She couldn’t get the smell of him out of her head, she realized as she rested in the shady nook behind Shane’s house. Conor had smelled of pine trees and sun-kissed skin, hints of masculine sweat and spicy aftershave. Unique and yet familiar. She could’ve stayed in that souvenir shop forever, relaxing into his caring embrace.
But he didn’t care, she told herself. He wasn’t interested. Thinking he might be had been a trap that had almost cost her this entire investigation last time. She wasn’t about to make the same mistake. Lord, she shouldn’t even be thinking about him now!
She forced her eyes to focus as she gazed out across the acreage and that’s when a strip of porcelain skin caught her eye.
She narrowed her gaze on it, the color that didn’t belong low to the ground and almost hidden among the tall, green stemmed weeds and vegetation. Was that a black, shiny pool of hair?
Rachel started through the tall grass, marching briskly out into the blazing sunlight, her gaze locked on the suspicious shape fifteen yards ahead.
“Sweet Baby Jesus!” she exclaimed as she rushed to the body. There was no mistaking it. It was a woman lying in a lump on the grassy ground.
As she came over the woman, she felt her eyes widen and a silent gasp escaped her.
The long, black hair. The flawless, porcelain complexion. The exotic eyes that hinted at rare ethnicity. Native American subtly in the Irish features.
Delilah Dane.
She was naked from head to toe. She didn’t even have shoes on. And her lower abdomen had been slashed open. It looked as though someone had gutted her like a fish.
Rachel dropped to her knees and placed her fingertips to the girl’s cold throat.
Dead.
Stiff as a board.
Rachel wasn’t a medical examiner, but she’d picked up a few things here and there. She looked over the entirely of Delilah’s strange position, the crusted blood across her stomach. The girl hadn’t been killed here and Rachel’s gut was telling her that she hadn’t even been killed recently.
She’d been dumped on Shane Quinn’s land.
But had Shane killed her?
Had Larry Hardcastle planted her?
Or was something far more twisted and nefarious unfolding?
Rachel swallowed hard, grimacing down at the poor girl, and pinched the radio that was clamped to her shoulder, her eyes misting over with tears as she called it in to the station.
***
At the moment Rachel was conveying into her shoulder-radio that she’d discovered the dead body of Delilah Dane on Shane Quinn’s property, Sheriff Rick Abernathy shut the door of Interview Room Two closed after entering, pulled a chair out from the little table, and sat down across from Angel Mercer.
She’d had more than enough time to think about the deal he had offered her. Larry Hardcastle had taken up a wealth of Rick’s time and it had taken two officers to wrangle him out of the station and convince him to go on home, wherever that was, so that the police could do their jobs.
He hoped for Angel’s sake that she could tell him something that would get her out of here.
“Would you like a soda? Water?” he asked her so that she would feel more comfortable. “We’ve got a few donuts in the breakroom.”
“I’m fine,” she said in a small voice.
Her big blue eyes were rimmed with pink and she looked so exhausted that she could barely meet his gaze.
“Give me something that will help me locate Dante Alighieri and you’re out of here, Angel,” he reminded her. “All charges dropped.”
She lifted her drained eyes up to meet his and in a flat voice said, “So long as he’s out there, I’m safer in here.”
“I’ll provide officers. Give you a protective detail,” he promised.
She let out a sad, breathy laugh that was devoid of humor. “Your policemen are no match.”
“Angel,” he said, leaning across the table and fighting to hold her gaze deeply enough to convince her of what he was about to say. “I’m going to kill the son of a bitch. I’m not interested in the kind of justice that a courtroom will provide. Alighieri’s as good as dead the second I lay eyes on him.”
She leaned into the table, meeting him halfway, and informed him, “You’re no match, Sheriff.”
It chilled him, chilled him worse than the time creepy little Lucy Cooper lifted her zombie-gaze up at him and told him of the time his wife had discovered werewolves in the Fist like a soothsayer from ancient Greek times.
Rick cleared his throat, straightened his spine, and lifted his barrel chest.
“You leave that to me, alright, Angel? You do your part and I’ll do mine.”
She let out another sigh, but the subtext seemed to hold something to the effect of it’s your funeral, which didn’t bode well for boosting Rick’s confidence in the situation.
“He’s been favoring the old Halsey land,” she finally told him.
Rick pinched his rugged mouth into a twisting frown.
Damn Halsey. The old man hadn’t set foot in the Fist for upwards of forty years. His land had turned into a playground for addicts and horny teenagers, and now it homed a homicidal maniac who may or may not be a werewolf.
“The Halsey land is nearly three hundred acres,” he informed her. “Can you be any more specific?”
“How would that serve you?” she challenged, and he didn’t much appreciate the sarcasm in her tone. “You want me to tell you that he’s hiding near the fifth oak tree at the twenty-acre mark? There are no landmarks within that land and you know it.”
“We’re aware of the cave he used with Reece,” he reminded her. “In relation to that location, can you get more specific for me?”
Angel let out another sigh and Rick knew he was going to have to send out every last officer he had, maybe even recruit a bulk of volunteers, to cover the entirety of the Halsey land.
But where he expected more sarcasm, Angel met him with the specifics he was hoping for.
He jotted down every last detail she offered.
***
By the time the werewolf meeting at Damned Repair was adjourned Whitney didn’t know what the hell to think.
Troy Quinn had devised that the pack would go out at dark to hunt through the old Halsey land. Lucy had promised to light the way and fight should they actually locate Dante Alighieri. And Shane had stood beside Whitney with his arm protectively cradling her lower back, but it hadn’t felt right. Nothing made sense. Whitney felt like she’d been thrown over the edge of a cliff and was free-falling towards a dark abyss, and complicating matters were her newly acquired werewolf urges. She was hungry as all hell and something told her that scarfing down candy in her daddy’s den while he doted on her wasn’t going to do the trick this time.
And the sour cherry on top of the miserable sundae that had become her life?
She’d wanted nothing more than to jump Shane’s bones the second they’d piled into his pickup truck. He looked sexy as all hell and it was infuriating. Maybe it was because he’d been the one to turn her, or maybe the fact that wolf blood now flowed through her veins was the cause of her suddenly overwhelming arousal. Either way, Whitney had half a mind to leap onto him from the passenger’s seat and take him then and there, no matter if it caused Shane to swerve off the road or not.
“You’ve been awfully quiet,” he commented, and his deep, rugged voice hit her ears in such a way that sent a barely controllable flare of hot, horny heat swirling within her core.
“I’m holding on by a very thin thread,” she told him darkly without glancing his way. She knew if she did, if she stole a peek at his sexy profile, it would be her undoing. “I’m having… urges.”
He shot her a sideways grin, but it only made her scowl as she kept her eyes straight ahead on the bumpy road, the forest of trees that spanned either side of the road.
“What kind of urges?”
“As if you don’t know,” she snapped, folding her arms.
“Look, it wa
s a dirty trick—”
“Ya think?” she returned hotly.
He reached across and placed his hand on her thigh. His warm touch, the strength and connection of his large, strong hand sent another searing wave of arousal through her. He was really asking for it now, wasn’t he? She wasn’t sure if she wanted to punch him or mount him. Maybe both.
“You can’t stay mad at me forever,” he told her.
“You don’t get to talk to me like that,” she snapped. She was glaring at him now as he slowed, nearing Bison Road. The heart of the Fist was straight ahead, but Shane turned left on Bison, which would connect with Berry Road and take them all the way back to his cabin. And then what? she thought. Would she kill him or sleep with him when they got there? “I don’t know which is worse,” she went on, “the fact that you made me like you—without my permission!—or the fact that you didn’t make me your one true mate!”
“Would you have liked me to?”
“Not without my permission, Shane!”
“No, seriously,” he said, turning up Berry Road though his eyes never seemed to leave her. “Would you want that?”
“I’ll tell you what I don’t want, what I didn’t want, was for a large group of werewolves to think I’m your mate and then look at me with pity in their eyes when they learned you’d only turned me! It was insulting!”
Shane pulled off onto the grassy shoulder and shifted his truck into Park so that he could give her his full attention.
“I take orders, Whitney. That’s what I do. I’m a soldier. And when I’m not given a concrete order I—”
“You what? Turn girls into werewolves?” she fiercely accused.
“No, not girls—”
“You come up with your own ideas?” she revised. “Are you telling me you’re all brawn and no brain, Shane? Because I think you’d have to be goddamn brainless to think you could do something like this to me and I’d forgive you! And now what? I’m supposed to be your little spy? Turn against my own father to provide intel to your secret organization?”
“Lucy was improvising—”
“But you liked the idea,” she pointed out furiously. “You all liked the idea, but none of you—not a single one of you—actually asked my permission! Is that how it is with you people?”
“Yes,” he barked right back. “Actually, it is. We’re a hierarchy and—”
“So Lucy is above me in the ranks, is that it?”
Shane seemed to hesitate, which was confirmation enough for Whitney.
“You know why she outranks me, Shane?” she went on smartly. “Because I’m not bonded with a Quinn. You robbed me of the person I used to be and you gave me nothing in return.”
“You want to be mine? You want to be a Royal?” he challenged. “If I’d known—”
She was on him in an instant. Without thought. Without warning, she’d jumped on him, straddling him in the driver’s seat, crushing her mouth hard over his, devouring him in deep kisses. Her hands moved roughly over the firm wall of his chest then she grazed her fingernails through his short hair, moaning into him, needing him, desperate to feel him fill her.
She didn’t have a clue as to what had come over her. All she knew was that she’d never felt more attracted to him. She was on fire and he was ice. A coldhearted bastard that she couldn’t resist.
Fumbling, urgently, she shoved his tank top up his chest and he pulled it off the rest of the way. She slapped her palms against his chest then clawed her nails down the length of him as she crashed her lips to his all over again.
Shane was pawing at her as well, pushing her loose tee shirt up her chest, yanking it over her head, wrapping his large, strong hands around her breasts. The feel of him caused a hot, aching thrill between her legs, agonizing pleasure. It was building and she couldn’t get his army fatigue pants undone fast enough.
He was jerking her jean shorts open at the same time, yanking the zipper down and pulling the sides down her fleshy hips.
She drank in the scent of him as she held his face, kissing him like he was the very air she needed to breathe, and he popped the seat release and they glided backwards, creating a foot more room behind the steering wheel.
Effortlessly, he lifted her and by some magic, she wrestled out of her shorts and freed her legs. When next she started to peel her panties down, Shane took hard hold of the material and tore it clean from her body.
She settled down over him, nude as the day she was born, against the cotton of his boxer-briefs. She could feel his hard shape in-between her legs, nothing but cotton separating them. She lifted up to look at him, but hit her head on the truck’s ceiling and cursed.
He pulled her face down to his and kissed her as she wrapped her arms around his muscular shoulders, loving the smooth feel of his bare skin. She pressed her hips to him, wanting and needing to feel the full extent of his hard shape against her with as much pressure as she could manage, but her back arched wildly when she felt his strong fingers press across her ass, both hands caressing and reaching and finding her aching core from behind.
She moaned out in pleasure as his fingers found her slippery core. She couldn’t arch her back enough to welcome his firm fingers fully inside. As he explored her tender flesh, feeling the soft, wet folds of her body, she lost all sense of herself. Her lips went slack against his and all she could do was breathe in his masculine scent, resting her cheek to his, and enjoy the pleasure of the sensual massage he was now delivering from behind, her legs spread over his lap and body burning to be brought over the edge.
“You bastard,” she moaned as he worked her towards the heightened peaks of a climax.
She heard him rumble out a deep, devilish chuckle that only turned her on more, as his fingers continued to massage and thrust into her slippery, titillated core. She wanted to slap him hard across the face, bite his neck, cause him physical pain to match the emotional upheaval he’d caused her. But she was too loose, melting into the hard wall of his body, to fight.
As he brought her there, forcing a powerful orgasm to swell through her, she grabbed his face and stared deeply into his dark eyes. The sexy grin on his face was partially insulting to her powerlessness, but she only wanted more.
She cried out with the final, grand swell of her climax and then collapsed against his firm body, breathing heavily as his fingers calmed and stilled and soon drew out of her.
“I want you to be mine,” he growled softly in her ear.
It was unfair timing and the best she could do to keep herself from reciprocating was to bite her lower lip and focus on her breathing.
Whitney might want to be his also, but she wasn’t ready to admit it to him. She had too much anger to contend with, too much hatred mixed in with her insatiable lust.
She glared at him as she lifted up.
He didn’t like it.
He grabbed her face and glared right back into her eyes. His hand was strong and hard. It hurt, but when he kissed her, he loosened his grip just enough for her to feel like she might like to be overpowered like this by him for the rest of her life.
It took a moment to collect her clothes, and when they were both dressed and Shane had pulled his seat closer to the steering wheel, he put his truck into Drive and continued on along Berry Road towards his cabin.
Whitney gasped, eyes round with disbelief, when she saw the line of police cruisers in the driveway.
“What the hell?” Shane breathed as he turned the pickup truck up the driveway.
There were cops crawling all over the place, but it didn’t look like they’d gone inside the cabin. There was an ambulance parked on the grassy lawn, but its lights weren’t flashing. Yellow police tape warning all do not cross had been strung up from both sides of the cabin.
Whitney saw PO Rachel Clancy wipe her brow from where she stood in front of a cluster of uniformed police officers, but it wasn’t until Whitney saw her father that her stomach fully dropped with trepidation.
Shane Quinn’s property was a
crime scene.
And Whitney was terrified to learn what particular crime had been committed.
Chapter Thirteen
SHANE
“There’s Quinn!” one of the uniformed officers shouted as Shane climbed out of his pickup truck.
PO Rachel Clancy locked her gaze on him as he approached the yellow police tape. She looked forlorn, liked she’d hoped better of him than to discover he was a murderer.
“Hold it right there, Quinn,” she ordered with her palm lifted to prevent him from reaching for the yellow tape, which she was standing on the other side of.
“What happened?” he demanded.
Her attention had been stolen and when he glanced over his shoulder, he found another police officer collecting Whitney as she stepped out of his parked truck.
“What’s all this about?” he asked, returning his attention to the sweat-stained officer. It looked as though Rachel had been out here for hours.
“Delilah Dane,” she stated in an accusatory tone. “Found her dead in your backyard.”
“What were you doing in my backyard?”
It was the wrong question to ask. Rachel’s brown eyebrows shot up to her dewy hairline and she challenged, “That’s what you’re concerned about, Quinn?”
“No,” he insisted. “You found Delilah dead on my property and I’d like to know how she got there.”
“As would I,” said Rachel as she studied him closely. “The vic’s stepfather, Larry Hardcastle, tipped us off that you might have done something to Delilah, and what do you know? I show up here to ask you a few questions about it and I find the girl dead and naked out back.”
“I had nothing to do with that!” he insisted into Rachel’s unemotional face. “Oh, come on. You think I killed Delilah and left her out in the open on my own property? I’m not an idiot.”
“I don’t know what you are, Shane, but I have my suspicions.”
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