And judging from the mischievous look in the blonde’s eyes as she sized them up, they knew it too.
Immediately, her fox nature began to react. When a desirable male was in the area, her natural instinct was to preen and pose to make herself more attractive. To slide her hands slowly over her body when she knew they were looking. To give a man hot, possessive looks to let him know she was interested. Two handsome men? Well. It was an immediate turn-on, and she licked her lips, her voice pitching low. “Can I help you two with something?”
“I sure hope so,” said the blond, grinning at her. He hadn’t missed her quick appraisal – and approval – of their appearances.
The dark haired one cleared his throat, the hint of a blush tingeing his cheeks. He pulled out his wallet and approached the screen door. “My name is Jeremiah Russell, and this is Sam Thorpe.”
Miko kept the smile on her face. “And?”
“Yui Westwood sent us.”
God. Not another one of her mother’s matchmaking schemes. Miko raised a skeptical eyebrow and crossed her arms. “And I shouldn’t tell you both to fuck off…why, exactly?”
Sam licked his thumb and raised it to the breeze, waiting a moment for it to change. As soon as it did, she knew.
They were shifters. Just like her. Here on her doorstep. Two cat shifters, if her nose was correct. Her eyes narrowed. Well. That either made things really interesting, or really annoying. Either way, she couldn’t turn them away from her door. Miko opened the screen door, gesturing for them to come inside. “I should have guessed.”
“Your mother said you should call if you have concerns,” the darker-haired one began in a mild voice.
“Or if you’re just wowed by our charm,” the blond added with a grin and clapped his friend on the back. “Though this behemoth might make you a little anxious.”
Again, the darker one showed signs of embarrassment, but it was a good-natured embarrassment. As if the two ribbed each other all the time and the blond just happened to get the upper hand. Sam and Jeremiah, she reminded herself, trying to memorize their names. Sam the cocky blond and Jeremiah the sweet, overgrown brunette.
She wondered if they teamed up for everything. A throb of heat flashed deep inside her body, making her pulse flutter.
Frowning at her instant response, Miko shut the door and moved toward the kitchen. Annoying visitors or not, she had to offer hospitality to fellow shifters. “Can I get you guys something to drink? I need to make a quick phone call to my mother.”
“Of course,” said the tall one easily.
She poured two glasses of iced tea into tumblers and reached for the phone, cradling it to her ear and turning her back to her guests. The phone’s short cord kept her in the room, which she found irritating; the two feline shifters would be able to hear everything her mother said, even through the phone line. Shifters of all kinds had amazing hearing.
“It’s about time you called,” her mother said into the phone, in Japanese.
Miko drummed her fingers on the receiver. Her mother always spoke Japanese, but mostly did it to annoy her daughter, who hated reminders of who and what she was. For once, though, it was working in her favor. She doubted either of the shifters in her house spoke Japanese. She replied in Japanese. “Mother, why are you sending strange men over to my house?”
“Not strange men. Two shifters,” Yui corrected. “They will help you this week.”
“What do I need help with?”
“Did you find yourself a mate? Is he there to protect you?”
“God, Mother. Do you have a one track mind? I’m twenty-seven. Is that what this is? Matchmaking? I don’t need your help with men—”
“You are headstrong and foolish and you—”
“I’ll call you later, Mother,” Miko said loudly, in English. “When you’re ready to have a real conversation.”
“Miko-chan,” Yui warned, “listen to your mother—”
“Gotta go,” she said, and hung up. Miko stared at the phone, and then pinched the bridge of her nose. Why had she even called her mother? Yui didn’t approve of Miko’s quiet lifestyle and thought she should spend her time recruiting men to service her were-fox needs if she didn’t take a mate or two. Her mother – still incredibly beautiful at fifty-five – had a harem of men that she kept at her disposal, and constantly had a new boyfriend in the wings. As a child, it had been confusing. As a teenager, it had been humiliating. When she’d grown up, she’d vowed that she’d control her own were-fox nature better. No harem of men. No constant stream of new boyfriends that zipped out of her life as quickly as they zipped in. Miko preferred a quiet, celibate life.
Her mother clearly had other ideas.
Miko turned. Both of the men were still studying her, standing where she’d left them. Though one blushed at being caught staring, the other returned her frank look with a smile. She sank down in one of the two chairs, indicating that they should do the same.
At her cue, the tall one sat, awkwardly. Jeremiah, she reminded herself. “My mother probably told you that I need a big strong man around the house to see to all my needs. She’s wrong. I don’t need anyone.”
Jeremiah rubbed his face, a blush moving across his cheeks. “Actually, she hired us to be your bodyguards for this week.”
Miko sat up in surprise. Bodyguards? But both of them were so attractive. Surely that hadn’t been just luck. “Oh.”
Sam seemed to want to fill the silence with small talk. “This isn’t what I expected,” he said, glancing around her messy house with surprise. “You’re not what I expected.”
Annoyance flared in her. “Oh?” What were they expecting from a were-fox? A room full of sex toys and a guy in latex chained up in the corner? “What exactly were you expecting?”
Sam the blond gave her an assessing look. “We thought you wouldn’t be, you know.” He rubbed his nose and grinned. “Pretty. Young. What with you living out here on your own. Heck, I was expecting a bunch of cats and some knitting.”
Jeremiah put his hand over his face. “Sam…”
“What?” His partner looked surprised. “I’m just telling her the truth.”
Miko smothered a laugh. All right, then. They weren’t here to jump in the sack with her, despite what she’d suspected. She relaxed a bit, and wondered briefly if they even knew she came from a family of fox shifters. “And what is this about, exactly? Why did my mother send you to be my bodyguards?”
Jeremiah’s face grew serious, his brown eyes growing darker. “The local hunt club has a new chapter leader. An English one.”
She frowned. “So what does that mean?”
Sam finished downing his iced tea, then reached across her low table to grab Jeremiah’s and drink it as well. “Rumor has it that he’s started a fox-hunting club.”
Her breath left her lungs. “Fox hunting? That’s…that’s not allowed. It’s illegal.”
“It is illegal,” Jeremiah said calmly, glancing over at Sam, then back to her. “But we have it on good authority that it’s happening, nevertheless. Another were-fox – Hayami – was chased through the woods by several men on horseback with hunting dogs.”
Miko sucked in a breath. No wonder her mother had sent them. “Hayami’s my cousin. Is she all right?”
Why hadn’t anyone told her? Her mother had said nothing on the phone, simply started in on her usual tirades, and Miko hadn’t known to ask. Guilt surged through her. She should have known that Hayami had been attacked, but…she didn’t keep up with her family. It was easier than answering nosy questions, seeing her cousins and mother with an endless string of men, the appraising looks she got from their dates, and her own involuntary response.
Her mother seldom took Miko’s opinion into mind, choosing to drop by – or send people by – to remind her exactly who and what she was. Family was complicated. Family expected things. Family expected her to embrace her nature fully, and she’d spent years fighting that very thing. Still, hearing that her cousin had bee
n hunted filled her with fear and a little bit of shame. She hadn’t known.
“She’s fine,” Sam assured her. “But until this gets this sorted out, other shifters have been assigned to shadow the local foxes.” He gave her a sideways glance and muttered. “And you are definitely a fox.”
“Sam,” Jeremiah warned, then gave Miko a bit of an embarrassed look. “You’ll have to ignore him. He’s a blowhard, but harmless.”
And they expected her to smile prettily and ignore that obvious invitation? If so, they didn’t know were-foxes. Even though a small voice in her head said she should ignore it, she couldn’t help but turn to Sam and give him an equally assessing look. Her gaze crossed over his shoulders and down to his crotch, and focused there. “He’s not bothering me. I’m a big girl. I can handle myself.”
At that, both men’s eyes gleamed.
Vixen is available now in our anthology, Wild & Steamy. Up next, Carolyn Crane returns to her Code of Shadows world with Mr. Real…
Mr. Real: An Excerpt
MR. REAL
Available Now
The woman of his dreams…with the secret agent of his nightmares
Alix Gordon is a woman who doesn’t take life too seriously. What’s the fun in that? So when she stumbles across occult software that can bring any computer image to life, she conjures up lots of awesome outfits and accessories. And then, on one drunken, horny night, she conjures up Sir Kendall, the sexy TV ad spy…who looks exactly like Paul, the hot martial arts teacher who kicked her out of class three years ago.
Fighter Paul Reinhardt has good reason to hate Sir Kendall, the character he brought to life to land a part in a TV ad; he’d do anything to forget him. A cross country road trip seems just the thing…until Paul finds himself inexplicably drawn to Minnesota and is shocked to discover Sir Kendall—in the flesh—with the girl he’d once loved from afar. He barges into Alix and Sir Kendall’s love nest, determined to stop the madness—somehow.
But is super spy Sir Kendall transforming into something more dangerous anyone can imagine? And what will Sir Kendall do when Paul and Alix finally give into their mad lust for each other?
WHEN ALIX GORDON RETURNED FROM a tromp in the woods with her dog, Lindy, she spied a sparkling little something on her porch—a piece of jewelry. She quickened her pace up the steps.
“Look, Lindy!”
Her bracelets jangled as she scooped it up. It was a beautiful necklace with blood-red jewels looped in lavish crisscrosses. She felt thrilled, like she’d found treasure. She turned it in the light, enjoying the weight of the cool stones draped over her fingers and how they looked glittery and soft at the same time. So beautiful…and so familiar.
She stiffened when she realized why she recognized the necklace: she’d copied the image from a website and saved it onto her computer desktop some time ago. And just yesterday, she kept clicking on it by accident, meaning to open the file next to it.
Who would leave such a thing? She didn’t have a friend for miles. Certainly not a boyfriend. Was it even for her? Of course! Who else would it be for? She lived alone in the middle of nowhere.
The piece had a certain sultry glamour, like the costume jewelry she would’ve worn back in her old life in Minneapolis. Only this wasn’t costume jewelry; it was a ninety-thousand dollar necklace. Which was why she’d settled for a jpeg image instead of the real thing.
Was somebody out there watching her? Her pulse raced. “Hello?” she called.
Tree leaves whispered. Sounds from a distant highway.
It was probably fake rubies—ninety thousand was a lot of money. But still! What kind of person left any necklace on a woman’s porch and hid? It seemed a little creepy.
A June bug droned. She patted her thigh, a signal for Lindy to come close. Lindy trotted up, panting, watching her. Lindy didn’t seem to think anyone was out there.
How would anybody even know she liked the necklace? Unless they’d gotten into her computer.
She shivered, feeling quite alone. And a little bit invaded.
“Hello?”
Once in a while, kids would sneak through the forest to throw eggs at her house. A rite of passage left over from when her Great Aunt Veronica—a supposed witch—had owned the house.
She eyed the forest edge, pulse racing. Her impulse was to run inside and slam the door. But that’s probably what they wanted—to show they knew things about her. To scare her.
Like hell she’d give them the satisfaction.
Alix had a lot of poses and attitudes that fooled a lot of people. There was “capable Alix,” “responsible Alix,” even “brave, knowledgeable Alix.” Standing alone there on her porch, she placed her hand on her hip and took on a slouchy stance. This was “confident tough-girl” Alix.
In her most insolent tone, she yelled, “Olly-olly-oxen-free!”
And waited.
June bugs.
She clenched the necklace in her fist. In the four months since she’d inherited the rambling old place, Alix had felt lonely and bored and even discouraged—opening a bed and breakfast required a lot more than finding cool furniture and muffin recipes. But she’d never felt frightened.
Until now.
She pulled Lindy inside, locked all the doors and windows on the first floor, shut the curtains, and pulled the shotgun off the wall.
The shotgun was a rusty Russian antique that she and her best friend from Minneapolis, Karen Alderman, had found at a flea market. They’d put it up as a joke: Alix’s new country life, complete with a shotgun…for varmints and critters!
It didn’t seem all that funny now.
Who would do this? Maybe as a relative of a supposed witch, Alix was deemed a witch, too. It probably didn’t help that she had platinum-pink hair in this very rural place. Still, why leave a necklace?
She looked down at the joke of a gun in her hands. There was a knife attached to the end; a bayonet, it was called. She and Karen had made jokes about that, too—like, you know your shooting skills suck when they make you have a knife at the end of your gun. That joke didn’t seem so hilarious anymore, either.
It was during times like these that she always pictured the stern glower of Hardass Paul, her former martial arts teacher, along with the words he’d uttered just before he’d kicked her out of his class. You think everything’s fun and games, but someday you’ll find out it’s not! Four years later, she could still picture him perfectly, all hot and manly with his tank top hanging loosely around his shoulders, hair dark with sweat, pointing at the door with his taped-up martial artist hands.
She certainly didn’t see this necklace incident as a game. No note, no explanation, but there was a message all the same: I see you. I know what you do at your computer.
Alix peeked out the side of the curtain.
She scratched Lindy’s head. Poor Lindy had only three legs, but she made up for it in spirit. She was black with a snowy-white bib and big enough to have a nice big bark, but she was not much on the attacking.
“Fine,” she mumbled. “Don’t show your face. Jerk.”
She checked every room and closet in the whole house, locked the basement door, and then headed to her office with the gun. She almost always used her laptop at her desk with her back to the wall—no chance the stalker had window-peeped.
She ran a malware check, but it turned up nothing. She opened up the jpeg image of the necklace, thinking to trash it, and what she saw stunned her. The necklace was gone from the picture, yet the black velvet it had lain across was still there. It was like somebody had used a graphic design program to painstakingly cut out just the necklace parts, leaving a blank white space behind.
“What the hell?” she said to Lindy.
Not only had the stalker known what she had been clicking on yesterday and put the very thing on her doorstop today—freaky enough—but he’d erased the image from the file.
Madness paired with resourcefulness. Not a heartening combination.
She felt like she�
�d spent the whole summer fighting—fighting electrical problems, plumbing problems, regulation mazes, the attitudes of people back in Minneapolis—Crazy Alix, trying to start a bed and breakfast. But now this?
“Screw you,” she said aloud to the computer. “Screw you!”
And with that, she went and grabbed a Kit-Kat bar from her freezer.
After gnawing through most of it without even tasting it, she called the Malcolmsberg sheriff, who suggested she put up ‘no trespassing’ signs and maybe call the post office to see if the mail carrier had dropped it. Insanely unhelpful, but she thanked the man anyway.
She nibbled at the edges of the remaining rectangle of Kit Kat, expertly removing every last chocolate bit from the wafer surface, trying to decide what to do next. You can handle this, she said to herself. When she had the wafer part perfectly bare, she stuffed it into her mouth. Then she called the number from the website where she’d found the necklace image. Maybe somebody had ordered one in the last twenty-four hours.
“I don’t know what you found on your porch,” an irate jewelry artisan named Xing said, “but my necklace is a one-of-a-kind creation, and I happen to be staring at it in the case as we speak.” He assured her that if her necklace resembled his, then it had to be leaded glass, not rubies. “Rubies like this require weeks of cutting,” Xing said. And he had more important things to deal with—his website had been hacked.
“Hacked?”
Xing told her that somebody had messed with an image. Goosebumps crept up her spine.
As soon as they hung up, Alix went out to Xing’s site and discovered that the necklace had been knocked out of the picture there, too.
Why? What did it mean?
She called around to tech places, and finally a guy at a used computer store in Paupesha, the largest town around, agreed to see her computer right away.
She dropped the necklace into her purse, piled into her old Volvo with Lindy and her laptop, and drove the forty miles out. No way was she leaving Lindy alone in that house.
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