She hid her smile. He wouldn’t be in such a foul mood if he weren’t healing.
When he’d first collapsed at her feet she’d been frantic with fear. What if he’d been killed trying to protect her? The mere thought had been like a brutal punch to her gut.
She couldn’t bear the loss.
It was that simple.
Wrenching her thoughts away from the destructive memory, Cassie instead turned to the task at hand. Whether he liked it or not, Caine was still weak and it was going to be up to her to take charge.
“I’m going to get us out of here,” she said, nibbling her bottom lip as she concentrated on locating the key that Caine always kept hidden beneath the floor mat and sticking it into the ignition.
“Can you drive?” Caine demanded.
The engine roared to life and she studied the knobby thing that she recalled she had to pull down to allow the vehicle to move forward.
“How hard can it be?”
“Shit,” he muttered. “Just wait. I’ll be fine in a few minutes.”
She managed to get into gear and pressed gently on the gas pedal, holding the steering wheel in a death grip as they eased down the dark, empty street.
“What if we were followed?”
“There was a masking spell that should have dampened our scent,” he said, his hand reaching to brace on the glove box as she began to pick up speed. “Besides, whatever is chasing us can’t be any more dangerous than you behind the wheel.”
“Very funny. I happen to be doing just fine, so sit there and be quiet.” She sent him a chiding glare, only to have her moment of victory ruined as the wheels hit the curb and they took out a stop sign. “Oops.”
“I guess we’re about to find out if I’m truly immortal.”
With a sniff, she turned her attention back to the road. “Keep it up and I’ll kick your naked butt out. Maybe Ingrid and her creepy twin will stop by and pick you up.”
He made a sound of disgust, but obviously accepting he was in no position to complain, he instead pointed toward the side street. “Turn left here.”
Cassie followed his direction, keeping her speed slow but steady as they headed out of the fringes of St. Louis. Soon they left all signs of town behind, traveling down a gravel road that was flanked by cornfields.
An hour later Cassie was wondering if she’d bitten off more than she could chew. She hadn’t wrecked, thank the gods, but her muscles were cramped from her nervous tension and her fingers were aching from gripping the steering wheel so tightly.
“How much farther?”
“Not far,” Caine assured her. “Take a right at that mailbox.”
She slowed, turning onto a narrow path that was rough and nearly overgrown with weeds. “Where are we going?”
He straightened in his seat, his power sizzling through the air to assure her that he was nearly fully recovered from his battle. “I have a hidden lair just a few miles north of here.”
“How many lairs do you have?”
It spoke of his trust in her that he didn’t even hesitate to answer. “A dozen spread across North America and another six in Mexico.”
She blinked. That seemed . . . excessive. “Why so many?”
“I always knew that Salvatore would eventually stumble across my trail,” he said with a shrug. “I needed to be able to disappear no matter where I was.”
Wise, of course. Being hunted by the King of Weres was a lethal sport. Still, she couldn’t resist teasing him. “Always prepared?”
“That’s my motto. Just like a Boy Scout.”
She snorted. “I can’t imagine you were ever a Boy Scout.”
“No,” he readily agreed, “but there was a time when I aspired to become an altar boy.”
“An altar boy?” She couldn’t disguise her shock. “You?”
“I had a life before I was turned into a cur, you know,” he said dryly.
She kept her gaze trained on the narrow path, hoping that nothing darted out of the thick underbrush that had replaced the cornfields. “Tell me.”
He tensed at her request. “It was so long ago I barely remember.”
Cassie hesitated. She might be socially inept, but not even she could miss the I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-this vibe he was sending out. Which, of course, only made her more determined to discover what he was hiding. “Where were you born?”
She heard his faint sigh. “In the gutters of Paris in the year 1787.”
“Paris?” She sent him a startled glance. “Really?”
“Eyes on the road, pet,” he reprimanded, gently grasping her chin until she was facing straight ahead.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “I’m just surprised.”
“Why?”
“I’m not certain. You seem very . . .”
“What?”
She considered, trying to find the perfect word for his blond good looks, his hint of swagger, and the devilish charm that sparkled in his sapphire eyes. “American,” she at last said.
“Not surprising.” She felt him shrug. “I was barely thirteen when I signed on as a deckhand to the first ship that would take me. I foolishly thought nothing could be worse than starving in the streets.”
She had read enough about history to suspect that being a young boy on a ship wasn’t the dashing adventure that the poor kid no doubt hoped it would be. “But there was?”
His fingers drummed a restless tattoo on the door handle. “We’d been out to sea less than a month when the ship was taken by pirates.”
Oh . . . gods. She slowed the vehicle to a mere crawl. “Did they hurt you?”
“Yes.”
And that was all he was going to say on the subject, she ruefully acknowledged. Not that she needed the gory details. A young boy in the hands of brutal, lawless pirates . . . it was all very self-explanatory. “I’m sorry.”
The tapping halted as Caine sucked in a slow, deep breath, no doubt battling back the memories of those bleak years of misery. “I survived and eventually they sailed close enough to land for me to risk throwing myself overboard and swimming for shore. I ended up in New Orleans.”
“How old were you?”
“By then I’d lost track, but I think I must have been around seventeen.”
“So young,” she breathed. “How did you survive?”
“I begged or stole. Occasionally, I sold my body.” His voice was bland. Too bland. “You can’t afford pride or morals when you’re hungry.”
“I understand,” she said softly.
He reached to brush a stray curl from her cheek. “Do you?”
Cassie nodded. She’d never been beaten or starved or raped. But she’d been held against her will by one of the most evil creatures to ever touch the world. She knew the toxic combination of anger and frustration and fear at being at the mercy of others. And the strange sense of guilt at not being strong enough to take control of her own destiny.
“How long were you in New Orleans?”
“For five years.” He smoothed the curl behind her ear as she kept her gaze on the path, which was becoming increasingly more difficult to see beneath the weeds. “I might have stayed there until I died, but one day I was caught in bed with the wife of the mayor. The bastard put a bounty out on my head, so I thought it might be a good idea to leave Louisiana for a few years.”
She chuckled. It didn’t surprise her at all that he’d been run out of town by a cuckolded husband. What female wouldn’t try to lure him into her bed?
“Where did you go?”
“St. Louis.”
“And?”
His fingers outlined the shell of her ear before trailing along the line of her jaw. Cassie shivered in anticipation. She hoped his lair was near. Once Caine was fully rested, she intended to have her wicked way with him.
“And I had barely stepped foot in the city when I was attacked by a strange animal. I thought it was going to be the end of my sorry life.” He paused, his hand cupping her nape in a gesture of pure male possession. “Instead it was just the beginning.”
Caine stroked his fingers down the elegant curve of Cassie’s neck, his thumb lingering on the steady beat of her pulse. A part of him felt . . . raw at having exposed a past that he’d devoted over two hundred years trying to erase from his mind.
Not that it had ever truly been forgotten, he wryly conceded.
He didn’t have to be a shrink to know that his obsessive search for a way to become a pureblooded Were came from an overwhelming need to climb the evolutionary ladder. He’d spent his entire life at the mercy of others. He’d been determined to become the master, not the slave.
But a larger part of him was relieved to have unburdened his darkest secrets. It was like lancing a wound that had been festering for far too long.
A faint smile touched his lips as he studied Cassie’s profile, which was tense with concentration. She’d accepted his confession without judgment or disgust. And for once, he hadn’t been insulted by the knowledge he was being pitied. Her sympathy was as pure and untainted as her heart.