Quinn Security
Page 41
He pushed the material off of her body and drank in the sight of the lacey, pink bra and panties she was wearing. They were so thin that there was no need to imagine the shape of her breasts or light dusting of narrow hair between her legs. His grin spread wider and his pleased expression caused a hot flare of wet arousal to bloom in her core.
As he continued to savor the sight of her, Lucy began unfastening his belt buckle, eyeing the shape of his bulging body beneath those tight jeans of his, but again she was struck from out of nowhere with the disheartening fact that for Kaleb, this was just another night. It had to be. This was what he did to women. Seduced them. Used them. Even the aroused glint in his dark eyes and the sexy sideways grin on his face weren’t for her. Weren’t unique or special. Weren’t because of Lucy Cooper. This was just what he did.
Was she really going to let him do it to her, too?
She tried to push the thought out of her cloudy mind and concentrate on the feet of those large, warm hands of his that were now cupping and massaging her perky breasts. She still felt hot between the legs, but she was distracted. Her fingers slowed from their work of unzipping the fly of his jeans.
“Do I even matter to you?” she heard herself say and she immediately wanted to cringe.
She sounded like the insecure girl, the one who needed constant validation. It so wasn’t her and yet, she needed to know.
“Of course you matter to me.”
“But isn’t this exactly what you did with Courtney and Pamela and a million other girls?” she questioned.
She wanted to pull him into a kiss and scream, don’t go! when he hopped off of her and sat with a bounce on the bed beside her, his back to her, the energy between them having been completely sucked out of the room.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “It is.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. She would’ve preferred that he try his damnedest to convince her she was wrong.
“But you’re different,” he added as she sat up, the cuffed arms of her blue uniform still over each shoulder. “And so am I.” After a long moment, he wondered, “Maybe that’s not enough.”
“What makes you so different?” she questioned, studying the muscular shape of his perfect back, those broad shoulders of his, his tight strong waist and hips.
“I can’t tell you,” he said in a low voice. “The timing isn’t right.”
She’d had enough mystery for one lifetime. She wanted sex. She wanted it with him. And so what if she wanted a little reassurance in the process? How in the hell had he turned this around on her, pulling away like this and rejecting her?
Lucy felt like she’d blown it. Once again, her emotions had sabotaged her, but this time she only felt angry, not guilty and self-hating. Did she really have to veil her emotions and pretend to be someone she wasn’t just to get what she wanted? She did that all damn day, didn’t she? For years and years. And she was sick and tired of it.
She took hold of his muscular shoulders then wrapped her arms around him and whispered in his ear, “If I’m different, show me I’m different to you.”
He grew very stiff and still, then turned to face her on the bed. There was something in his dark eyes, a strange look, that told her she didn’t quite get him at all.
“What do you want, Lucy?” he challenged.
“You,” she told him with conviction, but quickly wavered. “I think.” After another moment’s consideration, she clarified, “I want something real.”
“With me,” he asked but it came out like a statement.
“Yes,” she breathed, and they stared at each other for what felt like an eternity.
It looked like he was shutting down, hardening.
Was the thought of being with her so terrible?
She watched as his mouth pressed into a hard line.
“I’m not what you think I am,” he told her.
Assuming he meant a playboy, she encouraged, “Then show me.”
“I’d have to since I doubt you’d believe me otherwise.”
“Yes,” she agreed, pulling him in, but he was too strong for her and wouldn’t collapse to the bed all over again. “Show me.”
Then she felt her mind bend, nearing snapping, as she witnessed Kaleb—faster than the rhythm of her heart—magically transform into a dark wolf.
She couldn’t comprehend it. All she could do was scramble back on the bed until her shoulders were pressing against the headboard.
The wolf was massive, on all fours, its shoulders hunched, head low, snout snarling, peeled back from its fangs.
She couldn’t even scream she was so mind-boggled and paralyzed with intrigued terror.
The dark wolf closed in on her, its snarling cooling off into a friendly pant. When it reached her, Lucy cowering with her palms up for mercy, the wolf rolled onto its side, laying its huge head on her tucked knees, and let out the kind of submissive whine that dogs did when they wanted their bellies scratched.
She just stared, her entire body stiff as a board. Then, cautiously, she lowered her hand to its forehead and dared to give him a gentle stroke.
“Kaleb?” she breathed, and the wolf let out a comfortable groan that almost sounded like a response.
Then it leapt to the foot of the bed and as it turned, it transformed back into Kaleb Quinn.
A laugh, relieved and amazed, tumbled out of her and she slapped a hand over her mouth.
“You’re…”
“Different,” he supplied.
“A werewolf,” she clarified.
“Yeah, that too.”
“Who else knows?” she asked.
“No chick I took home from Libations, that’s for damn sure,” he told her.
And it worked. Lucy felt different. Special. She believed him and it suddenly dawned on her—they were similar. Unique. Insanely strange in their own ways. She didn’t feel like such a freak. Suddenly the fact that she was some kind of Astral Goddess, as his Grandmother Sasha had explained, wasn’t so scary. Kaleb was otherworldly, as well. Neither of them was human. Did that make them suitable for one another? Could their inhumanness make them meant to be? Could this be real?
“There’s a lot of us,” he went on. “Werewolves in the Fist. Everyone in my family basically heads the pack.”
Lucy suddenly remembered the wolf-man who had penetrated her mind out on Eagle’s Pass and she asked him, “That half-shifter who messed with me—”
“Dante,” he supplied. “He’s not one of us. Or, I should say, he’s rogue.”
“He’s a part of your pack?”
“He’s a mistake,” he said vaguely. “We’re trying to find him. Kill him. I guess, technically, he’s my uncle.”
“You’re lucky,” she told him. “There are others like you. You’re not alone.”
“You’re not alone, either,” he said as he neared her on the bed. “You might be one of a kind, but you’re not alone. You have me.”
“What does all of this mean, Kaleb?” she asked when the warmth of his reassurance had taken root in her heart. She believed him. She believed he wouldn’t let her feel alone. Ever. “I always assumed my parents were killed in some kind of robbery gone wrong. What if… what if,” she started to say for a second time, but the thought of it was almost too much to bear. She tried again, “What if they were killed because they were different? And what if,” she went on, suddenly struck by revelatory intuition, “your kind killed my kind?”
“No,” he insisted, shaking his head. “Impossible. Sasha would’ve mentioned it.”
“What if Dante, having gone rogue like you say, killed them?”
Kaleb went eerily quiet as their eyes locked.
Then she abandoned the notion. “No, that guy Peter Swanson was arrested.” She let out a rocky breath. “I’m trying to connect dots that don’t belong.”
But was she?
The look on Kaleb’s face was indication enough that she might not be.
Chapter Eleven
KALEB
His senses were massively heightened this way, especially his hearing, which would keep him alert whether he rested his eyes by shutting them or not.
His confidence with Lucy and her abilities had been building. Her last shift in the diner had taught him that. If she wanted, she could flicker out of this dimension and into the next, dodging any danger that might surprise her. Perhaps her emotions would have to be running high for that ability to manifest. Time would tell. All he was sure of at this point was that the anti-anxiety medication she was accustomed to taking gravely hindered her powers. Tonight, she wouldn’t be safe without him. But if she could manage to resist the urge to take her Xanax, then soon she might be fully capable of taking care of herself. Not that he would ever give up protecting her. But still, it gave him hope that so long as she stayed sober, she could also keep herself safe if need be.
But her blindingly bright glow might always be there. Well, if he kissed her. He might have missed his opportunity in that respect. God, he had sabotaged himself. She had been practically begging for it, and he’d most definitely wanted to give it to her, no mistake about it. But he’d gone and done the opposite.
Instead of feeding his incredible lust for her and succumbing to the one thing he wanted to do to her most—bring her there over and over again with the hard, slippery thrusts of their bodies merging—he’d gone and done the forbidden. He’d shown her what he truly was—a werewolf—breaking the cardinal rule of the pack. Unless the mortal was destined to be your one true mate, which could only be confirmed through the foresight of the werewolf king, a wolf was never to reveal itself. Ever. And that’s exactly what Kaleb had done. He’d rolled the dice and didn’t bother to read the white dots that had turned up. Lucy now knew he was a werewolf, and if she wasn’t meant to be his, and the pack found out, he could be exiled. Or worse. He could be put to death.
It was not a pleasant thought, and if Troy hadn’t been a volatile bundle of stressed nerves, he would’ve confided in his brother what he’d done and beg for forgiveness and advice. Troy was always a phone call away, but confessing to his brother, and king, was not a risk Kaleb was willing to take at this juncture.
For now, ignorance would be bliss for everyone.
Lucy had raised a disturbing point, though, one he’d like to pass on to Troy.
How long had Dante been out there? How many years or decades had he been roaming the Fist, wreaking havoc wherever it suited him best? Had Dante killed Roxanne and Harold Cooper? Had he known of their Astral abilities, their otherworldliness? Had it threatened him? Had they known of him? And had he robbed them of this world because of it?
Had he come after Lucy to finish off her kind only to take the life of an innocent girl accidentally instead?
It was a dark possibility that made his bones ache with trepidation so he settled into a far more comforting idea. What were Lucy’s abilities? He knew nothing of the Astral race, and if his grandmother did, she hadn’t said much about it other than Lucy was stronger than any of them. Was she? And would time prove that she was also stronger than Dante, the rogue wolf that none of the Quinns had managed to catch?
Kaleb felt his wolf eyes grow tired, his eyelids heavy, and soon he closed them, his wolf ears perking up and swiveling with every change in the wind’s direction outside the living room windows. He could hear Lucy breathing deeply on the other side of the door, but the longer he listened out, the stronger the feeling of sleep fought to take hold.
The next thing he knew, he was being sucked into a dream, the bright ethereal goddess who had been visiting him in his sleep for years suddenly presenting herself as she had time and again.
This time, he saw her face, fully, every detail. It was Lucy. And she breathed a kiss into his mouth that made him come to life, the dream now feeling more real than reality itself.
“I’m yours,” she said, “and you’re wasting time.”
“What am I supposed to do?” he asked her as he tried to hold her tight.
Her body turned to rays of light and she slipped through his grasp, as the light of her essence seemed to carry with it her responding voice like a soft echo that enveloped him, “You know what to do,” she told him. “Time is running out.”
He breathed deeply, embracing her intoxicating fragrance that no smell on earth could describe. It was almost like a meadow of roses, but ten times as lovely, then the scent sharpened into a noxious chemical that felt all wrong.
Paint fumes.
He jolted from the dream, his snout peeling back into a defensive snarl, and he realized the chemical scent was wafting through the living room. It was coming from the apartment door. He knew that smell. It was spray paint and he instantly darted to the apartment door, his heightened hearing picking up the sounds of footfall quickly descending the stairs.
Shifting into his human form he threw the apartment door open and raced down the stairs only to find the parking area behind the diner was dim and desolate.
Heaving out of breath, he listened out, hard, but heard nothing and didn’t know which direction to go.
He hauled himself back up the stairs and when he reached the landing, he saw the other side of the apartment door that was slightly ajar.
MURDERER.
Capital letters, just like Lucy’s bathroom mirror when it had been marked in pink lipstick.
This time, the vandal had used a can of red spray paint that was now lying on its side on the landing floor.
Who would do this?
It wasn’t Dante’s style, not by a long shot. It seemed petty and cruel and harassing, not the measure a killer would have taken, much less a rogue werewolf hellbent on overtaking the town.
Kaleb didn’t want Lucy to have to see this. He didn’t want to give her any excuse to keep herself high on prescription pills. He spent the rest of the night quietly washing the accusation off of the door, and by the crack of dawn, there wasn’t a trace of spray paint left to indicate that anyone had ever dared.
***
Officer Rachel Clancy finally had a day to herself.
It felt good.
She didn’t have to pull her wavy, brown hair into a tight ponytail. She didn’t have to button up in her dress-blues and lace her stiff police-issued boots. And best of all, she didn’t have to suffer the insult of pretending the sheriff was some kind of genius, showering him with admiration and respect, neither of which he consistently deserved.
Wearing a pair of crisp jeans that flattered her figure and a purple blouse that reminded her she was, in fact, still a woman, she swung the heavy wooden door open and stepped inside Libations bar, pleased that she’d thought to doll herself up a touch with mascara, blush, and a dab of lip gloss.
She wasn’t exactly looking to get lucky and because she wasn’t much of a drinker, she sure as hell wasn’t going to order a beer at one o’clock in the afternoon, but she was, on the other hand, fully prepared to use her feminine wiles to get a suspect talking.
Lord knew that the sheriff had gotten absolutely goddamn nowhere with Peter Swanson, and Rachel wasn’t about to make the same mistake.
She’d missed him at Damned Repair when she’d swung in earlier that day. The owner, Curt Wilson, might have been reluctant to inform her that Peter had shuffled off to Libations for his lunch hour, but Rachel had batted her eyes and leaned a touch into the man’s personal space and out the information had tumbled.
Easy as cherry pie.
It was also very much in Rachel’s favor that the parolee had decided to spend his lunchbreak in a bar instead of a diner. She’d use that against him if she had to. Violating parole by drinking alcohol wasn’t ex
actly the guy’s smartest move, but then again, he was the same guy who had touched damn near everything in the Cooper’s house before, during, and after the double-homicide he’d committed for apparently no reason.
This should be interesting, if not highly productive, but she reminded herself not to get smug about it, as she spotted Peter Swanson hunched over a pint of Guinness at one of the tables in the back where the light of day couldn’t reach him.
He was an intimidating-looking man. Prison hardened, through and through, so she shoved her boobs up, being sure her cleavage would be noticeable above the scoop of her blouse’s neckline.
When she neared his table, she was sure to wear a great, big smile on her face.
His eyes snapped up to her and not a second later, the right kind of grin spread across his pockmarked face.
“Hi there,” she sang, trusting full well that the man probably wouldn’t recognize her as the genderless police officer who had accompanied the sheriff the other day. It’s not like she’d been questioning Peter right alongside Rick. Course not. There was Rick’s thermos to fill, and all. “Can I join you?”
“Not without a drink, you can’t,” he flirted then lifted his hand to get the bartender’s attention.
The kid behind the bar, who looked like he belonged on a surfboard in southern California and not stuck landlocked in Devil’s Fist raised his eyebrows then gave Peter a thumbs up.
As Rachel eased into the wooden chair across from him, the bartender came over with a pint of Guinness and set it down on the table, perhaps unsure of which of them it was for.
When the kid left for the bar counter, Rachel lifted the pint in salute and said, “I love me a gentleman,” and took a heady-sip.
“Then you might not love me as much as you’re hoping there, miss,” he told her.
“Rachel,” she said with an easy smile. “And I’m sure I’ll like you just fine if you tell me a little bit about yourself.”