by Alyssa Day
“I know. And we solved that case. Now we’ll solve this one.” He opened his door, but I stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Jack. I don’t need a babysitter.”
“I’m not your babysitter. I’m your friend. Also, your cat likes me,” he said smugly.
I couldn’t argue with that.
I loved my house. I’m kind of a homebody, odd for a twenty-six year old, I know. It was small, and nearly a hundred years old, but it was mine, and I took good care of it. It was white with deep-blue storm shutters, and I had flowers in pots on the porch. I could feel all my tense muscles relaxing as I walked up to my front door.
Jack had never owned a house. He’d told me a little bit about his life as a soldier, and then as a rebel, and finally as a rebel leader. Ever since the supernatural creatures of the world had come out into the open to take their place in society, there had been some that tried to fit in and others who tried to take over.
Some of the older vampires were the worst of the lot. Jack and his comrades-in-arms had held the line between the power-mad and truly evil of the supernatural creatures and the rest of us—the humans and the normal, non-evil supes. He’d took part in fighting back a demon invasion, too, in the lost continent of Atlantis when it rose from the sea after 11,000 years—lost no longer.
The Atlanteans considered him a friend and brother, even the Atlantean king, who’d married an American woman. The news had raved for months about the social worker who’d become a queen. Jack said Riley—Queen Riley, who also happened to be Quinn’s sister—was a very nice woman.
I couldn’t imagine meeting royalty, so I took his word for it.
When I unlocked the door, Lou ran out and leapt on me, purring loudly. My sweet cat. I’d named her Lieutenant Uhura after a Star Trek character I’d been watching when she’d shown up on my porch, bedraggled and emaciated, one rainy night. Since then, we’d kept each other. She loved me fiercely, but didn’t like most other people. The trauma that had happened to her when she was a kitten, mangling the tip of her tail, had made her aloof and wary of strangers.
Oddly enough, she loved Jack.
He lifted her off my shoulder and stroked her back, and her purr grew to a ridiculously loud level.
“Traitor,” I said, laughing.
Jack grinned. “It’s a cat thing, remember?”
“Are you staying for dinner, then? I’m not sure I have enough food to feed you,” I told him, kicking off my shoes and heading for the kitchen.
“We can order pizza.”
“Or you could order pizza at home, and I could go to bed early,” I said pointedly, glancing back at him. “Still don’t need a babysitter, Jack.”
He gently dumped Lou on the couch, then followed me into the kitchen. “I’m your friend. If somebody was killing all the tiger shifters in the country, would you leave me alone to tough it out?”
No way in hell. I had a shotgun, and I knew how to use it.
I fed Lou, who appreciated me, and ordered pizza for Jack, who was a pain in the butt. Then I came up with a good argument.
“I’m not a banshee,” I pointed out.
“No, but if anybody knows you’re related to Leona, especially if this Everett jerk is involved, how will they know the difference? You could become collateral damage,” he said, in a reasonable voice.
“I hate when you use the reasonable voice,” I muttered, giving in. There was no point arguing with a tiger. “I may as well buy you a cat bed, you stay over here so much.”
Jack grinned at me and reached into the fridge for a beer. “I already have a great cat bed here.”
It wasn’t until a few hours later, after pizza and a rousing game of Street Fighter on the Xbox, that I discovered what Jack thought was a ‘great cat bed’ for a five-hundred pound tiger.
Mine.
Chapter 7
“Oh, hell, no.”
I’d walked out of my bathroom, face washed, teeth brushed, and totally exhausted, to find two cats on my bed. One human, and one purring.
So not happening.
Even though I was just the teensiest bit tempted.
Sleepy Jack was even more gorgeous than awake Jack. He was still fully dressed, except for his boots, which sat at the end of my bed. His wavy bronze hair was almost golden in the light from my bedside lamp, and his eyes were deep, shining green. His hands were clasped behind his head, which was on my pillow, displaying the muscles in his arms in more glorious detail than was good for a single girl who hadn’t had sex in way, way too long.
I swallowed, hard. “Jack. You can’t sleep with me. We’re not even dating.”
His lips curved in that slow, sexy smile he was devastatingly good at, and I tried not to fall into his hot green gaze. “Do you want to be?”
“Dating?” I squeaked.
Lou, curled up at Jack’s side, gave me a curious look, like she was wondering what her human was up to now.
I was kind of wondering that, myself. It would be wrong to just jump him, right?
Damn. Moral dilemmas on top of murder on top of magically appearing grandmothers. This was a weird freaking day.
I bit my lip, trying to decide which way to go—order him out of my room or kick start a wild night of deliciously carnal sex.
Jack suddenly sat up and swung his legs off my bed. “I’m sorry. You’ve had one hell of a day, and I’m making it worse by teasing you. Get some sleep, okay?”
“You’re going home?” I didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
“Nope. Not till we catch whoever’s killing banshees.”
The now-familiar tingles of his magic washed over me, and seconds later there was a Bengal tiger curled up on the braided rug next to my bed. Lou hissed at him, talking big for an eight-pound cat, and I sighed.
Definitely disappointed.
When I skirted his huge body to climb into bed, Jack surprised me by nudging his head into my hand. Caught off guard, I froze, but then relaxed and smoothed one of his ears with my fingers.
“So this is where all that superior hearing comes from, I guess?”
His eyes gleamed amber, hopefully in appreciation for my superior sense of humor, and comforted, I curled up on the edge of the bed and fell asleep, one hand hanging off the side of the bed, still resting on his fur.
The banshee wailed, and shrieked, and screamed at me that Jack was going to die. I shook her, and then I slapped her, and then—I couldn’t get her to shut up—I shoved a banana in her mouth.
Wait. What?
I sat bolt upright in bed, suddenly wide awake.
“A dream,” I said, blowing out a sigh. “More like a nightmare.”
Jack, human now, stood next to my bed holding out my phone. He had a weird grimace on his face, and I realized he was looking at my hair. A quick glance into the mirror over the dresser revealed that I looked like a poodle caught in a windstorm.
Not my best look.
Sadly, not my worst look, either.
“It’s Alejandro for you,” Jack said, grinning at my attempt to calm my hair down a little.
“What? Why?”
Special Agent Alejandro Vasquez, originally from Guatemala, and currently with P-Ops, the FBI’s Paranormal Operations division, was so hot that butter probably melted when he walked by the dairy case in the grocery store. Not quite as hot as the tiger currently invading my space, but almost. He was scary good at his job, married to a garden witch who lived in Ohio, of all places, and he’d helped us out with our evil witch problem a few months ago.
Alejandro, like Jack, had fought on the side of the Atlanteans. He had zero jurisdiction in Dead End, but he’d pulled some strings to help us adopt Shelley, so he was high on my list of good guys.
I took the phone, and said “coffee?” to Jack, with extra desperation, after I glanced at the clock and saw that it was only six a.m.
“After we hear what the Fed wants,” Jack said, folding his arms across his chest and leaning against the wall.
<
br /> “Do you want me to put it on speaker?”
“No need. Superior—”
“Tiger hearing, I get it.” I raised the phone to my ear. “Hey, Alejandro. Caught any evil basilisks yet?”
It was kind of a running joke, since we’d found out his rookie assignment had been to capture basilisks, which are about the size and shape of a chicken crossed with a lizard.
“Funny girl. I hear you’re related to the president of NABR,” he said in his warm voice with the seductive accent that his wife must really, really love.
Jack growled at me, and I rolled my eyes. “I can’t help it. He has a great accent.”
“Thank you, your accent is delightful, too,” Alejandro said. “Now about the missing banshees?”
“How do you find out about this stuff? I just learned I had a grandmother that was a banshee yesterday.”
Miffed, I threw the covers back, causing Lou to hiss at me, and got out of bed.
“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you, and I don’t really want to have to take on your tiger boyfriend,” he said, amusement plain in his voice.
“I’d kick your ass, Fed,” Jack called out.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said.
“Yet he is in your bedroom at six in the morning? Perhaps I need to have a chat with the tiger about the proper way to treat a lady,” Alejandro said smoothly.
“Perhaps I need to send your wife a sympathy card for being married to an asshole,” Jack said, snatching the phone from me.
I put my hands on my hips. “What do you—oh, never mind. I need coffee for this phone call, anyway. You two have your bromance chat and then we’ll get back to whatever Alejandro is calling about.”
I made myself a hot cup of vanilla-toffee—thank you, gods of Keurig!—and drank most of it while they talked smack at each other. The funny part was that Jack and Alejandro really respected each other. In fact, Alejandro had even offered Jack a job as his partner, which I was very glad he’d turned down.
I studied Jack as he looked out the kitchen window, talking to Alejandro. It was a very nice view. Jack had one of the best butts I’d ever seen on a man. It was bite-worthy. His body tapered from that amazing butt to a narrow waist and then back out to his strong back and thickly muscled shoulders and arms.
Jack suddenly turned and caught me drooling over him. His eyes flared hot amber for a second, and I dragged in a shaky breath. The man was sex personified, and I’d been pretending it was perfectly innocent to let him sleep over at my house—in my bedroom. I was finally going to have to admit to myself that I needed some distance, or else I was going to take a flying naked leap at him and climb right up all that gorgeous, muscled perfection.
My nipples got hard just thinking about it, and he was a man and a predator, so he definitely noticed.
He abruptly hung up the phone and prowled over to me, all tall, bronze deliciousness.
“Tess, if you keep looking at me like that, we are not going to get out of this house today,” he said, his voice low and rough in a way that sent shockwaves through my poor , sex-deprived body. “Maybe for the next three days.”
For the life of me, I couldn’t come up with a single reason why that would be a bad thing.
My phone rang.
“Ignore it,” Jack commanded.
“Ignore what?”
The phone stopped ringing.
He pulled me up out of my chair, scary hair, morning breath, and all, and gently cupped my face with his hands. “I’m going to kiss you now.”
“Uh-huh,” I agreed. “Now is good.”
My cellphone started ringing again, except this time my house phone and Jack’s phone both started ringing, too. It was a cacophony of bad freaking timing.
I tried to smile. “Saved by the bell?”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “I think not.”
Then he kissed me, and my mind disintegrated. Oh, holy hormones, the man could kiss. He’d kissed me before, but he’d been drunk. That had still been a good kiss, but this was a stratospherically good kiss. He pulled me into his arms and kept kissing me, taking my mouth with heat and barely leashed ferocity, and the world and all the ringing phones in it disappeared.
Nothing was left but Jack. The feel of his hot, hard body against me. The taste of his mouth. That tantalizing scent of green forest with a hint of something sharp and spicy and masculine that was all man. All Jack.
When he finally raised his head, I inhaled a couple of long, shaky breaths.
“Wow. You… I…This…”
His arms tightened around me, but a shadow of something dark crossed his eyes. “Yes. You. This. I’m not sure why that happened. I won’t apologize, because I’m not sorry, but I sure as hell didn’t expect that.”
I didn’t know how to take his words, so I started to get girly and neurotic, but then I mentally slapped myself and smiled at him instead. “At least the phones stopped ringing.”
Jack looked around, with a dazed expression on his face. “They did?”
Suddenly, I wasn’t feeling neurotic at all. I’d knocked him just as off-balance as he’d done to me, and wasn’t that interesting? I wanted to sing, but I refrained, because my singing has been known to cause dogs to howl, flowers to die, and inanimate objects to run screaming out of the vicinity, as more than one person had told me.
This was a little bit hurtful, but possibly true.
“Jack—”
The phones started ringing again, and somebody started pounding on my front door.
“Somebody really wants to reach us,” Jack said, not moving an inch or showing any sign of letting me go.
“Great. I get to be the sensible one. I’m so not cut out for that role,” I said, sighing.
The pounding at the door sounded again, and this time whoever it was started yelling my name.
“Do you want to get that while I get dressed?”
Jack’s gaze travelled slowly down my body and then back up to my face. “I’d rather help you get dressed and we ignore the idiot on the porch.”
He pulled me even closer, and I realized that the hardness I was feeling meant that a certain tiger shifter was very, very happy to see me. In spite of the crazy hair and morning breath.
This relationship had potential.
Wait. Relationship? Okay, now might be the time to panic.
Just then, a man’s voice bellowing through a bullhorn sounded from the front porch.
“TESS CALLAHAN, OPEN THIS DOOR AT ONCE OR I WILL ASSUME YOU ARE IN DANGER AND BREAK IT DOWN.”
Jack snarled and headed for the door, shifting into his tiger form between one footstep and the next.
I’d been wrong, before.
Now was the time to panic.
Chapter 8
In a letdown of titanic proportions, it was only Deputy Kelly on the porch. By the time I got there, Jack had the poor guy treed on the porch railing.
“Jack! Let the nice man down.”
Jack turned his giant tiger face to me, and I swear he winked. Stupid cat. I pushed past him and held my hand out to the deputy.
“Come on down, he’s not going to hurt you.”
Jack shimmered back to human and gave Kelly an unfriendly look. “Not that you don’t deserve it. What the hell are you doing banging on Tess’s door at this time of morning?”
Kelly, to his credit, didn’t back down. “I might ask you why you’re here this early, too, preventing Miss Callahan from answering her door, when she’s in this state…this state…”
He looked at me, obviously baffled as to how to phrase the “state” I was in.
“State of bedhead? State of morning breath? State of just woke up to all my phones ringing and somebody banging on the door? What’s going on, Deputy Kelly?”
He blushed, making all those cute freckles glow. “It’s Andrew, ma’am.”
I winced. Not the dreaded “ma’am.” I was too young for this.
“Call me Tess, please. Now, why are you here, with y
our bullhorn, assaulting my poor door?”
Andrew held out his phone, and his voice dropped to an awestruck whisper. “Special Agent Alejandro Vasquez would like to speak to you.”
“I’m going to kill him,” I grumbled, taking Andrew’s phone, but being careful not to touch him. I did not want to know how sweet Andrew died.
“That might be a federal offense,” Alejandro said into my ear, laughing.
“Any female judge in the country would consider it justifiable homicide,” I told him. “Now I’m going to give the poor deputy his phone back, walk inside, get more coffee, and answer my cellphone, which you’re going to call in three minutes. Is that okay with you, or do I need to call your wife and describe your actions to her?”
Jack whistled. “Bringing out the big guns.”
Over the phone, I could hear nothing but silent panic, or so I imagined. Then the click of the call disconnecting.
I gave Andrew back his phone. “Thank you. Hey, what did you find out about Chet? From the RV park?”
He paused and then shrugged. “I guess it’s no secret. The blood on his shirt was from his own hand, not anybody else’s.”
Jack nodded. “I tried to scent the area, but there had been far too many people there, and I’m no wolf or bloodhound.”
Huh. I hadn’t even noticed him leaving yesterday. He saw my surprise and shrugged. “Ned was opening bottles of wine and telling you something about five o’clock. I took a few minutes to smell what I could smell.”
“Okay, well you should probably go talk to the P-Ops agent, ma’am, um, Tess,” Andrew said, blushing again.
“I will, and thank you. I’m sorry for Alejandro’s control freak tendencies.”
He nodded, but then glanced at Jack. “Um, do you need me to stay and protect you from anything else?”
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Kid, do your worst.”
I jumped between them. “No, no, no. No worst, no nothing. I have a strict no-aggression policy on my porch. Cut it out, Jack.”
I all but shooed the deputy off the porch and waved, then dashed back inside. I could at least get another cup of coffee before—