by Lauren Dane
“God, you should have been a lawyer. I mean, I handle the physical stuff. I make the plan to storm the Rogues or the mafia and you stay here or wherever I say, safe.”
“For now, I agree. Since I no longer have a store to run, I have the time to crack some computers.”
“Why do I have the feeling I’ve just given you the keys to the castle?”
She got a sour look. “Keys to the castle? Dude, work on your metaphors.” She crossed the room and walked out and down the stairs toward the office where the other wolves were and Lex couldn’t help but admire her, even as she took ten years off his life with her antics.
* * *
True to his word, Lex had Carter’s laptop and home computer brought to the house for Nina to examine. His books and work computer were also delivered. An office was set up for her in the room that had served as the guestroom when she first came to the house.
Lex put Megan on Nina permanently so he could investigate the situation without worry. He extracted a promise from Nina that she wouldn’t leave the grounds without his knowledge.
Tracy stayed over at the house and helped out with some of the records investigation and other tasks that Nina set her on. Both Lex and Cade were impressed by their baby sister’s competence and intelligence. They saw her through new eyes as she worked with Nina.
As the full moon approached, Nina’s restlessness increased. She found that she needed to be outside more often, even if it was just to walk on the decks outside the main rooms of the house.
She was afraid to admit to herself just how terrified she was of the first transformation. She’d endured a lot in her life but this change into something totally different freaked her out more than she could wrap her head around. She didn’t want to make Lex feel any guiltier than he already did. She was angry, yes, but she’d come to her own peace over the way she’d been transformed. It was that or hate Lex and what she’d become, and that way was the destruction of her entire future. No, she had to accept it, it was done. But it still freaked her right out.
The work was fairly easy for Nina. Carter thought he was clever but he wasn’t really. His passwords were stupid and easily gotten around. The firewall and other security he had was not very complicated.
The day before the full moon Nina headed into Lex’s office, dropped a sheaf of papers on his desk and flopped into a chair until he finished his phone call.
Lex turned to her and smiled. She was so damned beautiful that he still marveled at the sight of her. His once prim schoolmarm was a goddess and he caught fire in her presence.
“Good afternoon, beautiful.”
She rolled her eyes at his flattery and smiled as it won her over despite herself. “Flatterer.”
He laughed. “Does it get me laid?”
She snorted. “I bet it always did before me too. Now, to business, you pervert.” She leaned over his desk and pointed at a column of numbers. “Your boy had quite a problem in Vegas. The left-hand column there is what he lost, the right-hand column is what he owed and that far tally is what was coming in. From what I can tell, those numbers from the Swiss accounts were payments he received and then he gambled them away.”
“Okay. Tell me how you know it was gambling.”
She shuffled through the papers until she found what she was looking for and put it in front of him. “He kept pretty good records, actually. The dates he stayed in Vegas at these three hotels coincide with the huge amounts of money debiting his accounts. I took the liberty of, uh, nosing around a bit in some databases and verified the times he was there and the payouts when he did win. They have to keep records of that sort of thing you know, for the IRS.”
“How did you...never mind, I don’t want to know. Okay. So we have a situation where he was in need of money. How did he jump from that to involvement with the Rogues and the mob?”
“Well, I don’t know the hows and whys of it. What I did find were notations of deposits from a J.R. and a W.P. The numbers got bigger and bigger, Lex. Carter was in deep. From what I could find, he was in the process of losing his home. He was so far behind on his car payments it was in the process of being repossessed.”
“He made quite a handsome salary. And, wait, did he have all of this financial stuff in his computer?”
Nina looked at him and sighed, waving his question away. “I saw what you paid him. He went through that in the first ten days of every month. When he wasn’t in Vegas—and he used your private jet to fly out, by the way—he played video poker and used some of the tribal casinos around here. He hadn’t made a payment on his mortgage in five months.”
Nina pulled out another sheet of paper. “Here is where your Pack funds began to siphon off. It was small amounts at first, but just before you pulled his access he stole seventeen grand. All in all, it appears that he embezzled roughly forty thousand dollars from the Pack coffers.”
Lex sat back in disbelief. “My god, Nina. I can’t believe he’d do this. You don’t have any idea how strong the compulsion to serve the Pack is when you’re this high up.”
“Oh I don’t? Because I’m not a wolf?” Hurt arced through her at his blasé dismissal of what she was dealing with.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. So you do see. I don’t get it.”
“Come on, Lex. You have Rogues, they appear to live in the same basic configuration that you all do, with an Alpha and upper ranks. If they’re so bad, they must have resisted the compulsion. Your problem is that you don’t think like you’re bent. That’s why you’re lucky to have me, because I do.”
She pulled out another sheet. “Now, these are the records from your labs and it appears that three vials of the virus are missing. The lead researcher there claims he reported that a month ago. This after he’d reported some tampering with their internal records two months back.”
“Reported it to Carter?”
“Yep. But Lex, this system is just flimsy. You’re dealing with what are essentially biowarfare agents here, and I could get in and look around with no problem at all. They gave me all this information over the phone without any real verification of who I was. That’s why you’re in the situation you are now.”
“You’re totally wasted as a florist.” The admiration in his voice salved the hurt feelings she’d had.
“I am a damned good florist. By the way, the plants you have at the Pack house are crap. But you know, I can’t be sniffing around computers very often, at least not the internet. It’s not good for me to expose myself like that.”
Alarmed, he stood up and shot around the desk. “Why are you risking yourself! Nina, stop it now.”
“Lex, it’s okay. Most of the stuff I’m doing is all internal. I’m a good investigator, you know. I can spot scam miles away and I can talk my way around most anyone. Including grumpy, overprotective werewolves.” She gave him a quick kiss. “But thank you for your concern, it’s very sweet.”
“Sweet? Jesus, Nina, are you trying to push me over the edge? Be careful! Let someone else do the work if it’ll get you in trouble. And for god’s sake, don’t expose the Pack with all of this. The last thing I need are the human cops breathing down my neck.”
“Is that how little you think of me? That this is a lark for me? All fun and games and I don’t care a thing about you or your precious Pack?” She stood and headed for the door but he blocked her way.
“You are not going to run from me again. Why do you take everything the wrong way?”
“Excuse me? Why do I take everything the wrong way? Why do you assume I’d do anything to expose your family? I nearly died for your precious family, Lex. I am being very careful but you need this information.”
Leaning down to put his forehead against hers, he exhaled slowly. “You are my family, Nina. You’re part of us and I didn’t assume that you’d expose us. It was just something I said. I t
ell my men to be careful all the time, it’s part of my job. I didn’t mean to imply that you would endanger us.”
The tension went out of her then at his words and her arms wrapped around him.
“Are you ready for the transformation tomorrow?” he murmured into her ear.
“I have no idea, Lex. Truthfully, I’m scared to death.”
He led her back to the couch and sat down, pulling her into his lap. “Beautiful, there’s nothing to be scared of. Your wolf is already there, you can feel it. You’ll just sort of let her take over for a while. You won’t do anything you don’t want to do. It’s not like you’ll be a different person.”
“Lex, I’m going to be a werewolf. No offense, but that in and of itself is something I don’t want to do. And if turning into a fucking wolf from a human isn’t becoming a different person, I don’t know what is.”
He looked puzzled, then annoyed and finally resigned. “Okay, all of those things are accurate to a certain extent. But the fact is that you are already a werewolf and what I meant was that your values and your mind and heart won’t change when you’re in wolf form.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. And you’ll see tomorrow night.” He kissed the top of her head. “For now, I need to make some discreet calls. I think Jack Reed and Warren Pellini are the J.R. and W.P. noted in Carter’s files. Jack is the Alpha of the Rogues and Warren is the Second in the mob.”
She stood up, throwing her hands in the air. “This situation gets more jacked up every minute.” Nina left the room grumbling to herself about werewolf godfathers and Rogues.
Chapter Nine
Nina’s eyes fluttered open to focus on Lex’s face right above her own, looking intently down at her.
She smiled. “Hey.”
He leaned down and kissed her. It was slow at first, drawing her into his web. He wooed her lips with his own. He tasted her, sipped her with the barest of pressure. Her eyelids slowly closed as she let him take her wherever he was going.
Her hands slid up the warm, hard line of his torso, up the rippled muscle of his back. He was hers, she felt that particularly strongly at that moment. In fact, despite her extreme discomfort at moments over her predicament and her feelings about the way she was changed, she hadn’t doubted him or what they were to each other for some time. That surety was calming, comforting, it anchored her in much the way Cade did. Gave her security.
When the hot wet of his tongue scalded her lips she opened her mouth to his, opening herself to him, giving herself to him. His taste shot through her system, filling her senses, intoxicating her.
The sensual slide of flesh on flesh as she arched beneath him, as her tongue slid along his, of his hair through her fingers—delighted her.
The kiss deepened, the pressure of his lips became firmer, more insistent as the edge of his teeth caught her lip. She was swept away by the intensity of his passion and could do little more than cling to him as he devoured her.
Her skin tingled and her bones ached so that she arched hard with it, a surprised cry coming from deep within her stomach.
He pulled back from the kiss and looked down at her. Staring up into his eyes, she fell into his gaze. There she saw his wolf and knew that the feelings she’d just experienced was her own wolf clawing to the surface.
She sighed with that knowledge, with the feeling of her wolf rolling within her skin, reaching out to Lex’s. A low growl trickled from his lips and she blinked up into his face. There was no fear, only recognition of that more feral nature, of what was now the other half of her being, and it matched his—this man who loomed over her so strong and intense. Yet she felt no threat from him.
“Lex,” she murmured and blinked slowly as her body adjusted to the dual-natured feeling, of forest and loam, of city and sidewalk, of two legs and four, of flesh and fur. It was like looking through the bottom of a very thick glass and seeing things in multiples.
“Beautiful, can you feel it?” His teeth were white and sharp against the olive of his complexion. He was so incredibly handsome at that moment, so compelling to her, the lure of his sexuality, of his very being, tugged at her. It almost felt as if it was happing to someone else and she was watching it on-screen as she reached out and slid her palm around his neck, pulling him down to her.
“Yes, I can feel it. I can feel her inside of me.”
“Are you scared?” This was whispered, his lips the barest distance from hers.
“No. I want you, Lex. Make me yours.”
“You already are, Nina. Before you even laid eyes on me.” His words halted as his lips were on hers again and his hands were alive over her body. He touched her with wonder, with reverence and awe and she pressed into him, not able to get enough of him, wanting him so much she was sure she’d die of it.
His lips moved to the sensitive spot below her ear and she arched back, baring her neck to him, understanding the relevance of that act more now than ever. He bit the tendon there where neck meets shoulder and she shuddered as pleasure roiled through her body.
Her nails dug into the hard muscle at his shoulders as wordless sounds of pleasure slid from her mouth.
His tongue blazed a scalding trail down the hollow of her throat to find a nipple. He flicked it with the tip over and over until she was begging him for more, begging him to take her, to make love to her, to possess her as deeply as he could.
He responded, sucking the nipple deep into his mouth, teeth grazing it. One of his hands slid down her stomach and over the flesh of her mound and between her thighs. They both gasped when his fingertips found her pussy, hot and wet and ready for him. Two fingers thrust into her and his thumb found her clit, swollen and hard, slippery and sensitive.
The walls of her pussy clutched at his fingers as she hooked her calf around his ass, opening herself up to his touch.
“More. Please, Lex. More,” she gasped out.
“Okay, beautiful.” He moved down then, tongue licking over the flesh of her stomach, over that very sensitive crease where thigh met body.
When he pulled his hand away she cried out at his absence only to moan in pleasure as his mouth closed over her.
The intensity of that feeling—of the wet of his mouth meeting the wet of her pussy, of the sinuous slide of his tongue as it slid through the folds of her body that way, tasting her like she was the best thing on earth—made her entire body tremble.
She could feel the scalding heat of her own honey as he drew a thumb through it and slid it down to the sensitive flesh of her rear passage. She stiffened and he looked up at her.
“I mean to have all of you. You told me to make you mine, Nina. You are mine. Your pleasure is my job. Give yourself to me, beautiful. Trust me.”
She nodded and her head fell back as he took a long lick, the flat of his tongue applying hard pressure over her clit. The spark of orgasm began to heat her body, seep into her.
While he suckled her clit, teasing the underside with the tip of his tongue, his thumb pressed into her ass. He stroked it gently into her until she began to relax and accept the new sensations he delivered.
His teeth abraded her clit gently but firmly and orgasm slammed through her, poured into her cells until they all exploded as endorphins surged through her body. Stars burst onto her eyelids as her skin tingled and heated. Her bones, once achy, now felt nearly fluid as her back arched, and she couldn’t help but scream out his name.
She was still lost in the swirl of pleasure when he moved up and entered her, his cock sliding into her body, her flesh parting like a molten curtain around his.
“Damn, you’re so hot. So tight and wet. You feel so good I may die from it,” he murmured as he bent and licked the sweat from her collarbone.
Her body slid beneath his, the sweat of their exertion easing the friction. She was past words by
that point. The wolf inside her was pushing her to submit to him and she couldn’t argue. All she wanted was for him to make love to her. All she craved was the weight of his body on her own, the slide of his cock deep within her. The scent of his heated flesh rode her in much the same way he did. She was utterly drowning in sensation. Drowning in Lex.
His pupils were so large they made his eyes look black. His wolf was there, just inside him, and for a brief moment she felt her own wolf rush up and stroke against his and they both gasped and then moaned at the pleasure.
Over and over his cock slid deep within her body. There were no coherent words, just her moans and sobs for more and his growls and gasps. The wet collision of bodies was the only other sound in the room.
It felt like being pulled into a vortex, the only thing holding her in place, keeping her from being swept away entirely, was the way his cock pinned her to this reality. Her heart beat with his, her lungs breathed with his, their scents mingled and became one.
It built and built, the tension tightened, the web of desire, of lust and love and longing—of belonging—built until it burst over them both as he shouted her name, his body emptying into hers in pulse after pulse.
A feedback loop of sensation was created and orgasm spread through them both in wave after wave over what seemed like minutes until he collapsed with a long sigh just next to her, chest heaving.
* * *
Some point later she awoke again and sighed with satisfaction. His head was on her chest, ear over her heart. The sight made her ache with tenderness for him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt tenderness and tears began to come then.
He looked up with a start, worry on his face. “Nina? Honey? Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head, reaching out to trace a fingertip over his lips. “No. Just the opposite. You healed me. I’ve never, ever, felt that way before. Thank you.”
If Lex Warden hadn’t already adored the prickly woman in his arms, he would have fallen right then at the expression of her feelings in such an open way. She’d been so closed up that he didn’t know what to do with the rush of awe and admiration he felt for her.