CHAPTER 10
Talon was acting strange.
After they had fixed her front door, and the others had left, he had kept his distance from her. He looked troubled as he stared at the TV, and he hadn’t heard a word she had said when she had asked if he was hungry.
Now she stood at the end of the couch, watching him as his coffee went cold on the wooden table, waiting for him to notice her.
Something was troubling him.
“Talon?” She inched closer.
His amber eyes snapped up to her, focused and he blinked. “Sorry. You say something?”
Was he just anxious to get going on the plan? Nervous that he was going to play bait for Archangel?
It scared the hell out of her.
Sherry sat on the arm of the couch, planted her feet on the cushion, and rested her chin on her upturned palm. “Are you worried?”
He shook his head, but that troubled edge to his eyes remained. “Archangel can’t hold me again. I won’t let it happen.”
“I won’t either,” she said, and his eyes widened a little, a ripple of warmth and light chasing through them before the darkness closed back in. “During the meeting… you mentioned you had a brother.”
He nodded, sighed and leaned back into the couch, tipping his chin up and his face towards the ceiling. Obviously he had a brother that exasperated him, was trouble enough that just thinking about him had Talon’s mood degenerating. Or was it because he had failed to keep Jayna safe?
“Is he going to be pissed at you?” She studied his face, trying to discern from it how he felt about his brother.
His eyes told her everything as they slid towards her, overflowing with weariness and the smallest hint of fear.
“Probably,” he muttered, and then added, “Definitely.”
Another long sigh escaped him, shifting his bare chest, tempting her eyes to fall there.
Talon closed his eyes.
“My older brother Byron is my pride’s alpha. I’m his second in command, not a very enviable job when it involves dealing with him. He can be… moody. Normally, a small group of females are sent together with a couple of our males, warriors, to visit another pride and return with a bride. This time, Byron tasked me with meeting Jayna and bringing her to the village.” He grimaced, and Sherry had the feeling he was imagining how upset his brother was going to be when he returned home and told him that Jayna was gone. Her heart whispered that his reluctance to go home was about more than his brother’s anger though.
It was because he had failed, and he didn’t want his brother to know about it, or the pride.
She could understand why. He was second in command of an entire tiger pride, an important position by the sounds of it. When he returned and revealed what had happened, his ability to hold that position would come into question, along with his abilities as a warrior.
How could he be expected to protect his pride if he couldn’t protect a single female?
“Good job I can’t go back yet, huh? Not with Archangel still looking for me. Guess they’re a blessing in disguise in a way, stopping me from having to go back and face my brother’s wrath. I should probably thank them when they capture me again.” He cracked his eyes opened and looked at her, but there wasn’t an ounce of humour and not a trace of light in them.
He looked tired, worn down just thinking about things.
Was it only the thought of heading into Archangel and returning home that was hurting him?
Or was it something else?
Whatever it was, she wanted to free him of its chains.
She wanted to take away his pain.
“Talon—”
“Do me a favour,” he cut her off and she nodded. His handsome face shifted, dark slashes of his eyebrows falling as he turned his head towards her, suddenly so serious that a shiver went down her spine. “Don’t look at my file… and don’t let anyone else see it. Keep it separate… or don’t download it at all. I don’t want the jaguar or the others seeing it.”
She had a feeling that he didn’t want her seeing it either.
“Why?” she whispered, certain that he wouldn’t answer her, but needing to ask.
He stared at her in silence.
Eventually sighed.
Looked away, fixing his gaze back on the ceiling.
“I have a secret, and I need to keep it.”
That just made her want to press him even more. What sort of secret? Why did he want to keep it from her too?
The shimmer of nerves that entered his eyes, and seemed to echo inside her, connected the dots in her head and his behaviour since the meeting had ended suddenly made sense.
Because his demeanour hadn’t changed since everyone had left.
It had changed the moment Sable had announced Sherry’s part of their grand plan.
He had been worried since then, slowly withdrawing into himself because he felt a need to protect himself, and that was manifesting in him pulling away from her.
That gave her the strength to let it go, to place her trust in him and not let this secret bother her or stand between them. Everyone was entitled to their secrets. She had plenty herself and she knew Kyter had a few that only Iolanthe knew.
Perhaps one day, Talon would be ready to tell her his secret.
She stared at him, reeling from that thought, and the need that went through her in response, the deep desire to be that close to him.
To stay with him.
Shit, she needed to keep things lighter than that between them, couldn’t let them get heavy. Hadn’t she vowed that she wouldn’t fall in love?
His eyes slid back to her.
A sudden need to say something rushed through her, as if he would know her ridiculous thoughts if she sat there in silence, and she didn’t want him to know how deeply he affected her.
“Do you have other family?” She fiddled with a fraying patch on the hem of her pale blue jeans, teasing the threads. “You mentioned Byron was your older brother… do you have a younger one?”
He shrugged. “In a way. I have a younger sister too.”
“What’s it like having brothers and sisters?” Damn, had she sounded envious?
The tension that had been building inside him seemed to flow out of him and he relaxed into the couch, turning his head towards her, a light back in his amber eyes. “You don’t have any?”
Sherry shook her head, a flare of regret bursting inside her, together with a question that had always plagued her. If she’d had brothers and sisters, would things have been different?
“They can be a pain… but I like having family… I think it’s an instinct thing. Might be a pride thing. Feline shifters like to have others around.” He almost smiled.
She did smile at that. “Kyter certainly does. He tries to pretend he’s cool with it all, but in reality, he gets weird if we’re not around… like antsy.”
Talon dipped his head to his left, his eyes wide and eyebrows high on his forehead as he clearly considered it. “It’s a pride thing. The jaguar views you as his pride, and he gets restless when you’re unaccounted for… and how the fuck did you end up working for a shifter in a club that is for immortals anyway?”
He looked as if he had been dying to ask that question for a long time now and was relieved it was finally out in the open. Curiosity killing her cat? She scrubbed that thought. He wasn’t her cat.
Sherry looked deep into his eyes, catching how badly he wanted to know the answer to that question. She didn’t want to answer it.
She didn’t want to think about how she had ended up at Underworld.
Talon shifted closer, concern washing across the rugged lines of his face. “You’re upset.”
She shook her head, but stopped herself halfway through and sighed instead. “It’s not a pretty story, Talon.”
He leaned closer still and placed his hand on her knee, his eyes sincere as he held her gaze and softly murmured, “But it’s one I would like to know.”
Was it so important to him? The way he was looking at her answered that, telling her that he was being honest, truly wanted to know how she had come to be at Underworld. He wanted to know about her.
“You don’t have to tell me if—”
“I ran away from home,” she cut him off and he frowned at her. She held her hand up when he opened his mouth to speak, because if she was going to do this, if she was going to bare this part of herself, she needed to do it quickly, like ripping off a sticking plaster. “When I was nine, my mum died in a car accident. I was in the car with her. My dad… he took it hard. It was like all the light went out of him with her… and he was never the same again. It killed him. He fell apart… and I realised how much he had loved her.”
His amber eyes filled with sympathy.
“It was hell after that.” She lowered her eyes to her knees, placed both hands over them and stared at them. “Dad blamed me for her death… hated me… he pretended to be fine around my teachers and others, but when we were alone… he couldn’t even bring himself to look at me. I lost count of the number of times he told me he wished I had died instead.”
“Fucker,” Talon snarled.
She closed her eyes. His fingers flexed against her knee.
Before he could utter a word about her stopping, she said, “I’m doing this… just… I need to finish.”
He didn’t say a word, but she could feel how much he wanted to speak, how angry he was about how her father had treated her. Her father had been a broken man. Love had utterly destroyed him. In the end, it had almost destroyed her too.
“It wasn’t any way to treat you,” he growled, and she let him have that one.
“He was hurting… had lost someone he loved. I was hurting too. I would lash out at him in return, and then we would fight… and it would be ugly… and all because we had both lost someone we loved.”
She sighed and couldn’t bring herself to look at him as he stared at her, his eyes boring into her, as if he could see how it had coloured her opinion of love and he didn’t like it. Sometimes, she didn’t like it either. Sometimes, she wanted to take the risk and fall for someone.
Like now.
“I ran away from home at fifteen. I stole his motorbike after we’d had this big fight and he had said he wanted me gone. I was so upset… I lost control of the bike and crashed it into a ditch.” Sherry lifted the right leg of her jeans, revealing the start of the scar that ran up her shin to her knee, and Talon stared at it, all the fires of Hell raging in his eyes, his jaw set hard and eyebrows drawn low. She carefully smoothed her jeans back down, and he lifted his eyes back to hers. She didn’t look away from him this time, because she needed to know he was there with her, needed the comfort of his presence and his strength. “My dad found me in the hospital and rather than being concerned about me and my fucked up leg, he was pissed about the fact I had trashed his bike.”
Talon lowered his hand to her right shin, stroked it up and down in a way that both soothed and seared her, making her itch to feel his hand on her bare skin. His eyes held hers, darker now, conveying the way he felt about her father.
Pretty much the same way she felt about him.
She hated him.
“I ran away again at nineteen, and ended up in London. Spent a year or so on the streets, roughing it… until I was caught stealing food from the bins behind Underworld.” She smiled at that, still able to remember being dragged through the empty club and brought up in front of a very groggy and pissed off Kyter. He had been more angry about being woken than the fact she had been going through the trash. “Rather than turning me over to the authorities, he gave me a place to stay in exchange for me working for him… he pretty much saved my arse.”
At the time, she hadn’t understood why. It had only been after she had learned he was a jaguar shifter, and all his staff were immortals too, that she had realised he had done it because he had a habit of taking in strays, was creating his own small pride from non-humans who no longer had a place to call home.
People like him.
“How long have you known your boss is a shifter?” He sounded curious again, and she risked a glance at him, caught the glimmer of it in his eyes as he watched his hand skimming up and down her leg.
Did he like touching her?
“Um… like… maybe eight years or so. I don’t really remember.”
“And you stayed?” He lifted his eyes to hers.
Sherry smiled. “Of course… why wouldn’t I?”
He frowned at her. “Just… it must have been a shock.”
“It was, but I always had the feeling something was off. I mean, the gym at Underworld has plastic barrels in it and knotted ropes, and there was a huge stuffed bear at one point that looked a little worse for wear.” Her smile widened when she thought about the one time she had caught Kyter in his jaguar form with that bear in a death grip, his hind paws kicking at its stomach. When he had finished, she had teased him by petting him and congratulating him on being a big bad kitty and killing the bear. It hadn’t gone down well. “Underworld… it’s my home now… and everyone there is my family.”
He pulled a face. “If you ask me, your big brother is an overprotective pain in the arse.”
She giggled. “He can be a little like that… but he’s saved my arse plenty of times now… I have to give him something back and if it’s putting up with a jaguar who wants to kill anyone who might hurt me, I’ll live with that.”
Talon averted his gaze and blew out a long sigh, and might have muttered something under his breath, something about not being out to hurt her.
“Must be nice having real family though,” she said in a low voice, trying to imagine what his life was like.
Kyter had painted a grim picture of his pride, but Cavanaugh had made his sound wonderful, like a close-knit community. One big family.
“In some ways… not in others.” Talon tipped his head back and grimaced. “Byron is not going to be happy with me.”
Something about the way he said that annoyed her and made her hate his brother even though she had never met him. Byron should be glad to have Talon back, alive and safe, and not blame him for what Archangel had done to Jayna. She had the horrible feeling that Byron was like her father though, and liable to hurt Talon just as her father had hurt her, making his life Hell because of what had happened to his bride.
Talon’s amber gaze slid downwards to land on her, and he rolled his head towards her. “What’s wrong?”
He always seemed to know when she was upset. How? Could he sense it in her?
She didn’t want to talk more about her family, and didn’t want to hurt him by talking about his brother either, reminding him what lay ahead for him.
She settled for a safer topic.
One that was playing on her mind.
“I’m a little nervous.” Her pulse quickened when his right eyebrow rose and she suddenly realised that he could interpret that in a thousand ways—including that she was nervous about being alone with him. “About going into Archangel.”
The wicked hunger that had been building in his eyes dissipated, concern replacing it.
“I know,” he murmured and ran his eyes over her, over every part of her except her face. He was avoiding eye contact. Why? She frowned at his face, at the struggle written in every strong line of it. He sighed, closed his eyes, and then opened them and met hers. “I can feel it in you… I can feel when you’re worried… or upset… or happy… and I can feel when you’re nervous.”
Sherry had the feeling that was meant to surprise her, or terrify her. Kyter picked up on her emotional signals too, and even Cavanaugh could at times. The bastards could read her like a book if she wasn’t guarded with her emotions.
She stared at Talon, her gut telling her that his ability to sense things in her ran deeper than Kyter and Cavanaugh’s talent for pissing her off by prying into her private feelings.
Dangerously deeper.
The big demon had said that she was Talon’s, and Talon hadn’t denied it.
He had been swift to protect her, had risen to all the bait that Kyter had tried to hook him with too, and had forgotten their company from time to time, seemingly lost in her and unaware of the world.
Shit, hadn’t she felt the same?
It was dangerously easy to lose herself in Talon and forget the world.
She didn’t want to think about the how of it, or the why, but she could sense things about him too.
Like the fact he was nervous again.
“You’ll blend in.” His deep voice sank into her, warmed her right down to her bones and teased her senses, chasing away the doubts and her fears, and crushing her ability to keep some distance between them. She met his gaze, fell into it and into the dream of just sliding off the arm of the couch and into his arms, and forgetting everything for a while. She wanted to be closer to him. His hands twitched against his thighs, as if he wanted to pull her into his arms, wanted that same moment of madness as she did. “You’re human and they won’t suspect you if you’re with that huntress.”
She ignored the sharp way he had mentioned her species. If he had been trying to remind himself that she was just a little mortal and not a beautiful tigress, he had failed, because the hunger that had fled his eyes was building again like a storm.
A storm she knew would light them both up and change their lives forever if they let it crash over them.
Sherry curled her hands into fists on her knees, ignored the voice at the back of her head that chanted at her about keeping her distance, about how this would only end in heartbreak, and that love was painful, and dragged her courage up.
Because she was about to do something crazy, leaping into the lion’s den to get information for the man in front of her. She was going to risk her life for him, because deep inside she knew he was worth it.
And she was going to risk her heart too.
For one night with him.
She couldn’t dance around it any longer, and it felt stupid to deny herself something she wanted. This wasn’t about love. This was about desire. Attraction. Need. She had never been afraid to scratch itches whenever they had walked into her life before, and she wasn’t going to be afraid now. She was still here. Still standing. This wasn’t going to turn into anything. It was just satisfying the hunger she felt, one she knew he shared.
Just one night.
She swore it would be enough.
She swore she wouldn’t fall for him.
It was just about lust.
Scratching that itch.
Her mouth didn’t get the memo.
“I’m not nervous that people will know I’m not with Archangel… I’m worried something will happen to you.”
He just stared at her.
Shit. What the fuck had made her say that? Lust. Not love. Lust! Damn it all to Hell. She wasn’t meant to be feeling anything soft for him, thought she had mastered those emotions and managed to get it into her head and her heart that this was just physical release, just a roll in the hay. Fuck.
Fear was swift to rise and swamp her, that voice screaming at her in a mocking tone, telling her she had been a fool, had just laid it all out there, baring the softest part of her, the side she had meant to keep locked away and hidden. Protected.
Idiot.
She shot to her feet and paced away from him. “Pretend you didn’t hear that.”
He was on his feet in a flash, and across the room in the next second, hemming her in against the cream wall.
He pressed his palms against it on either side of her shoulders and leaned in close.
“I cannot.” He lifted one hand and caught her cheek, smoothed his palm across it and sent shivers dancing over her skin, a tremble that carried heat in its wake that soothed her fear and tamed that voice. She lifted her eyes to his. They were bright gold, mesmerising. Beautiful. She couldn’t catch her breath as she stared up into them and his words curled around her. “You want me.”
She wanted to deny that.
“Don’t,” he whispered and traced his thumb across her cheek, his bright amber gaze following it, filled with fascination. “I can feel you… I can feel your need… and it’s as fierce as my own.”
It was?
Did he feel as if he was on fire, would burn to ashes if he didn’t do something?
His eyes met hers again, stole her breath as they told her everything, that this was about more than lust. More than desire.
This crazy thing between them ran as deep as their blood.
As their souls.
She wanted to tell him how she felt, but he stole the words right out of her mouth when he leaned in close, slid his hand around the nape of her neck and clutched it, and brought his lips near to hers, husking in the most earnest and heartfelt voice.
“Gods, I’ve never needed anyone the way I need you.”