Passion's Prey: The Shadow Shifters (26 page)

Thanks to Lucas, the shifter from the Gungi, she’d known exactly when they finished their official meeting in Rome’s private conference room. Lucas didn’t speak much English, and Caprise had only gotten to know him because he’d clung to Seth like a wet T-shirt. He was tall and gangly, still trying to figure out how his sixteen-year-old body was going to suddenly morph into the bodies he saw every day of full-grown shifters. He had intelligent eyes and an inner strength that some of the shifters around here would envy. She could see it in the way he held his head high, how he was determined to speak English, to learn to fight, and to prove to Rome he hadn’t made a mistake bringing him here.

Tonight he’d been in Rome’s rooms, as Kalina had summoned him there. He’d asked Caprise to come along because her Portuguese was a lot better than Kalina’s and he was hoping she could translate. She really hadn’t felt like being bothered with a lot of people, but it had actually worked out for the better.

“So you’ve seen X already tonight?” Kalina had asked when they were in her sitting room. Lucas was eating dinner because Kalina swore if he missed one meal he was going to shrivel up or possibly pass out. Caprise thought it was a little much. He was a growing boy; he’d eventually get hungry, at which time he’d eat. She understood all too well the starvation that came with grief. How many days had she gone without eating after her parents died? Double that after little Henrique had passed.

“Saw him, talked too much, moved on,” she said quietly.

“Talked too much, huh? I know that feeling. When I told Rome about my past as an orphan I felt like I’d talked too much, too.”

“He didn’t talk at all” was her reply.

Kalina simply shook her head. “They’re like that.”

“He’s not playing fair. He wanted me to tell him everything and I did,” she said, absently rubbing the mark at her side, her son’s name surrounded by floral swirls. “He should have reciprocated.”

“Is it important to you to know what he’s holding back?” Kalina had asked.

Caprise thought about that for a long moment, then sighed. Before last night, hell, about two weeks ago, it wouldn’t have mattered to her one way or another. Today she couldn’t say that. “Yes, it is.”

Kalina’s response was a genuine smile. “I knew it.”

“You did not know anything,” Caprise said, only slightly agitated. It was different having someone she could confide in. Kalina had said she and Ary were there for Caprise, that she could share things with them and they wouldn’t tell a soul. Caprise believed them and she appreciated their offer.

“So how are you going to get him?” Kalina asked after she’d cleared Lucas’s plate from the table and come back to sit on the couch next to Caprise.

“I don’t know yet.”

“My advice—and I know you’ve known X a lot longer than I have—I would smother him. Don’t give him a moment to think of why the two of you joining is not a good idea. Don’t let him find refuge.”

Caprise let her words sink in. “Like in battle you’d never let your opponent get a catnap,” she said slowly.

“Precisely. Stay on his back until he has no other choice but to face you, to face what’s going on between you two.”

“Or run and hide,” she followed up with. There was the possibility that X really didn’t want this mating thing with her.
Maybe he wanted to mate with someone else. Maybe … stop it!
she berated herself. Xavier Santos-Markland wanted her, she knew he did. The
companheiro calor
was so strong, if it were a drug she’d be high as a kite right now. No, whatever was standing in their way had nothing to do with her, but with him.

“You won’t run and hide, it’s not in your nature. You’ll bide your time to figure out a strategy, then you’ll strike.” Kalina picked up her mug of hot chocolate, blew on it, and smiled before taking a sip. “And when you do Xavier won’t know what hit him.”

Lucas had interrupted then, attempting to tell Caprise that X and the others were on their way out of the conference room. To avoid seeing him right at that moment and any awkwardness between the two of them and her brother, she’d slipped out the door before they made their way to this part of the First Female’s suite.

Now she was back, and she was ready.

“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in bed?” X asked, his brows drawn in a tight line.

He looked like he was about to explode, he was so angry. Any other woman would have run screaming. Caprise wasn’t any other woman and she wasn’t running anymore.

“I don’t have a curfew,” she said, taking a step closer to him.

His body was tense, anger rolling off him in heavy rivulets that assaulted her like huge waves. She didn’t falter, simply took another step closer.

“Do you have a time to be home, or someone you have to go home to?” she asked him.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. She watched his muscled chest, beneath the fitted material of his black T-shirt, move up and down. Her mouth watered and at the same time her heart melted. He was trying so hard to keep a lid on whatever was inside of him. It was almost painful for her to watch.

“There’s no one else, Caprise,” he said finally, his eyes opening slowly as if he’d been drugged. “And don’t tell me you’re going to play the jealous girlfriend now.”

Caprise chuckled because of all the human and shifter traits she possessed and would inevitably claim, jealousy was not one of them.

“Just clearing the air about where we stand.”

He looked tired as he spoke.

“We’re currently standing in the hallway in the middle of the night discussing whether or not I’m sleeping with someone else.”

She nodded. “Well, are you?”

He didn’t speak right away but stepped toward her. She probably should have backed up, his height combined with his thick build could be intimidating—
very
intimidating. But she stayed still until her breasts brushed against his torso.

“When I touch you, nobody else touches you. Got it?” was his terse reply.

Caprise shook her head. “We weren’t talking about me, buddy.” She lifted a palm, placed it right over his left pectoral, and let the beat of his heart vibrate through her fingers, up her arm, until it seemed like their rhythms matched … finally.

“For the time you’re in my bed, no one else is,” he said finally. “Does that satisfy you?”

Caprise licked her lips. “Not quite.”

“You don’t want to do this right now, Caprise. Just go back to your room and go to bed,” X told her solemnly.

His eyes were already shifting, the dark brown going to intense green in a matter of seconds. And that wasn’t the only change. A heady scent filled the air around them, circling them both and holding tight until Caprise felt like she was breathing the exact same air he was. She was smelling what he was; they were sharing something so acute and so intimate when they were both fully dressed and standing upright. It was an intense feeling, so much so that she swayed a bit and damn if her big brooding hero didn’t reach out and wrap a muscled arm securely around her waist.

“I know what I’m doing. And I’m not going to bed without you.”

*   *   *

“You don’t want this right now,” X said when they were closed in her room.

His mind was dark, fathomless, and void of anything real. Or at least that’s how he felt. It was that strange feeling that overcame him sometimes, the one that left him uncontrollable. His palms itched, fingers clenching and unclenching. Even the cat inside him was looming like it was ready to pounce at any moment. He could do anything right now, absolutely anything. Fuck, drink, run, or even kill. Nothing seemed to matter.

And then there was her scent. It had changed somehow, was stronger than the floral aroma that had originally drawn him to her. Heavier, more intense, this new scent clogged his lungs until he felt like he wanted to choke—to cough it up and finally be rid of it. Even his normally excellent vision seemed a little blurry around the edges.

Caprise stood at the end of her bed. She wore shorts that were too fucking short and a shirt that hugged her breasts too goddamn tight. His dick took the hint and perked the hell up instantly. X growled.

“I want you right now,” she said, her voice settling over him just like a full glass of Hennessy.

Hell, his mouth even watered the way it did just after the Hennessy slid down his throat. He licked his lips. She licked hers in response, keeping her eyes on his as she did.

He yanked at his shirt until it ripped and fell from his body. “This isn’t going to be pretty,” he told her as his hands went to his belt.

Her eyes grew darker and she pulled her shirt over her head. “I didn’t ask for pretty.”

“I mean it, Caprise. I don’t do soft whispers, cuddling, and all that shit.” His zipper down, he was about to push at his jeans but he remembered his boots.

Bending over, he untied them with record speed, probably broke the damn laces but didn’t care one way or the other. When he stood again he kicked them off, pushed his pants and boxers off, and looked back to Caprise to see if she was still interested.

She was naked. Like fucking Christmas morning the best damn gift sitting under a perfectly decorated tree, naked as the day she was born.

“I want you,” she repeated. “Just as you are.”

X didn’t believe in forcing females, had never done that a day in his life, no matter how out of control he felt. At the same time, no other female had said the words she’d just spoken to him. They rendered him still for about ten seconds. Then the darkness pressing firmly against his skull pushed him forward.

He grabbed her at the waist, his fingers pressing tightly into soft skin. She gasped, her hands moving to his biceps to hold on. She needed to hold on because he wasn’t going to be able to stop once he started. He knew this without a doubt and sighed, dropping his head so that his gaze fell solidly on the tattoo at her side.

The tattoo of her dead son’s name. She’d borne another man’s child and that child had died. She’d lost her parents and her son and she was still standing, ready and willing to take him with this darkness engulfing him inside her. The knowledge almost broke him. Almost.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound like his own.

The next thing X felt was her hands at his cheeks, pulling upward until his gaze met hers.

“You won’t hurt me,” she told him in a strong and clear voice. “I trust you, Xavier.”

She didn’t. She couldn’t. She had no idea who or what he was, what he’d been through, how he came to be this beast that barely held on. He opened his mouth, determined to tell her, to warn her. But when he did she came up on tiptoe and covered his lips with hers, thrusting her tongue inside his mouth, rendering him totally speechless.

The kiss was like liquid fire moving through him. He gripped her tighter—if that were even possible without breaking her in two—his mouth sucking at hers hungrily. His teeth scraped along her bottom lip, clamped down and tugged until his tongue wanted to taste her once more. Her arms had gone around his neck and she pulled him closer, hugged him tighter.

Admittedly, kissing wasn’t X’s favorite pastime. The act never appeared during his sexual escapades because he didn’t allow it. Now, despite his past misgivings, X was drowning in this kiss. With his eyes wide open he watched her and she watched him. But he was falling, felt the weightlessness as their tongues touched and dueled. Inside, his cat growled and paced, wanting him to take more, take faster. He lifted her off the floor, dropping her onto the bed and breaking their kiss. She landed on her elbows, shook back her hair, and glared at him. Her cat’s eyes glowing, her teeth bared and sharp. “I’m okay,” she told him.

He hadn’t asked; in fact, the question was so far back in the recesses of his dark, addled mind, he wondered how she knew. With a shake of his head, a futile attempt to gain some clarity, X lowered himself until his face hovered just above her tattoo.

“I saw this that first night you were in Rome’s house. I wanted to lick you all over the second I knew you had been inked.”

He didn’t give her a chance to respond, but flattened his tongue over the tattoo and licked. Her hand went to the back of his head as he licked again and again, some small part of him wishing it had been his child. The thought led him to her stomach, where his tongue delved into her navel. Beneath him she spread her legs and it was like a beckoning. His hands slid down her thighs until he clasped her just behind the knees and pushed upward. The action opened her wide for his perusal and peruse he did, gladly.

With feral hunger gnawing at him, he looked down at the plump folds of her vagina, already glistening with her arousal. Her center opening creamed, and X’s cat growled. Lowering his head he caught the juices on the tip of his tongue, savored them for a moment, then licked her until he would swear she’d be bone-dry. But when he pulled back, she still glistened with wetness, her womanhood as beautiful as everything else about her. Waiting wasn’t an option … no, this time it had to be. X pushed back against the urgings, rising above her to cup her breasts. His dick hurt, the skin pulled so tightly over the bulbous head he feared a really bad result. But he didn’t care, as his palms worked over her breasts, his eyes closed, and that weightless feeling comforted him. It lulled him against the darkness like a huge pillow. He swore the scent had intensified like a pillowcase rubbing softly against his skin.

“Xavier.” She called his name and X heard her clearly. Not like before when it could have been a whisper on the wind.

This time it was loud, or at least loud to his ears. “Say it again,” he urged her.

“Xavier” was her quick reply.

He still stood over her, hands on her breasts, eyes closed.

“Again.”

“Xavier.”

His hands moved quickly from her breasts to her wrists. Opening his eyes, he watched her closely as he pulled her arms up over her head. “Don’t move,” he told her.

Cursing, he wished like hell he was at his place where his things were. As it stood he’d have to make do. Climbing off the bed he found his jeans, pulled the belt from the hoops. He went to the headboard and grabbed Caprise’s wrists, tying them tightly to the heavy wood. To her credit she didn’t even wince.