by Selena Scott
“Wren thinks they are.”
Diana had met Wren a few times and didn’t know her well, but her first impression was that she was a woman who saw through bullshit. “Well, if Wren is right then Quill directly lied to my face on your porch this morning when I asked him if something was going on between them.”
Orion reared back. “Hold on, Quill was at my house this morning? Why?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure. He had an excuse but it seemed a little thin.” Diana tipped her head back. “He’s been acting a little funny recently, and he says it’s because of this.”
Diana tapped the papers in front of her and then explained them all to Orion. She explained all about the program, the advantages it offered. She watched him carefully for reaction, but he seemed to be doing the same thing to her.
“So, what’s wrong with it?” he asked after a moment.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that it sounds too good to be true, but you’re acting all… quiet. If it were really worth my time, I figure you’d be excited.”
A little glow started up in her gut at how well he knew her. “I’ll admit that there’s something about this situation that is making me hesitate. Something isn’t quite right, but I can’t tell what it is. You know? Is it Quill? Is it this program? I don’t know. I wish I could pinpoint it because honestly, if this program is for real, it would be an absolute lifesaver for you and your siblings. How much medical debt do you all have? A couple hundred thousand dollars, right? Well, with just a three day commitment to this medical research, you’d wipe it all away.”
Something lit up in Orion’s eyes. “Sounds like we need to do an experiment of our own.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m thinking that we need to do something as a group and try to watch Quill and Dawn to see if there’s anything going on. If there isn’t anything going on then you know that it is something else bothering Quill. This program maybe.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah,” he said, sitting up, obviously liking this idea. “Let’s take them someplace undeniably sexy and see if there’s any,” he wiggled his fingers and his eyebrows in tandem, “vibes.”
Diana laughed. “Or you could just talk to your sister.”
“Nah, this is way more fun. Let’s go to a club.”
“A club.” She groaned internally. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone to a club and she could tell from the devastatingly charming look in his eye that he was totally going to convince her to go along with this stupid plan.
“Yeah. I’ve never been to one. I want to go to one like they have on tv. With flashing lights and oonce oonce oonce oonce,” he imitated the sound of heavy bass.
“Oh lord.” She dropped her forehead into her palm. “You’re going to force me to revisit my early twenties, aren’t you.”
“If you went to clubs in your early twenties, then yes.”
“Is there anything I can say to talk you out of this?”
“What should I wear?”
She groaned again and lowered her forehead to her desk.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Orion was kind of… giddy. This was fun. Really fun.
He’d somehow talked Phoenix and Ida, Wren, Dawn, and Quill into having dinner with him and Diana. They’d gone to an Italian restaurant down the street from the club they were going to go to when it was, apparently, a more appropriate hour. According to Wren, nobody went to a club when it was still light outside. Orion was happy to defer to the expert.
Which meant that the group had chatted and laughed over dinner, gone to the bar next door for a drink and now that they’d settled up their tab, were finally heading over to the club.
Orion felt delightfully human. He wore a V-neck T and jeans and boots, an outfit that Diana had insisted would blend in just fine. Apparently Ida had had the same thought because Orion’s scowly brother was currently outfitted in exactly the same thing.
Quill, however, was in a tight hoodie and dark athletic pants, a frown on his face. Orion had been watching him very carefully all night and hadn’t seen any hint that he and Dawn were sleeping together. If anything, Orion had only observed a level of mild indifference on Quill’s part. He’d sat next to Dawn at dinner, sure, but he’d barely said a word to anyone, concentrating on his food instead. Orion would have wondered how the hell Diana had gotten Quill to agree to this outing if it weren’t for the fact that he truly believed it was physically impossible to deny Diana anything.
Dawn was her usual quiet self, though she’d seemed to make an effort to chat with Wren over dinner. Maybe, if Orion was really looking for it, he could detect the fact that Dawn was maybe going out of her way not to talk to Quill.
But for the most part they just looked like two people who were decidedly not in the middle of a forbidden affair.
All thoughts of his sister and her mentor flooded out of Orion’s head when their group stepped through the front doors of the club, each of them flashing their IDs at a gigantic man in black glasses. Orion exchanged looks with his siblings. The bouncer was a shifter for sure, but one that he’d never before encountered.
Before he could think twice, Orion leaned across the red velvet rope separating him from the bouncer and shouted over the music. “What kind of shifter are you?”
The man jolted and eyed Orion with extreme suspicion.
Orion lifted his palms outward. “I’m a wolf. Same as my brother and sister.” He pointed out Phoenix -who was still scowling- and Dawn. He wasn’t related to Quill so he didn’t think it was his place to out the fact that there was also a bear shifter in their midst.
The bouncer’s eyes narrowed.
“He’s pretty new to human culture,” Diana said, sliding under Orion’s arm and placing herself between him and the bouncer. “Sorry for the intrusive questions.”
“Oh.” Orion looked from her back to the bouncer. “Sorry. I didn’t realize it was rude to ask.”
The bouncer seemed to loosen up a little bit. “You came out of the woodwork after the internment camps got closed down, then?”
“Yeah.” Orion nodded enthusiastically. “We lived up in the hills for most of our lives.”
“Right. I was in hiding too. Until a few years ago.”
“What’s the hold up?” Wren shouted over the bass beat, reappearing at Orion’s side. “Let’s dance!”
“Just making friends,” Orion shouted back, tossing his thumb toward the bouncer.
“Hi there, muscles,” Wren said, tracing an appraising eye up and down the bouncer’s body. Orion couldn’t tell if he’d passed the test or not. Apparently the bouncer couldn’t either, he frowned at Wren, one of his hands going to the back of his neck, like he was very uncomfortable having his muscles pointed out.
“Okay, I know it’s apparently rude,” Orion said, unable to help himself. “But I hafta know. What kind of shifter are you? I’ve never scented anything like it before.”
The bouncer shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat. His eyes darted around the club, making sure that no one would overhear him. He leaned forward. Orion, Wren and Diana all leaned forward as well.
“Polar bear.”
“No shit!” Wren said, her eyes going wide. She stuck one hand out. “I’m a raven. Nice to meet you, snow bear.”
The bouncer looked at her hand for a long minute before he reached out and shook it, looking like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of Wren.
“Orion!” Diana hissed in his ear. “Look!”
He tore his attention away from Diana and the bouncer and turned toward the bar where Quill and Dawn stood shoulder to shoulder, trying to get the bartender’s attention. The bartender was young and good looking, when he turned and saw Dawn standing there, he immediately smiled, pretty much completely ignoring Quill.
Orion watched as Quill looked back and forth between Diana and the bartender, scowling the whole time.
They watched as Quill said something to Dawn. She qu
ickly said something back, looking both flustered and annoyed at the same time. Ida and Phoenix approached a moment later and Dawn took her drink and stepped aside, letting the newcomers fill in between her and Quill.
“Interesting,” Diana mused, her eyes narrowed and slightly skeptical.
“Very interesting,” Orion agreed.
He tugged Diana to the bar where they got drinks as well and then he turned to survey the dance floor, Diana tucked safely under his arm. As soon as they’d stepped into the club, he’d noticed a rather unsettling number of male eyes trailing her around. He’d also noticed that the closer she was to him, the shorter the amount of time the gazes lingered on her. If he could have stuck her under his T shirt he would have.
“Huh,” he said, scratching at his head. “I think I’m experiencing jealousy.”
“What?” Diana shouted over the music.
“I don’t like all these idiots looking at you!” he shouted back. “I’ve never been jealous before.” He paused and thought about it. “It sucks.”
“What idiots?” she scanned the bar. “All I see are a bunch of floozies in short skirts trying to catch your eye.”
He laughed at the expression on her face, sure that it was mirroring his own. “I have no idea what a floozy is, but you’re cute when you’re jealous.”
She crossed her eyes at him and stuck out her tongue. “I have an idea,” she said. “Let’s just go ahead and make everybody jealous.”
Orion wasn’t sure what she meant until she grabbed his hand and hauled him out onto the dance floor. Diana was good at everything, so it didn’t exactly surprise him when she turned out to be a very alluring dancer. She was all hips and soft curves and only eyes for him. He didn’t have a ton of experience on a dance floor, sure, but he also didn’t have a ton of self-consciousness either. And besides, it didn’t take a dancing expert to put your hands on a woman’s hips and grind up against her.
Which, he noticed with a grin, was also the route that his brother was taking with Ida. Phoenix frowned around at the dance floor as Ida bopped and danced against him, making it so that he didn’t have to move too much and aggravate his injury. Orion caught Phoenix’s eye and the two brothers just kind of shook their heads at one another. Two years ago, they were in their wolf forms 99% of the time, avoiding humanity at all costs. And now, here they were in a club with flashing lights and terrible music and their women all loved up on them.
“You’re not bad at this!” Diana shouted to him as she turned in the circle of his arms and linked her hands behind his neck. “Have you been dancing before? I thought you said you’d never been to a club before!”
“I haven’t. But I’ve been on a dance floor before. At bars and joints like that.”
Something lit in her eyes as she put the pieces together. “That’s how you used to meet women, wasn’t it? Back when you only came to town every once in a while?”
To get laid.
Neither of them needed her to complete that sentence.
He hesitated, remembering their conversation from before. The one where they’d landed on the fact that it wasn’t a good idea to hear about one another’s past lovers. “Uh.”
That was the best he could come up with on such short notice.
“Oh, come on, you can tell me! I’m curious now.”
He scrutinized her expression and saw that she was open and playful and definitely not about to knife him for talking about his exes.
He leaned down to her ear so that he wouldn’t have to shout. “If I talked to women too much, they always figured out there was something different about me. You know, I was a mountain man. A secret shifter. I had no interest in getting caught. So, I figured out a way to meet women without having to talk too much.”
“You’d dance with them?”
He pulled back from her ear and nodded.
“You had a lot of success with that?” she asked, one eyebrow raised.
He shrugged. “Not always.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You’re being modest. I can tell.” Her head cocked to one side. “What would happen after you danced with them? What was your move?”
He leaned down to ear but she shook her head. “No. Don’t tell me. Show me.”
This time when he scrutinized her expression, he saw a very healthy dose of lust in her eyes. She wanted to see how he used to pick up women? She wanted to experience it?
Yeah. Orion could do that for her.
He took her hand and led her further onto the dance floor, away from the eyes of his brother and sister. They didn’t need to see this. Neither did her two employees who happened to be there with them.
They were instantly lost on the dance floor, bodies closing ranks around them. The music was loud and mindless and sexy. Orion turned Diana so that her back was to his front. In her high heels her softness and his hardness were perfectly aligned. He used his hands on her hips to press her close and move her exactly how he wanted. He drew her hand up to his hair and opened his mouth against her neck. The beat intensified as the song faded into the next and his thumb dipped below her shirt, tracing a circle against her hipbone. He thought he might have heard her gasp, but it was impossible to tell over the music.
What was easy for him to decipher was the scent of her arousal on the air as he moved against her. He turned her so that they were facing one another, his hands roaming her back, dropping briefly to her ass and then back up to her hair. He didn’t think she realized it but he was dancing her little by little to the far edge of the dance floor. By the time he got to his chosen destination her eyes were hazy, her lips parted, and there was a trusty wall exactly where he needed it to be.
He pressed her back to the wall and kissed a line up her neck, one of his hands dropping to her knee and pressing her leg up against his hip.
Her fingernails dug into his shoulder and now they were really getting somewhere. He lifted his head just enough to scan their surroundings. He spotted a darkened hallway and tugging Diana along behind him, he headed straight for it.
At the mouth of the hallway, he almost ran straight into the bouncer they’d met at the front of the club. Judging from the faint scent of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that trailed behind him, Orion figured he’d been taking his break. The bouncer looked back and forth between Orion and Diana, apparently -accurately- clocking their lusty expressions, the way they leaned against one another, Orion’s slack mouth, Diana’s lower lip pinched between her teeth. He raised an eyebrow at the two of them, blocking their way to the dark hallway. Then, after a second, his expression softened and he rolled his eyes, stepping to one side and letting them pass.
“Polar bear,” Orion said, tipping an imaginary hat to the man who hadn’t put the kibosh on their public sexcapades.
“Not my business,” the polar bear shifter said, raising his hands in the air and disappearing into the belly of the club.
Orion tugged Diana down the hallway, the two of them laughing and stumbling and pawing at one another. He tried two locked doors before he got to an unlocked supply closet and tugged her in after him.
The lightbulb swung from the ceiling after he pulled the chain and it lit Diana in an intoxicating splash of color. She was staring at him up through her lashes, her lip still caught between her teeth, her back to the door he’d just slammed closed.
She was glistening with exertion from dancing, her shampoo a fresh zip of a scent between them. She was excited and turned on and looked just… free.
He fell to his knees in front of her, dragging her panties down her legs, working his belt and zipper loose so that by the time he was back on his feet, lifting her against the wall, her wetness was already sliding against him. She was pressed, hot and gasping, the most gorgeous thing he’d ever laid eyes on.
He braced her against him and against the wall and bucked his hips upward, testing her readiness with a blunt push of his cock. He pressed forehead against hers and glanced down her body. Her dress bunched at her hips as he pr
essed upward, half an inch into her. He was given a crazy-making view of heaven. The image of their bodies merging threatened to burn itself into his brain permanently. He wanted it to. He wanted to be branded with her. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders and he wanted that too. He wanted her to leave a permanent mark on him, something that would reflect the mark she’d left on him inside.
He pushed in another inch.
“Yessssss,” she hissed and let her head knock backward onto the door he had her pressed against, her eyes squeezed shut.
He held his breath, braced her, faced ecstasy head on and plunged to the hilt inside her. Her eyes opened all at once, point blank and blazingly bright. He knew that look. It was the look of someone who saw everything and nothing all at once. He was positive that her world was both incredibly blurry and blindingly clear all at once. She was zeroing in on him, he just knew it.
“Orion,” she whispered.
And that was all it took. How many times had she said his name before? Easily a thousand. But there was something about this moment that transcended them all. Because they’d stumbled into this closet to just screw each other quickly and lustily in the back of a club. Hell, they’d been pretending they were strangers who’d just met on the dance floor. But even now they couldn’t detach. They couldn’t disengage. She wasn’t a stranger and could never be again. She was his Diana.
He, buried all the way inside her, panting into her mouth, swallowing her air, had a sudden flash of the first time he’d ever seen her. She’d been immaculately buttoned up. Her hair a gorgeously neat slick back from her face. Tasteful jewelry, a modest neckline. But there’d been no downplaying that face. Striking eyes that had reflected his entire new world, the human world right back at Orion. Even then, she hadn’t seemed a stranger to him. Even then, he’d known what he’d found, who he’d just met.
That image laid itself over Diana now, her mouth dropped open, her eyes dozy and dilated, his name pouring out her like honey onto silk as her heels dug into his back.
They were two opposite versions of the same complicated woman.