One Night With the Shifter

by Theresa Meyers

  Jess laughed despite herself. “I’ll bet. So, if I’m little Red Riding Hood, does that make you the Big Bad Wolf?”

  He leaned in, his muscular shoulder brushing against her, his mouth brushing against the skin just below her ear. “Only if you want me to be.” The rumble of his voice and the warmth of his breath against her skin caused her body to spark with awareness of him.

  Jess turned, putting her face just inches from his. Lord, the man could kiss. The temptation alone made her lips tingle. “Where exactly are we going with this, Ty?”

  The color in his eyes deepened, going from dark chocolate to espresso in the space of a heartbeat. “Wherever you want.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “Who says I’m not?”

  His hands slipped around her waist and brought her up against him, the heat of his body searing straight through their clothes. Jess’s skin tightened at the sensation with anticipation and suddenly she found his warm, coaxing mouth on hers. Luring her in, making her crave more than just a hot stolen kiss. Ty Grayson did something to her on every level. Mentally, emotionally, physically. There was just something about him she found utterly irresistible. Jess sank easily into the sensual haze that blotted out everything not related to the man kissing her.

  “Looks like you don’t need the coffee after all.” Crawford’s voice was like a telephone ringing, jarring her back to reality. Ty might be a man. But he was also a Were. Jess abruptly pulled away from Ty and smoothed her hands over her slacks.

  Without apology, Crawford handed her the cup of coffee. “Thank you,” she mumbled, bringing the hot cup up to her lips, grateful for the interruption. Steam spiraled up from the opening in the white plastic lid, bringing with it the fragrant aroma of freshly brewed coffee, hot and strong. Jess took a deep inhale to help her focus on something other than Ty. She could feel him pulsating beside her, his annoyance at Crawford coming off him in waves of heat.

  Crawford patently ignored him, turning his full attention on Jess. “Since you missed your doctor appointment, I don’t suppose you’d consider seeing one of our doctors?”

  Jess nearly choked on her sip of hot coffee. “Vampires have doctors?”

  Crawford grinned. “Some of the best.”

  “I’m not sure it’s the best idea.” She shifted uneasily from foot to foot.

  “I’d like you to at least give it a shot,” Ty said softly. Jess glanced at him and saw the concern in his face creating fine lines around his eyes. “You fell pretty hard when I took out that reiver who was trying to abduct you. I’d like to make sure you and the baby are okay.”

  His worry touched Jess on a whole other level than physical attraction. Ty had that base covered in spades, but once again, just like he’d done at the bar, just like he’d done when the vampire had taken her, he’d been willing to fling himself into the path of danger in order to protect her at any cost. If he’d done it only after he’d discovered she was pregnant, Jess could have chalked it up to being worried merely about the baby. But he hadn’t. Ty had been this way from the first hour they’d met and she suspected he was this way through and through.

  A warm heat blossomed in her chest and she gave Ty a smile in return. “If you think it’s a good idea. I’m willing to try it.”

  “Dr. Chamberlin-Stefanos is fantastic,” Ty added. “You’ll like her. The first time I came here, she was the one who knew how to help me out when I was sick.”

  Ty struggled not to let the bitterness he felt into his tone. Coming to the Cascade Clan, asking for assistance from Raina and Slade or anyone else from the Wenatchee Were Pack, was really an option of last resort. As a general rule he didn’t trust either of the groups, but he did trust certain individuals who’d proven themselves worthy of it. Achilles Stefanos was one, and his wife, the good doctor, was the other.

  The truth was Ty was worried sick about Jess and the baby. Even if the fall couldn’t be helped, it had still been hard enough to justify his concern. The minute she’d opened her eyes in the forest, something had taken hold of him that surpassed a Mesmer. And Ty realized that Jess was his lifeline to sanity. Without her there was no reason to keep building the community of a pack. It wouldn’t provide him with what he truly sought: someone he could matter to, and make a difference for—like her and his unborn child.

  Crawford had screwed his eyes tight and was now opening them. “Achilles says he’ll make sure everything is taken care of as far as visiting with the doc once we get there.” He glanced at Ty. “And he wants to talk to you about Eris.”

  “Who’s Eris?” A measure of curiosity tempered with an undercurrent of jealousy colored Jess’s voice.

  “She’s the ancient goddess of chaos.”

  Jess just stared. “Wait. I know I hit my head hard, but now you want me to believe that not only are there vampires and Werewolves, now there’s gods and goddesses, too?”

  Crawford took a nonchalant sip of his coffee. “Hey, I don’t really care if you believe it one way or the other, it’s no skin off my nose, but she is who she is. A nasty piece of work. Thrives on misery and confusion, pain and suffering like it was beer. She’ll do anything to anyone to bring more chaos into the world.”

  Jess rested more fully against Ty’s chest. He resisted the urge to start kissing down the column of her neck.

  “Then why pick on a lone Were?”

  “’Cause my territory is smack in the middle between the reivers and the Cascade Clan.”

  She looked up at him, those baby blues of hers making him lose all concentration. “Reivers? Those the bad vampires?”

  Ty absently brushed his fingers through her hair, letting the warm silk of it slip over his skin. How could he possibly risk something so precious as Jess in a battle with a malicious goddess? It wasn’t a battle he could fight on his own. “Yeah. The ones who are causing trouble to please Eris.”

  “They don’t seriously think they can challenge the vampires in Seattle, do they?”

  “They’d like to think they can,” Crawford interjected.

  The ferry captain’s voice broke over the loudspeakers, announcing they were arriving in Seattle. Everyone trudged back to their vehicles.

  Jess crisscrossed her arms around her waist, trying to make herself as small as possible in the cramped space between the two very large men.

  “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes. The clan’s parking garage is just up off of Second,” Crawford murmured. The ferry bounced a little as it came to rest at the dock. All around them the cars started up their engines, preparing to disembark. A loud thump jolted the truck.

  Jess jumped, staring over her shoulder through the back slider window of the cab. “What was that?”

  “Sounds like the kids are waking up from their nap,” Crawford said with a smile that revealed slightly longer canines.

  “Watch where you’re flashing those fangs. I think you just about gave the couple in the car next to us a heart attack,” Ty muttered.

  Crawford chuckled. “Good. It’ll give them something to write home about instead of just, ‘Hey, we went to see them throw fish at Pike Place Market.’ Take a left when you get up to the intersection.”

  True to his word, it took only a few minutes to reach the clan’s parking garage, which was a good thing considering how much thumping, bumping and muffled noises were coming from beneath the canopy.

  “You can park anywhere on level four. It’s secured parking.”

  Ty pulled into a spot and he and Crawford both exited quickly, rounding to the back of the vehicle, leaving Jess to scoot to the edge of her seat and slip out of the truck.

  Ty glanced at her. “You need to stay inside until we get them out.”

  “How do you want to get them inside?” Ty asked Crawford, his key poised on the lock for the cover.

  “Headlock?” Crawf
ord offered.

  “Very funny.”

  “Well, now that they’re awake, they should be easy enough to glamour, especially since it’s easiest to control the weak willed. Go ahead and unlock it.”

  Ty mentally prepared to shift just in case the situation required it. The Thralls had not managed to undo their bindings but were thrashing about all the same, like fish in the bottom of a boat.

  “Screw the glamour.” Annoyance underscored Crawford’s tone. “I’m just going to transport their asses to our security area.” He grabbed one by the shoulder, then evaporated into a twist of dark smoke, taking the first Thrall with him. A minute later he returned. He wiped at the trickle of dark black liquid at the corner of his mouth.

  “Problems?” Ty tried to keep the humor out of his voice, but he couldn’t. Crawford wasn’t as big and badass as he liked to pretend. Ty grabbed the other guy, holding him at arm’s length as the kid wriggled.

  “He got in a lucky shot by head butting backward into my jaw. Give me the other one and let’s get this done.”

  Crawford grabbed the kid’s arm and suddenly the kid melted into nothing but mist in Ty’s hands. He didn’t understand how the vampires did it, but then he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  He went round to the passenger side of the truck and opened the door. “Now it’s secure enough you can get out.” He offered Jess a hand to help her down.

  Jess batted his hand away. “They were tied up. It wasn’t as if they were going to eat me.”

  “I don’t know about that. After all, I don’t trust myself not to want to eat you. Why would I trust any vampire or Thrall around you?”

  “So your plan is to stick me in a bubble until the baby is born?”

  Ty smiled at her barb. “You know, that’s not a half-bad idea. Thanks.”

  Jess smacked him on the arm. “Don’t even think about it, Grayson. I was getting out of locked rooms by the time I was four. My brothers never had a prayer, and neither do you.”

  Truer words had never been spoken, Ty thought.

  Crawford rematerialized at the end of the truck. “You two ready to roll?”

  Ty slipped his hand around Jess’s and together they followed Crawford through the maze of the parking garage to a very ordinary-looking gray metal door. “What’s behind door number one?” Ty gibed.

  “An elevator,” Crawford said, deadpan.

  It made Jess giggle. They were so intent on one-upping each other that neither seemed to have noticed she’d taken the truck keys. Jess tried to memorize every landmark she could on the way to the elevator so she could get back. She hadn’t been kidding when she’d told him he’d have no luck keeping her on lockdown if she didn’t want to be.

  At sixteen she’d been the bane of Davis’s existence. No matter how many security measures he put into place, Jess had a means around them. Her delinquent phase had only petered out when her brothers had stopped trying to keep her on lockdown and confined the meddling in her life to lectures.

  Crawford opened the door with a key and they stepped inside the elevator car. He pulled a key card from his pocket and slid it through the reader slot by the button panel. “Next floor, vampires, medical units and clan offices. Going down,” Crawford said as the door slid shut.

  “You really get a kick out of being a vampire, don’t you?” Jess asked.

  Ty was surprised by such a direct question. Clearly she wasn’t afraid of Crawford, which made him both glad and agitated at the same time. She didn’t know the kind of terror and damage the wrong kind of vampire could cause. The confines of the small elevator seemed even more claustrophobic to Ty with Crawford in the space. Ty hated these damn things.

  “You ever get tired of hanging out with the Weres, you can always come back here and I’ll be happy to show you,” Crawford said.

  Ty bristled, straining to keep his wolf form in control by forcing his mind to think logically. First, wolfing out in an elevator would be just plain stupid. He’d chance crushing Jess. Second, he didn’t need to sic the whole of clan security on his ass the minute he walked into the atrium. He needed to be calm. Collected. He could always kick Crawford’s ass later.

  The elevator doors opened to reveal the atrium in all its brilliantly lit glory. Jess’s mouth dropped open. “This is all underground?”

  Crawford puffed up, his expression superior and manner smug. “We’ve managed to create an entire complex beneath the streets of Seattle. Once Ty and I have been to our security briefing and you’ve seen the doc, maybe I can give you a tour.”

  Ty shouldered his way between Crawford and Jess. He definitely was going to have to kick Crawford’s ass, but for now he had to outmaneuver the vampire who was trying to muscle in on his mate. “Come on, Jess, I know you want to see Riley.”

  Her entire face lit up. “Yes!” She slipped her hand eagerly into his.

  Ty glanced back over his shoulder, giving Crawford a now-who’s-got-the-girl look. “See you in an hour, Crawford.”

  A wall of dark smoke blocked their path. Ty drew up short, pulling Jess behind him so he stood between her and whoever was joining the party. The solid form of Achilles materialized out of the particles. “Not so fast. We’ve got a major problem. You three come with me.”

  Chapter 12

  Jess understood instantly why no one told the big vampire blocking her path no. He was intimidating as hell. He seemed golden all over, from the color of his tan to the shade of his surfer hair.

  Crawford bowed, his fist and arm across his chest. “Commander.”

  Ty stepped forward. “Achilles, this is my girlfriend, Jessica Brierly. Jess, this is the security leader for the Cascade Clan, Achilles Stefanos.”

  Achilles gave her a polite smile that didn’t reach his intense green eyes. “So you’re the reason they’re in an uproar.”

  Ty’s hands curled protectively around her shoulders. “What’s going on?”

  “Follow me.” Ty took her hand in his and they fell into step behind Achilles, crossing the atrium and heading through a set of double doors into a labyrinth of brick hallways. The only light came from fixtures overhead or random purpled squares of glass set into the ceiling in big sections. The musty odor of damp wood and brick filled her nose. The farther they went into the warren of passageways, the more confusing it became to Jess. “Where are we, exactly?”

  “A story or more beneath the city,” Achilles answered. “These are the original streets circa 1889, after the Great Seattle Fire came through and leveled all the wooden buildings in the area.”

  Jess glanced at the empty stone storefronts, even a bank with the rusted-out remains of what had once been a large safe. “But this is all stone down here.”

  Achilles nodded. “They raised the street level because the water table went up at high tides. Built walls straight up from the street level and turned the upper stories into the ground floors for their shops. This became the Underground.”

  “But how did you get here?”

  Achilles stopped walking for just one moment and turned to look at her, the pool of yellowish light from overhead throwing his features into shadow. “We’ve always been here. We just saw an opportunity to build a Seattle of our own down here.”

  They turned down a hallway that terminated in a pale army-green metal door. “Our security center is this way.”

  Jess was shocked when she walked into the room. After walking past antique storefronts and rusted-out antiques piled up here and there, she didn’t expect to see a bank of flat-screen monitors and high-tech equipment staffed by several more big vampire types like Crawford and Achilles. In the center of a room was a large metal 1950s conference table that looked as though it had been salvaged from a military storeroom.

  “What’s the situation, Commander?” Crawford seemed much more reserved and by the book whe
n in front of his superior officer.

  “Eris is on the move.” Achilles nodded toward a muted television screen. Images flashed across it of a news conference, a yellow ticker ribbon along the bottom on the screen proclaiming that a kidnapping had occurred.

  Crawford whistled long and low. “This is bad. You’ve got the whole town jazzed up.”

  “What?” Jess asked. It looked like just an average news conference to her about some missing kids.

  “She’s up to her old tricks again. Used to be civil wars and famine, but she can do much more damage these days with a little well-placed panic in the media.” Achilles grabbed a television controller and flicked on the volume. The blonde on the screen, who looked like a polished Reese Witherspoon clone, sported a well-pressed powder-blue suit that brought out the blue in her eyes and made her platinum hair shimmer and shine.

  “These kidnappings and killings by this extremist group can only be considered terrorist in nature,” she said matter-of-factly. “We’re certain that they’ve been using the outdoor survival school as a base of operations for some time, using their connections with local military to brainwash and extract information from the recruits sent there to learn elite outdoor survival techniques.”

  * * *

  Ty’s skin bristled at the surprising reference to his facility, but he kept a tight rein on his emotions, not wanting to chance a shift in form. He clamped his jaw tight, his teeth gritting together.

  “Conniving bitch,” Crawford growled.

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Achilles agreed. The last time Ty had seen this room he’d been a captive brought here by Donovan and Raina as they tried to convince him to help them thwart Eris’s plans. He’d worked with them only to spare the Wenatchee Pack certain destruction, and in the end it had been he who’d paid the price.

  Jess glanced at Ty, putting a hand on his arm. Her touch more than anything soothed the rage simmering beneath his skin, threatening to explode. As it was, his canines extended, pressing into his bottom lip.

  “Anyone who’s ever met you knows that’s an outright lie,” she muttered.