by Lauren Dawes
I shot him a look, wondering just how much he’d told her. That I’d been forced to join as a punishment? That I’d watched my previous partner get killed without lifting a finger?
“He said you transferred in as human liaison when nobody else wanted to,” she finished. “I’m glad it was a woman who finally found the courage to join.”
I was stunned. My eyes darted to Brax again, and he smiled at me, mouthed, ‘welcome to the team’ and pulled his mate in closer.
“Ah, thank you.” Heat suffused my body, the kind of heat that felt a lot like pride to me. “Where are the kids tonight?”
“At home,” she replied with a smile. “Indi, Ivy, and Saskia offered to look after them.”
“More werewolves?” I asked.
Andrea shook her head. “A half-human-half-vampire, a werewolf, and a human.”
“That sounds like the beginning of a great joke.”
She laughed at that, the sound sweet and carefree. Andrea looked adoringly at her mate, then back at me. “I tell you, the best thing about living with a werewolf pack is the availability of babysitters.”
“And the worst thing…” Brax grumbled, “… is having nearly three dozen people living under the same roof. It makes getting a little horizontal time with my mate really difficult.”
Andrea’s cheeks flushed with color, and she elbowed Brax in his side. He let out an exaggerated oomph, then grinned at his mate.
“I can’t help it if I want my hands on you all the time.”
Andrea rolled her eyes, then flashed me a shy smile. “Men, huh?”
I glanced over at Sawyer. “They have one-track minds,” I agreed.
“Come and dance with me, Drea,” Brax said, already tugging her away. “Have a great night, you two,” he yelled over his shoulder as they disappeared through the throng of people.
“What do you think he meant by that?” I asked, suddenly defensive.
“I think he meant have a great night.”
“By the ‘you two’ bit? What did that mean? Do you think he knows we’re banging now?”
A soft, erotic growl from Sawyer sent a shiver down my spine. “You can’t say words like banging around me without getting a reaction, Cat.” His arm banded tightly around my waist, and he pressed his hard length against the side of my hip.
I looked down at the tent in his tux, then back at him. “Sawyer,” I hissed. “Put that thing away. We’re in public. Plus, I don’t want everyone to know we’re sleeping together. Surely, that’s against workplace policy.”
“Don’t worry about it, pussy cat.” He flexed into me again, and he lit the spark of my desire. Like a fuse, I knew I would be detonating soon because when it came to Sawyer, his desire was my own. No feelings, though, I reminded myself.
He tugged me toward the door.
“Where are we going?”
“Someplace quiet and secluded,” he murmured into my ear. “Where I can fuck you until you scream my name.”
Hell to the yes.
We brushed past countless people in the antechamber attached to the ballroom, a lot of them giving us dark looks, while some gave us a completely wide berth altogether. I looked at all their faces, spotting Smith among them. He didn’t have a date, but he was ogling the wife of another one of his colleagues. When he saw me, though, his eyes narrowed, filling with hate.
He didn’t say anything to me, but I flashed him a smile and gave him a finger-wave.
The muscle in his jaw jumped in irritation.
Out into the lobby proper, I scanned the space, looking for somewhere we could go. As I turned my head to the right, I caught sight of someone I wasn’t expecting to see. Willis Cameron was walking through the lobby and heading for the exit.
What was he doing here?
Sawyer asked, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. It’s…”
He tugged on my hand again. “Come on. There’s a restroom down here.”
I followed him into the disabled bathroom in the hotel’s lobby, locking the door behind us. As far as romantic went, it wasn’t, but seeing Sawyer in his tux with his erection practically banging against his zipper to get out, all thoughts of romance were gone.
No, not romance.
I couldn’t think like that.
This was just fucking because that’s what Sawyer needed. After feeding only on lust the last couple of days, I could understand his frantic desire now.
We came together abruptly in a rush of hands. I tugged down his zipper while he burrowed his hands under the skirt of my dress. When his fingers brushed against the wet panel of my panties, I bit my lip. I stroked his cock, matching his pace as he brought me closer to orgasm.
With a soft growl, he shoved aside the scrap of unicorn print fabric and plunged two fingers inside me. I cried out, my orgasm coming hard and fast. Clawing at his arm, I tried to keep my legs under me, but my knees went loose. Sawyer banded his free arm around my waist, then positioned me on the small countertop beside the sink.
Hiking up my dress, he bunched it in his fist and held it above my waist. My orgasm was only just waning when he slammed inside me. We both groaned, and I came again—this one creeping up on me without warning. Dropping my head to his shoulder, I bit him to stop my scream from coming out. Sawyer didn’t seem to mind, especially given how he shivered from my teeth in his shoulder.
“This is going to be quick,” he told me, slamming into me with a relentless drive of his hips.
“Okay,” I whispered, keeping my head low, the scent of chocolate and whisky swirling around us. The first hint of my next orgasm surfaced, and I tightened my grip. “God, I’m close. I’m close. I’m close.”
Sawyer’s thrusts increased until he suddenly stilled, spilling inside me. His orgasm set mine off, and together we came until we were both sweating, panting, and spent from fucking each other when we should’ve been attending the work Christmas party.
Sawyer pulled back and pressed his forehead to mine. “Thank you,” he said, his breathing still unsteady. He stepped away, tucked his dick back into his pants, and turned to the sink to run his handkerchief under the water. He cleaned me up gently, staring into my face the entire time. His eyes lingered on my mouth, and I could’ve sworn he wanted to say something else to me.
When I was clean, he rinsed the handkerchief and dumped it into the trash. “We should get back to the party.”
I slid off the edge of the counter, repositioned my panties, and smoothed my dress back down over my hips. As I turned to unlock the door, Sawyer took my wrist and pulled me to a stop. In my ear, he whispered, “I’m going to keep replaying this all night. I’ve never felt so complete from a feeding before.”
Plastering on a smile, I said, “Glad I can be of help.”
I’d just pulled open the door when I was thrown back as a huge explosion ripped through the hotel’s ballroom.
Seventeen
Smoke filled the lobby of The Palatial. People were screaming in pain, others in panic. All I knew was that a lot of cops had just been targeted in an attack I hadn’t seen coming. Sawyer and I rushed toward the ballroom to see if there were any serious injuries. Some people were already walking out of the anteroom covered in blood and smoke.
Weaving through the crowd, I covered my mouth, trying to keep the noxious smoke out of my lungs. On impulse, I moved toward the dance floor to where Brax and Andrea should’ve been. There were people laying everywhere—men in their tuxes and women in their gowns, except all the glamor and glitz was gone now.
Hanging by one stretch of electrical cables was the grand chandelier, dangling above the floor and threatening to fall.
“There,” Sawyer said, pointing. Coughing, I followed the line of his arm until I saw Brax and Andrea. Andrea was limping as she helped prop up a bloody and severely injured Brax. When she saw us, the tears sitting in her eyes began to fall.
“He covered me with his body,” she sobbed. Sawyer took Brax’s weight from
her, while I wrapped my arm around Andrea’s shoulders. “He saved my life.”
“It’s all right. He’s going to be all right.” I glanced over at Sawyer to find him checking Brax. The guy had his eyes open, but they weren’t his usual amused gray. Instead, they were bright yellow. Blood was streaming from a wound to his head, the red river running down the side of his face.
“You have to get him out of here,” Andrea told me, clutching at my dress. “His wolf is too close to the surface. If he shifts, he’ll go berserk.”
Jerking my chin at Sawyer, I snapped, “Go. I have her.”
Sawyer’s gaze narrowed on me, but I saw his barely-veiled panic. “There could be another bomb.”
“I’ll be right behind you.” I made a point of looking at Brax, whose teeth had grown into fangs the size of my index finger. “We can’t have an angry werewolf loose in here right now. Go!”
Finally, he wrestled his need to protect me into submission and nodded, hustling Brax toward the exit.
“Are you hurt?” I asked Andrea, looking the woman over. She seemed to have a limp.
Tears were streaming down her face, but she shook her head. “Please, just get me out of here.”
I took Andrea into the lobby, but as I stopped to lower her down into a seat, she shook her head. “No. I have to go to Brax. He needs me.”
I glanced down at her leg. “You’re limping. You need to rest.”
“No. It’s not from the blast. Please, take me to my mate.”
I sucked in a breath when I saw her gray eyes flash blue, and danger crackled through the air. It seemed Brax wasn’t the only one on edge.
I looked around the lobby, spotting Sawyer on the other side of the door leading outside. Helping Andrea in the same direction, we caught up with the men. After the werewolf couple were reunited, Sawyer and I ran back inside. More people were moving now, all of them covered in smoke, coughing or bleeding from a wound.
Sawyer said, “We need to find Ben and Hayliel. They were both coming tonight.”
“Right. Let’s go toward our table then. They may have been seated at the time of the blast.”
As we weaved between the masses in the lobby limping from the ballroom, I couldn’t help but think that Kailon had finally succeeded—he’d finally managed to wound me, just not in the way I thought he would. I hadn’t realized how much PIG had grown to mean something to me and that fae was going to get an ass-kicking for hurting what was mine.
When we finally made it into the ballroom, I tried to remember where our table was positioned.
“Over there,” Sawyer said, pointing at an eleven-foot crater in the floor.
A crater.
No more table.
No more… anything.
“Jesus, the bomb must’ve been planted under our table.” I scanned the floor, gasping when I saw someone’s arm lying in the rubble. It had belonged to a woman. “Oh, my God.”
Sawyer crouched down beside the dismembered body part and cleared his throat. “Hayliel.”
There was a moan behind me, and I spun around, spotting a familiar face half-buried under a destroyed table and a piece of the fallen coffered ceiling. “Sawyer, it’s Ben.”
I covered the few steps quickly, dropping to my knees beside the wendigo. Ben’s real face—his skeletal deer face—was flickering in and out of sight as he lost his battle with consciousness. I took his hand in mine and squeezed his fingers.
“Ben? Ben, can you hear me?”
His eyes cracked open, glowing red. “McKenzie,” he said in a deep, rasping, dual-layered voice. “Hayliel?”
“Don’t worry about that right now,” I said softly, trying to brush some hair back off his head. “We’re going to get you to the hospital, all right? Help is coming.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again, pain glazing them over. “Hayliel?” he repeated more desperately.
Looking over my shoulder, I saw Sawyer moving through the rubble, crouching down every now and again. Sensing my eyes on him, he looked over and shook his head. Returning my gaze to Ben, I stared at him.
“Tell… me… McKenzie,” he panted, trying to rise from the floor.
“Stay down. Hayliel is…” I hesitated.
“You can… say it. She’s… dead.”
I chewed on my bottom lip. “Yeah, Ben, she is.”
He squeezed his eyes shut once more, a single tear streaking down the side of his face. After one more pat on his shoulder, I stood when I saw Vaile approaching with a green-eyed, blonde-haired woman tucked securely under his arm. Neither of them looked hurt.
“McKenzie, Sawyer,” he said in a deep voice. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. We’re okay,” Sawyer said. “We were out in the lobby at the time of the blast.”
“Us, too,” Wolfe replied. “How many were injured? Was anyone killed?”
Sawyer stepped closer. “Only Hayliel. Ben has been injured. Brax is okay too. We got him and his mate out before Brax could lose control. I don’t know if anyone else in the regular department was seriously injured.”
“As far as I know, they weren’t, but I’m going to head to the hospital to make sure.”
“Good idea, sir. McKenzie and I will take care of Ben. Make sure he’s loaded into an ambulance and ride with him.”
“All right. Take care of yourself.”
Sinking back down on my haunches beside Ben, I tried to make sure he was comfortable, brushing the hair from his face. Blood was caked onto his skin, and I tried to rub it away. He moaned at my touch, but his eyes remained shut.
“Should we get this debris off him?” I asked Sawyer when he crouched down beside me.
“Yeah, but don’t move him just yet. He may have sustained a serious injury we can’t see.”
Clutching Ben’s hand, I whispered to him, telling him what was happening. Sawyer stood, got a hold on the ceiling plaster and flipped the weight off the wendigo’s body. Next, he shoved aside the table, and I got a better look at Ben’s injuries. Through his white tux shirt, there was a red stain blooming on his side, soaking the stiff cotton. Aside the wound to his belly, he appeared to be okay, but I was no doctor. Besides, wendigo physiology might be completely different to that of a human.
“It’s all right, Ben. You’re going to be all right.”
He moaned a little, but there wasn’t any feeling to it. His eyes were still firmly shut, his mouth a hard slash.
“Do you need a gurney over there?” someone called, and I glanced up to find my old paramedic pals, Berman and Jones, coming toward us.
“Yeah,” I shouted back. “We have a man down.” And a woman in pieces.
Berman crouched beside me, all-business, as she looked over Ben in assessment, then started taking his vitals.
“He’s a wendigo,” I told her. “I don’t know if that’s going to make a difference in how you treat him.”
She glanced over at me, her eyes serious. Taking my hand, she squeezed it. “I’ll treat him to the best of my ability, Cat. I’m just glad we’re not treating you tonight, too.”
And there was the guilt. I had no doubt that this blast had been meant for me.
My table.
My work Christmas party.
My fault.
Kailon had already made three attempts on my life—that I knew about—and this one was his success.
“Jones, bring me…”
As Berman and Jones got on with treating Ben’s injuries before moving him to the ambulance, I stood and retreated a few paces. Sawyer was suddenly there, wrapping a comforting arm around my waist.
“This is my fault,” I rasped.
“How do you figure that, pussy cat?”
“Kailon must’ve planted this bomb. Clearly, I was the target since it went under our table, except now…” I couldn’t hold back the sob as I cast my gaze over the scattered remains of Hayliel, “… now, my family has paid the price for my actions.”
We were down to three members of PIG—two if yo
u didn’t include me on account of me being human and all. First Faline, now Hayliel.
What would be next?
Who would be next?
Turning around, I buried my face in Sawyer’s chest and wrapped my arms around his waist. Tears fell. I had no way of stopping them even if I wanted to. I cried for the death of Hayliel. Yes, I didn’t know her all that well, but she was part of PIG, and I’d grown to depend on her outrageously inappropriate BDSM attire at work. Ben might be excessively growly, but deep down, I knew he had my back.
I hadn’t even begun to realize how much these people meant to me.
They were the family I’d lost.
They were the family I’d gained.
They were the family that had been ripped from my fingers.
I clutched at my opal, knowing what I had to do.
Kailon was going to die tonight because nobody messed with me and mine and got away with it.
Eighteen
“I really think we should’ve gotten changed,” Sawyer said.
“Revenge waits for no one, Sawyer,” I called. “And revenge in a ball gown and black tie always looks awesome.”
We were at the abandoned amusement park—the entrance to Wonderland. After going back to our apartment quickly to arm up, get coats, and change our shoes, Sawyer had his Glock along with about a dozen knives strapped to his body. I had my Glock too, the holster strapped over my torn and bloody dress. Reaver had shown up in the apartment’s elevator on the ride down to the underground parking garage.
Reaching up, I patted the top of my dress. Tucked inside was my trump card—something I wasn’t sure I needed but thought I better have just in case.
“I’ll take the lead,” Sawyer told me, his jaw tight and his expression fierce. We’d both agreed that killing off our team was not the best idea Kailon had ever had, and he’d be getting the spanking of a lifetime because of his actions.
Farther and farther we walked into the amusement park until arriving at the entrance to The Screamer. “Set your watch for forty-eight minutes, pussy cat,” Sawyer murmured. “We need to get out of there before the alarm goes off. Otherwise, we’ll be stuck in Wonderland, miss Christmas completely, and I know you don’t want to do that.”