Mine to Claim (Shadow Shifters: Damaged Hearts) (7 page)

“I know she’s your roommate just like I know you’re an art history major and that you’re the product of a mixed heritage. And by ‘this week,’ I mean that Jordy has a lot of girls in and out of his apartment. I don’t think that’s a big secret on campus.”

I stopped at the door just before using the key to let us in because I knew she was digesting what I’d just said and maybe not liking or understanding 100 percent. When I turned around she was right there, right up on me, the top of her head a couple inches beneath my chin, her breasts in that puffy jacket she wore pressed against my chest.

“You checked up on me,” she said, looking up at me.

She had really long lashes and they were real, not like the glued-on ones females were wearing now. She didn’t wear makeup or if she did she never wore a lot of it, the freckles across the bridge of her nose probably wouldn’t be hidden even if she did. My fingers itched to touch the tiny brown flecks.

“Why would you check up on me?”

Because I hadn’t been able to think of anything else but her since that night at the bar. Damn, that was some lame shit and I wasn’t about to admit it to her.

“I like to know things,” I told her with a shrug then turned around to open the door. She followed me inside and I closed the door behind us, locking it and putting on the chain. A futile effort since whoever really wanted to get in, probably would. Of course, they wouldn’t like what they found when they did but I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.

“So do I,” she said, taking off her jacket and tossing it on the bed.

When she spun around to stare at me she’d put her hands on her hips, nice curvy hips I might add, and was giving me a look that said she meant business. I don’t think she had a clue how sexy that look was considering she was wearing some form of skintight material on her legs and a long but thin T-shirt with a sleepy-eyed teddy bear on front. The kicker was she wasn’t wearing a bra. Fuck me!

“How old are you and where are you from?”

One of those questions was easy-peasy, while the other … I sucked in a breath and tried to act as calm as I wanted her to believe I was. I took off my jacket and hung it on a chair that looked like it wasn’t going to be able to hold up on its own much longer. “I’m twenty-one so I was perfectly legal having drinks in the bar. And you?”

She opened her mouth then snapped it shut, then tried again.

“I’m nineteen and I tried to tell that bartender but he didn’t care.”

“You had a drink at the party too,” I said, moving past her to plug my phone into the charger I’d left on the small table near the bathroom door. “You shouldn’t drink at parties with strangers. That’s how things get out of hand.”

Her arms instantly folded over her chest then and she looked away from me. Now she was uncomfortable. I shouldn’t have brought her here. I knew that when I asked her to come with me but I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t stop any of my impulses when it came to her and I hated to think of the reason why.

“So if you don’t want to tell me where you’re from then what are we doing here? Because really I could think that this was getting out of hand too and I haven’t had anything but a sip of a heavily creamed and sugared coffee.”

She was adorable. No, the punch of lust I experienced every time I looked at her sort of downplayed that word. But right now she looked like an innocent teenager in a hotel with a dirty older man intent on having his way with her. That dirty older man would be me, even though I wouldn’t say I was much older, but I did want to have my way with her. Somewhere deep inside me I felt like I had no other choice.

Instead of going to her and probably scaring her out of her mind, I rubbed my hands on my thighs and took a slow, deep breath.

“I don’t know why I asked you here. And I don’t know why I keep popping up every time there’s a guy trying to hit on you. To tell the truth, I don’t know what it is about you, but I can’t walk away. I keep trying and trying and I can’t.” I admitted feeling something unfurl inside at the words.

Her head tilted to the right as she stared and spoke. “When I was eight a puppy followed me home from school. My mom screamed bloody murder at the thought of me keeping him. Dad took him away an hour later and the next morning when the nanny opened the door to take me to school, the puppy was sitting on the front step. When I came out of school that afternoon it was there again. I never wondered why it kept showing up because I was so happy to see it. Until Mom had it put down.”

She took a deep breath after that, lifting her hands to smooth strands of hair behind her ears. I liked how she looked when she did that, how her face was so much prettier when it was free of any distractions, like hair. I wanted to touch her again. No, I really needed to touch her this time. So I stood and walked to her. I cupped her cheeks, loving the feel of warmth in my palms and sucking in a breath when her soft brown eyes stared up at me.

“I’m not a dog your mom can put down,” I told her, a vicious hiss echoing inside of me.

“But one day you’ll be gone too,” she whispered.

I wanted to tell her no, that wasn’t true. I wanted to promise her something I knew deep down I’d never be able to deliver on. Tomorrow I would be gone and so tonight, right here, right now was probably one of the worst things I could ever do. But there was nothing, nothing I knew of that could stop me from taking this one thing, this one slice of happiness that I’d been able to find.

“I’m here right now. We’re both here and there are no parents, no intruding guys, or well-intentioned friends to come between us,” I told her.

Us? There was no us and I knew it. There was no me and her like boyfriend and girlfriend, happy ever after, or any of that chick-lit crap. There was only this moment and for the rest of my life I would hold onto this memory as if it were a lifeline.

“No memories and no regrets,” was her whispered reply.

I wanted to ask her what that meant, wanted to pursue why recriminations would be prevalent in her mind but she flattened her palms on my chest and pressed closer to me. The kiss was inevitable. It may have been a slower event, a smoother one if I had the patience, but I didn’t, so it wasn’t.

Our lips collided and it was like a whoosh of air being sucked from my lungs. Her mouth was so soft, so warm, I just melted. My fingers dug into her shoulders as I grasped her tightly, maybe too tightly, so I gave myself a mental shove and loosened my grip. Her hands fisted in my shirt as she pressed closer, coming up on tiptoe and tilting her head. She was as anxious as I was to take this kiss further, or to at the very least see where this kiss would go.

As we were in a motel room, the where was sort of obvious and even more so when she pushed me backward until I fell to the bed. She climbed over me almost immediately and I groaned because, yeah, this was exactly where I wanted her.

“This is crazy,” she said with a nervous giggle as she straddled me.

“It is,” I admitted, reaching up to cup her face again, pulling her until those slightly swollen lips were on mine once more. She tasted like heaven. I’d never been to the place and figured my kind probably weren’t welcome there, but I knew that’s what she was. My own little slice of heaven, moaning softly into my mouth, my hands cupping her ass.

Inside the cat roared, it pressed its weight against me, its hunger the most prevalent thought in my mind. This is why I couldn’t stay away from her, why I kept turning up wherever she was, whenever she needed me, because the cat wanted her, needed her. This is why I couldn’t leave when I knew I had no other choice.

My hands moved—albeit reluctantly—upward, pushing her shirt as I did, until my fingers touched the bare skin of her back. She sucked in a breath, arched slightly, and let me suckle her lower lip. My body was not only hot, it was like liquid fire, my bones going languid with each touch of her, each inhale of her scent. I was hard and there was no sense trying to hide that fact. And Grace obviously felt the same as she rubbed her center over my engorged length, grinding her hips like she wanted more.

I was so ready to give it to her, so very ready to strip us both and claim what she was offering, what I now felt was rightfully mine.

“No,” she whispered, her body stiffening above me. “No.”

CHAPTER 7

Grace

No, this wasn’t Rory. This wasn’t like that night at all. I said the words over and over in my mind, had been since our lips first touched and the heat seemed to encompass me instantaneously. I couldn’t stop, didn’t want to and so now I was on top of Aidan, loving the feel of his muscled chest, his strong arms and thighs beneath me. His erection was a little unnerving. It was actually the break of lust-filled euphoria I’d been engulfed by. It was what gave my inner rejections a voice and had Aidan grasping my shoulders as he pushed me off of him.

I rolled to the side, lying on my back, eyes closed, chest still heaving, body still tingling from his touch. From the motion of the bed I figured Aidan had laid back down as well and was most likely wondering what type of lunatic he’d brought to his room. Or maybe, just maybe he was calling me a dick-tease just like Rory had.

“You said no regrets,” his voice sounded after a long silence. “Why did you say that? Did something happen to you that you regretted?”

I bit my bottom lip hoping that pain would ease the one growing between my legs. It was a gnawing sensation, persistent and intense, but even it couldn’t drown out the sound of Aidan’s voice or the question he’d just spoken, or the swell of embarrassment snaking along my spine.

The fact was I didn’t tell anyone about my regrets. I never had and never planned to. Things happened in life and a person either picked themselves up and moved on or wallowed in self-pity until life wasn’t worth living anymore. I despised the latter and had promised myself a long time ago that I would move on, that I would have a life despite those idiots that tried to hold me down with their cruel words and senseless pranks. I was determined to be better than them, to be the bigger person, and here I was, letting what they’d done to me turn me into a quivering, self-doubting goofball in front of the only guy I’d ever felt like being different for.

“I don’t talk about regrets,” I told him when I thought the silence was just about to drive me insane. The least I could do was open my mouth and talk. “There’s no point. They don’t go away but I refuse to give them any more attention.”

“But you are giving it attention. You may not be talking about it, but you’re acting because of whatever the regret is,” he said simply, as if he were explaining how to ride a bike. Get on and pedal, how hard is that?

Well, talking about this was hard, which is why I’d avoided it for so long. The fact that he sounded like it didn’t matter that I’d stopped us before we could … before either of us could get what we both seemed to want, only made the past a bigger and much nastier pill to swallow. He didn’t sound angry and wasn’t yelling, wasn’t calling me names or laughing at me, and I didn’t really know how to handle that.

I inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, looking for some type of easy way to say this. A cool transition line that would make what was once a really big deal in my life, a maybe not so big deal tonight. It was pointless and I knew it, another fact I chose to run from instead of facing head-on. Okay, well enough of that, the pity-party thing was getting pretty damned lonesome, not to mention boring.

“I used to go out with this guy,” I blurted out. I was going to tell Aidan what I’d never told anyone else since I’d tried to tell my parents. I never planned to let these words slip from my lips again, to anybody. But Aidan wasn’t just anybody. I think I’d known that since that first night at the bar.

“He was an ass but I didn’t know it until it was too late. We were making out one night at his house and he tried to take it further. I mean, we’d been going out for a while and I was thinking that maybe it was time anyway. I knew his family and they knew mine, we were the ‘perfect couple,’ they all liked to say.” I took a deep breath and finally opened my eyes. The ceiling was a cracked and stained mess and I frowned.

“Anyway, he was going fast, ready and willing and so was I until I realized we were in a room with other people. Then I told him to stop. He didn’t at first so I pushed him and yelled for him to stop again. Everyone in the room looked at us and he immediately stood up, cursing at me and calling me a tease and all this other stuff.” I could still hear his voice as he’d yelled, could see the appalled look on the faces of so many, too many. I had felt like running into one of those closets and locking myself inside. And I had felt betrayed, by Rory and by my friends.

“You’re right, he was an ass,” Aidan said dryly.

That simple statement stalled the trembling of my lower lip as the memories swamped me. I sighed with a good amount of relief. I hadn’t been sure what his response was going to be, hadn’t wanted to read into any of Aidan’s kisses or intense stares. For all I knew he could be out for the same thing Rory was, but something told me he was different. I’d had that niggling feeling from the first night we’d met. At any rate, I didn’t want to continue, probably didn’t need to since Aidan was clearly in agreement with my assessment of Rory, but I pushed on anyway, sensing that somehow this purging might actually be good for me.

“The next day I was so hurt and so angry at Rory for embarrassing me the way he did. His cousin and one of my best friends, Rebecca, had finally driven me home that night after I’d threatened to call a cab. I come from a quiet area in Seattle so calling a cab after midnight would have been like burning down our town hall in broad daylight—eyewitness news that would spread just like that fire.”

Aidan made a sound that was almost like a chuckle but I kept talking.

“Rebecca didn’t say a word on the ride home and when I called her to say I needed to talk the next morning she sounded like I was bothering her. I hadn’t really thought about that then, but now, remembering, she hadn’t seemed happy to hear from me at all. I told her later that morning that I wanted to press charges against Rory, that he’d assaulted me when he’d shoved his hands down my pants and … and…” I couldn’t seem to get the words out. Tears stung my eyes at the memory and I cursed myself for being so weak after all this time. I’d sworn that I was over Rory and what he’d done, but I guess I really wasn’t.