She stepped inside and was welcomed by the cool air-conditioned environment of Havenway. Somebody said good morning; Caprise didn’t reply, just kept walking. Havenway consisted of lots of long halls, with doors everywhere. She still had no idea what was behind every door and didn’t really care. Her room was on the second floor, down another corridor. She took the stairs at the end of hallway number two and walked with quick strides. Her goal was to get inside her room without having to see or speak to anyone. As soon as she punched in the code to her own private quarters and pushed into the room she began to breathe a sigh of relief.
Too fast, too soon.
“Oh, Caprise, I’m so glad you’re back. Were you hurt? Should we go down to the medical center to have a look at you?”
Aryiola Delgado with her beautiful amber-colored eyes, long streaked hair pulled into a ponytail, and protruding belly, stood in the center of Caprise’s bedroom rattling off questions as if this was the start of some great inquisition.
Caprise dropped her bag and purse and pushed her door closed tightly. “I’m fine, Ary,” she told her sister- in-law.
In the weeks since she’d returned and moved into Havenway, she and Ary had become friends, somewhat. For Caprise, female relationships were just as hard as male ones. She’d been on her own without any ties for five years. And before that, her dealings with people not in her family were minimal. That was all due to her differences as well, and she’d refused to bond with the female shifters as her parents had suggested. It seemed, quite miserably, that Caprise was destined to be alone.
No, that wasn’t true. Not if her sister-in-law had anything to say about it.
“Are you sure? Nick didn’t want to tell me what was going on, but I got most of it out of him anyway. When the helicopter arrived and he and Rome left so quickly I knew something bad must have happened. But Kalina came to see me and said that X was fine, that he hadn’t been arrested. She said you’d stayed with him but I told her I’d find out everything from you personally.”
Caprise nodded as she passed Ary to open the wardrobe where her clothes hung. This was how most of their conversations went—Ary talked, Caprise nodded or gave one-syllable answers until Ary grew weary and gave up. Something told her today Ary wasn’t going to give up. And there was something that was bothering Caprise; maybe it wouldn’t hurt to talk about it. What if she gave this sister thing a try? No, not with Ary. Even though she didn’t like talking to her sister-in-law, she did care about her and the baby she carried. Unloading all her issues on Ary wasn’t a good idea.
Still, she didn’t really have the energy to keep dodging her questions, either. As usual, sleep hadn’t come quickly to her last night. But it had come eventually, which was still a little baffling.
“X and I had sex,” she said bluntly. Then she pulled out a dress and threw it over her shoulder. “I’m going to go in and change.”
Ary looked stunned and for a moment Caprise thought she might make a clean getaway.
“Wait, you did what with who?”
So much for the clean getaway.
Instead, Caprise figured, she might as well just get this over with. She moved to the king-size bed, which at first seemed utterly foolish for just one person, but then she’d fallen in love with its extreme comfort, even on those nights that sleep eluded her.
“X and I had sex. He showed up at the club being all bossy and controlling as usual. Then one thing just led to the other and we did it.” She shrugged but even she realized that what she’d just said wasn’t that simple.
Ary came to sit on the other side of the bed, taking a moment to adjust herself and her growing girth. Pregnancy for Shadow Shifters was a bit different than it was among humans and full-breed jaguars. Ary would carry the baby for twelve to eighteen weeks max; then she’d deliver what would look like a human but after going through puberty would become a full-grown jaguar shifter. So right now, she looked like she was about four months along in a human pregnancy, complete with the swollen ankles and face.
“You don’t even like X” was Ary’s next comment. She’d folded her arms so they rested on top of her stomach, and Caprise resisted the urge to reach out and touch her.
In fact she turned away, looking across the room instead.
“He’s arrogant and high-handed and obnoxious.”
“Okay,” Ary said. “That may be true. I guess the next question would be what’s he like in bed?”
To that Caprise couldn’t help but chuckle. Ary was a
“It wasn’t that big a deal,” she started to say. “But then he gets even more macho-man on me and tosses me into his truck, because he says Rogues are coming. We end up at his place, where—” She sighed. “—we do it again.”
“Again?” Ary asked. “Well,” she added, barely holding her own smile in, “I guess that means he was pretty good in bed.”
No matter how contrary her nature, Caprise smiled right along with her sister-in-law. “He was good. But that’s not the point. It wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“So why did it?”
That was a simple question, one Caprise had been avoiding since the moment X pulled her off that stage.
“I don’t know” was the only reply she could come up with. And surprisingly, it was the truth. She didn’t know why she’d had sex with X when sex had been the farthest thing from her mind since she’d made her way back to the United States. No, to be even more honest with herself, sex hadn’t been what Caprise had shied away from— intimacy was. And what she’d shared with X wasn’t intimate, it was basic and good. Damn, it was good.
“So let me get this straight. You and X were at a club together and then you had sex. Rogues appeared, then you ran away to his house and had more sex. Does that sound about right?”
“The facts are there. But let me fill in the blanks because you’re going to find out anyway. I’ve been working two nights a week at Athena’s. I dance there because I haven’t heard back from the school about getting a job dancing or teaching or whatever. X was there last night and he saw my routine. I don’t know, I guess he got turned on, and when I came off the stage he dragged me back to my dressing room. Then he smelled Rogues and things got all crazy.”
“And you ended up in his bed again?”
Caprise frowned. “Why do you keep going back to that point?”
Ary laughed. “It’s a pretty hard point to get past. No pun intended.”
Caprise could see she was enjoying this way too much. “You’ve been around Kalina too long. Speaking of which, where is she?”
Ary shook her head. “Don’t try to change the subject. She’s in some training meeting with the newly hired staff. I don’t know if she really likes the new duties of being First Female of the Stateside Assembly, but it’s keeping her plenty busy. And now back to you and X and the Rogues. I know he’s been investigating the club. We actually saw the girl who was killed there at the morgue.”
“That’s the girl they think he murdered?”
“X would never murder anyone, especially not a female. That’s not what shadows do,” Ary said adamantly.
It took valiant effort not to roll her eyes. “He’s a man, Ary. He was born in the states and raised here. So he’s visited the Gungi, that doesn’t make him a part of the tribe.”
“You’re wrong. The Gungi is in our blood, no matter where we’re born.
Caprise opened her mouth to speak then clapped her lips shut again. She took a steadying breath and clenched and released her fists. “How did you know I went back?”
“I saw you.”
“I didn’t come to the village. I stayed away.”
Ary shook her head. “I left the village every morning to visit Yuri. I saw you one morning. You stayed on the
