by Jory Strong
“What a freaking nutcase,” Tyson, the cop to Conner’s left, said. “I hope he gets jail time instead of time on the psych ward.”
“You and me both.”
Tyson laughed. “Not that I’d mind being in a breeding program with the reporter. She’s a real looker.”
“Yeah, she is.”
Christ. He just wanted to get this wrapped up so he could deal with what else she was.
His head felt like it was never going to be screwed on right again. But his cock was rock hard and the only screwing it cared about was finding its way back into her.
Fuck! How could he want that so desperately? Knowing she came with a whole shitload of baggage labeled supernatural.
The cop who’d been interviewing her got within speaking distance. “You need us to hang, Tyson?”
“No. Saunders and I are going to stick. A unit is coming out to process the scene since this kidnapping is linked to the homicides at Stern’s cabin. You and Lake can head out.”
“Okay.”
Lake caught up to his partner then. He gave Conner a quick glance before speaking to Tyson. “The reporter asked for a lift. We’ll take her with us unless you’ve got an objection.”
Conner looked at her then, daring the distraction he hadn’t allowed himself when he stepped out of the building. Across the distance their eyes met and he saw she intended to make this easy for him. There were no tears in them, no accusation. No regret or pleading. There was nothing but the same courageous resolve he’d seen before, the fierce determination to survive.
Realization trapped his breath in his chest and tensed his muscles. A fight-or-flight response his heart understood.
If he let her go now, all the times he’d told her he wanted nothing to do with the supernatural, all his negativity toward it would create a wall that could never fully be torn down. He’d lose her. And he’d spend the rest of his life regretting it.
His feet were moving while his mind scrambled to get ahead of them, to have the right words by the time he reached her. He understood then how Trace could handle Aislinn being psychic, because loving the woman meant accepting the existence of things that couldn’t be sealed in an evidence bag or paraded out in front of a jury, or even put down in a police report without risking a forced leave of absence or a visit with the department shrink. It meant coping, the same way anyone who loved a cop had to cope with the baggage that came with the job.
Determination and possessiveness grew with each step. She was his and he wasn’t going to let her go.
He gripped Khemirra’s upper arms and jerked her against him when he reached her. “You’re not running away from me, baby.”
Fire returned to her eyes. “Don’t accuse me of that, Conner. I’ve got sharp teeth and might just bite your ass off.”
A laugh erupted, coming from deep within and surprising him as much as it did her. Jesus he loved her mouth. He loved everything about her, inside and out.
“Yeah, well, I only just discovered the teeth thing. No more secrets, Khemirra. Promise me that I can accept all the rest.”
Everything inside Khemirra stilled. The hope shattered earlier reforming though still fragile from the cracks in it.
“Do you mean that?”
“Try me.”
“It’s a lifetime deal once the bond kicks in.”
“Good, then what we have won’t become a casualty of the job. Marriage to a cop isn’t easy.”
“The woman isn’t completely gone, Conner. Whatever she is, she’s bound to the medallion Scholes was wearing.”
Conner’s jaw clenched so tight it surprised her he could get it open to say, “Was?”
“I’ve got it. It has to be dealt with.”
His nostrils flared. “I know someone who might be able to help. She owns a place called Inner Magick. Anything else?”
Her heart pounded so fast it ached. Lowering her voice so there was no way it would carry beyond the two of them, she said, “That day I met Scholes at his estate, a mage showed up with a charm capable of forcing the change. It happened so fast there was no control involved. I shifted and the wolf killed him.”
The entirety of Conner’s expression became stone, but that stone lasted a breath, no more. “What happened to the body?”
“Scholes disposed of it, I think. I watched the papers and used my contacts. There was never any report of it.”
Conner glanced in the direction of the building where they’d been held as prisoners. His hands tightened on her arms as principle battled with the reality of what would have happened if she hadn’t escaped the first time.
Reality won. “No body, no crime.” His hands left her arms in favor of tangling in her hair. “But let’s not make a habit of this kind of trouble. If you need to see action, we can take up alligator wrestling.”
She became aware, then, of the hard length of his cock against her cunt and belly. Pressing into it, she said, “Alligator wrestling? That’s the best idea you can come up with for excitement?”
“Hell no.”
He halted additional conversation with the possessive claiming of her mouth, with the thrust and rub of a tongue that promised a lifetime of ecstasy. He sealed off any objection and silenced all doubt, his scent holding arousal and determination, his arms becoming the place both woman and wolf called home.
Catcalls finally penetrated the haze of desire, ending the kiss. A male voice yelled, “Get a room.”
Conner laughed against her lips. “I’ve got a better idea. Let’s go back to the cabin. By the time they’re finished with me here, and we collect your Jeep and get there, the homicide guys will have cleared the crime scene and everyone will be gone.”
“Let’s,” she said, and they did, stripping the moment they got inside. But when he would have pinned her to the door and taken her there, she avoided the embrace, yielding to a greater need, to the wolf’s craving to be acknowledged and accepted.
She shifted without warning, a demand for a truth that couldn’t be hidden. There was a flash of fear in Conner, human instinct that would be overridden with time and exposure, but it didn’t linger to permeate his scent or control his actions.
He crouched in front of her, face inches away from hers, making it easy to read the admiration in his eyes, the awe. “Beautiful,” he murmured with no tremble in his voice, no hesitation as he reached out, touching her, stroking, accepting, truly accepting all of her.
The wolf’s heart sang with joy and contentment. The woman’s burned with the desire to call him husband as well as mate.
He rubbed her ears, combed through fur at the ruff of her neck, his sudden smile making her mouth open in a furry version of one. “Fair warning,” he said, amusement lacing his voice. “This is definitely giving rise to some collar and leash fantasies.”
Her jaws clacked as she snapped, lips pulled back, sharp canines inches away from his face before changing in a glimmer of magic and saying, “Bite me, Conner.”
His laugh preceded his tumbling her backward onto a throw rug and coming down on top of her, hot skin against hot skin, his mouth going unerringly to her neck. “I believe I will.”
Epilogue
Pausing in the act of washing more carrots and broccoli for the veggie platters, Khemirra smiled as she looked though the kitchen window. The backyard was full of cops.
They weren’t a sea of uniform blue, but a wild mix of colors and a wide variety of shapes and sizes, from a deeply tanned guy with a surfer’s vocabulary to the proverbial donut-fond overeater in an eye-straining Hawaiian shirt with garish parrots on it.
Conner’s pack, not the one he was born into, but the one he’d chosen. The men and women who had his back on the job, whose backs he would have if they ever needed him. Her pack now, in a way, and the wolf made its approval felt at having a place in this human world, even if most would never know she existed.
Their guests drank beer or soda, gathered in companionship around the grill and congregated at the food table, some
of them accompanied by spouses or dates, others coming solo. Khemirra’s smile widened when her eyes settled on an older homicide detective, Brady Sinclair. He’d shown up with a date he introduced as Ilsa, a woman she knew was a psychic named Madam Fontaine.
Laughter broke out and her gaze shifted to a cluster of guys that included Dylan Archer, who worked Homicide, and next to him, his partner Trace Dilessio. She didn’t see Trace’s wife, Aislinn, and hoped that meant she was on her way inside for a quick consult about the medallion.
A short distance away was another homicide cop, Storm O’Malley, in the company of a man who smelled like magic and wasn’t human though the wolf wasn’t positive what he was. Fey maybe, given the elemental scent of water and air surrounding him.
Khemirra laughed. For a man who hadn’t wanted to talk about things supernatural, or think about them, Conner had ended up surrounded by it, even without her in his life.
“What are you laughing at?” the subject of her thoughts asked, entering the room and wrapping his arms around her, the kiss he pressed to the spot where her neck and shoulder met narrowing her world to just the two of them.
She turned to face him, pleasure filling her like helium pumped into a balloon, his happiness making her lighthearted. “I’ll tell you later.” She nibbled his bottom lip. “Your partner here yet?”
“Any minute now. He was swinging by the store to pick up some beer.”
“What? He thinks the rest of you are going to empty the keg before the first round of burgers and dogs is off the grill?”
Conner laughed. “I wish it was something like that. I’ve been saddled with a beer snob. He won’t drink anything but Dos Equis.”
Aislinn’s presence in the doorway ended the hug. Conner stepped away. “I’d better go keep Trace occupied. He tends to be overprotective.”
Khemirra snorted. “As if you wouldn’t be the same if I dropped my guard.”
“True enough.”
Aislinn laughed and the sound was laced with musical notes Khemirra heard only because the wolf did. She wanted to ask, Are you human, but bit her bottom lip to stifle the impulse, though the question must have remained in her expression.
“Half,” Aislinn said after Conner left the kitchen. “My father was human. My mother is Elven.” She stopped next to the small kitchen table. “Does Conner know what you are?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad. I’m glad he found you.”
“I’m glad too.” Khemirra joined her at the table, snagging the medallion’s chain and pulling it from the pocket of her shorts, placing the medal on the table, sigil-side up, without actually touching it.
At the sight of it, Aislinn shook her head in instant denial and took an instinctive step back, no doubt aware of the black magic as the wolf had been. “I can’t tell you anything about it, but there’s a witch who might be able to help you. She’s Dylan’s heartmate though he isn’t aware of it yet. I think you can probably trust her. I’ll—”
A gorgeous Latino with a six-pack of Dos Equis in each hand entered the kitchen, halting the conversation. Setting the beer on the table, he gave Aislinn a hug then surprised Khemirra by pulling her into his arms.
“I’m Miguel Torres, Conner’s partner, and I’m guessing you’re Khemirra, the reason we’re all here.”
“You’re right on the first count at least.”
He laughed, releasing her and picking up the medallion before she could stop him.
“Fuck!” He flung it back onto the table hard enough for it to bounce a couple of times.
Color crept in his face. “Sorry, guess I’m still a little jumpy from my trip. It felt like my hand was on fire.”
A burst of laughter drew his attention to the window. There was a fleeting expression of unhappiness before he shrugged it away and smiled. Taking possession of the beer, he said, “I’ll leave you two to your girl talk.”
Fear for Miguel roared through Khemirra, anger at her own carelessness. Her heart was still pounding in her throat after he’d gone.
She grasped the chain and lifted the medallion so she could see both sides, already knowing on some level that they would be smooth—the sigil gone, along with the taint of black magic that had clung to the medal.
“What do you think it means?” she made herself ask.
Aislinn surprised her by touching the very thing she’d been frightened of moments earlier. She examined it as if she could read something left behind, a truth captured in the silver.
Her smile gave Khemirra a measure of relief. Her words brought cautious hope. “I think it means Miguel is about to meet his match.”
About the Author
Jory has been writing since childhood and has never outgrown being a daydreamer. When she’s not hunched over her computer, lost in the muse and conjuring up new heroes and heroines, she can usually be found reading, riding her horses or hiking with her dogs.
Jory welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Jory Strong
Carnival Tarot 1: Sarael’s Reading
Carnival Tarot 2: Kiziah’s Reading
Carnival Tarot 3: Dakotah’s Reading
Crime Tells 1: Lyric’s Cop
Crime Tells 2: Cady’s Cowboy
Crime Tells 3: Calista’s Men
Crime Tells 4: Cole’s Gamble
Death’s Courtship
Divine Redemption
Ellora’s Cavemen: Dreams of the Oasis I anthology
Ellora’s Cavemen: Jewels of the Nile III anthology
Ellora’s Cavemen: Seasons of Seduction I anthology
Ellora’s Cavemen: Seasons of Seduction IV anthology
Elven Surrender
Fallon Mates 1: Binding Krista
Fallon Mates 2: Zeraac’s Miracle
Fallon Mates 3: Roping Savannah
Fallon Mates 4: Zoe’s Gift
Fallon Mates: First Sharing
Familiar Pleasures
Healing Seduction
Ride to Ecstasy
Spirit Flight
Spirits Shared
Supernatural Bonds 1: Trace’s Psychic
Supernatural Bonds 2: Storm’s Faeries
Supernatural Bonds 3: Sophie’s Dragon
Supernatural Bonds 4: Drui Claiming
Supernatural Bonds 5: Dragon Mate
The Angelini 1: Skye’s Trail
The Angelini 2: Syndelle’s Possession
The Angelini 3: Mystic’s Run
Two Spirits
Print books by Jory Strong
Carnival Tarot anthology
Crime Tells 1: Lyric’s Cop
Crime Tells 2: Cady’s Cowboy
Crime Tells 3: Calista’s Men
Crime Tells 4: Cole’s Gamble
Ellora’s Cavemen: Dreams of the Oasis I anthology
Ellora’s Cavemen: Jewels of the Nile III anthology
Ellora’s Cavemen: Seasons of Seduction I anthology
Ellora’s Cavemen: Seasons of Seduction IV anthology
Fallon Mates 1: Binding Krista
Fallon Mates 2: Zeraac’s Miracle
Fallon Mates 3: Roping Savannah
Fallon Mates 4: Zoe’s Gift
Feral Fixation anthology
Forbidden Fantasies anthology
Supernatural Bonds 1: Trace’s Psychic
Supernatural Bonds 2: Storm’s Faeries
Supernatural Bonds 3: Sophie’s Dragon
Supernatural Bonds 4: Drui Claiming
The Angelini 1: Skye’s Trail
The Angelini 2: Syndelle’s Possession
The Angelini 3: Mystic’s Run
Thunderbird Chosen anthology
Discover for yourself why readers can’t get enough of the multiple award-winning publisher Ellora’s Cave. Whether you prefer e-book
s or paperbacks, be sure to visit EC on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic reading experience that will leave you breathless.
www.ellorascave.com