Of course, the only clients who came to this office were of the shifter variety. Human jobs were taken on location at the clients’ choosing. Derek understood the pack’s need for privacy, and out here on their own massive piece of land, they found it. In fact, it hadn’t been until Derek had mistakenly seen Eli shift back in high school that he’d gotten to see his best friend’s home himself.
And after meeting Paige, he thought with a grin and a twitch of his cock, well, he had a feeling he’d be seeing a whole lot more of the area. He hoped from her bedroom window.
“Nice of you to show up on time.”
The woman’s voice stopped him in his tracks. Raising an eyebrow, he did an about-face and stared at the owner of the snide comment. Her tousled hair, straight from a night smashed against a pillow, covered the thin scar running across one of her cheeks. At least these days the hair wasn’t there on purpose. She’d gotten over that anxiety in the past several months, thanks to Eli.
The woman was pure annoyance. Always had been. He stripped the folder from between his lips with the hand that held his keys and shifted his weight to one jean-clad leg.
“Nice of you to get out of bed on time,” he countered.
“Ass.”
“Bitch.”
“Stop calling my fiancée a bitch, Derek.” Eli sauntered by, his gaze buried in a report he was reading, not even stopping to give his bored reprimand.
“Tell my sister to stop harassing me and I’ll stop calling her a bitch.”
Nikki snorted. “That’ll never happen.”
“Ya know, the day you moved out of the house was the best day of my life.” Liar. He missed having her around.
“Whatever. Give me my coffee, fool.” She snatched the cup from his hand and strolled back to wherever she’d come from. Her hips swayed back and forth with a little too much emphasis as she took a long drag of the coffee he brought his loving sister every morning, lest she really be the bitch he teased her about being. One cup usually cured her, not that she couldn’t do without. In fact, the only reason she drank it was because Derek brought it for her. She’d developed a taste for the stuff over time.
“Derek.”
He shook his head and followed the bellow of his boss, Caelan.
“You hollered?” Derek slapped the folder on the desk in front of Caelan, stuck his keys in his pocket and slumped into one of the two seats opposite the Prime of the Graham Pack. Derek wasn’t a shifter, wasn’t part of the pack, but by virtue of being Eli’s best friend and having known their secret since their teenage years—not to mention he was Nikki’s brother and Nikki and Eli were getting married in two days—he’d been invited into the family security business.
“I’ve got a job for you.”
“No rest for the wicked, huh?” Derek chuckled and reached for the apple danish his sister had left for him on the corner of the desk. It was their tradeoff every day. Her Starbucks for his danish. He propped his left ankle over his right knee and bit into the sweet treat, licking the bit of icing that stubbornly stuck to his lip.
“Nope.” Caelan sat back and threaded his fingers together behind his head.
“Sweet. Just don’t let it interfere with my dear sister’s wedding this weekend or you’ll likely lose something you value a whole lot.” Derek cringed and pressed his thighs together. She’d probably relieve him of his own set if he did anything to botch up her nuptials.
He had a pressing need for them now. One that included a certain long-legged blonde who made his dick hard as a rock with one look.
“It won’t.”
There was a smile behind the words, and Derek sensed something in the tone of Caelan’s voice, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Amusement? What the hell was he up to? What kind of security job would be fun? Most of the time they were downright boring. Sitting in parked cars and people watching, trailing behind the rich who only wanted to look like they had a problem and thus needed protection when they didn’t, or staking out a situation beforehand to make sure it was safe. Routine stuff. Not fun.
“We think one of our pack members is being stalked.”
Again, not fun. Derek sat upright, his foot dropping to the floor with a thud. But… “Wouldn’t another shifter be better suited to help with this case?” Not that he didn’t want it, but shifters had an innate sense when it came to their own kind, and hell, he’d be the first to admit their tracking skills were far superior to his, especially in the form of their wolves.
He shrugged. “Possibly, but I’m assigning her to you.”
A woman. Of course. It went without saying the majority of stalking cases were against women. He hated thinking of a man messing with a woman. Women were supposed to be cherished, not treated like dirt. Caelan had known Derek would react strongly to this case because of what had happened to his sister. An instinctive need to protect whoever she was rushed to the forefront of his mind, along with a flash of blonde hair and petite breasts. If anyone messed with Paige, he’d kill them.
Whoa. Where the hell had that come from?
“I got a call from her last night. She thought someone had been in her house, but neither she nor Eli nor I could pick out any foreign scents. No, scratch that. There was one,” he said, giving Derek a pointed look. “I’ve got someone over there now looking for fingerprints.” Caelan opened a folder on his desk. “She’s been getting flowers every day this week and just found out they were being left by another one of our pack members.”
“So check him the fuck out.”
Caelan stared at him, clearly saying I am with his eyes. He flipped Derek a photo of a man.
“Tucker Patton. You met him last night, actually. He has this crazy idea the woman is his mate. Unfortunately, as even you know, it doesn’t work that way. As a shifter, she would know he was her mate too, but he seems convinced she is his anyway.” Caelan rifled through some more papers before saying, “Last night Eli traced him back home from her house, where she’d dumped him rather unceremoniously off her porch.”
“Good for her.” Derek smiled. He liked a woman who didn’t take shit off other people. Especially any dickhead pressuring her. It had nearly killed him to see his sister so wary of men after she’d been attacked in a parking lot by a group of would-be rapists. They’d done more damage to Nikki than the scar across her face. Scars were physical—it was the emotional damage that had taken its toll on her.
“Yeah, well, Tucker didn’t take too kindly to it.”
“Ego took a hit, did it?” Derek didn’t even try to suppress the snort. Maybe Tucker would think twice before he approached her again.
“Eli said he was a might pissed. Anyway. I’m not certain Tucker is completely to blame in all this.” Caelan handed him the rest of the contents of the folder he’d been searching through.
Derek raised an eyebrow and accepted the papers. “You think she’s making it up? Maybe trying to get Tucker into trouble so he’ll back off?”
“Hell no. Tucker’s fascination with her is all his doing. She’s too sweet to play those kinds of games, plus I know how bad she wants a mate even if she won’t admit it.” There went the strange look again. “No, what I’m not positive about is it being Tucker who was in her house. He swears the only flowers he left were the ones last night, and he says he never went into her house. But Paige has gotten flowers every night this week. If he didn’t do it…”
Derek tuned out the rest. His brain stopped cold at the name Paige. Paige. The woman he’d made love to for far too short a time not twelve hours ago, Paige. How many Paiges could Caelan possibly have in his pack? It wasn’t the world’s most popular name, and what were the chances he coincidentally had made love to a different shifter named the same?
She’d fucking left his bed only to be confronted by a stalker. Why hadn’t she said anything to him?
Because she doesn’t know you from Adam. D
oesn’t have your cell phone number. How or why would she say anything to you? Then his mind crashed into overdrive. Jesus. Had she been using him as a respite from her trouble?
No. He wouldn’t believe that.
Then why did she run out the second you’d flooded her pussy with your—
Shit. Shit. He frantically thought back to the heated moment. She’d said she was safe, right? Right? He’d been at the brink of her opening, ready to sate himself in her tight pussy, loving the way she felt around the head of his cock, when sanity struck. He wasn’t wearing a condom. No wonder she’d felt so fantastic. She was the first woman to make him lose his head and not give a damn about the fact he wasn’t protecting her.
But she said she was safe.
Derek searched his brain for her precise words. Hard to do when he couldn’t think of anything but wanting to take her the same way again.
I’m good. Clean and everything…
Clean…and everything.
Everything.
What the fuck did “everything” mean? She hadn’t said, “I’m on the pill”—she’d said, “I’m clean. And everything.”
Fuck.
He suddenly envisioned little Dereklets running around. Little Dereklets with the ability to shift into little wolflets.
Was he ready for offspring?
He grinned. With Paige? Hell yeah. For the first time in his life he could imagine forever. Weird.
He zoned back into the conversation with Caelan. What had they been talking about?
Tucker. Derek would kill him if he ever laid a finger on his woman again.
“Sounds to me like the prick would say anything you want to hear,” he mumbled in response to Caelan’s statement that Tucker only left the flowers but didn’t enter her house.
“Could be,” Caelan conceded and shrugged. “That’s her file—read up, get to know her in more ways than the biblical,” he said dryly, revealing that he knew Derek had been with Paige. “You start tomorrow night.”
Derek didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say, and he didn’t want to get pulled off the case because things were personal between him and Paige. As for not meeting her until tomorrow night? He wasn’t about to leave her vulnerable for the next minute, let alone the next twenty-four hours.
“Why not now?” He restrained himself and didn’t leap to his feet to confront the wolf. “If she’s got a stalker, then waiting isn’t the answer. And shit. Tomorrow night is the rehearsal dinner. If I miss it, Nikki’ll have a kitten.” Not that he needed to tell Caelan how to run his business.
His boss grinned, the dick. He knew about him and Paige, so why he didn’t just say so? Damn his sense of smell.
“I sure as shit hope not.” Caelan shuddered at the kitten pun. “I don’t need you now because she’s at work and I’ve already sent someone to keep an eye on her. Kind of a drive-by thing. I wasn’t sure how long you’d be today finishing up your last assignment, and turning it over to someone else when you’re this close to the end doesn’t do me any good. And trust me, Paige isn’t the kind of girl who’ll take kindly to being shadowed.”
“What woman would?” None Derek knew. Temperamental pieces of equipment, that’s what the female species was.
“I was kind of hoping you might be able to find a way of being with her without her knowing exactly what you’re doing.” Again with the pointed gaze, and he almost sounded…smug?
“For God’s sake, Caelan, we both know you know how close I can get without her knowing why I’m there. Shit, I know you smelled her on me the second I walked in the door. There’s no goddamn privacy around you people, is there?”
Caelan grinned but didn’t answer.
Something about doing it Caelan’s way reeked. At some point, if Derek didn’t tell her she’d become his job, Paige would no doubt find out and think he’d slept with her for the sole purpose of staying near to protect her.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Caelan stood and stretched, making Derek wonder how late he’d been up the night before and how long he’d already been at work. He ignored the jibe about how close he could get to her.
“She may surprise us all,” he said. “Last night was a shock for her. I don’t think she’ll be stupid about this. Tonight she’ll be with Eli and Nikki at something or other, and tomorrow night she’ll be at the rehearsal dinner, so you can meet up with her there.” He paused as if waiting for Derek to say something, then continued. “I’d say you could introduce yourselves, get to know one another, but like you said, moot point, huh? Who knows, maybe if whoever really is stalking her—and I’m not counting Tucker out in the least—sees the two of you together, he’ll back off.”
“Either that or he’ll escalate.” Derek put his hands on his hips and thought. It wasn’t all that unusual to keep quiet about the job. He’d done it before, not telling the client why he was actually around. But usually they only did that in business-type settings when they suspected someone on the job of whatever nefarious issue. The owner might hire a security person as an “employee” to catch said suspect in the act.
But getting involved with Paige that way could only end badly for both of them. He had to think of a way to tell her who he was and that he hadn’t made love to her to get close. Hell, he hadn’t even known she was in trouble until this morning, so maybe if he explained the whole timing issue, she would understand.
Then there was the no getting involved with a client. Tough shit.
“I guess we’ll be ready for him then, won’t we?” Caelan pointed out, shaking Derek from his musings.
“Without a doubt.” Derek reached for the danish again and mulled over what needed to be done. She was probably going to resent the shit out of him intruding on her life full-time. Again, tough shit. She was going to have to deal, because he wasn’t about to leave her unprotected.
Damn it. He wished he could go to her right now. He didn’t like the thought of leaving her vulnerable, even if Caelan had said someone was watching her. But his last case beckoned, and it wasn’t something he could just drop. He had to close it, make sure all the I’s were dotted and T’s crossed so it could go to trial without a hitch. Then he’d study the file Caelan had given him and hopefully find out if the team had found any fingerprints at Paige’s house this morning.
Caelan’s office phone rang as Derek left, closing the door behind him. Nikki, with a bounce to her step, approached him. She looked happier than he could remember seeing her in a long while, and not because of the coffee. His best friend was the direct reason. Eli had brought her back to life after the attack that left her face scarred and then her witnessing her friends’ murders. If it weren’t for Eli, she’d probably still be a shell of a woman, hiding in their parents’ home from the world.
“Don’t you dare be late tomorrow, Der.”
He huffed out a silent breath and shook his head. Had he really just been thinking about how proud he was of her? “Well, now that you mention it, I do have this new assignment…”
She rounded on him, her eyes glaring, teeth bared and steam shooting from her ears. “Derek. Taylor,” she snarled. “I will make your life miserable.” In less than five seconds he found himself plastered against the wall with his sister’s nose on his, which meant he must be slouching against her onslaught, because no way would her nose reach his under normal circumstances.
There was a click and a puff of air.
“Relax, Cujo.” Caelan laughed beside them from his reopened door. “He’ll be there.”
Nikki backed up slowly, never breaking eye contact with Derek while saying, “I mean it, Caelan, don’t give him a job until after this weekend. That’s all I need is for my own brother to mess up and take the wrong girl down the aisle because he missed the rehearsal.”
“There’ll be girls?” Derek couldn’t resist. She punched him in the arm and
half of his danish fell to the floor.
“Damn it, Nik, you ruined my breakfast. I ought to dump out your coffee.”
She gasped, and Derek hid a smile as he bent down to retrieve his mutilated pastry. She stomped her foot, the little twerp. “I do not want anything else to go wrong with my wedding.”
Neither did he or he’d never hear the end of it. Besides, she deserved the happiness and he didn’t begrudge her the chance one bit. “Nothing’s gone wrong, Nik, and nothing will.”
“You call one of my bridesmaids breaking her leg nothing?”
Well, there was that.
“All right, nothing else. What could possibly happen in two days?”
Caelan covered his eyes, Nikki’s widened. “You are such a man.”
Thankfully Eli breezed through at exactly the right moment. “Come on, Nikki-Raine.” He tugged her hand, pulling her in the direction of their wing of the massive house. There was a wicked gleam in Eli’s eye, which Derek clearly read as intent to do bodily…whatever. He didn’t want to think about his sister doing the sixty-nine, but thanked Eli for his intervention.
“I’ve got better things for you to do with your spare time,” he heard Eli say.
“I don’t have spare time,” Nikki grumbled back.
“You do now.”
Nikki spun around one last time. “Six o’clock, Derek, not a second later.”
“Yes, master.” He gave her a two-finger salute. “Are all women like this right before getting hitched?” he asked from the corner of his mouth.
Caelan grunted. “Sometimes worse, and when they’re pregnant, whoo doggie.”
“Great. I’m glad I’m a confirmed bachelor, then.”
Except…damn. Was he still after last night? He had a feeling his bachelor’s days were over. Especially since he’d come deep inside Paige’s orgasming body last night.
Chapter Four
He finished tying off the cord binding the big guy’s hands behind his back and stood. The redhead groaned from his position on his side in the trunk of his car but didn’t wake.
Ultimatum: Graham Pack Mates, Book 3 Page 7