Marrying Her: The Keeping Her Christmas Wedding (The Keeping Her Series Book 5) (2 page)

He made his face as blank
and innocent as he could manage with those clear green eyes of hers narrowed
and searching his.

“Fine,” she said, “but .
. .”  He wrapped both of his big hands around her hips and pulled her over his
thighs into solid contact.

Demon kissed the warning
off her lips again, and was more than satisfied with the confused haze that
covered her eyes after he had done a thorough job of it.  He growled in
satisfaction and watched her blink herself back then glare again.  “Demon, you
are not . . .”

This time when he kissed
the words off her lips, he also clenched his hands tighter and shifted her hips
high enough that now she could not miss that he was hard as fuck.  Her hips
bucked against him without thought, her arms wrapping close around his neck. 
He shifted his hands to her ass, which always satisfied.  Clytie wrapped her
legs around him and held on, her lips working, her taste addicting and sweet. 
He growled into her mouth and took her deeper.

Clytie pulled back her
lips away from him with a gasp and looked down at him, the fall of her red hair
cocooning them.  Breathing deeply, she just looked at him while he fought his
instincts, which were to claim and mark his mate again and again.  The same
instincts were always there where Clytie was concerned, but something about her
grief and the coming visit to her family had him in overdrive.  She studied his
face and then licked her lips, taking her bottom lip inside for the briefest
second.  Demon growled seeing it.  She moved one of her hands from around his
neck and ran her thumb down the scar on his cheek.  “You make me forget
everything but you.”

“Good,” he bit out, his
eyes hot on hers.

Clytie looked at him for
another minute, making him crazy wondering what the fuck she was thinking; then
she spoke and he knew exactly what she was thinking, and he approved wholeheartedly. 
She smiled, a little sad around the edges and damp, but a real smile
nonetheless.  “It is good.”  Then she moved her lips to just barely brush his
and spoke directly into his eyes, the feel of each word a caress.  “Make me
forget everything for a little while, Demon.”

With a push, he had her
rolled over, reversing their positions, so that he pressed her into the bed. 
He moved so fast that he had his hard dick wedged against the heat of her
before she finished her surprised gasp.

“That I can fucking do,”
he said with hard finality before he took that beautiful soft mouth again. 
Then he gave her what he would always give her, the same thing Clytie always
gave him, from the very first time – Everything.

Nearly twelve hours later,
the Lionsgate jet had hummed them decadently to a landing strip in Oklahoma
City.  If Clytie had been in any kind of normal frame of mind she would have
appreciated the dark leather seats and spacious area, not to mention the ease
of travel when you didn’t have to stand in line in security or fight for space
with a hundred strangers.  As it was, other than noticing that the seat was
wide and comfortable and the jet itself sleek and fast, she didn’t take much
else in.  She had other things that took precedence in her thoughts.  Now,
sitting in the black limo that met them all at the Will Rodgers World Airport
and which was now coasting all of them to the hospital through busy Oklahoma
streets, those thoughts still swallowed her senses to the exclusion of most
everything else.

She did not remember a
single day as a child where her father was sick.  Not even a little cold or the
sniffles.  So now that the shock had worn off a bit she was having a hard time
believing the hard man she remembered could be not only ill but dying.

Shawn sat with the driver
in the front, but everyone else lounged in the ridiculously swank car all
around her.  Demon was holding tight to her side, keeping her hand in his as if
she was going to make a run for it at any minute, or fall apart.  Clytie
wondered occasionally if he might not be wrong about the running part.  She had
not seen her father or mother since they disowned her.  She had occasion to see
some of her aunts and uncles when she attended family events with Sara or
Cassandra, but those were few and far between and her parents never attended
anything out of their minuscule area.  Her father refused to miss work or
church with equal fanaticism.  So this would be a meeting fourteen years after
she left her family behind at eighteen and never looked back.  Not once had she
regretted that choice, even now.  Not the leaving, not the changing her name,
not any of it.  Not after what they did to Becky.  But looking around at her
family – Demon holding her hand, Cassandra at her side, Ben teasing Roxy about
pretending to favor Cleo over him by sitting with her instead, Mac with his
feet up, his eyes closed but hearing everything going on around him with a
content look on his face – that was family.  People who would drop everything
to be with you in your hour of need.  Lucas sending his jet and arranging a car
to pick them up, a hotel room, his mate Miley arranging everything so they didn’t
have to.  None of these people would abandon a fifteen-year-old pregnant girl,
or disown their own children.  Not any of them, not for any reason.

Cassandra was sunk into
the seat beside her.  Her mates, one light, one dark, sat across the way,
looking out of place away from her side.  They were not usually so far from
Cassie, but they had given her up so she could sit beside Clytie because they
were all good people and worried about her.  She thought more than once that
she needed to reassure everyone that she was all right, but the words stuck in
her throat.  So, she said nothing and watched the window as the flat bustling
city passed them by.  They were pulling into the large city hospital before she
realized it.

“I don’t remember your
father ever being sick,” Cassie finally said into the quiet.  Nobody had gotten
much sleep, and Cassandra wondered if she looked as bad as the gritty hollow-eyed
feeling that weighed her down.  “He always seemed indestructible.”

Clytie sighed and laid
her head on her cousin’s shoulder.  “I was thinking that myself.  It has to be
driving him crazy to be missing work.”

Cassandra snorted.  “The
people he works with at that construction company probably think Gilbert Jones
missing work is a sign that the end is nigh.”

Clytie snorted out a brief
laugh before she realized she could.  She snuggled in deeper with her cousin
taking comfort in Demon’s heat on one side and Cassie’s on the other.  She
sighed.  “I don’t want to see him,” she admitted.

“I know.  I’m not looking
forward to it either.  Let’s face it, even sickness and possibly prolonged
death is not likely to mellow Gilbert Jones.”

Clytie closed her eyes
and drifted on her exhaustion.  “Yeah.”

“At least my parents won’t
be there.”

“Why not?” Clytie mumbled
on a yawn.

“They consider themselves
devout Christians, but Mom likes to wear pants and still goes to the beauty
shop every week to get her old lady perm, which in your father’s eyes means she’s
going to hell, and he told her so one time too many.  They haven’t spoken in
years, which is why she knew nothing about the cancer when I asked her about
it.  She called around in a tizzy and no one knew about it until now.”

“Sara knew.”  She tried
to keep the expression out of her tone, but she must have given something away
because Demon’s hand tightened on hers and Cassandra sighed long and sad.

“Yeah, she did.” 
Cassandra took her free hand and started writing letters across Clytie’s palm
like they used to do when they were little.  “Don’t take this the wrong way,
but your sister can be a dick.”

Clytie snorted out
another unexpected laugh, and then opened her eyes and really looked at her
cousin.  The words across her palm were spelling out Cassie’s name and her
mates’, like they used to spell out Cassie + whoever she had a crush on at
school.  Clytie smiled for real this time, reminded once again that she was not
alone, not even close, and never really had been.  She squeezed her mate’s hand
and smiled at her cousin.  “That leaves my mom, my dad, eventually my sister, who
can be a dick, and Uncle Vern.”

“And also eventually
David, Boone, and Jordan who are emphatically not dicks.”

“And possibly Uncle Vern’s
fourth wife, the ex-stripper,” Clytie added, watching Cassandra grimace at the
reminder.

“Well, there is a bright
side to Aunt Crystal.”  Cassandra proceeded to sketch her finger across Clytie’s
hand spelling out Clytie + Demon.

“What’s that?”

“We won’t be the only
sinners there.”

Clytie felt another laugh
bubble up.  “There is that.”

“We won’t even be the
most flagrant.”

Clytie gave her an arched
brow and looked from her to the two beautiful males across from them, one
golden male perfection with a constant irreverent smile, the other dark and on
the scary side, then at her own scarred, tattooed, hard-bodied mate that took
up a great deal of the room on their side of the car.  She turned back to her
delusional cousin with a pointed look.

This time it was
Cassandra who sighed long and loud.  “I see your point.”

***

Like most shifters, Demon
didn’t care for hospitals.  Too many irritating cleaners over the scent of
wounded prey.  The way shifters healed and the slight differences in their DNA
made going to a doctor a risky proposition for their kind.  Besides, they
healed all but mortal wounds without help, at least until extreme old age. 
Rarely was a healer needed and when they were, if you were not lucky enough to
have one with the gift handy, like Miley, and few packs were, then you were
just shit out of luck.

It wasn’t that long ago
that Shawn would have died without ever seeing the inside of a hospital if
Miley had not been there after the Gerent attack.  As it was, they almost lost
him anyway.  No, Demon had never really had a use for human doctors, and now in
this place, all he could think of was that Clytie was human, and as susceptible
as the rest of these sick people to illness and disease.

He didn’t realize he had
started to growl low in his throat until Clytie started running her hands up
and down his back while they walked.

“Let me just say that if
we didn’t have a healer in our pack this place would freak me the fuck out,”
Ben muttered, his own arms wrapped tight around his mate’s shoulders while they
stopped and waited for the elevator.  For once, his eyes were dead serious.

“What?  Why?” Cassandra
asked looking up at him.  “You heal too fast to worry about most of what these
people are dealing with anyway.”

“It’s not me I’m thinking
of,” he said grimly, his eyes all for his mate.  “The thought of you sick like
this makes me crazy.”

Cassandra rubbed her hand
down his back soothingly and then followed him into the elevator, Mac following
the pull of her hand in his to join them.

Demon and Clytie
followed.  They had left Roxy at the hotel with Cleo and Shawn.  Clytie had
refused to bring the girl into what was bound to be a whole fuck load of
drama.  Though her exact words were: “It’s no place for a child.”

A young nurse in blue
scrubs stepped up to the elevator and looked at the occupants with a distracted
look on her face, which transformed into alarm once she saw Demon.  She stopped
walking like she hit a wall.  She was still standing there with her mouth open
and her eyes taking in all that was Demon until they finally moved to the rest
of the occupants.  Her eyes were just beginning to glaze in appreciation at the
sight of Ben in all his golden glory when the doors closed with her on the
wrong side.  

Demon growled again when
Cassandra snorted out a laugh.  She tucked herself close to Mac, pressing her
face into his neck when Demon turned his glare her way.  Clytie rubbed his
back.

“It’s alright, dear,”
Clytie said, her tone of voice overly solicitous and not hiding the laughter
behind it.  “I’d take arresting over pretty any day.”

“I resent that,” Ben said
mildly.  Everybody turned to look his way.  He shrugged.  “I will not be
objectified and belittled simply because I am all things male perfection.”  He
swept his hands up and down pointing out all his assets.  “Don’t hate me
because I’m beautiful.”

Cassandra pressed her
face harder into Mac’s neck to muffle her laughter.  Mac sighed and shook his
head at the both of them.

When Demon turned to look
at his mate, she carefully wiped the smile off her face and cleared her
throat.  He glared at her but she just widened her eyes at him.  “What?  It was
a little funny.”

Then the elevator doors
opened on their floor and she could no longer distract herself with their antics. 
Demon saw the second she recalled where they were and why.  He pulled her
against his side and kissed her forehead.  “The second you say the word we’re
out of here.”

She wrapped herself
around him for a brief second and then pulled back.  He saw the determination
light her eyes before they blanked of emotion.  “I may take you up on that,”
Clytie murmured and then stepped away from him and out the elevator.  Demon
caught her again before she went two steps.  She gave him a questioning look; for
an answer he just took her hand again and led the way.

They found her father’s
room with no problem since Mac had called ahead for the number.  They walked
right past the nurses’ station, ignoring the bustle of activity and the sudden
cessation of voices.  Cassandra, Mac, and Ben stayed outside so Clytie could
see her parents and have a moment to introduce her mate, hopefully with as few
fireworks as possible.  It was a double room with two of everything, but one
side of the room was unoccupied.  The other held Clytie’s parents. 

A woman turned and looked
them over from her place in the row of conspicuously empty chairs.  Demon knew
her to be in her late fifties, but she looked a decade older.  Her hair had
more grey than brown, she wore no make-up, and her denim dress covered her from
neck to wrist to ankle.  Beatrice Jones shared her daughter’s height and Demon
suspected her body type, if she didn’t starve herself to the point of being
stick thin that was.  Her eyes had a sunken listless look to them that made
whatever bone structure she shared with her daughter unrecognizable.

The man on the bed, even
sleeping, managed to look older still.  Neither of them looked like Clytie, but
his red hair would have given him away if the woman’s piercing green eyes had
not already done so.  All the noise came from the beeps, the hum of machines,
and the muted chatter in the hall.

“Hello, Mother,” Clytie
said.  Her small voice should not have carried to the sleeping man on the bed,
but Demon heard him wake up anyway, and watery brown eyes hit his with more
force than a dying man should have.

“Christine Mary,”
Beatrice Jones said with no inflection in her voice, “you should not be here.”

Neither woman seemed
cognizant that Gilbert Jones was awake and aware; they were too busy looking at
each other and pretending to be unmoved.

Clytie tilted her head
and studied her mother as if they had never met before.  “If you didn’t want me
here, why did you finally allow Sara to tell me about the cancer?”

“I didn’t think you’d
come.”  The woman looked her daughter over and Demon could not guess what she
saw, because her eyes showed a disapproval that Demon did not get.  Clytie had
dressed for ease of travel in loose fit jeans, tennis shoes, and a purple
t-shirt that managed to cover everything and still prove just how magnificent
her breasts were.  Her long hair was pulled back in a French braid with wisps
of curls escaping here and there.  She looked tired but lovely despite that
with her usual clear green eyes and pretty lips that smiled easily.  She was
not smiling now, but even sad and trying not to look uncomfortable, she shown
with a pure bright light that warmed those around her.  Her mother was looking at
her like she came in wearing fuck me stilettos and a halter top.