Cautiously, Trish nodded and said, “It’s just…everything Jacob’s going through. It’s tearing the clan apart. We used to be this real…family. You know? But lately, it’s just…falling to pieces.”
She looked up and expected to find Cayden picking dirt out of his nails. Instead, his eyes remained locked on her. Listening. “Must be hard,” he said.
Trish gave a small nod, her eyes never leaving his. “I’m terrified of being left alone.”
“I can’t tell you where the talisman is,” he said. He also sounded guilty about it.
Time to play hardball. “Are you…sure you can’t tell me?” she asked. She bit her bottom lip, smiled, and edged the neckline of her shirt down. She saw eyes hook on the path of her fingers as she bared the purple fabric of her bra, and then further down. She stopped, however, right before exposing the pink of her nipple and blushed. She was trying to be coy—like some sexy secret agent or something—but she just felt stupid now, silly. Because Cayden had—obviously—seen plenty of perky girl-tits, plenty that were way better than hers, proud college girls who would snap off their tops at a moment’s notice. And she was still too chaste with her body to even give a little nip-slip.
“I, um…didn’t think this all the way through,” she admitted, finally.
Something warmed in his face, a very human reaction in the face of the young girl’s vulnerability. He took her shirt between his fingers and slid the top button back into place. “You care a lot about your family,” he said.
“They’re all I have.”
Cayden looked tense. He raked his fingers through his hair, eyes stuck on the ground. “I don’t know where it is,” he finally confessed. “Her cougar buried it somewhere…probably in the woods.”
“That could be anywhere,” Trish said, her shoulders dropping.
He nodded, but then he added, “All I know is that it can’t be destroyed easily. You can try to burn it, smash it, run it over with a truck, but there’s nothing that’s going to break that gem. You have to…find the man in the Beast. Whatever that means—”
Trish grabbed him and kissed him. Hard. He let out a muffled, startled noise in her mouth. He was just starting to lean into it when she sealed it off and pulled back, giddy, a grin stuck on her lips.
“You’re a good guy underneath all those claws.”
He bared his teeth. “Don’t count on it.”
But when Trish kissed him once more before dashing off to the ranch, she swore she could hear him purr.
Chapter 62
Something wasn’t right. Jacob could feel it. Bare, animal instinct—danger—woke him out of a restless sleep, anxiety stirring in his blood.
Holly lay curled up in the crux of his arms, her head nestled against his wide chest, her arm draped over him. Her nightgown had slipped past her shoulder sometime in the night, exposing the top of her full breasts. The thin fabric had just barely stopped from falling away completely, the top lace caught on her round nipple, and he could only just make out the pink blush cresting the lace like the last light of a sunset. Jacob’s mouth watered at the thought of taking her nipple between his teeth, his moonlust transferring to a very immediate, very human longing. He felt his cock stir, rising languidly and disturbing the silk of his briefs, and he thought to himself: This is my wife. My mate. And still just the sight of her makes me crazy.
Focus. What had woken him up in the first place? What was this nervous feeling crawling through his bones? Then it hit him: Brent had left in the morning to get the talisman from Miranda and he still hadn’t heard from him. Jacob checked his phone: no calls, no texts.
He could feel Holly stir beside him. “Are you okay?” she croaked, still half-asleep. He loved her voice then, and felt the sudden urge to kiss her again and again until she fell back to sleep under his lips, like Sleeping Beauty in reverse.
“Brent hasn’t called,” he said. He didn’t try to hide the worry in his voice; if he’d learned anything about Holly, it was that trying to hide around her was an act of futility. He had no poker face around her, no more walls to hide behind. There was something intensely refreshing about that.
“He’s a hard worker.” Holly yawned. Jacob glanced over at her, eyebrow lifted. “Oh, you know what I meant,” Holly said, and then slipped her hand over his back. Her fingernails graced his shoulder blades. “Brent’s probably just getting one more…ride in before he leaves her for good.”
Jacob gave a snorted “hm” noise in response. He still felt unease prickling in his heart, but he also knew Holly was right. He had, after all, sent Brent on a mission to sneak the talisman out from the lion’s—or, in this case, the cougar’s—den. Brent had little to no finesse, so, in Brent logic, that meant one of two things—knock the cougar woman out long enough to steal the talisman, or fuck her brains out and then take it while she lounged in a puddle of postcoital bliss. He was guessing his brother had taken the path of least resistance.