Wolf Shield Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Wouldn’t it be nice?”

  “Why did you sigh?” he asked, breaking through her fantasy.

  “I didn’t realize I had sighed,” she confessed.

  “Well, you did. What’s on your mind?”

  “Lots of things,” she hedged. “I guess I was imagining what it would be like to wake up and not feel afraid. If I’d made a lot of different decisions, a lot of different choices, better choices. Where would I be now? Where would I be waking up? What would my life look like?”

  “I wonder that all the time,” he admitted. “But you know, we are where we are right now, and we can try to make the best of it.”

  “Well, I don’t know about you, but a stack of pancakes might make things better.” She turned her head toward him, smiling, and was caught off guard when he took her face in one hand and kissed her deeply.

  Just like that, all thought of pancakes and choices went out the window in favor of joy. Sensation. Delicious thrills running up and down her spine with every touch of his hand on her body.

  He came closer, draping himself half over her, and she wrapped a leg around his and brought it up tight between her thighs. He was thick all over, and she took delight in running her hands over his shoulders and back, her fingers dancing over rippling muscle that bunched under his skin with every movement.

  Yes, they would do this too if this was their life—a lazy morning in bed, kissing, touching each other. She ran a hand through his hair before cupping it around the back of his neck, holding him fast. Breaking away to take a breath, she locked eyes with him.

  Just like the night before, they seemed to change for a second, to darken, to widen.

  He lowered his head again for another kiss, and another, his mouth then trailing down her throat. She lost herself, moaning softly, her fingers tangling in his hair again. He could do that all day and she wouldn’t mind him exploring her skin with his lips and tongue.

  To say nothing of what he was doing with his hands, sliding one up and down her raised thigh before skimming the curve of her backside through the pants he’d lent her. She gasped, arching her back. She hadn’t been touched this way in so long.

  He chuckled softly, the sound of a man satisfied with himself. The hard length of his erect member pressed against her thigh, and she brushed against it until his chuckling turned to grunting, panting.

  She knew how to do that to him too, and she also knew the satisfaction held in a man’s grunts. Knowing she could do that to him, to this strong, protective, dangerous, generous man, turned the ache between her thighs into an all-out blaze of passion, heat, need.

  “You like to play, huh?” he gasped, nipping her ear, and she just about melted into the bed. He was sexy enough without the raspy whispers, but now? She pulled at his shirt, determined to strip him down.

  The thudding of her heart almost drowned out the buzzing on the nightstand, but not quite.

  “Noooo….” Zane groaned, his face buried in the pillow next to her head. She knew she should let go of him, but she might not get this chance again. Nothing would ever be this perfect again.

  “I should answer,” he reminded her, his mouth still close to her ear. Her eyes closed, a sigh escaping. Happiness and desire and frustration all at once.

  “I know.” She let go of him—not that she really held him back because how was she supposed to hold back somebody his size if he really wanted to move?

  “Logan,” he murmured. “No big surprise.” He knelt in front of her, still on the bed, and her eyes were drawn to the very generous bulge in his shorts. So close…

  His shouted curse pulled her attention away from his erection. “Are you kidding me? Again?”

  And there went the mood. She sat up, watching him with her knees pulled up to her chest. He was so into his conversation she might as well have not been in the room.

  “Great. Let me know if and when we find out what happened.” He sighed heavily on ending the call, looking down at her. “Somebody tried to hack us again. Hawk thinks they might’ve succeeded. And guess when it happened?”

  “Oh, no.” She covered her face with her hand. “Not when they were all with us.”

  “Yeah. I’m afraid so.” He sat on his haunches. “Our records are on the network somewhere. Logan stole them when we were escaping.”

  She blinked hard, shaking her head a little. “Wait. What? Escaping? Escaping from where?”

  He scowled—though whether it was directed toward him or her, she couldn’t say. “I can’t talk about it.”

  “No. Nope.” She scrambled out of bed. “You can’t do that. That’s not fair.”

  “I didn’t know this was a question of fair or unfair. There’s no such thing. You should know that better than anybody.”

  “Since when do I have to trust you, but you can’t trust me? I was supposed to tell you everything, and if I held out, I was tied to a chair.”

  “You were tied to a chair because you tried to escape.”

  “Still. You tied me up. That wasn’t fair either.” She wasn’t even making sense, but that tended not to matter when a person cared more about making their point than they did about making sense.

  “I’m not having this argument.”

  “You don’t have to. You can just tell me what I wanna know, and there won’t be anything to argue about. Why did you have to escape? What the hell did they do to you?”

  He looked like he might be on the verge of exploding. “Don’t do this,” he growled, nostrils flaring, chest heaving.

  “Listen to me. I only care because I care about you. I only want to know because it’s you, Zane. That’s all. Why don’t you believe me?”

  His head fell back. “Aimee. Remember when we talked about sparing the people we care about?”

  “Yes?”

  “That’s it. That’s all I have to say.” He looked at her again, still breathing hard. “Why don’t you wash up and get dressed and we’ll go to breakfast. Okay? I could eat an entire pound of bacon right now.”

  And that was that. He brushed past her on his way to the bathroom, then slammed the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “This is a good diner.” Aimee looked around the inside of the diner, leaning back in her side of the padded booth. “You can always tell a good diner, you know?”

  He glanced up from the menu. “How can you tell?”

  “For one thing, they tell you to take your menus and seat yourself. That’s crucial. They don’t have time for your bullshit.”

  He bit back a smile. “Point taken.”

  “You’ve got your metallic trim along the walls, the old-timey clock over the swinging door leading into the kitchen.”

  “Also true,” he noted, looking over his shoulder to find what she referred to.

  “And you gotta love the little jukebox on the table.” She rolled through the list of songs, all oldies from the fifties and sixties.

  “You like this music?” he asked before remembering who he was talking to, the woman who watched classic films like there were no other options on TV.

  “Uh, yes. I do. Which is why I love this diner. It’s like time froze here.” She looked down at the menu, eyes widening. “Including the prices. Wow.”

  “Good thing too since I intend to eat at least an entire cow.”

  “That’s quite a leap from a pound of bacon,” she pointed out.

  “That was half an hour ago. I’m much hungrier now—and I smell food.” So much food. His mouth watered. The wolf wanted meat and plenty of it, preferably as bloody as possible.

  She murmured to herself as she went over the items on the menu. “Creamed chipped beef.” She smiled a little, almost fondly.

  “A favorite of yours?” he asked.

  “It was a treat for me when I was younger,” she explained. “I mean, not exactly much of a treat—when you’re a kid, you want sugary cereals and toaster pastries and those fruit leather snacks you could wrap around your fingers and bite off all at once. Did you ever
have those?”

  “In my household? No way. My parents weren’t exactly hippies, but they saw the problems with sugar long before the FDA started talking about it.”

  “Anyway, Mom used to buy those frozen packets of creamed chipped beef. You’d pop them in the microwave for six or seven minutes, open the pouch—carefully or you could burn your hand. I can’t tell you how many steam burns I got. Pour it over toast, and you have a meal. Actually, I was so young I could get two meals out of it. There was way too much for just me to eat.”

  “And you were eating alone.”

  She lifted a shoulder, still skimming the menu. “Of course. I was always eating alone at dinnertime. That was a special breakfast-for-dinner sort of thing. Granted, it could’ve been cereal or frozen waffles or whatever, but something about the creamed chipped beef felt special. I would have the leftovers for breakfast the next day.”

  “Is that what you’re going to get now?”

  She shook her head, waving both hands. “No way. I wouldn’t eat that again if you paid me. Too many memories. Too many stomachaches. That shit sat like lead, you know?” She crossed her hands over her belly, groaning in mock discomfort.

  He chuckled, though the story wasn’t exactly amusing. It was more sad than anything else—this little girl, making her creamed chipped beef for dinner, a treat to be eaten alone in front of the TV.

  Their waitress, a woman in her late middle age who wore entirely too much blue eyeliner, came by to take their order. He requested what was called the Hungry Man’s Platter, along with a short stack of French toast and an extra order of bacon. “Crispy,” he added, handing back the menu.

  The waitress eyed him up and down, smiling in approval. “You’re a growing boy,” she winked. She then turned to Aimee, and that flirtatious manner dropped. “What’ll you have?” she asked, pen poised over her notepad.

  “Pancakes, please. Apple topping.” Aimee handed the menu over. “And can I get a hot chocolate?” There was something so childlike in the way she asked, the hopefulness in her voice. He smiled to himself, thinking about the child she still was inside—and what the woman was capable of.

  Both in and out of bed. While he understood the urgency of Logan’s call, that didn’t mean he or his wolf was a big fan of being thwarted for a second time.

  Aimee chuckled sheepishly. “I haven’t had a hot chocolate in the longest time,” she confessed, hands around her coffee cup.

  “Neither have I,” he admitted. “It’s one of those things you don’t think about that much, but when you want it, you really want it.”

  “Exactly.” There was a freshness in her now, the sense of meeting the real Aimee. Amelia. Not the assassin, but the person underneath that professional façade. She blushed, giggled, asked for whipped cream on her hot chocolate.

  “Do you have change?” she asked, pointing to the quarter slot in the music machine. “I’d use my own, but I’m sorta screwed right now. No money, no wallet.”

  “Right.” He frowned to himself as he fished a handful of change from his pocket and slid it across the table. “We’ll have to do something about that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like going back to your place to get your wallet and anything else you need. You wouldn’t be alone,” he assured her when her brows drew together.

  “You were against the idea last night,” she reminded him.

  “I’m still against it, in theory,” he assured her, sitting back and watching as she chose her songs without asking if there was anything he wanted to hear. Not that it mattered. He was more than happy to let her choose what she liked. It seemed to make her happy, too.

  “What’s changed?” she asked, glancing his way.

  “Necessity. You need your things. It’s not like we’ll set up camp there. We’ll only go in for what you absolutely need, then get the hell out.”

  “I wouldn’t mind not feeling so completely helpless,” she murmured.

  “Like you’ve ever been completely helpless in your life,” he snickered.

  “You know what I mean. If anything were to happen to you, what would I do? I don’t know who to call on your team, and I don’t have a phone anyway. I have no wallet, no ID. No way to get a rideshare, nothing to pay for a cab. I might as well be a ghost.”

  “I feel like you’d find a way. You could steal a wallet or a car.” He grinned a little, playing, but his grin died when she shot him a stony look.

  “I don’t wanna do that.”

  “Oh. Okay. I was just—”

  “Who do you think I am? Some wanton criminal?” she whispered, looking back and forth in case somebody heard them. Nobody in the diner paid them a bit of attention except for maybe staring at him for a second when they first noticed the huge guy in the booth. After that, they went back to their business.

  He leaned in. “I was only kidding around.”

  “Yeah, but there’s always truth in every joke. Right? Jokes don’t come out of nowhere. You were serious. You thought I’d do something like that. Steal a car, a wallet, whatever it took.”

  “To survive,” he reminded her. “Not for fun, not because you’re bored. To survive. I know you have a strong instinct for survival. You must. You’ve survived this long when everyone around you was dropping like flies. I mean, you’ve never told me about that in specifics, but I’m guessing.”

  She sat back, letting out a long breath. For a while, only the sounds of some old doo-wop group filled the air around their booth. Somebody singing about the ABCs of love.

  “I heard they… were no longer part of the mission.” She shook her head, scoffing. “I knew what that meant. First, it was Lewis. Then, Chance. I only ever knew last names. I didn’t know anything about their personal lives. I only met Chance once. Never met Lewis. Chance is the one who broke into the house, by the way, and tried to again. But you stopped her the second time.”

  “I see.” He did everything he could to remain neutral, to not seem too interested in what she was sharing. She might shut down if she sensed he was too interested.

  “And all of a sudden, they weren’t with us anymore. Nobody had to tell me what was really the situation. You don’t just walk away from them, these people. You don’t decide one day that this isn’t for you. They can’t afford that.”

  “Of course,” he murmured. “Once you’re in, you’re in.”

  She nodded, looking out the window. The sunlight turned her hair into molten copper, shimmering with each breath she took, each pulse of air that stirred it. “I don’t know what actually happened to them. Only that they were no longer with us. This started happening after I learned about Marnie and Beth, mind you.”

  “Sure—after the accident. Chance didn’t try to get in again until the day after the accident.”

  “Right, and I’d already started looking at Marnie, at why I had to do what I did.” She shook her head, her hands trembling as they raised the coffee cup.

  “We don’t have to talk about this anymore,” he assured her, now ashamed of himself for having put them on this train of thought in the first place with his careless quip.

  “Good. Because I really don’t want to.” There was a plea in her eyes when they met his. “I was just starting to feel normal again for a minute. You know? Like a regular person. I guess being reminded that I’m not regular got to me. That’s all.”

  “You don’t have to apologize,” he assured her, taking the risk of reaching for her hand. Not such a risk, considering how close they’d been to stripping each other naked back in his bed. She was hardly afraid of his touch—she’d practically begged for it, a memory that made him twitch in his pants.

  But this was different. There wasn’t any lust-fueled, breathless panting going on. No groans or sighs or kisses. They were two people sitting in a diner a few miles up the road from his house.

  Even so, she smiled at the touch of his hand on hers.

  The waitress broke up their quiet moment, carrying a tray laden with food. “You ca
me in hungry this morning,” she grinned, setting down his many plates. Pancakes, French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, fried potatoes.

  “I’m always hungry,” he grinned, while out of the corner of his eye he saw Aimee make a face into her coffee cup.

  When they were alone again and she was busy spooning whipped cream off her hot chocolate—which he now wished he’d ordered for himself—he took a chance. “Did your mom like old movies and music? Is that why you’re such a fan?”

  “You sure are perceptive,” she snickered. “Of course, that’s why. She raised me on it—as much as anybody can raise a kid they hardly ever see.”

  There was bitterness there, and he didn’t blame her. Even as an adult, it couldn’t have been easy to come to grips with an absentee parent. “She worked long hours, huh?”

  “Constantly,” she sighed. “Weekends were hers, which was nice. She didn’t so much as answer a phone call or email on the weekends. Sometimes we’d go into town, visit the art museum or the historical areas. We’d go shopping. In the summer, we might drive out to the beach, but during the week, I hardly ever saw her.”

  “That couldn’t have been easy, no matter how you learned to cope.” He folded a piece of bacon in half and slid it into his mouth all at once, relishing the saltiness. It was rare that he indulged in heavy breakfast food, but she’d put him in the mood for it.

  “It wasn’t. I’d leave my homework out on the kitchen table, and when I woke up in the morning, she’d have signed it for me. She’d be in bed by then, and I knew better than to wake her up. But there might be a note wishing me a good day; there might be lunch in the fridge for me to take to school. Not always, but sometimes when she had the chance to do it.”

  “What did she do that she was away from home so much of the day?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t already know,” she warned him, cutting into her pancakes with more determination than they needed. She might as well have been cutting a steak, the knife sawing back and forth. “She was a secretary at the Federal building. Her bosses were big shots. They needed her there all the time. Probably didn’t know how to wipe themselves when they were finished in the bathroom.”