I guess that explains why the strays didn’t attack him until he took a swing.” Ethan wiped a smear of pizza sauce from the corner of his mouth with the back of one hand. “He’s their source.”
“Yeah, but he did take that swing, and he didn’t feed them information on purpose,” I insisted, glancing from one stony male face to another. “He fought alongside us, and even if the strays were inclined to spare him for further use, they won’t be now. And they’re probably still out there…” I let my sentence fade into silent censure, aimed pointedly at Marc.
“He’ll be fine.” Marc grabbed another slice of pizza and tore into it, speaking again only once he’d swallowed. “If getting rid of him were that easy, I’d have done it weeks ago. He’s probably in the front office right now, renting the room next to ours.”
The rest of the meal passed as Marc and the other guys got caught up after more than two months apart. After dinner, I checked on Manx to find her curled up asleep with the baby, both of them fully clothed, a paper plate scattered with pizza crusts on the floor beside the bed. I pulled a blanket from the empty bed to cover them, then closed the connecting door on my way out.
Ethan and Vic were already arguing over the remote control, so Marc helped me into my jacket and ripped pants, and we took one half-full box of pizza back to our room.
The door closed at my back, cutting off the biting January cold, and Marc’s hands were all over me, warming me everywhere my skin was exposed. Then exposing even more.
My hand opened, and the pizza box thumped to the table. His fingers slid beneath my jacket, pushing it gently down my arms and over the bandaged bite marks. The jacket hit the floor and I stepped over it, then winced and nearly went down when my full weight hit my injured leg.
Marc caught me, then lifted me. I wrapped my legs around his hips and pulled his ripped, bloodstained shirt off one arm at a time, while he supported my back with first one hand then the other. His shirt hit the floor. I nibbled on his collarbone. Four steps later he set me on the edge of the bed, and I let him pull my ruined pants off. His followed quickly as I pulled my tank top over my head and squirmed out of my underwear.
And finally, after months apart, we were alone, with nothing between us but memories and need…
Later, I lay next to Marc on the bed farthest from the door, propped up on my right elbow, my chin in my hand. I was bruised all over, and I ached from head to toe after the fight, but I pushed my discomfort aside, determined to focus on Marc for what little time we’d have together.
“You hate it, don’t you?” My left index finger traced the long-healed claw-mark scars that had brought him into my life fifteen years earlier, when he was infected by the werecat who’d killed his mother. My parents felt responsible for him because he was orphaned and infected in our territory, so my mother nursed him through scratch fever, then my father made him the first and only stray ever accepted into a Pride.
“Hate what?” His chest rose and sank beneath my hand with each breath, and our mingled scents surrounded me with an almost physical presence. It was intoxicating, just being near him, but the knowledge that his company was only temporary kept me from being truly content.
I ran my fingers over each hard ridge of his stomach. “Living here. Surrounded by humans.” Marc had lived with us for half of his life—for all of his life as a werecat—until my father had been forced to choose between us. Marc was exiled as part of the under-the-table deal that eliminated execution as a possible sentence at my hearing.
Marc went willingly. He would do nothing to endanger my life, even if it meant living without me. But that was proving every bit as hard as we’d known it would be. Marc hadn’t lived among humans since the day he was scratched, and had, in fact, ceased thinking like one around the same time. He no longer knew how to relate to humans, which probably frustrated him even more than it would a Pride cat, considering he’d been born among their ranks.
He shook his head slowly, as if considering. “I don’t hate it. It does no good to hate something you can’t change.”
“How very Zen of you.” I smiled skeptically at his unusual display of composure, because we could change his location. As soon as my father’s position on the council was secure, I would do whatever it took to get Marc back into the south-central Pride.
But in the meantime… “Have you made any friends? Other than Dan Painter?”
“I don’t need friends,” he insisted, turning his head to grin up at me. “I just need you to visit more often.”
Unfortunately, we both knew that was impossible, especially now.
My father had hired Brian Taylor—Ed Taylor’s youngest son, and Carissa’s brother—to help pick up the slack when he’d been forced to exile Marc. Brian was a year my junior, which made him the youngest enforcer on the payroll. But he was also a quick learner, and eager to impress his new Alpha and earn the respect of his fellow toms. In short, the kid had real potential.
Still, he didn’t have anywhere near the experience Marc had, so while we weren’t technically shorthanded, neither were we truly running at max capacity. I’d been temporarily paired with Vic, my father’s right-hand man now that Marc was gone, and we were always working. Always. Patrolling the territorial boundaries, chasing down trespassers, teaching my fellow enforcers the partial Shift—after Marc mastered it, Jace and Vic picked it up quickly—and working with Kaci during every spare moment.
But this particular moment was mine. Ours.
“I’m here now.” I laid my palm flat on Marc’s chest, so I could feel as well as hear his heart beat in sync with my own.
“So you are…” He rose to kiss me, and I lay back on the pillow, sighing when his delicious weight pressed me into the mattress. I arched my neck and let my hands wander his torso as his mouth trailed over my chin and down my throat. Every hard plane on his body was as familiar to me as my own face. I knew how he’d gotten each scar, and at one time or another I’d tasted them all.
“Maybe we could take an extra day,” I murmured into his ear, rubbing his thigh with my knee as I wrapped my good leg around him. “Surely full-scale attack and a slashed radiator hose warrant a bit of a delay….”
“Somehow I doubt the council will see it that way.” His right hand slid up the back of my thigh, then cupped my rear, shifting me gently into position.
“Screw the council—” I whispered, not surprised to hear my voice go hoarse with all-new need. One romp wasn’t enough to alleviate the ache of a two-month absence. That would take many, many…
Three brisk knocks on the door drenched the moment like a dunk in an ice-cold pond.
Marc sighed, and collapsed on top of me for a moment before rolling off to search for his pants. “Hang on!” he growled, as the knocking started again.
“Don’t let me interrupt…” my brother called through the door. “I’ll just stand out here and freeze my balls off while you two get reacquainted. No hurry.”
“Damn it, Ethan!” I stepped into my underwear, one hand on the pressboard bedside table for balance as I favored my injured leg. Then I pulled my tank top over my head and tugged it into place, already hopping toward the entrance as Marc zipped his pants. He settled onto the end of the bed with a sigh, and motioned for me to go ahead.
I slid the chain free and twisted the dead bolt, then jerked open the door to find my youngest brother grinning at me, hands stuffed into the pockets of a jacket much too thin to ward off the biting January cold. “I swear, you two have no self-control. You’re like animals.”
“Asshole.” But I couldn’t summon real malice, knowing he wouldn’t have interrupted us without a good reason. I tried to step aside and let him in, but I wasn’t fast enough. Ethan brushed past me into the warmth of the bedroom, and I stumbled back. My weight hit my injured leg and I hissed, then fell on my ass with all the