Burning Up (2 page)

“I’m big, I’m strong, and I’m pissed as hell that someone dared touch a woman on my watch.”

She blinked. “Your watch?”

“Dorian’s part of my team,” he said, nodding to the blond man who’d turned her attacker into a sack of broken bones. “Wish he hadn’t done such a good job—I would’ve liked to bloody the piece of shit myself.”

Ria wasn’t used to violence, but she knew without a doubt that this man was a changeling, that he could turn into a leopard with a single thought—and that the leopard had no problem with the most brutal kind of justice. When she looked into his eyes, she saw rage . . . and the flickers of something that wasn’t quite human. “He can’t hurt me.” Somehow, she found herself trying to comfort him.

“But he did.” An implacable statement. “And I’m going to sniff out the nest this little viper came from no matter what.”

She glanced at her assailant’s unconscious body. He was alive, barely. But he wouldn’t be talking for a while yet. “He wasn’t working alone?”

“Indications are he’s with a new gang.” Emmett tucked her blanket gently around her feet when it came loose. “Dark-River’s done a hell of a lot of work to clear the city of this kind of scum, but sometimes, they pop back up.”

Ria knew of DarkRiver. Who didn’t? The leopard pack, based in the Yosemite forest, had claimed San Francisco as part of their territory when Ria had been a child—no other predatory changelings could enter the city without their permission. But in the past few years, they’d gone further and begun to wipe out human predators, too.

“I can tell you a little about him,” she said, her voice gaining strength on a cresting wave of anger. “He came to my mother’s shop, left an account number where she was supposed to wire ‘protection’ money. We thought he was just another thug.”

“I’ll get the number from you tomorrow. Right now, you need to be seen to.” Sliding one muscular arm under her legs, he curved the other around her back, just below her shoulders, and scooped her up before she knew what was happening.

She gave a startled cry.

“I won’t drop you.” A soothing murmur as he shifted her deeper into the van. “Just getting you out of the wind.”

She should’ve protested, but she was tired and achy and he was so warm. Resting her head against his heart when he sat down with her in his arms, she breathed deep. Her body sighed. He smelled good. All hot and male and real, his after-shave something clean and fresh. Though he clearly needed to shave more than once a day. His jaw rasped against her hair as he settled her more firmly on his lap. Not that she minded, she thought, her eyes fluttering shut.

E
mmett stroked his hand over the hair of the mink in his arms. She was a little thing, and right now, she was at the end of her resources. Enraged at the thought that someone had dared harm her, he held her with conscious gentleness until he felt her begin to relax. When she sighed and snuggled closer, the leopard in him gave a pleased growl—right as Dorian looked into the van.

The blond soldier nodded at Ria. “She okay?”

“Where the hell are the paramedics?” Emmett snarled.

“With the piece of shit.” Dorian shrugged. “I should’ve killed him.”

The feral part of Emmett wanted to tell the man to go out there and finish the job, but he forced himself to think past the leopard’s need to maul and tear. “We need any information he can give us on the Crew, so let’s hope he can talk later.”

“This is when a Psy would come in handy,” Dorian muttered, referring to the psychic race that was the third part of the triumvirate that was their world. “One of the telepaths could rip the information right from the bastard’s head.”

“You guys are gruesome,” said a drowsy feminine voice.

Emmett looked down to find Ria’s eyes closed. “Yeah, we are.” But he had a feeling she was already asleep, her lashes dark-moon crescents against skin so creamy, he wanted to taste it. Returning his attention to Dorian through sheer force of will, he said, “Did you find any emergency contact details in her wallet?” He’d left the young soldier to handle that while he took care of Ria.

“Yeah—parents are on their way.” Dorian’s smile was sharp. “Her daddy sounds like he’s itching for a fight, so maybe you shouldn’t look at her that way.”

“Mind your own fucking business.” He tightened his hold.

Raising his hands, Dorian backed off, laughing. “Hey, your funeral.”

“Go get a paramedic here.”

“I think Tammy just arrived—she can stitch up your girl.”

The DarkRiver healer popped into the van on the heels of Dorian’s statement. “Let me have a look at her,” she said in a soft voice, putting her kit on the floor.

Ria’s eyes snapped open at the other woman’s first touch. Emmett ran a hand down her back in reassurance. “Ria, this is Tamsyn, our healer. You can trust her.” To his leopard’s delight, he felt her body relax almost at once.

“Call me Tammy.” Tamsyn smiled. “Everyone does.”

“I know you,” Ria said an instant later. “You bought a chunk of jade from my mom’s store.”

“Alex is your mom?” Tammy smiled at Ria’s nod. “I told her I needed something to threaten my mate with when he got blockheaded, and she said, why not a block for a block?”

“That sounds more like my grandmother.”

Tammy grinned. “All women sound like their mothers after a certain age.” A wink.

Ria found herself smiling despite herself. “Then I’m doomed.” She held out her hands for Tammy to clean. “It doesn’t actually really hurt anymore.”

“Hmm, let me see. You got this falling on your hands?” Tammy was cleaning the dirt and debris from the wounds as she spoke.

Ria nodded, wincing at the sting of the antiseptic. “Yes.”

The healer looked at her now clean palms. “No cuts that need stitching,” the gorgeous brunette murmured. “Let me look at your face, sweetheart.” Her hands were incredibly competent and careful, for all that she looked like a fashion model, with her height and her elegant bones.

Ria had always wanted to be tall. That was the one thing she hadn’t inherited from her father. Instead, she was stuck with her mother’s diminutive height—but not Alex’s naturally slender body. No, Ria had gotten stuck with short and “curvy.”
Hah, more like generously padded.
Her mother ate six dumplings in a row and had room for more. Ria ate three and put on five pounds.

“You asleep?” It was a rumble against her ear.

She shook her head. “Awake.” Sort of.

“Your face is going to bruise some,” Tamsyn told her, “but there’s no permanent damage.” She soothed something over the skin. “This’ll help keep the bruising down.”

“Xie xie.”
It came out automatically, a response to this healer’s touch. Tamsyn had hands like her grandmother. Caring hands. Trustworthy hands.

“You’re welcome.” A smile she could hear though her eyes were closed. “Emmett, you need to leave us alone for a few minutes.”

She felt the big body around hers tense. Forcing open her lids, she patted him on the chest, not quite sure where she found the courage. The leopard changelings were lethal when roused. But, in spite of the fierce scowl on his face, she had a feeling this cat would never hurt her. “I’ll be okay.”

“Tammy,” Emmett argued, scowl darkening even further, “she’s half asleep.”

“I need to ask her some personal questions,” Tamsyn said in that calm, capable voice, “so I can see if she needs any other meds.”

Ria’s fuzzy brain cleared. “He didn’t get that far. Just knocked me around some.”

A growl filled the air. She jolted upright, heart thudding at a hundred miles an hour. “What was that?”

“Emmett.”

Blinking at Tammy’s tone, she glanced at the man who held her. “You?”

“I am a leopard,” he said, as if surprised by her surprise.

“Forget him,” Tamsyn said, catching Ria’s gaze as she disinfected the scratches on her knees. “You sure about what happened, kitten? No one’s going to judge you.”

It was impossible not to trust this woman. “I threw my handbag at him, kneed him in the balls. After that, he was more interested in hurting me than . . . you know.”

Tamsyn nodded. “Alright, then. But if you ever need to talk, you call me.” She slid a card into the giant handbag someone had retrieved and put in the ambulance while Ria hadn’t been looking.

“That’s—” Ria began when there was a commotion outside.

“Where’s my daughter? You! Where is she? Tell me right now or I’ll—”

“Mom.” Ria felt tears rise for the first time as her mother entered the ambulance, pushing Tammy out of the way as if the other woman wasn’t stronger and taller.

“My baby.” Alex patted her all over, kissing her forehead with a mother’s tender warmth. “That piece of shit.”

“Mom!” Her mother never swore. When Ria’s grandmother was feeling wicked, she called Alex a “tightass” simply to see her explode—her grandmother was a firecracker.

“You!” Alex fixed a gimlet eye on Emmett. “Why do you have your hands on my daughter?”

Those hands cuddled her even closer. “I’m looking after her.”

Alex huffed. “Didn’t look after her very well, did you? She got attacked right here, almost on the main road.”

“Mom,” Ria said, intending to stop the diatribe, when Emmett calmly nodded and said, “It was my fault. I’ll fix it.”

“It was not your fault,” Ria said, but no one was listening to her.

“Good.” Alex turned back to Ria. “Your grandmother’s waiting for you.”

“How did you manage to make her wait at home?”

“I told her you’d want her special jasmine tea when you got back.”

E
mmett had grown up in a strong and vibrant pack. He’d figured he could handle Ria’s family. That was before he met her grandmother. Five feet nothing of pure fury and a tightly held rage that was all the more impressive for its control. Ria came first, of course. Emmett would’ve allowed noth-Ria came first, of course. Emmett would’ve allowed nothing less, even if her grandmother hadn’t ordered him to carry Ria—who was protesting that she could “walk, for goodness sake”—into what looked like the grandmother’s bedroom, so she could wash up and change. Soon as he’d completed that task, he was banished to the kitchen to wait.

Ria’s father was still at the site, being restrained from giving the near-dead attacker even more of a beating. So was Ria’s older brother. Which left him in the kitchen with Ria’s mom and sister-in-law. Alex and Amber looked more like sisters than anything else. Ria’s mom was a pretty woman, petite and graceful. Amber was cut in the same mold—even heavily pregnant as she was now, her features were delicate, her arms slimly fragile.

Emmett stayed very carefully in the chair where he’d been ordered to sit. He was afraid he’d break one of them if he accidentally touched them. Now Ria, Ria he wanted to
handle
.

“Drink!” Something slammed in front of him.

He looked down at the puddle of jasmine tea around his little cup and decided not to mention Alex’s temper. “Thanks.”

“You think I don’t see it?” She poked him in the shoulder. “You, the way you look at my baby?”

Nobody dared attack Emmett. He wasn’t one of the more volatile leopards in DarkRiver, but he was beyond dangerous when riled. And wouldn’t all his trainees just love to see him now, not daring to lift a finger for fear of bruising Alex. “How do I look at her?”

Alex narrowed her eyes. “Like a big cat with its food.” She hooked her hands into claws and made as if she was shoving others aside. “Like that.”

“You have a problem with that?”

“I have a problem with every man who wants to date my daughter.” With that, Alex turned and walked back to the counter. “And her father, he has twice the problem.”

Emmett wondered if Alex expected that to scare him off. “I grew up in a pack.” He was used to nosy packmates, snarling fathers, ferally protective mothers.

Amber smiled when Alex sniffed and turned away. “They have problems with women, too,” she said in a mock-whisper. “When I started dating Jet, Alex told me if I broke his heart, she’d beat me with a rolling pin.”

Alex waved the very same implement in Amber’s direction. “Don’t you forget it.”

Laughing, Amber hugged Alex. “She’s okay, Mom. Ria will bounce back—better than you or I ever would.”

That was when Ria’s male relatives returned. Her father’s first question was, “Who the hell is
he
?”

TWO

R
ia sat back in the bubble bath her grandmother had drawn and sighed.

A light knock came moments later.

“It’s okay,
Popo
.”

Her grandmother came in. Though tiny, with a face that bore the million marks of a life well-lived, her stride was steady and her eyes clear. Miaoling Olivier had a whole heap of decades left in her yet, as she liked to say. Now, she walked in and took a seat on the closed lid of the toilet as Ria’s father began yelling in the kitchen.

“Here we go,” Miaoling said, rolling her eyes. “Sometimes, I think we accidentally opened our home to the inmates of an insane asylum.”

Ria felt her lips twitch, her eyes water. “They’re just angry and scared for me.”

“Smart girl.” Reaching over, her grandmother took one of Ria’s ravaged palms and brought it to her mouth.

The kiss was soft, loving. It healed Ria from the inside out. “I love you,
Popo
.”

“Do you know,” Miaoling said, “you’re the only one who calls me that. Ken and Jet both say nana.”

“That’s why they’re not your favorites and I am.”

“Shh.” Miaoling’s eyes twinkled as she put Ria’s hand back down on the edge of the bath. “Did you thank the young man who found you? Maybe you should bake him a cake.”

That made Ria smile. “Not interested,” she told her ever-hopeful grandmother. “He’s a little too beautiful for me.” The blond DarkRiver male was clearly a highly trained member of the pack, but slender, looked more like a teenage surfer than a grown man. Emmett on the other hand . . .

Her grandmother sighed. “You go on like this, your female parts will dry up.”

Ria snorted with laughter.
“Popo!”

“What? I say only the truth.” Miaoling’s speech shifted, going from Harvard-perfect English to a rhythm she only ever used with those she was comfortable with. “Your age, I had your mother on the way.”