CHAPTER 18
I AWOKE ON OUR COUCH. MY WHOLE BODY ACHED, deep down, all the way to my bones. Pain was good. Pain meant I was still alive and healing.
Curran leaned on the windowsill, silhouetted against the window, where the dusk or dawn bled crimson onto the sky. The sun was in the east. Morning then. I’d slept for several hours.
Muscles tensed across Curran’s wide back. He knew I was awake.
No matter where I was or how much trouble I was in, he would come to get me. He would demolish the city to find me. I didn’t have to go at it alone.
Several floors below, Julie was sleeping while her body worked to betray her. My Julie. My poor kiddo. Some people awoke to escape their nightmares. I awoke into one.
“Any change?”
“She is still asleep,” Curran said.
“Doolittle sedated me, that old bastard.”
He turned around. “No. He was chanting your wounds closed, and you fell asleep. I brought you up here. Does it hurt less now?”
I shrugged. “How do you know it hurt in the first place?”
“You held your breath when you walked.”
“Maybe I was just pissed off.”
“No.” He came toward me. “I know when you’re pissed off. It’s the way you stand. I know the look.”
He noticed the way I stood. What was I supposed to do with that? “Grendel?”
“He’s in Doolittle’s infirmary. Nothing serious. A few bruises and a sliver of wood stuck in his paw.
Andrea returned to the Keep. She says they were eating and he took off on her with no warning. Went through the restaurant’s window.”
Silly poodle. How had he even known we were in trouble?
Muscles played along Curran’s jaw. “We should’ve found Leslie. We’d tracked her all over the city. Her scent was less than three hours old in Palmetto. If we had found her, none of this would’ve happened.
You can’t save everyone. I’ve made my peace with that. We should’ve saved Julie . . .”
“I love you,” I told him.
Curran stopped in midword and strode to me. I kissed him, sliding into his arms. “I don’t want to talk,”
I whispered. My cheeks were wet and I knew I was crying. My voice didn’t tremble, but the tears kept coming and coming. I’d lost my mother, my stepfather, and now in two days, my kid as well. It was time to pay the piper.
Curran kissed me, his lips sealing on mine. His tongue slid into my mouth, his taste so familiar, so welcome. I clenched his shoulders, pulling him closer, pulling his shirt off. He moved the sheets aside and broke apart from me for the tiniest second to peel my tank top off. I kissed his mouth, my fingers in his short hair, asking for his strength. His hands slid over my breasts, the rough skin of his palms scratching at my nipples. He lifted me to my knees and licked my left breast, the heat of his mouth piercing through all of the pain swirling inside me. I let go of it all and lost myself in him, kissing, licking, stroking, wanting to be one.
He rose above me, I wrapped my legs around him, and when he thrust inside me, the world took a step back. There was only me and him. We built to a smooth hard rhythm, faster and faster, each thrust lifting me higher, until finally heat blossomed inside me, drowning me in a cascade of pleasure. He shuddered and emptied himself. We stayed like that for a long moment, then he moved to the side, gathering me up to him. We lay, curled up together, as the day uncurled outside the window.
I refused to let Julie go. There had to be a way around it. There had to be something I could do. She wasn’t a loup yet, damn it. There had to be a way.
“We’ll kill them,” Curran said, his voice laced with so much violence I almost shivered. “We’ll stamp them out.”
Yes. “A year from now nobody will remember they existed.” There would be no more Lighthouse Keepers after we were done. It wouldn’t help my kid. But it might keep other Julies from being hurt.
A knock resonated through the door.
“What?” Curran growled.
“Jim is here, my lord,” Barabas said.
I pushed off the pillow.
“Tell him to wait,” Curran said. He turned to me. Gray eyes looked into mine. “I love you, too.”
Maybe he truly did. “Promise me that if we leave, nobody will touch Julie until we return.”
Gold rolled over Curran’s eyes and vanished. “Not if they want to live.”
“Not even an alpha of a clan.” I didn’t know how dark the inside of Jennifer’s head was.