Seeing Eye Mate (6 page)

He took a step toward her, his fur lifting with the breeze, and Elizabeth backed up. She twisted her fingers together in front of her. Why was he here and where was Micah? Her belly plummeted. Something was wrong with her mate. Micah would never leave her alone like this. She should have sensed it immediately. Now she smelled the malice on the wind and suddenly she didn’t want to be alone with this shifter anymore.

He took an aggressive stance when she started walking backward. His hackles raised, he pinned his ears back and one side of his top lip curled up to reveal his teeth. Elizabeth held her breath. What reason did he have for attacking? She inched closer to the house. If she could get there, she could lock the door and wait for Micah to come home. If he could come home. She whimpered and covered her mouth with her hand to stifle the noise, not wanting to scare the wolf into action.

It lunged at her anyway with a sharp bark. Elizabeth screamed and twisted to run, but it was on her, pinning her to the ground before she could take another breath. He growled and snarled, drowning out her terror-filled screams. His teeth tore into her clothes and her flesh, ripping off strips of both. Searing pain arced through her body and black spots burst in her vision.

With a pitiful volley of fists, she pummeled the creature, still screaming in excruciating horror, but was no match for the much larger animal. After a few minutes of useless fighting, Elizabeth’s body grew numb. Her blood-slick fingers fell from the tangle of fur she’d grabbed hold of in an attempt to push him off.

A drop of her blood fell from a pointed tooth and plopped on her cheek. She blinked and took a shallow, wrenching breath. Her lungs were on fire with the effort it took to fill them.

The colors were so beautiful, swirling and dancing in the sky above them.

The eerie silence returned, broken only by a faint whistling in her ears and the harsh breathing of the shifter.

She took another breath, shorter than the last. Cocking his head, the wolf licked its chops and stared at her with glowing yellow eyes. He turned, looking into the woods, and Elizabeth saw the long, fine scar bisecting his left upper shoulder. The hairless strip sharply contrasted with the much darker fur surrounding it. He stood and prowled toward the tree line, never looking back. A howl exploded through the stillness like a shotgun.

Within moments, he was gone, loping off into the night.

Her lungs worked hard to force another breath into her near lifeless body.

Leaves rustled a few feet away. Micah was coming, she felt him. She turned her head to the side and watched as he pulled himself by the strength of his arms into the opening. A gash split his temple, dripping a trail of blood in his slow wake. Halfway to her, he pushed himself to his hands and knees and crawled the rest of the way.

She loved him so much. He would be alone now, without her. “Micah,” she whispered and smiled one last time before ascending into the beautiful lights.

“Nooo!” The soulful, anguished cry of a grieving shifter followed her.

“Tieran!”

Her teeth snapped together with Caelan’s powerful shake of her shoulders. She sucked in a deep breath, revitalizing lungs that felt starved for oxygen. Slowly her senses came back to her. She was sweaty and dizzy and had to swallow past the lump in her throat while trying to get her bearings. She and Caelan were in her kitchen. Tieran sat on the counter still impaled on Caelan’s insistent cock. She had to get away from him. Now, before she passed out. With weak hands, she pushed on his chest.

Jesus, it had been so real. More so than any before. Tieran reached a weak hand up to her cheek and wiped at it. She looked at her fingertips, half-expecting them to come away red.

“Let him help you, Tulla.”

She shook her head. No. She didn’t want him to know. Didn’t want what happened with Peter.

“It won’t.”

Caelan pulled out, leaving her feeling empty in more ways than one, and captured her hands, placing them on his shoulders. She heard the rustle of his jeans as he drew them over his hips. He lifted her with his hands beneath her thighs, holding her tightly to him, his semi-erection pressed against her throbbing pussy through his still open fly. Tiny pulses of electricity raced through her womb as he carried her, the friction along her sensitized clit making her gasp.

“I’ve got you, my own. You’re safe.”

His voice was so tender, laced with concern, not scorn. But then, he didn’t know what had just happened, couldn’t know. Wouldn’t know. She would never hand over control to another man again. Especially not to one she didn’t know at all. Regardless of the incredible sex they’d just engaged in.

“You have…to leave.” She could barely whisper. The darkness was closing in fast. Soon she’d be unconscious, only to wake incredibly groggy and disoriented with a pounding head.

“Never. I’ll never leave you now.” He kissed her tenderly on the forehead and lowered her to her bed. She heard herself whimper before the blackness took control.

*

“What the fuck just happened?” Caelan muttered, unfolding the blue and tan plaid blanket from the foot of the bed and covering her loosely.

In the bathroom he ran a washcloth under warm water, then went back to her too-still form. Tieran never moved as he wiped away both of their come from her thighs and pussy.

The sudden sensation of being watched had the hair on his arms standing on end. He whipped around. Nothing. The room was empty, the house silent. He let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding and shook off the eerie feeling.

Caelan turned back to his mate. She had a beautiful body, slim and slightly tanned. Her nipples stood in stiff peaks atop her small, perfect breasts, and he ached to suck one into his mouth, to mark the sweet skin the way he had her shoulder.

With a fingertip, he traced the bite mark that made her his forever. He’d claimed her by introducing his extraordinary DNA into her bloodstream, not to mention her womb. She was his and he’d never felt more proud. Tieran was feisty and stubborn and all his. Now he just had to convince her they were meant to be together. And somehow reconcile with himself the fact he did all this without her consent.

He idly stroked his quickly hardening cock through his open fly and felt disgusted. His mate was unconscious and he wanted to fuck her again. Before he ended up doing more damage, he jerked his hand off his dick and tucked the blanket around her shoulders, hiding her body from his view.

Caelan painfully buttoned himself up. He’d fucked her on the kitchen counter and hadn’t even bothered to take his pants off.
What a charmer, Graham.

In the corner of the room was an overstuffed armchair. He pulled it over next to the bed and slumped into it. Christ, one minute he’d been coming inside her, the next he’d been shaking her just to get a response out of her.

He’d never had a woman lose consciousness on him before, though he had heard of it happening. At least, he hoped to hell that’s all it was, ‘cause it wasn’t something he wanted to happen again. The look on her face had been downright scary. Almost as if she’d been having a seizure.

And then she’d asked him to leave.

“Yeah right,” he scoffed. Like that was going to happen. Leave his mate unprotected? Uh-uh. Not now, not ever. Of course, she wouldn’t understand since he hadn’t even gotten around to telling her he was a shape-shifting wolf. Hell, they hadn’t even gotten past swapping names. The only things he knew about her were from his reports, not from her mouth.

Caelan stretched his legs out. He needed her again and had a feeling he would be in this constant state of arousal forever. With a click, he released his phone from its belt clip and punched in Eli’s number.

“Yeah,” his brother answered.

“E, I’m at Tieran’s.”

“You don’t sound too happy about that.”

“You ever fucked a woman unconscious?”

Eli barked out a laugh. “Once, but then, she was dead drunk. Might have been the alcohol and not my sexual expertise.”

“Hmm.” Caelan stabbed his fingers through his hair.

“I guess she’s good with you?”

“I didn’t get a chance to tell her.”

The silence on the other end of the line spoke volumes.

“You mated with her, possibly impregnated her, but didn’t tell her yet?” Eli’s voice was ripe with disbelief.

“Pretty much.”

“Damn, Cael. I thought we agreed a long time ago, when we found our mates we’d treat them with more respect. At least give them the chance to understand what we are before going on to more drastic measures.”

“Yeah, we did, and when you meet your mate, you can tell me how that goes, because I’m telling you,
you
won’t be able to keep your dick zipped up either.”

Eli snorted. “Okay, so why exactly are you calling me during your post-coital bliss?”

“She’s fucking dead to the world, E. Did you get that, or did you think I was bragging about my prowess in bed?”

“No need to shout, I got you. Tell me what happened.”

Caelan winced and shot a look at Tieran. She was still out even though he was shouting. “Christ. I don’t even know. She came, I came, then bam, she’s gone. Her eyes rolled back, her head lolled to the side, and her body went all rigid. It was like some kind of seizure or something. It took me almost a full minute to shake her out of it.”

“Then what?”

“She starts pushing me away, telling me to leave. Panicking almost.”

“Where is she now?”

“Bed.” He had to stare hard at the blanket draped across her chest to make sure she was still breathing. She hadn’t moved yet.

“Damn.”

“What do you mean, ‘damn’?”

“Cael, another file came through the fax a little while ago. A buried one someone went to a lot of trouble to hide. I was kind of hoping she’d tell you about it first. When you put her name in the system, it alerted someone in Florida.”

“So?”

Tieran shifted on the bed, the first movement she’d made since he laid her there. He reached over and recovered her with the dislodged blanket.

“So she was involved in a serial rapist case down there when she was younger.”

“Fuck. No.” Not his mate. Please God don’t let that have happened to the woman he’d just made love to. The woman who’d shown no inhibitions in letting him fuck her.

“No, not that,” Eli spat. Caelan could almost see Eli’s hand dismissing him and let out a breath of relief. “But she was almost instrumental in putting the bastard behind bars.”

“How are you
almost
instrumental?”

“She’s psychic, Cael. She has visions, sees things somehow.”

Caelan shot out of the chair and stared down at his mate. Is that what had happened? Had she had a vision of some sort as he ejaculated deep inside her pussy? It appeared they both had secrets, which should make his a tiny bit easier for her to accept.

A cold blast of air pressed against his back. Caelan jerked around, looking for a possible source. It wasn’t the first time he’d been bombarded by an unexplained sensation inside Tieran’s home. Drafty fucking house, he decided when he couldn’t come up with a source. He turned back to Tieran. Her face was drawn tight with whatever was troubling her.

He found himself rubbing unconsciously at another set of goose bumps attacking the bare flesh of his arms. Had she had some sort of vision? About him? If not, then what?

He moved to stand by the window where he saw a man walking a dog on the sidewalk. The dog lifted its head and stared at Caelan, its tail wagging ferociously, before letting out a bark in greeting.

“You still there, Bro?”

Caelan cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

“The police didn’t believe her. She took a lot of heat, so much that her parents moved back here, where her grandmother lived. Florida police eventually arrested the man she’d told them about, but they couldn’t find her and closed the case without talking to her again.”

“Son of a bitch. Then maybe she already knows I’m a shifter.”

His breath puffed out in a neat white cloud, frosting the window and making him drop the phone. It was seventy fucking degrees outside! And not much cooler in the house. No way should he be able to see his goddamn breath!

“Cael. Cael?”

“What?” he hissed, picking up the phone and putting it back to his ear.

“Cael, if she is even halfway able to see our Mate Killer, and he somehow finds out, she’s as good as dead.”

“I’m aware of that. Fuck! E, I need you to bring me some things. It looks like I’m going to be here awhile.”

“What?” Eli sounded surprised.

“Would you have me leave her here unprotected?” Caelan growled. What was his brother thinking?

“No. Jesus, that didn’t come out right. Maybe you could just get it over with and tell her about us. Then get her the hell out to the ranch where you know she’ll be safe.”

Caelan sighed. “She’s not ready for that yet. Besides, I have a feeling she had a vision and that’s why she’s unconscious.”

“Do you know that for sure?”