Shameful by May Dawson
32
Legacy
During the days that followed,I trained with Killian every morning.
I spent my next few nights with Rhett. We slept in the same bed at night, where I knew I was safe. If Lucas was with another woman, Rhett would touch me, bring me to orgasm, cover me with his kisses.
Rhett felt like home, even in a haunted world.
West was often absent and when he was around, he was silent.
But at night, I would sometimes go into the hall and listen to the piano music drifting up the stairs. West was an accomplished musician, playing the guitar and the piano. Sometimes I caught him singing. His soulful, sexy voice seemed so at odds with the gruff personality.
I asked Rhett about it one morning. He was lying on one of the tables in the library, being very helpful as usual, while I looked through the books. One of his arms was tented over his eyes to block out the light.
“Yeah, he wanted to go to college for music, but he couldn’t get permission from the pack.” There was a bitter twist in Rhett’s voice that wasn’t present when he talked about his own story.
I pulled a book out of the shelves and sneezed.
“Occupational hazard,” Rhettsaid.
He didn’t understand my obsession with the two story library. I couldn’t understand how he and his brother had mostly ignored it for the last four years.
“There have to be answers to some of my questions here,” I said. “How to usher the ghosts on into the afterlife. Who this ghost even is… Are we sure it’s TeresaKate?”
I didn’t understand why a woman who had been murdered here would try to murder anyoneelse.
“Mass of fury,” Rhettsaid.
“There’s got to be a reason. No one’s that angry for no reason.”
“You’ve never been on the internet much, haveyou?”
“Neither have you,” I said. “You haven’t had wi-fi for four years.”
He smiled to himself. “No.”
I propped my hands on my hips. “Rhett. What aren’t you tellingme?”
“I was good on the trip to pick you up. Killian was worried I’d take the chance to escape.”
I ran my fingers along the titles, even though my fingertip came away smudged. “Are you planning to escape eventually?”
“No,” he said, in that breezy tone that I already knew concealed untruths. “Why not just wait until the alpha’s in a forgivingmood?”
“Do you think Lucas would bring me back? When he’s the alpha?”
“Sure,” Rhett said. “That would make total sense. I’m sure he’s not at all offended when he can feel you and I fucking around through thebond.”
I groaned at his crass words—for something that felt so beautiful—and then said, “That’s not fair. He startedit.”
“Mm. Well, he seems like a fair, feminist kind of guy.” He sat up, yawned, stretched. In a too-casual voice, he said, “When do you think you two will stop feeling each other through thebond?”
I knew what he was really asking. Maybe Lucas didn’t actually feel the echoes of what I did with Rhett. Maybe he’d managed to move on, really and truly, from who we were supposed to be to each other.
But I hadn’t managed to move on yet. No matter how much I willedit.
I still felt it every time Lucas put his lips on another woman.
“Look at this,” I said. I’d just pulled an unmarked book off the shelf, and inside, I’d found ornate cursive I could barelyread.
It was a diary.
It was Theresa Kate’s diary.
That night,when the piano strains drifted down the hall, I left the bed where I slept with Rhett. I liked knowing someone was close, just in case those inky ghosts came to attack me, or Lucas’s phantom touch. Rhett would protect me from eitherone.
He stirred, blinked his eyes open. He was a light sleeper; we had to be in this house.
“Go back to sleep,” I said. “I’m just going to check onWest.”
“Bad idea,” he murmured, but he closed his eyes again.
I was so used to the dominating ways of the males of my wolf pack. Rhett was refreshing in his own strangeway.
When I walked into the room, West scrambled up from the piano, the keys jangling discordantly as one of his big hands smackeddown.
He looked for a moment as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t, boyish and abashed despite that big, rugged body. Then he recovered, his usual look of arrogant stoicism coming over his face. “What the hell are you doing inhere?”
“The doors are open.” I gestured at the big, elaborately carved wooden doors that stood open at the end of the ballroom.
“That doesn’t mean you’re welcome.”
I ignored West’s sullen mood. That seemed to be what Rhett did, although perhaps Rhett had no choice; the two were trapped here with only each other as friends. “You play beautifully.”
He grunted and sat down again at the piano bench. “Iknow.”
“It seems like a waste you only get to play for the ghosts and the spiders.”
Although Rhett had told me that West had always known it was a long shot he’d get to play his music long term. West seemed like the typical domineering wolf shifter on the surface, but most of them didn’t play music.
“Yeah, keenly aware,” he said. “What do youwant?”
“I don’t know,” I said, which was true. I leaned on the other side of the piano. “You haven’t really talked to me since we gothere.”
He shrugged.
“You barely talked to me during the trip,” I said. “But you did talk. A little.”
“What do you want me tosay?”
“Anything you want tosay.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Leave me alone.”
I stared back at him, meeting his eyes. “Tell me something that surprisesme.”
He let out a husk of a laugh. “You don’t listen, doyou?”
Not if I don’t like the answer.The words were on my lips, but they weren’t true; they were just something glib tosay.
“No, I do,” I said thoughtfully. “I always listened before. I tried to do the right things, tried to be a good girl. No, I tried to be the perfectgirl.”
I’d always obeyed—my father, my alpha, even Lucas because he would be my husband and my alpha. I’d trained hard to fight, and I’d always been willing to fight for someone else. But it had never seemed right to fight forme.
The one time I did—to save my own life—they told me it would’ve been better if I died. “I tried so hard, and I ended up here anyway.”
“Guess you weren’t so perfect.”
“Maybe perfect was always overrated.”
West gave me a long look, then said, “If you promise to sit still and be quiet, you can listen.”
“I’ll be a better audience than the spiders.”
“Doubtful. They don’t talk atall.”
But for all that West said he preferred the company of spiders and silence, his gaze seemed to linger on my lips whenever I spoke.
I curled up in the window seat that overlooked the sea. I listened to him play, and I could get lost in his music.
For a few moments, the darkness I’d left behind receded. I felt content.
And maybe somewhere, Lucas felt that I had a moment’s peace withouthim.
And maybe he hated me forit.
Because suddenly, I could feel his touch. I knew it was him, because a part of me whispered mate even as he grabbed the woman he was with roughly, his fingers hard and bruising. I pulled my t-shirt’s collar aside expecting my own skin to be indented by his fingers.
Dark bruises, shaped like his fingers, were pressing into my body. Then suddenly a hand gripped my throat, pressing hard, too hard. I drew a strangled gasp of a breath, the rasp barely audible over the music. He was chokingme.
The music broke off abruptly. West was at my side, his gaze worried.
“He’s hurting her,” I rasped, barely able to get out words. “To hurtme.”
“How do I help?” he demanded.
His handsome face swam in front of my face as Lucas’s hand dug even harder into my throat. I couldn’t breathe. How could Lucas do this to someone? How could he do this tome?
“You know how to help,” I managed.
West gave me a long, pained look. Was it really that awful to have to kissme?
Then despite the anguish written across his face, he grabbed my head, his fingers threading through my hair. His lips met mine in a hot, claiming kiss. I was so surprised by the heat in his touch that Lucas’s power receded.
For a second, there was no one that mattered in the world except for the man in front of me and his lips on mine. He drew my hips fiercely against his, kissing me hard, and my hands stroked up his chest. I kissed him like he could save my life, and he kissed me the sameway.
Then jagged pain ripped through my side, and a strangled scream escaped mylips.
West looked down at me, terrified. “What happened?”
I tried to say he hurt her, but I couldn’t breathe at all anymore. I stared up at him in horror, and he cupped myface.
“It’s going to be all right, Legacy,” he said, but I knew he was lying.
West tried to kiss me, but my head jerked around; I couldn’t breathe. I needed to break the bond between me and Lucas. I could almost feel his satisfaction from here, knowing by hurting her, he was hurtingme.
How did I ever care about him? He didn’t deserve it. I hated him, and yet I couldn’t make the bond between ussnap.
West tried to kiss me one more time, then gave up and sank between mylegs.
“Legacy, stay with me,” he said, his hands gliding over my thighs. “Listen to my voice. Come back tome.”
Then he tugged down my panties.
“Damn it, Legacy, this isn’t how I wanted this to be,” he said, before he lifted my thighs onto his broad shoulders.
I barely registered his words through the feverish pain, through the pressure in my throat.
His tongue swept across my folds, then he settled in, his mouth working against my clit. My hips bucked and rolled as he pleasuredme.
Lucas’s face rose up in my memory, the way he’d looked at me when he kissed me in the rain. My fingers sank deep into the velvet cushion of the couch.
“West,” I groaned, reaching for him. He looked up at me, his blue eyes vivid even in the dim candlelight, his mouth still working frantically on my clit. His big hands stroked over my thighs.
I didn’t know what I wanted. I just needed to be grounded in this moment. Being trapped in this haunted castle might be a nightmare, but that nightmare was better than the fantasy of a happy life with Lucas.
He never deserved me. But the damned bond between us wouldn’t quite let mego.
West caught my reaching hand in his and folded my fingers in his firm grip. The way he held my hand was comforting, reminding me that even when Lucas dragged me into this hell, I wasn’t alone.
West didn’t stop, though, licking and nibbling until I came, my hips rolling up. The darkness above me seemed to shatter into stars.
Then I sank back into the couch, trying to catch my breath. All the strength had leached from my muscles, and even my bones felt weak. That orgasm had been powerful, but part of my exhaustion was just from fighting Lucas.
Lucas must still feel the bond between us too. Or he wouldn’t be trying so badly to hurt me. He wouldn’t care anymore.
West scooped me up against his chest, my bare legs dangling.
“I can walk,” I tried tosay.
He just snorted. He didn’t bother to answerme.
Maybe I was lying when I said that his snorting wasn’t cute, because all of West’s grouchy mannerisms were beginning to grow onme.
He carried me up, shouldered Rhett’s door open, and laid me down on the bed. Rhett was sleeping peacefully, one arm cocked under his head. Then West turned togo.
“West,” I said softly. “Stay.”
He hesitated, his body silhouetted against the light. I couldn’t see his face which was lost to the shadows. Even if I could, I probably wouldn’t have known what he was thinking.
A few long seconds went by, then he lay down beside me. He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me tight against hisbody.
Spooned against the grouch.
Who would have thoughtit?
I opened my mouth, and his big hand found my lips. His palm hovered as if he didn’t want to risk cutting off my breathing.
“Go to sleep,” he ordered.
“Only if you stay all night.” I didn’t even know where the flirtatious tone in my voice camefrom.
I’d just been through hell tonight.
But I’d been through heaventoo.
“Only if you shut up,” he said, and I smiled in the darkness as he nestled even closer, pulling me against hisbody.
Peace fell over the haunted castle.