Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
JESSE
Caleb wasn’t making sense.
I gripped his knees, torn between questioning him and scooping him into my arms and carrying him straight to bed.
“I saw France,” he rasped. “I was in the dining salon in the chateau.”
My heart stopped. Then it started again, knocking against my ribs like a clenched fist. Salon. Caleb didn’t say words like salon and chateau.
“You’re disoriented,” I said, rising and pressing a hand to his forehead. His skin was damp.
He shook me off. “I’m fine. Jesse, I was in your head. Inside your body.” His blue eyes were steady despite his pallor. “I saw Philippe through your eyes.”
I sat without planning to. Blood rushed in my ears. “What did you see?” I asked, but I already knew. The answer was in his eyes, which were certain but anguished, old hurts staring back at me.
My hurts, buried and stomped flat over a century ago.
In a low, halting voice, Caleb told me what he’d seen. The dining salon. The candlelight. The ribbon in Philippe’s hair. His crop and clamps and the bowls of wax he’d kept for the times it pleased him to drip it over my balls and press the de Boisseaux crest into it as it cooled.
Caleb described my mother’s sewing machine. My father’s strap. The horse we’d sold so we could eat.
“You weren’t lazy, Jesse,” he said at last. A tear slipped down his cheek.
My chest burned, and a curious pressure settled on it like I was pinned under a bench press. A heart attack, maybe, except werewolves didn’t have them.
I’d never told anyone about that horse. Not even Philippe.
“His name was Ridder,” I said, forcing the words past the pressure in my chest. “It means knight in Dutch. I named him.”
Caleb made a sound. Then he was in my lap, his thighs against my hips and his big arms around my shoulders.
“Fuck,” he whispered, squeezing my neck. He put his lips to my cheek and kept them there as he stroked the back of my head. “Fuck, Jesse, I’m so sorry.”
My vision blurred. I closed my eyes and held onto him.
The pain in my chest faded to a stitch that comes after running too long.
A feeling surfaced, and I didn’t have a name for it.
Violation came close, although that wasn’t quite right.
That implied intent, and Caleb hadn’t meant to go where he’d gone.
But he’d slipped under my skin. He’d picked up parts I’d mended and turned them over, exposing the undersides that never saw the sun.
He pulled back, his eyes wet and bluer than the ocean. “Jesse…” he whispered, cupping my face with both hands. “You were so lonely. You were just a kid, and you were so lonely.”
I swallowed hard. He was warm in my lap—and close enough for me to count every freckle on the bridge of his nose. He hated them but I’d memorized each golden dot and trusted the sun to give him more.
Star-spangled. He was better than that sky.
“I’m not lonely anymore,” I said.
His breath hitched. He traced gentle thumbs under my eyes, rubbing away moisture that had gathered without my permission. “Good.”
We leaned into each other at the same moment, foreheads meeting, and he smiled.
“Forehead frotting,” he murmured.
I closed my eyes, pretending to be annoyed even as I was hopelessly charmed. “You’re going to ruin regular frotting if you keep saying that.”
He laughed, and the last of the pressure eased from my chest. “I think you like it,” he said, easing off my lap and settling in his chair.
I took his hand. “Maybe.”
We smiled at each other, joined hands resting on my thigh with the hushed kitchen around us. He rubbed his thumb over my knuckles.
“Why didn’t you tell me your childhood was like mine?”
“My upbringing was normal for those days. If you were poor, you worked hard and burned yourself out by forty. My parents were religious, but most people were. They left Amsterdam with nothing and crossed an ocean to make a new life for themselves. That took guts. I respect them for it.”
Caleb waited, listening.
“My parents were harsh by today’s standards,” I said. “I’m not saying they were right, but they were a product of their time. My father thought he was doing what God wanted by making me obedient.”
“And Philippe?”
“He wasn’t a monster. You saw him enjoying sex the way he was built to. It wasn’t wrong for him, even if it was wrong for me. We weren’t the right fit, but he helped me in other ways.”
“By teaching you it was okay to like men?” Caleb asked.
I nodded. “We didn’t always scene. No one called it that back then. Kink wasn’t a formal thing with how-to guides. At times, sex between us was vanilla, and I was happy with that because vanilla was the best thing I’d ever tasted. When he turned me, it was like…”
“Like a kid raised by vegans getting set loose in a Cheesecake Factory?”
The snort that came out of me felt better than any belly laugh I’d ever indulged in. The air lightened, and it was suddenly easier to breathe.
“Pretty much,” I said.
“What about everyday stuff? Were you happy with him?”
Memories surfaced, spinning me back to sun-drenched vineyards and crumbling libraries. Castle turrets and Parisian cafes.
“Yes,” I said. “Things were good in the beginning, although I was just happy to be alive. I think he liked seeing me experience things for the first time. It made the world seem new again for him. He’d realized I wasn’t Marcus reborn, but he fulfilled his obligation to the Council and trained me.”
“He should have told you,” Caleb said. “It’s bullshit that he didn’t.”
His defense was like the sun on my skin. “I probably wouldn’t have listened. I was embarrassingly naive, and I thought I was in love with him.”
“Yeah, and he knew it. Which makes it double bullshit.”
Bullseye. Of course, Caleb had pinpointed the problem. Sterling was wrong. My mate wasn’t a himbo. He was just really good at making everyone think he was.
“Philippe was from a different era,” I said.
“He was an aristocrat, and I was a farmer’s son.
He was never going to think of me as an equal.
It’s not an excuse. Just a fact. And he was desperate to recreate what he’d had with Marcus, even if it meant loving a shadow.
But I couldn’t give him that. Philippe was very dominant, and he must have known almost immediately that I was too. But he tried to make me a switch.”
Caleb raised his eyebrows. “I could have told him that was a wasted effort.”
I smiled. “At first, I thought I just needed to give it time. If I tried harder, it would get easier. And then I’d enjoy it.”
Caleb’s eyes went soft. “It doesn’t work that way.”
And he knew better than anyone. He made submission look easy when it was the opposite. He gave himself over to me completely, trusting me with his body and well-being. He gave in because he loved it, and he loved that I loved taking him to a place neither of us could go alone.
“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “Philippe couldn’t unlock the door to a room that didn’t exist. And he knew it, but he pushed anyway.”
“Then he wasn’t a good Dom,” Caleb said. He was clear-eyed and steady. As golden as the sun coming through the window. And he was mine. Somehow, I’d landed this smart, big-hearted man who fit me in all the places I needed him to.
“I don’t deserve you,” I said.
He smiled. “Well, you’re stuck with me.”
“Don’t.” The word came out more firmly than I intended, but I leaned into it because this was important. “Don’t diminish yourself like that. You’re not someone I have to put up with. You’re perfect, Caleb. You’re perfect for me.”
He shifted in his chair, pink dusting his cheeks. “Clearly, you haven’t looked in my side of the dresser since we got to Italy.”
I grinned. Then my joy faded as the full weight of what had just happened settled over me.
Caleb had touched my forearm and ended up inside me, living out memories I’d never told another soul.
“Your magic is stronger than we thought, and it was already strong to begin with. Seers observe. They don’t climb inside bodies.
You have something that a lot of very powerful people are going to want. ”
“Then you’ll have to protect me.”
“That’s what I was made for,” I said, the certainty of it landing even as the words left my lips. “All this time, I was waiting for you.”
Caleb looked at my mouth. “Philippe didn’t know what to do with you.” He lifted his eyes. “But I do.”
My heart rate climbed. “Yeah, you do.” I stood, drawing him to his feet. “Come upstairs with me.”
He hesitated, and I knew he was thinking of what he’d seen. “I don’t know if that’s a good—”
“I’m not asking,” I said.
He shut his mouth.
“The past shapes us,” I said, “but that shape is always changing. We live a very long time, Caleb. I want centuries with you. A thousand years won’t be enough.
” I dropped his hand and grasped his jaw.
“I want to see what shapes we take.” I kissed him, slow and deliberate, and spoke against his lips. “Come upstairs with me, puppy.”
“Okay,” he whispered. “Whatever you want.”