License to Kill

by R. J. Blain

  “When I win, I’m going to be keeping you so busy in our bedroom I won’t have time for coffee.”

  I thought about that for a few moments. Then I thought about it some more. How did I lose in that situation? Was it possible to lose? I frowned. My body definitely approved of his idea, my common sense wanted to take a vacation, and my traitorous heart wanted him to continue making offers to maximize the benefits of going along with his flow. “You’re saying that to get me to lose, aren’t you?”

  He took another slurp of coffee. “And it didn’t even take you very long to figure it out. I will use every dirty trick in the book to win this fight.”

  I’d learned early on, one of Jake’s favorite dirty tricks was to use my handcuffs against me. I almost regretted my utter lack of handcuffs, zip ties, or anything else that could be used to add a little zing to an already heated bedroom session. On second thought, if he tried to add any zing in my current state, he might give me a heart attack.

  There were worse ways to go.

  I controlled my breathing until I could speak without my voice wavering. “When I win, you get to break the news to your parents you’re leaving them while I listen on speakerphone. You, however, will tell them you found some hussy in an alley, and that she offered you the good stuff. By the good stuff, I mean sex, drugs, and other illegal things. You will go for a record-making rap sheet in one alley incident. You will give them explicit details about your law-breaking exploits.”

  Jake choked on a laugh. “You don’t have to win to get me to do that. We’ll get you a wig, I’ll drag you off into the nearest alley, I’ll get you to give me a few kisses, so when I tell them, I won’t be lying at all. As for the drugs and other illegal activities, I’ll figure something out, although they won’t precisely be illegal—just naughty enough my mother won’t be able to tell if I’m lying or not.”

  I raised a brow and considered the coffee pot. A little coffee couldn’t hurt, could it? “I am not a hussy.”

  “You’re my hussy. Does that count?”

  “No.”

  “It should.”

  “You’re still on probation, and there shall be no bedroom adventures until you’re off probation.”

  Jake sighed. “I’m doing my best here. I want to make this right.”

  Nobody could make any part of my ruined life right. The best I could hope for was surviving, and I had one reason alone to keep doing that, and I meant to dance on my ma’s grave once every year or so to remind myself why I needed to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

  One question rose above all the others: could Jake truly bring me into his pack?

  No, that wasn’t the most important question.

  Would his pack actually accept me?

  The fox in me needed their acceptance. She needed a family to call her own.

  I feared we’d break should we be rejected yet again.

  Jake prowled close, sipping at his coffee and staring down his nose at me. “When I win, you’ll promise me you’ll submit to have your medical leave ended and agree to therapy and go through full evaluations to rejoin the FBI as a special agent. The department is up for negotiation, but you lived and breathed CARD your entire adult life, and I want you to have that future you desired. We’ll have to transfer out of the area for that, which is fine by me. Any pack I join will need to take both of us or I’ll reject the transfer. But you deserve better. You have to at least start working towards becoming a special agent again.”

  I tensed, and I narrowed my eyes. The first bad case in CARD would do me in unless a therapist could work miracles, and I doubted anyone could make a shattered glass into anything other than sharp, broken shards that might be melted down to become something else. Rather than tell him that, I countered with, “When I win, you will willingly volunteer to work as a desk jockey for a period of a year. Every night, you will come home and tell me what a wonderful day at work you had. Then you will go cry into your glass of water, as you will also give up alcohol in addition to coffee.”

  While Jake wasn’t an alcoholic, he liked his liquor after a bad shift, and the restriction would hammer home what I’d endured for so long.

  According to his glare, Jake had caught onto my intentions. “When I win, we might both lose our jobs because we’ll be too busy in our bedroom to go to work.”

  Ack. Nowhere in my plans was room for him trapping me in a bedroom and keeping me there with the lure of his body. He’d get away with it, too. “You already said something like that earlier.”

  Well, almost.

  “It is worth repeating.”

  When Jake meant business, he would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. I considered everything I knew about him and smiled my sweetest smile. “When I win, you will go back to college and get a degree in high school education. Then you will get a job as a secretary so you can watch the real teachers do your job.”

  Paybacks were a bitch, and Jake’s eye flashed golden. “When I win, not only will you rejoin the FBI as a special agent, but you will spend all of your vacation time each year in bed with me.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure you told me that’s how your parents ended up stuck with you.”

  “I’m thinking we’ll start with two.”

  Triple ack with a few extra acks on top. I scrambled to think of the most absurd condition I could, to change the subject away from children. “Start with two? You’re getting ahead of yourself, Mr. Thomas. When I win, you will secure yourself the first assignment requiring undercover work in a strip club. I’ll go out of my way to be hired at that strip club. I’m pretty flexible. I bet I could learn some interesting tricks.”

  Jake’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  Bingo. With luck, I could secure my victory. “I seem to recall you asking me, once upon a time, if I was dressing as an underaged prostitute.”

  “When I win, you join the pack. In the slim chance you win, I’ll do anything you want, just let’s forget the rest of this bargain ever existed.”

  “You will be a desk jockey for a year, and we never speak of me returning to the FBI ever again.”

  “Six months?”

  I shook my head. “One whole year. I’m being nice. I won’t make you give up coffee. There will be no alcohol, however.”

  “Fine. But when I win, not only will you join the pack, but you will reapply to join the FBI, even if it means you have to take a desk jockey position until you qualify to return to a position as a field agent.”

  Clacking my teeth together, I contemplated dumping the pot of sludge disguised as coffee over Jake’s head. If I submitted to have my medical leave ended, it could be weeks before the FBI found an appropriate psychologist to handle the horror show that was my file. It’d take weeks—or months—for the psychologist to work his or her way through the file. During that time, if I was lucky, I’d be assigned a desk jockey job instead of going through basic training again. It could go either way.

  It could take a year before I passed evaluations and went through any training or retraining they required before having a chance to qualify for active field duty.

  “Fine. How does this dominance fight work?”

  “We fight. I win, you lose. We’ve been over this already.”

  “Jake,” I growled.

  “Rip my fur out until I beg for mercy. That’s basically what it’s all about. Since you don’t heal as fast, I’ll have to be a bit more careful with you. The idea is to force the other to submit. If you force me to submit to you, you win. When you submit to me, I win.”

  “And what exactly happens when you submit to me?”

  “Nothing. I request a desk jockey job, and I’ll begin the groundwork of finding a pack that will take us both. Then we’ll spend the next week in our bed making so much noise you’re evicted and you have to come back home where you belong.”

  “And in the slim chance I submit to you?”

  “You’ll join the pack. Then we’ll spend the next w
eek in our bed making so much noise you’re evicted and you have to come back home where you belong.”

  Once again, I had a difficult time figuring out how I lost even if I lost. “That sounds like a lot of effort. Shouldn’t we just spend the next week in bed?”

  It was all Jake’s fault, strutting around without a shirt on. No matter how mad I got at him, a peek at his chest did terrible things to me, terrible things that ended in bed. Damn it.

  “We can’t have the life-altering sex without making up first. That’s a rule. As the issue of packs is the critical issue, we need to resolve it before we spend the next week in bed. The fastest way to resolve it is through a dominance fight.”

  Jake both confused and annoyed me. “So I become a fox, you become a wolf, and we fight until one of us wins.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Could we not do this in the apartment? I really don’t want to repair anything.”

  Jake sighed. “Now you’re just being a pain in my ass. Fine, but I get to pick the location.”

  “Fine, pick the location.”

  “Grab your purse. Better yet, put on some real clothes so you don’t have to carry that dinky little contraption around with you. Something with pockets large enough to fit your wallet.”

  Knowing it’d worry him and drive him insane, I marched for my bathroom. “Hold on, I need a few minutes to put on all those cosmetics I bought for work…”

  Jake grabbed me by the waist, tossed me over his shoulder, and headed for the door, scooping up my purse on his way by. “Forget I said anything. I have your little feminine contraption. Let’s go.”

  Fourteen

  They’re going to kill you.

  Jake took us to Baltimore in a little sports car he borrowed from another FBI agent who lived in Manhattan, a man who cooperated for a chance to annoy Jake’s parents. I made it the entire drive without succumbing to my anxiety, but my inability to unlock the front door shattered my crumbling defenses. It was stupid to sob helplessly over something so insignificant, especially considering Jake was already digging his keys out of his pocket.

  With a few curses, he got the door open, scooped me up, and carried me inside. “I have your keys inside, Karma. They’re in the safe along with your guns and your other things. If you give me five minutes, I can open it up and give them to you. Please don’t cry.”

  He beelined for the couch and lowered me onto it, and I grabbed hold of him in the reflexive fear of being dropped. He chuckled, attempted to pry my fingers open, and discovered I had a death-grip on his shirt. “I can’t get your keys if you don’t let me go.”

  Shaking my head, I kept my hold on him.

  “All right. I’ll get your keys when you’re ready to let me go, then. Are you going to let me sit down?”

  I hesitated but nodded. Giving him just enough time to sit, I crawled on his lap, hid my face against his chest, and cursed. He seemed larger than I remembered, although after I thought about it for a bit, it wasn’t that he had gotten larger, but that I really wasn’t much more than bones held together with a thin layer of skin barely capable of offering the illusion of decent health.

  “I thought I’d limit the damage to our property. That, plus Mom and Dad are still in New York City, probably fretting I haven’t returned to the hotel despite claiming I’d come back eventually. Even better, I left my phone in your apartment. Yes, my tracked phone. I gave it a full charge while you were showering, then I tossed it on your bed. I’m considering it payback for suggesting I should leave you alone.”

  I hiccupped and sniffled. “They’re going to kill you.”

  “They sure are, especially after they track my phone and find it in a tiny little apartment in the worst part of New York City. I’m not sure I can live with you living there, Karma.”

  “I haven’t had any problems.”

  “That probably classifies as a miracle. And don’t feed me any of your bullshit about it being close to work, as I know you have an hour and a half long commute on a good day. While I’ll grudgingly drive you back so you can go to work on Monday morning, I’m not going to like it. In fact, I might book a hotel near your work and make you stay there with me. I’m sure I can find something for us to do with all that time you’ll save.”

  I scowled and rubbed my eyes. “You’re being an asshole.”

  “I am. You’ve lost your right to complain about my asshole tendencies until you’re at least a hundred and ten pounds and capable of resuming some form of martial art so you can properly kick my ass when needed. I’d say one fifteen, but I know how hard it is for you to get into competition shape.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Sure it is. You got what you wanted and ran yourself into the ground like a little idiot. If you can’t take care of yourself, I’ll take care of you, and you’re just going to have to deal with it.”

  “You’re going to piss me off,” I predicted.

  “Good. Go shift and put me in your place—if you can.”

  The implication I couldn’t annoyed me so much I wiggled free of his hold on me, spat curses at him, and stormed to the bathroom to prove I wasn’t entirely weak and useless.

  Jake waited for me in the hallway as a wolf, and while he was larger than me, I didn’t feel dwarfed by him—much. Like when I was human, I’d suffered as a fox, too, scrawny enough I realized I had an advantage over him. While I could throw all my weight into trying to rip his fur out, I’d break if he used all of his bulk against me, something I suspected he realized, judging by the way he twisted his ears back.

  I resisted the urge to clamp my tail between my legs at the shaggy state of my fur.

  Jake sighed and licked my muzzle, and I twisted away from his foul wolf breath. He pursued me, turning his attention to my throat, which he nipped just hard enough I yipped from surprise more than pain. Stalking me to the living room, he circled me. A golden gleam lit his chocolate eyes.

  Showing him my teeth did nothing to dissuade him. If anything, it encouraged him to come closer.

  His teeth were a lot bigger than mine, and I really didn’t want to find out what his larger jaws could do if he decided to take a chunk out of me. Since going on the defense wouldn’t do me any good, I lunged at him, snapping my teeth at his throat.

  The bastard reared up, and more like a tiger than a wolf, he batted me aside with so much force I crashed into the coffee table. Wood cracked beneath me. Infuriated he’d tossed me with what seemed like no effort, I scrambled to my paws and jumped for him again, chittering my irritation.

  Instead of using his paw, Jake intercepted me with his shoulder, ramming me to the floor. The air rushed out of me, and I made acquaintances with the carpet, my head spinning from the force of the blow.

  Wolves did not fight fair.

  I understood his point despite hating it. Unless I got really lucky, I had no chance of winning. The question wasn’t if I’d lose; I would. How long would I last until I gave up and acknowledged I had no chance of victory? That was the real question.

  I could out-stubborn a rock when I felt like it. Normal rocks felt a lot less dense than Jake’s shoulder had, however. Groaning, I got back to my paws and shook myself off, flattening my ears at how easily he’d knocked the breath out of me. Brute force would win me nothing. I wouldn’t last long in an endurance race, either. Where I resembled a shaggy rug on the verge of matting, Jake’s coat was glossy with good health.

  I was willing to bet the bastard had been working out, waiting for his chance to throw down the gauntlet and start a fight. A head-on assault wouldn’t work, so I darted for his tail, closing my jaws around the thick fur.

  Twisting around, Jake gave me a good view down his throat although he didn’t bite me. Bracing my paws, I jerked backwards, giving his tail a vicious yank.

  Jake didn’t budge an inch.

  Whining, I pawed at his flank and tugged on his tail again.

  He went as far as ignoring my efforts altogether, yawning and turning his head to ins
pect the damage I had done to the coffee table. Chittering my fury, I released him and lunged for his back, clawing at his thick fur in an effort to get at his throat from behind. With a single buck, he tossed me off.

  Landing on the coffee table hurt, and it collapsed under my weight, leaving me sprawled on top of the broken wood. At least I hadn’t insisted on the glass table I had initially wanted. Picking splinters out of my fur wouldn’t be my idea of a good time, but it beat glass shards.

  Jake sighed, trotted to me, and placed his paw on my throat, staring down his elegant nose at me.

  I graduated from chitters to high-pitched barks, promising fates worse than death once I figured out how to get out from under him. While the weight of his paw didn’t cut off my breath, whenever I struggled, he applied more pressure, enough to keep me pinned in place.

  My inability to challenge him at all frustrated me almost as much as his disinterest. Until I could offer him at least a little sport, he wouldn’t even pretend we were equals. Worse of all, I couldn’t blame him for it.

  I would have done the same thing just to prove he needed to do better.

  Maybe indulging in a temper tantrum only dragged out the inevitable, but I kicked my paws, snapped my teeth, and wailed my frustration and fury for the world to hear while Jake patiently waited for me to surrender.

  I lasted for several hours, managing to escape three times when Jake lowered his guard and huffed his annoyance over my ability to wail and scream bloody murder with short breaks to catch my breath. At least the neighbors didn’t seem bothered by the ruckus; animals lived in the woods surrounding our properties, and our house was far enough outside of Baltimore to offer us a bit of space and privacy.

  Unless someone came knocking at the door, the neighbors would blame the local wildlife.

  Mustering enough strength to stage one final getaway, I lurched to my paws, startling Jake enough I hopped out of his reach, twisting my ears back while I panted. With a huff and a sigh, he followed me and licked my muzzle. When I didn’t attempt to bite his nose off, he nuzzled his way to my throat.