by Anya Nowlan
Amy shuffled her feet awkwardly. While on The Pearl Princess, she’d come to be accustomed to being the Alpha dog, the person that everybody looked up to despite the fact that she was a late addition to the crew. No one had made her feel the least bit uncertain of herself.
Funny how two men she barely knew could have that effect on her so quickly. Elation and dread mingled within her and she wasn’t sure which side was winning.
Should I tell them? Now? Isn’t this as good of a time as any?
She swallowed stiffly, frowning to herself, before looking up at the brothers. They seemed to be as tongue-tied as she was and as far as she knew, they didn’t even have a good reason for it.
“I think I should t-“
“Captain Marris?”
The crackle of the walkie-talkie on her hip made her jump slightly and then fumble for the radio. She held up her hand in apology to the confused and amused looking Renards.
“This is she. Speak.”
“We have a small pool party emergency. Could you come to the bridge at first convenience, ma’am?”
Not this again.
“Sure, Jorge. I’ll be right there,” Amy said, trying to keep from sounding too dejected.
“Captain Marris?” Prowler asked, grinning.
“Hey, some of us need false identities to do our jobs, alright?” Amy shot back with a small smile, tucking the radio away on her belt. “But I’m afraid we have to cut this short now. ‘Pool party emergency’ is very clever code for the fact that a fight has broken out on the pool deck and I need to glare very sternly at some drunken asshats.”
“The glamorous life of a cruise ship captain, huh?” Price teased.
“Exactly that,” Amy said, nodding.
She excused herself gingerly from the company of the two werewolves, edging past Prowler a little too uncertainly. When she reached the hallway formed between the shelves, her pace quickened.
“I’ll come find you later tonight,” Prowler promised.
“I’ll be waiting,” she called back, biting her lip the moment those words slipped out.
Way to go. Playing it so cool they should name an iceberg for you. But maybe it was fate? Maybe I shouldn’t tell them before the mission’s over and keep their heads clear?
She gnawed on the inside of her mouth the whole way back to the bridge. It wasn’t a decision to be made lightly.
Eleven
Prowler
Night had fallen over The Pearl Princess but to Prowler, it didn’t exactly look to be sleeping.
The decks and corridors were filled with happy, semi-drunken people, laughing, dancing and having a good time. And there he was, unable to enjoy any of it, even for a minute.
Since the moment he had laid eyes on Amy, standing against that railing, her hair being whipped by the wind and her body looking so delicious that it brought their night together back to him in high def, Prowler had felt like he was losing his mind. He couldn’t get her scent out of his nose or her gorgeous face out of his mind. His hands ached to touch her again.
The fact that both he and Price had managed to steal a kiss from her only made it worse. It made it nearly impossible to concentrate on the task at hand.
We keep running into her. This can’t be a mistake, he thought, slipping past a trio of especially jovial lion shifters, discussing the merits of keg stands with one another. So I must not have been imagining it after all.
The last two months had been… difficult, to say the least. Not only had Prowler lost his appetite for having a good time, but he’d also completely given up on women. Even looking at someone who wasn’t Amy made him feel guilty, in a way.
He couldn’t quite put his paw on it.
The obvious answer to his problem seemed far too, well, obvious. The few times he had attempted to bring up the topic with Price, he’d been stonewalled. Not that Prowler could blame his brother.
Admitting to yourself or your Alpha twin that you might have just let your fated mate walk out of your life without even realizing it wasn’t something that any shifter wanted to do.
So maybe this is our second chance, Prowler thought, rounding another corner and reaching a doorway that was marked as private, for crew use only.
He checked over his shoulder and then pushed through it, walking up the stairs with purposeful strides. Only when he reached two decks higher, nearly the same level that the bridge was on, did he pause.
Prowler pulled a small device out of the pockets of his pants, flipping it open twice to reveal a pocket computer. Casually, he leaned against the closest wall, pulling a wire out of the side of the device and running it along the wall until he got a blip on his screen.
Humming to himself, he tapped a few keys on the screen and then, the lights in the stairwell flickered once, twice and then shut off completely. With the tune still on his lips, he folded the computer together again and shoved it in his pocket, shouldered the door to his left and stepped into the hallway that had a long row of officers’ quarters in it.
Every light was out and the door, which usually required a special access card, had clicked open for Prowler without question. He had thirty seconds before the lights would come back on and the locks would reactivate, making it look like a tiny glitch in the system. Good thing he knew exactly where he was going.
He rasped his knuckles on the door of the captain’s quarters once and waited, shuffling from foot to foot without noticing. Nervousness wasn’t exactly something he was used to feeling, but being around Amy always made him antsy for some reason. The cool, casual and completely indifferent Prowler that he was used to using when dealing with women was gone, thrown out the window.
Something about her made him feel like a teenager sometimes and he wasn’t sure if he had any real problem with it.
Amy pulled the door open, dressed in casual sweatpants and an oversized tee now instead of her captain’s uniform. Her hair was messy and her eyes hazy.
Prowler pushed in through the door, counting the seconds in his head. The moment after the door fell shut behind him, the lights went back on in the hallway. Some poor techie would have to come running to the officers’ deck to make sure that everything was still in order, only to find that they’d never figure out what had caused the glitch.
A glitch Prowler was hoping to use and abuse a few more times over the course of this trip.
“Evening. I woke you up, huh?” he asked gently, resisting the urge to grab her and kiss her again like he’d done last time he saw her.
I can have more finesse than that, right?
Well, maybe he could, but probably not for too long. She was far too scrumptious to keep his hands off of for an extended period of time.
“That’s alright,” Amy said, yawning softly. “No rest for the wicked and all that.”
“Sure,” Prowler agreed with a shrug, taking a few steps into the lavish captain’s quarters. “Whoa. Nice digs you got here, ma’am.”
“Are you going to get sassy with me, boy?” she quipped back with the same level of irony, quirking a brow at him as Prowler glanced at her over his shoulder.
He stalked through the room, admiring the view from the wide-panel windows. While Shifter Squad Nine had a series of suites, all interconnected, they had to ‘make do’ with small portholes. Amy seemed to have as much space as the five of them did altogether. Perks of being the captain, obviously.
“A little,” he admitted with a shrug. “Do you mind?”
“Not one bit,” Amy said with a chuckle, opening a door for him that led into a small study. “Come in. The stuff’s here.”
Prowler nodded and walked in, taking a seat at her desk. He knew how The Firm’s tech crew worked well enough, having trained with plenty of them, so finding the fake panels on the table that would reveal the screens to him came easily. Several wide screens popped up from the polished mahogany table, raising up from the smooth surface to offer him a view of more than forty cameras at a time, and several feeds to switch between.<
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“Nice,” he murmured, exchanging glances between the setup and Amy herself, who was leaning against the doorframe, her arms crossed over her chest.
“What are we talking about?” Amy asked, smirking back at him.
“Whatever you want, ma’am,” Prowler purred in response, chuckling at the scoff he got in return.
He liked the moxie that she had, the fact that she wouldn’t take anyone’s shit unless she thought there to be a good reason for it. While she allowed Prowler and Price to mess around with her a bit, he was entirely sure that she could put them in their place if need be. She was just that kind of woman and Prowler found it incredibly sexy.
Looking sleepy, a little disheveled and comfy in her ‘alone’ clothes, he found her more irresistible than ever. So much, in fact, that he forgot for a moment what he was there to do.
“Do you need me to step out and give you a few minutes to compose yourself, soldier?” Amy asked, keeping her expression deceptively neutral.
“No, I’m good,” Prowler said, switching the bulk of his attention back on the screens and the keyboard that had raised up for him as well.
His fingers tapped over the keys quickly and efficiently, hiding the feeds and bringing up the settings and the logs. A few carefully placed commands made diagnostics start running on the system, looking for any abnormalities in the setup or in the video feeds captured since the cameras were set up.
He produced a thumb drive from the bottom of his pocket as well and plugged it in, Amy watching him do so with a frown.
“What’s that?” she asked, motioning towards the drive.
“Oh, just something I’ve concocted up over the years on my own. It runs a thorough scan of the feeds every day and alerts you if it catches something that’s off. It tries to determine movement patterns, facial and emotion recognition and then make assessments off of that. It feeds the information back to me,” Prowler explained, holding up his trusty pocket computer. “It’ll help us figure out if something’s awry before we can see it ourselves on the feeds.”
Prowler had to work at sounding not too proud of his invention. He’d spent considerable time building that bit of code and it had saved his ass a couple of times on long recon and observation missions. If he could use it again to ensure that Amy was even a tad safer over the course of this mission, he’d be more than satisfied.
He stood up, giving the screens one more look.
“It’s going to need some time to run,” he said, stalking towards Amy.
“And what do you propose we do with that time?” she asked, her voice sounding slightly husky.
It made his wolf stir immediately. The urge to pin her against that wall and kiss the breath out of her lungs was almost insufferably powerful and Prowler found himself relaxing his hands because they wanted to ball into fists from the sheer stress of it. The wolf rose to the forefront of his mind, letting him know loud and clear what it thought of his ‘good manners’ so far.
“How about we talk a little?” Prowler proposed, even getting the words out turning out to be difficult.
“Oh, sure!” Amy replied, looking equal parts surprised and relieved.
Prowler had to agree with her on those sentiments – if he’d been told a couple of months ago that he’d try to do something other than make a beautiful woman scream his name in ecstasy when left alone with her, then he would have called them completely off their rocker and entirely insane.
So maybe I’m growing as a human being, he thought with the faintest growl rising in the back of his throat as he followed her back into the main room and to a set of plush armchairs.
It was a time of firsts for Prowler Renard, no doubt about that.
Twelve
Amy
“So, what do we talk about?” Amy asked, after getting both of them a cup of tea and settling into one of the burgundy leather chairs, opposite of Prowler.
Going from being grimy, bloody and having angry sex on a table in a nondescript mess hall in Montana, to having a civilized conversation over a cup of tea in the comfortable seats of a cruise ship was the kind of progression Amy would have never seen for herself and Prowler.
She picked up the cup, curling up in the large seat and blowing on the warm liquid. The thought to offer him some alcohol had passed through her head but she discarded it quickly. It would only cause him to ask her why she wasn’t joining him in a drink and that was not a conversation she was ready to have.
No, I have to tell them both at the same time, she decided, taking a sip of her tea.
“Well, how about you tell me about yourself?” Prowler said finally, holding the mug like it was in danger of breaking at any moment.
In his large hands, it just might, if he decided to squeeze it a little. Those large hands that had roamed her body and made her feel pleasure unlike any she had ever felt before…
A familiar heat was pooling in the pit of her stomach, along with reaching her cheeks and flushing those a hot pink as well. She swallowed the tea and then met his green gaze, finding it as hard as ever to look away from him once he caught her with his gorgeous eyes.
The twins both seemed to have that effect on her. She was beginning to revel in it, not even minding that she couldn’t get herself out of those eyes unless they allowed her safe passage out.
It all sounded a bit melodramatic in her head, but it was what it was. She was, in a word, smitten.
And I shouldn’t be. Not only do I work with these men, but they’re shifter bad boy murderers… not exactly daddy and husband material, right?
It made perfect sense when she thought about it like that, but in all honesty, being rational had very little to do with her attraction to the Renard twins. It was raw, animalistic, and came from somewhere far deeper within her than she could have expected.
“Do you promise to return the favor?” she asked, bringing herself back to the conversation with far more force than she originally anticipated requiring.
“Always,” he said, and his deep voice ran serious.
Amy was certain that he was being truthful with her and it made her smile. She’d grown to always be wary and on her toes around soldiers, men who fought and killed for a living. Though she was sitting opposite one of the very best of them, she had never been more certain that every word out of his mouth would be the truth.
“Okay. So what do you want to know?” she asked, relaxing and letting her head drop against the padding of the chair.
Prowler considered her for a moment, pursing his lips in thought.
“Alright. Why’d you go into the military?”
“Ah, softball questions, huh?” Amy asked with a chuckle, getting an arched brow in response. “Well, I woke up one day and realized my life wasn’t going anywhere. I was in college, second year, getting a degree in economics. I didn’t like the school, the people or the debt. One day, there were Navy recruiters on campus and I thought I’d step in for a moment, see what it’s all about. The rest is history.”
“So the answer is boredom?” Prowler asked.
“More like violent dislike of my existence and a wish to change it. But boredom definitely had something to do with it, I guess,” Amy admitted, squirming slightly in her seat.
“What’s the real reason?”
Amy’s gaze flicked up, meeting Prowler’s. He remained steady, not breaking eye contact. Her objections died on her lips and Amy sighed.
Damn these twins. They can read me far too well already.
“I wasn’t lying about school or where my life was headed, you know.”
“I figured. I think there’s more to it, though.”
Amy slicked her tongue over her teeth, feeling her palms get a little bit sweaty. She didn’t like talking about her past, the time before the military life took her in and sheltered her from what had been going on before. Yet with Prowler, it didn’t feel like the worst thing in the world to share.
Maybe only like the second worst thing?
She shook her
head with a sigh. If she was going to tell him about her pregnancy soon then it was only fair that she opened up to him about things she kept bottled up as well.
“Okay. During my first year of college, I got raped.”
She could almost feel the temperature drop in the room. Glancing at Prowler again, she could see his face twist in anger and his eyes flash the solid gold of his wolf.
If it had happened when she was stuck in a room with any other shifter than one of the Renard twins, she might have worried. Right now, though, she felt touched that his reaction was so visceral and immediate.
“I came out of it fine. He was a jock and I was in a sorority and it all sort of got out of hand. I didn’t report him because I was afraid of what people would think. So I let him get away with it. It kept gnawing at me, the fact that he could do the same thing to someone else. I was a mess. My grades were falling, I didn’t want to see my friends and all I could think about was what he’d done.”
The memory was painful, but Amy made herself take another deep breath and continue.
“My parents died in a car crash a few years prior to me going to college so I didn’t really have anyone to lean on, either. When I stepped into the recruitment room almost a year later, everything seemed to click into place. I signed up that day and when I stepped out of there, I went straight to campus security and filed a report about the guy, followed by one at the police department. I didn’t have enough proof, but I let everyone I possibly could know about what he had done to me.”
“Were there others?” Prowler asked, having set down his tea cup.
His fingers were digging into the arms of the seat and Amy had to wonder how long it would take him to just take a chunk out of the damn thing at that rate. She reached over the table that separated them and put her hand on top of his for a moment, feeling it relax immediately.
“There were. They came forward, three girls. We got him put away finally.”
“I still can’t believe there’s scum like that roaming the world,” Prowler ground out, shaking his head as Amy pulled back.