“Good.” She squared her shoulders, silently demanding I do the same. “Show everyone that by accepting his choice with grace and dignity.” I wasn’t sure I could do that, but she didn’t seem to have any doubt. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I reallydoneed the restroom.”
A minute later, the dining room door opened again, and Jace was the first one out. His gaze found me immediately, and he led me down the hall, out the back door, and across the backyard to the guesthouse, where’d he’d lived when he was my uncle’s enforcer. Mateo sat on the steps, elbows propped on widespread knees, but he stood when his Alpha approached.
“Anyone in there?” Jace nodded at the closed front door of the guesthouse.
Teo shook his head. “They’re all in the main house, waiting on the sentence.” He obviously didn’t know what Jace had just done.
“Good. Make sure we’re not disturbed, but knock when the council calls us.”
Teo nodded and opened the guesthouse door for us, then closed it as Jace led me inside. I could see Teo through the glass panel in the door, standing with thick arms crossed over his broad chest. No one would get past him without taking a beating. And making one hell of a racket.
Jace gestured toward the stairs, and I turned on him the moment my feet hit the second floor landing.
“Why?” I demanded. He tried to pull me close, but I pushed him away and crossed my arms. I’d hadenoughof Alphas, and politics, and tears. “Why would youdothat?”
“Because I love you. Because I need to protect you.”
Each word was an arrow shot straight through my heart. Love was supposed to make people happy, not tear them apart. “That’s not… You can’t…” I needed to argue, and he wasn’t fighting fair. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No one ever accused love of making sense, Abby. You and Brian made sense, yet that went nowhere because itmeant nothing. This.” He held my arms and looked straight into my eyes. “You and me. No matter how far apart we are or now much time passes, we will never mean nothing.” He shrugged, and a hint of a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “We may also never make sense, but that just means we’ll never be bored.”
I leaned against the banister and had to concentrate to think past what he was saying. Past words that triggered every urge I’d ever had to touch him. Words that made me want to crawl into his lap and purr, and write “Back off, bitches!” on his forehead.
It was the words he’d said to thecouncilthat were a problem. “You’re not my Alpha anymore, remember? You kicked me out of your Pride.”
“This has nothing to do with the Pride, and you know it.” He brushed a tumble of curls off my face, and his hand lingered at the back of my jaw. “I’ve made mistake after mistake. I missedsomany things I should have seen, and you stepped up where I failed. You risked everything to protect Robyn when that was my job. She was infected inmyterritory, and I should have been the one helping her through it.”
“You would have, if you’d known.”
“I would have known if I’d checked on you,” he insisted. I tried to argue, but he shook his head. “I stayed away from you because you weren’t mine, but I wanted you. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I was just neglecting my duty. I’m not going to messthisup, Abby. I’m not going to let them chop off your fingertips to declaw you.” He took my right hand and kissed each of my fingers, and my heart suddenly felt too swollen to fit in my body. “Or pull out your teeth.” He slid his thumb between my lips and skimmed the tip of my incisor.
I sucked his thumb into my mouth, and Jace’s eyes fell closed. I ran my tongue over the pad, my heart slamming against my chest.
“And I sure as hell couldn’t let them lock you in a cage.” Jace rubbed his thumb across my lower lip, where his gaze seemed stuck. “I can’t let that happen to you. Noteveragain.”
I pulled him close and wrapped my arms around his neck, giving in to the sudden urge to touch him. The sudden need to maintain contact with as much of him as possible, because an ominous certainty growing inside me said that I’d soon lose that chance. Even if they weren’t going to execute him, they probably wouldn’t consider spending more time with his girlfriend an appropriate punishment.
“What do they want from you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he whispered as he leaned down to kiss me, but I put one hand on his chest to stop him.
“Yes, it does. What do they want?”
Jace exhaled slowly. “The vocal minority wants me off the council. They’re trying to kill our wildcat resolution, and they think Isaac will be easier to manipulate than I am. Especially after they’ve just spared his only sister and sworn him in as Alpha in record time. Faythe said Mitchell wants to kick me out of the lodge and leave me rank-less in the Appalachian Territory.”
“They can’t do that.” But I knew better even as I said it. Finding him guilty of my crimes would finally give Mitchell and his allies a legitimate excuse to replace Jace as Alpha. Leaving him rank-less would be an extra dose of humiliation.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He leaned down for a kiss. “It’s done.”
“But—”
“No.” He shut me up with another kiss. “I don’t need to run the Appalachian Pride. I need to be withyou.” Jace tilted my head for greater access, and his mouth opened against mine. His kiss felt desperate. Urgent.
When we finally came up for air, Jace buried his head in my hair and spoke against my ear, his voice an intimate whisper. “Let’s just think aboutthis.” He lifted me, and my legs wrapped around his waist. “Aboutnow.” He carried me three steps forward, and I felt the wall at my back, the cool paint a blissful counterpoint to the heat of his body pressed against me.
“Only now,” I whispered, but I would have agreed to anything he’d asked for in that moment, with his arms around me and his mouth on my neck. With our future spread out in tatters before us.
His kisses trailed toward my collarbone and I closed my eyes, concentrating on the heat of his tongue against my skin. The council could take everything away from us any second, but they couldn’t take this moment, or the memory of it, once it had passed.
