by Zoe Chant
Moving slowly, but making an effort to hide any hesitation or stiffness, Max eased himself out of bed.
When he stood up, a lance of pain went through his right leg. He gritted his teeth and endured it. He took one step—another—
Shoshanna was out of bed and by his side in an instant as he stumbled slightly.
“I’m fine,” he said to her, through clenched teeth.
“Oh, yeah, I can tell.” Her voice was dry as a desert.
Her breath washed over his neck as she spoke. Her arms were around him, her small, strong body tucked perfectly up against his side. He could feel the curve of her breasts, her hips...
No. He needed to get away before this became a problem.
“A limp isn’t going to be a problem if I’m calling a car to pick me up,” he told her. “After all, I only have to walk to the car, sit in it until I’m home, and then walk to my door. Hardly any stress at all.”
“And when those guys from Elite show up at your house?” she fired back. “Don’t tell me they have no idea who you are.”
“They won’t come to my house.” More to the point, they wouldn’t be coming to Max’s extra-secure penthouse suite in Manhattan. He doubted Elite had the resources to take him down when he wasn’t engaged in self-motivated moonlighting with only one security person—especially now that he was on his guard.
It made him want to take Shoshanna with him, put her in his penthouse surrounded by guards. But that would just make her a prisoner once again. Safer to leave immediately, before Elite realized she was connected to him at all.
“Of course they won’t.” Shoshanna rubbed her forehead. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re incredibly frustrating to talk to?”
“Not for many, many years.” Only his siblings, and only when they were young enough that their relationships were only personal, rather than professional.
Shoshanna dropped her hand and looked him in the eye. “Well, it sounds like there’s some catching up to do, then.”
* * *
It was inevitable, Shoshanna thought, that her mate would be stubborn, arrogant, and convinced that he was better off alone. Kevin would tell her that this was karmic revenge for all of the times she’d behaved exactly the same way to him.
It was fate, at least. And fate had saddled her with someone who could show her how irritating it was.
The thing was, Max was right. He was clearly caught up in something dangerous, or he wouldn’t have shown up injured on her front step. Elite Enterprises, or whoever had done that to him, could easily try again. If he left before they realized where he was, he could keep them away from her.
Part of Shoshanna was relieved that Max didn’t want her involved. Since she’d gotten out of the lab, she’d been determined that nothing like that would ever happen to her again. That was one of the reasons she’d started the PI business with Kevin—to learn the skills that she’d need to take care of herself. The easiest way to ensure her safety, though, was to stay away from dangerous situations like this.
Another part of her thrilled—quietly—at the fact that her mate wanted to protect her.
The biggest part, though, wanted to hit him over the head herself for being a stubborn idiot. They were mates. That meant that his problems were her problems. It was very noble of him to want to keep her out of it, but that wasn’t how this was supposed to work.
Shoshanna sighed internally. Her mate was noble, arrogant...and blond. Even if she hadn’t already seen his lion form, she’d have no trouble guessing what sort of shifter he was.
Lions. She was in for it. For the rest of her life, at that.
Fortunately, in this particular situation, she was pretty sure she knew how to get him to agree with her.
“Max,” she said, “how sure are you that Elite doesn’t know you’re here?”
He frowned. “I would’ve expected them to be here by now, if they knew. As I said, they’ve had plenty of time to show up.”
“Really?” she asked. “They sabotaged your car, right?”
He nodded. And swayed a little. Shoshanna narrowed her eyes. She was getting him back into this bed if she had to tie him to it.
Then she blushed. It was a good thing her skin was too dark for it to be noticeable, and it was a very good thing Max couldn’t read her mind, because that mental image had gotten very pornographic, very fast.
“So,” she continued quickly, “they were trying to keep it quiet. They didn’t shoot you in the middle of the day on a crowded street or anything.”
He chuckled, like that idea was too ridiculous for words. “No.”
“So maybe they don’t want to stage a frontal assault on someone’s residence,” Shoshanna suggested. “Maybe they’re waiting until you leave. Maybe they’re waiting until they can confirm who lives here. They could still show up after you’re gone.”
That sobered him. He looked her in the eye. “Are you worried that that might happen?”
“Yes,” Shoshanna said honestly.
She wanted Max to stay for his own sake. Because one look at him was enough to show anyone that he could be knocked down with a feather right now. She wasn’t letting him leave while he was this vulnerable.
But she also knew that if he did leave, she’d be living in shifted form, jumping at shadows, checking the doors and windows. She already wanted to call Kevin and tell him to forget the job, get his butt back from Boston, and come stay with her until this Elite business was sorted out.
Neither of them was going to be all right alone. Which, if Max wasn’t such a stubborn arrogant idiot lion, he would’ve seen already.
“Staying here longer isn’t going to create any more of a trail,” she pointed out to him. “If you’re inside recovering, they can’t find you. Take one day to get stronger. I’ll feel safer with you here.”
Again, that last statement held his attention like nothing else. “I’ll do everything in my power to keep them away from you after I leave.” He made it sound like everything in his power was pretty formidable.
“I believe you.” And she did. “But my partner’s away right now and I don’t want to be alone with those guys out there, maybe knowing where I live. I’ve had...” She hesitated.
This was hard to say, even vaguely, even to her mate.
“I’ve had some bad experiences. I get anxious easily.”
His hand lifted. Shoshanna watched it—he almost reached out to her, made an aborted movement to, what, touch her shoulder? Her cheek?
But he stopped himself before he did it. His hand clenched into a fist, and then fell back at his side.
“All right.” His voice was thick with some kind of suppressed emotion. “All right. I’ll stay. Though I know you’re doing this to try and keep me out of danger.”
“I’m telling the truth,” she said.
“I know that, too.”
He looked very tired all of a sudden. “How about you come back to bed?” she suggested.
...And blushed again.
Max raised his eyebrows, and she hurried to keep talking, trying to erase the unintentional implications. “I looked up Elite last night while you were asleep.” She reached for her laptop. “We could go over what I found out together.”
He hesitated for a long moment, and then he said, “All right.”
Shoshanna relaxed. He was staying.
He wouldn’t accept her help coming back to bed, of course, but he didn’t hurt himself any further as far as she could see. After a few minutes, they were sitting up against the headboard together, looking at her laptop.
They weren’t touching, and they were both on top of the blankets, but they were close enough that Shoshanna could feel Max’s body heat through the borrowed sweats. Even sitting down, he was noticeably taller than she was. She wanted to lean into him, tuck herself against his side.
She shook herself out of it and brought up her browser.
“I don’t know what you know about them,” she said to Max, “but here’s
the website I was looking at.”
Max studied the page. “All of that information is accurate as far as it goes. However, what it doesn’t say here is that they’re developing drugs that can be used on shifters. That was part of the reason I crashed the car—they drugged my coffee.”
“That’s what I figured, considering how you were acting last night.” Shoshanna kept her tone light to hide the chill that went through her body. Anti-shifter drugs were literally her worst nightmare. Please, please let Elite not have followed Max to her house.
“I...apologize for that.” Max’s voice was stiff. When Shoshanna looked over at him, he was blushing.
It was faint. Just a hint of pink over his cheekbones. But he was pale enough that it was very noticeable. And it was a nice distraction from her fear, that was for sure.
“Why?” Shoshanna raised her eyebrows at him. “You didn’t say anything embarrassing. You were just a little out of it.”
“I apologize for not being in control of my faculties when I met you.” Max still sounded stiff and uncomfortable. And like he should be wearing a business suit instead of Kevin’s borrowed sweatpants. “I would have preferred to be in command of myself. And you shouldn’t have had to...to take care of me. As you did.”
That hurt him to admit, she could tell.
Stubborn, arrogant, a loner, and hated losing control. She really had met her match. Kevin was going to laugh his ass off.
Still, she couldn’t bring herself to get on Max’s case about it. Not when he was so obviously, uncomfortably sincere.
“I was happy to take care of you.” It came out even more gently than she’d intended. “You’re my mate. Who else should be doing it?”
He shook his head. It was funny—sitting here in her bed, barefoot and his hair mussed, tired and injured, he took on an air of authority. Like he was pulling confidence and command over his body, as though it was a second set of clothes.
“No one needs to take care of me. I take care of things on my own. For myself, and for many, many others.”
“Then your life’s about to change, mister,” she told him. “Because I don’t sit around and get waited on by anybody.”
Her attention caught on “many, many others.” What did that mean? She didn’t know anything about him, she realized suddenly. He hadn’t said anything about his job, his family, or why Elite Enterprises was so interested in him—if it was just because he was a shifter, or if there was any other reason.
“I don’t wait on anybody.” He sounded insulted, and despite her sudden uneasy curiosity, Shoshanna stifled a grin. “I’m simply accustomed to being in charge.”
“Well, you’re not in charge in this house.” And he’d better accept that, or they were going to have a problem.
“That much is becoming clear.”
The authority from a few minutes ago was fading into a disgruntled air. It was...cute.
Shoshanna had only met Max a few hours ago, but she already knew enough to never, ever say that to him out loud.
Okay. Enough silly distractions. They had a genuine problem on their hands, and hopefully Max could help them solve it with some information. And she could satisfy her curiosity at the same time.
“So why was Elite after you? Were you just a shifter that happened to be in the way, or what?”
Max sobered immediately. The disgruntlement disappeared, replaced by focused attention. “I was investigating them. I’d suspected that they were up to something, that they might be targeting shifters. I had a meeting with one of their employees to discuss something else, but...they must have worked out what I was doing.”
That disturbed him, she could tell.
“I’m not sure they knew for certain I’m a shifter,” he continued. “They could have used the drug simply to cover all the possibilities.”
“What happens when they find your car?” Shoshanna asked. “Would the crash have killed a human?”
Max’s eyes closed briefly. “It did.”
“I beg your pardon?” Without her permission, Shoshanna’s voice went faint.
“I had a passenger.” He opened his eyes, looked at her. His expression gave nothing away, but she knew, she knew, this was causing him pain. “A man I’d hired to help with the investigation. He was killed in the crash.”
“Oh, God.” Shoshanna took a deep breath. “Should we call the police?”
Max shook his head. “The drug’s out of my system by now. The coffee cup it was in was left at the shop and undoubtedly washed. Whoever sabotaged my car would certainly have worn gloves. And I’m willing to bet that by now, Elite has found the car and taken away any evidence...including Tom’s body. They didn’t strike me as an operation likely to leave loose ends.”
Tom. Elite had killed a man named Tom.
Determination welled up inside Shoshanna. This wasn’t acceptable. These people had killed a man. They’d tried to kill her mate. They’d left him hurt, drugged, and alone.
Yes, Shoshanna was afraid of what might happen to her if Elite got hold of her. She’d do anything rather than be captured again, held in a lab like the one run by Rowland Global Solutions.
But Rowland Global Solutions hadn’t gotten away with it in the end. And Elite Enterprises wasn’t going to get away with it, either. Not if she had one thing to say about it.
“We’re going to figure this out,” she told Max.
He shook his head firmly. “Shoshanna, no. I told you. It’s too dangerous for you to get involved.”
“Then it’s also too dangerous for you to get involved.” She met his burning golden eyes, willing him to understand that he shouldn’t be taking risks right now.
“I can take care of myself.” He was straightening up again, infusing his words with that absolute authority she’d seen a few minutes ago.
Well, that might work on random folks on the street, but it wasn’t going to work on her. “Says the guy who showed up bleeding and drugged on my doorstep last night,” she fired back. “You need help.”
“My last help was killed.” His voice was quieter now, the arrogance fading away, although the determined light in his eyes remained. “I won’t get you killed, Shoshanna. That will not happen.”
“So what happens when you get killed?” she asked him. “And I could have prevented it, and I have to feel guilty for the rest of my life because I sat around and did nothing? Are you going to let your mate spend the rest of her life alone?”
“I’d rather you were alive.” His eyes were fierce.
Too bad. She was fierce, too. “I’d rather I was helping you stay alive. Is your opinion about this more important than mine?”
“My bare opinion might not be more important, but I have more data about Elite than you do,” he pointed out. “I’m far better equipped to make decisions about this situation.”
“Huh, well, I guess there’s no way to change that, is there?” Shoshanna pretended to think about it. “Oh, wait. How about you tell me what’s going on?”
He shook his head. “It’s not safe.”
Shoshanna’s fists clenched on the sides of her laptop. Rather than accidentally breaking it—six months after the worst experience of her life, she knew better than to get angry around expensive electronics—she carefully shut it and set it aside. Moving slowly and delicately, she got up off of the bed.
“I don’t know when the last time you ate was,” she informed him, “but I’m guessing it’s been a while. I’m going to go make some breakfast. The bathroom’s down the hall. I put a spare toothbrush out.”
Max took a deep breath. When he let it out, he seemed calmer. “May I use your phone?” he asked.
Shoshanna hesitated.
“I promise I won’t try to leave,” he said. “I need to call someone who will be wondering where I am.”
Who? Shoshanna didn’t ask. She already knew he wouldn’t answer.
Stubborn, arrogant, loner, control freak, didn’t like to give up information about himself. God, Kevin really was
going to laugh his ass off.
Instead, she picked up her phone from the nightstand and handed it to him. Their fingers brushed as he took it, and the touch of his skin sent a thrill through her stomach.
Shoshanna booked it out of the room as fast as she could at that. How dumb was it to feel like that when their hands touched, after she’d had her arms literally around his naked body last night?
But this was different. He was awake and aware. She’d looked into his fierce golden eyes and seen the strength, the will, the power that was in there. And she wanted him.
She could tell by the look in his eyes that he wanted her, too.
Shoshanna wanted to blame Max’s injuries for the fact that they weren’t under those covers right now, exploring every square inch of each other’s bodies. But, well, it was obvious that that wasn’t it.
Neither of them was the type of person to give anything up. As much as Shoshanna had wanted to plaster herself up against Max while he was sleeping, when he woke up, she was suddenly aware of his piercing eyes, his calculating brain.
She didn’t like opening up. She didn’t like making herself vulnerable. Stripping naked and making love was a level of trust and intimacy that Shoshanna almost couldn’t imagine, after her time in the lab.
And she could tell that Max was the same. She’d watched him act like he was in a corporate meeting while wearing a borrowed sweatsuit in someone else’s bed. He wasn’t about to bare all anytime soon, either.
So they were fighting instead of doing what mates were meant to do.
Hey, Kevin, Shoshanna imagined herself saying. I found my mate.
That’s great! He’d be so excited for her. When’s the wedding? Any cubs coming along soon? I call godfather.
Well, she’d say, not quite yet. First we have to touch each other, on purpose, while we’re both awake.
What would Kevin say to that? She couldn’t imagine it. His easy, joking manner was so foreign to her.
When Kevin found his mate, they’d probably be married the next day and be expecting twins in a month. What a jerk.
Shoshanna’s mouth quirked up. That was going to a fun conversation. She was going to wait and make sure she wouldn’t be putting Kevin in needless danger, too, but a tiny, giddy part of her couldn’t wait to tell her family about her mate.