Kiss and Kin: A Sexy Shifter story

by Kinsey Holley

  She stopped retching but remained on her knees, gulping air and resting her head in her hands, elbows propped on the bowl. He didn’t let go of her hair.

  “Okay,” she eventually said in an unsteady voice. “I think I’m done.”

  He stood behind her while she brushed her teeth and splashed water on her face. Their eyes met in the mirror as she scrubbed at her mascara. A weird expression crossed her face.

  “You okay?” he asked quietly.

  She shrugged. “I will be. Thanks to you. I was so stupid. If you hadn’t been there…” She dropped her head so he couldn’t see her face.

  With his hands on her shoulders, he drew her back against his chest. He closed his eyes, memorizing the feel of her body pressed against his. She didn’t look up, but she didn’t try to shrug him off.

  “Silly brat,” he grunted. “Why do you think you’re stupid? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  She took a breath. He heard it catch. “I know better than to walk off and leave my drink, especially when I’m with a bunch of people I don’t know. That’s like rule number one for single girls in bars. I don’t know why I did it.”

  “Because you’re not perfect, and people forget to do things they should.”

  No answer. He dropped a quick kiss on top of her head. He’d never done anything like that before. She didn’t react at all. That scared him.

  “You want to stop at a drive through on the way home?” he asked again.

  “I don’t think so,” she said softly. “I feel nasty. I want a shower.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Let’s get you home.”

  She didn’t speak as the orderly wheeled her out of the hospital, or while they waited for the valet to bring his Mercedes around. He tried to think of something comforting, or reassuring, or halfway witty to say, but he couldn’t. He never could, he reflected bitterly. So he called the department to check in. He told Danny he was taking Lark home.

  Once on the road, she startled him when she reached over to lay a hand on his arm.

  “Taran?” she asked uncertainly.

  “What?”

  “I want you to be honest with me, okay? You can tell me. I need to know…”

  “Know what?” he said, staring straight ahead and wondering wildly if she’d sensed something.

  “Did something horrible happen to me, and you don’t want to tell me?’

  He turned to look at her in bewilderment. “No. What makes you think that?”

  “Because,” she said, dropping her hand, “you’re acting so sweet and gentle, it kind of scared me, and I thought…”

  “Shit, Lark!” He nearly plowed into an SUV stopped at a light. “Why can’t I just be nice to you?”

  “I don’t know, Taran. I ask myself that all the time.” She gave him a small smile, nothing like the smartass-brat grin he usually got.

  He swore again under his breath. The light turned green.

  “Maybe I’m being nice to you because someone drugged you and tried to kidnap you and you could’ve wound up dead. But hey, now that you’re okay, I can just go back to being an asshole.”

  “Not necessarily. I mean, I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.” She grinned wider that time.

  “That’s not funny, Lark.”

  “Sure. Like you’d know funny.”

  They got to Lark’s apartment to find TJ waiting for them. When Lark asked her friend what Nick had needed, TJ just smiled at Taran and murmured, “Oh, you know how those alphas are.”

  Taran looked annoyed, which Lark found strangely comforting. After ordering TJ to stay with her at least another four hours—TJ cheerfully told him to bite her (“but if you do I’ll tell your Alpha”)—Taran left. He threatened to call and check on her later.

  “So. The Great Werewolf Detective seemed kind of concerned about you, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t want to talk about him, Teej. I just want a shower.”

  “Okay, but at least tell me what you think about the way he—”

  “Hey, TJ? How’s Nick? How many women has he fucked this month, and have you told him it kills you?”

  She instantly regretted the horrible, nasty words, but after all the trauma, and in her state of nervous exhaustion, she didn’t feel like dissecting her endless, hopeless, unrequited crush one more time. They’d been best friends for thirteen years. TJ would let this one slide.

  Sure enough, after a minute of hurt silence she threw her arms around Lark and squeezed.

  “Look, bitch,” she said into the general vicinity of Lark’s breasts, “That’s just mean, but I’m sorry anyway. You’ve had an awful time, and you’re right. No talk of asshole werewolves. How about midday margaritas? On second thought, no booze. Let’s order Chinese and veg on the couch…”

  She kicked TJ out around six. Her best friend hesitated to leave, asking over and over if she wanted her to spend the night, but Lark insisted she could stay by herself. She promised to call TJ if she changed her mind.

  She briefly considered staying home from work on Monday, but she didn’t want to talk about the ordeal and she didn’t like to lie. Besides, comfy pajamas, fuzzy socks and a good night’s sleep fixed almost everything. Tomorrow she’d feel normal again.

  Once asleep, she found herself in another dream—a bad one this time, and not just because it featured no Taran. She dreamed she was asleep in her bed, warm and safe, when someone tried to bust down her front door. In her dream she laughed—the unknown assailant couldn’t get in, because when she’d moved in here Taran and Myall had insisted on installing a steel door. She’d thought it excessive at the time, but she appreciated the hell out of it now, in her dream.

  She heard a godawful fight—from the sound of it, right outside her door. The steel door finally gave way with a mighty crash. The godawful fight fell into her front room. She sat up in bed and screamed, because she realized she wasn’t asleep after all.

  The pitifully faint trail threatened to go cold if he didn’t chase some leads. After he dropped Lark off, he went to meet with Le Monde management.

  They didn’t have much to tell. The mysterious European werewolves spent a lot of time and money—always cash—at Le Monde, and they attracted hordes of women. No one knew their names, and they never made trouble.

  Le Monde managers knew of the three women’s disappearances—four now, with Eloise—and the threat of publicity scared them enough that they agreed to let undercover officers pose as staff.

  The DA had failed in his attempts to get search warrants for the homes and computers of the first three women—the judge didn’t see enough evidence of foul play, even given all the women’s fae ethnicity and the fact they’d all gone missing from Le Monde. Now, however, with Lark’s drugging and near-abduction, and Eloise’s disappearance, presumably with the same wolves who’d tried to take Lark, the DA tried again. When contacted on Sunday morning, the judge granted the warrant.

  Either El made a lot more money than Lark, or she had someone helping to support her lifestyle. Her corner loft apartment was in one of downtown Houston’s most exclusive buildings. Taran could see clear to Sugar Land from the living room’s two picture windows.

  He took a small phone book and some photos he found on the fridge and her bathroom mirror—a few pictures of Eloise and girlfriends, more of Eloise and different wolves. He’d ask Lark if she recognized anyone. Forensics would send someone to get Eloise’s computer. Now that they had a warrant for her stuff, they’d apply for the other three women and see if any names, numbers or emails popped up more than once. When someone showed up to dust for fingerprints, he left.

  Something still nagged at him from last night, apart from the lingering horror of nearly losing Lark. If the wolves had thought Lark enough of a threat to try to take her, would they just walk away now? Might they consider her a loose end? They could easily learn her identity; Eloise may have told them.

  He couldn’t ask the department for help. He was weaving this case together with gossamer threads to begi
n with, and concerns for Lark’s safety wouldn’t merit police protection.

  He’d been awake for thirty-six hours; he figured he could go another twenty-four before he dropped. He almost called Denardo to tell him he was headed back to Lark’s Museum District apartment, but didn’t. No one but Nick needed to know about his feelings. He got to her apartment around six.

  The older complex sat on a cul-de-sac, tucked away among million dollar homes and swank boutiques and restaurants. It backed up to a tall wooden fence. On the other side of the fence, traffic roared down Bissonnet Street day and night. Bad guys paying Lark a visit would likely do it from the cul-de-sac.

  Taran couldn’t say for sure they’d try to come after her; he thought he might be using that as an excuse to sit outside her apartment and whine with frustrated longing, but he decided to delay introspection for a while.

  The complex didn’t have guest parking on the grounds. He parked a block down the street. From here, he could see the walkway leading to Lark’s unit four doors down from the front of the building. He put the top up for privacy; in this neighborhood, a Mercedes convertible wouldn’t attract attention.

  A car purred into the cul de sac around nine—another Mercedes, a blue SL-Class Coupe worth three times as much as Taran’s Cabriolet. It passed him and pulled up directly in front of the complex. Four footed, the hair on his back would’ve stiffened; on two feet, his neck itched, his nostrils flared and his cop sense screamed for attention.

  Two wolves got out—a tall, slender alpha with brown hair and a shorter, stockier, red headed beta, both dressed in jeans and black T-shirts. Taran got out of his car. They stopped and turned to look at him.

  The three of them stood like that for perhaps five seconds before Taran threw himself at the alpha, who ran to intercept him while the beta sprinted for the apartment building. He had seconds before the beta got to Lark. Even exhausted and with nerves shot to hell, an alpha wolf with a mate in imminent danger could summon vast reserves of fighting strength.

  The alpha ducked Taran’s first punch. When he threw his own, Taran caught the fist in his hand and twisted, snapping the wrist. The alpha howled and stepped back before spinning to level a roundhouse kick that caught Taran on the side. Taran grabbed the leg before the alpha retracted it. He jerked, sending the other wolf crashing to the ground on his back. The alpha kicked. Taran jumped out of the way, landing beside the other wolf’s head, which he kicked with his steel-toed cowboy boots. He heard a satisfying crunching sound, and the alpha stopped moving—not dead, but not going anywhere, either.

  Taran raced for Lark’s apartment.

  He grinned with malicious glee as the beta attempted to kick the door down. That fucker was solid; he and Myall had made sure of it.

  The beta didn’t try to run, but just kicked the door harder. He stank of meth and whiskey, which explained why he didn’t flee at the sight of Taran. Wolves involved in criminal enterprises, especially the drug trade or mob enforcement, got their betas stoked on speed and alcohol, which temporarily suppressed their instinctive submissiveness. A beta with a short-circuited flight response made for a dangerously unpredictable fighter.

  The door finally gave way with a resounding crash just as Taran jumped the beta. Taran heard Lark scream as he and the beta went vaulting across the tiny den, crashing into the bar separating the den from the kitchen. The beta kicked hard and rolled away from Taran. He sprang to his feet and turned for Lark’s room.

  Taran shouted, “Lark! Stay in there!” as he dove into the beta’s back and took him down face first. The beta squirmed and bucked, trying to throw him off. Taran grabbed a chunk of his hair and slammed his head into the hardwood floor. The fucked-up bastard barely paused before he started bucking again, arms flailing and legs kicking.

  “Fuck!” shouted Taran as a searing pain shot through his leg. He looked down to see a knife protruding from his thigh. The beta had been walking around with a goddamned silver knife in his pocket.

  Wolves who carried silver knives were pussies.

  He yanked the six-inch blade out and plunged it into the beta’s back. The wolf howled in pain, joining his voice to the chorus of sirens Taran suddenly noticed. The howling stopped abruptly, and then the bastard sure as hell stopped moving. Blood ran out of his mouth and pooled on the floor beneath him.

  Taran rolled off the dead wolf, groaning in pain and exhaustion as he lay on his back on the cold, hard floor. He heard the bedroom door creak. It flew open as Lark ran into the den.

  “Taran! Taran—oh God, you’re bleeding, honey, you’re bleeding,” she babbled, skidding to a stop and kneeling beside him. She kept babbling, but he didn’t hear anything after she called him “honey”.

  She smelled fantastic, of apple shampoo and the girly stuff she put on her skin; even her fear smelled good to him. Her hands warmed him as she ran them over his face and his chest and down to his leg—the knife had gone in the outside of his left thigh, missing his femoral artery and his quad, and it hadn’t been in there long enough for the silver to do much damage. The dark stain on his jeans stopped spreading.

  He started to sit up.

  “Don’t move.” She knelt over him, her long hair falling in his face. He decided he could stay like that for a bit longer.

  “I called the cops,” she said, stroking his face.

  “Lark, I am the cops,” he said with a tired smile.

  Then he noticed her shaking hands, one on his face and one on his chest, and her pallid face and red, puffy eyes. He pushed her hands away and sat up.

  “Hey,” he said in surprise, “hey, come on, it’s okay. I’m not that hurt.” She started to cry and buried her face in his shoulder. He gathered her in his arms across his lap—avoiding the bleeding thigh—and shushed her, murmuring words of comfort. He ran his hands through her hair and stroked her back while she sobbed, and he lost himself for a few moments in the feel and the scent of her. If the only way he could hold her like this was on the floor with a knife wound in his thigh and a dead werewolf next to them, so be it. He wished the sirens weren’t so close.

  A sweet ache of pride and longing flooded him as he hugged her and rocked her back and forth. She’d been through one traumatic night already, only for someone to attack her again and invade her home, and she didn’t go stark fucking hysterical. She stayed out of his way and called the cops, and now she worried about him, not about her busted door or the dead wolf.

  He looked up to see a small knot of people in varying states of dress standing in the open doorway, staring at them. He started to say something to the neighbors when two uniformed wolves pushed their way into the crowd, followed by two EMTs with a stretcher.

  “Coming through, let us through please,” said the second officer through the door. “Please, folks, everyone go back to your apartments. We need to talk to the folks in here. Thank you,” he finished as the neighbors drifted back to their own units, speculating on the cause and nature of the disturbance and the very large guy on the floor holding Lark in his lap.

  He tuned the neighbors out and turned his attention to the officers, one of whom said, “Excuse me, ma’am? Detective?”

  Lark mumbled something about washing her face and fled to her room.

  Taran showed his badge to one of the officers, whose name was Hinojosa, and gave his statement. He recounted almost everything; he left out the part about sitting in the cul-de-sac for three hours, saying he’d arrived at the same time as the two wolves.

  “He pulled a silver knife on you?” Officer Hinojosa asked with raised eyebrows.

  “Yeah, that one there, sticking out his back,” Taran replied.

  “Pussy,” the cop sneered.

  The EMTs wanted him on the stretcher and into an ambulance, but since neither was a wolf and they didn’t have a tranq gun, they couldn’t make him do it. He let them help him stand up—he knew he couldn’t do it alone—and he agreed to let them look at his thigh.

  Lark came out of the bedroom with her hair
pulled back in a ponytail. She flinched a little, uncertainly, when he put his hand out to—what? Hug her? Stroke her face? Kiss her in front of the cops and the EMTs? Their moment of intimacy had passed, and he would deal with it.

  He hated dealing with it.

  “I’m going to let these guys look at my leg,” he told her quietly. “You talk to the officers. When you’re done, pack enough clothes and stuff to be gone for a few days, maybe a week.”

  “Why? Where am I going?”

  “My place.” She started to argue. “Lark, I’m not discussing it with you. You can’t stay here, they may try again. I need you where I can protect you and know you’re safe.”

  “But I don’t want to get in the way,” she said fretfully, crossing her arms and hunching her shoulders, “or cramp your style or anything,”

  “I don’t have a style. Or anything. I have five bedrooms and I only use one. Talk to the cops, then pack.”

  “Taran? Dude, what the fuck happened?”

  Taran turned in surprise at the sound of Denardo’s voice. Too tired to reprimand a beta rookie for calling him dude, he recounted the evening’s events before he let the EMTs do a quick repair job in the bathroom.

  He returned to the den to hear Denardo complimenting Lark on her composure, which she seemed to appreciate. Taran had noted her composure, but he didn’t compliment her.

  He never complimented her, he mused.

  “Hey, Danny,” he said loudly, “how’d you know I was over here?”

  “When Lark called it in—” the beta put his hand on her shoulder as he said her name, and Taran very consciously refrained from growling, “—she told the dispatcher who you were. I was at the precinct when we heard about an officer down. You going to the hospital now?”

  “No,” he said shortly. “Don’t need to. He missed the important parts.” You could pump a beta with whiskey and speed, but you couldn’t make him a decent knife fighter. “They gave me an antibiotic shot. I’ll just stay off it a day or so.” He couldn’t protect her from a hospital bed. He’d feel like shit for a couple days, but he’d recover shortly.