Words came out in Spanish, the language of his heart. “My love, my soul. Always mine. Always, Cassidy.”
No more words. Their bodies met and melded, kisses turning to fire. His blood burned. He wanted all of her, more and more. Mindless. Feeling. Mine!
Diego’s body shot the last of his frenzy into her. She moaned, moving with him, just as frenzied.
Diego wanted to stay inside her forever, but he settled for lying on top of her and gathering her against him. She breathed a sigh and smiled at him.
The smile was full of warmth, of caring, Cassidy who’d come to save him from himself. The darkness that had dogged him and eaten at his heart had eased somewhat. Because of her.
Diego knew, as he kissed her again, that he had to have this woman in his life. For always. No matter what he had to do to get her there.
They made love twice more, and at the end, Diego was as awake and alert as he had been when they’d started.
Cassidy drowsed though, and he let her, liking the way she looked curled under his sheets. Diego finally rose, quietly so he didn’t disturb her.
He did a quick rinse off in the shower, tucked a towel around his waist, and went out to see what he had in his kitchen. He should offer her chilled champagne, but he’d be lucky if he had a couple of Coronas in the fridge.
The noise he heard was soft, impossibly soft, but it raised every trained sense he had. Someone was outside.
Diego quietly closed the bedroom door, cutting off the glare of the bathroom light he’d never turned off. In the living room’s darkness, he crept to the window and looked out.
His front door led to a small outside balcony that served as a doorstep for his apartment and the one next door. Open stairs ran from it down to the parking lot. At the bottom of the staircase, a shadow flitted into view and then almost instantly vanished.
Diego moved noiselessly across the living room, set the two beer bottles down on the counter, went back into the bedroom, and picked up his gun from the dresser.
Cassidy propped herself on one elbow. “What is it?” she asked sleepily.
Diego’s heart beat swiftly, both with adrenaline and at seeing the beautiful woman he’d just had sex with rising from his sheets.
“Someone outside.”
“Oh.” Cassidy lay back down. “It’s just Kyle, one of Eric’s trackers. He’s here to protect me. He and Brody.”
Of course. Eric, rightly so, wouldn’t have let her leave Shiftertown without them, not with Reid running around loose.
Diego put the gun back into its holster on the dresser. “How did you get in here, anyway?”
He hadn’t cared when she’d suddenly appeared in his bathroom—it was enough that she was there—but he was calm enough now to be curious. The front door had been firmly locked when he’d entered the apartment.
Cassidy smiled, a wicked, tempting smile that made him want to crawl right back into bed with her.
“Kyle, the Lupine, is very good at picking locks. But he won’t be coming in. I took his lock picks away from him.”
“Devil.” Diego turned off the light in the bathroom, shut the bedroom door, and came to the bed. It was warm under the covers with her. “Tell me something. Why is Brody one of Eric’s trackers but Shane isn’t? Or is he?”
Cassidy pulled Diego into the comfortable nest with her. “Shane is Nell’s second. There’d be a conflict of loyalty if Shane worked directly for Eric.”
“But not if Brody does?”
“Brody’s lower in the bear hierarchy. And Eric has one male from each Shifter family working for him in some way. It’s another way he keeps the peace between species.”
“Your brother is too damn clever for his own good.”
Cassidy shrugged. “He’s a good leader, and he makes use of all his resources.”
Of which, Diego realized, he himself now was likely one. But he didn’t want to talk about Eric and his trackers. “Come here,” he said.
Cassidy put her arms around him, and Diego held her close. He drew a long breath and let it out. “I killed a man tonight,” he said.
Cassidy started, then she stroked his back, soothing. “Oh, Diego. What happened?”
He told her. Diego hadn’t told the dispatcher the truth, or the paramedics, or the uniforms, or his captain, not even Xav, who’d come to the scene when he’d heard. But the story poured out to Cassidy, from what Enrique had been like at fifteen to the thirty-five-year-old pathetic wreck Diego had shot tonight.
Diego found his eyes wet with tears. “Enrique didn’t think I would do it. He was going to shoot me for real. He smiled at me as he died, as though I’d finally measured up in his eyes.” He rubbed his forehead. “Like I ever wanted that son of a bitch to approve of me.”
Cassidy touched Diego’s cheek. “He was an alpha who’d lost his power. Sometimes dying pride leaders do that, when their power has passed on. They hole up somewhere and ask a young alpha to fight them, so they can go with dignity.”
Diego shook his head. “Enrique deserved to die ten times over for what he did to my family and to so many others. He doesn’t deserve dignity. But tonight, I felt sorry for him.”
“Because you have compassion. The best leader does. Strength without compassion isn’t true strength.”
Diego managed a smile. “Listen to you. Like I haven’t dreamed about shooting him in the ass all these years. Like I don’t want to find the men who killed Jobe and rip them apart with my bare hands.”
“Of course you do. Just like I want to rip apart the men who killed Donovan.”
Diego pressed a finger to her lips. “Which you are going to let me take care of,” he said. “Humans won’t tolerate Shifters killing humans.”
“Shifters do a lot of things without bothering about humans,” Cassidy said.
“Don’t tell me things like that. I’m a human cop, and if I know things, I’m obligated to act on them.”
Cassidy licked his finger. “All right. This is a no-telling zone.”
His blood heated. “Dios, you’re sexy, Cassidy. Especially when you smile at me like that.”
Cassidy widened her smile. “You’re sexy too.”
“Stop looking at me like that,” Diego growled.
“What are you going to do if I don’t. Restrain me?”
Diego shivered. “And don’t make my mind go there.”
“Go where?” Cassidy gave him an innocent look.
He leaned into her. “Dirty, naughty places. Like it did in that skyscraper when I slapped cuffs on you. Sexiest ass I ever saw in my life.”
“And yet, you still took me in.”
“Just doing my job, ma’am.”
“I wanted to jump your bones in the interrogation room,” Cassidy said.
Diego’s mind conjured up about five good scenarios, all of them highly satisfying. “I wanted to jump yours. Let’s just say that if the video had been running, we could have made a fortune selling it on the Internet.”
Cassidy grinned. “Really? It would have been that good?”
Thoughts of Cassidy, coveralls open, on the ugly metal table, lingered in his head. “It would have been damn good.”
“It was pretty damn good right here.” Cassidy rolled her lower lip with her teeth. “Maybe still is?”
Diego rested his fists on the bed. “Are you saying you want more?”
“I’m saying I want you.”
It was a good thing Diego had decided to take a few weeks’ leave to get over shooting Enrique. He wouldn’t be able to walk after tonight.
He pushed Cassidy down on the bed, letting his tongue do some exploring. Cassidy’s skin was fiery and salty, her breasts smooth, filling his mouth with her taste. Diego suckled and licked, then drew his tongue to her navel and flicked it over the stud there.
Cassidy laughed. “That tickles.”
“Too bad, querida. What happens to this when you shift?”
“It just goes away when I shift and is there when I change back.”
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“Oh, right. How does that work?”
She shrugged. “A Basque woman in northern Nevada made it for me. There’s magic in it, she said.”
“Magic.” The Shifters liked to talk a lot about magic and seemed very comfortable with it. But then, these were people who could move back and forth from animal to human form. Scientists tried to claim that the shape-shifting ability was genetics gone wrong, but there had to be more to it. “Pretty magical, all right.”
Diego played with the stud with the tip of his tongue, liking it. Cassidy’s flat stomach rippled with her delight. “Lindsay and me both got one, daring each other. I was pretty crazy when I was younger.”
“Yeah? What about now?”
“You’re starting to make me crazy again.”
Diego warmed. “Good.” He left the stud and licked lower, then lower, to the warmth between her legs.
Cassidy stiffened. “What are you doing?”
Diego raised his head. “What does it feel like I’m doing? I’m feasting on you.”
Her eyes were round, her breasts rising as she half sat up. “I’ve never…”
“Been feasted on?” Something in Diego went tight. “Do you like it so far?”
Silently, she nodded.
“Then I’ll keep doing it.”
Diego lowered his head. Dear God, she tasted good. He drank her in, the beautiful taste of Cassidy, his damn gorgeous, sexy woman.
He rose up over her, hard and wanting her. Cassidy’s face was languid with sex, but there was a stunned look in her eyes. Diego grinned at her. “Did you like that?”
“Hell, yes.”
“Good. How about some more?” He lowered his head again.
Cassidy loved it. His tongue drove her crazy. Hot, wet, wild, beautiful. “Diego.” Cassidy raised her hips, wanting more. And more.
Diego slid his arms behind her legs, pulling her toward him. He knelt over her, positioning himself, then thrust straight into her.
He was big, opening her, satisfying her. Cassidy never wanted it to end.
Diego feathered her skin with hot, leisurely kisses. He made love to her just as leisurely, as though they had all the time in the world, slow heat in the cool night. “Amada mia,” he whispered. “You are so beautiful.”
Cassidy didn’t understand all his words, but the mate bond did. It rose up in her to bind her to him, and it wasn’t going to give her a choice about it.
Hours later, Diego woke in the warm bed with Cassidy when someone thumped on the front door.
He didn’t want to get up, not with Cassidy backed into him, her buttocks nestling sweetly into his groin. Sunshine poured through the window to touch her hair—when had it stopped being night?
The thumping didn’t end. Cassidy looked at him sleepily. “That’s not the trackers,” she said. “They wouldn’t knock. And if it was someone trying to hurt us, they wouldn’t let them near the door.”
Diego growled, but he got up, pulled on a T-shirt and sweatpants, and made for the living room. He relaxed when he recognized the silhouette outside his living room window, and unlocked and opened the door.
“Hey, Diego,” Xavier said, walking in. “Ready to go?”
Diego rubbed his head. “Go? What time is it? What day is it?”
“Saturday.” Xavier strode into the kitchen in his gray T-shirt and jeans and frowned at the two beer bottles still sitting on the breakfast bar. “We’re supposed to go to Mamita’s.”
“Oh, yeah.” Real life, which had seemed a million miles away, rushed at Diego with lightning speed. Last night, when Diego had talked to Xav, Xav had reminded him, but that seemed a lifetime ago. Xav had said he’d turn sitting on Reid’s place over to Eric’s trackers, because missing Mamita’s Saturday breakfast wasn’t an option. Mamita had made that clear a long time ago.
Xavier’s gaze was on the half-open bedroom door. The bed was hidden but not Cassidy’s shoes resting lazily on the floor.
“Aw, hell, Diego, you’ve got Cassidy in there. Why didn’t you say anything?”
Diego stepped to the bedroom door and pulled it shut. “Keep it down.”
“You should have used the signal. I’d have left you alone.”
Diego and Xavier had worked out a signal when they’d moved into their own places years ago. If either had a woman spending the night, one front window blind was to be completely closed, the other to have the slats half open.
“There wasn’t time,” Diego said. “Give me a minute.”
Xavier strode to the refrigerator, looked inside, and shook his head. “You’ll starve Cassidy to death. Tell her to come with us and have one of Mamita’s spectacular breakfasts.”
Diego imagined Cassidy meeting his mother and how that would go, on both sides. But he did want Cassidy to meet his mother. Cassidy was special, and his mother would realize that.
Diego opened the bedroom door, ready to invite Cassidy and offer her first dibs on the shower.
He faced an empty bedroom. Cassidy’s dress and panties still lay in a heap on the bathroom floor, but she was gone.
The window by the bed was wide open. Diego went to it and looked out. Two years ago, he’d have hung all the way out, but now he stayed a safe foot back on his solid floor and scanned the narrow alley below. He saw nothing but a few stray newspapers caught between the apartment building and the block wall that separated the property from an empty desert field. The apartment’s back wall was sheer, but a large wildcat could have easily leapt down, scaled the far wall, and faded into the field on the other side.
Damn. The disappointment cut deeper than he’d have imagined.
Diego showered and dressed while Xavier flipped channels on the television. Diego left the back window open when he and Xavier headed out. It was unlikely a human being could scale the sheer wall that led to his bedroom, and Cassidy might want her clothes back.
Cassidy waited, crouching in the scrub of the empty lot, until she saw Diego’s T-Bird drive off. She knew he was unhappy with her running, but the mate bond sneaking up on her had terrified her, and she needed to retreat and think about it. Meeting his mother while the mate bond toyed with her was not something Cassidy was ready for.
She’d seen Diego looking out the window for her, confused and irritated, and she didn’t like how that made her feel. But she’d make it up to him. Cassidy would call him later, invite him back to Shiftertown, explain.
I’m trying to protect you, Diego. Just as I did when I took that blood pledge to keep the other Shifters off your back.
Eric hadn’t been happy about that, but he’d understood. Eric could be tough, but he had wells of compassion.
The back alley was quiet. Brody and Kyle were waiting farther back in the desert lot, impatient and wanting to get out of here. She sent them a low growl to cool it a minute while she flowed quietly to the top of the wall.
From there, it was an easy leap through the back window Diego had so thoughtfully left open for her. She’d need her clothes if she wanted to drive home.
Cassidy landed on the bedroom floor with a light thump. She started to shift into her human form when a sudden smell assaulted her nose.
Fae.
She froze for a split second, then she sank back into her wildcat. The Fae was moving around the living room. Cassidy slid noiselessly around the bedroom door, keeping to the shadows.
It was him all right, tall and slim, dark-haired, and stinking of Faerie. Reid.
He didn’t see Cassidy until she leapt.
Reid whirled, eyes full of fire. Cassidy’s Collar went off, biting pain deep into her, but she opened her mouth and went for his face.
She felt something bite into her side, and found herself spinning, dizzy and sick, the world blurring before her eyes until it snapped and went dark.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“She climbed out the window?” Juanita Escobar said from the stove. “I’ve heard of men doing that when the husband comes home, but not a girl with nothing to hide.”
> Xavier had told their mother the whole story with a grin on his smart-ass face.
“Xavier probably scared her,” Diego said. He sipped coffee, which was wonderful. The only coffee he’d found that came close to Mamita’s was Jace’s. The fried potatoes, beans, and eggs she was whipping up for breakfast chilaquiles would be even better. “Cassidy’s shy,” he said.
Xavier’s eyes widened. “The woman who broke into your apartment and waited for you to come home to have sex with you is shy?”
“You should have brought her with you, Diego,” Mamita said sternly. “You should have called for her to come back.”
Xavier laughed. “Here, kitty, kitty.”
The trouble with being head of the family meant having no privacy whatsoever. “Leave it alone. Cassidy obviously didn’t want to make a big deal of it. Fine, we won’t make it a big deal.”
“How can you know what she does and doesn’t want to do?” Mamita asked. “She’s a Shifter, not a human. She probably reacted instinctively, like a cat who doesn’t know who’s approaching it. They hide first, and then they investigate.”
“Call her, Diego,” Xav said. “Tell her everything’s all right.”
“Or, I could give her some space,” Diego said irritably. The problem was, he kept thinking about Cassidy’s beautiful body, her kisses, and her throaty, sexy voice. He couldn’t stop thinking about her.
His mother started layering the egg mixture with crisped tortilla pieces, then cheese. “Sounds like she doesn’t want space; she wants reassurance. Call her, Diego, then go get her and bring her over here. I want to meet her.”
Diego held on to his patience. “I can’t guarantee she’ll want to meet you.”
Mamita gave him a pitying look. “Ask her. If a girl agrees to meet a man’s mother, then she’s serious. If she doesn’t, then it was a one-night stand, and you’re better off knowing right away so you won’t break your heart.”
“There’s no question of me breaking my heart.” The pang in it betrayed Diego’s lie.
His mother’s look turned sharp before she went back to the chilaquiles. “You let me be the judge of that. You’re thirty-two, Diego. It’s time you started seriously looking.”