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The same growl he’d made when he was a beast in the woods rumbles through the car as he pulls into a driveway that takes us up a mountain. When the trees clear, a beautiful two-story home with stone columns and a wraparound porch fills the space. The sun gleams off large front windows.
He throws the car into Park and growls as he exits.
Not sure what to do, I stay in the car.
Cade stands in front of the hood with his back to me and his fists at his sides. His broad back stretches the material of his shirt as he breathes.
After a long minute, I get out of the car and walk to him. “I’m sorry I made you angry.” Half expecting him to transform into a manticore, I touch his arm gently.
In an instant, he pulls me into his arms, wraps himself around me, and holds me against his body. “You never need to apologize to me. I know she is your sister, but her behavior is abhorrent. The man is a pig. How is it that your mother has sided with this marriage?”
Loving the feel of him all around me, I relax against him. “Mom goes with the flow. She likes Derek because he’s very wealthy. My father was less supportive, but eventually decided he may as well go along.”
“Why did you go to their wedding?” He cups my cheek and bends his knees so he can see my eyes.
“I don’t know. Maybe to prove that I could, that I’m over him and her. To be the bigger person. Then I got here and it was too horrible and all I’ve done is run away and hide.” My laugh sounds as sad as it feels.
Even in the short time that I’ve known Cade, it’s easy to see that he wants to say something more.
“It’s okay. I know I’m a loser for being here and letting them walk all over me.” I walk to the porch, step up, and give the rocking chair a push. It makes the most wonderful sound on the wood deck and I wonder what it’s like to sit here and have coffee in the morning.
“That’s not what I was thinking, Leona. They should treat you with more respect, but I’m glad you’re here with me, regardless of the circumstances.” He slips his hand into mine.
My tears start, and I throw myself against him and sob. “I’m sorry. I never cry.”
He cups the back of my head and caresses my back. “Maybe it’s just what you need.” Lifting me as if I weigh nothing, he carries me inside and sits with me in his lap on one of three long gray couches with red and black throw pillows.
I hate crying at all, but crying in front of someone is the worst. I sniffle and pull myself together. The house is a mix of rustic and modern with a cathedral ceiling and steps at the back wall. Behind the couch, the kitchen stretches along one full wall, with an island and stools. A dining table stands in the front portion of the house, and a large hand-hewn post at the corner separates the kitchen from the dining room. The cabinets are natural oak with glass fronts on the very top ones.
I sniffle again. “Nice house.”
His smile is everything and goes right to my heart.
“May I use your bathroom?” I badly need to wash my face and blow my nose.
Nodding, he points to the stairs. “Under the steps, you’ll see a door to the powder room. If you need more space, there are two bathrooms upstairs.”
I wiggle from his lap, completely turned-on by how good he feels, no matter where we’re touching. “The powder room will do.”
It takes me a few minutes to get myself calm enough so that my eyes aren’t red and my nose has stopped running. Any makeup I applied this morning is gone, but at least the cold water helped with my swollen nose and eyes.
He’s still sitting on the couch, but now he’s at one end. His gaze never strays from me as I make my way around the coffee table and sit on the other end of the same couch.
I like the way he’s grouped three large couches around the table to fill the extremely large room. “Tell me everything.”
There’s a slight twitch in his lips. “Let me see if I can remember all that you asked. First, you want to know what you saw last night. Well, you saw my manticore form. I was born this way to a mother and father who were also shifters. We lived in a community of monsters in the Rocky Mountains. My mother became ill about eighty years ago and wanted to come back here to the place where she was born. She died here and soon after, my father also died. That’s often the case with mates, when one dies, the other doesn’t last long. I could have gone back west, but I like it here so I stayed. Four days ago, while in my manticore form, I was hunting a deer and someone shot me with a dart. I wasn’t able to shift back to human. If you hadn’t pulled the dart, I would never have been able to shift back, as I was losing my humanity.
“That covers what I am and what you saw. I don’t know why anyone would want to hurt me, but it’s not the first time someone has found out about monsters and thought they might gain something by capturing us. I’m not interesting in my human form, so keeping me a manticore would be beneficial to a circus or something like that. I can’t say for sure, because I don’t know who shot me.”
When he doesn’t continue, I draw a long breath. “That leaves why you’re with me instead of finding out who did that to you.”
He grins and slowly crawls toward me on the couch. “You forgot about why you want me so fiercely.”
Swallowing my sudden trepidation and wishing I had kept my big mouth shut, I say, “I didn’t forget. I guess I was hoping you had.”
Running his nose along my throat and down my chest to the crease between my tits, he breathes me in. “I won’t forget any of this.” His eyes glow gold like the manticore’s. “I’m with you because I want you as much as you want me. More maybe.”
I shift so that I can look him in the eyes. “Impossible.”
