“No, that’s compromise,” he said to me. “If you were not willing to put off your decision, I’d offer you no privacy at all. I’m sure Jace would be happy to observe your shower to head off any attempts to crawl through the bathroom window.”
I cringed. “Daddy, how could you say something like that?”
“I’m not your father. I’m your Alpha.” His smile was gone; he was absolutely serious. And he wasn’t going to give in on the watchdog issue. “Whether you believe it or not, even Jace has the ability to concentrate solely on the job at hand. I wouldn’t employ him if he didn’t.” He shrugged, but the casual gesture looked alien on my suit-and-tie father. “However, if you’d rather forget your first attempt at negotiation, there’s always the cage. Of course, the cage has no privacy at all… And no shower or proper toilet.”
He had a point, and I knew I’d lost round one. But round two would come soon enough, assuming I hung around long enough to fight it.
I pouted, slumping against the back of the couch. “Fine. You win. But if you send Marc into my room at night, I swear he’ll come out a eunuch.”
Daddy nodded. “Fair enough. Marc stays on the day shift.” He glanced at Michael, amusement lifting the corners of his mouth. “Make the arrangements.”
“No problem.” And with that, Michael left to strip away another of my civil rights. You’d think his law school education might have at least made him hesitate. Whatever happened to the Bill of Rights? But apparently Baylor Law didn’t teach complicated concepts like that. What was the world coming to?
Fourteen
Jace wound up with the first shift of Faythe-sitting, because Daddy wanted Marc to help greet the arriving Alphas and bring them up to speed. Ethan got the same assignment, along with Parker, once he’d returned from the airport with the Di Carlos. Every half hour or so the doorbell would ring as another Alpha and his small entourage arrived. After the third large man in a dark suit asked me how I was holding up, Jace and I retreated to my room with a plate piled high with food from my mother’s buffet.
“So, what’d you do?” Jace asked me around a mouthful of ham and cheese on whole wheat. I lay sprawled across my bed on my stomach, the plate of food in front of me. He sat in my desk chair, which he’d pulled up to the bed so he could reach the food.
I licked a smear of pimento cheese from my finger and reached for another tiny sandwich. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.” He brushed crumbs from his shirt, and my eyes followed his hand, lingering on the lines of his chest, clearly visible through the thin white cotton. “What’s with the babysitting detail? Is it because of Marc’s leg, or did Ethan rat you out about the guy in the woods?”“Why? You have something better to do?”
“Not a thing in the world.” He sniffed the air in my direction. “But you do smell a little ripe. Maybe you should go run a bath.”
I laughed, jiggling the bed and the plate of food. “Nice try, but I’ve been granted restroom clemency.”
“It was worth a shot.” He shrugged, popping a cube of sharp cheddar into his mouth. “So, was it Marc’s leg, or the hunter?”
“Neither.”
“What then? How could you possibly have had time to get into any more trouble between then and now?”
That was a very good question. I speared a chunk of honeydew on a toothpick topped with a strip of green cellophane, making him wait while I chewed extra well to prolong the suspense. Swallowing, I motioned for the Coke we were sharing. Jace grunted in impatience as he handed me the can from my nightstand. He chose another sandwich while I drank, and I waited until he took the first bite before finally answering. “I told Daddy I was leaving the Pride.”
His eyes widened, and he made a wet, strangling sound, nearly choking on the bite in his mouth. I pounded his back, and he turned angry eyes on me. “That’s not funny, Faythe.”
I shrugged. “I said I’d stay within the territory. And don’t worry, I didn’t mention my winning our little—” Before I could finish the sentence, he flew out of his chair, launching himself at me before I had time to do anything more than drop my sandwich on the comforter. I landed flat on my back, the top of my head pressed against my headboard. Jace’s right hand covered my mouth, and his knees straddled my stomach.
Damn. Pinned again. I was going to have to work on my reaction time.
“Are you trying to get me killed?” he demanded in an urgent whisper, brown hair flopping onto his forehead.
I shoved his hand away, grinning at how familiar our casual play felt. Along with Ethan, we’d been chasing and tackling each other since I was ten years old, and deemed sturdy enough to run around with the boys. I’d kind of missed being with people who wouldn’t break if I played too hard.
“Daddy wouldn’t kill you,” I said, beaming up at him.
“Shit, I’m lucky Marc didn’t. If you take my car, he’ll tell your dad about our bet, and Greg will skin me alive and hang my hide in his office as a warning to all future enforcers not to mess with his daughter.” I laughed, but he never even cracked a smile. “Promise me you won’t go.”
“I already promised Daddy I’d wait till we find Sara and Abby. Then we’re going to ‘revisit the issue.’”
He relaxed and sat up, moving back to straddle my thighs instead of my stomach. “How’d he get you to listen to reason?”
“It was either that, or have my mail permanently forwarded to the cage.” I propped myself up on one elbow and gave him a shove with my free hand. Jace fell over sideways on the bed, rebounding into a sitting position almost instantly.
“Oh.” He pouted for effect. “Surely a few hours with me is better than a night in the cage.”
“Tough call.” I grinned, watching him sulk. “But he wasn’t talking about just one night. Seriously. We’re talking long term. Months, at least.” I sat up, noticing that Jace had knocked the food over when he’d tackled me.
He rounded up several stray grapes while I righted the plate and started picking up the sandwiches. His hand brushed mine as he dropped the fruit on the plate and a tiny spark of excitement charged up my arm, making my next breath sharp.
Jace paused, a glint in his eyes and a cube of cheese in his free hand. “Your dad was exaggerating. He had to be. He’s never locked anyone up for more than a couple of weeks.”
Of course, that was me, the last time I’d run away. Two weeks in a damp, dark basement, with nothing but an old can for a toilet and not so much as a magazine to distract me from my mounting rage.
“Nope, he was completely serious.” I brushed crumbs from my comforter onto the floor. “So, I guess you’re stuck with me.”
“Well, if that’s the case—” he flopped back onto the pillows, lacing his fingers behind his head as he winked at me suggestively “—we might as well make the most of the next few hours. After all, it’s either me or the cage.”
I laughed to disguise the tremor his heated look sent thrumming through me. “I doubt that’s what Daddy had in mind.”
“It could have been. What did he say, exactly?”
I tilted my head, pretending to think. “Well, he did say something about letting you watch me in the shower…” Jace’s eyes widened comically in surprise, and I laughed for real. “He meant it as a threat.”
“So, if you misbehave, I’m your punishment? What a fascinating punitive system.”
“I’m glad you’re amused.” I lay down next to him, my hands folded over my stomach.
Jace propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at me through eyes just a shade lighter than my mother’s cobalt wineglasses. A girl could get lost in those eyes—if she let herself.
It took every bit of self-control I possessed to pull my gaze from his. Suddenly, Daddy’s threat wasn’t so threatening anymore. It wasn’t funny, either. How could I have thought of Jace as a brother for so long, then suddenly find him so exciting, so tempting in a forbidden-fruit kind of way?
Jace was starting to step over some pretty well-defined boundaries, and Daddy wouldn’t be very forgiving of either of us if he found out. Not to mention what Marc might do. Yet even knowing the consequences, I wanted to look into his eyes again. I wanted to think about what might have happened the night before if Marc hadn’t interfered. I wanted the possibility of a little excitement I didn’t need anyone’s permission to enjoy.
Jace stared down at me as if he knew what I was thinking, his finger tracing a lazy, coiling pattern on the comforter between us. “You know, if Marc hadn’t stopped me, I’d have won our bet.”
“I thought you didn’t want to talk about the bet.” With no thought for what I was doing, I reached up for his arm, my eyes focused on the well-defined curve of his biceps, where it lay half hidden by his sleeve. His pulse jumped as my fingers brushed his skin, and I realized what I was doing. Mortified, I tugged his sleeve down where a section of the hem was folded up, feigning concern for his appearance.He grinned, clearly seeing through my lamentable act. “I didn’t want to talk about you snatching my keys. But me winning our bet is just about my favorite conversational topic in the world right now.”