Chapter Fifteen
Silence smothered the car ride back. Cato wasn’t sure exactly what had taken place in that women’s bathroom, but whatever it was, it didn’t look very good for him.
When they stopped outside her place, Wendy didn’t wait for him to open the door for her but instead stomped her way to the house. Once at the door, she stopped in the frame.
Cato stepped out to head after her. Maybe Wendy was pissed about his friend upsetting her friend. He could understand that.
“Just what the hell kind of crap are you trying to pull?” she said from the door.
Cato stopped where he was, just a few feet from her, and stared at the very angry woman in front of him. “I don’t understand.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, pushing up her breasts in such a way that distracted him more than anything.
“I’m not going to be the other woman,” she snapped. “I don’t know just who you are trying to run from, but if there is some fated women you’re supposed to be with, don’t go dragging me into your drama.” She shook her head. “It’s not damn fair!”
Cato stared at her for a moment, not totally sure he was following the conversation. “Other woman?”
She jabbed him hard in the chest with her finger.
“Don’t play stupid with me. Jamie told me about your whole fated thing,” she said with a bitter laugh. “She overheard some of the wives of the hybrids talking about it. It all makes sense now. All the stuff about making choices.”
Her whole body shook as she spoke, her anger and pain clear to him.
“I’m don’t want to be played with,” she said and made her way inside. “Good-bye, Cato.”
Faster than either of them expected, Cato had her in his arms, unwilling to let her just close the door on his heart like that.
“I don’t know what you were told, but there is no other woman. It’s always been you. The fates made the choice that my heart already knew was right, and they led me to you.”
Wendy stood with her mouth open for a moment, her gaze still pinned on his.
“Now I’m confused,” she whispered.
Cato nodded. “Then let me explain.”
Wendy stepped out of his arms, and for a moment, he worried she might shut the door on him again. She stepped inside.
“Let’s talk,” she said.
Wendy watched as Cato closed the door and made his way inside. They sat on the couch, her emotions still on high, and she was not quite sure what the hell was going on. Everything had made sense at the bar, but suddenly she was a jumble all over again.
“The term we use is Vestal,” he said. “It’s like a purified woman sent from the gods. One half of the heart of a hybrid. Or at least that’s how it’s told,” he mumbled.
“So this is an old wives tale? Some religious myth?”
Cato looked over to her and shook his head. “We used to think so, but more and more we know it to be true. The Vestal is a woman. Her scent is made to draw the hybrid. The two pull each other in with their pheromones. But it’s even more than that.”
Wendy blinked a few times. More?
“There is one Vestal for a hybrid. One chance at happiness. Once they have bonded, there is no going back for the hybrid.”
Wendy kicked off her heels and tucked them under her legs on the couch.
“And how does the bonding happen? Is it like a marriage?”
He shrugged. “Sort of. It’s like a bonding of the souls.”
She noticed he’d aptly avoided her other question. “How?” she said bluntly.
“You are my bonded,” he said. “My heart, body, and soul are already yours.”
She opened her mouth and closed it. This was far heavier than she anticipated. Somehow, she had tied herself to Cato. What’s more, she wasn’t tossing him out the door.
Wendy had never really thought of herself as the marrying sort. Maybe a long-term boyfriend, but marriage? Yet when he talked about being bonded, the very idea of it just seemed right. Not just seemed, felt right, in her heart, maybe even in her soul.
“You don’t have to love me,” Cato said when she hadn’t spoken for some time. “I’m content to just be by your side, but you need to know my feelings. I should have been honest last night before we did anything.”
She looked over at him. His face was far more uncertain than she’d ever seen him.
Cato was worried.
Her heart ached at the sight of it, and before she even knew what she was doing, Wendy was moving. She straddled his lap and kissed him on the lips.
It wasn’t the searing sort they had shared the night before. This one contained something even more. A feeling. Something more than the words she couldn’t seem to find.
When she pulled away, Wendy stared into his soft amber eyes.
“I’m content to be by your side as well,” she whispered.
This time she kissed him again. With a bit more passion than what had been there before, an aching need that never seemed to leave when he was around.
Slowly she undid the buttons to his shirt but stopped when his hands clasped over her own. When she leaned back, she could see the fear there in his eyes.
“Maybe we should go to the bedroom,” he said.
Wendy frowned. “I want to see you.”
Cato looked away from her and nodded.
She leaned back on his lap as she popped each of the buttons. When she was finished, she pulled the soft cotton away and gasped.
Cato wanted her hands on him. To feel her against him. To think he wasn’t some freak, but that’s exactly what he was.
He pulled his arms out of his shirt and placed it on the couch next to him.
Wendy placed her small hands on his chest. His muscles tightened under her touch. With slow deliberation, she ran her fingers over the puckered spots that dotted his chest. The scars that were the physical manifestation of his pain.
“Burns,” she said softly.
Cato hated them. A sign of his weakness. It was always there, reminding him of just how easily a person’s rights could be taken away.
“I was just a teen then,” he said. “One of the Horatius Group guards wanted to teach me a lesson after I tried to run on him.”
“He burned you like this?”
Cato turned his face away from her. He didn’t want her to see this side of him. The one that still felt the pain from it all.
“They held me down as he burned me over and over again.”
Cato could still feel the sizzle of his skin and smell the god-awful stench that filled the air.
He jumped when soft lips kissed a sensitive scar on his chest. Wendy placed a kiss on each one of the spots. When she was finished, she stared back up at him again.
“I don’t want you to hide anything about yourself from me,” she said softly. “I want to see all of you. Good, bad, and ugly.”
His heart filled with a joy he’d never felt before but even more than that, hope.
Cato leaned in and kissed her. His tongue pressed deeply inside, as if he wanted to devour all of her.
With deft hands he slid the black dress over hear and onto the couch.
His eyes roved over the black lace that covered her body. He loved every little inch of her.
Soft hands pressed against his pants, and with far more ease than he expected, Wendy unbuttoned and unzipped them. She shoved the material down enough that his cock sprang free of its fabric prison.
“I need you,” she whispered to him.
Cato understood. He felt the urgency to be connected to her once again. To fill her up inside as they each reached out for their release together.
He reached down and tore the black panties from her. A small yelp followed.
“I have to be in you,” he mumbled.
His fingers brushed across her wet pussy, and he moaned in surprise. She was ready for him.
As if understanding his needs without thought, Wendy lowered herself onto his throbbing cock, taking him in all the way until they were so close that he could no longer see where they were joined.
“So big,” she said with a grunt.
Cato stared at her with concern. Despite the beads of sweat that were breaking out on his brow from just the feel of her tight confines, he wanted them both to enjoy it.
He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips.
“Don’t push yourself,” he whispered.
He groaned loudly near her face when she rose up slightly and then pressed herself back down on him again.
Wendy leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her mouth against the shell of his ear.
“I’m so turned on seeing your face as I push you deep inside,” she whispered. She moaned still near his ear. “When you twitch like that, I can feel it pushing at my cervix,” she panted. “It makes my inside shiver.”
Damn. She was going to kill him with this sort of talk. But he could feel how deep he was, and the way she flexed around him only added to the pleasure of it all.
She inched up and down him, each time pressing him as far as she could.
Cato gripped her hips hard when she sat down on him again and gyrated her hips, his cock moving inside her as she did.
“Fuck,” he said and grunted. “I’m going to come if you keep that up.”
Wendy shivered hard in his arms, and she tightened around him, her orgasm shaking her. His cock was still buried deep inside. Every part of her sweet pussy was moving over him, squeezing him in a way he’d never felt before.
Unable to stop, he released inside her. His seed poured against her cervix as it suctioned the tip of his cock.
She collapsed against him. She still shivered as the waves of pleasure wracked her body.
He had never been so drained in his life, but it was all in the best sort of way.
Wendy placed small kisses against his neck, and he could feel the smile there. “You owe me a pair of panties.”
Cato laughed. Her comment was totally unexpected.
“Worth it,” he whispered.