by J. D. Light
"You thirsty?" I asked, standing up suddenly. Restless energy now bubbling up inside me. "Hungry? I have beer."
He was watching me with wary eyes as I moved to the fridge, my steps far too rushed, and not at all those of the man I normally was. I probably looked like I was tweaking or something.
Chapter Two
Something had changed. I wasn't sure what it was, but the more I watched West move around the kitchen, the more I became convinced he was nervous about something. It had been pretty obvious that he hadn't expected me to want kids. Could my wanting a family have something to do with why he was suddenly so twitchy?
I was pretty sure if I yelled, "boo," right then, the normally laid back, abnormally graceful human would scream and jump up on the counter.
"I'll take a beer, yes," I said, watching as he rubbed his hands on his jeans like his palms were sweating, then turned to open the refrigerator.
There was a lot to be said about the house he was staying in, and none of it was good. The walls were all old and rotting, the wallpaper peeling off and exposing the slat boards beneath. I didn't think there was even a stitch of insulation to keep the cold out once the days started cooling off. I hoped that this whole ordeal would be over with by then.
I had no doubt the only reason they had picked this dilapidated old shack was the fact it was smack dab in the middle of the woods. There wasn't even a driveway anymore, just an old grown-over path that even had small trees going up in the middle.
I wasn't sure how they have gotten their prisoners to the location, but there was no way anyone got in and out of here in a vehicle. Which meant West had to traipse through the woods by himself as a human.
I really didn't like the thought of that, which really pissed me off, since I promised myself I'd keep the man at a distance.
I'd been attracted to West Dyer since the first moment I'd met him a little over six months ago. He had been in town, meeting with Boston, Foster and a few other former FBI agents who'd made Purdy their new home.
I'd been utterly floored the first time I saw him. His face was chiseled and gorgeous, his cheekbones high, and his jaw incredibly square. He wasn't much shorter than me and nearly as wide, his muscles honed and his body tight.
Physically, he really had been absolute perfection, and I greatly enjoyed watching him move about. It had been the glimmer of mischief in his eyes when he'd walked up to me that had made me leery.
I was nearly three hundred years old and way beyond the point of wanting something casual or a one-night stand. I was looking to settle down. The first hundred and fifty years of my life, I'd spent running around being wild and carefree. The last hundred and forty-eight, I'd been looking for my mate, desperately wanting to connect with someone in the way only a mate could.
It might be said that I was maybe not the most welcoming individual in the world, and I'd been convinced that only finding my mate would save me from being completely lonely for the rest of my long, long life, but I'd promised myself nearly two decades before that if I made it to three hundred and hadn't found my soulmate, I'd find somebody else to settle down with.
Over the last few years, reports of chosen popping up everywhere were growing, and a new goal had surfaced in me. Suddenly, the idea of having children that were my own was a possibility, and I just couldn't believe that it was a coincidence since I was only two years from turning three hundred. That had to mean there was a chosen out there for me.
Unfortunately, that meant no West for me, no matter how tempting he was.
It wasn't that he wasn't chosen and therefore unable to give me children. If I found my mate, or even someone that I genuinely thought I could spend the rest of my life with, it wouldn't matter if they were chosen or not, but I was looking for somebody who could be serious about a relationship, and I highly doubted a twenty-three-year-old FBI agent who never seemed to care about his safety was ready to get serious about a relationship, especially, a relationship that would last God only knew how long. That was a big commitment, and West just didn't seem to fit that mold.
"So, what now?" I asked, when he set my beer in front of me, quickly popping his open and guzzling a surprising amount in one gulp.
He chuckled, putting his half-drunk beer down, and smirked at me, thankfully, back to his normal self.
"Are we talking about sex?" He asked, waiting until I had a mouthful of beer.
I sputtered, choking and coughing, and glared at him as I fought to get air into my lungs.
"What?" I demanded, when he sat there and blinked at me, trying not to look amused at my expense.
"What?" He parroted, his lips trembling.
This was exactly what I was talking about. The man took nothing seriously. How could I possibly think that he could be ready for a relationship like the one I wanted.
Though, I had to admit, I liked his smile… and his laugh. I even liked his humor when I didn't feel like he was making fun of me for something.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, shaking my head. "I meant, what are you going to do now? You have those two." I pointed downstairs. "What now?"
He looked at my hand and then up at my face, blinking. "I still can't tell if you're talking about sex."
I looked at my hand too, noticing that it did indeed look like I was pointing to my crotch. I snatched my hand down to the table with a too-loud thwack and closed my eyes, taking a deep breath.
I was turning into a bumbling idiot and it was completely his fault. My calm, cool normalcy continued to fly out the window where he was concerned. I'd caught myself nearly smiling at him probably a million times since he breezed back into town nearly a month ago, and I was constantly finding myself in awkward boner territory.
I might not be able to smell him which was just as important a part of being attracted to someone when you were a shifter as the visual aspect of attraction, but just watching the way he moved and feeling the heat coming off his body when he got too close, or I found myself inexplicably moving into his space, always had me so hard, I was too uncomfortable to even move.
"Now," he said, shrugging his wide shoulders and tilting his head to the side, exposing his muscular neck and the soft-looking pale skin that covered it, making my lips tingle with the urge to brush tiny kisses there before giving it a long, slow lick.
I couldn't smell him, but maybe I could taste him.
I wiggled on my stool, trying to get comfortable, and only succeeding in pinching the head of my dick in the fold of my jeans, making me grunt.
He glanced at me, blinking at the noise, but after a moment, he continued. "I have people manipulating bank accounts and making it look like they've been making money under the table and hiding it from the IRS. I'm also tying the money to drugs. I'm doing a major set up, really."
"You don't do anything the easy way, do you? Tell me again why you don't just hand them over to the elders?"
He smirked, his face taking on that mischievous glint that always had me tensing up.
"I know a shifter that went to a human prison. Prisoners are limited on the amount of time they get for activity. Can you imagine how horrible it would be for a shifter who only has so many minutes in a day to move around, and only gets to shift once a week at most?"
"What's to stop them from shifting anyway and exposing shifters?"
He yawned big, reaching under his shirt to scratch his stomach, exposing a long, pale strip of defined, sexy abs and the band of his underwear where his jeans gapped slightly in the front. I bit my lip to keep from grunting again when my dick pinched even harder. "Don't worry, I have that handled."
He looked tired. It wasn’t the first time that I'd noticed him looking a little off, and I wondered how much sleep he'd been getting lately.
He moved over to the drawer next to the stove and pulled out… Well, it looked like a shock collar, actually.
"Is that what I think it is?" I asked, not sure whether to laugh or be offended.
"Don't look at me like that.
There have been a few times we've had to do this. It's not like it's my own personal invention… I just really, really like it." He brought it over and set it down, spinning it so I could see the two little metal prongs that would sit against the wearer’s neck. "It has a sensor that can feel the vibrations of a shift, and it will actually vibrate at a different frequency to keep the shift from happening. See, it doesn't even shock them… but I could definitely fix that if I needed to."
"Hi, honey," someone yelled form the living room. "I'm… at this creepy shack in the woods that doesn't belong to either of us, thankfully, because I'm pretty sure the mold on the walls behind the sink is the kind that causes neurological damage or something."
I didn't even realize I was growling until West put his hand on my shoulder calming me instantly. For some reason, the Honey didn't sit well with me. Even my tiger seemed highly offended by it, and he was usually pretty quiet, but he was definitely picking up on the proprietary feelings I had for the man across from me. The feelings I'd had from pretty much the beginning and had never been able to shake.
"Who set off the booby trap? Was it you again?" The other man asked, accompanied by the sound of keys hitting the little table by the door and a bag being dropped somewhere. "Dude, the last time was fucking hilarious. That rope burn straight down the center of your face was fucking magical."
West made a face that conveyed his indignance, and I struggled not to laugh at the thought of him hanging in that fucking net with his face smooshed up against the ropes. Though, I didn’t really like the idea that his gorgeous face had been marked by it.
I also didn't like that this guy seemed to think it was okay to call West Honey, and that he seemed to be fairly friendly with the man.
"Who's that?" I growled, liking the flash of heat I saw in his eyes at the low rumble.
"Oh, hey," the new guy said from the door, drawing our attention and blinking at me in surprise as he looked at me. "You're Gabriel, right?" He walked around me, tilting his head this way and that as he took me in. "Dyer talks about you all the time."
West reached out and smacked his friend, his cheeks turning a telling shade of red. "No, I don't!"
The tall skinny man danced away gracefully, chuckling. "Uh huh."
"Dylan, this is Gabriel. Gabriel, Dylan," he grumbled, glaring at his friend.
It was nice seeing him like that. Off his game. Twice in as many minutes, I'd seen a less confident, almost bumbling side of West, and I had to admit that though I was really fond of the confidence he usually held like a shield, it was oddly sweet to see the side of him that was blushing… and nearly spilling his beer when he turned too fast as his friend came to my side of the counter to shake my hand.
"Nice to meet you," Dylan said with a smirk, his gaze flicking over to a glowering West, and then back to me, clearly aware he was striking some nerve, though, I wasn't sure which one that might be.
"You too," I said, watching the two closely as they had some kind of silent argument that made me feel like I was being talked about. I didn't mind that so much, but I was still confused as to what their relationship might be, and I didn't like it.
West glanced in my direction, and then did a double take, seeing something on my face that made him blink owlishly. He licked his lips, swallowing. "Dylan and Lane are the other two agents that are helping me with this thing."
I'd kind of already gathered that they worked together, but that still didn't answer the question of whether or not they were fucking… or why the hell it even mattered.
"Have you seen Lane today?" Dylan asked, walking over and grabbing a beer for himself.
"No," West said, moving around the counter and sitting on the stool next to mine. "He left just after you did."
The move seemed almost possessive, and I watched him out of the corner of my eye for a moment, wondering if he'd done it so that Dylan couldn't. By the amused look on the other agent's face as he joined us, he'd caught the move too, and probably knew exactly what the motive was behind it.
"Good," Dylan said, leaning over the counter and planting his elbows on the cracking Formica. "So, I've been going through the stuff on Brinkley and Darian's phones, right?" He reached back with one hand, pulling his own phone out of his back pocket and opening it, before moving his fingers over the screen, then putting the thing on the counter and sliding it between us, clearly involving me in whatever it was he was trying to show us. "Look at this picture."
I would have thought it was a picture of a bunch of people at a casino, if it wasn't for the background. The background was lined with cages, not unlike the ones down in the basement that were holding our two celebrities. The two celebrities that seemed to be two of the six in the photograph, and all were gathered around a poker table, laughing.
In the background, there were other stations with other people, but it was pretty clear that this table was the VIP table.
"Wow," West said, leaning closer, and his shoulder pressed into mine, his warmth seeping through my shirt and into my skin. "That's all of them. All the names Clay gave us. Who is this sixth person?" He pointed at a man sitting at the table, but clearly not involved with the game, though he seemed to be enjoying himself."
"I don't know, but look at this." Dylan placed two fingers on the screen and spread them, zooming in over Brinkley's shoulder and far into the background where the slightly blurred cages were, and the people milling about in front of them.
"What the fuck?" West said next to me, making me blink over at him before looking back at the picture in an attempt to figure out what he could be looking at.
The cages were awful, no doubt, but I was pretty sure he'd seen that a lot in the last couple of years with all the people trying to make a profit from other human beings just because they were special, but other than that, I didn't see anything that would stand out in a gathering for a bunch of socially prominent rich people.
"Is that… What the hell is Lane doing there?" West growled, looking up at Dylan.
Lane? I looked back down again, wondering if the big, burly looking man in the middle of the screen, glancing in the direction of the camera… or maybe the table of people, was the man he was talking about.
Dylan shrugged, his eyebrows raising slightly. "I don't know. The time stamp says the picture was taken a month and a half ago. At first, I thought he might have been on a mission having to do with the chosen, and it led him there, since they all kinda run in the same crowds, so I completely ignored it. I almost showed him, thinking to tease him about being so close by so far, but he was gone for two days and I didn't see him. It was a good thing too, since, while he was gone, his boss actually called to see if somebody had put his information in the computer wrong, because surely, he wasn't taking more vacation days so soon after the last ones. So, I looked it up. Sure enough, he took four days off a month and a half ago." Dylan looked up pursing his lips. "He wasn't there on a case. He was there on vacation."
I glanced back down at the phone, frowning hard. That did not speak of innocence.
"You think he's involved?" West asked, his eyebrows pulled together as he leaned back over the phone, moving his finger over the screen as he looked the entire picture over.
While Lane definitely didn't look like he was dressed like just about everyone else in the picture, he also didn't look like he was feeling completely out of place, since there were two other men dressed very similar to him standing fairly close by.
"Doesn't it kinda look like he's working?" I asked, leaning closer myself, putting my face inches from West's in an attempt to get closer to the screen. "Almost like he's working security or something."
West tilted his head to look at me and I could almost feel his mouth so close to my face. "You're right," he said, his breath tickling against my cheek. "That's exactly what it looks like."
I did my best to hide the pleasure that went through me at both his praise and his proximity, but I couldn't do anything about the goosebumps popping up on my arm where his rested
along mine.
He didn't pull back and give me more room, and I didn't either, taking a few moments to bask in the heat of him. Being turned on by this man was nothing new to me. Even without his scent in my nose, I couldn't help but think about all the things I'd like to do to his gorgeous body.
I often tried to imagine what his scent would be like. Probably heady and a little dark with tendrils of something spicy to match his personality. Until recently, I probably wouldn't have added a layer of sweetness since the man usually wasn't all that sweet, but I'd seen a little of his vulnerability tonight, and as much as I didn't want him feeling that way, seeing that part of him had been nice.
"Did you ask him to be a part of this case?" Dylan asked, interrupting my thoughts as I once again went off on a tangent in my head about all the things West Dyer was.
I was seriously becoming obsessed, and I needed to cut that shit out. Even if my goals weren't what they were––though honestly, with every passing moment they were becoming less and less important––there was no way we'd work out, and aside from the tiny amount of flirting he did with me––probably designed to irritate me or otherwise rile me since I enjoyed being in control of my emotions and he knew it––he'd never really given me a clear sign that he was interested one way or another… though, after hearing what Dylan had said, I was starting to wonder if maybe there was something there after all.
"No. I thought you did."
"No, Granger came up and told me he'd been added. At the time, it didn't seem important why or by whom."
"So, he specifically asked to be part of this case? And this is an actual case, and not you randomly accosting celebrities?" I asked, making sure I was getting all the information. "I don't like the sound of any of this."
West sent me a slightly amused look, licking his teeth. "Well, originally, it was me accosting celebrities, though there was nothing random about it, but when Granger found out, he liked the idea, so he sent Dylan and Lane."
"What do you want to do?" Dylan asked, picking his phone up off the counter and putting it in his back pocket.