by Dakota West
Her face, look at her face, Julius thought.
He raised both eyebrows, trying to act every inch the cool, calm, collected lawyer.
“Yes?” he asked, forcing himself to sound as chilly as possible.
Next to him, Hudson clasped his hands in front of himself, subconsciously assuming the bodyguard pose.
“I, um, well...” she said, her voice trailing off slightly, her eyes flicking from Julius to Hudson and back.
Then, she seemed to collect herself. She stood up straight and looked Julius in the eye.
“I just wanted to apologize for my parents,” she said. There was the faintest tremor to her voice, and from the way she held her hands together, Julius could tell that he and his mate made her nervous. “I’m really sorry for the things they said back there, and I’m sorry that they sued you at all, and I wish they hadn’t dragged me into it.”
Julius nodded.
“Thank you,” rumbled Hudson.
“My wrist is fine,” she went on, the words tumbling out of her now. “I don’t know why they won’t just leave you alone, I thought you were going to be animals or something, but actually seem okay and I don’t know what everyone’s problem is.”
“Some people can’t abide what they don’t understand,” Julius said. He was still doing his best to stay calm on the outside, but inside, he trembled with lust for this girl — her perfect, curvy body, her verve at defying her parents, her bravery at talking to the two of them at all.
Hell, he could tell that she was still shaking slightly.
She’s probably been raised to think we eat babies or something, Julius thought. She’s brave as hell to talk to us.
“Thanks, Miss Taylor,” he said.
He held out his hand for her to shake it, and for a moment, she eyed it nervously, as though it might be some kind of trap.
Then she took a quick breath, swallowed, and put her own hand in his, shaking it firmly.
“It’s just Quinn,” she said.
Julius smiled, careful not to show his teeth too much.
“I’m Julius,” he said, releasing her hand. “This is my mate, Hudson.”
Hudson and Quinn shook hands, Hudson murmuring a nicety.
“Thanks,” said Quinn. “I mean, sorry. I gotta get back, my parents are probably pretty mad.”
She nodded once and then turned, rushing back down the hall, her hips and perfect ass swaying from side to side in her skirt.
Julius and Hudson stared. They couldn’t help it.
I could watch her walk away all day, he thought.
“She’s afraid of us,” Hudson rumbled, leaning his face toward Julius’s ear.
“But she’s brave,” Julius said, his eyes lingering on her form as she turned a corner and disappeared from sight.
“I bet we could make her less afraid.”
Julius turned to face his mate, finally letting go of some of his control now that she was gone.
Right away, he started to get an erection. He tried to ignore it.
“We can’t,” he said. “Hudson, you know we can’t.”
“Can’t is an awfully strong word,” Hudson said. A smile began to spread across his face. “Don’t you mean shouldn’t?”
Julius’s palms began to sweat, his bear growling inside. He fought down the urge to grab Hudson’s face in both of his hands and press the other man against the wall of the courthouse.
People are watching, he reminded himself. Your colleagues are watching.
Hudson put one hand very, very lightly on Julius’s shoulder. Just a gentle touch between mates.
Julius’s knees went weak, his bear clawing to get out.
Mate, it was saying. Mate. Mate.
Julius licked his lips and glanced down the hall, at the line of closed, dark doors.
One of them was the jury sequestration room — almost always empty.
Acting far more calm than he felt, Julius grabbed Hudson’s hand. They walked down the hallway, and Julius nodded to a colleague of his, the assistant State’s Attorney. The man waved back, a manila file folder in one hand.
“Did I ever show you the jury room?” Julius asked, just a little bit too loudly, to Hudson. “It’s got an absolutely beautiful mural of the first city council of Granite Valley, you know.”
“I don’t believe I’ve seen it,” Hudson said, playing along.
They passed two women walking quickly, both wearing skirt suits and pumps, carrying paper coffee cups. The women didn’t even look at Julius and Hudson.
They reached the door to the jury room and Julius opened it, the brass doorknob blissfully cool in his hand. He stood perfectly straight as he let Hudson go through the door first, looking one last time over his shoulder at the other people in the hall.
No one was paying them any attention. Julius felt his shoulders relax with relief, and then Hudson’s hand grabbed his and pulled him inside.
He had barely shut the door behind him before he was pinned against the wall, Hudson’s mouth on his, the other man’s hips pinned against his own.
Julius could feel the long, hard throb of Hudson’s erection against his own, and the feeling was enough to shut his thinking brain off and his animal brain on.
From somewhere deep in his chest, he groaned, hands sliding under Hudson’s suit jacket. He knew the other man’s body almost as well as his own. Better, maybe. After all, he didn’t spend as much time staring at himself in the mirror as he spent looking at Hudson.
Julius opened his mouth, pushing his tongue into Hudson’s, muscle against muscle. In seconds he had Hudson’s suit jacket off and he tossed it toward a table in the center of the room, not caring when one of the buttons made a loud thwack against the wood. His own followed, seconds later, and then Hudson was undoing the buttons on his shirt, yanking it out where it had been tucked into his trousers, his rough hands against the soft skin of his belly.
“Shh,” Hudson whispered, teasingly, breaking their kiss for just long enough to speak. “That’s not the sound of mural appreciation.”
Julius realized he’d been groaning, and laughed.
“I’ve got a keen eye for art,” he said.
For just a moment, he thought of Quinn’s ass as she walked away from them.
Then he thought of her, riding him, her face flushed, her eyes closed in bliss.
He grabbed Hudson by the belt and jerked the other man against himself, his eyes shuddering closed as they rubbed lengths again, through the thick suit fabric. His other hand danced under Hudson’s shirt, feeling his hard ab muscles alongside the thick ridges of the scars there. He knew the story behind every one: the long one that traveled up his side from a motorcycle accident ten years ago, the diagonal slash across one pec from a knife fight not long before they’d met.
Julius moved his lips along Hudson’s jaw — clean shaven for once, since they’d been with the judge earlier — and followed his skin down to the spot below his jaw, right where he could feel Hudson’s heartbeat.
Ba dum. Ba dum. Julius nipped the spot softly with his teeth, just hard enough for Hudson to feel it.
Hudson groaned, and Julius could feel his cock stiffen against his.
“It’s an excellent mural, isn’t it?” he said, teasing the other man.
Then Hudson’s hands were on his belt, unbuckling it, whipping the black leather through the buckle, unbuttoning and unzipping his pants, his thick, calloused fingers drawing Julius’s cock out of his pants and stroking it once from root to tip, his grip tight.
“God I want to fuck you,” Julius hissed.
“Is that what this is?” Hudson asked, a smile in his voice, sliding his hand up and down one more time.
Julius’s hand found Hudson’s cock through his pants and squeezed, hard, eliciting a groan from the other man. Hudson’s grip loosened on Julius’s cock for a second, and Julius took the opportunity to grab his mate and spin the two of them around, pinning the other man against the wall with a dull thud.
He didn
’t even care if anyone outside had heard. Julius was beyond caring about any of that. All he could feel was the roaring fire of his lust.
He pressed his cock against Hudson’s again, lowering his head one more time to the other man’s throat, inhaling his scent deeply.
It made him feel like he was burning from the inside out.
Julius wanted nothing more than to take his mate right there, on the table in the jury room, bury his cock to the hilt inside Hudson, listen to his mate’s cries of pleasure.
He hadn’t brought any lube, though. Shit.
In a flash, he had Hudson’s pants unbuckled and undone, his cock out, rubbing against his own. For a moment it felt like fireworks were going off in his brain, blotting out everything else in the world. Right now, there were only the two of them.
Then he thought of her sashaying away again, her hips moving side to side. Teasing him, though she hadn’t meant to.
“Are you thinking about how easy it would have been to rip her shirt open?” Hudson growled.
“I’m thinking about her ass in that skirt as she walked away,” Julius said.
He felt Hudson’s strong hand grip both of their cocks, stroking them together, hot, hard flesh on hard flesh.
“I bet her tits bounce when she rides your cock,” Hudson whispered in Julius’s ear.
Julius put his hand over Hudson’s and they stroked together. Julius was breathing hard now, and he could feel the sweat dripping down his back.
He was so keyed up that it wasn’t going to take much to send him over the edge. He was close, already, and he could tell that Hudson was too.
“You could really sink your fingers into her thighs, too,” he said, his voice little more than a rough growl. “Squeeze them as she screams your name.”
Sparks began to play around the edge of his vision, and he fished desperately in his pocket for the handkerchief he usually kept there.
“Oh, fuck,” said Hudson, leaning his forehead against Julius’s, as Julius covered their cocks with the handkerchief just in time.
Sparks exploded across his vision as he came, feeling the fire at his core rocket through him with shuddering, explosive force. Hudson’s hand tightened and then he exploded too, his lips seeking Julius’s, their hips grinding together.
Finally, Julius was spent. He leaned against his mate, still against the wall, their foreheads still together, their lips an inch apart, their breathing heavy.
“We shouldn’t even talk about her,” Julius murmured, his eyes closed.
“I know,” Hudson said. “If her parents heard, I bet they’d sue us.”
“And she’s a lost cause,” Julius said, shaking his head slightly. “She could barely bring herself to shake our hands, let alone sleep in our bed.”
Hudson sighed. Then he swallowed, nodded, and took his hand from their cocks, sending a quick shudder through Julius.
Then Hudson frowned, looking down.
“Didn’t I give you that handkerchief for our anniversary one year?” he asked.
Julius peeled it away very, very carefully, and then looked and their pants.
Not a drop of semen had gotten on either of them. The silk handkerchief was ruined, though.
“I think we put it to good use,” he said.
Chapter Six
Quinn
Quinn tried to look dignified getting into the back of her parents’ fourteen-passenger church van, but it was hard. In fact, she was finding dignity increasingly hard at the moment: she felt completely ridiculous back in that judge’s chambers, admitting that her wrist was basically fine and that she didn’t mind seeing two people kiss.
Then, to top it all off, she’d had to go apologize to the sexy lawyer and his incredibly hot mate. They’d seemed more amused than anything, and while that wasn’t precisely the reaction she’d been hoping for, it was better than disdain.
Not that Quinn knew what reaction she had been hoping for.
As she’d approached, every warning she’d ever heard about shifters had rung through her head — that they would kidnap her away and keep her as a sex slave, that looking into a shifter’s eyes meant you belonged to that shifter forever.
Hell, on the playground in elementary school, a kid had once told her that touching a shifter made you into one. It was obviously untrue, but she couldn’t help but think about it as the lawyer held out his hand.
And then, there was whatever the hell was happening to her, some potent combination of anxiety and, well, lust. They were easily two of the hottest men she’d ever met, and she replayed their kiss in her mind a dozen times a day.
Besides the hotness, they also seemed... nice, almost. Warm and welcoming in a way that her parents weren’t and would never be.
As soon as Quinn plopped into the bucket seat two rows behind her parents, she put her earbuds into her ears and hit play on her iPod. She already knew that the entire way home, the conversation between her parents was going to be nonstop abuse of Julius and Hudson, and she wasn’t sure she could handle it.
For a couple minutes, she stared out the window, watching the beautiful scenery of Cascadia drift by the van window. Even though they were just driving down the highway, everything there was beautiful: the tall, strong evergreen trees, the rock mountains peeking above the forest, the clear blue sky that went on forever.
The playlist she’d been listening to ended, and there was silence in her earbuds. Quinn looked down to play something else.
She was scrolling through her music when she heard her mother murmur something about a rifle.
Her thumb on the iPod’s dial stopped. Quinn wasn’t sure what made her hear that single word, but there it was, hanging in the air, and she froze completely.
“That seems like overkill,” her father’s voice said. Even without seeing him, she could tell he was frowning.
“Well, apparently Jacob couldn’t hit the side of a barn from ten feet away,” her mother snapped, a little too loudly.
Without meaning to, Quinn’s eyes snapped to the front seat. They met her father’s in the rearview mirror.
She thought her heart might beat out of her chest, but she nodded her head in time to an imaginary song, letting her gaze drift away. Acting like she was listening to music and that she hadn’t heard a thing that her parents were saying.
Jacob, she thought. I know that name. Why does it sound so familiar?
“The new guy is much better than Jacob,” her father said. The van wiggled a little on the road as Quinn stared out the window, straining her ears.
I know that name, I know I do, she thought.
“If we’d just used him in the first place, that mangy lawyer and his thug of a mate wouldn’t have been smirking at us in judges’ chambers this morning,” her father went on.
Julius and Hudson? Quinn thought.
Then it clicked.
She knew the name Jacob because he’d been all over the Granite Valley news for the past day.
He was the shooter. And he’d been aiming for Julius.
Quinn wanted to pass out, throw up, or both. She felt lightheaded, and had to remind herself to breathe, and to look as calm as she could. If she freaked out now, she was certain that her parents would lock her in their room or worse — but if she played it cool and pretended she couldn’t hear them, maybe she could help them.
“Save the ‘I told you so’s,’ all right?” her mother said. “I’ll tell him we can try to get the tools he wants, but the new court date is the day after tomorrow, so he might have to deal with something handheld.”
“More likely to get caught,” her father said.
Chills ran up and down Quinn’s spine, but she tried to stay as calm as she could.
“He’s got two little girls and some lions just moved next door to him,” her mother said. “He’ll do anything for the cause, even if it means being in jail for a long time.”
Quinn fought back a shiver.
“We shouldn’t even be talking about this,” her mother
muttered.
Silence ruled for the rest of the ride back to the motel.
Quinn managed to look half-bored and half-tired until her motel room door was locked.
Then she started freaking out. She tore her uncomfortable clothes off, pulling on a soft old t-shirt and jeans as she paced back and forth, her head in her hands.
What am I supposed to do? she thought.
She hadn’t actually heard anything that she could go to the police with. What was she supposed to say — I heard my parents talking about a rifle and a new guy?
They’d mentioned Jacob, sure, but everyone was talking about Jacob.
Besides, there was nothing they could use. No evidence against her parents, no info on who the new shooter was, or when or where the shooting was going to happen.
Hell, she wasn’t even positive they’d been planning a shooting. All she really had was a bad, bad feeling.
Besides, she was a known member of an anti-shifter group. Why would the police believe her? Why would they think she’d suddenly turned on her parents?
This might be a good time to call your brother, she thought, and before she even knew what she was doing, she was opening the book and dialing his number on her phone, each ring on the other end sending her anxiety higher and higher.
“Quinn?”
At George’s voice, she blinked back sudden tears. It had been years since she’d heard him speak.
“Hey,” she said.
“What’s up?” he said. She thought she heard a note of caution in his voice, like she might be calling as some kind of trap, some way for his parents to finally get back at him.
“I understand why you left,” she said.
Silence on the other end.
“I’m in Cascadia with them, protesting the triad marriage court case, and it’s awful. They’re awful. These people don’t deserve the stuff that mom and dad say about them, they’re just normal people.”
“I know,” George said.
“I believed them for so long,” she said.
Tell him about the assassination attempt, she thought.