CHAPTER EIGHT

Morning broke into day, day once more into dusk, and dusk into the depth of night by the time Viola woke again, still wrapped warm in Rowan’s arms. Her eyes fluttered open, pupils dilating to adjust to the blackness in which they were engulfed. She blinked and looked down at their entwined bodies, immediately surmising that they hadn’t moved an inch all night. She was stiff and achy when she pulled herself out of his embrace, and reluctant to move away from the comfort of his warmth and presence, but after about 13 hours of unconsciousness, she had to pee something fierce.

She padded across the carpeting, careful not to disturb the still-slumbering Rowan, and pushed into the bathroom. Switching on the light, her pupils constricted against the sudden glare, and she blinked the spots away until everything settled. Sitting down to pee, she admired the luxurious surroundings: white marble floors, jacuzzi tub, dual-headed stall shower with a built-in bench, bidet, the works. Done with her business, she flushed and stepped into the shower, finding the water almost instantly warm, and almost giddy with the happiness that accompanied letting it wash over her.

The bathroom was fully equipped with luxury products for her to use as well, so she helped herself to some salon-quality shampoo that smelled like lavender and soaped up. After a few moments, she heard a knock at the door and Rowan peeked his head in.

“Vi? It’s just me.”

“You can come in,” she called, her voice echoing against the marble.

“You mind if I pee, I feel like I might burst.” She didn’t mind, entirely, and knew the feeling, so she simply turned her back to him to give him some more privacy, even though the glass shower doors were appropriate fogged up and hid them largely from each other’s view. She was just grateful that the water was loud enough and strong enough that she couldn’t hear it until he flushed. Then, he took the liberty of opening the shower door and stepping in with her. She instinctively moved to cover her breasts, but then remembered what they’d done together the evening previous—or, rather, earlier this morning. Or…whenever. She lifted her hands and leaned her head back to rinse the shampoo from her hair.

“I want to ask you something,” he said, moving tentatively toward her.

“What?” she asked, wiping the water out of her eyes.

“Last night—”

“This morning?”

He grinned. “Yeah. Um. What was it about, exactly…?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, were you just like…really stressed out and needed to relax…? Or…”

“Or?”

He averted his gaze, and took her hand in his, linking their fingers together underneath the spray of water. “Or do you actually like me?”

She couldn’t help but smile. Never before had she seen Rowan so bashful. She was charmed. “Of course I like you, Rowan. You’re my best friend.”

“How long have we known each other?”

She arched one shoulder in a shrug. “Like eight years, I think?”

“Viola,” he said, suddenly grave, serious, “I have loved you since the first second I ever laid eyes on you.”

Her heart skipped a beat with the shock of it. Sure, they had flirted, were attracted to one another, teased each other mercilessly, but never had he ever given her any indication that he had real feelings for her. Her pulse was a timpani in the symphony of her cardiovascular system, and she was flushed due to more than the hot water beating down on her. “Rowan,” she said quietly, barely audible above the flow from the faucets, “why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“There was never a good time, I guess,” he replied. “I never wanted to distract you from a mission by some…lame profession of love. I wanted your mind on your work, not on me. And for a while there, it was just one job after another, after another, and…But then last night I thought maybe, maybe she feels the same way I do.”

He turned a pair of pleading green-yellow eyes on her, and she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what she felt, had no idea what was in the confines of her own heart. In fact, for most of her adult life she cut herself off from any such luxury as love. But now, two different men in as many days had awakened something in her, something she felt she owed herself to explore.

Her mouth could form no promises, and she wasn’t prepared to lie, not to Rowan, never to Rowan. So she simply pressed herself up against them, their bodies slick from bath water, and caught his mouth in a kiss that, if nothing else, was full of real and genuine longing. He gripped her by the hips and kissed her back, his tongue making a tentative journey into the cavern of her mouth.

They kissed like they were trying to find shelter in one another. Finding none, they kept searching over and over again. Finally, he pulled back and brushed his water-slick hair back from his face. “Do you?” He asked, and she watched droplets of water fall from the lips she’d just been kissing. “Feel the same way?”

She blinked up at him, her mouth open with all the words she wanted to form but could not. Finally, she said, “I don’t know, Rowan.” He pursed his lips into a thin line and gave a sharp nod of his head. “But,” she continued, reaching down between them to curl her fingers around the shaft of his erection, “help me find out?”

He crumbled at her touch, trembling with the force of his longing, and bent forward to kiss her again, even as she stroked him to full attention. She felt the pulse of her yearning between her legs and carefully lowered herself down onto her knees on the marble tile. His fingertips found the damp mass of her black curls, urging her forward. She puckered, pressing a series of fluttering kisses to the head of his cock, her tongue darting out to trace lines over its curve. Finally, she took him fully into her mouth, pushing the length of him into the back of her throat. He groaned, the sound of it bouncing off the marble, and she hummed her excitement as she worked him in and out of her mouth.

Pulling away, she kissed her way back up his thighs and torso, trailing kisses along his shoulder and up his neck until he caught her mouth and wrapped his arms around her, sliding his hands under her ass. He lifted her easily against him, and she parted her legs to wrap them around his waist. She felt his hardness press against her entrance, then slide inside her as he lowered her down onto it. She gasped, clinging to his neck as she rolled her hips back and forth to help facilitate the movement of his cock in and out of her sex, slick as a waterweed.

It felt so natural, this union, and she nuzzled into the crook of his neck as his strong arms hoisted her up and down, up and down. But he set her down eventually, sliding out of her just long enough to turn her around and bend her over. Her hands found purchase on the wet shower bench, and she spread her legs and arched her back so she could look over her shoulder at him as he entered her again. He dug his fingers into the flesh of her hips as he thrust into her, and she moaned and gasped and pressed herself back into him, to work him deeper into her.

“Viola,” he grunted, his voice husky in his frenzy to find release, and she let out a cry as he pushed himself finally into her, his member pulsing with the force of his orgasm. He stayed inside of her as his breathing began to slow, and she rose up halfway so that he could run his hands up and over the curve of her breasts. At last, he pulled out, and she could feel the nectar of his stamen running down her thighs. She turned, and he encircled her in his arms, squeezing her with a protective, proprietary fierceness that she rather enjoyed. She felt safe there in the little bubble they’d created.

So they both gave a start when a banging on the bedroom door broke them out of their intimate moment and forced them back into the real world, where the fates of numerous clans rested in their hands alone.

They parted and locked eyes on each other, and, after a moment, Viola scrambled to get out of the shower and wrap a towel around herself. She padded out into the main room, closing the bathroom door behind her, hoping that Rowan would remain silent.

Opening the door just a crack, she peered out into the hallway, her eyes lighting on Katherine, the lioness. She cocked her head to the side, brows arched in question, and pushed aside the surprise that such a comparatively diminutive woman could knock so forcefully.

“Sorry to disturb,” she said quietly, “but Mr. Weaver and the council would like to speak with you, at your earliest convenience.”

“Of course,” Viola confirmed. “Where should I go…?”

“There’s a conference room on the eleventh floor, you can go to them there.” She turned on her heel as though to walk away, but paused, and came back. “Oh, and there will be food. Lots of food. We’ve been having this whole ‘lock down’ catered.”

“Lock down?”

“I mean, that’s essentially what this is. The whole clan is here, basically. And no one is allowed to leave.” She paused and offered a faint smile. “At least there’s food.”

“Yeah.”

Viola went to close the door, but just before it clicked shut, she heard Katherine say, “Oh, and ask Rowan to come too, would you?”

~ * ~

“There will be about ten of them,” Rowan explained as he reluctantly pulled on the boxers he’d previously shed. But he hadn’t thought ahead enough to bring a change of clothes with him. “They will be the most powerful shifters in the clan—usually ‘power couples.’ Their offspring tend to follow in their footsteps. They keep the bloodlines pure.”

“Listen,” she said, rifling through her bag to pull out a fresh tee shirt, “I’ve been thinking: I don’t think this has to be violent.”

Rowan scoffed, butting his white dress shirt that was looking rather wrinkled for almost two solid days of use. “You don’t know these people, Vi. They don’t know anything but violence.”

“I just think…” she sighed. She couldn’t lie to him. Anyone else, but not him. “Graham came to speak to me.”

Rowan started, his eyes big, and round as two saucers, and trained on her. “What?” he demanded with a sharpness that, in turned, startled Viola. “When did this happen?”

“When I went back to my apartment, to get my things,” she replied, busying herself with the business of getting dressed.

“And you’re just telling me now?” He demanded, and she could see his fury rise by the way his face was turning kind of red.

“There just…before, there hadn’t been a good time, I guess. I just—”

“I should have gone with you,” he said quietly, under his breath. “I should have just gone with you, and we could have ended this all tonight.”

“That’s just it, Rowan,” she said, buttoning her jeans and moving over to him to press the palms of her hands against his chest. “He doesn’t want any more violence.”

“Well, what is it that he wants, exactly?”

“Peace,” she said. “That was the word he used, peace between the clans.” She reached up and ran her fingers through his hair, black like hers, but as poker straight as hers was full of curls.

“And how do we get this peace?”

“Well,” Viola ran her tongue over her lips and took in a deep breath of air, “it begins with you succeeding your father as the Alpha of Clan Felidae.”

Rowan rolled his eyes and pulled away from Viola entirely. “So, he wants you to kill my father. Is that it?”

“No! No, Rowan, that isn’t it.” She said, watching him turn away, toward a window that was still blacked out by the heavy velvet curtains. “He wants you to convince your father to step down, he wants you to come into power, and he wants to work with you.”

“Step down? No one would just give up the throne like that, Vi. That’s not how it works.” He turned back toward her then and gripped her by the shoulders. “Now, you listen to me very carefully, all right?” She bobbed her head in a nod, eyebrows arched high over her eyes as she waited for him to continue. “When we go in to see the council, don’t mention this to them.”

“Why not?”

“There’s a chance that they’ll see it as a betrayal, that you let him live, knowing everything that you know.” There was a certain desperation in his expression that unnerved her, and she found herself reaching out for him. “I’m serious. Your mission was to take him out. It’s understandable that you ran the first time, but there should have been no hesitation, knowing what you did, when he showed up to your apartment. They’ll think you’ve turned.”

“So quickly?”

“It happens. More than you know.”

But Viola shook her head, her still-damp hair bouncing from side to side as she did so. She didn’t think they would just kill her. Not when she was the anomaly that she was. “I don’t know if I think it’s right move, staying silent.”

“Please, trust me.”

She chewed contemplatively at her lip, absently picking at the skin around her nails. “I just think…if there’s a chance to end this all peacefully…”

“If the condition is that Alec Weaver be removed from his position as Alpha of Clan Felidae—”

“But it would be best for everyone, Rowan. If you were to take his place.”

“Take his place,” he repeated, giving a slow shake of his head, “you say that like it’s…Do you know how a man becomes the Alpha of his clan, Viola? He kills the current Alpha. It’s not some…some bloodless business transaction, one doesn’t simply retire from the position, so to speak. The only exceptions have ever been when an Alpha is struck with sickness and is rendered too weak to fight, but even then, there is usually more than one contender for the job.”

“But Graham said—”

“Maybe it’s different in his clan,” Rowan said on the wings of a sigh. “I honestly know precious little about the inner workings of Clan Ursus. Maybe they all hold hands and sing fucking kumbaya, for all I know. But that’s not how Felidae does it; it’s not how we’ve ever done it.”

“Oh.” She bowed her head, feeling suddenly at odds with herself and her own instincts. Did Graham know that killing Alec was the only way for him to get what he wants?

“Just…” He rubbed her shoulder gently, inclining his head to try to catch her gaze. “Just…let them do the talking, ok?”

She nodded. “Whatever you say, Rowan,” she mumbled.

Rowan took two long strides to the door and swung it wide, holding it open for Viola to pass through. Once she did, he caught her by the elbow, and she turned to peer up at him.

“You know I’m on your side, right?”

She couldn’t help but smile, though the smile was a specter that passed her features and then was quickly gone.