Joanne straightened to find Broderick right against her back. She turned around awkwardly, pinned between the edge of a table and him. She swallowed. “Yeah,” she repeated.
“It’s soft here,” Broderick said, his voice anything but that. “Pretty. Like you.”
He didn’t touch her. He didn’t have to. Broderick kept her in place simply looking at her. Joanne could have ducked past him, but her breath hitched, and she stayed put.
Pretty. Like you. Not many people were around to call Joanne pretty. She’d been working with IT guys a long time, and while most were just as interested in women as non-computer-geeks, they also weren’t forthcoming with the compliments. They were more likely to praise a string of Joanne’s code than tell her she looked nice. The last guy she’d dated had been into drawing his own X-rated Manga, starring women whose breasts were so impossibly large they’d never have been able to walk in real life. He’d asked Joanne to pose for him, thinking she’d be flattered.
“Pretty,” Joanne said, her voice strangled.
Broderick’s face softened. When he did that, when his bad-ass facade fell away, he was the most absolutely gorgeous man who walked the planet.
No, not a man, a Shifter—who’d taken in her sister’s mate to nurse him back to health against his better judgment, and who called her pretty.
“Yeah,” he said.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you.” Joanne let her voice become as gentle as his. “I know you must be freaked out about what happened to you.”
A bit of his ferocity returned. “You think?”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Joanne said. “If you didn’t see or hear them, or even scent them, I bet they took you out from a long way off—maybe with a tranq rifle with a scope.”
Broderick’s hands balled. “Doesn’t matter. I’m a sorry excuse for a tracker if I didn’t realize someone had staked out the Guardian’s house. Sean was just lucky they shot the wrong guy.”
“Well, Sean should have noticed. Or Dylan—Dylan’s supposed to be the smartest and scariest of all the Shifters, isn’t he? Where was he?”
Broderick’s fingers unclenched slightly. “You have a point. But it was more than that.” A shiver went through him before he could stop it. “Waking up not knowing where I was, listening to people trying to decide what to do with me, it was like … like being rounded up again. Only this time, it was me that was getting shot.”
“Shot …” Joanne put her hands on his arms, not liking his grim look. “She missed, thank God.”
“They didn’t miss my dad. Shot dead, right in front of his sons, right in front of his mate. My mother never got over it.” Broderick’s eyes took on a hunted look, the gray going light again. “She was never the same, though it took twenty years for her to die. She went last spring, right before I met you.”
“I know.” Joanne’s heart felt like a solid lump. “Your aunt told me …” Broderick had never talked about his mother, but Aunt Cora had told Joanne the story, saying she needed to know.
Broderick hadn’t ever once mentioned his mother, but not because he didn’t love and miss her, Joanne understood. Because he couldn’t. This was a pain he kept buried, in case it rose up and consumed him.
“I know,” Joanne repeated softly.
“Damn it.” Broderick’s voice was a whisper. He touched her face. “Jo-Jo …”
The pet name was what did it. Joanne left her rigid stance and came at him, burying her face in his chest as she grabbed handfuls of his shirt.
Broderick smelled clean, in spite of him tearing up the hacker’s basement, though he did smell of drywall dust as well.
His arms went around her, and he let out a long, shuddering breath, as though every pain inside him came out with it.
Joanne dug her hands into his T-shirt and lifted her face to his. He didn’t resist at all when she rose and pressed a kiss to his mouth.
Broderick made a low sound in his throat. His arms tightened around her, his lips unmoving for a moment. Then he met her kiss with his own, parting her mouth, sweeping his tongue inside, sealing them together.
The kiss went on for some time, heat transferring from Broderick to Joanne. She’d been cold, she realized, but now she tingled down every limb.
Broderick broke the kiss. He didn’t let go of her, and she felt the Celtic knot disc pressing into her back. “No,” he said. “I can’t …”
“Can’t kiss me?” Joanne let go of his shirt to trace his lips. “You’re doing fine.”
“There’s this thing called mating frenzy.” His voice was low, fierce. “Ever heard of it?”
“Yes.” Her heart beat faster. “I’ve hung around Shiftertown a while.”
“If you don’t let go of me, if you don’t run the hell away, I won’t care about helping with your damn computers. Screw the Guardian, the sword, the stupid medallion, the hacker. I just want you.”
Joanne couldn’t move, as though a force other than the table behind her kept her in place. Her body thrummed with his nearness, the heat of him through his clothes, the hardness that pushed at her from the other side of his jeans.
Joanne slid her body up his, cupped his neck with one hand, and pressed a long and passionate kiss to his lips.