by Jessica Sims
A low, unearthly growl met my ears.
Was it Beau … in his cat form? I took another step toward the bushes, then stopped. Would he recognize me if he was in his cat form? Was this quite possibly the dumbest move ever?
I took a step backward and decided to try another tactic. “Sara,” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Beau!”
“Over here,” Sara said, her voice distant and odd.
I turned and saw the most beautiful sight in the world—Sara’s tiny frame was cradled in Beau’s arms. They stood on the far side of the Viper, having emerged from our small backyard on the far side of the house. I bolted toward them. “Sara! Thank God!”
My sister was in a pair of pajamas, her body stiff with fear, shoulders hunched in a way that I recognized—trying to make her body smaller in the hopes that she might curl it tight enough to mask her scent. As I ran toward them, I realized Beau was buck naked. With the massive breadth to his shoulders and the light sprinkling of hair on his chest—much lighter than I’d imagined for a were-cougar—and the narrow hips and …
Oh, boy.
“Hi,” I blurted, my voice cracking, but fear for Sara quickly overrode my awkwardness at Beau’s nudity. “What happened? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine,” Beau said, still holding her against him. “When I came in through the back of the house in cougar form, I scared her and she fainted.”
Of course she had. She had probably thought he’d been coming for her, or she’d been on the verge of doing another shift. Sara gave me a tiny smile of embarrassment and rubbed her arms, as if warding off another involuntary shift.
I could understand that. I felt a little faint myself. “Who was in our house?”
His gaze darkened. “No one that I could find. When I went upstairs to check, the place was empty. It was like no one had been there, except there was a smell …” He frowned to himself.
“What sort of smell?”
“Like rotten meat,” Sara added. “I didn’t know what was going on, just that the house stank. I was changing the garbage when you called.”
I gestured at the bushes on the opposite side of the house from where they’d come. “I thought I heard something over there, but I didn’t smell anything.”
“I’ll check it out.” Beau immediately set Sara down and crossed the yard.
I watched his buttocks flex in the moonlight as he walked toward the bushes. It was hard to force myself away from the sight, but concern for my sister drew me back to her, and I turned, touching her arm and examining her with my gaze. “Are you all right?”
“Just trying to hold it together,” she said in a shaky voice. “He caught me by surprise. I … I hope he didn’t smell me.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said, lying to comfort her. To be safe, I surreptitiously hid my hand behind my back and wiped it on my dress to try and remove her smell.
She looked over my shoulder, and choked a little. “He’s coming back.”
I turned. Blood roared in my ears as I stared at the man striding across the lawn, all tawny skin and rippling muscles and completely, utterly naked. And judging by his casual, graceful stance, he didn’t care that he was naked.
“Oh, I am in so much trouble,” I breathed, watching him move. Then I picked up Beau’s pants, holding them out to him with my eyes closed so I wouldn’t see anything else and be tempted. “I’m fine, really,” Sara protested from beside me in the Viper. The wind was high and icy outside, so I sat in the driver’s seat while we waited for Beau. “You’re making too big of a fuss.”
“I always fuss over you. Besides, you fainted.” I ran a hand over her bare arm, feeling for telltale fur. “How are you now? Are you good?”
“I’m fine,” she said, shoving my hands off of her like she would an overprotective mother. “It just startled me. Tell me about your date.” A shadow crossed her face. “He didn’t ask about me, did he?”
“Dinner was very nice. The restaurant was lovely. You would have liked it.” If you ignored the car thing, the drop-in from the werewolf, and my date telling me he was going into heat.
“Your face is red,” she said. “You like him, don’t you?”
I focused on the front yard, avoiding her gaze. “Don’t be silly. I’m just going out with him this one time. It’s not going to go anywhere. You know it can’t.”
“You like him,” she restated slowly. “And you don’t like anyone. Huh.”
I ignored her, scanning the house for Beau again. He had insisted on checking out the place one more time in cougar form. When that yielded nothing, he shifted back and made a few phone calls while Sara and I waited in his car.
All of my suggestions to go into the house were met with a small growl.
“Should we call the police?” I rolled down the window and asked.
He shook his head at me. “I don’t think what was in your house was human. We can’t notify the police—that would compromise the Alliance members in the immediate vicinity.”
I didn’t give a crap about the Alliance. I wanted to get back inside my house and see what was missing or touched or disturbed.
Beau circled back toward the car, pulling his pants on and buckling his belt. “I smelled a mixture of things. Like werewolf and something else.”
Sara stiffened next to me, and fear clenched my heart. “We can’t smell anything,” I told him. “You’re the one with the shifter nose.”
He gave me a sheepish look. “Right. I keep forgetting.”
“Isn’t it safe to go back in?” I asked again. “You’ve gone over the property three times.”
He shook his head and reached for his shirt. “One of the tigers in the Merino clan knows forensics. He’ll be over shortly to dust the house and look for evidence.” His hand stretched toward me. “House keys, please?”
I held my purse tightly. “Why?”
“So Mike can check out the house while I take you two to a hotel.”
No way. Not with Sara’s scent all over the place.
Beau continued, “Mike insisted that we leave the crime scene intact, and that’s what we’re going to do. I can go inside and get you some clothes once he gives the okay.”
Sara’s hand clutched mine anxiously, and I knew what she was thinking. If Beau went inside and dug through her things he’d find wolf scent all over her clothing—or worse, he’d find the clothes that she had last used when she changed: a torn T-shirt and a wrinkled pair of shorts that reeked of the change.
“We’re fine,” I blurted. “We don’t need clothes. Let’s just go.”
Beau’s eyebrows went up and he glanced over at Sara in her pajamas. “All right,” he said slowly. “I’ll buy you girls some clothes and we can check things out in the morning. Sound good?”
I still didn’t like the thought of a stranger poking around in our house, especially one with a shifter’s nose. “We sometimes take care of the neighbor’s dog for her,” I lied, to explain the canine scent sure to be in the house. “Tell Mike that if a woman with a dog comes to the doorstep in the morning to call me.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Beau’s mouth. “I’ll tell him.”
Without another reason to stall, I handed him the keys.
He walked away to greet the car that pulled up.
Mike turned out to be an enormous man with short, close-cropped black curls and a cheerful expression, despite it being nearly midnight and freezing outside. He and Beau talked for a couple of minutes, then Beau showed Mike to the front door and they went inside. I clasped my hands tightly to stop myself from dashing inside and dousing the house with some scent-masking sprays—or better yet, chasing the men out of the house.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Sara told me, trying to ease my worry. “You know I’m careful. And if Beau didn’t notice anything before …”
At least I had the clothes on my back. Poor Sara had only her pajamas.
Beau returned a few moments later and I got out to meet him. He moved to my side as
if he belonged there and began to rub my shoulders. “Mike’s going to be several hours, so he’s going to drop your keys off to me in the morning.”
“All right. Sara and I will stay at the office,” I said.
“You can’t sleep at the office,” Beau argued, putting his warm arm around me. He gestured at Sara, still huddled in the car, her legs tucked under her. “She looks a little freaked out. Wouldn’t you rather stay in a nice, comfortable hotel room?”
I glanced over at my sister. She was a dainty, fragile sort, so unlike me with my tall, sturdy frame. Tonight she seemed even smaller, staring at the house with worried eyes, waiting for Mike to discover her secret and ruin her life. She was shivering, too.
I sighed. “She could use a good night’s sleep. Thank you. We’ll stay at the hotel.”
He nodded and pulled me against him, tucking me under his chin and cradling my body to his.
I stiffened a little, but he only ran his hands gently up and down my back. It felt lovely and soothing, and I finally relaxed a little.
Unfortunately, snuggling with a man was not the way to get rid of him.
At the hotel, Beau got us the room adjoining his. The hotel room was lovely, the blankets turned down, and fluffy robes hanging on the back of the bathroom door. I felt sleepy just looking at the big, plush bed.
“I’ll be on the other side if you need me,” Beau said, standing in the doorway that connected the two rooms. “Sleep tight, ladies.”
With a wink at me, he closed the door.
As soon as he was gone, I slumped on the edge of the bed and sighed. “God, I wish he wasn’t so hot. That would make this all so much easier.”
Sara tapped her ear, indicating that his shifter hearing could hear our conversation.
Oh, well. It wasn’t like I’d done a good job hiding it anyhow.
She moved to the closet and opened it, scanning the contents. Then she turned to me and mouthed, “Are there extra blankets?”
“Why?” I mouthed back.
She gestured at herself. “I still smell like whatever was in the house,” she mouthed, her voice barely audible. “I need to shower and get the stink off of me. But if I do …”
She’d smell like herself again. And if I slept next to her all night, I’d smell like her, too, because I didn’t have any other clothes to sleep in.
Should I go downstairs and get a third room? Beau was sure to be curious if I did, and we would have to be more cautious than ever.
Unless … he’d already figured out that Sara was a werewolf? I discarded the thought. He’d have questioned me about it immediately if he had, or demanded to speak to Sara. Our secret was still safe.
Sara trembled slightly as she stared down at the bed, knowing she couldn’t get into it and relax. Knowing that our being here wasn’t a full reprieve, that in the next room was a man who could give away everything we had worked so hard to conceal. As I watched, she rubbed her arms. They were covered in goose pimples, a sure sign that she was about to shift due to stress.
I waved a hand to get her attention, then gestured at the connecting door. “I’m going to go sleep with Beau,” I mouthed. “You take this bed.”
Her eyes went wide with shock and she forgot to whisper. “Bath, what—”
I cut her off with a quick wave of my hand, then mouthed, “Not like that!” I moved closer to her to explain my plan. “I’ll just tell him that you snore and I won’t be able to sleep. It’s perfect, because if I sleep in the same bed as him we’ll have the same scent, and he won’t suspect a thing.”
It was a perfect plan, but it wasn’t why I wanted to sleep next to him. I wanted to sleep next to him because the very thought made me shiver with excitement.
“Bath, no.” Sara mouthed the protest. “What if he’s a creep?”
I shook my head. “He’s not a creep,” I whispered back. “He’s nice. He won’t do anything.” I decided not to mention the whole “in heat” thing.
She didn’t look convinced, but I saw her gaze sneak back to the bed, and she sighed. “I can sleep on the floor,” she began, but my eye roll cut her off.
She sat down on the foot of the bed, then gave me a weak thumbs-up that I returned. When she was freshly showered and wrapped in the bathrobe, I flicked the lights off, then closed the door behind me, stepping back out into the hall.
A loud, fake snore began to rise from the room, so I took a deep breath and knocked on Beau’s door.
He opened it a few moments later, his hair tousled, chest bare. My gaze went immediately to the low-slung plaid sleep pants around his waist, noticing the dark trail of hair that crept down his abdomen.
“Hi, again,” he said.
I jerked my head up, caught staring. “Oh. Hi.”
“Something wrong?”
Not in the slightest, I thought as warmth spread through my body. I gestured at our room. “I hate to ask, but my sister snores and I thought I might sleep with you.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Sleep in the same room as you,” I amended quickly. “We could put pillows between us or something. And it’ll give us a chance to … talk.”
“I can get another room,” he began.
“I’d rather stay with you,” I said. “It’s not a come-on. I just feel safer with you in the room, if that’s all right.”
He stepped aside to let me in. “Of course.”
Ever the gentleman, Beau immediately offered me a spare set of pajamas, and I took a quick shower and brushed my teeth with the complimentary toothbrush. When I emerged the room was empty, with a note that Beau had gone to get extra pillows from the front desk.
He returned a short time later. The click of the lock on the door was the only thing that let me know that he’d come back; other than that, he moved as silently as a cat. Hah.
I had already prepared the bed for his return. Pillows were stacked in the middle and I’d wrapped myself in one of the extra blankets, leaving him the sheet and the duvet. His lips twitched at the sight, but he said nothing. He simply put the extra pillows down and clicked the light off.
“I thought we were going to talk,” I reminded him.
The other side of the mattress dipped with Beau’s weight as he chuckled. “My mouth works just fine in the dark, Bathsheba. I imagine yours does, too.”
Now that was a blatant double entendre. My heart pounded with nervous excitement. Oddly enough, I was a little breathless at his pursuit. Would he shove the pillows aside and take me into his arms? Kiss me senseless?
I squirmed a little at the thought and forced myself not to think such things. I had told him this would be innocent, and he had agreed. Why was I fantasizing about him ravishing me? I rolled over on my side, facing away from Beau, and tried to relax. It was a near-impossible task—my body was utterly conscious of the man who lay so close to me.
I tried to think of something to say. After all, the premise of my being here was that I wanted to talk to him, right? So I needed to talk.
One arm snaked out and grabbed me by the waist, pulling me across the bed. Instead of the wall of pillows I expected to meet, I slid across the sheets and bumped into his chest. “Shhh,” he said softly in my ear, his breath warm. Hot snakes of desire coiled through me.
“So tell me,” he whispered quietly in my ear. “Who would want to kill Sara?” His thumb began to stroke my arm in a rather distracting, shivery pattern.
I stilled in his arms, shocked by the rush that crept over my skin. It took me a moment to recover, and then I realized what he was asking. Lots and lots of people probably wanted to kill Sara, but I couldn’t tell him that. I feigned ignorance. “What do you mean?”
“Whoever was in the house.” He pulled me closer until my backside was spooned against his front. The breath stole out of my lungs at the warmth that flooded through me. His arms enveloped me, and huddled next to him, I felt like the smallest, daintiest woman in the world rather than my five-foot-ten self. It was pretty close to heaven.
&n
bsp; “The intruder?” I asked. “No one who knows Sara wants to kill her.”
It was all those wolves that didn’t know her that were the problem.
I could feel his warm breath against my ear and neck. “Any ex-boyfriends or angry lovers?”
I was silent. The only ex-boyfriend she had was a dead one.
I knew he was dead because I’d shot him.
“No angry lovers,” I said. “Sara’s not seeing anyone. Do you think she was the target?”
I could feel his chest moving with every breath. His hand slid off my arm and down my waist, then across the cradle of my hips in a very intimate embrace. “Would someone be after you, then?”
He was making it damn hard to concentrate. I struggled to gather my thoughts and shook my head. “Not unless I’ve pissed off the bookkeeping mafia. We’re dangerous people, you know.”
“Shhh. Keep your voice down,” he said, then bit my earlobe gently.
That playful caress made my entire body flare, and I flexed my hips back against his instinctively. A small whimper rose in my throat.
I heard his groan in my ear, and his spread hand flexed across my belly. “Did you like that?” he murmured, and repeated the action. His teeth scored against the edge of my earlobe, and I felt his tongue flick against my earring. “Shall I tell you how sexy you look wearing nothing but my pajamas?” Nip, nip.
Dear God, this was the best thing I’d ever felt. Why in the world was I still a virgin? My hand covered his, my fingers pulsing in time with his, kneading the flesh of my stomach as well. I felt his cock against my backside, hard and obvious, and began to entertain some very naughty thoughts.
But I couldn’t. I removed his hand from my belly and could have wept. “I’m not going to sleep with you, Beau.”
He chuckled as I tried to move my head. He was lying on my still-damp hair. “Who says we have to sleep?”
I jerked on my hair and he moved, leaning over me instead of next to me. His breath fanned across my neck. Though I was free now, I made no attempt to move, excited and quivering. What would he do?
To my surprise, Beau leaned over me and bit my collarbone. Too low to be a vampire bite at the carotid, but I felt the definite scrape of teeth at the base of my neck, and then the sensual slide of his tongue over my flesh.