He growled, no doubt annoyed that she had called it voodoo. What Lucas could do was impressive. She could admit that now that she didn’t hate his guts for almost ruining her chances with Brant. But she still didn’t like his ass, especially after this shit.
She and Brant climbed into his SUV, and he transformed and dressed. His mouth was set in a hard line, and he gripped the steering wheel between clawed fingers. Zandrea suspected he would rip into his half brother the second he laid eyes on him. She would be right behind him.
Brant kicked the front door in so hard, it hung from its hinges. Lucas did not seem surprised that they were there. He stood in the hallway with bared sharp teeth and a drink in his hand. From the scent, Zandrea figured he’d been at it a while.
“You’ve been avoiding me, brother,” Brant spat.
“Fuck you,” was Lucas’ reply.
“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do. I don’t give a flying fuck if you are my Alpha. I’ve been looking for you ever since that bull you pulled on Nita at the restaurant, threatening her, hurting her.”
Lucas’ eyes were glazed. “You knew where I lived. And what are you talking about? I never hurt her or threatened her.” He sighed and waved his hand, sloshing the liquid in his glass over the side. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. All that is over for good. I didn’t fuck up and make her my mate before I got rid of her.”
“Got rid of her!” Zandrea screamed. She launched herself at him, but Brant caught her in the air and whipped her back behind him. “You son of a bitch!” Zandrea curled her fingers, trying to get around Brant. She might not have claws, but her tips could do some damage.
Brant growled. “You cold bastard. You’re slipping. Whatever you used on Nita didn’t work. She remembers everything. She knows what we are, what you did to her.”
Lucas slumped down on the stairs leading to the second floor. “Impossible.”
“Not impossible. Brother, she’s missing,” Brant told him. “And you’re going to sober up and help us find her.”
* * * *
Lucas’ stomach stirred, and he felt like he was about to throw up all the alcohol he had consumed in the last hour and a half. He had thought to make himself forget, but wiping that sweet face from his mind was impossible.
He shook his head to clear it. “No, that’s not possible. I know it took. I did have trouble. My usual batch didn’t work on her. She resisted, but then the second one—”
Brant squinted at him. “You said you didn’t make her your mate. Did you bite her once?”
Lucas grumbled. “What does that have to do with anything?” He knew, but he couldn’t face it. If anyone knew about the affects of blood mixing, it was him. He’d studied it along with herbs for years. It was his life’s passion until Nita.
“You know damn well what I’m getting at, Lucas,” Brant insisted. “Biting her once means you tainted her blood. She will have heightened ability even if she is human. Zandrea’s five senses have improved dramatically. She used to wear reading glasses, but now her vision is twenty fifteen. Your memory potion is formulated for humans with no trace of wolf DNA in their blood. You lectured me on it enough times. So now you’re surprised that Nita resisted it? Tell me the truth. You bit her, didn’t you?”
Lucas ran a hand through his already disheveled hair. He had caught sight of it sticking up all over his head when he passed the hall mirror but didn’t give a damn at the time. He still didn’t. “Yes,” he admitted. “I bit her once. I lost control. I was about to bite her again tonight, but—”
Zandrea gasped. “You were going to make her your mate?”
“No, damn it! I lost control I said. I couldn’t help it. She’s so...Never mind. What do you mean she’s missing? If you’re lying and you’re hiding her from me, so help me I’ll slit your throat, Brant.” Another thought occurred to him. “And what do you mean about threatening her? I never did. I would never.”
Zandrea’s hands slipped to her hips, and Brant eyed her, apparently assessing whether she was about to attack Lucas again. He let her move out from behind him. “Don’t give me that. I was there. I was having lunch with my girls, Nita and Stacy, and you barged in and started accusing Nita of seeing another man. You put your hands on her like you were going to shake her head off, and you threatened her. You telling me somebody put some voodoo on you to make you forget that?”
Lucas stood up and stalked back and forth from the dining room to the living room while racking his brain. No one had slipped him anything. No one he knew had the skill, except a couple of the elders, and they wouldn’t act against the Alpha of the pack. None of the other wolves had challenged him to be the leader. The only one who had seemed close to doing that was Brant, and he had backed off since he had taken Zandrea as his mate.
The bottom line was, someone had been impersonating him, and that someone might very well have Nita. When he found him, Lucas would rip him apart. He spun to face Zandrea. “You said you were there. The man who walked in looking like me was an exact duplicate? Nothing stood out to give a warning that it might not be who you thought?”
She rolled her eyes.
He snapped his fingers. Some senses never lie. “Brant said you have heightened senses. What did he smell like?”
She frowned. “What you always smell like, I guess. Look, I’m not a freaking bloodhound.”
“Concentrate, damn it. Nita may be in deep trouble, and I’m depending on you to give me a clue.”
Zandrea’s eyes went wide, and she shook. Brant tucked her to his side with a nasty look in Lucas’ direction. “It’s okay, baby. We’ll find her. If you don’t remember anything...”
“Wait, I do,” she squealed. “The cologne. I remember thinking if you were going to go all macho on my girl, the least you could have done was wear some decent cologne and not that cheap shit you had on.”
Brant stiffened. “Lucas doesn’t wear cologne. None of us do. The scent can be too much.”
The strength left Lucas’ body. He almost sank to the floor before he took a strong hold on himself. “Deandre. That’s the guy who’s been trying to date Nita. I interfered with his plans, so I’m guessing it was him who came in there looking like me.”
“Hm, so you think he’s a shape-shifter?” Brant asked. “Shifted to look like you in an attempt to fool Nita into hating you and breaking it off?”
Lucas sighed. “If only it was that simple. All the shape shifters I’ve known have had scents. Deandre has none. It’s almost like he’s not real, not really there.”
“A skin walker,” Zandrea piped up. At Lucas’ and his brother’s odd looks, she explained. “I saw it in a movie once, and Nita, crazy girl, thought it was interesting enough to look up and recite some of the facts to Stacy and me when we had already been freaked out by the movie. Apparently, they can take on the form of whatever they touch. Lucas, did he ever touch you?”
The blood drained from his head leaving him woozy. “At the country club I frequent. He used my name to get in and pretended we were old buddies. I had him thrown out, but not before he had slapped me on the back a few times and shook my hand with this big stupid grin on his face. Now I know what he was up to. He was going to take on my form.”
Brant turned to his mate. “Any other facts, sweetie?”
She shook her head. “No, but I know where we can find out.”
Chapter Fourteen
Deandre yanked Nita close to him and ran his hands down over her ass. She pulled at the bonds around her wrists and strained to get away from him. He chuckled as if her resisting turned him on all the more.
“I see the hope still burning in your eyes, baby,” he said between small kisses he planted along her neck. “But give that up. Your ex-lover can’t track me. I don’t care how good his dog’s nose is.” He laughed again. “You see how I can change?”
He demonstrated, and she turned her head. He snatched it back to face him. Instead of a young black man, younger than she was, this time he was white, taller and
older. It was unnatural.
“Not only can I change, I have no scent. That asshole could sniff for years and never pick up my smell.”
“What do you want me for, Deandre? A lay? Since you can look anyway you want, you can get any woman you want. You can just become whatever her fantasies are.”
He nodded. “You’re right.” In that instant, he became Lucas, and Nita’s heart shattered.
“No,” she moaned.
“No?” he teased. “I thought you would like that. Me fucking you with your ex-lover’s face. Thought it would get you off. Well never mind. I don’t want you thinking of him anyway while I have you.” He stroked her cheek. “And to answer your question, I want you for reproduction.”
“Say what?” she screamed.
“Yup, brilliant isn’t it? See I’m a skin walker, and my kind cannot reproduce with each other. We can only reproduce with those who can do it by ‘natural’ means. I want my legacy to go on so to speak, and I’ve chosen you to be the mother of my children. Now, don’t you feel special?”
She spit in his face. “I’m not having your children!”
Deandre smacked her and shoved her down on the bed. He had stopped at this hotel because they had been driving for hours, and he was tired. And now from what he said, he wasn’t afraid that Lucas would find them.
Nita closed her eyes when Deandre landed on top of her and pushed a knee between her legs to force her to spread them. He was rock solid against her pelvis, and she swallowed to keep from throwing up. Why had she ever found him attractive?
“I had intended to play it slower, get you to care about me so you would happily raise my child the way I want him raised, but you had to ruin it all by being a whore with that wolf. Bestiality doesn’t gross you out, huh?”
“It’s not bestiality,” she snapped. Her words were true. The love burning in her heart for Lucas wasn’t going away just because she had found out he wasn’t human, that he could shift into a wolf. She had been terrified at first, sure, and she was angry about what he did. Yet, as she considered what had happened, the thought occurred to her that Lucas was suffering as well. He had apparently thought she was better off forgetting what he was rather than living with his secret. But she would bet her entire trust fund and the money coming to her in a few years that Lucas loved her just as much as she loved him. More than anything, she ached to see him again and verify it.
When Deandre’s head lowered toward hers to kiss her again, she blurted out, “He can track my scent.”
Deandre drew back. “What?”
She swallowed. “You said you have no scent to pick up, but Lucas can track my scent can’t he? I mean he knows me pretty well.”
That last part seemed to tick him off. “Yeah, too well!” He held up a small vial. “See this? Got it off a guy I know. Guaranteed to screw with the wolf’s nose. Not just the wolf, any tracker who uses his sense of smell to find people. I don’t normally need it, but as you can see I’ve thought of everything. You and I, my sweet thing, will disappear forever. You’ll raise my brood. Yeah,”—he seemed to be picturing it in his mind—“more than one, I think. A few. Oh how sweet it will be making them.”
The hope that Nita had been harboring, that Deandre had recognized in her eyes, died a quick death. Lucas would not be able to find her. That meant she would have to take matters into her own hands. One way or another, she would have to trick Deandre and get away. She would have to do it all on her own, with no money or resources because the very person she depended on could be Deandre in disguise, and she would be right back here facing a life of misery.
She blew out a breath she hoped sounded resigned. “Well, in that case, let me go to the bathroom and take a shower.” He gave her a suspicious look, and she frowned. “You’re between me and the door, damn it. There’s no window in the bathroom.”
After a few minutes, he nodded, leaned back to untie her hands, and rose off the bed. He bent over to unzip the bag he had brought into the room and reached in before pulling out something black and silky. He tossed it to her. “Put this on after.”
Nita held it up. It was a charmeuse babydoll. The thing looked like it would barely extend past her ass. Anger rose inside her at him using her for his pleasure whether she liked it or not, but she tamped it down. In order to get out of this predicament, she would have to stay calm and use her head. She grabbed for her purse to take with her to the bathroom, but Deandre caught her wrist and searched the interior. He brought out her cell phone and her PDA and pocketed both before handing the purse back. Nita snatched it and stomped into the bathroom before slamming the door in his face. The chuckle she heard beyond the door made her grit her teeth.
“I have to get out of this,” she whispered, sitting down on the toilet and staring at the wall. Deandre was a small built man but he was also strong. She could not overpower him. Longing for Lucas overwhelmed her, and she blinked her eyes in rapid succession to ward off tears.
There was no hope of anything permanent between them. He was a wolf shape shifter, and it was certain that as soon as he had the chance, he would try his charm on her again to make her forget him. Nita dropped her head into her hands. She didn’t want to forget Lucas, not now and not ever.
“Hey, what are you doing in there?” Deandre called.
Nita jumped to her feet and turned the shower on, but she ignored Deandre, not answering his call. Thinking of Lucas being a shape shifter reminded her that Brant was his half brother, and now she recalled how she had heard Zandrea mention that she was Brant’s mate. Nita had thought that terminology was an odd way to put it. Now she realized that Zandrea knew their secret. How could she not, sleeping with the guy? Did Brant grow claws, sharp teeth and extra hair when he got too turned on? He probably did which would have been a call for much explanation if Zandrea didn’t know the truth. Something told Nita she would not be allowed to keep knowing the truth unless Lucas was willing to make her his mate.
“Fat chance,” she muttered in misery. “He’s too much of a ladies’ man.” She sighed. That was neither here nor there if she didn’t get out of this predicament.
She stood and undressed then slipped into the babydoll. After a few minutes, she turned off the shower. No sense washing right now, although she really wanted to. She stuffed her clothes inside her purse and forced the zipper closed, hoping Deandre wouldn’t notice how overfull it was. If for some reason she had to make her escape without pausing to get dressed, she didn’t want to spend too much time out on the street dressed as scantily as she was now.
With a deep breath, she tugged the door open and pasted a slight smile on her face, hoping it appeared to be genuine. “Well, here I am. I’m not one to cry long over anything. We can make the best of it. After all, you’re not bad to look at, and you can look anyway I want, right?” She raised an eyebrow in Deandre’s direction.
His own grin spread across his face. “Damn, you look good! I knew you would. Turn around and let me get a glimpse of that ass.”
Nita suppressed a flinch at his crass words and spun around while dropping her bag on the floor. She put a hand on her hip and spread her legs a little in an attempt to keep his attention on her and not the purse. It worked. Deandre let out a long whistle.
“Yeah!” he crooned in excitement.
When Nita spun around again, he was already shuffling out his clothes. She directed her gaze around the room in search of something heavy to bring down on his disgusting head when the time was right. The heavy motel phone on the nightstand would be perfect. It was a cliché from too many movies, but if it worked that’s all that mattered.
She positioned herself on the edge of the bed and extended her arm to him. Deandre couldn’t get across the room fast enough as he stumbled over his pants still around his ankles. He kicked them away and almost fell on top of her, bumping her shoulder with his chin where Lucas had left his mark. She closed her eyes, her heart aching for the man she knew without a doubt that she loved.
Bile ros
e in Nita’s throat at the contact of Deandre’s hard-on. He grumbled at finding her panties still on.
“Take them off!” While he fumbled, first trying to rip her panties off and then yanking them downward, Nita felt for the phone. Damn, why was his head on the wrong side? She couldn’t see where she was reaching, and Deandre was raining little kisses along her shoulder. At any second he could figure out what she was up to.
She squeezed her eyes shut and then reached down between them, her hand just above his erection. Her voice shaking, giving the impression of arousal, she hoped, she said, “Let me suck you, lover.”
Deandre whopped. “Oh, Nita, girl, I knew you were the one. But not too much. I can’t waste my seed.”
She pushed him to his back on the bed and kissed along his stomach. To give the man credit, he did have smooth brown skin that stretched over taut and defined muscles. Then again, that could be another illusion of the skin walker. She took her time going down his body. The pleasure of her touch got the better of Deandre. He groaned and closed his eyes.
Nita took her opportunity, snatched up the phone and brought it down with all the force she could on Deandre’s skull.
Chapter Fifteen
Tears streaming down her face, Nita didn’t wait a second before she tore out of the room with her purse clutched under her arm. She sobbed as she ran, not even knowing if she was headed toward the motel office or not. When she had rounded the building out of sight of the room, she stopped to yank her clothes from her bag and only then realized she should have paused long enough to retrieve her cell phone from Deandre.
Fear drove her on when she had shoved her feet half way into her shoes. She sprinted across the parking lot toward a Laundromat she spotted in the lot next door to the motel. Inside, a woman leaned a hip lazily against a table while thumbing through information on her cell phone. Nita rushed over to her.
“Please, I beg you. Let me make an emergency call. I will give you twenty dollars if you do.” The woman’s face brightened, and she held out the phone. Nita grasped it and pounded in the numbers to Lucas’ cell in lieu of the police. They would never know how to handle a skin walker, and she wasn’t sure if Lucas knew, but he was the best option.
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