She startled at his voice. “No. Honestly, I just want to get cleaned up and go to bed.”
He nodded, trying not to let his mind linger too long over the image of her in the shower... lathering up... rubbing soapy hands all over her body.
He cleared his throat. “You take the first shower.”
Chapter 10
Father would be angry if he knew the clusterfuck Helen’s project had become.
It was a common misconception among both full humans and shifters that the gods could not experience human emotion, but Helen knew better. She could always tell when Father was displeased. Even beings who had seen everything, done everything, and lived many human life spans as the gods had, could experience happiness, disappointment, fear, love, even anger.
She was sure her father had loved her mother. Of all his concubines, Helen’s mother, Rebecca, had had the longest contract. When she was unable to bear more children, he didn’t cast her out. While it was true, he took another concubine, eventually, Helen knew Father must have held great affection for her mother.
The changeling’s failure to acquire Dolores Black threatened the entire project. Father had never been completely on board with Helen’s vision for Pantheon. After the debacle with Julie Wheeler, if he knew the status of the Dolores Black acquisition, Father would insist she shut down the entire project.
And he would be angry.
Helen’s secure Omni communications device hovered in the air in front of her as she weighed her options. She had already located Dolores Black’s Omni signal. It appeared as a small purple dot on her screen, superimposed on a satellite rendering of the location, blinking in one spot. This could only mean one thing- the Omni was stationary. Best case scenario would have the purple dot moving down the screen, on the way to the remote bunker where she would be kept. But according to the map, Dolores Black was currently at one of the shifter enforcement agencies in town.
If Dolores’s dot had been at her apartment, she could simply dispatch the changeling to her and re-acquire the woman there. Had the purple dot been fixed at one of the Dallas Police Department locations, Helen would have been able to fix that as well. Not ideal, but she had people working for her in the DPD, and that would be a situation she could work with.
Helen could not get to the subject at a shifter agency. Shifters did not trust the gods, didn’t trust Pantheon, nor anyone working for the company. Generations ago, shifters served the gods and their children. After the Prometheus Incident, shifters became autonomous and self-governing.
Even worse, this particular shifter agency was headed by Mac Bodie, the minotaur shifter who had ruined Helen’s other operation a few months earlier.
The short-range dragonfly drones she had sent to monitor Dolores Black’s abduction had located Lola’s Omni, and hovered silently at the warehouse location, providing Helen with various views of the building, none of them helpful. The Omni didn’t register any of the small movements all humans make whether conscious or unconscious. That could only mean Lola wasn’t actually wearing it.
Thanks to the concubine program, Helen had access to the most carefully vetted females Earth had to offer. All Helen had to do was determine which ones wouldn’t be missed. The way she saw it, she was providing an important service to the clients and the women.
Helen didn’t like loose ends, and Lola Black was a loose end. When things went upside down with Julie Wheeler, she was able to suppress the missing person’s report the bar girl’s daughter had filed. After she terminated the changeling, that should have been the end of the matter.
Now she wondered if she was wrong. Did the presence of the shifter who had disrupted Lola’s kidnapping mean the shifters were aware of her activities? She ground her teeth in frustration.
How were they were anticipating her moves? She was more intelligent, cleverer than any of them. They shouldn’t be able to anticipate anything she’d done. The fact that she wasn’t currently in prison — or dead — meant the enforcers didn’t know it was Helen who was involved. It was risky to attempt to re-acquire Dolores Black, but it was also risky to let her go free. Julie Wheeler had gone free, and now there was more heat on Helen than ever before.
“Where are you, Dolores Black?” Helen spoke aloud to herself.
Between the soundproof walls and her security, she wasn't worried about anyone overhearing. Not only was the security absolute, but her voice was absorbed by the luxurious surroundings of her office space.
Even if she didn’t recover Lola Black, keeping an eye on her was probably a good idea. Helen needed to find her.
A small chime sounded from her Omni, reminding her of the time. She'd spent enough time on her little project. Now she needed to focus on other things. She shut down her Omni, stood, smoothed her cassock, and headed to her reception area. Her receptionist’s desk was empty.
Probably at lunch. Good.
Helen hurried toward the elevators that would take her to her penthouse apartment. Moments later she used her thumbprint to unlock her front door. She didn't even notice her surroundings as she moved through her living space.
She went to her closet and placed her thumb against the lock on her floor-to-ceiling safe, and it snicked open. She moved items around the shelves and found what she came for- a container about the size of a pickle jar. Inside were many pea-sized, black beads.
She grabbed the jar and closed the safe. In her bedroom, she set the jar on her dresser. She again engaged her Omni and began to program the tiny drones. Each bead began to glow blue at its center. She gave the jar an experimental shake and the beads glowed brighter and began to vibrate.
Time to set them free.
Helen took the jar and went into her bathroom. She perched on top of the commode and opened the tiny window there. She unscrewed the lid of the jar. She wasn’t sure how many were in the jar, but she knew it had to be at least a few hundred. She carefully dumped the beads into the cold February air.
They hovered, then popped open, making a sound like a string of firecrackers. The dragonfly drones deployed, their mechanical wings catching the breeze. It would take some time for the drones to cover the many hundreds of square miles she estimated Lola would have been able to travel. In a few hours, she would check on their progress.
Eventually, they would find Dolores with their facial recognition technology. When Helen located her quarry, she would decide what to do.
Helen carefully stepped back down to the floor. She paused, considering her next step. Should she tell the buyer there would be a delay? And as for Father...
She tapped her long, manicured fingers on her leg, thinking. She would tell Father nothing at all—there was no reason to. She would fix this situation before he even knew it had happened. Father couldn’t become angry about something he didn’t know about, now could he?
Her business done, Helen left her home. She returned to her office and Stella Washington, her assistant, smiled at Helen from her desk.
"Did you have a nice lunch?" Stella asked in her annoyingly upbeat manner.
Helen returned the human’s smile with a practiced one of her own.
“Very productive,” said Helen as she stepped into her sanctuary.
Chapter 11
Phelan watched the sway of Lola’s backside as she headed for the shower. Every part of him wanted to follow her through that door- the man and the wolf. He sighed as she closed the door behind her.
He needed a distraction. Then he recalled he hadn't contacted Bubba yet to check in. Perfect. He engaged his Omni to call Bubba. The screen sputtered, then dissolved to blackness. He frowned. Then he remembered that the Omni drone coverage was spotty so far away from a major city. Shifters in particular didn’t allow drones near their settlements. A standard communications drone could easily be reprogrammed for surveillance purposes.
He went out to his truck to find his smartphone. He had to dig around a bit because he didn't use it often. When he found it, it was dead. Figures.
He took it into house, plugged it into one of the electric sockets in the kitchen, and called Bubba.
“Cermak,” said the other wolf.
“Bubba. It’s Phelan,” he said, amused at the other's answer.
Bubba’s face appeared on the screen of Phelan’s smartphone.
God, how did people get anything done with these tiny little screens?
Phelan could make out Bubba in the front seat of his car. He could also make out two small children in the backseat- girls of similar, but not identical, appearance, about six or seven years old, brown-skinned with lively brown eyes. Both girls had their hair styled in two dense-looking puffs of hair about the size of softballs.
“What the hell?” Phelan asked as he heard the children's laughter.
“What?” Bubba barked with an annoyed frown. More high-pitched giggles erupted. Bubba’s lips twitched in a smirk.
“Bubba, where are you?” Phelan asked suspiciously. Since when did his cousin have regular dealings with little children?
“Dropping my mate’s pups off at school," Bubba said, sounding annoyed. "What do you want?”
“When did you get a mate?" Phelan asked, floored. "When did you get pups?”
“I got a mate a couple of months ago," Bubba said with a soft smile and a glance in the rearview mirror. "And she came with two pups already.”
Phelan took a moment to process this. Bubba was a bona fide manwhore, perhaps the worst at relationships than any wolf Phelan knew. Bubba’s car appeared to stop, and the little girls disappeared from view.
“So, are you two getting married?” Phelan asked, trying to connect the dots.
“Eventually. I just need to talk her into it. She’s mine,” Bubba said arrogantly, his eyes narrowed to slits.
Ahhh, now it all made sense. Bubba and his mate were apparently not on the same page about their mating.
Join the club, Phelan thought wryly.
“How long have you known this girl?” he asked, curiosity eating at him.
“She’s not a girl. She’s all woman.” The last bit said with a satisfied sigh.
“Woman," he corrected himself with a smirk. "How long have you known this woman?”
“A couple of months," Bubba said, still clearly annoyed. "I already told you that.”
Phelan was getting irritated with Bubba’s evasions and blurted out,
“Are you mated, or what?”
“She’s my mate,” said Bubba. “But…she doesn’t exactly believe in that stuff.”
Phelan stared blankly out the kitchen window, letting this information sink in.
“So…You’re dating this girl?” he asked slowly.
“Woman,” Bubba corrected with a growl. “She’s not a girl. She’s a woman. And we’re not exactly dating.”
This sounded so similar to his situation with Lola, Phelan needed more information.
“Why are you dropping her kids off at school if you’re not even dating?”
“You should be lucky enough to understand this one day," Bubba said with an exasperated sigh. "If you ever have a mate, the things she cares about, you also care about. I would do anything for Vanessa.”
Phelan let that sink in and his mind went to the woman in the bathroom. What did Lola care about? He had no idea. He had been with her for hours, had defended and protected her, yet he didn’t know the first thing about her. Not really.
"How did you figure that out?" he asked cautiously. It was never wise to show too much interest in another wolf's mate.
"Figure what out?" Bubba asked with a confused frown.
"You know," Phelan asked, suddenly regretting this conversation. "Never mind."
"Oh no," Bubba said with a sharp look. "Spit it out."
Phelan glared at the tiny screen. "Fine. How did you figure out what's important to her?"
Bubba smirked, "Pay attention, idiot."
The screen went blank before Phelan could respond and he silently snarled. "Thanks for nothing," he said.
He eyed the tattered knapsack, which she had clutched to her at all times and before now had not once put it down. It hung from a hook next to the front door. It was patched together from dark red velvet and some kind of shiny blue material. There was actually had a pattern he hadn’t noticed before, the petals of a hibiscus, from what he could tell. He wanted to know what was inside the bag, so much so that his fingers itched to grab it. If she were any other witness, he would have already done it on the down low.
The shower shut off, and he snatched his hands back, feeling guilty.
She emerged from the small bath in a cloud of shower steam, her features soft and her skin dewy. She wore a fluffy white towel as if it were a strapless dress, showcasing the graceful lines of her collarbone. Her hair was wrapped in another towel and as she stepped out, she removed the towel from her head, squeezing her damp hair.
She looked at him, a startled expression on her face, like she hadn't expected to find him standing there. Then she bit her lip and grinned when he simply stared at her.
He went instantly rock hard, his boner straining at the denim of his jeans. He went to place the smartphone on the kitchen table but thunderstruck as he was, missed the surface and it clattered to the wood plank floor. She blinked at him with no idea how beautiful she was.
Phelan struggled with what to say to her since all the saliva in his mouth and throat had suddenly dried up. His mouth dropped open and his jaws worked soundlessly.
“Uhhh,” he started, looking into her clear brown eyes. The rustic surroundings only enhanced her beauty.
She looked at him with a soft expression that reminded him of the exchange they’d had at the stoplight the night before. His body screamed to be closer to her and his legs carried him the few feet needed to stand over her. Her eyes widened in wonder the closer he got to her. He had always been taught that meeting your fated mate was an experience impossible to describe if you haven’t lived it.
It was true. He felt like a marionette, and she held the strings. His fingers itched to touch the soft, brown skin, to see if her touch would go through him like an electric jolt. Her breathing grew shallow and she went still. He reached out for her, anticipating the same sizzle he felt the first time they met…
A loud bang sounded at the door and he came out of his trance with a start. Lola blinked several times, suggesting that she, too, had been affected. Befuddled, he turned and robotically walked to the door, wincing at the discomfort caused by his steel-hard cock.
He opened the door and frowned at the last person he expected to be standing there.
“Mr. Richards?”
Chapter 12
The cold blast of air shocked Lola out of her trance.
She blinked as she realized the front door had swung open. A small shiver went through her body. She'd never experienced anything like that “moment” with Phelan before.
The “moment” prompted by Phelan’s slack-jawed reaction to her emerging from the shower wrapped in only a towel. She smiled to herself as she realized she wasn’t alone in her attraction. She was pretty sure she saw desire in his turquoise eyes. Unlikely, she told herself cynically. Maybe she just made him horny, but that wasn’t the same as true desire for her as a woman. Regret ran through her at the thought.
She snapped out of her inappropriate fantasy and focused on the surprise visitor at the door.
Phelan gave a grudging “hello” to the old man who stood at the doorway.
“They told me you were in town!” the old man exclaimed as he stood eye-to-eye with Phelan. He seemed completely oblivious to the fact that he hadn’t been invited in, breezing past an open-mouthed Phelan. Lola did give the man points for looking her in the eye.
She took in the man’s features, noting his long, lean body, sharp facial features, and penetrating blue gaze. Given that they were in a pack town, she guessed he was shifter. Had to be.
Probably a canine — wolf or coyote, maybe?
Most shifters were generally taller than
average, with the exception of some ruminants derived from goats and rams. This old dude had to be 6’ 4” if he was an inch. She herself barely topped 5 feet. If she lived in this town for any amount of time, it would be like being a Lilliputian in a land of Gullivers. She’d stick out like a tomato bush in a land of beanstalks.
She shouldn't be here. She needed to disappear, not stand out. In a town like Perdition, where everyone probably knew everyone else, there were few, if any, secrets. It was better for her to get lost in the anonymity of big city life, where no one knew, or cared, about her background. So, there was no use in fantasizing about giving into her attraction to Phelan. The man at the door glanced at her uncomfortably. She was suddenly aware that she was underdressed and standing in a room half naked with two strange men. The parallels to her work at Woodland Creatures were not lost on her. The towel actually afforded more coverage than her skimpy outfits, she thought wryly, and she wasn’t expected to wear platform sandals.
She wasn’t at work anymore, she reminded herself, and her cheeks flamed at the sight she must present.
“Excuse me,” she said, turning away from the men to return to the bathroom. She frowned when she realized she didn't have any clean clothes to wear. She shrugged, oh well. Quickly, she dressed in the same clothes she had worn leaving work the night before, sans her underwear, which she had washed and hung to dry.
If she stayed here for any length of time, she'd have to find something to wear. The thought made her shiver. Why would she want to stay here?
She returned to the front room where the two men sat at opposite ends of the curving sectional sofa, facing each other. Phelan's smile seemed to be congenial, but she saw the tightness around his mouth and eyes.
The other man leaned back, looking completely relaxed and at ease. Unsure of what to make of the tension between the two men, she offered her hand to the older man.
“Dolores Black," she said with a polite smile. "But everyone calls me Lola.”
The Wolf's Concubine Page 6