by A. C. Arthur
“Second, in addition to their marketing firm, my parents own a couple of nonprofit foundations. I don’t know where any of their money goes or why.”
“How is that possible?” he queried, sounding as confused as he felt. He didn’t live with his parents but he knew that his father had just retired from the government aide position he’d held for more than thirty years and that his mother, still as pretty as ever, supervised a showing of artwork that had been in her family for centuries.
She blinked then stepped around him, bending down to pick up her boots before taking the spot he’d just vacated on the bed. “Look, I’m not close with my family. So I don’t know what they’re doing.”
“But you don’t sound at all surprised that they would give money to Comastaz.”
“It’s a government laboratory. I’m sure if there’s any type of monetary or social reward for their donation, that would be the reason they made it. My parents are really big on keeping up appearances.”
“Even at the cost of betraying the shifters?”
She looked up at him then, her lips drawn tightly. “I answered your question to the best of my ability. Are we done now?” She’d finished tying both boots and was standing again. “I’d like to get back to my room.”
“Before anybody sees that you were here, right?”
He had no idea why he’d asked her that question, or why he needed to be close to her again, but he moved forward. Lifting a finger he touched her chin, tilting her head up so he could see her eyes. What he saw in their depths left him breathless. Snatches of light and dark, pleasure and pain, suffering and turmoil. He wanted to yell in disgust, to force the images out of his head, but when she spoke, they all disappeared.
“You shouldn’t keep your eyes covered all the time, they’re beautiful,” she told him.
Eli looked away instantly, turning from her and going to the door. “Nick and Rome know about the money your parents are sending to Comastaz. With all that’s gone down they’re concerned. I told them you were trustworthy, that I would take care of the situation. Don’t make a liar out of me,” he warned, his teeth clenching.
She moved behind him, her steps soft but sure.
“I’m not my parents. I stand for what I believe and I believe in the shifters. Whether or not that makes me a liar is not my concern.”
She reached around him to turn the doorknob and walk out of his room, leaving him there to stare after her. To wonder and to regret. Eli closed the door with a growl that no doubt echoed throughout the entire dwelling.
Chapter 7
“We’re not ready to proceed with production. ADAM was unsuccessful but we’ve had some new developments. I need at least six months to produce another prototype,” Captain Lawrence Crowe said as he stood across from a huge mahogany desk.
To the left of the desk was the American flag, to the right the bright red flag of the U.S. Marine Corps. Lining the wall behind him were more citations and commendations than any one man should possess. All giving the impression of achievement and power, no doubt, only Lawrence knew better.
General Oscar Pierson, the tall, slim man with a sallow complexion and raspy voice, sat back in the executive office chair. He lifted a leg, resting an ankle on his knee, his fingers steepled in front of him.
Pierson was retired, had been for two years since the scandal erupted depicting him as the head honcho in the inhumane treatment of POWs in Iraq. Now, he worked closely with his partner-in-crime, Major Randall Guthrie, who had somehow escaped the scandal and still remained on active duty or at least active payroll.
They were all still being paid by the U.S. government, whether directly or through a government pension, even as they planned to betray that very entity.
“That’s not an option,” Pierson informed him. “The meeting’s scheduled for four weeks from now, at which time we are expected to present an expertly designed killing machine. Buyers from all over the world will be here looking to write a check for the best weapon on the market. There’s no margin for error and the stakes are succeed or be destroyed. Is that clear enough for you?”
Pierson had the political connections and the reputation to get him on foreign soil with the most powerful men in countries all over the world. Crowe was the mastermind, the seed that had put this little plan into motion. Guthrie was the muscle, or, more accurately, a fucking nuclear missile with its time clock ticking every second. The fact that he had been excluded from this meeting was cause for concern, but Crowe wasn’t afraid. He held all the cards here, not to mention the ace in the hole that neither Pierson nor Guthrie knew about.
“That’s too soon,” he countered. “Rushing this will be disastrous for us all.”
Pierson turned sharply, his cold gaze resting on Crowe. “You mean like the disaster you caused in Arizona? The press are still circling around the fire at Perryville Resorts and the break-in at your lab, like a bunch of vultures. Hell, your houses were even broken into and destroyed. Your name is wrapped in so much shit right now you should be wearing fishermen’s waders instead of combat boots!”
Crowe didn’t even flinch. “Exactly my point. ADAM wasn’t ready. If we go in front of the buyers without being one hundred percent there’s no telling what will happen.”
Lowering his leg, Pierson turned to lean his elbows on his desk, now giving Crowe what he knew was his dangerous commander look. “I’m going to tell you exactly what’s going to happen. You’re going to get your ass to work producing a number of viable prototypes. Not just one, but another one to pick up the slack if you fuck up again. And another one as backup to that one. This deal is going through in four weeks. That means you’re going to produce what you promised or I’m going to cut off your balls and feed them to you for breakfast. Are we clear, captain?”
Crowe gritted his teeth. He wanted to snap back, to tell the spindly old man that he wasn’t scaring anybody in this room. Crowe could kill him right now, with his bare hands, just as he’d almost done to Pierson’s whining and pampered son Sidney back in Arizona. But there was a bit of truth to the man’s words. This deal was important to all of them and it was a one-shot occurrence. Arranging for the top foreign leaders to be in one place at one time, promising them a product that would make the three of them billionaires, was a pretty big deal. It was the fucking biggest deal of Crowe’s life. He had to make it happen, there was no question about that.
He also had to stay alive.
“If this goes bad,” he started to say to Pierson.
“It had better not go bad,” Pierson interrupted.
Crowe nodded, knowing that if the prototypes didn’t perform there would be hell to pay. Hearing the ghostly laugh of Boden Estevez in the back of his mind only reinforced that fact. Because when—not if, he thought—this all went bad, the world as they all knew it would never be the same.
* * *
He let his head fall back and laughed. Deep, rich, loud, reverberating throughout the expanse of his suite at the Four Seasons. The chip he’d had installed in Crowe’s cell phone was proving to be one of the smartest things the beautiful Bianca had ever suggested.
Speaking of the goddess, she touched a hand to his shoulder, letting her long red-painted nails draw an imaginary path down his torso as she leaned in to whisper in his ear.
“He’s going to create more of them, faster than ever,” she said.
Boden chuckled again. “He sure is.”
She slipped around him then, lifting a leg so she could straddle him on the bed. “The Shadows are going to fall hard.”
“They are,” he replied, cupping the plump globes of her ass.
“And you’ll take your rightful place as ruler,” she whispered in his ear, thrusting her pussy against his growing erection.
“Right again,” he said, letting his hand slip under her dress and between her crease.
Everything Boden did was for the sake of revenge. First and foremost, against the Elders and the Shadow Shifters of the Gungi who had so eas
ily and humiliatingly tossed him from the jungle and their tribe. The moment he’d arrived in Sierra Leone he’d begun to plan how he would take them down and eventually control the very tribes that despised him.
The next had come a while later, the twins that had so systematically taken away the one thing in the world Boden had ever cherished—his mate—by first using her body and then viciously killing her. Yes, that revenge would also be sweet.
“We’ll rule together,” she was saying, her tongue tracing provocative strokes over his ear and down his neck.
A growl rumbled in his chest, the jaguar quickly coming to life as three of his fingers pressed deep into Bianca’s hot, waiting center. She hissed and began pumping against his strong strokes immediately. Always ready for him, Bianca rarely bothered with underwear or pretenses. Since the first time he’d seen her lurking around his hut in the Sierra Leone rain forest, she’d been submissive to his every whim. His control of her had come easily and proven almost invaluable. She’d done excellent work infiltrating Sabar’s operation and securing the funds that would facilitate his highly secretive move from Sierra Leone to the States. However, he didn’t love her, was not capable of such a basic and useless emotion. And she wasn’t his mate—that ship had long since sailed the night Acacia was brutally murdered. No, everything Boden did in his life now was for a purpose, a bullet point being checked off on his long and sadistic to-do list.
When Bianca placed both hands on his shoulders, clenching as she continued to bounce up and down with the motion of his fingers, Boden’s sharp teeth bit into his lower lip, the acidic taste of his own blood making his dick bulge to painful proportions. With his other hand he squeezed the right side of her ass, his finger slipping assuredly down her seam and over her anus. She was so wet his digits slipped back and forth over her plump folds and back to that tight bud where he pressed firmly, until she was breached.
She shivered in response, loving whenever he was there with her, whenever he gave her pleasure. He looked into her eyes, the ice-blue orbs shadowed by long black lashes. Her mouth, plump pink-tinted lips, gaped as she struggled to hold on, feeling the pleasure build and circle inside her but not daring to let it rip free. She knew better.
The knowledge of the complete control he had over her made Boden smile, his dick dripping moisture that would stain his pants. With more deep strokes he worked her pussy and her anus, loving the tightness, the gripping, the wetness dripping down his wrists.
“You’ll continue to do what I say, my little tiger,” he told her, leaning forward to lick down the line of her throat. “Whatever I say, whenever I say.”
Her body jerked now, her long dark hair swaying with the erratic rhythm she’d begun in an attempt to keep up with his thrusts. “Yes!” she yelled. “Yes, sir, I will!”
He bit her then, his sharp teeth sinking into the tender and tasty skin of her neck until it was her blood that now flavored his tongue.
Come for me, now,” he instructed her. “Come for me, now Lormenian cat. Now!”
Bianca convulsed over him, her nails-turned-claws sinking deep into his shoulders, cutting right through the material of his dress shirt. Her body bucked, her pussy walls tightening as she dripped incessantly, growling deep inside her chest as her release ripped free.
One week later.
Eli’s head throbbed with every strand of the classical music that had been playing throughout the evening. For what felt like the billionth time tonight, he fiddled with the bow tie at his neck, rolling his head on his shoulders and tried to relax in the confining suit he’d been forced to wear.
“They’re grown-man clothes,” Ezra had told him when he’d shown up at Eli’s door.
“I’m not the grown-up you are, Ezra,” Eli had responded blandly, still not convinced he should wear the charcoal-gray suit and lighter toned shirt.
“It’s a formal gig and we’re all on duty since Rome, Nick, and X are going with their mates.” Ezra had crossed the room then, reaching into the clothes bag and tossing the black-and-white paisley-print bow tie at Eli.
“Now hurry up, we’re pulling out in twenty minutes.”
His older brother had left him alone then, to Eli’s relief.
Ezra was one of those men that could wear just about anything and women went out of their minds for him. Ezra was obsessed with designer clothes and accessories. Whatever the latest fashion was, he had it. And he worked it effortlessly, just as it seemed Ezra did many other things.
Ezra had come back from the Sierra Leone and trained like a shifter on a mission. He rose higher in the ranks with Eli right by his side, all the while meeting and sleeping with whatever woman he chose. He slept with them, he walked away, the next day he started again. Eli had only wished he could rebound as quickly.
Unfortunately, Eli had been drawn into Acacia’s web. A part of him had known she wasn’t for him, that what they shared would never be anything more than just sex, and another part had hoped. That hope had been dashed quickly with the revelation of Acacia’s true goals. She’d been using Eli and Ezra to get back at her father for sending her true mate away. Once they’d found out, they’d gone to the shaman for his miracle potion to kill the desire they both still had so deeply for this shifter. For Ezra that had worked. For Eli, not so much. He’d still wanted Acacia, up until the moment he knew she intended to kill them. Then his instincts had kicked in, simultaneously with Ezra’s, and they’d killed Acacia and her minions.
Eli came back to the States determined never to make that mistake again. Only to make another one far worse with Leanne.
That thought had Eli stumbling, his palms flattening on his dresser to keep his body upright. He blinked and all he could see was Leanne’s lifeless body lying on her bed, the envelope with his name scrawled across the front taped to the mirror on her dresser.
Eli dropped his head, felt his heartbeat thumping throughout every pore of his body. Shaking his head, he tried to clear his thoughts, to get that picture out of his mind. He’d had memories before and he’d dealt with them, but this was different. He felt strange, as if he were a spectator looking in on the scene. Exactly how he’d felt a week ago in the woods after they’d left that cabin. He’d seen Agent Wilson in that car driving away like it was a scene on television, playing out in front of him.
He took a deep breath and then another, until his legs had stopped shaking, his head ceased throbbing. And then, still without an answer and not caring to delve deeper, he got back to the matter at hand.
Eli’s gun bulged beneath the back of his jacket and he cursed, hating the dress clothes even more. After three tries he’d finally gotten the bow tie done in a vaguely acceptable fashion. With a heavy expel of breath he looked into the mirror, hating what he saw once again. Reaching down to his dresser he picked up his shades, slipping them on slowly then looking in the mirror once more.
That was better, he thought with instant relief. His shoulders had relaxed a little, the wrinkles that appeared in his forehead when he frowned had cleared, and hey, the suit didn’t look half bad on him. His consensus about what had just happened, the memories and all that crap from the rain forest, was that they were all irrelevant.
Now all Eli wanted to do was find this Lawrence Crowe and hurt that SOB so bad he’d never be able to conceive another idea in his life, least of all an idea to create shifter supersoldiers.
* * *
Just when he thought the stigma of the fitted suit and too-tight bow tie would surely be the death of him, Eli walked into the ballroom of the Four Seasons where each table was filled with crystal and candles and classical music playing softly in the background. He felt like turning right around and running the hell out of there. But that wasn’t going to happen.
“Let’s check the room. Nick has another team checking the perimeter and vehicles parked within a three-block radius,” Ezra told Eli as they both stood in the doorway of the hall. “Once we confirm it’s clear we’ll go out and bring Rome and Nick and their mates in
side.”
“Their mates, right,” Eli muttered. He’d just turned to the left, opting to take that side of the room first when Ezra’s words stopped him.
“You don’t think about mating anymore?”
Eli looked over his shoulder. His brother may have been walking around the room, checking under each table and chair, but he was definitely waiting for an answer.
“No. I don’t.”
“But you did before,” he continued.
Eli ran his hands along the fabric-covered wall near a doorway marked EXIT. He pushed the door open and looked up and down the mustard-painted hallway. He’d thought he’d put the memories of the rain forest and all that had happened there on the back burner for the night. He hadn’t anticipated Ezra bringing Leanne—another one of Eli’s failures—into the picture.
“That was a mistake,” Eli replied, more to himself than to Ezra, who was across the room anyway.
“We all make mistakes, you know. Then we get over them and we try again,” his twin responded.
Eli tried not to act surprised that Ezra heard him. Of course he would hear him no matter where he was in the room. They were twins with extrasensory abilities. It just so happened that Ezra’s were working perfectly and Eli’s, well, hadn’t he earlier declared that issue irrelevant?
“There’s no ‘try again’ in my world. Two strikes and I’m out,” he told his brother honestly and before Ezra could speak again, added, “Now, let’s just get the job done without the small talk, okay?”
Ezra touched Eli’s shoulder and Eli had to fight like hell to keep from jumping out of his skin and embarrassing the crap out of himself. He hadn’t heard Ezra’s approach, nor had he picked up his now-familiar companheiro calor.
“This isn’t a small issue, man. And ignoring it is not going to work forever. Hell, it’s probably not working now.”
Eli shook his head. “You don’t know what I’m going through.”
“I don’t?” Ezra asked, raising a brow. “You’re my brother. My twin. I know just as much about you as you do yourself.”