Every Night Forever

by R. E. Butler

  He let go of her legs and leaned over her on straight arms while they both caught their breath. “Tell me,” she cooed, curving her fingers over his shoulders.

  “I love you, Alyssa.”

  Her eyes were happy and bright, and then a frown marred her features. She sat up on her elbows and pushed on his shoulder. “Do you smell that?”

  He took in a deep breath and froze. Smoke! He jerked away from her and yanked his jeans up. Touching the back of his hand to the door, he was relieved it felt cool, but the scent of smoke overwhelmed him when he opened the door. The gym was slowly filling with smoke. Why weren’t the alarms going off?

  “Dante, the phone isn’t working,” Alyssa told him in a trembling voice, hanging up the desk phone.

  “My cell’s in the drawer.” He moved carefully out of the office and heard her call the emergency number. He could see flames licking from the outer doors. There was a muffled exploding sound, which told him the glass from the first set of doors had shattered with the heat.

  “Fire department’s on the way.” Alyssa grabbed onto his arm with trembling hands.

  He looked down at her; she’d put herself back together. He fished his car keys from his pocket and said, “Let’s go out the back.”

  As they moved along the wall of the gym towards the back entrance, she pulled on his arm. “What if it’s a trap?”

  “A trap?”

  “Yeah, to lure us out the back? Who else but Grady would set fire to the building?”

  “We can’t stay in here; the smoke is growing thicker by the second.”

  She blinked worried eyes up at him and chewed on her bottom lip. He said, “We can go up to the roof. Come on.”

  Shifting direction, he raced her across the gym to the janitorial room and the access to the roof. He used his key to unlock the door and she followed him up. When they reached the cooler air of the roof, they both took in a few quiet, deep breaths of fresh air before he left her at the door and crouched along the edge to look over the back. As she’d eerily predicted, standing in the shadows of the building were a half dozen men dressed in black. It was only his superior vision that saw them. They would have walked right into a trap. He would have walked his woman right into a trap.

  He crept back to Alyssa and pulled her down onto his lap. They sat on the concrete of the roof, leaning against an AC unit, hidden from view of the men in the back. “Give me my cell, baby,” he whispered. She handed it to him from her purse and he texted Cairo the information.

  As Cairo cursed a blue streak in his text, after making sure they were both okay, Dante heard the sirens in the distance. Alyssa sat tucked into his lap, curled up and gripping his shirt like a life preserver. “Baby.” He tipped her chin up until she was looking at him. “I’m going to look over the edge and make sure those assholes are gone. Stay put.”

  She nodded. He kissed her once and put her down, crouching as he crossed the roof and peered over the edge. The men were gone; the sirens must have scared them off. As the fire trucks raced towards the gym, he carried Alyssa over his shoulder down the fire escape on the other side of the building. She didn’t seem able to move at all.

  He told her not to mention Grady or the men waiting for them out back. She promised with a nod of her head, and he hugged her tightly, several hundred yards away from the burning gym. While the firemen turned the hoses on, battling the blistering blaze that engulfed the front of the building, Dalton’s chief of police strode towards him.

  “Hell of a thing, Dante. I’m damn sorry.” Brad Layton was a good man who took pride in his town and his job.

  “Thanks.” He told him the brief cover story, that they were working in the office with the door closed and got out the back unharmed.

  “You don’t think it was your competition, do you?” Brad gave him a sidelong glance as the water poured from the hoses and settled the fire.

  “I don’t know what to think. That’s the honest truth. If Alyssa hadn’t smelled the smoke, we would have... Well, it could have been a lot worse.”

  He heard racing footsteps and he knew it was his brothers. He turned Alyssa over to them so he could talk to Brad and the fire chief privately.

  Alyssa sobbed loudly when Cairo scooped her up in his arms and stalked away towards his truck. Mason looked at him for a long moment and he nodded. “Go ahead and take care of her, Mase. I’ve got it under control.”

  Mason wasted no time, darting after Cairo. Fury stole over him, but he tamped it down. First Grady had tried to drug Cairo, once successfully and once that Alyssa had stopped. Then he had his goons attack Alyssa in the gym, and now this. If Alyssa hadn’t been suspicious, he would have walked her right out into an ambush without thinking twice. There was no telling what Grady had planned for the two of them, but it surely wasn’t good.

  Within the hour, the fire was out. Whatever accelerant they had used, it had been fast-burning. Although it had caused the glass doors to explode, he was fairly sure it hadn’t been meant to actually destroy the gym but simply to cut off the only other exit and force them to the back.

  He walked over to Cairo’s truck and found him pacing outside while Mason held Alyssa on his lap and rocked her back and forth in the seat.

  “I’m going to fucking slaughter the whole lot of them,” Cairo growled in a low voice.

  He ran his hands through his thick hair and sighed, leaning on the hood of the truck. “Has she said anything?”

  Cairo stopped pacing. “No. She did stop crying, though. She is well and truly freaked out and I don’t blame her. Mason’s fit to be tied, too.”

  “Listen, I’m going to stick it out here with the chief. You should get her home.” Glancing into the cab of the truck he could see Mason’s face carved with worry. “Both of them.”

  “You sure? Mase can drive her home.”

  “Yeah. He’s clearly too tied up in knots to drive right now. His overprotective nature is probably going nuts, I know mine is. I’ll be home in a few hours.”

  Cairo walked over to the truck door and opened it. “Thanks, D. For keeping her safe.”

  He nodded and walked away, back to where the police chief and fire chief were talking.

  Several hours later, as exhaustion pricked at the edges of his mind and all he wanted to do was get home and hold Alyssa, the fire department and most of the police were gone. Brad watched him lock up the interior front doors.

  “You get a cleaning crew in here tomorrow you can open up in a few days again. I’m really sorry to hear you guys are having so much trouble.”

  “A busted door and some paint are much better than what might have happened if we hadn’t gotten out in time.” Or if they had gone out the back.

  “True. I sent some of my deputies over to Grady’s to check out his alibi. The arson investigator said it was gasoline, nothing unique. I’ll get you the report for your insurance company.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sure. You take care of yourself, Dante.”

  He followed the chief out of the parking lot and turned towards home. Although the drive was short, he felt like it took forever. It was a relief to close the garage door and walk inside.

  “They’re in the den,” Cairo said from the kitchen table, nursing a beer, a grim expression on his face.

  “The den?” He sat down heavily in a chair opposite him.

  “When we headed home, she started crying again, worried about leaving you behind, and she was so riled up that Mason got worked up, too, so I sent them downstairs. They took a bath together and they’re both asleep now. They ended up comforting each other.”

  Dante hummed in his throat and it came out on a growl. “This is the second time they’ve come after her at night. I think we need to reconsider her hours.”

  “I was thinking that, too.”

  “And we need to take care of Grady.”

  Cairo agreed with a silent nod of his head.

  After a shower down in the den while Cairo locked the house up, he stret
ched out on the big bed. Cairo joined him. “When we were kids,” Cairo said quietly, looking at him across Mason and Alyssa, who were tangled in a naked knot like they couldn’t get close enough to each other, “I remember thinking that it would be hard to sleep together as adults and share a woman. Now I don’t think I could sleep right unless we were all together, and it’s only been a week.”

  Dante chuckled. “I feel the same way, brother.”

  “Tomorrow,” Cairo said evenly. “We’re going to make a plan, tomorrow.”

  And indeed they were.

  * * * * *

  There wasn’t a whole lot that pissed Cairo off, but the man who had twice tried to screw with his woman had soundly pissed him off. Dante wanted to handle things right, legally, because Grady was human, but all Cairo wanted to do was drive to Grady’s house and rip his head off. That would create a few problems, but at least Alyssa would be safe. He’d had trouble sleeping, and so had Dante, but they had stayed in bed until Alyssa and Mason woke.

  Alyssa’s face, puffy and red from her hard night, was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. His beast was stalking around in his mind, and before he knew it, he was growling out loud and his brothers had joined him. The worry that had immediately lit her eyes when she opened them faded, her brows easing and her lush mouth parting into a small smile.

  “My fierce mates. There isn’t any luckier woman in the world than me.”

  Pride wove through him at her confidence. He wouldn’t let her down. And judging from his brothers’ faces, they were thinking the exact same thing.

  Tuesday was quiet. They vegged on the couch and watched old movies while Dante handled repairs and cleaning for the gym and called in their winter help to prepare them to take over in a few weeks. This winter they were really taking to the den because they finally had their fourth. Once a week they would each leave to work at the gym, but for the rest of the time, they would be focused on their bride and their clan’s happiness. For the first time, Cairo was not looking at the coming cold as something to dread and suffer through, but rather something to embrace and revel in.

  Alyssa’s warm breath fanned across his bare chest where she lay half on him and half on Mason, her eyes closed as she napped in the dark corner of the den’s main room. She really loved it down here, and he couldn’t have been happier or more surprised. Most clans only used the den in the winter, but Alyssa found peace down here and they were happy for it.

  Dante cleared his throat quietly and Cairo looked up at him. In a low voice, he said, “I’m going to go take a look at the gym, maybe look around the property and see if anyone left anything behind when they were waiting for us last night. Want to come? Mase, you can stay with Lys.”

  “No,” she said with a yawn, wiggling around until she was partially sitting up. “I want to go, too.”

  “Lys,” Dante started, but she stopped him.

  “You can’t keep me apart from everything. I want to see the gym, and I want to walk the property with you. Don’t shut me out, please.”

  Dante might have argued, but clearly something in her eyes told him that she wasn’t going to back down. Cairo was proud of her. She’d been attacked twice at the gym, and she wasn’t afraid to go back.

  Dante nodded, and they got up, dressed, and left.

  Standing inside the gym, they looked around at the mess. The interior doors had broken, weakened from the flames and the force of the water from the hoses. The carpeting was soaked, and the walls, ceiling, and equipment were dusted with ash. The whole place was going to need to be redone.

  “How long did the repair company say it would take until we could open again?” Mason asked, turning in a slow circle with a frown on his face.

  “If we’re willing to pay for three full shifts of workers, five days. They can start Monday morning at seven and be done by Friday evening, Saturday morning at the latest,” Dante said.

  “We’re going to pay, right?” Cairo asked.

  “Yeah. I thought I’d grab the client list from the safe and call, refund everyone for the week and offer some kind of incentives to stay on with us. Fortunately most of our clients are tied in for their contracts, but we still might lose some. This is just such bullshit. It needs to stop.”

  “I’ll call the clients,” Alyssa offered.

  Dante smiled. “Sure thing, Lys.” He glanced around the gym and his anger rose again. “What we need is some proof of the men who were waiting for us. If we can find evidence of the men who were there and tie them to Grady, we can put a stop to this once and for all.”

  “It would be easier if you just let me kill him,” Cairo growled.

  “Easier in some ways, but more complicated in others. Humans don’t understand our need to protect our mate, and going after him when he’s not a danger right now would land you in jail. If he disappears, we’re going to be the first suspects.”

  “Still.” Cairo sniffed, feeling oddly impotent and helpless. “Alright, let’s go take a walk. If I can’t put him down, I can at least put him in jail.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone will shank him,” Alyssa offered as he held the door open for her.

  Mason chuckled. “Did you just say ‘shank’, Lys?”

  She made a face and then shrugged with a laugh. “I saw it on a TV show.”

  They all grinned at their mate. The sun was beginning to set, so the golden glow of early evening cast a pleasant shine to the five acres of property. At one time, they had planned to build a real boxing training center so he could focus on what he really loved. But now with Lys, he was thinking it was time to hang up his boxing gloves. At least professionally. He could still train, he could still teach others. He wasn’t doing anything that was going to take him away from Alyssa, that was for damn sure.

  Cairo was suddenly caught off guard by a flash of white skin as Alyssa pulled her shirt off and dropped it on the grass behind the gym. “What the hell are you doing, Lys?” he demanded, immediately scanning the area for prying eyes.

  She rolled her eyes and stepped out of her jeans. “Duh, I’m going to shift. I have a better sense of smell in my shift than my human form. I might be able to find something by smell in the grass or the trees.”

  Dante grabbed her arm, not forcefully but enough to make her pause in the motion of stepping out of her pants. “No way, baby. Mase can shift, you don’t need to.”

  Instead of tugging away from him, she stepped closer, wrapping her free arm around him. “First of all, it’s so adorable that you think you can boss me around. And second, wolves have a great sense of smell, it’s just a fact. So if you want to hold my arm, you’re going to have a handful of fur in about two seconds and then you’ll have to buy me a new bra because this one will be toast.”

  She relaxed and they all saw her eyes shimmer from pretty brown to wolf amber. Dante released her arm and she smirked in triumph before stripping completely and slipping into her wolf form.

  As Mason stripped to shift, Dante squatted down in front of her and tugged gently on her ear. “Alright, but you have to stay close to one of us and keep your guard up.”

  She chuffed at him and nuzzled under his chin, licking at his throat with a soft growl.

  Cairo chuckled and watched as she and Mason put their muzzles to the ground near the back door, where Dante said the men had waited. The two paced slowly in front of the building and then began to move out towards the trees.

  He and Dante swept their eyes along the ground looking for any anomalies that Mason and Alyssa might miss. Most of the property was flat and unobstructed by trees, but a there was a stand of trees a few hundred feet long that offered some privacy from the street. When Alyssa and Mason disappeared among them, he and Dante followed.

  Alyssa began to whine as he and Dante entered the trees, putting her nose against several of their trunks and scraping her claws against the roots.

  “Baby?” Cairo asked, squatting down next to her. A pile of cigarettes lay at the base of one tree,
with a few scattered buds lying around.

  “Someone stood here last night for a long time and smoked all these cigarettes,” Dante said with a frown. “I can pick up the faint smell of sweat and, I don’t know — something herbal?”