by Holley Trent
“You’re right. I’d be even more annoyed with you if you weren’t doing anything.”
“That’s the spirit!” Dana chirped. “Cooperation makes success happen. All right, then. So, moving on. Drea had some intel on Pamela’s daughter.” She leaned out of the screen and called down the hall. “Drea, you coming in with that, or should I relay the details? Oh. Never mind, she’s on the phone.” Dana rustled some papers on her desk and then, while clicking open the cap on a bottle of TUMS, clucked her tongue. “Ah. Here we go. Kimberly Little.”
Marcella scratched the name onto her pad.
Soren’s eyes were closed again.
She sighed.
“Drea found a couple of child support garnishments, and that sent her on the path,” Dana said. “Looks like her father died in prison in Illinois two years ago. Some kind of riot. As far as we can tell, he wasn’t a major player in Kim’s life. We learned that Kim dropped out of high school in eleventh grade, and later got a GED. Drea found some evidence of a hospital stay about a month after she dropped out that was the right length for—”
“How?” Marcella asked.
Dana cocked a brow.
“I don’t mean to interrupt, but isn’t that information supposed to be confidential?”
Dana shrugged. “For the most part. You have to know how to research outside the usual channels. Drea picked up the clues on Facebook. Kim’s profile is more or less private, but not all her friends’ are. People love to discuss other peoples’ business on the Internet. There was a lot of not-so-coded discussion about Kim’s boyfriend of the time. A lot of he-said-she-said stuff, and there was a comment about Kim allegedly saying that she ‘wasn’t going to keep it.’ Kinda put two and two together.”
“A baby, then?”
“Yep. Couldn’t find any pictures of the child in anyone’s timeline, but Kim was tagged in a picture where she was wearing a specific kind of hospital bracelet—the kind with a newborn’s information. The evidence adds up.”
So, social media is the devil. Good to know.
Marcella massaged her temple. “So, our suspicion now is that the alleged child you think she had was put up for adoption.”
“Looks that way. Kim doesn’t seem to have recovered from the choice, in my opinion, but admittedly, we’re talking about something that happened a year ago. It seems that she really wanted to keep the baby but, for whatever reason, didn’t feel she could. Other than that, we can tell you that Kim works thirty-two hours per week at a local dollar store and that she occasionally takes a class at the community college. Introductory biology. The kind of thing you’d take as a core class at a four-year school. Maybe she wants to transfer. Anyway, I hope some of this information helps.”
“I believe it will. I need to sit down and compile my notes, though. If I need to follow up with you, I’ll send you an email.”
“You’ll do great, I’m sure. Well, I’m off to bed.” Dana stood up and stretched. “The night was way too eventful. Lots of calls came in. Nothing urgent, but the ladies will be scrambling this morning. Sarah will be in the office in about twenty minutes if you need a live voice.”
“Thank you.”
“Is my brother still there?” Soren asked.
“No, I sent him out on a job,” Dana said. “Need something?”
“No. What I have to discuss with Peter is family business. I’ll call him later.”
“Okay, then. Good luck.” Dana disconnected the call.
Marcella closed the program and opened a new tab in her cloud-based notepad app. She needed to do a brain dump to capture all the little details of the conversation—even the ones that didn’t seem important. She had no way of knowing what petty, throwaway comments could make or break a case, and her gut gave no guidance. She needed more experience.
“So efficient,” Soren murmured. He pushed himself upright and then, heaving a sigh, padded to his coffee cup.
“I want to do this right. How do you do keep track of everything? Do you keep all of the information in your head?”
“Mostly, but the way I investigate is different from the way the Shrews tend to. I move more like a Bear and go where my curiosity leads me. There’s less order and structure to my methods. Even if there seems to be a rhyme and reason, mostly I’m using my knowledge of how people behave than any actual evidence.”
“But that works for you.”
He grunted and peeled back the lid of his cup. “Nine times out of ten.”
“That’s still pretty good odds.” Marcella finished typing her flyaway thought about Kim before turning her focus squarely on Soren. “What happens that tenth time, though?”
He made a sour face. “I have to call my father for guidance.”
“You poor baby,” she said drolly.
“I know.” He tipped the cup back, swallowing probably one-third of the contents of the super-sized vessel before setting the container back on the dresser. “Smarts when I have to do that. Want to kiss me and make me feel better?”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“That’s not a no.”
He was right.
Marcella cleared her throat, finished up her notes, and saved the file twice to be sure the version would stick before she closed her computer. She scooted to the end of the bed and tucked the machine under her arm. “I’m going back to my room for a while. I think it’s probably too early to hit that office building. We can leave at around eight-thirty, so we’re there right after nine when the foot traffic is heavy. That way, no one will pay specific attention to us when we’re scouting the lobby.”
Soren ripped off a piece of a third bagel and popped it into his mouth. “I’m still waiting for you to tell me no. My self-esteem would be much improved with a kiss.”
“I think your self-esteem is fairly overblown already.”
“I hide my pain well. Stoic Romanian Bear, and such.”
“And when, exactly, did this blow to your confidence occur that you would still be so wounded?”
He narrowed his eyes and rubbed the dark scruff on his jaw. “Help me remember. When did you turn up?”
She sucked her teeth and tried to edge around him, but he took up too damned much space. The tiniest tilt to the right and he was in her path.
Sighing, she closed her eyes.
“Why do you insist on making me suffer?” he asked in a comically petulant tone.
“Why do you insist on behaving as though I owe you anything?” She opened her eyes and gave him a pointed look. Hard to do without her eyes crossing when he was so close. “Just so you know, I don’t owe you anything.”
“You think I would take without giving back? I’m a very generous lover.”
He sounded so self-assured when he made statements like that, so she couldn’t help but believe him. She couldn’t help but wonder what being with someone who’d take his time and learn every intimate detail about her body would be like. Who’d observe all her responses and file them away so he’d know what to do the next time.
And he probably wouldn’t stop until he was sure she felt good. His ego wouldn’t allow him to quit.
Marcella’s face burned so hotly that she was certain Soren could read her temperature in the red of her eyes. She swallowed.
The fact that Soren didn’t hit her radar as a completely selfish shit wasn’t going to change the fact that they were working on a case. Until the matter was resolved, they would be—come hell or high water—chaste.
She nibbled the inside of her cheek and studied him. The lift of his raised brow, the green streaks in his irises, the full, sensuous mouth that always had a slight uptilt at one corner.
He wasn’t going to back down. In any other circumstance, that wouldn’t have been such an appalling thing. There was something undeniably sexy about a man who refused to give up on her. But he didn’t know her. He didn’t understand what sort of creature he was dealing with.
She released her cheek, swallowed, and took a step backward.
&
nbsp; Distract him and run.
That always worked. “If I kiss you,” Marcella said, flustered, “will you back off?”
He raised a brow. “For now.”
It was a start. Marcella cleared her throat and pulled her leather gloves out of her jacket pocket. She slid them on, pressed her hands to his cheeks, and gave him the briefest peck on his jaw she could manage. Then she grabbed her crap and made for the door while he was too stunned to respond.
“Uh, Mar—”
“Bye.” She had the door open and one foot outside before he caught up.
“That didn’t count.” He lifted her by the waist as though she weighed little more than the bagel he’d been holding and carried back into the room.
The door closed, shutting with what Marcella thought was a taunting click.
“Damn you!” she spat.
Soren took her computer, her bag, and her coffee cup, and set them all on the dresser. “My father taught me when I was six that if I half-assed things, I shouldn’t be surprised if I was made to do them again.” He nudged her back until her legs brushed the end of the bed and, reflexively, she sat. “You’re going to have to do that again.”
“You’re changing the terms of the deal.”
“No, you’re shorting me on my due. Don’t you agree?” He pressed one hand to the edge of the bed at each side of her hip and leaned down, meeting her gaze. Giving her no room to flee.
She dragged her tongue across her dry lips and pulled in a bracing breath.
He was doing something to her. Chipping away at her defenses. Making her feel like nothing bad would happen if she just gave in once. Making her feel like…he was safe.
“Why do you insist on making an alpha Bear beg?” he asked softly.
“Most men can take no for an answer.”
“But you don’t want to tell me no. That’s the problem. You keep trying to repel me, yet everything about you is saying yes.”
“Because you can’t have me.”
“Why not?”
“Because…”
She couldn’t tell him. Couldn’t tell him what a freak she was and how much of an outsider she was. She didn’t even fully understand what she was, only that the only think she could be for him was trouble.
“Because…”
Some sound that was a cross between a snarl and a growl rumbled in his chest.
Her spine lost its stiffness and face resumed its former impersonation of a radiator turned up too damned high.
“I…”
“You what?” he demanded.
“You don’t even know what I am!” she blurted.
He nodded. Slowly. Sardonically. A huff fell out his mouth, and his face was suddenly closer to hers. He whispered, “I don’t know because you won’t tell me.”
“No one knows.” Except for her mother and her grandmother. That was all.
“I think you would feel better if you told someone.”
“Yes.” But she wouldn’t.
Couldn’t.
She couldn’t explain what she was and make any sense. There were no names for things like her. Soren would call her a liar or worse—tell her that she was crazy. He may have claimed to have seen everything there was to see about the paranormal, but there was no way he could have ever seen anything like her.
“So tell me,” he murmured, and his lips covered even closer to hers.
Her throat convulsed with a swallow and eyelids flitted downward.
Her body was acting with no input from her brain, and even her brain was doing very little in the way of processing the madness.
When his lips pressed against hers, her breath fell out in a ragged gust and lips parted more.
His tongue slipped between them, searing across hers and starting a tightening cascade down her chest to lower things. Her fingers curled atop her thighs and then shifted down to her knees where they skimmed the insides of his strong legs. Up his thighs, settling on his hips as he leaned in so much that her only option was to fall backward.
Flat on the bed, his weight pinned her into the too-soft mattresses. His large form crushed her, and she didn’t care. He guided her, and she mirrored his actions. A lick from him. A lick from her. For once, no fear that a man with her was doing something because magic had told him to.
He behaved the way he did because he was a Bear, and the beast in him thought she was his mate, and he wanted her clothes off.
Magic was in play, maybe, but not hers. His. She wasn’t making him do anything that wasn’t already his idea.
His hot lips slid off her mouth and glided across her jaw and up her cheek before landing at her ear. His teeth stung the sensitive flesh, and before the pain could register, his tongue chased away the prickles, and his breath against the side of her face warmed her to her core. “Why do you put on the gloves?”
“Hmm?” She loved the heaviness of him between her legs, and her hips had started up a rocking motion, side to side, and she stimulated her sex against the roughness of his clothes—against the massive bulge hidden beneath them.
That’s okay, isn’t it?
“The gloves,” he repeated. “Why?”
“I told you.” She slid a hand over his mouth to shut him up and wrapped her legs tightly around his thighs. She was probably the worst sort of lover—the very opposite of what he’d proclaimed himself to be.
Selfish and interested in only her pleasure because she hadn’t had any in so damn long. Certainly, Soren had been satisfied far more recently than she’d been.
“I’d like to tell you things, but I can’t. You can’t understand.”
Didn’t matter, anyway. His mouth had been on her, and nothing bad had happened. He wasn’t rendered dumb by her.
He took her hand and peeled off her glove before she could register what he was doing. He kissed the back of her hand and, meeting her gaze with the arresting intensity of a man who was starved for attention, he licked her skin and her fingers splayed. His tongue darted between them, lacing up the sides, and he pulled the middle one into his mouth and sucked.
That was not okay with her.
That suck sent an answering tug to her pussy that would have had her arching off the bed if she hadn’t been pinned down by two hundred pounds of arrogant Bear.
Not okay.
Gasping, she swatted away and with tremendous effort, wriggled out from under him. “No. We can’t—”
“Why not?” He pushed up onto his hands and knees and growled. “Why the hell not?”
“Because.” Again, she grabbed her things scurried to the door. “You’ll understand when you find out. That’s all I can say. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”
That time, she got all the way outside, and he didn’t follow her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Soren let Marcella drive to the office building. Half because he was in a shitty mood and the kind people of Georgia didn’t deserve his aggressive driving, and partly because he wanted to let her hang herself.
Not literally, but professionally.
If she wanted to play Lone Ranger and solve the world’s problems on her own, he’d give her the space to fail.
He knew he was being petty. Even the bear part of him sensed that he was, but he had a right to lick his wounds after being rejected. At least he hadn’t completely shut her out when she’d returned to his room a couple of hours later, knocking on the door and calling out, “Are you ready?”
The silence was thick between them in the car as she navigated through the warren of city streets near the office tower. Occasionally, she glanced down at the navigation app on her phone.
He pondered which bills he hadn’t paid yet for the month and vowed to find someone to handle that shit for him as soon as he got home.
Home. Wherever that was.
“Turn left,” her app said, and she emitted a frustrated snarl. “Turn left where?” she asked. “There’s nothing there!”
He raised his eyebrows in amusement and ope
ned his phone’s mail app.
A car careened around them on the right, laying on their horn and shouting in creative expletives as only a Southerner could. Marcella probably deserved the treatment. She’d made a sudden lane change to the left.
“Goddamn it. The map says I’ve already passed the address, but there was no way to turn!”
“Is that so?” Soren asked noncommittally. His mother had sent him another email.
He clucked his tongue as he read. Getting angry was so much harder when he had already resigned himself to not giving his mother what she wanted.
He tapped Reply and sent her a terse, “No. :)” in response.
Predictably, his phone rang thirty seconds later, and Marcella was still muttering about driving directions.
He would have told her that they’d already passed the building and that it was set back in the block between two other tall buildings and behind a courtyard, but she hadn’t asked for his help. Nay, she’d been refusing his help for two days.
“Hello,” he said into his phone.
“What do you mean, no?” his mother asked, sublimely tart as always.
“I said what I said, and I meant what I said the first time. If you want to threaten to send someone else to do the job? That’s fine. You won’t hurt my feelings if you do.”
“What is this insistence of yours to drive me mad? Why can’t you cooperate?”
“I’ve been cooperating for a very long time and without so much as a murmur of complaint.”
Marcella turned left. Her GPS app said, “Recalculating.”
“Damn this thing.”
“As you should be,” his mother said. “You should respect the requests your elders make of you.”
“I have plenty of respect for my elders,” Soren returned. “And other authority figures as well, assuming they deserve my attention. I’m not incapable of following rules and being part of a team when I need to be.”
He cut Marcella a hostile glare, but she was too busy leaning onto the steering wheel and squinting at the road ahead. It seemed she wasn’t cut out for city driving.
“The one time I push back on a task, you take an excessive amount of offense,” he said.
“Of course I am offended, as is your father. You’re right there. Why should we send someone else to carry this out when you’re already on the ground and briefed?”