

At a hundred miles an hour, nothing took very long to get bigger.

His foot dropped on the brake, his jaw falling along with it. The sound of a horn bellowing from behind didn’t help matters. At least the screech of his tires almost drowned out his swearing but no doubt left half the rubber as permanent streaks on the asphalt. He almost broke the key off shutting the engine down before throwing open the car door and jumping out.

Of course, that hellcat he’d raised had yet to stop honking, despite pulling up right behind him. Not that she was the one he was staring at.

Lia sat in the passenger side, her hand locked around the sissy bar, her jaw set and those catlike eyes of hers all but squinting in absolute pissed-off fervor. Maybe it made him a sick bastard, but he couldn’t imagine a more beautiful sight.

Or one that made him more angry.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he yelled as soon as Betha finally got off the goddamn horn.

Lia got out of the car, not even bothering with opening the door. She hopped up on the window edge and slid her legs out without missing a beat. “Me? Why are you out here? Alone!”

No way in hell he was touching that one. Rather than run the risk of running over and burying his face in Lia’s neck, he turned on her driver. “Betha, goddamn it, you were supposed to make sure she stayed at the cabin.”

“Actually…” Betha leaned her head out and he knew he was about to regret speaking to her. “You just said I needed to make sure she got where she belonged.”

Lia’s head turned as she stopped midstep to glare at Betha.

“Time to go. You two play nice.” She revved the engine with a maniacal grin. “And hey, if you don’t want Pale tracking either of you down, you might want to turn off the GPS, dumb ass.”

If he had a blade, he’d have thrown it in her seat shoulder already.

Of course, if he had any blades, she’d never have stayed still long enough to be threatened.

By the time he finished the thought, the car had whipped around to go back the way it’d come, leaving him and his thoroughly pissed-off mate alone on the side of the road.

“You shouldn’t be here, Lia.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say. His brain was torn between the need to throw her on the ground and gorge every one of his senses on her—touch, taste, smell, hunger, desire, greed—or yell at her until he was purple and she was deaf.

“I thought this mate thing meant something to you.” Lia put her hands on her hips, the pissyness coming off her in waves. “Or was that the same kind of bullshit as
never leaving me behind?
”

So she wanted to push buttons already? “I wanted to give you a choice.”

“If you wanted to give me a choice, you shouldn’t have made it for me by leaving. Or were you just running away? What’s the matter? A mate you’d have to live with was too much to commit to?”

“I’m not running away now, am I? I’m standing right here in front of you.”
Trying like hell not to grab you.

“Betha says you think you failed me.”

“I did fail you.” And it wasn’t a wound his Wolf—or his humanity—could live with easily. He stared up and down the road, frustration eating at him until he started moving into the open field of tall grass, unable to stay still. “If you want to talk about this, walk with me. I’m not doing this out in the middle of the fucking road.”

She shook her head, hair swinging in every direction, looking as if she were about to burst with energy. “Just admit it, you didn’t think I would stay with you.”

The accusation hit too close to the bone to ignore, even knowing it for the deflection it was. He kept walking, calling out over his shoulder. If she couldn’t hear him, that was her fucking problem. “Why would you? You’re free, remember?”

She stayed by the car for a few stubborn moments before stomping into the grass after him. “What does being free have to do with you leaving?” Her unspoken
moron
all but echoed in his ears. Even with her forceful steps, she made up ground pretty quickly, only a few paces behind him.

He spun, his hands catching thick stalks of yellowing grass blades. “You don’t need me anymore—not that you needed me in the first place. You can go anywhere and see anything as long as you’re careful. See everything about the world you’ve been missing.”

“I’ve been walking around out here for years, Tate. I haven’t missed anything.”

If his pride wasn’t beaten to hell as it was, that’d still be a hell of a ding. “Bullshit. You were out here, but you weren’t free. If you were, you’d have gone back home years ago. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. You were hoping to find Laurel.”

She flinched as if he’d slapped her. “Laurel’s dead, Tate.”

“What?” The pain on her face sliced clean through his anger.

“Asher.” Her eyes were still closed, her mouth twisting as she said the name. “He killed her. The same day he found me. That’s how they had her scarf. My scent led him right back to her. She’s been gone since this whole thing started.”

“And I suppose he’s the one who told you this?”

She nodded, her eyes finally opening again, this time with pointed accusation. “Right before he shot you.”

“Why would you believe him? When all he ever wanted to do was hurt you?” Damn it, how was he supposed to keep his resolve when her eyes turned glossy with unshed tears. She wasn’t the type to win her arguments that way. He’d rather she punched him than cry.

“Because it’s not about him.” She slashed at her eyes with an impatient palm. “All these years, everything I ever did to stay alive, I did it for her. She was my reason for everything. What if she’s been gone all this time and it was all for nothing?”

“Not nothing,” he snapped, unwilling to let her plant that thought in her mind. “You’re still here, Lia. I’m here. That’s not nothing.”

Her doubt, the struggle to reconcile where she was now with where she’d been, was more than he could stand. He wanted to hold her, but he forced himself to stay those scant feet away. To give her the answers she asked for. “I wanted to find her for you, one way or another. If she was alive, if she was free, she’d head back home. I haven’t gotten any info on that task force you mentioned yet. I thought Horton might be the best place to start. Maybe the only place we have. I couldn’t protect you, but I thought maybe I could give you peace of mind, whatever the answers on Laurel turned out to be.”

She shook her head again, this time slower. “Finding out what happened to my sister isn’t going to change how I feel about you, Tate.”

“I didn’t mean it to.” He’d just wanted to give this to her. Wanted to give her what she needed. If that meant shredding his pride and his soul, he’d do it without a second thought.

“I don’t need a protector. I don’t want one. I need my mate.” The deadly calm in her voice stilled him as nothing else could. She wasn’t fucking around. “I do
not
need to be abandoned for my own good or so you can lick your wounds until they’re infected.”

“I was going to force the bond, Lia,” he finally admitted, remembering that moment of weakness back at the cabin. For a moment, in his hunger, he’d almost acted no better than Asher. “I had to leave. I wasn’t about to take anything from you, not like he did.” And if she couldn’t see how hard that had been for him, she had to be blind.

“You could have asked me. Asked me to bond. Asked me to come with you. Or even asked me to go to Resurrection without you. It’s not hard, you’re a lawyer remember? It’s supposed to be your job to ask questions.” The ease with which she rejected his excuse should have shocked him. But that was just Lia, always seeing through crap he didn’t even realize he was piling up. “Why did you really leave?”

There wasn’t an answer his already shredded pride would let him offer.

“So we’re back to that. How many times do I have to say this? You didn’t fail me.”

He ground his teeth together. He didn’t want to talk about this, but she had her right to a pound of his flesh. He was man enough, Wolf enough, to stand there and let her take it.

She shoved him, striking his chest hard enough to push him back a step. “Don’t do this martyr shit, it’s not you. Talk to me. You talked until I was blue in the face before. Say something now, Tate.”

“This has nothing to do with being a martyr.”

“Then what does it have to do with?” She popped him again. “Talk, damn it!”

“You
died,
Lia!” The words barked out even as he caught her wrist to keep her from another inciting blow. “You fucking died and there was nothing I could do to stop it. To stop him.”

If he expected his outburst to scare her, he still had a lot to learn about his mate.

“You were drugged, you idiot!” She yanked on her hand, frustration and anger giving her enough strength to actually require his effort to hold onto her. “Why do you think he uses the darts? No one fights past that sedative, not even when they realized they were about to die. But you did. You came for me. You ripped out his throat. For me.”

His turn to reject excuses. “I came too late. I was useless.”

She gave up fighting fair, pushing a breath out before closing her eyes and leaning against him. Breast to breast, belly to belly, hip to hip. The woman had been made for him, every inch of their bodies fitting like molded clay, and he felt his resolve to somehow send her back to safety start to slip. “You saved me, Tate.”

He should never have put his hand on her, because it was going to hurt like a son of a bitch to let her go. And he had to, even if the reasons why were losing clarity like water stirred with dye. “You saved yourself. Calling to Jade was just desperation.”

“I’m not talking about Jade.”

God, did she know she was breaking him down, settling her head under his chin like that, her arm wrapping around him until they might as well be one person? Her hair coursed over his hand where he’d automatically placed it on her hip. His grip probably bit into her flesh but he couldn’t help it. She felt so damn good, warm and fresh against him.

“I’m talking about me. I was dying long before we got to that motel room.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean my soul. I mean I’d spent so long just trying to survive, I’d buried who I was, what I was, until I was a ghost inside my own body. Too afraid to breathe, too scared to remember there was more to living than existing. I kept going only because I wanted so badly to believe it was keeping Laurel safe. Protecting her was all there was left of me.