Shifters used rites to formally acknowledge the mating, but a true mate—one who shared the mate bond—was a magical, unexplainable joy. The mate bond sealed mates to each other, ritual or no ritual.
Iona was the mate of his heart. Eric knew it like he knew the sound of his son’s voice. Iona knew it too, though she might not admit it.
But her body knew it.
Eric licked the warm space between her breasts and took kisses down to her navel. He let his tongue play there, enjoying how she jumped with laughter as he tickled her. He got to his knees and kissed the wiry hair between her legs.
The mating hunger in her responded instantly. She was wet there, not just from the shower, the scent of her honey filling Eric’s senses.
Eric knew she’d never been with a man—he could smell that. She’d probably been too cautious to take a human to her bed. She wouldn’t know how not to reveal the Shifter in the wildness of sex.
But Iona’s body knew what it wanted. Eric slid his tongue over her clit, licking the little berry to life. Iona rose on her tiptoes, moving her hips to press herself to his mouth. She made a noise of pleasure, a woman learning what it was like to have her sexual places touched.
She tasted of salt and musk, and beautiful female. Eric clasped her hips, leaned into her, and drank.
Iona’s legs slid apart, wet feet moving to let Eric take more. Eric slid his mouth over her opening and let the goodness of her fill him.
Iona alternately groaned and whimpered, her strong body pressing at him, wanting more. She wanted all of him, he knew, his cock filling her up, the Shifter female craving the male’s seed.
That would come. For now Eric assuaged his weakness by tasting her, letting himself drown in her scent and her heat.
“Eric.” Her voice filled the tiny room, echoing from the tiles. Iona shivered, though the hot water coated her skin.
Eric slid his tongue inside her in slow thrusts. He tasted the depths of her, savoring her heat on his tongue. She tasted of nectar and incredible sweetness, smelled glorious.
Iona’s fingers bit into his shoulders. When Eric looked up, it was to see her head rocking back, her mouth opening with her cries, the ends of her drenched black hair curling on her breasts.
The hair he licked was as black, her petals wet with her honey. Eric drank her, his hands cupping her buttocks, and Iona went into shudder after shudder of pleasure.
Eric plied his tongue faster, liking how she responded. She was coming beautifully, her cries blending with the patter of the water. He drank her, lapping her goodness like a greedy thing, then he rose, rinsed his face in the shower’s stream, and kissed her.
Iona responded hungrily, tongue tangling his, lips bruising, mouth opening to take him. Her fingers caught on his Collar, and for a moment, she tugged at it, as though desperate to unfuse it from his skin.
Someday.
Iona’s roving hands found his erection, which stood out straight and hard from his body. As she had in the back hall of her house, Iona closed her hand around him and began to stroke.
Eric broke the kiss to pull her close. She’d learned well, squeezing and pulling, the crazed ecstasy of it almost unbearable. Eric’s hips moved as he thrust into her hand.
“That’s it, my Iona,” he said softly. “You’re beautiful. So beautiful.”
Iona sped her strokes, her tongue busy on his chest and neck, her teeth latching onto his throat. Eric would have more love bites for his family to tease him about, not that he minded.
They were locked together, Eric’s arms tight around her, Iona in the curve of his body. Eric felt the need for her deep within him, the urge to mate and mate and never stop.
He braced his hand against the wall as he thrust into her fist, the squeezing almost as good as being inside her would be. Almost.
“Iona. Damn.”
His release shot out of him, right into her hands. Eric dragged her close, thrusting and coming, fucking her hand like he wanted to do to her. Iona smiled up at him, her blue eyes soft.
The beauty of her, coupled with the erotic joy gripping his body, took away all pain, all thought except the joy of being with her.
Eric knew he could never let her go. He’d never be whole again without her. Iona completed him like no other person had since Kirsten—he’d not felt this at peace since his mate had passed at Jace’s birth. So many years with emptiness inside, and now…Iona.
Eric kissed her, slowing now, his pain gone.
Iona leaned him into the wall, strength in her slim body, and pressed openmouthed kisses to his face, his neck. “Eric, I want…”
“I know, sweetheart.”
“Now. Why can’t it be now? I need you.”
The feral beast in Eric, so close to the surface, agreed. Take her now, to hell if they drowned, and do her for days. Graham and his wolves, the human world—everything else—didn’t matter, as long as Eric could bury himself inside this beautiful woman.
“I don’t want to drop a cub on you,” Eric said rapidly, his body crying out in protest. Like your father did to your mother. “Not until we’re joined under sun and moon. Join with me, love, and then we’ll slake the mating frenzy—I don’t care if it takes a month or a year of nonstop screwing.”
She didn’t laugh. “Live forever in Shiftertown?” She shook her head. “I don’t know, Eric. I just don’t know.”
“Shh.” Eric pulled her close, his body and hers warm with their release. “I’m keeping you near me, no matter what, love. I need to protect you, and I need you to ease this pain, whatever it is.”
Iona’s fear turned to concern. “Are you all right? I was so scared.”
“Fine now.”
She ran her hands down his chest. “What is happening to you?”
“I wish I knew. There’s a couple of people I need to talk to, who might have some answers.”
“You told me you’d felt something like it before, when you took the Collar, but you never finished explaining.”
Eric went quiet. He didn’t like to think about the dark days of their initial confinement, when the Collar first fused to his neck, when he had to fight the humans every day to keep his family together and unharmed.
He pulled Iona closer, letting the warmth of her body comfort him. “When Shifters were rounded up, some of us were experimented on. The humans wanted to know how we did what we did, how much physical stress we could stand, things like that.” He shuddered, involuntarily, remembering. “They wanted to use Jace. He was young enough to stand the experiments, they said, but old enough to be a good test subject. I refused to let them take him, so they took me in his place.”
Iona rubbed his chest again, her instinct to comfort. “That’s awful. What did they do to you?”
“A lot of things. Pumped me full of adrenaline, tortured me to see how much pain I could take, filled me with tranqs to see how many I could stand. They provoked my fighting instinct so it set off my Collar—again and again and again. They did that, they said, so they could adjust the Collars. I spent a year in a cage, mostly in pain, until a Shifter rights group got the experiments declared inhumane, and we were released.”
Iona leaned into him and closed her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“I got through it. This pain now is like some I suffered in the experiments, but I don’t know what’s triggering it, or why.”
“Your Collar?”
“Don’t know. Which is why I’m talking to some Shifters who might.”
Iona kissed his chest. “You were suffering like that all those years ago, while I was hiding in my mother’s house, pretending to be human. That makes me feel bad…weak and scared.”
He rubbed her cheek. “You were a cub, a half Shifter. I don’t like to think what they would have done to you if they’d found you. I’m glad you were safe.”
He truly was. Iona might feel guilty, but Eric had no anger at all that she’d escaped the attention of the humans too curious about Shifters.
Eric kissed he
r again, enjoying the hint of afterglow. As he pulled back from the kiss, savoring her taste, he reached over and shut off the water.
“Let’s go to bed,” he said. “We’ve used all the hot water, and Cassidy’s going to kill us.”
Iona woke when sun came pouring through Eric’s high window. Eric slept next to her, spooned into her side. His face was relaxed, his sleep, peaceful.
As Iona lay back, trying not to think about what she’d have to face today and the decisions she’d have to make, she wondered why Eric, the big, bad Shiftertown leader, had what must be the smallest bedroom in Shiftertown.
The room was wide enough for Eric’s bed and a nightstand, and that was about it. A corner closet had been built into the wall, not a very big one. The rest of the walls were blank, long and narrow.
Iona thought about the way Eric wanted her to alter the plans for the new houses, and she studied the walls around her with interest.
Eric stirred beside her, coming awake. His body was warm, his cock plenty stiff against her thigh. For a night not filled with sex, it certainly had been sensual.
“Morning, love,” Eric murmured. He pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder.
What would it be like to have him say that to her every morning for the rest of her life? Heady.
“Your room doesn’t match the house,” she said, to distract herself.
“Mmm?”
“Your room doesn’t fit. There’s too much space between it and the bathroom. It doesn’t match the footage in the hall.”
“That’s true.”
“Why squeeze yourself in here like this?”
Eric shrugged, his body moving in a good way. “Diego and Cass need the biggest room, especially with a cub on the way. I like Jace in the front room, where he can come and go as he pleases. He’s restless. I don’t need much space.”
“And these are false walls, aren’t they? You sleep in here to guard whatever’s behind them.”
“I knew you were smart the moment I met you.” Eric drew a fingertip between her breasts, but Iona refused to let him divert her attention.
“It’s not too hard to figure out,” she said. “What’s back there?”
Eric swung himself out of bed. The sunlight fell on his naked body, bronzed from the strong Nevada sun.
Regrettably, he pulled on jeans before he turned to the closet in the corner. He opened the door, revealing hanging shirts, pants, and a couple of jackets, then he reached up for a catch and pulled the whole closet away from the wall.
Iona stared in astonishment as the closet moved aside to reveal a solidly beamed doorframe in whitewashed brick. The brick passage led to shadows, but Eric reached around the corner and flicked on a light switch.
“Come on,” he said.
Iona scrambled out of bed, pulled on her jeans and a shirt—one of Eric’s—and followed him.
The lit passage ran five steps beyond the opening and ended in a stair going down. Eric flicked on another light, which illuminated the staircase and a door at the bottom. Everything was dry, dust-free, and very, very clean.
“Careful,” Eric said, leading the way.
Iona followed him on bare feet, the stone steps cool. The lights in the ceiling were nice canister spots, not bare bulbs, the walls finished and painted.
At the bottom, Eric punched a code into an electronic pad on the wall, and the door—which had no knob—clicked open.
“In the old days, we used elaborate locks that needed three keys in the right sequence,” Eric said. “Modern technology is so much faster.”
He pushed the door all the way open and ushered her inside.
Lights came on, flooding the large room Iona found inside. Correction—rooms.
The floor opened out into an area as big as, or maybe bigger than, the house upstairs. A small kitchen had been tucked into a corner, and other doors led to more rooms. Most of the doors were ordinary hardwood six-panel doors, but one was a slab of steel with no lock or handle that she could see.
The main area was a living room with comfortable furniture, a big flat-screen television, a computer workstation, and beyond a room divider, a pool table. A soft rug covered the ceramic tile floor.
Iona looked around in astonishment. “But…where did all this come from?”
Eric shrugged. “We pick it up here and there, over the years. Cassidy likes to remodel from time to time, and Jace likes gadgets.”
“Without anyone knowing?”
“We’re discreet.”
Iona walked slowly through the main room, noting that the oversized couch and matching chair were made of finest leather, the rug cashmere, the television a high-end model that cost thousands. “What?” she asked, marveling. “No wet bar?”
Eric didn’t laugh. “We mostly drink beer, and we only need a refrigerator for that.”
She turned in a circle, taking it in. “Do all Shifters have this under their houses?”
“Almost all. If a family is large enough to spill to several houses, they might have the underground area in only one house, where the whole pack or pride gathers. Cassidy likes to call this a man cave, but she’s got plenty of stuff down here too. Who do you think insisted on the pool table?”
“But…” High-end penthouse suites in the best hotels on the Strip weren’t this nice. “Why do you live like you do upstairs, if you can have all this?”
“Keeps the humans happy. If the dangerous Shifters live in near poverty, the humans think we’re under control.” Eric’s grin at her astonishment vanished. “These places are secret, Iona. Deadly secret. Only members of the pride or clan see them, no one else.”
“Then why are you showing me?”
Eric rested his warm hands on her shoulders. “I want you to see this, so you’ll understand exactly what we need from you.” He brushed his thumbs along her collarbone. “And because I’ve decided to trust you.”
“Trust me with this?” Iona asked.
“More than that. I’m going to trust you with this.” Eric took her hand and led her to the blank door at the end of the hall.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
As they passed one of the six-paneled doors, it opened, and Jace filled the doorway, half-asleep and alarmed at the same time.
With his hair tousled, his green eyes, and his hastily pulled-on clothes, Iona marveled at how much he looked like Eric. At the same time he looked different from him; the shape of his face and set of his body had come from his mother’s Shifter family.
She wondered how he’d gotten down here—Jace had been in the living room when she and Eric had exited the bathroom and gone to bed last night. She would have woken if he’d come through Eric’s room.
“Dad?” Jace asked. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Showing Iona the vault,” Eric said calmly.
Jace rubbed sleep from his eyes and bolted in front of him. “Are you crazy?”
“She needs to see it.”
“Yeah, but, you haven’t been thinking too straight lately. Cass know about this?”
“She will.”
Jace stepped in front of them again, putting his back to the steel door. “Only mates of the pride, Dad. Only mates. Or did you have a full sun ceremony without telling me?”
“Jace.”
Eric’s voice took on a note of patience, a patience so old that Iona for the first time was struck with how long Eric already had lived. He’d lost his parents and his mate, had raised his sister and then his son on his own, had fought covertly in a war to help humans escape atrocities, had made the decision to move his family here and let humans put Collars on them, had prevented humans from torturing his son by taking on that torture himself.
The laid-back Eric, who lounged barefoot in his house or kissed Iona so sensually in the dark while he fed her chocolates, was a man of complexities and hurt so deep, she’d never understand it.
“We need her to see this, Jace,” Eric said. “She needs to understand how to help us.”
“Cass sh
ould be here, then.”
“Cass needs to rest for her cub. Leave her be.”
Father and son faced each other. Jace had the impatience of youth, Eric the calm of experience, but Iona sensed that otherwise, they were evenly matched. She wondered if Jace would ever decide it was time to take over from his father, and what he’d do then.
She saw, in Eric’s eyes, that he knew that time would come. But not today.
“Open it up for me, Son.”
Jace sighed, took a small, round disk from his pocket, and touched it to a blank space in the door. The disk, Iona saw, had a Celtic knot design on it, but she couldn’t discern any place on the door the disk fit. To her, the door looked like an unbroken surface.
A ponderous sound like gears grinding filled the little hall, and the door slowly slid back into the wall. Beyond it was, indeed, a vault.
Eric led the way inside, flicking on lights as he went. The vault was long and narrow, taking up the rest of the space under the house and heading toward Nell’s side yard.
The room was lined with shelves and niches, though, unlike in a bank, only one had a door with a lock. The rest of the shelves were open and held boxes and small glass cases, with no organization that Iona could see.
Eric gestured for Iona to look around. Jace waited unhappily at the entrance, arms folded, as Iona strolled through in curiosity.
The collection looked like a jumble. Iona took one box off a shelf and found inside a clump of little plastic dolls with large eyes and tufts of long purple hair. She started to laugh. “Trolls. I used to play with these when I was little.”
“Cass liked them,” Eric said.
Iona put the box back, wondering why on earth they’d been stored in a vault.
The next box she pulled out was lined with velvet and held about two dozen uncut diamonds.
Iona nearly dropped the box. “Eric. Where did you get these?”
“I forget. When was that, Jace?”
“Eighteen eighty-two. From Africa. Grandfather traded for them—he never went there.”
“Traded with who?” Iona asked.
“Some lion Shifters,” Eric said. “They needed resources more than diamonds, and a safer place to live. My family helped them out, and they gave us a handful of stones.”