The bedroom was dark and silent. The only light came from the green numbers on the clock. Four o’clock. That was the time. Devon reached up and lightly stroked his fingers down the center of her back. Her skin was so soft. It felt like silk. His body was stirring, reacting to the closeness of this woman and to the extreme arousal she inspired in him.
A slight shiver caused her to tremble at his touch. Then she turned and placed her hand on his side. “I have to get up.”
“I wish you didn’t.”
The low sexy laugh ended with a sigh. “Don’t tempt me. I wish that I could just be lazy and mooch off my husband, but that isn’t the kind of woman I want to be.”
“I’m glad.” Devon thought of how much he respected her desire to be independent and to finish school and truly begin a career that she wanted for herself. “I always found your coveralls sexy.”
“Oh really?” Kami poked him in the chest. “So can I expect a very, very lovely interlude this morning in your office?”
Devon was the luckiest man on the planet and he knew it. “Oh, I think we can arrange some kind of appointment.”
She was still laughing when she got out of the bed and headed for the bathroom to get ready. Devon should have been following. He should have been up already. Getting to the office early was just part of his schedule. And yet the reason that he often got to the office early was right here in his bedroom. He had been trying to catch glimpses of Kami for years now. She had always fascinated him. Such a combination of fire and fierce intelligence wrapped in a package with curves in all the right places. In the beginning though, he had also been fascinated with the way that she refused to quit or to somehow try and shirk her responsibilities.
“Hey, sleepyhead. You really need to get up.”
Devon stirred. Dammit, he had totally fallen asleep. Kami was standing over him dressed for work. He could not see her, but he could smell the subtle orange oil and beeswax that always coated those coveralls she wore to work.
“I’m leaving,” Kami told him. She leaned over and nuzzled his neck.
Devon caught her and pulled her back into the bed. She gave a little shriek of surprise as he rolled her beneath him and kissed her full on the lips. He took his time about it too. Lingering over the glorious fullness of her full lips, he tasted the spice of her toothpaste and the wonderful flavor that was uniquely hers. She was his woman and he reveled in the taste and the feel of her.
“Devon,” she moaned. “You have to let me go to work!”
He chuffed out a huge sigh and rolled back to the edge of the bed so he could set her back on her feet. She gave a little squeak of surprise and then she was laughing with such joy that the sound nearly made him want to sigh like some kind of lovesick moron. Although, that was pretty much what he was, so what did it really matter?
“I’ll see you soon,” she promised.
And then Kami was gone and Devon had no choice but to roll out of bed and get ready for work. Shower. Shave. Teeth brushed, and hair combed, he finally managed to pull on some clothes and get ready for work. It was a horrible process as far as he was concerned. At least he didn’t have far to travel. A block or two at most. And he could always stop for coffee. In fact, he could definitely stop for coffee and grab some for Kami too.
The whole sensation of leaving their apartment and seeing her other shoes there by the door along with his boots was a very validating experience. How could such a simple blending of two lives mean so much to him on a very primal level? It was exhilarating!
By the time Devon got to The Corner Shop he was whistling and feeling so good about himself that he did not even care that he was running about an hour behind. He waved to Shawn and bellied up to the bar after waiting in a surprisingly long line for five in the morning.
“Morning there, Mr. King!” Shawn was grinning from ear to ear. “Are we getting coffee for yourself?”
“And Kami,” Devon told him eagerly. Was he being ridiculous that he was so excited to buy coffee for his wife? “I’m hoping you know exactly what she gets because I know she’s a total coffee aficionado and I sure don’t want to mess it up!”
“I’ve got your back.” Shawn punched in the order and then relayed the total for both coffees. “Kami was really excited about that apartment. It was a really great thing for the two of you. She’s really happy. I know it’s tough for her to just let it ride and be happy, but I think she’s getting there and I want to thank you for being a stand-up guy.”
Devon was taken aback. Although perhaps he shouldn’t have been. Kami was a popular person with the people who really knew her. “She’s a special woman,” Devon told Shawn. “I’ve never met someone who was more honest and hardworking.”
“She can definitely be a ball buster,” Shawn said with a laugh. “But there’s nobody who would work harder for you.”
Devon’s coffees popped up on the counter and he picked them both up. Lifting them in a mock toast to Shawn, Devon gave the manager a warm smile. “Thank you very much. I’ll be sure to give your compliments to Kami.”
“See you both later!” Shawn waved as Devon pushed his way back out of the shop’s front door.
The morning was just getting better and better as Devon got closer and closer to the building. He felt the anticipation in his gut rising and rising. It was rather exciting actually. He felt like a teenager again. He was going to go up there and peek into his office and just hope that Kami was waiting so that they could start making out like a couple of kids trying to find a place to sneak a kiss between classes at school.
Devon had to laugh at himself as he nodded to the security guard and headed for the elevators. He was humming as he went. The coffees were hot, but it didn’t bother him. The weather was ridiculously cold this morning. He could actually see his breath out there. But it was warm and snug in the building and soon enough he would have Kami warm in his arms.
His wonderfully sappy thoughts lasted until the moment the elevator doors opened onto the tenth floor and he realized that there were no lights on. The offices were all closed and locked. There was no doubt in Devon’s mind that he was the very first person to set foot on the floor this morning.
The coffees started to burn his hands. He set them down on the receptionist’s empty desk and turned a slow circle to take it all in. His brain was having trouble deciding what was going on. The only light came from the recessed fixtures behind the sign on the wall behind the receptionist’s desk. KING SECURTY SOLUTIONS, INC seemed to glow in the darkness.
There was a small halo of light that filtered down to the carpeted floor by the elevators. Devon was currently standing in this small bit of illumination while he inhaled deeply and tried to catch even a hint of Kami’s familiar scent. It was here, but the orange oil and beeswax were dulled in a way that suggested she had not been in this area since Friday.
Friday. It seemed like a decade ago even though it was only a few days. Right now he needed to decide what had happened to Kami this morning. There was no sign of her here. Maybe she had encountered some kind of problem down on the building’s basement level that had caused her to be running late. She generally started cleaning this floor first thing.
Yes. That had to be the case. It was a perfectly logical answer and made more sense to Devon than anything else.
He left the coffees for a moment and went to unlock his office. He flipped on his lights and then went back to the receptionist desk to get the coffees. Once he had deposited those in a way that was pretty much just waiting for Kami to come and enjoy a morning beverage with him, Devon went in search of his beloved.
The whole idea of trying to find her in a building with ten floors was a bit daunting. Actually what made it even more ridiculous was the fact that Devon was a wolf. He had a superior sense of smell. He should have been able to smell her for miles. That was the way it worked. But he was so out of touch with that part of his inner self that sometimes he forgot to utilize his preternatural senses.
Devon pus
hed the button for the elevator and climbed in. There was no hint of Kami in here at all. But there were two elevators. Kami should have taken at least one of them this morning at least once. That would leave her scent fresh in one of them. Right? Logically speaking of course.
With that in mind Devon slipped out of the elevator before the doors could close. He waited for it to go down and then pushed the call button again. Thankfully the other elevator did not argue overmuch with him about opening and letting him inside. The part that was no good was the fact that there was no doubt in his mind that Kami hadn’t been inside this one either. Not since last week. The traces of here were faint.
This time Devon rode the elevator to the basement level. He was starting to feel a pang of instinctive worry in his gut. The problem was that he could not decide if this was just paranoia or real instinct. He was far too worried about Kami in general to be objective.
Stepping out of the elevator, Devon looked first left and then right. This was the level where all of the building maintenance was located. The scents and sounds of boilers and electrical equipment nearly overpowered everything else. Devon closed his eyes for a moment and forced his mind toward the wolf. He had to find that portion of his psyche and tap into it. He thought about Kami. He let the wolf portion of his soul dwell on her presence. She belonged to him in a profound way. She was his wife. His mate.
Finally he caught the faintest whiff of her. Down here the scent of orange oil and beeswax was not enough. Those cleaning products were prevalent everywhere. But his nose led him to the closet where the janitor’s staff kept their equipment and their supplies. Here he could smell not only cleaning products, but Kami’s unique feminine spice.
The janitor’s closet was locked. Devon followed Kami’s old and faded scent to the end of the hallway and all the way to the exterior door that sat at the bottom of a cement stairwell. It was also locked. There had been nobody here this morning. Nobody. Kami had never made it to work. He knew that she had left their apartment building. Devon had followed her scent out the door and all the way to the coffee shop where her scent had continued on.
Had he smelled her past that point? Had he caught her scent and followed it all the way to the building? Had he even thought about it past the coffee shop? He had been carrying the coffee. The smell was warm and overpowering. At some point had he totally missed the fact that Kami had disappeared?
“None of that matters,” Devon whispered. He stared at the locked door and felt the most intense worry he had ever experienced. “She’s gone. She isn’t here. And that means that something has happened because Kami doesn’t just not show up. That isn’t her.”
And that left him with the very serious task of searching for his wife. But Devon could not do this alone. He needed help. He needed noses and muscle and the aid of someone who would not ask stupid questions. No police. That wasn’t going to cut it.
Fumbling for his phone, Devon texted Zane. If the Bigfoot Wolf vigilante wanted a task, Devon had one for him. HELP ME FIND MY WIFE. That was all Devon told his brother and he knew that it would be enough.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kami’s head hurt horribly. She blinked as she tried to figure out where she was and what had happened. She remembered the alarm. She remembered sitting up in bed and knowing that she was just a little bit disoriented because she had woken up on time, but in a very different place than she had first expected.
The apartment that Kami now shared with Devon was warmer and far more comfortable that the tiny shoebox she had shared with her family. The bed had been soft beneath her and there had been so much space that for a moment Kami recalled she had actually thought that she might have fallen on the floor.
Kami squeezed her eyes shut. Yes. Devon had touched her. He had run his fingers down her back and lightly stroked her skin. The way that Devon touched her left no doubt in Kami’s mind that he loved her very, very much. He had stayed in bed. She had gotten up.
No more shoebox—or rather refrigerator box—for her clothes. She had been able to turn on a light in a spacious closet and get dressed. She had used a bathroom sink to brush her teeth and a mirror to comb her hair and put it up. This had been an unimaginable luxury. And when she had left the apartment it was with the knowledge that she would see her husband very soon.
So what had happened?
A noise caused Kami to open her eyes. Children speaking? Where was she? It was dark. Pitch black and completely stuffy. And that was the final fact that caused Kami to realize where she was. Home. Or rather not home, but her parents’ place. This was the apartment that she had spent her whole life in. The old scent of beans permeated the air. The reek of chili sat just underneath everything else. And the total lack of light suggested that she was in her old closet room.
Groping in the dark, Kami finally felt the edge of the cot. She was on the floor. Her old cot had been folded up. It was currently occupying a corner. The refrigerator box was gone, but then her father had done that when she had still been living there. That had been the final straw. So what on earth was she doing back here now?
Coffee shop. She remembered passing The Corner Shop and getting ready to make a dash across the street toward the King building. It was a different route than she usually took because the bus stop had been on the opposite side of the street and about half a block in the other direction. She had been focused.
Had she heard someone? Her head hurt like hell. It was almost like her brain was refusing to go back to that moment. Why?
Another noise. This time the tread of footsteps on the creaky floor about twelve inches or more from her head. The carpet was threadbare. It still muffled the steps, but Kami would have known them anywhere. It was her father. She was back in her parents’ apartment and that meant her father and probably Roberto had grabbed her right off the street.
Okay. She could not panic. That would be the absolute end. Kami took measured breaths. It smelled bad in here. Like they had kept the door closed the entire time she had been gone. That would figure. Her father was probably so angry with her that he could not bear to see her bedroom door open and be reminded that she existed.
“Papa, I know you’re out there!” Kami called out to the darkness.
The feet outside her door stilled. No more shifting back and forth. Her father just sort of stopped moving and stood there like he thought he could hide or something.
“Papa, let me out of here. You can’t keep me a prisoner in this room.”
Of course, the very dangerous thing about this tiny closet was that it had never been intended to be a bedroom. That meant the lock was on the outside of the door. So in theory he could keep her locked in here as long as he wanted to.
“Guess you’d better get me a bucket or something,” Kami continued. She was starting to panic but trying to hold it together. “You know, if I need to pee I’m just going to aim it out the door or something. I don’t know how, but I’ll manage. Talk about a mess!”
That seemed to bother him. At least it got him moving again. This time his feet hurried down the hall in the direction of the kitchen. It was so odd to Kami how when you had lived in a place for so long and been crammed inside the tiny space with so many people you could suddenly develop the ability to know exactly where everyone was just by listening to their feet on the floor.
Kitchen. He was going to find her mother. Kami knew it about as certainly as she knew anything. Her father was freaking out that Kami might pee on the carpet and he would have to deal with the mess and this made him decide to pass the buck to her mother. The jackass.
“Kami?”
Her mother’s voice was tired. Kami could not imagine what Mama had been through in the last several days as Orlando went through his stages of anger and denial and then an obvious refusal to admit the obvious.
“Mama, could you please let me out?” Kami tried to be calm and reasonable. Her hands weren’t tied. She could have been banging on the door, but it was obvious that it would have freaked h
er mother out and made things worse. “Mama, I need to go to work. You know that’s important. I don’t want to get fired.”
“I can’t let you out, hija.” Her mother sounded so very sad. This wasn’t good. It meant that her father had been bullying the whole family. “Your papa says that you have to be punished for disobeying. Why would you get married without our permission, hija? It’s not right! Good daughters do not do those things to their parents. You embarrassed your father before the priest.”
“I’m sorry about that, Mama, but I love Devon. He’s good to me. He provides for me. Isn’t that the sort of husband a mother wants for her daughter?”
The angry banging on the door nearly made Kami pee her pants in terror. She gasped and shrank back from the door. “Don’t you talk about providing!” Kami’s father shouted. “You have taken money from this family. You have kept your brothers and sisters from eating! You bad girl!”
Her father’s words were so accented with his anger that Kami wished they could switch to Spanish just so she could try to understand what was happening. She rolled onto her belly and crept closer to the door. “Papa, what do you mean? You should have plenty of money to feed your children. You make lots of money. What did you do with it?”
There was a whispered argument outside the door. Her parents were speaking in rapid halting Spanish as they talked back and forth about money. Kami could hardly even keep up with them. The conversation was garbled. They were both so very upset that there was no doubt in her mind that something had happened with the family in Mexico.
“Was it your sister?” Kami shouted in Spanish. “Did she get hurt? Did she demand more money? What about my uncle? Did he drink the month’s money away? It’s not fair, Papa! Why should I pay for your family to drink away their money? Would you let me do that? Would you let me drink away my paychecks and then pay for me to live anyway? Why is that fair? That’s all I’ve ever wanted to know!”
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 90