As he said this, Riley noticed for the first time how he sat: leaning to one side slightly, his right leg extended with the heel of his foot resting against the carpet. He sat like…
“Are you hurt?” Riley demanded before thinking twice about it. She pushed past Zachariah and knelt on the carpet, grabbing the leg of his jeans and yanking it up. There was a bandage made of gauze wrapped around his calf, a small dot of blood on it. “What happened?”
“I shot him,” Angelique said dryly, and it took Riley a second to realize she was joking. “I did what every agent that’s ever worked for him has wanted to do since he became director.”
To Riley’s surprise, Damon laughed. “You wish,” he replied. Then he turned back to Riley and explained. “Before he had my house dropped on me, Brandon had his guy shoot me. Obviously, he didn’t want me bolting out of the house before it finished blowing up.” He gently tugged the pant leg from her hand and pulled it back down, easing it over the bandages so he didn’t dislodge them. “I’m fine,” he said, though Riley hadn’t asked. “Angelique stitched it up. It’ll heal okay.”
Riley’s heart had jammed in her throat without her realizing. She swallowed and forced a nod, pushing herself to her feet and retreating from him. She felt like hiding behind Scott, and she scowled at her irrational impulse. “So what now?” she asked once the lump in her throat had dissolved.
“We have to get back to D.C.,” Scott said. “I can’t leave Katie hanging. I have to get her out before those people decide to kill her.”
“And that’s not even addressing Ashton,” Zachariah spoke up. “We’ve got to get him out, too.”
“And to that end, I think I’ve assembled something like a plan,” Angelique said. “I was working on it while waiting for you guys to show up.”
As Angelique began outlining the plan she’d formulated, Riley only half listened. She was too distracted by the man still sitting on the end of the bed, arduously putting his shoes on as Angelique talked about how he was going to watch their backs from a distance with a sniper rifle. She didn’t understand how he could just sit there, acting like nothing had happened, acting like he hadn’t had an affair—or whatever the hell he felt like calling it—with her mother, like he hadn’t gotten her mother pregnant twice, like he hadn’t given her brother away and abandoned her…
“Does that sound good to you, Riley?” Scott’s voice broke into her thoughts, and she blinked rapidly and looked up at him.
“What?”
“Were you…even paying attention?” Angelique asked in a tone that said, This is the best the Agency has to offer?
Scott shot her a look that clearly said, Lay the fuck off. Then he gently took Riley by the arm and tugged her toward the bathroom. “Come here. You look like you need a minute.”
Riley let him lead her to the bathroom without complaint, and once they had the door closed between them and the others, she sagged against it, resting her forehead in the palms of her hands. “I’m a mess,” she admitted before he could say anything. “I can’t concentrate with him in there.”
“Look, I understand,” he said. “I totally do. But you need to be able to work with him. Is there any way you can separate the bomb he dropped on you with your work life? Because we can’t risk alienating the little help we’ve got—though, really, I doubt he’d allow himself to be pushed away at this point.”
“So you’re asking if I can compartmentalize?” Riley asked. She lifted her head and glared at him. “Of course I can compartmentalize. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t be in this job.”
Scott looked doubtful, which only made her want to slap him. Her irritation must not have shown through her pitifulness, though, because all he did was hold his arms out to her in an offering for a hug. She blew out an exhausted sigh and pushed off the closed door, tumbling into his arms and burrowing her face into his chest. He smelled fantastic, like something wild and free, and she wanted to smell more of it. She wrapped her arms around his waist, digging her fingers into the middle of his back as she clung to him. She felt him press his lips to the top of her head, and he sighed, his warm breath brushing against her hair.
“We really need to get out of here,” she mumbled, even as she breathed in deeply.
“In a minute,” Scott replied. “Just take a minute for yourself, okay? You look like you need it.”
“I need more than just a minute to myself,” she said. She dug the fingers of one hand more firmly into his lower back and slid the other to hook through one of his belt loops to keep him from going anywhere. She felt him nod against her hair, and she closed her eyes, listening to his heartbeat while feeling her own beat like castanets in her chest.
“Talk to me?” Scott requested, his voice a low rumble in her left ear.
“What am I supposed to talk about?” she asked.
“Whatever is going on in your head,” he said quietly. “You look absolutely wrecked.”
“I’m not sure the word ‘wrecked’ adequately describes it,” she admitted. “I feel like I’ve been turned inside out.”
“I think I know what that feels like,” he muttered, and the comment almost elicited a laugh out of Riley.
“That is, incidentally, part of why I’m so worried.” She pulled away from him, reluctantly, so she could look up at his face. His forehead was creased with concern, and his dark eyes looked shadowed, like he had too many worries on his shoulders. She reached toward his face, and his eyes tracked the movement of her hand until it crossed into his peripheral vision; she pressed the hand lightly to his face, tracing her fingertips along his temple and down the side of his face, feeling the coarse stubble on his cheek and along his jaw. He closed his eyes and leaned into her touch just slightly, but it was enough to be noticeable. A ghost of a smile tweaked at the corner of her mouth. “I haven’t gotten the chance to ask. Are you okay?”
“I got turned into a werewolf, Riley,” Scott murmured. “How do you think I am?” He brought a hand up to press against hers, lightly, then threaded his fingers between hers and held her hand in his larger one. “We’re both a hot mess, you know that?” he said as he wrapped an arm around her waist.
“How so?” Riley asked, the words coming out a little more breathlessly than she intended as he easily lifted her from the floor with one arm and set her on the edge of the sink.
“Well, look at you,” he said, using his hip to nudge her knees apart and stepping in between them. “You’ve been dealing with whatever this is,” he grasped her hand and lifted it, tracing a finger along the markings on her palm before easing it up her wrist to where the vine-like tendrils of scarring stopped almost a third of the way up her forearm, “ever since the vampire thing in D.C. And I got bitten by a werewolf and am most likely going to end up having to stay this way. It’s a lot to process.” He smirked and added, “And that’s not even getting into your whole family situation.” He leaned in, and Riley’s heart fluttered as she thought he was going to kiss her. Instead, he pressed his nose against the skin below her ear, breathing in deeply, like he was sniffing her. “God, you smell good.”
Riley could have begged to differ. She hadn’t showered yet today, and she was pretty sure she was at least mildly rank after the long car ride to Memphis. That, apparently, wasn’t going to stop Scott from nosing and nuzzling at her neck and ear, a sensation she found surprisingly…well, seductive. “Scott, what are you doing?” she asked, even as he disentangled his hand from hers—she hadn’t even realized she was still clinging to it—and slid it up her side to gently cup her breast.
“Trying to distract you from whatever you’re thinking,” he mumbled against her neck, eliciting a shiver that roiled down her entire body. “Is it working?”
“Maybe,” she confessed, shocked at how breathless the word sounded. Her hand snaked up his shoulder to slide through his hair, and he lifted his head to brush his lips against hers.
“I can smell you, you know,” he whispered.
Riley groaned. “Oh God.
That makes me want to go bathe in perfume,” she commented, and he chuckled, low in his throat, a sound that made her reflexively slide closer to the edge of the counter, closer to him.
“Don’t,” Scott breathed.
“Why not?”
“I don’t think the wolf would like it,” he replied. “It likes how you smell too much already.” He pressed his body tight against hers and added in a breathless murmur, “It wants me to take you right here, and damn the consequences.”
“And what do you want?” Riley asked, bunching her hand into the back of his t-shirt to inch the fabric a few inches higher, hoping he’d take the hint that yes, that outcome would be more than perfectly acceptable with her, thank you.
His lips brushed against hers again, teasingly, like he was testing out her reaction to what he was offering. She tipped her chin up, trying to accept the offer, but he pulled back just a fraction of an inch, like he was trying to avoid giving in to his apparently baser instincts. “The same thing,” he confessed, and his voice tremored a little as he spoke. “But we shouldn’t. We can’t.”
“Why not?” she asked, wrinkling her forehead. The man was a ball of contradiction; while his mouth was saying one thing, his body was saying something completely different, straining towards her, his hands slowly wandering over her body like he was exploring every inch of her curves, and oh, how she wanted him to give in.
“Because I don’t know if what happened to me is infectious,” he admitted quietly, and that simple statement was the equivalent of him dumping a bucket of ice-cold water over both of them. “I don’t know if I can pass this werewolf thing on to you if I kiss you,” he murmured. “I can’t take that risk.” He burrowed his nose against her neck once more, breathing in deeply, then pushed himself away, straightening his clothes as he did so. “I’ll give you a minute to collect yourself,” he said before slipping out of the bathroom. The door clicked shut behind him.
Riley groaned and leaned forward, burying her face in her hands. How had she gotten herself into this mess? When she’d been introduced to Scott—“introduced” was such a mild word for involuntary, forced proximity—she had been damned determined to hate him. She didn’t want to like him. She didn’t want to be attracted to him.
And that was the problem, wasn’t it? She was attracted to him, ridiculously, painfully so, enough so that she’d given in to temptation and had sex with him. And, worst of all, she wanted to again. Desperately.
“Oh my God, I am so fucking fucked,” she mumbled into her hands.
Eighteen
Thirteen long hours later, Scott pulled their SUV into the outskirts of Washington, D.C. It felt like an eternity since he’d been there last, but he wasn’t concerned with that. He was more worried about Katie. They were dangerously close to the deadline, and the last thing he wanted was to be late and get his niece killed. Thankfully, the route Scott had taken to get to D.C. brought them close to The Unnaturals headquarters where Brandon had told them to meet.
He glanced in the rearview mirror; he couldn’t see Damon and Angelique anywhere behind them, but he knew they were there, traveling in a separate vehicle. They wouldn’t be arriving at the same time as he, Zachariah, and Riley would be: they were the aces up the sleeve, the backup Brandon wouldn’t expect, and hopefully the backup they wouldn’t even need.
He didn’t think they would be that lucky.
“You guys ready for this?” Scott asked, easing the car onto the street where The Unnaturals headquarters was located.
“As I’ll ever be,” Riley reported. She was sitting in the backseat, stitching a loose seam on a long-sleeved flannel shirt she’d bought at a Walmart stop earlier that day, working the needle from a cheap sewing kit through the fabric with practiced precision. Zachariah didn’t answer, and Scott chanced a glance at him as he pulled over at the end of the block. He glared through the windshield, the fingers of his right hand clenched on his knee like he was trying to claw through the denim. Scott decided to not even try to get him to talk. To begin with, he didn’t know him well enough for that; for all he knew, this was how Zachariah got his game face on, and far be it for him to disrupt that. Instead, he focused on the building where they were to meet Brandon and Ahm, trying to ignore the steady, uneasy churning in his gut.
The headquarters of The Unnaturals had been undergoing extensive repairs last time Scott had seen it, necessitated by the fight he and his friends had had there with a massive horde of vampires, but it appeared that the repairs had been completed sometime over the past three weeks. The windows—what few there were—were no longer gaping holes in the walls but panes of tinted glass again, and he could only presume that the giant hole that had been torn into the roof by the vampires as they made their way inside had likewise been closed. Someone stood outside the front door, waiting patiently, a hulking figure of a man that remained stock still, even as Scott eased the SUV toward the entrance. As Scott pulled to a stop at the curb and turned the engine off, the man outside knocked on the door with a heavy fist.
“You guys ready?” Scott asked, keeping his voice pitched low. He glanced at the rearview mirror and saw Riley give him a short, slight nod.
Before he or his companions could do anything else, the vehicle’s doors were flung open, and three men reached inside, dragging them from the vehicle, shoving them bodily into the building, and dumping them on the concrete floor not far from the free-standing room where Scott had seen his first vampire. Scott grunted as he impacted with the hard floor, and he heard Riley let out a cry of protest. A thorough frisking followed as he was divested of all his weapons; someone fastened a pair of zip-tie handcuffs around his wrists, securing his arms behind him; and then he was yanked to his feet so fast it made him dizzy, steered to a position in front of the small gathering of people nearby, and forced to his knees.
Scott quickly looked around, trying to assess the situation. Ahm and Brandon stood together in front of and a little to Scott’s right, and that big Alpha werewolf stood to Scott’s left. Beyond three was a large red SUV, parked right inside The Unnaturals headquarters, driven into the building courtesy of some metal roll doors that now adorned the building’s back wall, an apparently new installation that had happened over the previous month. Ashton and Katie were nowhere in sight. To Scott’s immediate right, Riley knelt, her hands tied behind her back like his, and Zachariah crouched on the floor beyond her. He didn’t have to look behind him to know that the three thugs who’d pulled them out of their car and frog-marched them inside were behind them, guns aimed at their heads.
Ahm broke away from her position by Brandon and strode down their little line, walking almost languidly down the row. She had a knife in her hand and was twirling it almost absentmindedly; Scott glanced down and saw she’d exchanged her heels for a pair of black flats. Clearly, she’d shown up prepared for a fight. As soon as Katie was safe, Scott would be more than happy to give her a hell of one.
She stopped in front of Scott and slid down into a graceful crouch, though she kept her head above the level of his like an alpha predator, and her black eyes scanned him over as a knowing smirk crossed her face. “I told you that you would come back,” she commented. She tilted her head to study him more closely, and he glared at her, hoping that every ounce of defiance he felt showed on his face. She chuckled and gently tapped the blade of her knife against his cheek. The sharp edge opened up a cut on his skin, and warm blood trickled down his cheek and dripped off his jaw. That blade was sharp. “But you aren’t mine, not quite. Not yet.” She dragged the tip of her finger through the blood on his face then brought it to her mouth and licked it off. “Soon.”
“Enough of this,” Zachariah snarled from the end of the line. Ahm looked over at him, not moving from her position in front of Scott, and Zachariah stared back at her defiantly. “Where is Ashton?”
Ahm slowly rose from her crouch, straightening to her full height and moving down the line to stand in front of Zachariah. She stared down at him, her blac
k eyes studying him, and Scott had the horrible mental image of her reaching down, grabbing Zachariah’s throat, and ripping it clean out. Fortunately, she didn’t do so. Unfortunately, what she did was almost worse.
She smiled.
“You really should be more concerned with yourself, you know,” she said. “After all, you’re the one who is in imminent danger.” She raised a hand and snapped her fingers, like she was trying to get someone’s attention, and the bald man’s head swiveled to look at her. “Bring him,” she ordered.
The hulking man didn’t hesitate to obey. Breaking from his position almost directly in front of Scott, he strode to the rear door of the red SUV, grasped the handle, and yanked the door open so hard that Scott was surprised he didn’t pull it right off the car. Reaching inside, he grabbed someone in the back of the car and dragged them out. Over the sound, muffled but most unmistakably there, Scott heard Katie’s voice.
“No! Let me go! Let go!”
There was a scuffle at the back of the car, like someone was putting up a struggle, then Ashton’s voice broke out over it. “Katie, no! It’s okay. It’s okay, sweetheart. Just stay calm.”
Scott didn’t hear Katie’s response over the sound of the car door slamming shut again. He resisted the urge to look at his niece, to ensure she was okay. He couldn’t risk being compromised emotionally right now. Instead, he focused on Ashton and the way the man’s face drew tight with pain as the Alpha werewolf dragged him forward to deposit him beside Ahm.
Scott looked him over from head to toe, searching for any signs of injuries, but if he had any, none of them were visible. But he was in pain; that much was obvious by the way he stood, sagging slightly to the side like his bad leg had been put under too much strain. His eye had a dark circle under it, and he was clearly exhausted. But he stood as straight as his body would allow, and his eye had a hard look of defiance in it that revealed just how little shit he was willing to take at this point.
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