“That’s what they call it.” Jamison cupped her cheek. “It sounds more intimate than girlfriend, but less intimate than lover.”
“Did you mean me?”
He laughed softly. “Of course I meant you. My lover with the turquoise eyes.” He pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth.
“Why were they so cruel to you?”
Jamison brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead. “They did teach me things, like how to control the Change, and how to calm the beast inside me so I didn’t savage everything in sight. I learned how to be contained, controlled. It took a long time. They were right to keep me caged at first. I tried to rip out the throats of everyone I saw.”
She slid her arms around his waist. “I can’t believe that.”
“I’d never felt like that in my life. I was a killer, and I wanted to kill. Me, the storyteller who reads to children.” Jamison remembered his fear and self-loathing, his certainty he couldn’t trust himself with anyone he loved. “But the Changers taught me how to focus the killing instinct to what was necessary
—hunting game or moving up in the pack. Not that they were about to let me move up. They taught me, but the Alpha didn’t trust me.”
“You got away from them, though.”
Jamison nodded. “Once I got used to the Change and made it clear I wasn’t going to challenge the Alpha, they let me have more freedom. Not much, but more. The Alpha had some idea of using me as a guard for the pack, but he couldn’t trust me enough. So he decided that, to enforce my loyalty to him, I should mate with one of his females.”
The worry returned to Naomi’s eyes. She was trying to listen and be understanding, but he preferred her flash of jealousy to total indifference.
“Was she pretty?” Naomi asked, trying to sound casual.
Jamison wanted to laugh. “She’d lived in the remote desert most of her life, and I don’t think she’d combed her hair in five years. She was a beautiful mountain lion, but as a woman . . . let’s just say she let herself go.”
Naomi didn’t look amused. “Are you telling me this because you think it’s what I want to hear?”
“Because it’s the truth, love. I didn’t want to take her as mate, either as a cat or as a human. I wanted to get out of there, get home, and find you.” He lost his smile. “But they didn’t want me to go.”
“Then how did you get here?”
“I escaped.” Jamison closed his eyes, remembering the pain of the spelled chains. He’d drawn on his own limited shaman magic to counteract the spells, but it had been brute strength that finally broke them.
“It took me a long time, but I finally escaped their compound. And they chased me. They’re still hunting me.”
Naomi touched his face. “Is that why you said your enemies were looking for you?”
“Yes.” Jamison kissed the line of her hair. Her scent was intoxicating. “I had to come back here to protect you. The Alpha knew I was only partially bonded to you—he could smell it. I heard him tell his seconds that he had to get rid of you before he could fully bond me to the female.”
“Get rid of me.” Naomi’s beautiful eyes filled with alarm. “I bet he didn’t mean persuade me to break up with you.”
“The Alpha has lived apart from civilization so long he knows only one method of dealing with something in his way.” Jamison felt grim. “Kill it.”
FOUR
Naomi went still. She gazed into Jamison’s dark eyes, windows to the man she’d thought she knew.
“Kill it,” she repeated.
Jamison touched his lips to her hair again. “The Alpha is a vicious bastard,” he said softly. “As soon as I understood what he planned, I doubled my efforts to escape, to get back to you. I won’t let anything happen to you, Naomi, I promise.”
Naomi thought about the way Jamison had not let her do anything alone since he’d arrived. Every step of the way he’d been right beside her and Julie.
“Julie,” Naomi said, watery fear washing through her. Julie was sleeping alone in the house.
“They’re not here yet,” Jamison said as though reading her thoughts. “I can smell them, and they haven’t found me or Magellan. They’ll figure it out sooner or later, but it gives me a little time to complete the bond with you.”
She frowned up at him. “What do you mean, complete the bond? Won’t that make them more determined to kill me?”