Leopard Moon (17 page)
"Kissing you raises the evening's score by quite a bit."
"But I haven't…"
"Cormac, shut up and kiss me."
"Yes, ma'am."
Kess was beginning to regret having said yes when Cormac asked if he could pick her up for their next date. It was only their second real date and Kess wondered if she would survive it. Up until tonight she'd only driven with him in town, and he was a fine driver on regular roads. He'd taken her to a quiet little restaurant the next town over—to avoid uninvited family interruptions, he said—which had been great. The food was delicious and plentiful and it was a quiet place that allowed them to talk and joke with each other.
After the meal was cleared, Kess wasn't in any hurry to leave, but eventually the place closed, forcing them to find somewhere else to go. Only now she was seriously rethinking her decision to go back to Cormac's place. It wasn't that she didn't want to go, it was just that she wasn't sure if she would actually make it there in one piece.
The drive up the side of the mountain had been breathtaking, but not in the good way that people always meant. Switchback turns and steep grades made Kess grab onto the door handle on any number of occasions, especially considering Cormac's definitive unconcern with things like actually watching the road or keeping both hands on the wheel. He had spun the wheel with two fingers and slammed the Jeep into a lower gear as they turned down a small gravel road. Kess gritted her teeth, trying in vain to appear relaxed, reminding herself that Cormac knew these roads blindfolded and had lived here all his life. It wasn't helping. She was grateful when he pulled up in front of a small log cabin.
He got out, which gave Kess a few seconds to get her nerves together. She came from a place of flat expanses and few hairpin turns. There weren't hills in Miami. And there certainly weren't roads that would drop you off the side of a mountain and down a ravine to end in a fiery crash. She wiped her palms on her jeans before accepting his hand as he helped her down from the Jeep. He led her to the cabin beneath the slivered moon.
"Come on in," Cormac said, unlocking the front door to his place and throwing it wide. "Welcome to Chez McNeil."
Kess went in a few steps, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness inside before walking in further. No sense in bumping into a table or falling over the back of the couch. She heard Cormac close the door and turn the lock before he clicked on the lights in the room. "Give me your coat," he said as he shucked off his and threw it over the back of a leather recliner. She shrugged out of her jacket and he draped it over his.
She looked around as he went to get them something to drink. The cabin had a high ceiling, rough beams exposed throughout. This room was the living room. On one wall was a huge stone fireplace with a large hearth that anchored the room. A recliner sat adjacent to it and the couch faced it and a low, scarred table that crouched in front of it. A large television was cattycorner to it, opposite the recliner. Bookcases stood along the wall, stuffed with books of all sizes and on a multitude of subjects. A small kitchen was off to the right, from which Cormac emerged holding two huge glasses of water. These he placed on the table and then plopped down on the sofa.
He patted the sofa cushion beside him. "I'd give you the tour, but this is basically it. There's just my bedroom and a bathroom left to see and those aren't very exciting." Kess noticed that he had stripped off his overshirt and sat in a dark grey t-shirt that picked up the grey in his eyes.
"It's great! Did you build it?"
"Yeah. It was my high school graduation present. My dad and I built it together. It's on family land."
"The compound?" Griff had made a joke to one of the cooks about the McNeil family compound--it seemed everyone in town knew about it.
Cormac nodded. "This is on the back side of it. Lots of room and privacy--I think my parents keep hoping if they give me enough space I won't leave. This got me to stay through college at least."
Kess came around the back of the couch to perch on the arm behind him. "You're thinking of leaving? Why?"
Cormac turned his head to look at her and in a long-suffering voice replied, "If you are just going to sit there like a vulture, do you mind if I stretch out? I'd like to see you when I talk to you." He toed off his boots and slid to the other side of the couch, putting an arm behind his head.
"You don't need to see me to talk to me," Kess snorted, kicking off her shoes and swinging her legs over the couch's arm so her feet rested on the cushion near Cormac's.
"I like looking at you," he said simply. "It's one of the perks of being with you."
"Yeah, like there are tons of those."
She saw Cormac frown but he didn't say anything, instead choosing to take a big swig of water. He answered her other question instead. "I want to get out of here for a while. Not for forever or anything. But I want to design and build things, beautiful things, not just big houses for the people that can afford it, you know?" He paused to look at her, running a hand through his short hair. "You know the architect Frank Lloyd Wright? Stuff like his, that fuses nature with architecture. That's the kind of stuff I'd want to do."
Kess knew what he was talking about. You couldn't live in Miami and not see some amazing houses on the waterway or ocean-side that fit that description. Those houses usually cost millions of dollars. Kess had lived in one. "How do your folks feel about it?"
"I haven't talked about it much with them. I mean, they know. But it isn't something we've sat down and talked about. I think they worry--it's dangerous for weres out there alone. But I don't have to tell you that."
Kess caught his eyes with her own. "Depends on how dangerous home is. Sometimes it's better to be on your own." She got up, pacing behind the couch. She found pacing soothed her when she had to think about unpleasant things. Movement helped her, and pacing was better than rocking in a corner and eating her hair.
Cormac sat up to track her, the light from the kitchen throwing half his face in shadow. She looked down, tucking her hair behind her ears. When she didn't say anything, he asked, "How was it?"
Kess shrugged. "I know it's going to sound weird, but it wasn't all bad. Managing the changes was the hardest part. I had to make sure I was close enough to somewhere I could go to hunt. It was hardest in the cities." And it hadn’t been food that had been the problem. Leopards could hunt and eat almost anything, from mid-sized mammals to insects, fish, rats and snakes—they were imminently adaptable. It was trying to stay hidden in an urban area that didn’t have a lot of cover or natural area. She didn’t want to wind up dead or in a cage.
"Like Memphis?" He grinned up at her.
"Yeah, like Memphis. There's not a lot to hunt in the Jungle Room." She took a smack at his head.
Cormac grabbed her hand and pulled her over the back of the couch. "Much better," he announced once she lay sprawled on top of him.
Kess pushed off his chest, torn between wanting to stay there, draped over him like a blanket and needing to keep her distance. Cormac made that hard, both by being so damned attractive to her and by his desire for close physical contact. She wondered if it was because he was a guy or because he was a wolf. The closest thing she could compare wolves to—that she had any experience with, Cormac excepting-- were dogs, and while that would probably be insulting, she knew that dogs liked companionship and physical touch. Cats seemed far more solitary and didn’t need the close contact. Even though her clan had lived in the same city, only she and her brother and her father had shared the sprawling estate that could have housed a family six times the size of theirs. Wereleopards enjoyed their space.
But there was a part of her that enjoyed the closeness Cormac gave to her and that craved his touch. There were certain passions that weres seemed to have, that could only be met by another were. In a way, Kess understood Sek’s idea that weres should only mate with other weres, although she didn’t think it was important for breeding nor did she share his hang up about diluting the bloodlines. It made sense that you’d want to be with someone who could match you in every way, to not have to hide a part of yourself away.
Rivaling that need though was her fear, both of herself and for herself. She was afraid of what could happen if she allowed her passions to drive her, to rule her; she’d seen it happen to those in her own clan. Some of them had become cruel and twisted, passion a dark and painful thing, while others had thoughts for nothing but their own pleasure to the exclusion of everything else. Then there was Sek. Because of him she was tied in knots; everything had been warped and twisted, and things that should have come naturally were now unnatural. She knew she was broken. She just didn’t know how to fix it.
She realized she’d gone quiet. Cormac was looking at her, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Sorry," she said, sitting up so she could watch him. She crossed her legs Indian style.
He sat up too, resting his back against the arm of the sofa, shifting his legs so his feet now crossed behind the small of her back. "You were far away there for a minute."
Kess pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them and rested her head on them. He asked, "Want to talk about it?"
"Not particularly," came her muffled reply.
"Okay," he said easily. She heard him maneuvering around on the couch so that when she looked up, he was face to face with her. "So I’ll talk."
Kess listened as he told her about his life here; his classes, his friends who weren’t pack, Burke and Finn, the tensions between him and his father, Alaric, over leaving the mountains. He spoke of his mother, Emmeline, who was full were and of his brother and sister, who were not. He smiled a lot when he spoke of his baby sister, Lenore; he obviously doted on her. His husky baritone was the only noise in the room and Kess felt herself falling into a kind of trance where she saw the moonlit woods, trees limned in the light of the full moon, and through it streaked Cormac and his family, fur silvered and molten and so free and beautiful it made the heart stop.
He said more names that she didn’t recognize and she assumed it was more of his cousins and uncles and aunts. They were a productive group, certainly. Some seemed to live in other areas—Colorado was mentioned, and Vermont—but all of them kept in touch. Kess sighed and tried not to feel envious.
When he had stopped talking, they sat in a pleasant silence. Cormac had his arms around her and was tracing patterns on the back of her shirt absently when she asked, "So Bran’s one, right?"
"Mmmm-mmmm," Cormac hummed. Kess felt him gathering up her hair. He laid it gently over her shoulder and then continued his patterns.
Kess shivered with a wary delight. She was enjoying the mindless feeling of his fingers on her shirt, wanting more but worried about where it might lead. It reminded her a little of being out by the pool on a Florida summer day and having a masseuse tease tired muscles after a particularly grueling night in the swamps. She forced herself to continue with the thread of conversation.
"That’s a surprise. The man is huge."
"He carries the gene--he’s a cousin on my mother’s side. But he’s never changed. He never had any kids, but there's a slim chance they would have been were because he has that gene."
She felt his breath as he lowered his head to hers. She heard him inhale and then breathe out, "You smell so great."
Kess turned and found his eyes were like pools of mercury, alternately scorching and drowning her. This time she initiated the kiss and what started out soft and sweet didn’t stay that way for long. She pressed him back, her lips hungry for his. She noticed that he seemed to hesitate then returned the kiss with enthusiasm. She closed her eyes, giving herself up to sensation alone; no overthinking, no worrying, just touch and caress and the tropical heat of his mouth on hers. He was everything she’d ever wanted but wouldn’t allow herself—temptation fashioned in gorgeous flesh.
Her mouth moved along the strong cords of his throat and she could feel the beat of his pulse beneath her lips. He made a growling sound as she nipped lightly at it, wanting but staying the impulse to bite harder, to rend and tear, and then his hands had tangled in her hair and he was saying, "My turn."
She lost the capacity for conscious thought as he wrapped his arms around her and brought his lips to her throat. His mouth trailed hot kisses along her collarbone, his teeth grazing lightly across it in a way that made her shudder and close her eyes in pleasure. He moved forward, pushing her back against the cushions, his knee between hers, but he kept the weight of his body off of her. His hand skimmed up her leg, coming to rest on her hip and Kess remembered her brother: his hand on her hip as he tried to pull off her shorts, his mouth on hers, her narrow escape from her bedroom in Miami.
"Stop it!" she yelled, slamming her palms into Cormac's chest, shoving him away from her. Then she was racing out the door and into the woods beyond.
Cormac sat on the couch, stunned for a half second, before bolting after Kess. He had no idea what had just happened, but he knew it couldn't be anything good. He tried to see where she had gone and saw her sweater lying on the ground near the edge of the woods, along with one of her shoes. He gathered them up, trying to figure out what he should do so he didn't spook her further when he heard the howls of several wolves rise up from the forest.