by Terry Spear
“My associate must not have had time to get here with the food,” Finn said, pulling out the remainder of the baked chicken, potato salad, bottled water, and milk she’d brought with them in the ice chest. “We should have picked up something at the market. But I didn’t want to get too much stuff in case we had to leave again. And I didn’t want to chance him picking up our trail.
“I had intended to stay at your cabin and just watch you there in the event someone turned up to bother you. But with the gunfire we’d heard, a dead body, and a man who claimed to be another…” Finn shrugged. “Time for a change of plans. As to your question, I’m from southern California. I used to belong to a gray wolf pack that still lives down there.”
“No siblings?”
He put a chicken thigh and leg in a microwave dish and heated them for a couple of minutes. When the microwave dinged, he offered her a piece of chicken.
“Thanks, but I had enough chicken to eat in the car.”
“No siblings,” he said, glancing out the window at the view and taking a bite of the chicken. “Hmm, good stuff.”
“Thanks. It’s all in the lemon and pepper spice I used.” She tucked a curl of hair behind her ear and asked, “Do you ever wish you had any siblings?”
He grabbed a bottle of water, twisted off the cap, and took a swig. “Nope. Look at the difficulty it causes.” He motioned to Meara with the bottled water. “With no family, I don’t have any worries about anyone targeting someone close to me.”
“Ah. So you’re a loner wolf.”
“Yep. It’s perfect for the kind of work I do.”
That was just the way she’d had him pegged. She wasn’t all that surprised. Hunter had never mentioned that Finn was looking for a mate, although her brother probably wouldn’t have said anything to her about it anyway. Even though she hadn’t meant to feel anything one way or another about it, a hint of disappointment formed at the edge of her awareness, until she watched Finn dish a huge amount of potato salad onto a plate.
He scarfed down the salad, then refilled the plate. She couldn’t help but smile. The only one she knew who had that much of an appetite and loved her potato salad as much was Hunter.
Finn looked up at her, saw her smiling at the way he was eating her cooking, and grinned. “I didn’t think you’d catch me getting seconds. Hunter didn’t tell me you were this good of a cook.”
“I doubt he would. He just eats second and third helpings, which clues me in.” She pointed at the potato salad. “That’s an old German family recipe passed down through the generations with a few minor changes.”
“I have some German roots, too, but no one ever cooked anything that tasted this good.” He finished his second plateful and eyed the container of potato salad. Looking reluctant, he finally replaced the lid and set the salad in the fridge.
“You could have more,” she said.
“I will,” he promised. “A little later.”
She glanced out the window. “So what do we do now? The place is furnished, but there’s no food. Are we just supposed to hole up here for a few days? What if the guy who died was the assassin? We wouldn’t need to hide any more.” She quickly backtracked. “But then the guy who killed him could be even worse trouble.”
Finn nodded. “If someone else is pulling the strings, he most likely will still want the job done right. When the word gets out that the assassin is dead and we’re alive, what do you think will happen?” He finished his chicken, washed his hands, and then punched in a number on his phone.
“Cheery thought. Aren’t you supposed to be reassuring me instead of trying to frighten me out of my wits? I’m a civilian, if you recall. And not trained for all this deep-cover work.”
He gave her a small smile and shook his head as if he didn’t think she scared that easily. She didn’t. But she was surprised he wasn’t trying to whitewash the trouble they could be in. Or maybe he was smiling about her comment concerning the deep-cover work.
“When Hunter and I hooked up for missions this past year, you always wanted to know what was going on,” Finn finally remarked. “In fact you insisted on it.”
“I did. I was speaking tongue-in-cheek about wanting reassurance. I want to know the truth.”
He frowned, undoubtedly not reaching his party, and then punched in another number.
She expected him to leave her alone, to take his call in private—for all this superspy stuff—but instead he remained in the kitchen with her. Watching her? Worried about her? She was ready to ask him more about what was going on when he lifted his head. The person he was calling must have answered the phone.
“Hi, it’s me. I’ve got a situation. A man named Joe Matheson was found dead near Hunter’s place,” Finn said into his phone.
“My place,” Meara cut in.
“Yeah,” Finn said to the person on the phone, as he glanced Meara’s way but didn’t comment on what she’d said. “So I’m sending you the picture in an email. ID says he’s a news reporter. Did you get anything on the other man I sent the picture of?”
The other Joe? When did Finn take a picture of him? Finn had been naked, wearing only a towel, for part of the time when Imposter Joe was in the room. She frowned at Finn.
His gaze locked onto hers, and he frowned back. “All right. Keep trying to track down anything you can on either of the men. We’re holed up in a safe house for now. Get back with me when you can.” He repocketed his phone.
“It’s not Hunter’s house. It’s mine,” Meara reiterated to Finn. Hunter might interfere in a lot of things in her life, but when he’d moved into Tessa’s home, he’d given up the rights to owning their uncle’s house. It was now all Meara’s. Initially, she hadn’t wanted to move to the Oregon coast, but she’d made the cabin her home, and she really enjoyed having her own place without any of Hunter’s bossiness.
“My contact doesn’t need to know that the house is now yours. Only that the dead body was in the vicinity of your brother’s home. It shows intent to follow through with some master plan to hit all of us.”
“Why? Why would anyone be doing this? What was going on with your last mission?”
“It’s classified. We should be safe here.”
She gave him a ladylike sound of annoyance. “Yeah but since I’m involved now, too—through no fault of my own, I might add—I should know what’s going on.”
He shook his head, and that was the end of the discussion.
But not quite. “When did you take a picture of Imposter Joe? I saw you take one of the dead man with your camera. But you were wearing only a towel and, for some time, not even that when you saw my pretend renter.”
Finn hesitated to say but acted as if he’d come to a turning point in their relationship, moving beyond him being the protector and her the protected. He finally said, “I bugged your place and had placed cameras in various locations in the cabin.”
Her mouth dropped open. Then she snapped it shut, glowered at him, and said, “In my bedroom and bathroom, too?”
“No. I hadn’t gotten that far when you arrived, and then Joe came calling.”
“When were you going to let me in on that secret?”
“I didn’t think I’d need to since we’d have to leave your place anyway. Besides, it was only for your protection.” He turned to open a cabinet and found food, canned and boxed. Tons of it. “Looks like we’re not going to starve.”
She was still thinking about what he’d seen on his camera while she had been talking to Imposter Joe—the way she had slipped him the note, all that she’d said to the guy and what he’d said back, and all the while Finn had been watching and listening—when Finn pulled out a package of marshmallows, a box of graham crackers, and chocolate bars.
“Want some s’mores?”
Her irritation instantly dissolving, she eyed th
e ingredients with a sudden wistful craving. “S’mores?”
Chapter 7
Meara had expected super-espionage spy stuff—locked doors, lights out, and whispered voices—as the dark gripped the cliffside home. Instead, she was sitting on a bench on the private beach, heating up marshmallows on a metal skewer while chocolate melted on graham crackers over the fire.
She and Finn had passed a gas grill situated on flagstones nearby, and she thought how much fun it would be to eat a romantic dinner ocean side, something she hadn’t done since she’d moved to Oregon. Not that Finn would be the one she wished to eat that kind of a dinner with. A dinner like that should be a purely romantic affair, reserved for someone who suited her as a mate.
Yet she enjoyed the old-fashioned, roughing-it fire pit. The heat from the flames and the way the ribbons of fire licked at the air in oranges and reds made her feel closer to nature than if they were cooking on a grill.
The dark waves rolled in, clashing with the rocks and sandy beach in a melodic roar while the sea breeze whipped her hair about. She pulled it back and wound it into a knot, although misbehaving tendrils escaped confinement and tickled her cheeks. She watched Finn roasting the first of the marshmallows, two on the skewer initially, and her stomach rumbled with delicious anticipation. She hadn’t had s’mores in several years, and they brought back memories of hikes in the woods and backpacking to forested areas inaccessible any other way.
Even though she loved to camp, she and her pack mates had usually stuck to fishing as wolves and had hunted for wild blackberries and currants on outings like this. Strictly nature’s provisions. Not graham crackers and marshmallows and chocolate. But one time her mother had sneaked the ingredients for s’mores into her pack, and Meara would never forget how much fun she’d had with the others when they’d fought over the last one.
She had to force herself to sit still on the bench and not lick her lips more than she’d already done, or to show just how interested she was in crunching down on that first mouthful of melted chocolate and marshmallow sandwiched between graham crackers.
Finn glanced over at her and smiled. “Won’t be much longer now.”
Did she look as eager as she felt? Or was he just guessing?
He slid the marshmallow onto the graham cracker and partially melted chocolate and handed it to her. “See what you think.”
While she eagerly ate hers, not feeling any remorse that she got to sample the decadent dessert first, he fixed her another.
“What about yours?” she asked, still savoring every bite of s’more. She was in heaven, which almost made her forget she would have been trying to learn more about a potential mate tonight, if not for Finn’s untimely arrival and news about an assassin. “Oh,” she moaned with ecstasy. “Forget I intimated anything about you having the next one. That one’s mine. You can have the next several.” She reached to take the next one he’d fixed for her while he roasted a couple of new marshmallows.
When she looked up from taking another delicious bite, she found him watching her and not his marshmallows skewered over the fire. He smiled, the flames glistening off his eyes and making them glow green like a wolf’s at night when light reflected off them. She’d never pictured him like this, cooking marshmallows over a campfire. Skinning and eating a snake, yes, as any survivalist might in a dire predicament. But s’mores? No.
She smiled.
“What?” he asked, sandwiching his own s’more, although he waved it at her in case she wanted another before he got one.
Admiring him for being so generous, she motioned for him to eat it. “You’ll think I’m a little piggy instead of a wolf.”
He laughed. “The way you’re eyeing the s’mores makes me think you’ve been deprived for way too long.”
“Hmm, I have been. I couldn’t see you making them, either.”
“What did you think I did at campouts? Strictly clambakes?”
“Grilled snake,” she said, trying to keep a straight face. He grinned, and she laughed and then shrugged. “I thought all SEALs were hard core. I never thought one would make s’mores during a dangerous mission.”
He sat next to her, leaned over, and licked her lips.
She sat stock still, staring at him in astonishment.
“No sense in letting the chocolate go to waste,” he said, winking. He was sitting so close to her on the bench that their legs touched.
Heat from the fire and from him touching her started a slow burn, warming her to the core. His actions might have been innocent enough, just leaning in close and licking the sweet chocolate off her mouth, but she sure as hell felt like something more was going on between them. Especially after he’d nearly made her come an hour or so earlier in his car when he was frisking her between her spread legs with the listening-device detector. And earlier still, when he’d thrown her to her bedroom floor when they thought they’d heard gunshots. He had protected her with his towel-covered body, but then lost the towel in the action-packed moment and then became hard as a steel rod as she squirmed to get free.
She thought again about what he’d told Hunter, that he saw her in a brotherly way. Right. Yet she didn’t move away from him, seeking a safe distance, either.
The chill in the night air made her shiver, and she instinctively inched closer to Finn, seeking both the heat from his body and his protection from the breeze. She’d thought she might be walking along the beach with Joe tonight, if he hadn’t said he’d known Hunter and turned out to be an imposter. But she’d never expected to be snuggling up to one of Hunter’s SEAL mates and devouring melted chocolate-marshmallow creations beside him.
She glanced up and saw that his lips had remnants of chocolate and a couple of specks of marshmallow. She wanted to lick the chocolate and marshmallow off his lips, but she resisted. He watched her, and she suspected he knew just what she’d thought of doing.
Before she did anything stupid, she motioned for him to get back to cooking her marshmallows. “Some more.”
He laughed in a deeply seductive way and then skewered another couple of marshmallows. “Hunter didn’t tell me you had a real sweet tooth.”
“Hmm, I’m sure Hunter didn’t tell you a whole lot about me.”
A smile lingered on Finn’s lips as he turned away to watch the marshmallows melting, browning over the fire, and almost ready to eat.
“Well, he didn’t, did he? I mean, maybe that I’m strong-willed.”
Finn took a deep breath. “He told us you saved a human girl once who had fallen into a swollen river. Nearly drowned yourself in the process. And another time, you took on a pack of hunters who were killing deer out of season. That you chased a purse snatcher, faced down the knife he was armed with, and still got the woman’s purse back intact without getting sliced to ribbons.”
“It was instinctive.” Meara didn’t care for the way Finn was looking at her, just like Hunter would when he thought she’d done something foolhardy. She was a werewolf, and that meant she reacted instinctively. Well, because she was an alpha werewolf. A beta probably wouldn’t have.
At least Hunter hadn’t known about most of the situations she’d gotten involved in because he was away on missions, either serving in the Navy or working on contracts after that. She just wasn’t the type of woman who could stand by and hope someone else would step in and save the day.
“I don’t want you doing that here. While I’m protecting you, no heroics.”
“Unless you’re the one who’s being heroic,” she said.
“That’s my job. I’m trained for it. So yeah, let me take care of the bad guys, if the time comes.”
She smiled. “Suit yourself.” But if Finn needed her help, she was not going to sit back and watch as if she was observing a gladiator fight and was strictly a spectator.
He looked like he didn’t believe her. “I me
an it, Meara.”
If that didn’t sound just like Hunter! “I heard you the first time.”
“Yeah, but you have that intense look that says you’re not going to mind.”
She didn’t respond, watching the shape of his mouth as it closed over the last bite of his s’more.
This time when he finished it, she boldly reached up and licked the chocolate off his lips. She could be just as brash as he was.
Only she didn’t expect his next move. She ended up flat on her back in the sand as he maneuvered on top of her, devouring her lips, licking and kissing and gently biting as if he wanted to eat her all up. Ohmigod, she’d created a monster!
His hands slid up her silky blouse, the palms massaging her breasts with such finesse that she moaned against his mouth. His tongue entered her mouth, probing firmly, his fingers tweaking her nipples, her crotch wet with desire. This so wasn’t happening.
Yet it was. And damned if she hadn’t wanted it, too, from the first time she’d seen him leaving her bathroom, naked and towel-drying his hair.
Now, he was so aroused that his stiff penis poked at her waist, his body thrusting at her as if it had a will of its own. She knew if she was naked now, he’d be inside her in a flash. She had the insane desire to let him in, to open herself up to his primal urges, to tame the sexy beast.
But that meant a permanent mating, and no way in hell were they going there.
He groaned and collapsed onto her. “You’re not supposed to look or taste or feel this damned good,” he said, his mouth brushing her throat, his thumbs still working magic on her swollen nipples. “Or encourage me the way you do.” He shoved her blouse up, and then her bra, and nuzzled a nipple first with his mouth, then licked and kissed it. The cold breeze swept across it, making it tingle and ache with need even more as he licked and sucked on the other.
He was so incredibly hot as she ran her hands through his hair and savored the feel of his body thrusting against hers, making her come as he rubbed against her cleft. She hadn’t believed anyone could make her orgasm like this, fully clothed and lying on a bed of sand under the cloudy sky at night, with the sound of the surf serenading them.