by Zoe Chant
Max was still sitting up when she got back, thank God, although he was leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to take off your shirt.”
Oh, that sounded—Shoshanna was glad that her skin was too dusky to show a blush.
Max smiled slightly, just a twitch at the corner of his mouth, so she knew he was thinking it too. But he didn’t make any kind of suggestive comment. Not that she thought he was up for that.
At least the smile meant she knew he was awake.
Shoshanna unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a well-muscled chest streaked with blood. She noted the places where his skin had split, along his ribs. They were healing pretty well already, she thought. But when she ran her hands lightly over his side, away from the wound, he made a choked-off noise.
Cracked ribs, maybe? She bit her lip and kept going.
He had cuts and bruises all over his torso. But there was nothing that looked like internal bleeding, at least not as far as Shoshanna could tell.
She knew he’d probably be fine. Anything that didn’t kill a shifter outright was almost certain to heal eventually. But the way he was silently letting her do whatever she wanted to him bothered her. And the only things he’d said so far were his name and I don’t know.
“Max?” she tried, keeping her voice light.
His eyes flickered open.
“How do you feel? Do you think you’re in danger?”
His eyes suddenly opened all the way. His pupils were still blown wide, even in the harsh light of her bathroom. “Danger,” he rasped.
Alarmed, Shoshanna noticed him moving as though he was going to get up. She quickly hopped into the bathtub with him and took hold of his shoulders, looking him in the eye. “What danger?” she asked urgently. “Is there danger right now? Did someone follow you?”
His forehead creased in a frown, as though he hadn’t thought of that until just now. “I don’t know. I—God, I can’t think.”
“Did you hit your head?” He had an impressive black eye and a bruise on his cheekbone. She ran her hand through his damp blond hair, searching for blood or an obvious lump. Despite herself, her fingers lingered at the nape of his neck.
“It’s harder to think when you do that,” he murmured.
She snatched her hand back. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” His eyes were drifting closed.
“Hey.” She took the tone she was used to using with Kevin when he was too caught up in some ridiculous joke to listen to her. Max’s eyes snapped open, and for the first time, it looked like they really focused. “You can’t fall asleep. You have to tell me what happened to you.”
Maybe if he went back to the beginning, she could figure out if it was likely that he’d been followed. If there might be men outside right now, waiting to—where was her phone?
She found it in her pocket, thumbed open Kevin’s number again. It was twice as important that she stay safe, now, because her mate was here with her and he’d been hurt already.
Max’s gaze had gone fuzzy again. “I can’t remember,” he said. “I was in the car.”
“Okay,” she said. “Did you get into an accident?” Maybe there wasn’t anything to worry about after all?
He nodded, then winced. “Steering wheel didn’t work.”
The steering wheel didn’t work? Was he speaking literally, or had he just lost control of the car for some other reason? The roads weren’t anywhere near icing over, yet, and it hadn’t even been raining. And if the steering wheel had stopped working, was it malfunction, or sabotage?
He didn’t look like the kind of person who would drive a broken-down car. His suit was bloody and torn, but it was nice. But why would someone sabotage his car in the first place?
“Brakes, too,” he added. “I couldn’t stop. The car went into the river.”
That sounded like sabotage. “Who did that to you?” she asked urgently. “Are they coming here?”
His eyes focused again immediately. “No. I won’t let anyone come here. I promise, Shoshanna.”
It was the most coherent he’d been so far. His eyes were locked with hers, and for a moment, bizarrely, she believed him.
Then she came back to reality. Right now, he wasn’t in any shape to stop anyone going anywhere. “Who was it?” she asked him again.
His eyes had gone fuzzy again. “Elite,” he said, sounding far away. “Elite Enterprises.”
Then his face blanched even whiter than it had been. “Sorry,” he said, his diction suddenly clipped and precise. “I’m going to pass out.”
And then he did. Shoshanna caught him as he slumped, and looked down at the dirty, blood-soaked, unconscious lion in her arms.
“I should’ve known,” she muttered. “There was no way my mate was going to be normal.”
She resisted the urge to press her lips to his hair, and set about cleaning him up.
***
An hour and a half later, Shoshanna had made sure that Max was clean, dry, and dressed in some of Kevin’s pajamas that he’d left here the last time they had an Insomnia Sucks, Might As Well Get Drunk And Watch Awful Reality TV night.
Shoshanna had hesitated about where to put him. She technically had a guest room, but it was really Kevin’s room, and it felt...wrong, to put her mate in that room. That room was for her other family. Her mate should be in her room.
She finally went with her instincts. It was safer to have Max in her own room, anyway.
She wasn’t sure if she felt safer having him to protect her, or if she thought he’d be safer if she was there to protect him. Either or both, maybe. If tranquilizer-wielding men charged through the door, they’d be together, and that was what was important.
So her mate was asleep with his head on her pillow, flavoring the room with his sharply masculine scent. Her own soap and shampoo had done almost nothing to mask it, and when she thought of how the sheets would smell like him even after he got up, she shivered.
Having him in her bed was stirring up all sorts of instincts.
Shoshanna reminded herself that he was hurt, and would not appreciate her shaking him awake and suggesting that they take off some clothes.
It didn’t help that she’d already seen his entire naked body. So she knew that in addition to being tall and broad, he was smoothly muscled all over, leashed strength apparent in every inch of his body. And that he was—ahem—very well-endowed.
So Shoshanna was keeping herself firmly on the opposite side of the bed, on top of the covers, fully-dressed, with her laptop in her lap.
The laptop was distracting enough, as it turned out. The second she’d gotten Max settled, she’d pulled it out to look up Elite Enterprises. They were a small pharmaceuticals company based in Hartford. She couldn’t find any indication of why they’d sabotage a man’s car and leave him for dead in a river.
She couldn’t find any indication of why they’d sabotage a lion shifter’s car, either. But the fact that they were a pharmaceuticals company caught her attention.
Shoshanna had experience with people trying to kidnap, hold onto, and experiment on shifters. The hardest part was figuring out how to subdue them and tie them down. Small shifters could get out of bonds, cells, and handcuffs just by changing shape, and large shifters could break a lot of things. And people, if they had to.
And there weren’t a lot of drugs that worked on shifters. Dr. Benson, who’d been the scientist working in the lab where she’d been held, had developed one. But he hadn’t been the sort of person to share his work with anyone.
He’d explained to her once, gleefully, that everything in that lab was his own design, and only he and Carl Hendricks, CFO of Rowland Global Solutions, would be getting a share of the fantastic profits that would be coming out of all of these shifters’ suffering.
Maybe Elite Enterprises was developing something similar.
Max had been incoherent and woozy when she found him, even though he hadn’t had a head injury. His pupils
had been enormous, even in the bright light indoors. He’d slept through her washing the blood and river water from his body and moving him to her bed. Had he been drugged?
Did that mean Elite Enterprises knew he was a shifter?
And why did they know that? What had he been doing to get their attention?
Shoshanna looked over at Max in frustration. Forget waking him up to get him naked, she wanted to wake him up and make him tell her what was going on.
Sighing, she went back to her laptop. By the time Max woke up, she was going to know everything there was to know about Elite Enterprises.
***
Max woke up slowly, aware that he was in a soft, warm bed, and that he was surrounded by a delicious scent.
He didn’t want to open his eyes, because this had to be a dream. Any minute now, his alarm would go off, informing him that it was 5:00 AM. Time to start working; the Asian market would have been busy overnight. Alexandra was in Hong Kong, and he needed to call her and check up on what she’d been accomplishing.
Minutes passed. His alarm didn’t go off.
Slowly, carefully, he opened his eyes.
The light sent a lance of pain through his head. His normal low-grade headache was worse than usual this morning. The sleep deprivation must be getting to him.
Then he noticed the quality of the light. It was midmorning at least. He was late.
Max jerked fully awake, making an aborted motion to sit upright. Pain exploded in his body, leaving him prone...and suddenly aware that he wasn’t in his own bed.
He was in a pleasant-looking bedroom, in what seemed to be an older house. Curtains hung at the window, one set gauzy and drawn, letting the light filter in, and another outer set heavy and dark, but open. The furniture looked very...New England.
The bed was extremely comfortable, and easily big enough for him, which with his height wasn’t always the case. And it was occupied.
The source of the delicious scent, he realized, was his mate. Shoshanna Ross was asleep next to him. She was curled on top of the covers fully-dressed, breathing softly, her laptop resting on the bed between them.
Max’s eyes traced her face greedily. He’d only ever seen her in person once.
She’d been asleep then, too, but that had been due to a tranquilizer dart. She’d been thin and pale, pinched and exhausted from so long in captivity, and none of her personality had been visible on her unconscious face.
Max had known immediately that this was his mate, lying on the floor of the lab funded by his company’s money. He’d removed himself as quickly as he could, because he hadn’t wanted to risk her waking up and recognizing him in turn.
So he’d only had the barest moment to look at her. Still, the sight of her had burned itself into his brain; he knew he’d recognize her anywhere in the world, no matter how far away she was or how brief the glimpse. But once he’d started his one-man campaign against shifter experimentation, he’d thought that he’d never get the chance to look his fill.
But now she’d seen him. She knew they were mates. He could remember speaking to her as though it was a dream. He’d been cold and in pain, but all of that had slid away when he looked at her.
Now, he could see that she looked much better than the last time he’d seen her. No longer locked away from the sun, her skin was a dusky light brown. Her hair fell in glossy black curls across her pillow. And she wasn’t thin anymore—she’d filled out into what he guessed were her naturally generous curves.
Her face was relaxed in sleep, not slack with tranquilizer like she’d been on the floor of the lab. Max ached to reach out and touch the curve of her cheek, the snub chin, trace her elegant nose and her full lips...
He shook himself out of it. Now was not the time to be overwhelmed by his mate’s beauty. Not when—
When—
Memory crashed down on him. The meeting with Elite. The car wreck. Tom, dead in the passenger’s seat. His slow, painful, instinct-driven crawl to Shoshanna’s front door.
He must have been drugged. Goring had put something into his espresso; that’s why it had tasted so odd. He’d never thought to guard against something like that before. It was hard to drug a shifter. And even in his search for companies interested in shifters, he hadn’t expected poisoned coffee.
He should have had Tom drive him. A clear head might have been able to stop the sabotaged car without such a disastrous crash. He hadn’t realized the danger, and now Tom was dead.
Max forced the guilt down. He couldn’t reach into the past and change his own decisions, but he could be more intelligent, more wary, going forward. No one else was going to be hurt or killed by Elite Enterprises because of him.
Especially not Shoshanna.
Slowly, he shifted position. Pain settled into his bones and his temples, and crackled along his side and in his right leg. He’d never been this badly injured before; it was hard to even move.
It wasn’t enough to completely immobilize him, though. He’d healed enough overnight to get up if he had to. With a surge of effort, he pushed himself up into a sitting position.
Next to him, in one quick motion, Shoshanna started awake.
Her eyes went to the door first, and then fixed on him. After a second, her shoulders relaxed from the tensed-up posture they’d taken when she awoke.
“Max,” she said. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”
Hearing his name in her mouth sent a thrill of desire through him. “Thank you.” He kept his voice steady. In order to get through this, he was going to be depending on the reserves of calm he’d built up throughout his entire life. He couldn’t let his resolve weaken, even in the face of his mate just woken up from sleep, warm and sweet-smelling.
And looking fearfully around the second she was awake, checking the door for intruders before she looked at him.
Max needed to protect her more than he needed to be with her. He kept that fact in the front of his mind. Protecting Shoshanna was the most important thing. Waking up to her scent every morning for the rest of his life, as much as the idea filled him with painful desire, was not.
“I apologize for appearing on your doorstep last night,” he began. “I’m grateful to you for helping me like you did.”
“Apology accepted.” Shoshanna’s voice was smooth and low, the sort of voice that could thrill a man’s ears. But her tone matched his own, more businesslike than anyone would expect from two people waking up in bed together. It was a relief. “And you’re welcome.”
“Unfortunately,” he continued, keeping his voice businesslike to match hers, “the same people who caused yesterday’s accident could still be coming for me. The safest thing would be for me to leave immediately.”
“You mean Elite Enterprises.” Shoshanna settled herself into a more relaxed posture, crossing her legs and pulling her ankles in.
Even though that position showed off her body in ways that sent interest thrumming through him, Max kept his eyes above her collarbone and his attention on the conversation. “How did you know that name?”
“You told me.” Her tone gentled slightly, almost imperceptibly. “Last night. It was the last thing you said before you passed out. Did you see if they followed you here?”
Max suppressed the uneasiness that came from not remembering what he’d said to her before passing out, and focused on her question instead. He thought about lying. Maybe if he implied that danger surrounded him, she would let him leave without protest.
But he couldn’t make her afraid in her own home. “No. And it’s now been a full day since I met with them. If they were tracking me once I got out of the car, they would have been here by now.”
Shoshanna relaxed minutely. “Okay. So what did happen? Why are they after you?”
“No.” Max shook his head, resolute. “If I told you, you’d be in more danger than you already are. There’s no reason to involve you in this. You could be seriously hurt or killed, and I will not be responsible for that.”
&n
bsp; Shoshanna was silent at that, frowning. He could see her thinking the situation through.
“I should leave as soon as possible,” he pressed on. “The faster I go, the safer you’ll be.”
That was a misstep; he could tell immediately as her head came up and her shoulders set. “No. You’re injured. You won’t be safe.”
“I’m a shifter,” he said with as much dryness as he could muster. “I’m already healing.”
“I can tell you’re in pain,” she objected. “A lot of pain.”
He looked down at himself. He was completely covered in a set of men’s sweatpants—where had she gotten them?—and there was almost no indication of where he was injured. “How?”
“The way you’re sitting. You’re stiff and you’re trying not to move. And...” She hesitated. “I just know. I know something’s wrong.”
Through the mate-bond was implied.
“I admit I’m still healing,” he said, trying to keep from thinking about that too hard. If their bond was that strong... “However, it’s nothing that should keep me off my feet. I can leave.”
“How?” she asked bluntly. “You crashed your car.”
“I’ll call a car service.”
He could call a helicopter if he wanted to, but that would likely be too much of a clue as to his identity.
“How?” she asked again. “You don’t have a phone.”
Annoyance rose in him. “Are you going to keep me captive?”
She looked guilty immediately, and he cursed himself for saying something that most likely made her remember her own captivity.
But then stubbornness rose up to cover the guilt on her face. “Are you going to insist on hurting yourself because you’re not smart enough to stick around and rest for a little while?”
That threw him. He didn’t know if anyone had ever accused him of not being smart.
“All right,” he said after a minute. “How about I demonstrate to you that I can stand up and walk without injuring myself further. Then will you allow me to leave?”
“Let’s see it.” Shoshanna crossed her arms and waited.