Wild Love (Wilding Pack Wolves 2) - New Adult Paranormal Romance

by Alisa Woods

  “I’m sure she can,” Marjorie said grimly. “I’m just not sure it’s wise.” But then she tapped something into her phone, so Noah held his next attempt to convince her at bay. After a moment, she said, “Emily, could you please come to my office? Thank you.” She hung up.

  A small tightness he didn’t expect, deep in his gut, danced up and smacked him in the face. There was no denying he was attracted to Emily, but this was something more—a tingly anticipation that had been building ever since he left the safehouse. Even his wolf had perked up at the idea of seeing her again, and that caught him off-guard—Emily was human. His inner beast shouldn’t be reacting to her like this.

  Noah shoved that aside. “We both want the same thing here, Marjorie,” he said, pouring on all the charm he possessed with an earnest look and a small smile. “To clear out this threat and get WildLove back in business.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “Don’t bat those pretty eyes at me, Noah Wilding,” she said with fake admonishment. “Save that kind of thing for Emily.”

  He blinked and, astonishingly, felt heat rising in his cheeks. Was it that obvious he was attracted to Emily? Or was Marjorie just trying to get them together for her own match-making reasons? He prayed she was still in the dark about their almost-hookup—Emily had been adamant about keeping that secret. Which had given him the perfect opportunity to slip her his number. After all, her boss was practically shoving them together. Was it wise to hook up with her while working this job with the agency? Um… no. Would that stop him? Probably not.

  As he stumbled for something to say that wouldn’t make his thoughts completely transparent, Emily scurried into the room.

  “Oh!” she said, pulling up short, obviously surprised to see him. “You’re… back.” She tugged at her t-shirt, which said Will Write Code For Coffee. His wolf gave a small growl of appreciation for the way it hugged her chest. Noah whipped his gaze up to her face, afraid of being caught ogling, especially with Marjorie’s keen-eyed attention on him.

  “Hey,” he said, rather lamely, then forced his voice to sound at least a little professional. “Tell your boss it would be no problem to work some programming magic to open up WildLove again.”

  She frowned and took two more steps into the office, coming to stand equidistant between them. “I thought it wasn’t safe?” She looked to her boss.

  “That’s what I’m saying.” Marjorie gestured to him. “But Captain America here thinks he can catch the bad guys better if we’re live.”

  Emily turned her pretty frown on him. “I thought you had already captured the bomber.”

  Noah grimaced. “There was a second bombing just an hour ago.”

  “What?” Emily’s already pale skin lost even more color. “Is the shifter all right?”

  There was that feeling again, deep inside, stirred around by her concern. “Yes.”

  Her obvious relief was quickly followed by a cute scrunching up of her nose. “It must have been a prior contact.”

  “Yeah.” Of course, she would figure that out right away. Noah had only spent a couple hours with Emily, but it was obvious she was crazy smart—that was part of what drew him to her, too. He edged closer. “The two of them were matched by WildLove last week.”

  She scowled and dropped her gaze to the floor. “Of course. The average time from swipe to message is less than an hour. From message to chat room connection even less. But from there, the data’s all over the map. Hookups can be arranged within minutes, and the actual meet within an hour. Or it could be days. Or a week. All depends on schedules, day of contact, whether it’s coffee or…” She looked up at him with those clear blue eyes blazing. “There are hundreds of people still at risk. This is not good.”

  He nodded. “Which is exactly why we need to activate some kind of dragnet to pull in this second bomber—and whoever else is involved—before anyone else gets hurt.”

  She was nodding. “If there are two bombers, then there are probably more. We need to find the whole group. And shut them down.” The fierceness in her voice made that spot low in his gut tighten again. She was unbelievably cute like this, a whip-smart kitten in angry, problem-solving mode. And her protectiveness was just turning him on more.

  Stay on task, Wilding. It didn’t help that she smelled of freshly-scrubbed skin and lavender soap, no perfume of any kind, just like this morning. And the night before. He forced himself to look away before it was obvious he wanted to haul her back to that breakroom and kiss her for real.

  “See?” he said to Marjorie.

  Her lips were pursed as she examined Emily. “What can we do, Em? I trust you more than anyone in the company on this. And you know this system better than any other programmer. What can we do to keep everyone safe but still lure this guy in and catch him?”

  Noah swung back to look at her, trying to keep his face schooled and his thoughts on task. She was like a demon on the trail of some idea—he could tell by the way she wrinkled her brow, thinking furiously, so he kept quiet.

  “We could…” She stopped to lick her lips, and that wasn’t helping with him staying on task. “We could re-route all the messaging,” she said, tentatively, then gaining steam. “Have it go through a central account that we monitor. Cut the shifters out of it entirely—send their messages to a holding pen while we sort this out. They’re the targets, and we can’t have them exposed to any more risk. But we’ll let the human requests go through, in case they’re part of the setup.”

  Noah frowned. “We haven’t found any connection between the humans and the bomber we have in custody.”

  Emily stared at the floor. “If I could just figure out how they’re getting access…” She was biting her lip again, and his wolf was paying far too much attention to that.

  Noah gave Marjorie an apologetic look. “It could be someone inside WildLove.” He waited for Emily to react to that, but she was still chewing her lip and staring at the floor.

  “That’s still a possibility,” Marjorie said. “I hate to think it, but—”

  “Hang on!” Emily’s hands jumped in the air like she was stopping traffic. “I’ve got it.” She took a breath, but her eyes were blazing again. “I thought whoever these people were, that they had to have accessed the database with everyone’s real names and phone numbers, then hacked the phones—so I was looking for loopholes in that system—but that’s not it at all. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be restricted to attacking during the hookup. That must be the only information they have. Which means they have to be hacking the messaging system. It’s the only way they could know when the WildLovers are meeting. But whoever they’ve got hacking for them is good, really good, because they’re not leaving any traces afterward. It could be someone inside the agency, but anyone on the inside would have access to the entire database. Maybe someone is unknowingly giving them access just to the message system. Whoever it is, whether it’s coming from inside the agency or not, I’ll need to catch them in the act.”

  “By making WildLove active again?” Noah asked hopefully.

  Her face was very serious. “Yes. But we have to be careful, all set up and monitored by us. We’ll set the trap, and as soon as the bomber takes the bait, I should be able to trace them and see how they’re getting in. Then I can block them to prevent it from happening again.”

  “But then how do we catch them?” Noah asked, frowning. It was good to shut down whatever security hole WildLove had, but they needed to catch the bad guys as well. Not to mention this might lead them to the Wolf Hunter.

  “The same way as before—a hookup that’s really a setup. Only this time, all the interactions will go through us. There’ll be no actual hookups until the bad guy hacks into one of our fake message exchanges. Once we see he’s tracking us, we’ll stage a hookup and catch him when he shows up to plant the bomb.”

  “Sounds brilliant to me,” Noah said with a grin, throwing a glance to Marjorie.

  She was scowling at both of them but relented after a mo
ment. “No WildLovers at risk?” she asked Emily.

  “Nope,” she said with confidence. “Just the Riverwise security guys waiting to take down the bomber.”

  “All right, then.” Marjorie waved them out of her office. “Get going on this. I want the messages intercepted as soon as you can, before any more of our WildLovers can get hurt.”

  “Yes, Ma’am!” Emily had a shine in her eyes as she spun to hurry out of Marjorie’s office.

  “Thank you,” Noah said to Marjorie before hustling after Emily. She was hauling ass back to her cubicle, and by the time he caught up to her, she was already in her seat, pulling up screens of information that could be hieroglyphics for all he could tell.

  “God, why didn’t I think of this before,” she muttered, but it seemed mostly to herself.

  He put a hand on her shoulder but jerked it back when she jumped.

  She gave him an apologetic look. “Sorry. Just… tense.” She grabbed her mug of coffee emblazoned with Coffee is My Boyfriend, took a nervous sip, then set it down again.

  He frowned. “I just wanted to help. But if you’d rather I left…” He hoped she would say no to that, but she was back to that twitchiness she had before, at the motel. It tugged at something deep inside him. There was something wrong, something closed-up and hurting inside her, and it bothered him. A lot.

  She dropped her shoulders from their hiked-up position and seemed to relax a little. “No, sorry, I’m just… weird. Ignore me. And please stay. I’ll need your help for part of this.”

  Noah dragged a chair over to sit next to her, then gestured to the screen. “I doubt I can help you much with this.”

  She scowled at the screen. “I can’t believe I left some kind of security hole for these haters to waltz through! I wish you guys had come to me sooner. If I’d known, I could have—”

  “Thank you,” he said, interrupting whatever regret comment she was about to conjure. She did way too much of that—apologizing for being tense, for keeping whatever was bothering her locked inside. He was very familiar with that kind of thing—dark secrets his family kept under wraps while they slowly killed them from the inside out. He wasn’t exactly great at the whole understand your feelings thing, but he was working on it—he had to, in order to control his beast. It was way more powerful than it used to be, and he couldn’t afford to lose his grip on it.

  “Thank you for what?” Emily asked, turning to him with wide eyes.

  He smiled. “For caring about wolves so much.”

  She looked him straight in the eyes, and it was like she was seeing inside him. It wasn’t a bad feeling… not at all.

  “Shifters are better people than most humans,” she said, a little breathless. “At least, as far as I can tell. Generally speaking.” That delightful blushing color was back in her pale cheeks. He held her gaze, and if she didn’t look away, he was seriously tempted to follow that up with a kiss. But she dropped her gaze to the floor, then her keyboard, then back to her screen.

  Avoiding him again.

  “Evil comes in all shapes,” Noah said quietly. “Right now, I’d like to catch this particular brand of evil that’s bent on blowing up innocent people.”

  She nodded, eyes on the screen. “Right.”

  “So how can I help with that?”

  That brought her attention back to him, but a grimace was marring her pretty face. “I guess I need you to hook up with another human.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “I thought the hookup was just going to be fake.” The only hookup he was interested in having in the near future was sitting in front of him with her hands nervously tapping the edge of her keyboard.

  “We need the bomber to think it’s real,” she said, her face drawing down.

  “So… we have to set up a real meetup, but I don’t have to actually sleep with the person.” He didn’t like what she was saying… and he liked the look on her face even less.

  She shrugged one shoulder and turned back to the screen, fingers flying across the keyboard. “You didn’t have to sleep with them before.”

  True. Dammit. But back then he had no reason not to, and he had every reason to make it look real, in case the human was involved in the setup. Or just to buy time for the bomber. But, of course, Emily had already figured all that out, including the fact that she wasn’t the first WildLove hookup he’d had. “I’m kind of hoping I won’t have to do that again.”

  Her shoulders twitched, but she didn’t say anything. It took him a moment to piece together what she was thinking: that he regretted the almost-hookup with her.

  Noah reached a hand over to touch her wrist.

  Her fingers froze mid-stroke, and she slowly looked at him.

  He stared her straight in the eyes. “I just gave my number to a girl. I’m hoping she might call. I don’t want to get involved with anyone else, in case that happens.” He didn’t think he could be any more plain about what he meant.

  Her eyes went a little wider, then she blinked several times and turned back to her screen before speaking again. “I guess… I guess you wouldn’t have to go through with the hookup. If you didn’t want to.”

  “Maybe you could be my hookup.”

  She whipped a look to him then wrenched it back to the screen. “Um… yeah… maybe we could work it that way. It’s probably better if everyone involved knows what’s happening. Plus that way your hookup won’t be surprised when you don’t exactly match your profile picture.” She swallowed, but this time, her nervousness just made him smile. Because he was pretty sure she wanted it as much as he did, even if she wasn’t coming out and saying it.

  “Exactly,” he said, scooting his chair closer to peer over her shoulder. “So, tell me how this is going to work.”

  She quickly glanced at him, right at her back, then leaned over to pull a laptop out of one of her desk drawers. “You’ll need this.” Then she was back at her keyboard. “I’ll reroute the message system so that anything that comes from actual WildLovers goes to a holding pen but pings us that there’s activity. If it’s a shifter messaging a human, then you’re on, Noah.”

  “I get to be the shifter?” he asked with a grin, catching on to how this game would be played.

  “And I’ll be the human,” she said with a small smile. “We’ll have to chat like we’re really setting up a hookup, but it will all be fake. I’ll be monitoring on my screen, see if there are any real-time breaches of security. Once there is, then that hookup will be the setup.”

  “So…” Noah’s grin just grew. “I get to flirt with you online, under multiple names, agreeing to a bunch of different hookups… but I only get to go to one for real. With you.”

  “Well, yeah.” She was blushing again, and his heart rate kicked up a notched. “Except, you know, we’ll actually be conducting a sting operation.”

  He leaned forward. “How about after the op? Are you busy then? Or should I wait to ask once we’re alone in a motel room again?” He really couldn’t contain his smirk.

  She shoved him back, but even with her little hands, he could tell she didn’t mean it. “We have to catch a bad guy first.”

  “Deal!” Noah opened the laptop she had given him.

  This was absolutely the best job he’d ever had.

  BRIAN: Hey, Amy, your picture is so hot, it burned out my phone.

  AMY: Seriously, does that line work on anyone?

  BRIAN: Did it work on you?

  AMY: No.

  BRIAN: You owe me a new phone, then.

  AMY: Okay… maybe.

  BRIAN: Maybe a new phone? Or maybe your chat number?

  AMY: 347-2290

  Emily grinned at her screen and closed the messenger window, switching over to the secure chat board. She and Noah had been chatting for a couple hours, off and on, each time pretending to be a different set of WildLovers. All the real communication was shunted into a holding file—Emily would resurrect those messages once WildLove was truly live again—but each time a real person initiat
ed a contact, Emily routed it to Noah, who took whatever crazy pickup line was used and ran with it. They agreed ahead of time they would eventually have her give her chat number and then arrange a hookup… but making it look real meant they’d spent hours flirting.

  Which was somehow safer for her than in person.

  She could actually breathe when Noah wasn’t in the room heating her skin just by looking at her. Right now, he was safely back at his apartment somewhere in the city. It had taken a while to get everything set up on the servers, and he said he had some errands to run, so he’d taken the tricked-out laptop with him. It was well into the evening before they were “live” again—the messages came through on a special app she set up on his computer, and she was afraid he wouldn’t notice the ping alert, but he must have been keeping a close watch because he’d replied almost instantly.

  They’d been chatting ever since.

  Noah’s first message as “BRIAN” in the chat room lit up her screen.

  BRIAN: Hey, sexy thing. I’m so glad you wanted to chat. I’d still like that new phone, though.

  AMY: I thought you shifters were only interested in one thing from humans…

  BRIAN: Hot sex, yes. Absolutely. Also technology. We shifters don’t have access to much, what with living in the woods and hunting elk.

  AMY: I hope you have a license for that.

  BRIAN: Oh shit. You’re a narc, aren’t you?

  AMY: Yes.

  BRIAN: …

  AMY: Should I bring my handcuffs?

  BRIAN: YES

  AMY: Time and a place, hot stuff.

  BRIAN: Are you wearing the uniform? Please wear the uniform.

  AMY: Only if you’re naughty.

  BRIAN: I have been extraordinarily bad. Require lots of… punishments.

  AMY: How about in an hour?

  She wasn’t sure if that was enough time for Riverwise to set up the sting, but it would be suspicious if every hookup were at the same relative time, not to mention location, so there was a bit of art in this part of the arrangement. Noah knew what the Riverwise guys were ready for—she’d let him have the final say on the details. Meanwhile, she carefully monitored all the data flows, looking for traces that they’d been tapped by the bomber… but so far nothing.