MINE TO POSSESS

“Does it matter?” She realized she’d drained the water bottle.


“I guess not. You’re still as fucked up.” It hurt. “Yeah.”

He swore. “Jesus, Talin. Where’s your spine?”

That made her eyes snap open. “You’re insulting me to get me to react? What the hell kind of a bedside manner is that?” Outraged, she chucked the empty bottle into the pristine back-seat. “I almost threw up my guts and you—”

“When did you become such a scared little mouse?” His tone was hard, his eyes trained on the road.

“Trauma, Clay! I was traumatized. It had an effect.”

“So was I,” he said, merciless. “I didn’t deal by sticking my head in the sand.”

She knew immediately that he wasn’t talking about the killing. “You saved me.”

His laughter was harsh. “Years too late.”

“No.” She had to reach him, had to make him see. “Orrin never tried to choke me before.” He’d wanted to watch the life leave her eyes, just like he’d done with those other girls he’d buried.

“He abused you, Talin. Hurt you, touched you, made you suffer through things no little girl should have to endure. So what if he saved the brutal murder for your eighth birthday! I fucking should have stopped him long before that!”

“I never told you,” she cried. “And you were a child, too.”

“I should have known. I’m a cat—I could smell him on you.”

“He was my foster parent. I remember you telling me you could smell their parents on all the kids.”

He didn’t respond. She stared at the dark stubble along his jaw, at the ebony silk of his hair. He was so close and yet she didn’t dare touch him. “Clay?” Talk to me, please, she wanted to beg. He had always spoken to her, even if he didn’t to anyone else.

His fingers clenched on the steering wheel. “Tell me about your life with the Larkspurs.”

Relieved, she took a deep, shuddering breath. “They’re farmers, all of them. Well, Dixie isn’t, but she’s a farmer’s wife. Already has two babies. It’s what she wanted.”

“You like Dixie.”

“Yes.” She smiled. “She’s the baby of the family and so sweet, so gentle. She used to follow me around and hug me every day, as if—I like Dixie.”

“The others?”

“Tanner and Sam run various parts of the farm. It’s a huge operation. Samara—Sam’s twin and older by a minute—organizes the business end of things. Ma and Pa Larkspur supervise everyone.”

“They sound like a happy family.” His eyes were cat bright when he glanced at her. “So why are you still stuck in that room, watching me tear Orrin apart?”

She should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy to escape the past. “I tried to get better. I pretended I was. But I never did and I don’t know why.” Though after her recent slew of medical tests, she could guess at some of it. “Where are you taking me?”

“Somewhere safe.”

She watched the city retreat behind them. “Where?” she insisted.

“My lair.”

Her heart stopped. “I thought you didn’t take strangers there.”

“I’m making an exception.”

It almost made her want to smile. Except … “Don’t. These people who are after me, they’re probably the ones taking the kids. They could follow and hurt you and your pack.”

He laughed and it was a deep masculine sound she felt in the innermost core of her body, a place no one had ever touched. “We’re not some minor pack you can blink and miss. DarkRiver controls San Francisco and the surrounding areas. We’re also allied to the wolves. No one enters our forests without our knowledge.”

“These people are smart.”

“Are you saying we animals aren’t?”

“Don’t pull that racial crap on me,” she said, scowling. “Or I’ll tell you what I really think of big cats who like to growl and bite.”

Clay felt his lips curve despite himself. “Meow.”

To his surprise, a sound that was almost a giggle escaped Talin’s lips. “Idiot.”

And that suddenly, she was his Tally again. Sweet, funny, and strong. So damn strong. The only human being who had ever stood up to him and won. “What happened to you, Tally?”

The laughter seeped out of the air. “I broke.”


Talin noticed the flowers the second she entered the low-level aerie Clay called his lair. Outwardly, it appeared nothing more than a forgotten tree house lost in the spreading branches of a heavily leafed tree. Inside, it proved wide and clean, with a retractable ladder that led up into a second level invisible from the outside.

“There’s a third level, too.” His voice gave away nothing. “I built it so it could be isolated from the ground at a second’s notice. You’ll sleep up there.”

“Oh.” She couldn’t get her mind off the beautiful, feminine flower arrangement. “Nice flowers.”