Ryland (18 page)

“But you can communicate with us?” She
nodded. “I’m sorry, I don’t see the difference. Why not us?”

She shrugged. “Right now, your brother
Brock is hitting on the woman in his office. Neal is trying to decide if he
should buy another suit, quit his job, or keep at it. I think he needs a
vacation from life for a while. Keith is buried deep in a project that I asked
him to look into and enjoying himself.”

“And Jules? What is he doing right now?”

She laughed at Alistair’s question.

“What’s he doing, fucking his
assistant?”

“As a matter of fact, he is. Right there
on his desk. She’s screaming out his name and telling him to go faster and—”

“Okay, enough. I get it. You can read
them. But why not us? And why is that important that we know?”

She got up to pace and tried to think
how to answer Alistair’s question. “I can control them because I can read them.
When you guys were helping me with Cunningham, I knew that Jules was going to
try and step in front of the moving car to scare the man driving it away. I let
him know that doing that would get him killed. Yesterday, when Crawford came to
the house, I knew that Brock was about to shift to go to the aid of his mom
when the shots were fired. He’d have gotten hurt and hurt your mom in the
process. I can’t control you.” She could tell that Ryland was pissed, but she
wasn’t sure why. Did he really expect her to step back and let them get hurt
when she could keep that from happening? Not fucking likely. When he opened his
mouth to speak, Alistair stood up and started pacing.

“You said that you can control people. And
obviously cats too. Does that mean you can control all living things? Even in
the wild?” She nodded. “Okay. Bear with me here for a minute. You were in the
lab with Cunningham and he hurt you. A great deal. Why didn’t you control him
or the others to make them stop? Why was he able to get… You can’t control him
either.”

“I couldn’t, no. But I can now.” She
took a deep breath before continuing. “I called him yesterday. Cunningham, I
called him. Right before you did.”

“You called him without telling me?” She
nodded at Ryland. “Why? Did you think to, I don’t know, make a deal with him? One
to keep us safe because you think we can’t help you?”

That hurt her and she was pretty sure he
knew it. Before he could say anything else, she picked up the file on his desk
and handed him the picture of Cunningham that had come with the information
about the lab. “He has a scar on his right hand. It’s a bite mark, one I gave
him. It’s nasty in that when I did it, I tore at him and nearly had his thumb
off. But he punched me in the head and I dropped to the floor. The next time I
woke up, I was…”

“Finish. Tell us what he did to you
after you bit him. I know you’re telling us about the scar for a reason, but I
want to know what the son of a bitch did to you in retaliation.”

She didn’t look at Ryland as she
answered him. “He had me tied to the ceiling. My feet were about five inches
from the floor and I couldn’t touch it even if I stretched my toes. The ropes
had burned into my arms from the day before so now there was blood running down
my arms. My legs were tied to the floor this time so I couldn’t grab anyone
when they got too close. I was naked.” She closed her eyes as she thought of
the way she’d hurt. “He had hung me there often those first few weeks. My arms
would ache for hours after he let me down. This time, he was going to beat me. The
whip, braided leather that had been tipped with barbs, he’d told me, to get the
optimum pain from its victims. The first time it hit my back I screamed. Then,
after that, I didn’t make a sound. He was so pissed that he couldn’t hear me
again that he…”

“That he hit you more. Hurt you more.”

She nodded, but didn’t turn to look at
Alistair.

“Then when that didn’t work, he did
what?”

“He let Crawford beat me. But he used
his fists and his belt. He nearly killed me.” She turned to look at both men. “But
things have changed. I can control him. And I have. His hand where I bit him?
It’s going to be bothering him. I would say by the time he gets here tomorrow
he won’t be able to use it. Not without a great deal of pain. He’ll not be able
to use his gun or his whip for some time, maybe forever, if I can continue to
make him believe that it’s infected and itchy.”

“Remind me never to piss you off.”
Ryland laughed when she started to tell him she couldn’t hurt him when he
continued. “You have more to tell us, what is it? And why us? Why aren’t we
telling the family?”

Okay, here went the hard part.
“Cunningham doesn’t just want me for my ability to move things. He wants me
because I can kill. I can kill a person who is miles, hell, hundreds of miles
away. Destroy them in such a manner that no one would ever be able to pinpoint
how it had happened. But I can’t kill him.”

“Why? It seems to me that all this would
be over if you would simply reach out and take the man’s heart out. If he has
one.” Alistair looked at her then Ryland. “Bronwyn, what else aren’t you
telling us?”

“She can’t kill him because he is
somehow responsible for why she can do this. Am I right?” She nodded at Ryland.
“And he has…what? Programmed you somehow to not be able to kill him at all?
That’s why he is so bold, because he knows that you can’t hurt him.”

“I can hurt him. A great deal, but I
can’t let it get to the point where he may die from the injuries. I can do it
all the way up until it becomes life threatening then I have to stop.”

“You might not be able to, but I sure as
fuck can. You weaken him, love, and I’ll finish him off.” Ryland laughed. “This
has suddenly gotten a whole hell of a lot more fun.”

~~~

Ryland watched her move about the house.
The furniture had been delivered today and it looked great. But he could tell
that something was bothering her because he’d been talking to her for over ten
minutes and she’d not said anything. He sat on the new sofa and watched her
pick up the little candy dish again and set it back down.

“There are groceries here now. Would you
like me to fix you something to eat?” Nothing. “I think there might be a yak in
there. How about a yak steak and fries?”

“The security system here sucks.”

He nodded.

“I think your mom could get past it without
much trouble.”

“I hired a firm to come in and set one
up for us this weekend. They’re the ones that take care of the Towers.” She
paced more. “Bronwyn, what is it, honey?”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” He
started to ask her what she meant when she continued. “I can get you hurt, and
your family would be hurt without you. There are just too many factors that can
go wrong with Cunningham and Crawford. He isn’t going to like that you’re going
to turn him down.”

He supposed he should be happy that she
didn’t think he’d give her up, but he was still pissed at her. She had no faith
in him whatsoever. Trying to regain control of his temper, he watched her
closely. She was limping. “What happened?” He stood to go to her and she backed
away. “Either show me or I’ll tackle you and find out on my own. I mean it,
show me.”

She lifted her pant leg and he saw the
long gash in her calf. Swearing, he picked her up and took her to the kitchen
where he knew there was a first aid kit. She told him it wasn’t all that bad.

“We were fucking around and shouldn’t
have been, now that I think about it. I asked him to show me how he shifted and
he said no. Then I thought about pissing him off and that got me what I wanted.
Sort of. I didn’t necessarily want to be clawed.” She jerked away when he wiped
the long wound down with a rag. “That fucking hurt worse than the claw.”

“Which one of them is about to be killed?
I swear to Christ, I’m going to beat the living shit out of whoever did this to
you.” She laughed. “What the fuck is so funny? One of my brothers hurt my
mate.”

“No they didn’t. Max did it.” He looked
at her, confused. “The man at the gate. He’s a bear. And I don’t know about you
killing him. He has a wife and five kids to support. He used to be a performing
bear for the circus until someone saw him shift. Then it was all over for that
career. I think he said that his trainer knew, but I don’t know how he
couldn’t. Not as good as he was at some of his… Are you all right?”

“Max the Bear from the Three Ring?” She
nodded. “And he’s now guarding the gatehouse?”

“Yes, but I don’t think he wants to be
called Max the Bear. His children don’t know anything about that.” She took his
hand. “That’s why I should go before anyone else comes here and gets hurt.”

He looked at her calf and tried his best
to wrap his mind around what this had to do with Max and him shifting and her
taking off. He looked up at her face and saw that she was serious about this. He
held her leg and sat down on the kitchen chair.

“Okay. I want to start over.” He leaned
down and licked a path the entire length of the wound. “Why did you want Max to
shift?”

“You can’t do that.” She nodded to her
leg. “What if there was an infection or something? You can’t just go around
licking people’s sores and not get hurt by it.”

“My salvia will heal cuts like this one.
See?” He showed her the healing wound. “I can’t do anything about deep punctures,
but I can heal this. Why did you want to see Max shift?”

“I’ve never been a bear. And that makes
sense, I suppose, when you think about it. They say that an animal’s mouth is
cleaner that a human’s. But it could be dangerous if you—” He put his hand over
her mouth and she stopped talking.

“Bear. You’re going to tell me what you
meant by you’ve never been a bear. Are you able to shift?” She nodded, and he
was glad he was seated. “What can you shift into, anything?”

She pulled his hand away. “No, not
anything. I can’t shift into something without a heartbeat or less than fifty
percent of my body weight or mass. And it helps me if I can see the person
shift. I usually don’t have someone to watch like I did Max, but I can work
around that.”

She could shift. He had no idea why that
made him both thrilled and pissed, but it did. He tried to think of anything
but her beneath him as a cat, but couldn’t seem to make his mind get past that.
When he stood up, he started taking off his tie. “You’re going to shift and
we’re going out in the back and play around. Then I’m going to fuck you.” His
shirt was next, along with his jacket. “You’re not getting undressed. I need
you now and I want to take you like a cat.”

“I don’t need to strip. I can shift with
my clothes on and then, when I’m human again, I won’t be naked. I’ve never had
sex as one of my pets.” He grabbed the back of the chair as he thought about
what she was saying. “Ryland, you don’t look so good.”

He moved toward the door and shifted as
soon as the door was open. His pants still clung to his leg and he tore it off
him with his teeth. She came out onto the deck and watched him for several
seconds.

He was ready to go to her when she put
her hands on the rail around her and stretched. Her cat took her in small
measures. He would never be able to describe this to anyone else, neither would
he have believed it. Her cat moved along her body like it was dressing her in
fur.

And holy Christ, she was beautiful.

“I don’t always get the fur right. I can
see animals in the zoo, but they’re different than the ones that are were. Seeing
you like this and all the others, it helps me get a better cat when she comes
out.”

He nodded to her and laid down to wait
for her to come to him.

“I thought I should have been smaller,
more like my size, but you’re not when you shift, are you?”

“No. I have to be bigger as a cat so
that I can dominate others. The male can weigh up to five hundred pounds of
muscle and bone. Other males as a were can be larger too, but not as large as
the male.”
He
watched her leap from the deck.
“Come here, Bronwyn. I want to run with
you.”

“Not yet. I want to show you something.
Please don’t say anything just yet about this. I want you to…I’ve wanted to
show you for weeks.”
She shifted to human again and stood before him for several seconds, dressed as
she had been before. Then she was cat again. Before he could tell her he
believed her, she was bear, then wolf, and then she was human again.

“You’re amazing.”
She moved
toward him slowly and she changed colors from gold to white as she did.
“You
can be anything of any color.”

“Yes. White is actually what I normally
am when I’m a cat. I like it better for some reason. I feel…I don’t know, I
guess I feel like it’s the real me.”

Ryland could understand that. He loved
being a cat, but hadn’t been out to play in months, maybe even years. He stood
up when she got close enough to him and he nipped at her shoulder. When she
took off running he watched her until she was out of sight before he thought to
chase after her. He found her deep in the forest a few minutes later.

They ran through the woods for over an hour.
Every time he was close enough to her to roll her to the earth floor, she’d
take off again. He knew that he could hold her there if he really wanted to,
but he was enjoying himself entirely too much at the moment. When they stopped
by a small pond about four miles from the house they both sat near it and drank
deeply.