by Tamara Hogan
Her stomach leaped, suddenly full of frogs. “How do you know? Maybe he has a lover that no one knows about.” Deirdre d’Amour floated into her mind, but she shoved the bitch right back out again. “He’s a very private man.”
“Tia. It’s been over a hundred years.”
Sasha’s words sent a dark thrill through her. “How in the world do you know this?”
“The grapevine’s pretty reliable, and—” Sasha tapped her nose “—so is this.”
Antonia nodded, crossing her legs at the ankles. “Yeah, his sexual energy’s locked down like a Supermax.”
Sasha and Antonia absorbed and interpreted emotional energy as easily as they breathed, so they’d probably know. Tia couldn’t help it; she started to laugh. She’d just had the most stellar sex of her life, and he’d been…rusty.
It figured.
“Was it…bad?” Antonia asked. Sasha smacked her shoulder.
“No, it was awesome.” He’d rocked her like a hurricane.
She was in trouble.
Scarlett reached for the potato chips, opening the bag with a crinkle that brought Calamity running. “Well, I’m glad someone is having great sex, because I’m just not up to it at the moment.” She offered Calamity a potato chip. The cat snatched it out of her hand with surprising delicacy, then disappeared behind the couch with his prey. “Poor Lukas has to make do with blow jobs.”
Antonia slapped her hands over her ears. “Why must you talk about having sex with my brother in my presence?”
Tia knew Scarlett had spoken to draw attention away from her, to give her a moment to absorb what she’d just heard. As Antonia went on and on—she faux-collapsed onto the wide-planked floor and lay there twitching—she gave Scarlett a grateful smile.
But Bailey watched her with an unnerving lack of expression. Tia met her gaze squarely. “What?”
“Nothing.” Bailey looked at her phone. “It’s time to go downstairs for our meeting.”
What the hell was her deal? Well, it was Bailey’s problem, not hers. She stood, leaned over, and hugged Scarlett again. “Don’t get up. I’ll call you tomorrow.” She’d feel more comfortable talking about what had happened with Wyland without the other women there.
“Please do.”
She and Bailey left the loft. As they rode the elevator downstairs, the love bite on her collarbone burned. When they reached the first floor, Bailey turned to her. “Don’t hurt him.”
“I don’t see how that could possibly happen.” Wyland’s blood ran hot as any man’s, but his emotions were safely encased in ice.
They stepped off the elevator. Tia followed Bailey across the lobby to the heavy steel door, flinching as Bailey slapped her hand against the palm reader.
The slap spoke louder than words.
Chapter Ten
Wyland loosened his necktie just slightly, then sipped at the glass of blood Lukas had pushed into his hand soon after he’d arrived at Sebastiani Security. No doubt he looked as exhausted to Lukas as Lukas did to him.
He hadn’t slept in nearly two days.
After leaving Tia sleeping on the chaise by the pool, he’d escaped to the privacy of his room, his thoughts circling the carcass of his self-control like buzzards. Unable to sleep, he’d showered, gotten fully dressed right down to his necktie and shoes, and worked at his desk for long, long hours—not that he’d gotten much work done, because his thoughts kept slipping back to how Tia had held out her arms, welcoming him. To her quim’s piquant taste, and its tight, slick heat. To how her cries of pleasure had bounced off the tiles.
Several hours ago, just before sunset, he’d finally admitted defeat. Analysis—creative thought—was beyond him, but he could go to the hospital. ER work was reactive, and his training was deeply ingrained. But when he’d reached the garage, he’d discovered Tia, and her car, were gone.
And he’d gotten worried, damn it.
As a doctor, he knew driving when the sun was low on the horizon wasn’t going to cause her any lasting harm. As a man, he knew she used her VampScreen religiously, because its distinctive scent still swirled in his head. She’d gone to visit Scarlett, Thane had informed him. So instead of going to the hospital, he’d driven to Sebastiani Security instead.
“How’s Scarlett doing?” he asked Lukas as Jack activated the huge, flat-panel monitor mounted on the conference room’s far wall.
There was a hiss as Lukas opened a can of Coke. “Fine.”
Chico looked up from his mini-comp. “When I brought Tia upstairs, it sounded like she was chilling out, listening to some music.”
“That was work,” Lukas said darkly. “Wyland, can’t you tell her she works too much? Put her on bed rest or something?”
Pot, meet kettle. Lukas looked about ready to drop. “She’s perfectly healthy.” Scarlett would go into labor within a week, or he’d eat his favorite tie. “Her work gives her something to focus on rather than how physically uncomfortable she feels.” Distracting Scarlett had likely been Tia’s motivation in coming here. He couldn’t fault her intention, but…damn, the woman was working his last remaining nerve.
Lukas scrubbed his hand against what looked like a three-day beard, muttering something about vasectomies before draining half the can of caffeinated, sugar-loaded soda. He was just about to advise Lukas to drink something else when Tia and Bailey entered the room.
They didn’t look happy with each other.
Lukas, Jack, and Chico rose from their chairs, and he belatedly did the same. Bailey, ignoring them all, walked around the table and took a seat at his right. Tia exchanged kisses of greeting with Lukas, Jack, and Chico, then approached him.
“Hello.”
“Hello.” He took in her appearance with a big, thirsty gulp. Her eyes sparkled with life, and her hair was swingy and loose, the green tips brushing shoulders left bare by a sleeveless T-shirt that said “Type O Negative” on the front. Her shorts were just that—short—exposing too much of her sleek, curvy thighs for his comfort. Her lush lips were bare, and her shoes had so little leather they hardly deserved the name. A delicate mixture of lilacs and VampScreen reached his nose, winding diabolical tendrils around his brainstem.
His fangs throbbed with each beat of his heart.
With a light touch of hands against his chest, she leaned closer, lifted her head, and brushed her lips against his cheek. As she moved to kiss the other, she grazed his skin with the tip of her incisor.
His cock hardened in a rush. It was all he could do to keep his hands resting so lightly and politely on bare upper arms. To not grab her, yank her against his body, and crush his lips against her unpainted mouth.
She backed away. He watched as the tempting little witch took a seat between him and Chico, as if her covert caress hadn’t left him hard as a spike at a business meeting. As if she hadn’t shut his common sense down cold.
“Why don’t we get started?” Lukas suggested.
He was the only one still standing. “Certainly.” He sat, picked up the glass of blood, and drained it.
Bailey looked at him strangely.
“Tia, thanks so much for visiting Scarlett,” Lukas said. “She’s so uncomfortable right now. Every distraction helps.”
“My pleasure,” Tia responded. “It’ll be over soon.”
A wisp of panic crossed Lukas’s face before he schooled his expression. “Right.” He turned toward Jack, who was standing near the flat-screen at the end of the table. “Jack, why don’t you get us started?”
As Jack pressed a couple of buttons on his laptop, Lukas surreptitiously withdrew a sleeve of antacids from his pants pocket, and slipped two tablets into his mouth. Scarlett was as healthy as a horse, but if she didn’t have this baby soon, Lukas wouldn’t have any stomach lining left.
Jack dimmed the lights. “Tia, Wyland, I’m glad you were both able to meet with us in person today. We have some new information on the case.”
Tia drew herself upright—just an inch or so, but the movement took
her posture from comfortable slouch to hyper-alert in a millisecond.
“Today, five more people reported receiving letters similar to the one sent to Lukas and Scarlett.”
Tia’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell…?”
What the hell, indeed. “Civilians?” he asked.
“If you can call people who work here at Sebastiani Security civilians,” Jack answered. He gestured to the screen, where a document that looked a lot like the one Lukas had shown them was displayed. “Similar paper, same font, delivered to our front door by the U.S. Postal Service. The latest letters demand that the receivers voluntarily sterilize themselves so their infirmity—being of mixed race—doesn’t further weaken the species.”
“Are you serious? Cross-breeding introduces robustness. Hell, look what inbreeding has done to the wolves.” She glanced at Chico. “Sorry.”
“No need to apologize.” Chico’s tone was desert-dry. “That’s my letter we’re looking at.”
“See? See how ignorant this person is? Chico’s strong, smart, steady. Why wouldn’t we want these attributes represented in our cultural gene pool?”
Jealousy slithered, but he pushed it aside. Something wasn’t adding up. “You have Valkyrie roots in your family tree, correct?” Wyland asked Chico.
“Many generations back.”
“So where is this person—” he gestured to the letter— “getting his or her information?”
“Good question.” Jack flipped the lights back on, turning off the flat-screen and taking his seat. “None of the newer letters makes an overt threat—not like the one Lukas and Scarlett received, or like the comments made at In Like Quinn.”
Tia tapped a turquoise-tipped finger against her lower lip. “Coco is healthy, and of mixed species heritage. Jacoby Woolf is a purebred werewolf, but chronically ill.” She looked at Lukas, Jack, and finally at him. “This reeks of the GPL to me. It’s no secret that Krispin Woolf brought the latest GPL-backed petition before the Council—”
“And we promptly voted it down,” Wyland said. The proposal to require registration of bond relationships with the Council had been unacceptable. “Why would Krispin Woolf threaten his own son?”
“It’s no secret that Jacoby Woolf has been voting with the majority, against his father, much more frequently these days. The Alpha might see his son’s actions as disloyal.” She glanced down at her tattoo, then back at him. “Would the Alpha eliminate his own son to further the goals of the pack?”
He and Krispin Woolf didn’t agree with each other, but the possibility of the father killing the son had never crossed his mind.
It should have.
“The Alpha also has a massive hard-on against everything and anything Sebastiani,” Tia continued. “He holds Lukas personally responsible for letting Stephen, the man who assaulted his daughter, escape from prison.”
Lukas acknowledged the point. “And we have protective measures in place, but…sending letters? Scaring you with harmless snakes?” He shook his head. “Krispin’s threats are usually much more blunt.”
Lukas was right. Something wasn’t adding up.
“Krispin Woolf can’t be our only avenue of investigation,” Jack said. “We’re analyzing the letters that Chico, Winnie, and others have received—”
“Winnie got a letter?” Bailey asked.
Winnie Otsego, a Sebastiani Security lieutenant, had helped apprehend the hacker who’d threatened both Bailey and Sebastiani Labs’ computer systems earlier that year.
“Yeah. She’s fine.” Chico straightened from his relaxed slouch. “Wyland asked what I think is the key question. Where the hell is this person getting their information?”
Silence.
Jack looked at Tia. “Any more creeped-out feelings since moving to Vamp Central?”
She hesitated, glancing at him. “I had a funny feeling in my stomach the last time Wyland and I went to the Archives.” She shrugged. “Or maybe it was that burrito. I didn’t see anything, but—”
“Why didn’t you say something?” he snapped.
“I didn’t see anything, so I didn’t want to bother you about it.”
“It’s not a bother.” He hadn’t seen anything, either. He’d been too busy staring at her like a cock-addled fool. “Don’t you think I can protect you?”
“I had my hand on my stun gun the whole time.”
And he hadn’t even noticed.
“Wyland, I’m better prepared than you give me credit for,” she said. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
After last night, there was a lot he did know—like her natural hair color, the shape of the birthmark on her left hip, and the precise shade of pink that suffused her skin when she came.
And now Lukas was watching him again, damn it.
“Change of subject.” Tia shifted in her chair. “Antonia said something interesting about the Genetic Purity League when we were visiting Scarlett upstairs just now.”
She wouldn’t meet his eyes. He was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like this.
Tia explained that the GPL’s younger members met at a different venue every month, with the location being passed by word of mouth. “I want to—”
“Try to infiltrate?” he guessed. “No.”
“I—”
“No.” One small woman, going up against the GPL? Against Krispin Woolf? The little fool was going to get herself killed. “I forbid it.”
As Tia straightened in her chair, the leather creaked a warning. “I’m certain I didn’t hear you correctly.”
“I’m certain you did.”
“I wasn’t asking for permission.”
Fear clawed at him. She had no earthly clue how many heinous acts Krispin Woolf was suspected of committing, or of ordering others to commit on his behalf. He took a deep breath, holding on to his control by the skin of his teeth. “Tia, any interaction with Krispin Woolf—with the GPL—is dangerous beyond your ken.”
“I ‘ken’ just fine. If you’d let me finish a damn sentence—”
“Tia—”
She shot to her feet. “Wyland, let’s get something straight right now.” Glaring down at him, hands on hips, she looked like a pissed-off royal. “We might have slept together, but you need to throw this Cro-Magnon shit out the freaking window. ”
Had she really just…said that? At a business meeting?
Yes. Yes, she had—and now everyone was looking at them, their gazes bouncing back and forth as if they were watching a tennis match at Wimbledon. Chico was trying to hide a grin. Jack looked mildly amused, and mildly sympathetic. At his other side, Bailey diplomatically cleared her throat. Lukas simply…watched.
Clearing his own throat, he slowly rose and faced her. Their gazes clashed like swords. “Tia, now is not the time to discuss our private business.”
“Private? Please. Everyone in this room knows we hooked up. We didn’t have to say a thing.”
Hooked up? What a disgusting phrase, but she was probably right about others knowing they’d slept together. Chico, with his werewolf nose, likely smelled them. Lukas’s ability to interpret emotional energy signatures was unrivaled. Bailey, with her newly-discovered smidge of succubus blood, could probably read him—them—like a book. Even Jack, the sole human, didn’t seem surprised.
He felt hideously exposed.
“As I was going to say before I was so rudely interrupted—” Tia shot him a hard glance “—I’d love to attend a GPL meeting myself, but I don’t think I’m anonymous enough.”
“Or young enough,” Bailey added.
“Bitch,” Tia said without heat, taking her seat again. “But you’re right.”
Chico looked at Lukas. “We have a couple of young-looking operatives who might be able to make progress on that front.”
Lukas nodded.
“The most recent gathering occurred last week, in one of the smaller ballrooms at The Ivy.”
Chico whistled. “That doesn’t come cheap.”
“Money does
n’t seem to be a problem. Makes one wonder who’s picking up the tab.” With that, Tia stood again. “Do we have anything else to discuss? Lukas needs to get upstairs, and I’m going to the Archives.” She glanced at him. “And you can’t stop me.”
What did she expect him to do, deny her permission? Tell her she couldn’t go? Turn her over his knee and give her the spanking she so dearly deserved? His pulse bumped at the thought. “I’ll meet you there.” He’d given her a garage door opener, but—
“I can handle it myself.”
“I said, I’ll meet you there.”
“You know what? I’ve lost count of the fucks I do not give. Kiss my entire ass.”
He lifted a brow. “If memory serves, I did. Twice.”
Her eyes widened. With an audible growl, she grabbed her purse, whirled, then stalked from the room.
Silence in her wake. His skin prickled, as if he’d foolishly taken cover under a tall tree with lightning threatening overhead.
“Now that,” Chico said, “is one pissed-off woman.” His admiring tone suggested he didn’t necessarily think this was a problem, but Lukas and Jack wore expressions of knowing commiseration.
“You should probably go after her,” Lukas advised.
Jack nodded. “Make sure she safely reaches her destination.”
Bailey looked at them like they’d all sprouted second heads. “Seriously? We’re done here because Wyland wants to get laid?”
His face heated.
“I don’t have anything else to discuss tonight.” Lukas looked at Jack. “Do you have anything else to discuss tonight?”
“Nope. Chico?”
“Nothing that can’t wait. And getting laid is very serious business.”
Wyland opened his mouth—to deny he wanted to go after Tia because he wanted to get laid; to tell them to mind their own business—but then closed it again. He did want to get laid—he felt like an addict overdue for his next fix—but even more importantly, he needed to apologize. His sexual comment, in this setting, was inexcusable. He’d acted exactly like the Cro-Magnon she’d accused him of being.
Lukas hitched a thumb toward the door. “Go.”