Primal Bonds (39 page)

“Kim knows,” Dylan said. “Sean and Andrea will be wanting their space, and Kim said she got in enough food to satisfy even Shifters.”

“Plus she has cable. Luxury.”

Dylan stopped, his eyes quiet. “I don’t mind anywhere we stay, as long as I’m with you, my girl.”

Glory felt the mate bond for him wrap around her heart, and she nearly dissolved with its warmth. Taking a mate for the second time would be different, but the love would be no less intense. She understood that now.

She leaned into Dylan. “I’m feeling a bit of that mating frenzy coming on myself. Think anyone would notice if we slipped away?”

“I’m thinking they wouldn’t miss us.”

The smile Dylan slanted her was primal, and Glory’s excitement doubled. She slid her hand to his fine ass as they walked around the house to his truck, and then she leaned her head on his shoulder while he drove her across Austin and up into the hills.

S
ean and Andrea didn’t make it upstairs before their clothes came off, pieces scattered down the stairs like a breadcrumb trail. Then Andrea was under Sean on her bed, right where she wanted to be.

The lovemaking was intense, Sean sliding into her while she opened to take him deep. Andrea knew in her heart a cub had already begun forming inside her, knew it with the tingle of warmth that was an extension of the mate bond.

She’d tell Sean later. Right now, he was pressing into her, his eyes flickering from blue to white and back again, the Collar gleaming on his bare throat. She arched against him, loving the feel of his strong chest on her breasts, stirring more and more fires.

He was hard, he was big, and he was driving Andrea into the bed for all he was worth. Sean’s hands turned to claws as the frenzy drove them on, and so did hers, both of them growling as they suppressed the change to
keep on doing this
.

As the night moved on, Sean and Andrea kept loving each other, the mating frenzy claiming them, the mate bond winding them tightly together. Their bodies were drenched in sweat, their lips raw with kissing, their bodies twined so close that Andrea didn’t care whether they ever came loose.

Eventually, as cold night warmed to day, their raw, frantic sex wound down into tender, gentle sex. That in turn wound down, more slowly, into sleep. They drifted off, cuddled against each other.

When Andrea woke again, the sun was high, and Sean and she lay together in a tangle of warm limbs.

It was quiet outside now, all of Shiftertown sleeping off a collective hangover. Mate blessings were few and far between, and Shifters didn’t have much to celebrate in this world of captivity. Last night they’d celebrated both the mate blessing and the conclusion of a damn good fight, so they’d gone at it double force.

The sun warmed the window as Andrea watched Sean sleep, her heart full of love. Sean was a hot, hard-bodied male, and he belonged to her.

Sean opened his eyes, which were deep blue and clear of sleep. He gave her a smile. “I didn’t have time to give you your gift last night, love.”

“Gift?” Andrea grinned back. “You mean all that sex wasn’t a gift?”

“Oh, aren’t you the amusing one?” Sean kissed the tip of her nose, rolled away, and took a tissue-wrapped package from the nightstand drawer. “For you.”

Andrea took it, feeling something soft beneath the paper. “I didn’t get you anything.”

Sean’s eyes warmed. “Yes, you did.”

Andrea paused to give him a long, satisfying kiss, then she tore off the tissue and lifted a pair of lovely black silk panties between her fingers. On the back of the panties, bright red script spelled out
Smart Ass
.

“Goddess, Sean, these are great. Where did you find them?”

“Same place you found mine. The girl there was happy to help me out.”

Andrea remembered the young clerk in the store, the one friendly to Shifters and interested in Connor. She’d probably had a blast helping Sean pick them out.

Andrea swung the panties around one finger. “I’ll have to wear them. But not, I’m thinking, just now.”

Sean’s look was wicked. “No, we definitely aren’t needing any panties right now.” He took them from her and dropped them to the nightstand as he pushed her back down into the mattress. His kiss was warm and languid but held an edge that said more wild lovemaking was to come.

They were deep into the kiss when Andrea heard a car door slam, and Sean raised his head again.

“My second gift has arrived,” he said.

Much as she liked gifts, Andrea wasn’t sure she relished the interruption. Gifts could wait. “How many did you get me?”

“Only as many as I know you need.” Sean’s eyes held a mysterious glint. “Don’t you want to see what it is?”

With Sean lying on top of her all naked and fine? Andrea wet her lips. “They can leave the package on the porch.”

Sean lifted away from her, removing his delicious warmth. “No, love. This is something you have to get yourself.”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

Andrea gave him an impatient look. Why would a mate-frenzied male insist his mate get up and answer the door? He had to be insane.

Andrea rolled out of bed, groaning a little as she realized how sore she was. “All right, if it makes you happy.”

She pulled on a T-shirt and the new panties and slid jeans over those. Stretching, she went to the window, looked down, and uttered a strangled cry.

Her stepfather stood on the driveway below, he and Dylan having just stepped out of Dylan’s pickup. Terry Gray saw Andrea in the window and stopped.

“Andrea,” he said. “My daughter.”

“Father,” Andrea choked out the word. “What are you doing here? No, wait, don’t move, I’m coming down.”

She spun from the window to find Sean behind her, dressed in jeans and nothing else, his Collar gleaming at his throat. Her libido took in what a delectable picture he made while she pointed at him with a shaking finger. “You did this. You brought him here.”

“That I did.” Sean gave her a quiet nod, a Shifter who didn’t need to shout for everyone to understand how powerful he was. “It’s all very well that you found Fionn, but I knew you’d be still be missing your dad.”

Andrea felt the tears coming, but she smiled at Sean with all her heart. “I love you, Sean Morrissey.”

He drew her into his arms and gave her a kiss that was at once gentle and full of fire. “I love you too, Fae-girl. Go on now.”

Andrea kissed him one more time, then she dashed out of the room, nearly flew down the stairs, and burst out the door to be swept into the arms of her stepfather.

Sean watched out of the window as Andrea hugged her stepfather, his heart at peace. He caught the gaze of his own father, who leaned against his truck. Sean and Dylan shared a look that was full of understanding. Damn, it was good to be a Shifter today.

Across the room, the Sword of the Guardian gleamed in the sunshine, softly singing its happiness.

Turn the page for a preview of the next Shifters Unbound novel by Jennifer Ashley

WILD CAT

Coming soon from Berkley Sensation!

CHAPTER ONE

H
eights. Damn it, why did it have to be heights?

Diego Escobar scanned the steel beams of the unfinished skyscraper against a gray morning sky, and acid seared his stomach.

Heights had never bothered him until two years ago, when five meth-head perps had hung him over the penthouse balcony of a thirty-story hotel and threatened to drop him. His partner, a damn good cop, had put his weapon on the balcony floor and raised his hands to save Diego’s life. The perps had pulled Diego to safety and then casually shot both of them. Diego had survived, but his partner hadn’t.

The incident had left Diego burning with rage and grief, which manifested itself from time to time into an obsessive fear of heights. Even rising three floors in a glass elevator could make him break into a cold sweat.

“Way the hell up there?” he asked Rogers, the uniform cop who’d made the call for backup.

“Yes, sir.”

Oh, just effing perfect.

“Hooper’s pretty sure it’s not human,” Rogers said. “He says it moves too fast, jumps too far. But he hasn’t got a visual yet.”

Not human
meant Shifter. This was getting better and better. “He up there alone?”

“Jemez is with him. They think they have it cornered on the fifty-first level.”

The
fifty-first
level? “Tell me you’re fucking kidding.”

“No, sir.” Rogers gestured. “There’s an elevator. We got the electric company to turn on the power.”

Diego looked at the rusty doors then up through the grid of beams into empty space, and his mouth went dry.

This cluster of buildings had been under construction for years. An apartment complex, hotel, office tower, and shopping center in one, a little way from the Strip. The idea was to lure locals and rich out of towners from the more touristy hotels and casinos and have them spend their money here. The project had started to great fanfare, but so many investors had pulled out that building had ground to a halt, and the unfinished skyscraper sat like a rusting blot on the empty desert around it.

Tracking Shifters wasn’t his department. Diego was a detective in vice, and this call should have been a simple case of trespassing. He’d responded to the plea for backup because he’d been heading to work anyway, and his route took him right by the construction site. He figured he’d help Rogers chase down a miscreant and drive on in to the station.

Now Rogers wanted Diego to jaunt to the fifty-first level, where there weren’t even any floors, for crying out loud, and chase a perp who might be a Shifter. Rogers, rotund and near retirement, made it clear he had no intention of going up there himself.

A high-pitched scream rang down from on high. It was a woman’s scream—Maria Jemez—followed by a man’s bellow of surprise and pain. Then, silence.

“Damn it.” Diego sprinted for the elevator. Like hell he’d let two uniforms die up there because he was a little nervous about heights. “Stay down here and call for more backup. Tell them to bring tranqs.”

Fifty-first level. Shit. The lift rose through a few completely finished floors, then onto floors that were nothing but open beams and catwalks.

Diego had been chasing criminals through towering hotels for years; no need to get squeamish about it now. Hell, he and the sheriff’s department had followed one idiot high up onto a cable tower two hundred feet above Hoover Dam five years ago, and Diego hadn’t even flinched. A bunch of cop-hating meth dealers hang him over a balcony, and he goes to pieces.

It stops now. This is where I get my own back.

Diego rolled back the gate on the fifty-first level. The sun was rising, the mountains due west bathed in pink and orange splendor. The Las Vegas valley was a beautiful place, its stark white desert contrasting with the mountains that rose in a knifelike wall on the horizon. The visitors down in the city kept their eyes on the gaming tables and slot machines, strippers, and celebrities, uncaring of what went on outside the windows, but the beauty of the valley always tugged at Diego’s heart.

Diego drew his gun and stepped off the lift into eerie silence. Something flitted in his peripheral vision, something moving too quickly and lightly to be Hooper, who was a big, muscular guy who liked big, muscular guns. Diego aimed, but the movement vanished.

He didn’t fire. No sense in wasting ammo. He didn’t feel like having to balance on a catwalk five hundred feet above ground while he reached for an extra magazine.

Diego stepped softly, keeping to shadows. A soft sound came from behind him. He swung around, stepping into the deeper shadow of a beam, making himself a lesser target. The catwalk groaned under his feet.

Something pinged above his head. Diego hit the floor instinctively, trying not to panic as his feet slid over the catwalk’s edge.

What the hell was he doing up here? His heart was pounding triple-time, his throat so dry it closed up tight. He should have confessed his secret fear of heights a while back, gone to psychiatric evaluation, stayed behind a desk for a time. But no, he’d been too determined to keep his job, too determined to beat it himself, too embarrassed to admit the weakness. Now he was endangering others because of his stupid fear.

Shut up and think
.

Whatever had pinged hadn’t been a bullet. Too soft. He got his feet back onto the catwalk and crawled to find what had fallen to the boards. A dart, he saw, the kind shot by a tranquilizer gun.

Perfect. Put the nice cop to sleep, and you can do anything you want with him, including push his body over the edge.

Diego moved in a crouch across the catwalk to the next set of shadows. The sun streaked across the valley to Mount Charleston in the west, light radiant on its snow-covered crown. More snow was predicted up there for the weekend. Diego had contemplated driving up on Saturday to sip hot toddies in a snowbound lodge, maybe with something warm and female at his side.

Once he finished here, he was requesting leave. It was long past time. He’d go to Mount Charleston and then stay at his mom’s house out in Baker and fix all the things she kept complaining about. She’d be glad to see him.