Copyright 2014 by Georgette St. Clair
This book is intended for readers 18 and older only. It is a work of fiction. All characters and locations in this book are products of the feverish imagination of the author, a tarnished Southern belle with a very dirty mind.
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Pixie Montana is a reformed (mostly) thief and a hustler. Dominick is the sexy lion shifter who’s been voted “most likely to bite Pixie’s head off – literally”. And the two of them are Shifters, Inc.’s, only hope. A mysterious intruder has infected the staff of Shifters, Inc. with a deadly plague, and his price for the cure is a mysterious jewel known as The Bloodstone – a jewel that’s impossible to steal, because it kills all those who touch it. If Pixie doesn’t return with the jewel in 3 days, every one of her friends will die. Pixie and Dominick must set aside their differences and battle their strange, growing attraction to each other, or demons from both of their pasts will derail their mission and put all of their lives at risk.
Chapter One
Playa Linda, California
On a warm June morning, shafts of sunlight pierced thick white clouds and glinted off the darkened windows of the Shifters, Incorporated building. The nondescript brick and glass building was tucked away in an industrial area of Playa Linda, where the security agency’s clients could expect a measure of privacy. The sign outside the building read “Harwell Industrial”, a vague name that revealed nothing about its true identity or purpose. Clients were accepted by referral only.
A golden shaft of sunlight pooled around the slim, purple-haired human woman who sat in a small parking lot to the left of the building, cross legged on the hood of a Lexus, illuminating her like a Botticelli angel.
The trick of the light was as deceptive as the bland building. Pixie Montana was no angel. She wasn’t exactly a devil, either; more like an energetic imp with a talent for stirring up trouble.
The roars of an enraged lion shifter, rolling out from the lobby of the building, were testament to that.
“So how long, exactly, have you had a death wish?” Hillary Mease asked Pixie anxiously. “I should have been told about this. And shouldn’t you be running for your life?”
“Nah, he’ll get over it. Don’t get your panties in a wad.” Pixie grinned insolently.
The roars of rage coming from inside the building were increasing in volume, but Pixie wasn’t worried. She’d been dealing with Dominick for the past year, or rather, deliberately provoking him for the last year, and he hadn’t killed her…yet.
Hillary just wasn’t used to the special brand of mayhem that was the Pixie/Dominick dynamic; she usually worked in human resources and missed out on all the action.
However, with Pixie’s best friend Bobbi about to leave for her honeymoon, Pixie’s boss had felt that someone should be assigned to hang out with Pixie. Apparently Pixie could be, according to Kenneth, a “handful.” And a “security risk”. And a “wild card”. And various other less flattering things he muttered under his breath when he thought she wasn’t listening.
She was also one of the best thieves and pickpockets in the world, and Kenneth seemed to be oddly fond of her in a protective-uncle kind of way, so he kept her on staff, but he didn’t want her running around unsupervised.
Hillary wasn’t the ideal choice for the job of Pixie’s babysitter. Hillary was a nervous, follow-the-rules kind of girl who called home to her mother every day and blanched at the idea of jaywalking. Pixie was a minor league criminal who’d been hustling and living on her own since she was twelve. It was a slow day when she didn’t commit at least a misdemeanor.
However, Shifters, Inc. was so successful that most of their employees were currently scattered around the world on assignments, and there weren’t a lot of alternatives, so Hillary had drawn the short straw and gotten stuck on Pixie-watch today.
That was fine with Pixie. Hillary was almost as much fun to torture as Dominick. Dominick was a temperamental lion shifter who seemed to descend into an angry funk the minute Pixie walked into a room, and who regularly flipped his switch every time Pixie lifted a wallet or otherwise openly flaunted the rules.
Take today, for instance. A skinny, stuck up hyena shifter bitch in tight jeans and a scoop neck halter had strolled into the lobby of Shifters, Inc., hand in hand with a lion shifter who looked a lot like Dominick. While the lion shifter had spoken to the receptionist, asking for Dominick, the skinny bitch had raked Pixie with a look of utter contempt.
Shortly thereafter, Pixie might or might not have removed several items from the stuck up bitch’s purse. In Pixie’s opinion, if nobody had seen her do it, it had never happened.
And voila, instant angry lion shifter. Just add Pixie. In fact, there were dueling roars coming from inside the lobby of the building. Two angry lion shifters.
“I really think they’re going to cause you physical harm,” Hillary said, her voice rising to a high pitch.
She was a slender, pale blonde with big blue eyes that were owlish behind round glasses. Today she wore a pearl buttoned rose pink cashmere sweater over a pink silk shell, with a gray flannel skirt and sensible low heeled pink and gray plaid pumps.
“They can try.” Pixie climbed off the hood of the Lexus, pulled a set of lock picks from the pocket of her jacket, and within seconds, had swung the door open and slid into the driver’s seat. “Mmm, leather. Pretty. Want a ride?” She caressed the car seat next to her. “Come on, you know you want to.”
“You can’t do that!” Hillary squawked. “How did you do that? Those locks are supposed to be theft proof. Do you even know whose car this is?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.” Pixie fished in her pocket again, pulled out a tiny device of her own invention, waved it in front of the keyless entry remote, and seconds later, the engine purred to life.
“See, one of the things that I do for Kenneth is test security systems,” Pixie said. “If I can breach them, so can any other extremely talented and brilliant thief.”
“Yes, but did he ask you to test the security on this car?” Hillary put her hands on her narrow hips, a frown of disapproval puckering her face. “If not, I’m afraid I’m going to have to file a report. You are exposing this corporation to liability-stop that!”
Pixie had turned to her, stuck out her tongue, and made a rude raspberry noise.
Before Hillary could get another word in edgewise, the door flung open, and Dominick stormed out, his face like thunder.
In human form, he was a handsome blond man with a perpetual scruff of beard, and a body that would have made Renaissance sculptors swoon.
He was wearing his usual uniform of t-shirt and jeans. The cloth of his white T-shirt molded to his biceps as if it was painted on, and the jeans accentuated muscular thighs. He was extremely pretty to look at, but too much of an irritable jerk for Pixie ever to have considered for a roll in the hay.
The hyena shifter followed behind him. She was pretty in a spray-tanned, overly-bleached, heavily made up fashion. S
he was skinny, had improbably huge boobs, and waist length bleached blonde hair. She had a huge glittering rock on her ring finger, and clung on to the muscular arm of a lion shifter who looked so much like Dominick that the two were clearly brothers.
“He’s coming straight for us,” Hillary said, her voice rising several octaves higher. “I’m supposed to keep you safe. All right, you can drive a stolen car just this once– no, darn it! I can’t condone that! Just – er – run, and I’ll stall him.”
Pixie laughed. “How, exactly? Are you going to beat him to death with the Etiquette For Bobcat Shifters book that you carry in your purse?”
“That etiquette book comes in very handy on many occasions,” Hillary said in a wounded tone. “Wait, how do you know what’s in my purse?”
“Girl, please.” Why did people always underestimate Pixie?
Dominick shouldered past Hillary, who was trying to block him, and she stumbled backwards with a squeak of fright.
He reached into the car, grabbed Pixie’s arm, and hauled her out.
“Hey! This is not what it looks like!” she snapped.
“You didn’t just break into and hotwire my brother’s pussy-ass Lexus?” Dominick roared, his gold eyes blazing with anger. It was the eyes that always gave shifters away. Shifters could always scent each other, as well, but a human like Pixie could tell someone was a shifter because their eyes were the same color as their animal species.
“Okay. It is what it looks like.” Like they couldn’t spare a Lexus. Dominick came from a family of lion shifter millionaires.
“Ryder! Are you going to let your brother talk about your car like that?” the woman wailed, clinging to the man’s arm.
She turned and glared at Pixie, and then turned to Ryder, pouting. “And make her give back what she stole from me!”
As they spoke, two shifters rushed from inside the building. One was a bear shifter named Kory, one was an elephant shifter named Hans. Dominick flicked a glance at them, then turned back to Pixie.
“Hand it over.” Dominick said to Pixie, his voice gone low and dangerous. Fur rippled on his face, and then sank back into his skin.
He held out his hand. With a martyred sigh, she reached into the pocket on the inside of her jacket, and pulled out the keys to the Lexus, a rhinestone encrusted purse shaped like a pair of red lips, a pink rhinestone cell phone. Bitch can’t even color coordinate her tacky accessories, she thought. She slapped them into Dominick’s palm.
“You had the keys to the car?” Hillary’s voice was an outraged squawk. “Why didn’t you just use them instead of picking the lock?”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Pixie asked, baffled.
“Give me my stuff, you asshole! Now!” the blonde shrieked at Dominick, her nasal tone scraping like nails on a chalkboard.
Dominick shot her a look of utter disgust, and then hurled the cell phone, the keys, and the change purse, on to the ground and crushed them under his boot heel. The cell phone shattered into pieces and the purse tore open. The blonde let out an inarticulate shriek of rage.
Ryder’s face contorted with fury. He shifted into lion form, his clothing splitting and falling off his massive tawny body, and leaped at Dominick with a roar, and Dominick shifted, and the elephant and bear shifted, and Hillary screamed and hid behind Pixie.
The lions rolled on the asphalt, growling and snapping at each other. The blonde stood back on the sidewalk watching them, with a satisfied smirk on her face.
Hillary crouched low behind Pixie, who was standing by the open door of the Lexus.
“Nice job, bodyguard,” Pixie said. “I’ve never felt safer.”
“I did not sign up for this!” Hillary wailed. “Is this how you people carry on all the time? I am seriously considering handing in my resignation!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. No, it’s not usually like this,” Pixie lied. Pixie didn’t really want Hillary to quit. She just wanted her to go back to her nice safe office where she belonged. If Hillary quit, Kenneth would subject Pixie to one of his scathing lectures, which were considerably more boring than watching paint dry.
The fight was over in less than a minute. The bear shifter hurled himself onto Dominick and knocked him away from his brother, then grabbed and pinned him in a bear hug, and the elephant shifter grabbed Ryder in its trunk and lifted him off the ground, and after a minute the two snarling, roaring lions shifted back to human form.
In another minute, there were four angry men standing on the sidewalk, with the shreds of their clothes scattered around them.
Pixie couldn’t help but flick an admiring glance at Dominick. All of his clothes had fallen away, and he wore nothing except a leather necklace with some odd feathered talisman dangling from it, which he always wore, even in lion form. He had an amazing body, with those perfectly sculpted muscles and the six pack that looked as if it had been chiseled by Michaelangelo. Since Pixie tended to aggravate Dominick so much that he shifted and burst out of his clothes, she got to see him naked a lot. That was a nice side benefit of taunting the cranky shifter.
“My phone!” the woman wailed. “My purse! Make him pay for that, baby!”
She shot Pixie a look of disgust. “You. Get away from my car. I’m already going to have to fumigate it the second we get home.”
“That does it.” Pixie flung open the door to the Lexus and leaped in. She slammed the door shut behind her and hit the gas, tearing out of the parking lot with a screech of rubber on the asphalt.
Glancing in the rearview mirror behind her, she saw Dominick leap into his car. The blonde was literally stamping her feet up and down on the ground with rage. Hillary just stood there with her mouth hanging open.
Pixie was annoyed enough that she deliberately led Dominick on a good half hour long chase, bobbing and weaving all through town before she ditched him. He was very good, but when it came to evading capture, she was better. Then she turned around and headed back towards Shifters, Inc.
She grabbed her cell phone and called the main office line to tell them she’d be back in a couple of minutes, and to have someone on hand to keep Dominick from ripping her face off when she pulled in.
To her surprise, the phone went straight to voicemail. That was unusual. There was always a live person answering the phone.
She tried to call Bobbi, and the phone rang half a dozen times, and then went to voicemail. Then she tried Hillary. Then Kenneth.
Voicemail.
What the heck was happening? Was she wrong to be worried? She could understand one or two lines being busy, but all of them?
By then, she was pulling up in front of the building, behind Dominick’s parked car. There was another car parked in front of Dominick’s, a limousine with darkened windows, and the engine was running.
A new client? She’d worry about that later.
She hadn’t survived growing up in the worst neighborhood of Playa Linda without developing an instinct for sensing trouble. Something was wrong; fear hummed along her nerves and quickened her heartbeat. She quickly parked and leaped out of the car, leaving it running, and dashed to the front door.
Dominick stood there, his back to her. The front door was wide open. Dominick was backing away slowly, and as she ran up the sidewalk, he spun to face her.
“Pixie, stop!” he bellowed, holding up a warning hand.
He didn’t look angry. He looked panicked. Pixie had never seen that look on his face before.
For once, Pixie didn’t challenge him. She did what he said; she stopped in her tracks. “What is it?” she called out.
She looked past him, and her heart froze in her chest.
There were at least half a dozen people sprawled on the floor of the lobby, not moving. The receptionist was slumped over her desk.
Her boss, Kenneth. Kenneth’s wife, Chloe. Her best friend Bobbi. Bobbi’s husband, Jax. Hillary. Kory. Hans. Were they unconscious, or dead? From where she stood, Pixie couldn’t tell.
Furniture was overtur
ned. A blue glass vase which had rested on the desk was shattered on the floor, flowers and little glass marbles scattered around it. A chair was broken.
In the distance, sirens wailed, and grew louder.
Chapter Two
“Don’t take another step,” Dominick called out to her. “Don’t come close to me, I might be contaminated. I checked on them, and they’re all burning up with fever. I’m waiting for Haz-Mat to arrive.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t bother with that. They won’t have what you need to save your friends.” The voice was deep and mocking, and it came from inside the building, behind Dominick.
A tall, silver haired man stood in the lobby. He wore shiny mirrored sunglasses which obscured much of his narrow face. He was clad in a black tailored suit of raw silk, with a red handkerchief in the pocket, and his shoes were shiny and black, and he held up a syringe in one hand.
“They won’t have this,” he said. He spoke with an Eastern European accent, but Pixie couldn’t quite place it.
Pixie let out a yell of anger and tried to run past Dominick, who grabbed her by the arm.
“Pixie, don’t!” His grip on her arm was firm. “The air could be contaminated. You don’t know what’s in there.”
“He’s standing there breathing just fine. Let go of me!” Pixie struggled, but she was no match for a lion shifter’s strength.
The man in black didn’t seem the least bit concerned with Pixie or Dominick. “Let’s see, who shall I revive?”
There were at least a dozen shifters scattered around the room. Some were crumpled in a heap, some lay sprawled out on their backs. All of them were flushed with fever and completely still.
The man glanced around the room, then bent down over Hillary and jabbed the syringe into her leg. He swiftly capped it and shoved it in his pocket.
Hillary sat up with a gasp, her eyes huge, her chest heaving. Her hair was matted to her forehead with sweat. Her glasses had fallen onto the floor. She stared around her, eyes wild.
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