by Rae Foxx
"I'm sorry, but are you saying that scared rabbit murdered a hyena who could shift and kill him in one bite?" Travis' shoulders dropped a bit, his disappointment deflating my exhilaration.
Okay, I guess I could have announced that a bit better.
"Yes, I am. so let's go get him, bring him downtown, and book him." I bounced on my toes, ready to go. Travis, however, was putting his handcuffs back. "Isn't that what happens next?"
"No," Travis sighed, giving me a peck on my cheek before sagging back into the worn chair and going back to his clutter of papers. "What usually comes next is evidence."
"You have evidence," I leaned over his desk again. Now it was my turn to search through his papers, although I had no idea what I was looking for. "That goo was all over the dumpster and the alley. You said you were going to go take a look. Did you get a sample? Send it to a lab, maybe?”
His eyes were trained on Wulf as he spoke to me. Like he was afraid the wolf might run at any second. “Yeah, we just got the results back, but they don't point to anything Scarlet—"
“Can we look, please?" I interrupted, banging my hands on the desk and leaning forward again. With every noise back here the receptionist shrieked, poor girl must be having heart palpitations.
Travis leaned back in his chair, those dark eyes digging into mine. Studying. Watching.
"Please," I repeated and he groaned, rolling his eyes.
I won.
“Fine.” He jumped up from his chair, pointing over my shoulder at Wulf, I assumed, although it could have been the twins who had found a pair of handcuffs and were discussing how to use them later. “He goes nowhere.”
“Okay, okay. Wulf won’t leave." I put my hands up as if it were me he was talking about. "He’s innocent anyway. There’s no reason for him to run.”
Travis gave him one last glare as he stepped back to a battered old filing cabinet, the corners of paper sticking out of the all the drawers showing that it was as messy as the rest of this place. Damn, Travis needed an assistant. He slid a pink page out of the top drawer, and as he read it his eyebrows bunched.
“Plant-based as you said. Algae and carrot greens and... chlorophyll. Eddie said he had given him one for his dinner that night. We have the receipt." He went back over his desk to find it but stopped when I sighed, hands on my hips as I stepped in his way.
I loved my police chief, but clearly, this was a job for a fox.
“Why would he have a smoothie? Remember that day in his shop? Eddie said he didn’t know Kent very well, and that in all the time they had been next-door neighbors of sorts. Kent had never had one of his smoothies. There’s no way that was his dinner. Let's go arrest him!"
I was victorious, hand in the air as I jumped up and down like Rocky. Damn, I fucking got this sleuth stuff down! Then why didn't my police chief seem impressed?
"I can't just barge in and arrest him without proof, Scarlet."
"I have proof!" I pointed to the lab results and the receipt like a madwoman, Travis just set them down amongst the clutter and sighed.
"Real hard proof, not just the fact that he and Eddie didn't get along because Eddie doesn't like the smell of blood." That still seemed good enough to me, but I guess any rabbit wouldn't like the smell of blood...
"I have hard proof." I was not going to give up on this, even though Wulf and the twins were starting to get uneasy. I couldn’t give up if only because Travis was pulling his handcuffs out again and not for a striptease. "There's slime on the roof of Becky's office, and if I had to guess, I’d say it will match the algae stuff that Eddie likes to put in his drinks. He was there, and he dripped that stuff from where he killed him, to where he slung him up. If I had to bet, he snuck back in to clean it all up when he heard me scream. That's why you never found it."
"How did he sneak in?" Travis asked immediately. God this guy. He had counters for everything and yet was willing to believe that a hyena was eating an algae smoothie for dinner. "You were out front when we got there, and the back-door auto locks. It was one of the first things we checked when we checked for how the culprit got in. The killer had to come in through the front door."
I paused, my heart falling to my toes. He was right, there wasn't another entrance and I hadn't seen him come inside. He was holed up inside of his store, closed sign flipped, probably cleaning the bathroom or something.
Hot damn!
"The bathroom."
"Second door on the left," Travis answered, still trying to get around me to interrogate Wulf.
"No, the bathroom. That's how he got in. You know the white door in the office?"
Travis sighed and nodded, fingers still toying with the handcuffs. He was losing his patience. "That door is nailed shut—"
"Or it was when you saw it. I don't think it always was, or why would Eddie have painted over the fresh nail holes in his side?" That time everyone looked at me in confusion, I was smiling so big they might have spackled that smug on.
"His side?" Evan asked, just as Wulf licked his lips and smiled. At least he was following along.
"Yes, I was trying to figure out where the door in the butcher’s office led to, and then I remembered: the doorknob served as a mighty-fine balance while you were mating me in the bathroom, and it smelled a bit too much like fresh paint."
"Nice!" Owen said, already moving to give his brother yet another high five. "See, this is why we need to mate our girls in all the bathrooms in Cummings Cove. Clues. They are full of clues."
"So, Eddie used the door to kill Kent—"
"And to clean up the evidence," I interrupted. This was my brilliant discovery and he wasn't taking it away from me. "Judging by how warm the blood was when I found the body Eddie didn't expect anyone to be there, and he hadn't cleaned up yet. So, he has a motive." I finished, holding a finger up.
"He hated the smell of blood and said it was ruining his business," Owen said behind me, all of them lined up like the ultimate sidekicks.
"He had a way to get in there." Another finger, Travis' eyes widening with each one.
"Through the sex door." That time Evan answered, all of them beaming now.
"But we still don't have proof." Way to rain on our parade Phoquin. I rolled my eyes at him.
"We have the slime on the ceiling. Plus, you know, we could ask him." I shrugged, batting my eyelashes at him as though I was asking for sex and not to tag along on an interrogation. "And I could help."
I waited, breath held in my chest as I stared at him, giving myself the ultimate eyelash workout.
"I will go talk to him," Travis finally agreed and I punched the air again, this time the twins joined me. "You four stay here or go back to the shop. I don’t want you anywhere near this guy.”
“Yeah, I know we don’t know each other very well, Travis, but that’s not really how I roll. I’m not some little lady who stays put and waits until her man comes home," I teased him, the twins chuckling behind me. Wulf just leaned against the front counter like he was bored more than anything else.
“You know, I think I knew that about you. Silly me, thinking I could try and keep my mate safe," Travis smiled and let out a laugh.
“Dude, there’s no point in trying," Owen snorted, clapping Travis on the shoulder like frat boys. "It’s like trying to cage a wild tiger. It ain’t happening and your life will be a lot happier if you don’t attempt it. Trust us.”
“Yeah, we just quit," Evan agreed, clapping him on the other shoulder. "She can whip anyone’s ass anyway. I pity the fool who goes against our badass Scarlet.”
They could quote Mr. T but couldn’t keep their Star Wars characters straight. I gave up. There was no helping these two.
"Fine, but you stay outside." He didn't give us a chance to argue before he tore out of the station without a word to the receptionist who had finally gone back to her crossword, although it was full of scribbles.
Instead of taking the police truck, he walked. Travis let us trail behind him as he practically ran to the smoothie shop two
streets over. Unfortunately, a group of people following the police chief as he bolted down the street was turning more than a few heads. By the time we reached the shop, which was closed, the mayor, the florist, the baker, and a few other people I hadn't met had joined our little party.
"Stay here," Travis demanded, pointing at the sidewalk like we were dogs. He groaned when he noticed the crowd behind us but darted in regardless.
I counted to three before I also darted in. The guy was delusional if he thought his command was going to work. Pulling the door open with a victorious flare, I rushed in behind him. Only to run right into his back, his arms out to stop us from going any further.
The overwhelming scent of death made me nearly vomit right there. I wasn’t a big fan of carrots, but I would’ve taken a truckload of them and Eddie’s smoothies over the stench of murder in the air.
Over the murder that covered the once-pristine dining room.
Chairs were thrown around, tables overturned, glass shattered. In the middle, Eddie lay just steps away from where he had spoken to us just the day before. His uniform was on. The wall on the other side of the room was splattered from ceiling to floor in bright orange carrot smoothie, the cup and lid on the floor right next to Eddie.
The orange and white checkered floor was covered with a thick blanket of red, puddling beneath Eddie’s body and streaming from one of his...oh, my god.
“His hand is fucking cut off,” I said and this time dry-heaved before covering my mouth with my hand. “Someone fucking cut off his hand.”
“No,” I was corrected, Travis’ voice dead. “They cut his hands and feet off. They are all gone.”
31
"They think I'm a murderer."
I had been in Cummings Cove for about a month and there had not only been two murders, but I had been the one to find both of them.
That had to be one of the shittiest flukes in the history of flukes. And I thought the town had reacted weirdly to me before, but now that I was wandering around with the scariest looking mofo in town and had been directly associated with two murders, there was going to be no convincing them otherwise.
Eddie's body had only been carted away less than an hour ago and the jury of public opinion had been cast. I even had to drag all of my guys back to the vagina store to get away from the catcalling. They had filed into the tiny room obediently and my stomach had flipped for all the wrong reasons.
This was not how I had imagined bringing them all into my room for the first time.
"You aren't guilty," Travis reminded me for the millionth time as I sunk onto my king bed, throwing myself back on it with an over-dramatic sigh. "I know you aren't guilty."
"As do we," the twins said together, their confirmation fading into the silence of the room. I raised my head, staring at Wulf who was tinkering with the coffee maker as though he had never seen the thing before.
"Hey!" Owen grumbled, knocking Wulf in the back and getting his attention, the guy jumped and turned, his one eye darting dangerously toward Owen until he mumbled something and knocked his head in my direction.
"Considering you thought I was the murderer I am sure you are not at fault. Well, unless you are working with me." He shrugged and went back to the coffee maker. "I am sure we could kill a good amount of people."
"Dude! You really aren't helping, especially with the cop here. You are making yourself look guilty," Evan looked between Wulf and Travis who had narrowed his eyes at him.
"I still haven't written you off," Travis said, looking ominous in his police uniform as he stalked across the room toward him. "I'm still not sure why you’re even here."
Shit. I jumped out of bed, ready to shove myself between the two of them if needed.
"Ummm.... why are you here, Wulf? Why are you in Cummings Cove?" Owen piped up, blocking my way as both his and Evan's grins fell, and they went into protection mode.
I froze. I had assumed that they had asked him this question when they were having their existential conversation about Superman. But now that I was thinking about it, I hadn't asked him either.
None of us knew why he was here, and now that the question was out in the open, the badass wolf wasn't looking quite so badass. In fact, he was glancing at the door a bit more than would be considered normal for an innocent person. He looked a little like a trapped animal, his focus pulling from guy to guy, his lip pulling back as his wolf growled in warning.
I had been around shifter wolves enough to see the danger there. Unless I did something, he was going to attack.
"Wulf?" I asked, pulling that spark of fear in his eye right toward me. "It's okay, just tell them."
I spoke calmly, even though I had no idea what the answer was. Our connection was so strong, however, so calm, so pure... there was no way he was here for anything ominous.
He had said he wasn't the murderer and I believed him.
"I'm here because of you," he finally answered, still not looking away from me. "I broke away from that crate because of you. You looked at me, your smell so strong, and it awoke something in me that I had almost forgotten. I hadn't even reached manhood before the scientists captured me, thinking I was a real wolf. They beat me, used me, and when I was worth nothing more to them, sold me to a zoo. But seeing you, smelling you, I remembered what I was, and why I didn't belong in that cage. I broke out because you are my mate, and I needed to be with you."
Silence hung everywhere as his story whispered through the air, my heart wrenching painfully at the truth of his story. The story of the moose he had told before meaning so much more.
He had lost everything; he had lost himself.
"Wulf," I whispered, breaking past the twins who were just as shocked, to reach for him, but he pulled away, stepping back toward the door as that caged animal made a return.
"I just hadn't expected there to be such complications," the timbre of his voice changed, the snarl of anger hidden just underneath as he finally turned from me to the twins.
No wonder he had seemed so angry when he had mentioned hearing my moans of pleasure through the window, he had wanted that for himself.
Because I belonged to him too.
I had known it; it had cemented in me that day he laid me on that desk and pleasured me in a way I hadn’t expected. Now he needed to know.
Know that I was his as much as I was all of theirs. Let's just hope he could share.
That they all could.
"You are my mate," I said, holding my hands out for him. He didn't move to take them, but I didn't stop reaching. "I was raised to think that mates could only be in the same species, and with only one. I fought that for years, and even lost my place at home when I mated with not one, but two sand cats. We can be together her., I found Travis, and I found you, and you all belong to me."
Wulf shifted his weight, his focus darting from my hands to my eyes, that same snarl twisting his lips. He didn't move to grab my hands, but I didn't drop them either.
"In the wild, wolves are not monogamous. In all my years in the zoo, I saw males with many females and females with many males. The relationships were about safety and pleasure." Everyone moved as Wulf talked, Travis's hand dropping from where it had been hovering over his handcuffs to step forward. We were all hanging on Wulf’s every word as if we knew what he was going to say next.
"I want to keep you safe, and it seems that this town is dangerous, so you are going to need all of us to do that," Wulf finally lifted his hand, softly placing the wide calloused palm in mine. Scars that I hadn't seen before crisscrossing over his skin and glowing white in the light. "But most of all, I want to pleasure you. I want to watch them pleasure you. We may be tame. We may be shifters. But I am wild, and I want to take you as I have always dreamed I would take my mate."
He moved so fast that even if Travis or one of the twins had tried they couldn't have stopped him. Not that they wanted to. Hell, if they had tried, I would have stopped them.
Wulf's hands left mine, gripping my waist
as he spun me around, flattening me against the papered wall beside the door, pressing his hips against mine as he held me there, my feet a few inches off the ground.
"I want to claim you. Not just taste that delicious sweet that seeps from you. I want to fuck you into my soul, and I want your other males to join me."
Wulf's hips pressed against me harder, the hard knob of him pressing into my pelvis. Holding me there, I could feel his cock twitch as he lifted my shirt from me, baring me from the waist up. His wolf growled as he cupped my breasts, pinching the nipples so that they swelled between his knuckles, little red cherries peeking from underneath his grip.
"These are exquisite." He pinched them a bit as I gasped, my legs kicking a bit as my body tensed. There was something beautifully painful about being held against the wall by only the pressure of his cock and the pinch of my nipples. "A perfect pair. I know what else is a perfect pair. Would you like to suck these, boys?"
His bright blue focus glistened as he smiled, the twins practically racing forward to take their place on either side of me. Their hands were firm against my stomach as they held me up and Wulf’s hands were replaced by their mouths. Their tongues tasted, sucked, and nipped at my nipples and mewed.
"I claim your pussy as my own, but there is so much we can fill you with," Wulf whispered, leaning in to run his jaw against mine, his erection continuing to grow and twitch against me.
"What say you, Phoquin? Do you want to fill her ass or her mouth?" Wulf had taken control, and they were all eager to join in there. Travis rushed forward, his mouth capturing mine as he kissed me, claiming what he would do to me and sending twists of desire through me.
Travis's tongue pressed inside my mouth, the twins holding me against the wall as they sucked on my breasts, leaving wonderful rings of red behind. Wulf pressed into me, the nob growing as it tried to burrow through the clothes we were wearing to reach me. The clothes that he had begun to remove.
Travis moved from my mouth to my neck, flicking his tongue against the tender skin and I about lost it, throwing my head back as I moaned and panted and bucked against Wolf's fingers that were now pulling down my tight shorts.