AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You have no idea who I am,” she growled. “And no clue what I will do to protect what is mine.”
Blade’s own fangs descended as his cock positively pounded with need under the drapes of red. “I pray you do not find him.”
“Pray for him, not me.”
With that, she ran off without a sound, ducking into the pines, moving with the kind of coordination that one rarely saw in humans, but that was true of every nimble animal of the forest. In her absence, he exhaled and fought a wave of mourningso great, he felt certain it would knock him off his summit perch and send him tumbling to his death in the valley far, far below.
As devastating as it was to think he would never see her again, there was something worse.
For the first time in his life, he hated that someone thought he was an asshole.
TEN
LYDIA PULLED THESUV she’d borrowed under the porte cochere and parked it at the stone mansion’s front door again. After cutting the engine, she left the blacked-out box where she’d found it. As she jogged up to the fortified entrance, she was pissed off and still talking to thatsymphathin her head.
Who knew there were so many different ways to use the word “asshole.”
Courtesy of C.P. Phalen’s state-of-the-art security monitoring, her entry into the house was facilitated by one of the guards, and as he unlocked the bolting mechanism and opened things, she ripped by him—and his frozen, expressionless face reminded her of Blade’s rankling superiority. Which made her want to punch something—
Lydia stopped dead two strides into the black-and-white foyer.
The scent of blood was precisely the kind of crappy news flash that the night seemed determinedto keep providing, and the air was so saturated with copper that she expected to see a decapitated body down on the marble-tiled floor. Glancing back at the guard, the man was shutting the door, and then he returned to his sentry spot by the archway into the library that looked out over the back acreage. It was on her tongue to ask him if he smelled it, too, but then he probably didn’t. She sometimes forgot how much better her nose was.
The guard swiveled his head toward her, like he was remote-controlled. “You forget something outside?”
“Ah, no. Thanks.”
He nodded and resumed his forward-facing stance, his eyes staring into the middle distance. Standing there in that little alcove—which must have been built specifically for a statue—he was like part of a chessboard, the knight come to life.
Tracking the scent, she went down the hall toward her and Daniel’s bedroom, but thank God the blood wasn’t his—
The study was wide open, which wasn’t normal, and as Lydia closed in on the floor-to-ceiling aperture, the scent exploded in her nose.
Oh, God. C.P.
She spoke up. “Hello, is everything all right—”
Across the austere space, a door into a private half bath was thrown wide, and the red pool on the white marble floor gleamed in an evil way.
“No!”
She bolted across and swung around the doorjamb without entering because she didn’t want to step in the puddle. The toilet hadn’t been flushed, and the white bowl was bright—
“She’s okay.”
Lydia spun back. Daniel had entered the study, and the sight of him in his sweatshirt, with his jeans hanging off his hips, his feet bare, and his cane angled to support his weight, made her want to cry. As she ran to him, she was babbling all kinds of things, but then she was up against him and just trying not to faint.
“Is it the baby?” she mumbled into his shoulder.
“You knew?”
Lydia pulled back and nodded. “But it wasn’t my story to tell. I caught the change in her scent, and then I—I didn’t keep anything from you, I swear—”
“Shh. It’s okay.” He stroked her arms. “She’s medically stable. There was nothing anybody could—whoa, take a deep breath.”
Such good advice. That she tried to take. “She wanted that pregnancy. I am so sorry—where is she—”
“Upstairs.”
