The question was an insult and they all three knew it, but it served to cut through the posturing and challenge lurking in the air around them.
"You know the answer to that," Bailey sneered. Turning his back on Lily's car, he pushed between Cavin and Jude and headed back across the lot, a swagger in his step.
Cavin watched the wolf a moment, and then said, "My ride back won't wait forever. Keep me updated and order a cab for Bailey."
Jude stilled with Cavin's words, but his lion slipped its chains for the briefest of seconds. They were enough. Responding to the dual threat of wolf and dragon so near its mate, the lion's powerful jaws opened to release a series of warning roars, three in all, toward Bailey's retreating shape, toward the sky-wherever the dragon, Cerridwyn perched-and, pacing in a circle, toward the lights and traffic of the thoroughfare.
"Are you finished?" Cavin asked as the last call faded.
Yeah, he was finished-finished leaving his mate vulnerable, finished allowing the world to define his territory for him. Let the call be a warning to any who heard it. He curled his lip at Cavin, and then stalked away to find his woman.
Now that the animal had broken loose of the man's control, it wanted to meet her.
15
Jude couldn't have been gone long but after disconnecting with Paul, the sense of being trapped drove Lily from the tight receiving area and back into the roomier showroom. The front windows and door were now blocked by closed blinds, but she couldn't shake the exposed feeling that crawled over her skin.
Desperate for a distraction, she grabbed the vacuum and was bending to plug it in when she spotted her lip gloss wedged between the cushions of the window-facing sofa.
Cheeks hot, she started running her hands around cushions and beneath the couch. If Jude's socks were hidden under a display or something, she would be mortified if a customer found them. Her cursory search turned up three knitting needles of various sizes and a gum wrapper, but otherwise the area was clean.
Except for the security feed. Hell. Jude would have to fix that.
No. She would have to learn to fix it. Because that damn sense of safety was following her around again, cemented by his presence during a crisis. She didn't want to feel vulnerable when he wasn't around.
Didn't want to feel vulnerable at all.
As she blew out a shaky breath and ran her hands over her face, a tiny voice in her mind asked, Would it really be so bad to need someone? To need him?
"No," she whispered. No, if she had to choose somebody, she'd choose him.
Maybe it's not a choice. Maybe it just is.
She was standing in the middle of the shop, staring blankly at a display of patterns, when a wildly unholy sound rolled through the night, penetrating the glass door, connecting with her deepest, most primal core.
Was that … ?
Heart in her throat, she stared at the door until the slatted blind swayed with the force of a bump. What the-
A large figure paced on the other side of the door, its form visible in the spaces where the blinds didn't quite come up against the door and window edges.
Instinctively, she knew she was looking at Jude's other half, his hidden half. Except for some reason, it wasn't hidden now.
Cautiously, knees unsteady, she approached the door and unlocked it. There was a chance she was wrong, that whoever-whatever-stood on the other side wasn't Jude at all. Some deep part of her was certain, but how trustworthy was that part, really?
As she opened the door, pulse pounding and stomach tight with nerves, she braced for an attack and let in the night air. It wasn't until something warm and velvety caressed her legs that she realized she'd also closed her eyes. Prying them open, she looked down. And then back up because he was so large, his eyes were on level with her ribs, his chest twice the breadth of her hips. Her breath whooshed out, and then it caught. She couldn't stop herself from taking a step back.
She'd thought he had a leonine look about him while in his man's shape, but the markers of coloring were nothing compared to the full force of his presence. Eyes that had heretofore been tempered by a human's necessity for self-control now burned with an inner fire. Any green that tinted Jude's eyes was gone in the lion, leaving only an intense, intoxicating amber. His nose had re-shaped flat and broad, his sensual mouth now a dark slash, and he should have been a formidable, terrifying thing.
He was formidable. There was no should about it. Immense power rippled down his sides as he angled his body and shouldered the door closed. He lifted a massive paw to the lock, then gave her a meaningful look. Secure it.