Crossroads

Chapter 12

Derek settled one of Kat’s bags into the trunk of Jackson’s rental car and tried not to view the action as a failure. “Nick’s upstairs helping Kat get her laptop and school books together.”

“She’s got all the numbers, including the one at my parents’ lake house.” Jackson lifted the other bag and loaded it beside the first.

Derek stepped back and rubbed his hand over his chin. His stubble had grown into an actual beard over the last week, and he needed to shave before disheveled or shaggy bled into crazed mountain-man. “I know she’s better off out of it. Just gotta convince the instincts of that now.”

“I hear that’s the hard part.”

“Sure seems to be.” Derek rubbed his thumb over the suitcase, over the monogrammed initials that had belonged to his father. “She didn’t sleep last night. I thought being in her old room at my place would help, but she was up the whole night. Lied to me and Nick about it this morning and didn’t even care that we didn’t believe her. I think she’s still numb.”

Jackson cursed, quietly and under his breath. “Wouldn’t blame her. Sometimes it’s the only thing you can do.”

It was scary, seeing Kat’s usually bright, energetic gaze slide over a room without focusing on the people in it. The part of Derek that had been responsible for her for so many years rebelled at the idea of sending her away when she was so clearly hurting, but the rest of him recognized the truth—things were getting bad, and Kat was safer far, far away.

Alec had put it a lot more bluntly when he told Jackson to load up his mother and Kat and take the potential human hostages out of the equation.

Derek gave the suitcase one last look before stepping back. “Maybe a few days with your parents will be good for her. I don’t do comfortingly parental very well.”

Footsteps echoed on the stairs overhead, and Nick leaned over the railing, her hair swinging around her face. “Just a few more things. Kat’s locking up now.”

Even with his world in pieces and exhaustion hanging heavy around his neck, Nick’s smile made his heart jump. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” She skipped the last steps and held up two bags. “Books and computer. She didn’t even want to carry it herself.”

Kat relinquishing her stupidly expensive laptop to anyone else’s care was a step short of unthinkable. Derek winced and accepted the laptop bag. “Maybe she just really, really trusts you?”

“Maybe.” She stowed the books in the backseat, and Derek glanced up toward the balcony that fronted Kat’s apartment and led to the stairs. Keys jingled, and a lock clicked into place, but footsteps didn’t follow.

He glanced at Nick and raised both eyebrows in silent question. She shook her head helplessly.

Derek handed the precious laptop bag off to Jackson and circled around to the iron steps. The staircase trembled as he took them two at a time, and by the time he reached the landing, Kat was scrubbing her hands over her cheeks in quick, furtive movements. “I’m fine.”

“Liar.” Two rickety plastic chairs sat to the left of Kat’s door, along with a planter bearing a plastic tree and enough cigarette butts to make it clear Kat had been smoking again in recent months. Derek ignored them and coaxed Kat to sit before kneeling in front of her. “It’s okay to cry, kiddo.”

Annoyance tightened her eyes and pressed her lips into a thin, hard line. “The kiddo shit isn’t as funny as it used to be, Derek. I think I grew up a lot this week.”

She needed him to acknowledge it, that much was clear. Everything inside him struggled against allowing her that growth, but he tried. “I know, Kat.”

“Do you?” The words sounded so dark, so empty. He folded both of his hands around hers and studied her face, forcing himself to look at her. To see her. Some women’s features thinned out as they aged, but Kat still looked soft and young. Derek had his mother’s dark looks, but Kat had the freckles and blue eyes that her mother and Derek’s father had both shared.

They made her look young, until she lifted her face and he got the full impact of a frozen, hard gaze in red-rimmed eyes. He couldn’t begin to untangle the emotions there, though he could imagine a few—horror, pain. Rage.

Fear. Her hands shook under his, and some instinct prompted him, recognized panic as only a predator could. Not fear of him, but of being feared.

“Kat.”

She pulled in on herself, and Derek felt the world shift a little under his feet. Thin ice, he was balanced precariously on thin ice and the wrong word would send them both plummeting.

“Kat, look at me.”

“No.” She trembled hard enough the chair shook with her, one of the off-balance legs scraping over the concrete landing.

“I’m not scared of you. None of us are scared of you.” A tiny lie, maybe, but as locked up inside herself as she was, he knew he could get away with it. “You saved Andrew’s life, and it hurt. I wish like hell one of us had been there to do it for you. But in this world we’re in sometimes that’s all we can do. Mackenzie killed someone to save Jackson, and no one thinks she did anything but what she had to do.”

Tears stole down Kat’s cheeks, and her words were thick. “I want to stay. I want to help Nick. I want them to pay for what they did to Andrew.”

“They will. You know Alec will make sure of it. But the shapeshifters can’t do their thing until the humans are safe—and that means all of you. You, Jackson and Jackson’s mother.” He wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Don’t tell Jackson that Mackenzie’s secretly bundling him off to safety, huh? You know us men and our tender egos.”

It startled a short laugh out of her. It was still half-sob, but she opened tear-filled eyes long enough to glare at him. “I hate men and their tender egos.”

“You and every other woman.” He smiled and smoothed Kat’s hair back. “You have a big project due soon, don’t you? Go have your vacation and work on it, and let me take care of Andrew.”

Kat lifted her hands and rubbed tears from her cheeks. “You gonna let Nick take care of you?”

Nick could probably hear every word they said, and he replied knowing it. “Like I could stop her. I’m helpless when she smiles at me.”

“You are.” Kat’s tilted her head and stared up at him. “You know that, right?”

“I said it, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but do you really know? I mean, you’ve had that disturbingly intense booty-call vibe around her for years, but that’s not all it is. Not by a long shot. Not anymore.”

It wasn’t something he had any intention of discussing with Kat before he’d talked about it with Nick, so he caught her hands and tugged her to her feet. “Don’t think I didn’t see what you did there. Big eyes and a wobbly lower lip won’t save you. You know the penalty for snooping.”

She smiled, wide and brilliant enough that he let himself believe for the first time that she’d be okay. She shoved her keys into her pocket and started toward the steps. “Sucks to be you. My apartment doesn’t have a swimming pool.”

“Jackson’s parents have a lake house. I bet I can get Mackenzie to dunk you.”

“Whatever.” Kat paused three steps down and turned to stare back up at him. “Thanks, Derek.”

“You bet, kiddo.”

That earned him a rude gesture and a muttered curse, and he’d never been so glad to hear his sweet baby cousin cussing like a sailor.

It was late, and watching her bedroom ceiling fan make its slow revolutions was making her dizzy. Nick turned over and buried her face against Derek’s shoulder. “I can’t sleep.”

His arm came around her without hesitation. “Sleep seems to be in short supply.”

And no wonder, with the difficult decisions they’d all had to make over the last week. “Are you all right with Kat being so far away right now?”

“I don’t know. I think so. It’s like I told Jackson—she’s hurting, and I’m not so good at that comforting-parent gig. Maybe she needs someone like Nancy Holt who can hug her and tell her everything’s going to be okay and sound like she knows what she’s talking about.”

Nick propped her chin on his chest and stared up at his profile in the darkness. “You’ve done the best you can.”

“Yeah. I don’t blame myself, not for that. I was too young to be everything a seventeen-year-old kid needed, but I did what I could.” His fingers traced away from her shoulder, smoothed down along her spine. “It’s not being able to protect her. I spent all that time letting Alec kick me around so I’d be good in a fight, and it’s still not enough.”

“Then maybe it’s time to let go. Stop thinking you should be able to protect her and teach her to protect herself.”

“Maybe.” He sounded doubtful. “She’s never going to be as fast or as strong as us. Jackson may not be a shifter, but he’s got spells and magic. I just wish I could get her the hell out of this life.”

Kat’s empathy was strong enough to place her outside the rest of humanity, whether Derek liked it or not. “Where would you have her go?”

“Damned if I know. If I had a clue what I was doing, Nick, I’d probably be sleeping.”

She pulled free of his arm and sat up. “That’s what I mean. Doesn’t she get to decide?” She’d spent her life having everyone else plan her future—where she needed to go, what she needed to do—and it sucked.

“Don’t look at me like that.” Derek rubbed the side of his face and blew out a tired breath. “Of course she gets to decide. I’m an overprotective bastard, but I’m not that bad, am I?”

“Good intentions don’t change the outcome.” They never had in her family, anyway.

“Are we still talking about Kat, sweetheart?”

“Maybe not.” She toyed with the edge of the comforter. “I can sympathize. With you, for wanting to protect her. With Kat, for wanting to live her own life.”

Derek caught her fingers and tugged them up to rest on his chest. “No one could ever think you haven’t lived your life on your own terms.”

Of course she had. What no one expected was that she’d continue to do so. “Most people who care to think about me consider my entire adult life a rebellious phase I just have to get through before I settle down.”

“Aren’t there any well-bred shapeshifter kids who run off to join the circus?” His sudden laugh shook the bed. “Except Alec. God, thinking of him as well bred actually hurts a little.”

“It really isn’t funny.” She pulled her hand away. “Haven’t you figured it out? New Orleans is the circus.”

His laughter faded. “Just you and Alec?”

“Alec doesn’t count. His family would be ecstatic if he took an interest in politics, mostly because they’ve been trying to claw their way up to the Conclave for fifty years.”

“Oh.” He tucked his hand behind his head and studied her silently. “Sometimes I forget the shapeshifter royalty thing. I mean, I don’t forget that your family’s important…but I forget how many people know you. Have expectations for you.”

It was the furthest thing from the truth she could think of. “They have expectations, but they don’t know me.”

“Know of you, I meant.” A gentle smile, almost shy. “I like to think I’m getting to know you.”

That he seemed so glad to have that chance humbled her. “So what do you expect of me?”

“Hmm…” His free hand swept over her shoulder. “Expect, or want? Because one of those is nice and polite and boring, and the other might get my mouth washed out with soap.”

He was teasing her, and it was impossible to maintain her dour mood in the face of it. Nick leaned over him, letting her hair brush his skin. “Tell me both.”

“I expect you’ll continue to be a sweet, open, caring woman who helps her friends whenever she can.” He lowered his voice—and his hand, until his fingers traced along the curve of her hip. “I want to see if we can use the rest of that box of condoms we bought in one night. I bet you’d sleep then.”

Arousal shivered through her, echoed by need. “Your plan is to fuck me unconscious?”

“Hell, no. That’s crude. My plan—” His arm latched around her waist and he rolled her until she was curled on her side, her back pressed tight to his chest. “Is to fuck us both unconscious.”

“Oh, good. That’s far less crude.” She reached up and ran her fingers through his hair as she stretched slowly.

“Mmm. Can you reach the condoms? Before we forget them this time?”

“We’re not going to forget them.” She dug through the bedside table anyway. His mouth found the back of her shoulder, and one hand smoothed around to cup her breast. There was something different in his touch this time, all of the need and passion, but none of the frantic urgency.

It let her relax against him and enjoy the heat of his skin on hers. “Slow?”

“As slow as we can manage.”

“Mm-hmm.” That had been hit or miss over the last week. Control always dissolved for one or both of them at some point, sweeping them away in a furious haze of desire.

He chuckled, his breath stirring against her shoulder blade. “You doubting me?”

She shivered. “We don’t have the best track record when it comes to slow, sweet love.”

“Math of mating,” he murmured, then slid lower. His tongue teased back up her shoulder to the base of her neck, where he made slow a hundred times more difficult by closing his teeth on her nape.

Nick couldn’t not squirm against him. “That’s cheating.”

“Thought we covered that during the strip poker, baby.” Another bite, harder this time, accompanied by a soft growl. “I’m a cheater.”

“Yet you have everyone convinced you’re such an upstanding man.”

“Maybe you’re the only thing I want bad enough to cheat for.”

Her laugh was shockingly breathless. It took him a matter of seconds to leave her tense and trembling, and the sudden urge to do the same thing to him overtook her. Nick turned in his arms and draped one leg over his hip. “There you go with the cheating again, when all you have to do is ask.”

“Oh, is that all?” He caught the back of her head and whispered the words against her lips. “Nicky Peyton, can we make with the dirty hot fucking?”

She bit his lip with a moan. “That’s why we can’t do slow. You say things like that.”

Derek urged her over until she was stretched out on the cotton sheets, arms above her head, and pressed the box of condoms into her hands with a low, wicked laugh. “Hold on to those. I’m gonna be busy for a bit.”

She tossed the box on the bed with another laugh and drove her fingers into his hair. “Poor baby. Haven’t I told you I’m bad at following directions?”

“So you want me to stop?”

It was the last thing she wanted, and she told him so with a pleading twist of her body. He teased her when he touched her, his fingertips skating over her stomach and hips and down her legs.

She endured it as long as she could, but she wound up bracing her hands on his shoulders and flipping him onto his back with a growl. “What if I want to be busy?”

“Well, I don’t have any particular objections…” His hands landed on her hips, fingers spanning to cup her ass. “Oh yeah, this is nice.”

“I bet.” His size and strength tripped some primal response, and her basest instincts rose. She wanted to test him, to push until he proved himself strong enough to handle her. “Tell me what stopped you before.”

“Stopped me from doing what, when?”

“Me. Ever.”

The restless movement of his hands stilled. Sounds filled the silence, the soft tick of the fan, his heartbeat strong and steady in his chest and the rough sound of his breaths. Finally he sighed. “I was scared. Scared that I wanted you for the wrong reasons, and that I’d fuck it up before I could get the right ones straight under all the instinct.”

It wasn’t terribly different from her own reasons, and the realization was oddly soothing. Nick leaned down and kissed him gently. “Me too.”

“And?” He rubbed both hands over her lower back. “Still scared?”

Her answer surprised her. “Yes. But now I’m scared because we waited so long, and things are so crazy…”

“Things won’t be like this all the time.” There was no doubt in his voice, or in the strong touch at her back, holding her against him.

She tucked her face against his neck and murmured, “I don’t want you to fuck me unconscious.” It felt almost like a confession. “I want you to hold me.”

“Any time.” He wrapped both arms around her. “Any place. Forever.”

Instinct eased as she relaxed and drank in his quiet strength. The need for comfort was as much a part of the mating drive as a craving for sex, but so much harder to satisfy. Finding someone to be a lover and a partner was far less common or simple than one or the other.

And yet here was Derek. She nestled closer. “Thank you.”

His chest vibrated under her cheek with his soft reply. “You’re welcome.”