Her smile dimmed a bit. “I know.”
“What we have together is great, but look around you. Look at me.” He shook his head. “Is this really where you belong? The club? The crowd outside the cage every night? It sure as fuck isn’t the kind of life anyone wants to see you shackled to for the rest of your life. Not even me.”
“Careful, you’re sounding an awful lot like my family.”
“They’re right to disapprove. Of me. Of us, together like this.”
“I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”
No, she didn’t. And that was one of the things he respected about her. It was one of the many things he loved about her.
“First time I saw you, I knew you were going to be trouble for me.” He speared his fingers into her hair, his palm curving around her warm nape. “You and your little gang of giggling, jiggling friends. I noticed you the second you walked in, you know that?”
She grinned. “I’m sure it was hard to miss us. We were all pretty lit up that night. We’d already hit a bunch of clubs uptown before we ended up down here.”
Rune shook his head. “I saw your friends, but the only one I took notice of was you. You, striding in at the front of the group, leading the pack.” His cock stirred at the memory even now. So did his blood, pounding with the same hard need he’d felt the instant Carys had invaded his world like a blast of unstoppable light. “Every male in here that night took notice of you too, but I knew I was going to be the one to have you.”
Her brows arched. “So arrogant.”
“Aye,” he agreed. “And determined.”
“A lethal combination.” She smiled as she leaned toward him, until barely an inch separated their mouths. “I never stood a chance.”
“Not for a moment,” he said. “And when you came back the next night by yourself, neither did I.”
As he kissed her and pushed back into her heat, he couldn’t help thinking that if they were a normal couple, they’d probably already be mated or well on their way toward it.
If he was a different man . . .
Rune shook the useless thoughts away.
Forever was something he couldn’t give Carys.
Hell, he hadn’t even given her total honesty. The blood bond would open his ugly past and shameful secrets to her. It would bind her to him irrevocably, and to the darkness he’d been running from nearly all his life.
It would bind Carys to the danger that could catch up to him at any time. As it had already before.
And that was something he would never risk, even if it meant one day pushing her away from him for good.
CHAPTER 4
Seated on a living room sofa next to his mate, Tavia, Sterling Chase did his damnedest to chat with their three houseguests without staring at the clock on the opposite wall every five minutes.
Tried and failed, if the look Tavia slanted at him was any indication.
As soon as he heard the quiet beep of the command center’s security system, indicating his patrol team had returned for the night, Chase murmured his excuses and strode out to the mansion’s hallway.
The pair of warriors he wanted to see appeared at the far end of the corridor, fresh from their night’s sweep of the city. “Anything to report?”
“Just a typical Friday night in Boston,” Elijah said in his smooth Texas accent. “Which is saying a lot, based on how things have been going around here lately.”
“And my daughter?” Chase pressed.
Jax shook his head, his almond-shaped eyes solemn. “No sign of her at La Notte, sir.”
“Was the cage fighter there?” At the warriors’ nods, Chase let out a sharp curse. “Then so was she. Carys probably hid from you the instant she spotted you inside the place.”
And Chase ought to know his daughter had the skill to evade anyone she had a mind to. The fact that she could bend shadows to her bidding was an extrasensory gift she’d inherited from him, after all. Damn it.
As he considered sending the men back out for another fly-by of the illegal sport club, just to get a visual confirmation that his child was still in the city and still in one piece, he sensed a shift in the air behind him.
Tavia had come out to the hallway now.
She smiled warmly at the two warriors, who greeted their commander’s blood-bonded mate with deferential nods. “Is everything all right out here?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Eli replied.
Jax’s head bobbed in agreement.
“They were just reporting in on the night’s patrol,” Chase said.
“You mean, reporting in on your nightly surveillance of our daughter.”
He didn’t bother to deny it. Tavia knew how concerned he was for Carys living on her own now. Not simply because she was his only daughter, but because of the dangers lurking in Boston and around the world of late. Dangers few but the Order were fully aware of.
Tavia worried too, but she must have been made of stronger stuff than he was. In the weeks since Carys had moved out of the family Darkhaven, Tavia had reconciled with the fact that their daughter was a grown woman who should be allowed to make her own choices.
As much as Chase hated it, there was nothing he could do. She was an adult, and he had to hope that what he’d taught her in life had not only stuck, but taken root.
He glanced at the pair of warriors and cursed. “Maybe I should send them back out to pick her up and bring her home where she belongs.”
Tavia crossed her arms. “And then what? Chain her to the banister? She’d never stand for us dictating her life like that, and you know it. We’d lose her for good.”
“We still might if we don’t keep her where we can protect her.”
“From what I’ve heard about her friend, Rune—”
“Friend?” Chase scoffed. “Gutter-bred, cold-blooded killer, according to
