Predator's Claim (19 page)

He sat up and gawked at her. “That’s all? You’re worried about how we’ll make this relationship work with you in Toronto and me here?”

She nodded, ill at ease because the conversation was already deeper than she intended. She didn’t do deep, couldn’t do deep. Not at all.

He breathed in and out and eyed her with flaring anger. “That’s the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard. You’re worried about the fucking logistics? You’re my mate, Charlotte. We’ll make it work. I’ll do anything I need to do to keep you at my side, even if I have to move the whole bloody pack to downtown Toronto!”

“You would do that for me?” she asked in a small voice, overcome.

He threw his hands into the air. “I’d do anything for you. Don’t you get it, woman? I love you! I’ve loved you from fucking day one.”

He loved her? She barely knew how to process the information, even though her wolf leaped inside her in utter joy. “Oh, Bart. I don’t know how to love…”

He gripped her chin, forcefully, but not enough to hurt her. “Oh, yes, you do. And I can see you’ve loved before and it damn near killed you.”

She pulled away, mortified that he saw the things she’d striven to camouflage. “No, I haven’t. I don’t do emotion.”

“Sweetheart, I hate to break it to you, but from the way you run from it, I can see you’ve clearly done it deeper than most. What I don’t understand is why you hide it. There’s no shame in loving, and hell, we all have pasts. We’ve all made mistakes and been hurt. So you need to finally spill. Who hurt you, Charlotte? I’m not letting you move until you tell me.”

Boy, she knew her world would crumble when he discovered her secret. She just hadn’t envisioned it being blown to so many smithereens. Her brain screamed with the need to remember another man, a boy, really. Jake. She hadn’t allowed herself to think of him for years, and tears flooded her weak eyes. Damn, stupid tears! She wiped at them and they kept coming.

Bart just held her and gazed in her eyes. “Baby, please.”

“His name,” she began in a broken voice she hadn’t heard in years, “was Jake, and he didn’t hurt me the way you think. We went to high school together. He was a human boy, and I met him before I shifted for the first time. He thought I was just like him, and I never told him the truth because I was afraid of what he’d think. We were together for the better part of a year, and I did love him with the ferocity of first love. And because of my raging shifter hormones, it was the most intense thing I’d ever experienced.” She let out an anguished laugh that made her chest hurt. “He was kind and cute and got good grades. He was on the school track team and loved Snickers chocolate bars and martial arts movies. We used to park in his car and talk for hours. He taught me how to kiss and used to call me his ‘peanut’.”

Bart didn’t say a word, just cuddled her. It gave her strength to continue.

“Sometime before my sixteenth birthday, Jake told me he had cancer. I didn’t know anyone with cancer because most of the folks I knew were shifters and we don’t get sick. At first, I didn’t understand the gravity of the situation. After all, if shifters could heal, why couldn’t some humans?”

“Oh, Charles,” he whispered, stroking a warm hand down her back.

“He went downhill so fast, and we barely saw it coming. Jake grew thin and worn and spent all his time at the hospital. Before he lost his hair, he asked me to shave it for him. I kept some of it under my pillow.” She seized a breath, as her dams burst. “I saw him as much as I could. My parents told me to keep going to class, you know, to retain normality in my life, but I cut class a lot to sit with him. His tumors were inoperable and I felt so helpless.” She snatched at another painful breath and tried to talk through her sobs. “He died the day before my Sweet Sixteen party. I cancelled it, of course. Right afterward, I shifted for the first time. It seemed so unfair that I should become this powerful creature and he should wither away.”

Bart wiped his face and she realized he was crying with her. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

She held up her wrists to him, the wrists she didn’t have the heart to look at herself. She’d stopped looking at them ages ago. “Do you see my scars? They’re faded now, but they’re still there. Do you see them?”

She watched as he grabbed her arms and looked at the insides of her wrists, his face turning a shocking white.

“Charlotte, please say you didn’t…”

“I was so lonely. No one seemed to understand and I missed him so much. So I tried to kill myself.” She yanked her hands out of his. “And of course, it didn’t work! I’m fucking invulnerable! And he’s dead.”

“Oh, baby,” he said, pulling her into his arms.

“I felt so ashamed, I didn’t tell anyone, not even Marci. I just hid, and once my wolf matured, I ignored the need to mourn Jake. Instead, I began to date men, lots of them. I used them as a way to numb the pain. And I made myself a promise to never fall in love again.”

He ran a hand over her hair. “My love, you’re punishing yourself. And I’m not Jake. I won’t leave you.”

“No, you don’t understand, Bart. You’re an Alpha, a strong leader. You need a good woman at your side. Your parents agree, and I’m not that woman. Sure, for a while now I’ve been blaming it on my need to have a career in Toronto, but it’s not that really. The truth is I’m not strong enough for you. At the first sign of tragedy in my life, I tried to end my own. I’m weak and frail and can’t ever be in a position where I might lose you,” she cried, weeping. “Because I love you even more. I always have.”

“Oh, sweetheart. I love you, too. You’re my mate, and I will see to it you never lose me.” He dropped a tender kiss on her lips, licking her tears away. “And you’re the strongest person I know.”

She blinked, ignoring the incessant burning of her eyes. “Who’s talking crocks of shit now?”

“It’s true,” he said, laughing at her sad joke. “Because you found a way to keep living, even though you didn’t want to. And I’ll tell you something. I have a suspicion Jake would be mighty disappointed to think you stopped everything on account of him. If I’d been in his place, Charlotte, I’d want you to be happy.”

She clutched him harder, nuzzling the wonderful hard planes of his chest. “Please don’t ever be him. I can’t lose you. Please stay with me forever.”

He tipped up her chin. “Baby, I waited years to claim a single kiss from you. Do you honestly think I’m going anywhere now?”

She shook her head as he kissed her, lowering her back onto the mattress. And this time, when Bart made love to her, his soft, reverent touches made her hope as she’d never hoped before. Over and over, he stroked her back, caressing each muscle and notch on her spine. He played with her hair and did his best to comfort her through soft touches and whispered promises. When he took her, becoming one with her body in a series of slow thrusts that made her cry for sheer beauty, he held her gaze and shattered the last vestiges of her disguise with his quiet intensity.

After a while, their bodies stilled, and she knew the sweet thrill of listening to his steady breathing. Their forms, entwined like serpents, seemed so right together. His strong muscles seemed a perfect counterpoint to her body’s generous curves.

Wrapped around him, she’d never known such peace.

She would be strong. For him, and for her.

* * * *

Bart jolted awake and squeezed his eyes shut as a massive head rush assaulted his gray matter. Once his cobwebs dispersed, he opened his eyes and glanced at the clock in his bedroom, dismayed to see it was already mid-afternoon. Dammit. It had taken him ages to fall deeply asleep, and when he had, he’d been plagued by nightmares of Charlotte and her dead boyfriend, Jake. As relieved as he’d been that she’d finally shared herself with him, and that she’d admitted to loving him, he still felt so bad about her pain. A pain so horrible she’d wanted to end her life. What if she’d succeeded? He never would have met her and…

“Stop it,” he whispered to himself, as his heart began to palpitate. He couldn’t handle the thought of losing her either. It would be the death of him.

As he forced saliva down his furry throat, he turned and looked at her in his bed. Quite naked. Oh, man, he could almost convince himself he’d been dreaming. The events of the past twenty-four hours rolled haltingly through his memory, like a damaged, old film reel.

He wished he could forget some of it. Just not this part.

How was it seeing Charlotte in his bed made everything seem a whole lot better? As his cock thumped to life, a victim to bad timing as it always had been, he couldn’t resist brushing one finger over her soft shoulder and down her exposed back. Softer than anything he’d ever touched, her skin erupted in goose pimples where he stroked her. Amazing. She was on her stomach, her face buried in his pillows, her dark hair a tempting shock of silkiness. The blankets had strayed down their bodies and barely managed to cover the eloquent curve of her ass. He could even spy the top of her crack, so enticing.

His wolf howled inside him, suddenly quite awake. It wanted her, wanted her endlessly, it seemed. And all Bart wanted to do was banish those blankets, tickle that crack with his tongue, and kiss her into consciousness.

“No,” he whispered to his inner hound. “Let her sleep.” She’d been through a lot and deserved some rest. After her emotional admission, she might sleep all day. He brushed her hair away from her face, dismayed at how pale she appeared in the morning light. She looked shattered. The dark circles under her eyes broke his heart. Her sadness made her appear as if she suffered from an illness herself. For a shifter who wasn’t susceptible to much human disease, it made for a startling appearance. He’d glimpsed her grief in her fluttering eyelids, witnessed it in the quiver of her lips, and smelled it as it marred her normally delicious scent.

He would take it away from her. He’d make sure she never felt pain again.

Drawing the blankets up over them, he pulled her gently into his embrace and listened to her soft sighs. Over and over, he kissed her, each caress a reiteration of his vow to keep her happy and safe.

He should probably get up and check on the pack. He knew he had things to do. However, Charlotte’s eyes opened for a second and she burrowed closer to him.

“I love you, Bart.”

How those words made his heart sing. He’d wanted to hear them for so long, and now, to hear the syllables trip over her tongue was enough to make him shoot into the sky like a delirious rocket. He brushed his lips against her temple. “I love you, Charlotte.”

The pack could wait a little longer.

* * * *

That evening, after he and Charlotte had spent the better part of a loving hour getting pruney in the shower together, they set out to have dinner with his immediate family. Holding her hand as they traipsed over snow-lined pathways, he felt no cold. In fact, the merest glimpse of her now-rosy cheeks made his heart dance with riotous glee.

His. All his.

Yes, he had to figure out a way for them to live together, and would willingly receive a hundred lashes before he allowed her to relinquish her dream job at the university. Still, he had his job to consider, too. He loved being on Gemini Island, and the Ursa Lodge was his home.

Then again, perhaps the reason he so enjoyed his work at the Ursa was because Charlotte had always been in his periphery. She’d worked there almost as long as he had, and there had never been a day when they didn’t see each other, at least not until she went to Toronto. He realized he’d been happy there because of her.

In reality, his home had nothing to do with the four walls of his cabin or those of the security office. It had everything to do with a curvy wolf woman whose smile chased all his demons away.

She turned to him and offered him a sly grin. “What are you looking at, mister?”

“You. I don’t want to look at anything but you.”

The tease fell from her eyes and she blushed a beautiful pink. “So I didn’t scare you away with my hysterics last night?”

He stopped walking and gathered her into the circle of his arms. “Baby, you couldn’t scare me away if your skin turned green and you sprouted scales.”

“Hey, we’re shape-shifters. It could happen.” She giggled softly, a sweet ripple of sound that made his wolf pine for more of her intimate attentions. “Do you think your parents will be happy about you marking me?”

He leaned in and feathered his lips over hers. Her skin, a little chilled from the weather, grew immediately warm under his touch. Damn. He’d never grow tired of that. “Are you kidding? They’ll be ecstatic. There’s a pretty good chance my mother will officially adopt you. She’s been lobbying for you for ages.”

She smiled and tucked her head under his chin. He felt her smile against his skin. “Really? I always knew I liked her. Do you think she has any idea what sorts of dirty things I’ve been doing with her puppy?”

He cupped her ass and squeezed, whispering in her ear, “She doesn’t need to know everything. She definitely doesn’t need to know how much I want to fuck you right now.”

“Oh, yeah. Now you’re talking.”

A shuffling noise sounded next to them and he turned. Connor and Lloyd from security walked by, grinning.

Lloyd winked at Charlotte. “Congrats, honey. You improve Bartholomew immensely.”

As she laughed, Connor smirked and put his two, unwanted, cents in. “It’s about fucking time, too.”

“You wait, dickweed,” he threatened his buddy with a smile. “Your time will come.”

“Not a chance, lover boy,” taunted Connor. He motioned to the length of his body. “And deprive all the ladies of this? You know, Charlotte, it’s never too late to get in on some of this action.”

“Oh, it’s way too late,” said Bart.

Lloyd smacked Connor across the head and they walked off, talking trash, as they always did.

Charlotte watched them disappear, smiling and shaking her head. “Let’s go,” she said. “I can’t wait to tell your parents.”

He grinned. Neither could he.

* * * *

Even as they approached the resort’s buffet, Shirley Cairo pinned her wolf-like gaze on her, and Charlotte could see how her gaze was quickly drawn to the mark peeking out from under her collar. Leave it to a fellow wolf. It didn’t take them long to spot a newly-mated member of their community. Shirley jumped up from her seat, almost upending the table on Joseph, Nate, and Lena, and pounced toward Charlotte and Bart. She met them in the foyer.