In that moment, Malcolm gazed at her with a kind of expression that he’d never shown her before. It was a breed of wonder, a kind of gentleness and of astonishment. Beneath the ballistic sound of rockets at the climax of the display around them, Malcolm took the umbrella in one hand and cupped her face with the other.
She closed her eyes as he leaned in and, when his lips softly brushed hers in the first, tender moments of a kiss, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. It was a kiss that reflected the happiness he’d awakened within her, in the middle of this tiny lake, beneath a rain storm of man-made magic.
He groaned against her lips and took possession of her mouth, his hand sliding to her nape to hold her in place. She melted beneath his touch and let him take control. He was better at it.
But then he was breaking the kiss, drawing back just enough to gaze down into her eyes and whisper across her lips. “You’ll make me lose control of them, Charlie,” he told her, his grip tightening in her hair. She realized he was talking about the humans; the humans whose minds he was willing not to see them. His once-green eyes had again gone completely black with hunger. “Not here,” he told her. A single shake of his head.
She shuddered as he released her and set down the umbrella. The fountains had died down to a low, soft sway. Cole picked up the oars and began to row them back to the private walk where his men waited for them.
Charlie tried to calm the erratic beating of her heart. Moisture had gathered between her legs and, because she wasn’t wearing underwear, she was more sensitive to the sensation. Distractedly, she rubbed at the inside of her right wrist. She lifted her legs and hugged them to her chest as she gazed across at Cole and watched the taut muscles of his broad chest flex and relax beneath the tight material of his t-shirt. She thought of how those muscles would hold her down; how warm his body would be against hers. She rubbed distractedly at her other wrist, this time, harder.
She hissed in pain, but barely realized what it was that was hurting. She was too wrapped up in everything that was Malcolm Cole. She wanted him to say something, anything, just so that she could hear his amazing voice and that sexy accent of his.
She wondered if she were falling in love with him….
Again, she drew in a sharp breath, and Cole’s gaze narrowed. He followed her movements as she wrapped one hand around her other wrist and squeezed.
“Ow…” she hissed, now fully aware of the dawning pain. “It hurts,” she whispered. She’d said the words before she could stop herself, and he heard them loud and clear.
They bumped against the walk and Cole was immediately up and stepping out of the boat. Just as quickly, he was reaching in, lifting her into his arms, and hauling her out as well. He set her down in front of him and gave her no time to steady herself before he was grasping her right arm in his left hand and shoving the sleeve of her sweater up with the other.
He froze. Charlie could hear his heart skip. And then it slammed against the inside of his chest with a fierce thud. “No.” His eyes were wide in his handsome face, and they were no longer black. They were a vivid, emerald green that glowed eerily in the darkness.
Roughly, Cole took hold of her other arm and shoved its sleeve up as well, exposing the matching red mark on her left wrist.
“God, no,” he choked, “No, no, no….” He released her and then, in what seemed like one clean, swift movement, he ripped the leather bands off of his own arms and gazed down at the insides of his wrists.
His marks were gone.
Chapter Seventeen, The Showdown
“Take him,” Lily turned to her husband and waited as the tall, black-haired, blue-eyed man gently took the infant boy out of her arms. “My phone is vibrating.”
“I know. I can hear it,” Daniel said.
“Of course you can, Superman.” Lily strode to the purse that was sitting on a divan across the room and unzipped it. She pulled out the phone, glanced at the number on the screen, and frowned.
She hated it when it said “private.” Unfortunately, she knew a good number of people who might have numbers that were “private,” so she couldn’t afford to let it go. She sighed and popped it open. “This is Lily.”
“God damn it, Kane, why didn’t you tell me?”
Lily blinked and went stone cold. It was Cole’s voice on the other end of the line and she had never heard him so livid before.
“You knew! You knew and you didn’t tell me! Why?”
A flash of a vision and suddenly Lily was remembering. Shit, she thought. “Calm down and tell me what’s going on, Cole.”
“What the fuck do you think is going on, Kane? The marks transferred to my mate. That’s what is going on. And now they’re heating up and hurting her.” There was a brief shuffling pause and Lily imagined that Cole had removed the phone from his mouth and was squeezing it in his hand, trying with all of his might not to break the instrument in his rage.
She waited for him to put it to his ear again, and as she waited, she glanced at her husband. Daniel’s blue eyes were glowing. He could hear Cole loud and clear and the man’s anger was forcing Daniel into fight mode.
She tried to give him a look of reassurance. His own expression didn’t change. He held their son in one arm, gently moving him back and forth, but his handsome features were hard and unforgiving and his gaze was locked on hers.
Eventually, she heard Cole’s breathing once more. She interrupted him before he could speak. “Cole! Listen to me carefully. There isn’t much time, okay?”
Silence. Rage and Wrath and Redness. But silence.
“You didn’t transfer the curse to her, Cole. Not exactly. It lifted from you, yes. And she has a bit of it now, yes. But it’s different – ”
“I swear to God, Kane, if you don’t tell me how to fix this right now, I’ll-”
Lily gasped as the phone was suddenly torn from her hand and Daniel placed it to his own ear. “Speak like that to my mate again, Cole, and I don’t care how fucking powerful you are, I will die trying to kill you.”
“Put your wife back on the phone, chief,” Cole hissed into his ear.
Daniel closed the phone, disconnecting the line.
Lily stared at him with wide eyes. “Daniel, no! How could you do that? Charlie needs me right now!”
“She has Cole – more power to her – and the only people who need you are standing in front of you, Lily.” He pinned her with a stark sapphire gaze. The baby in the crook of his arm made a low mewling sound.
Lily glanced down at him. “Give him to me,” she said softly. Daniel handed her their child and the infant immediately wrapped his fingers in Lily’s long golden hair, pulling gently.
“This is too important for you to go all machismo on me, Daniel.” She turned toward the hall that led to the nursery. “I’m going to call him back, unless you call him back yourself.” It wasn’t so much a threat as a promise. At least she was giving him a choice.
She put her son in his crib, swaddled him, and then returned to the living room. Daniel was strapping on his shoulder holster. She watched her husband as his ample muscles stretched and flexed, taut beneath the black t-shirt he wore.
“Daniel, did you hear me?” she asked as she looked around for her phone. “What’s happening is very serious.”
Daniel shook his head. “Out of my jurisdiction,” he replied coolly. Then he turned around, pulled on his wrist watch, and shoved his loaded guns into the shoulder holster. “And I also don’t care.”
“Daniel, where’s my phone?”
“Good night, cher,” Daniel strode across the room, his long legs eating up the distance easily. He ran a hand through his wife’s soft, silken locks and pulled her in for a deep, possessive kiss. When he broke it, almost a full minute later, he gazed down into her golden eyes and whispered, “I’ll be home soon.”
* * * *
Cole re-pocketed the phone without giving it another thought and focused his attention once more on Charlie. Now was not the
time to lose control.
Charlie, herself, was trying to be calm, and he was impressed with her bravery. She had no idea what was happening to her or what was about to happen, and yet she faced it with her shoulders rolled back and her chin raised and her teeth bared.
Right now, she had her hands wrapped around her wrists and clenched to her stomach. “You’re good at a lot of things, Malcolm, but I gotta say that diplomacy isn’t one of them,” she said softly through clenched teeth.
He moved forward and gently took her arms to gaze down at them. “I would have to agree with you on that one, luv,” he said. “Now, listen. I’m going to explain this to you, because I don’t know how much time we have.”
She waited.
“These marks were placed on my wrists several decades ago by a Roman gypsy.”
“Your curse?” Charlie asked.
“Yes.” He frowned. And then he realized that Lily must have let Charlie in on his little secret. “Kane told you?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry you have to go through all of that.” She winced as the pain from the marks must have intensified.
“Ah Christ luv, you’re about to be a hell of a lot more sorry. Because that curse may have been transferred to you.” He gazed deeply into her eyes. “And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
Charlie gazed up at him steadily as she seemed to digest this. And then she looked down at her arms. “You mean I’m going to pop into some gory, bloody place where a murder has just happened and get to see mutilated bodies of innocent women and children?” She barely whispered the question. It was as if she were simply thinking her worst, nightmarish thoughts aloud.
It tore at Cole’s heart in a familiar, horrible way. It was reminiscent of walking into the camp at Dachau for the first time or witnessing his first serial murder and not being able to get the stench of innocent shed blood out of his nostrils for what felt like months afterwards…. And now that sickening pain was back because he knew that Charlie would be feeling it for him.
His gut clenched tight and he felt nauseated. Desperate. His head began to pound with the frustrated helplessness that was riding him. He would do anything to prevent her from having to witness what he’d witnessed. But this was one thing he was powerless against.
“Charlie, we have to get you to safe ground,” he said quickly. He noticed that his voice was shaking. He had to get her to some stable place where no one would be walking and no cameras would be monitoring her and no one else could be standing when she popped back into place the second time. And he needed to do it fast. He looked up to find that his men were all watching him, their stricken looks reflecting his own. They couldn’t believe this was happening any more than he could.
In the next moment, Jake was beside him as if he’d sensed that something was wrong and had pulled himself away from whatever he’d been doing with Mary Jane. Jake gently took him by the elbow and drew his attention.
“The men’s restroom. We can rope it off – out of order,” the blonde werewolf suggested.
Cole nodded. It was the only place in the hotel that wouldn’t have cameras, and they didn’t have the time to make it all the way to the suites at the top. “That’ll do.” He took Charlie’s hand and began to lead her down the walk toward the six-foot wall that Caige had helped her down. He climbed up first and then waited for Jake to boost her up. His men climbed the wall around him and, as a large group, they headed back into the casino.
They passed a man in gray overalls with a mop and a bucket, and Caige stopped to speak with him. Cole left him to his bribery and continued through the casino, the rest of his pack in tow. When they arrived at the men’s restroom, he reached in with his mental feelers and forced everyone out.
Three human men left the lavatory, seemingly at once. When the last shuffled quickly past and out of the way, Cole hurriedly took Charlie inside. Jake turned his back to the door from the outside, guarding it until Caige and the janitor could arrive with their sign.
The door shut and Cole turned to his mate. “Charlie, listen to me,” he began. “The pain is going to get worse. And then you’ll experience a sort of…” He searched frantically for the right term. “A ripping sensation.” Even as he said it, he broke out into a cold sweat. Why did she have to hear this? Why did she have to go through this now?
He hated the world in that moment.
“When that happens,” he continued, though Charlie had visibly paled, “you’ll flash out of here and wind up somewhere else. I need you to do this one thing for me, Charlie. Promise me that you will keep your eyes closed. Don’t open them, little one. Not for anything, understand?” He gently cupped her face in his hands and implored her with his stark, verdant gaze. “Promise me, Charlie. Promise me you’ll shut your eyes tight.”
Charlie’s mouth opened as if she were about to speak, but no sound came out. And then her eyes widened and her body went rigid. Cole could hear her heart hammering hard and smell the adrenaline running through her veins. They both looked down at her wrists, as one, and watched as the marks etched there began to glow.
“No, no… Charlie….” Cole pulled Charlie into his arms and shut his eyes. He couldn’t let her go. He couldn’t let this happen. It wasn’t right. There had to be some justice in the world. At some point, the pain – the wrongness – had to end, didn’t it?
Charlie made a harsh sound, one of pain and fear, and Cole’s grip tightened. “Shut your eyes, Charlie!” he commanded, one more time.
And then things were changing around him. He felt drunk, suddenly. Topsy-turvy. The world slanted around him and fell away, flashing into a redness that was all-too-familiar. Confusion hit him hard, fuzzing up his consciousness, but his grip on his mate never lessened. It never let up.
She screamed beneath him as pain undoubtedly ripped through her body, riding up her spine – as it always had his. It was the most miserable moment of Cole’s life.
But it was short-lived. The world settled in around him once more, the bright reddish light melting into individual colors and the ground beneath them once more leveling itself out.
“What the –”
It was a man’s deep voice. Familiar and hated.
Cole opened his eyes and looked down. Charlie was still in his arms and, bless her, she held her eyes shut tight, just as he’d asked.
“Well, I must say that this is unexpected. You’re early, Cole. And you’ve brought company.”
Cole whipped around to face Phelan, his fangs and claws instantly extending, his eyes at once glowing like flame-lit emeralds. Across the room stood Gabriel, his demeanor and dress one of a man who had never been injured and was not about to do what he had obviously been planning to do.
Cole’s stomach twisted nauseatingly as his eyes fell upon the young woman strapped to a chair beside the werewolf. Her left eye was swollen and bruising. Her face was sticky with streams of dried tears. Cole could smell faint traces of blood and his eyes skirted down the woman’s form to find that her wrists had been rubbed raw where she’d attempted to wiggle free of the ropes binding her.
“David…” Charlie had stepped back from Cole and was glaring at Phelan, her body still giving off residual shock-waves of receding pain, her blood now more cortisol and adrenaline than white and red cells. She was livid and hurt and shocked and her lithe form stood rigid and trembling with pent-up emotion. The small, sharp extended fangs in her mouth and the glowing ice-blue eyes were testament to that much.
Cole’s gaze cut from her back to Phelan.
Gabriel was staring at Charlie. He was apparently as surprised as she was. But there was something darker in that gaze. Cole recognized it easily for what it was. He’d felt that kind of desire, himself.
Phelan’s gaze skirted to the red marks on Charlie’s wrists – and then to Cole’s wrists, which were bare. “My, my,” he half-whispered. “Isn’t this an interesting development.”
Cole’s growl was low in his throat, but it was so deep and powerful that it shook t
he windows, which rattled in their panes. Necklaces and Mardi Gras beads that hung from the mirror on the dresser began to tremble against the glass. One of the pictures of the little boy and girl slid from its casing and drifted to the carpet.
The woman tied to the chair whimpered. But there was hope in her eyes where there had been none moments before.
“You sick, ruthless bastard,” Charlie hissed, moving to take a step toward the man at the other end. Gabriel’s sapphire eyes flashed in challenge and the corners of his mouth turned up in anticipation.
Cole’s hand shot out to press against Charlie’s chest, staying her in her advance. He turned a warning glance on her. She pulled her gaze off of Phelan to stare up at Malcolm and he hoped that she would understand.
He saw it in her eyes. She understood.
She just didn’t care.
He could sense the string of reason snap within her a sheer, split second before she bolted into action. He should have been expecting it. She’d been through too much at Phelan’s hands. There was only so much a person could take, werewolf or not.
Charlie’s form blurred beside him as she yanked off the sweater he’d given her and then raced toward Phelan, all fangs and claws and deadly intent.
Gabriel crouched low and met her, his arms up in defense, his own sharp fangs extending as she took them both to the ground in a flurry of indistinct and hazy forms. They moved far too fast for the human eye to follow and Cole could tell, with a single glance in her direction, that the human woman tied to the chair was bewildered. Perhaps she thought she’d gone mad and had snapped beneath the traumatic pressure of this nightmarish series of events.
Everything was happening too fast, even for him. Nothing made sense. Charlie moved with a speed that, until now, only Malcolm had ever displayed. Her moves were sharp and impossibly quick and incredibly strong. In the space of a few short seconds, she and Phelan seemed to become one super-human fighting machine.