Seduction's Shift (17 page)

Now, that was a sight. A woman who might be in her late forties, with hair she’d obviously purchased from a store flowing down her back in blond waves. She wore a skirt so short he knew instinctively she had no underwear on beneath because what would be the point. Her breasts were huge, too big for her slim frame. And she didn’t look right at all.

“This is a private building. I suggest you leave before security catches up with you.” Nick turned away from her after speaking because he didn’t really like looking at her. Besides that, he didn’t want to believe he’d actually slept with a woman who looked the way she did. He couldn’t believe it.

“You don’t want this, baby?”

He heard her talking, her voice a little more slurred now than it had been before. Nick knew he should have kept walking, knew with every gut instinct of the lawyer in him as well as the jaguar, that he should just get away from her as fast as possible.

But he turned to face her again.

She’d ditched the skirt so that her bushy vagina was visible. Her shirt was unbuttoned, those huge breasts hanging from her like overfilled balloons.

“What the fu—” Nick started but didn’t have the chance to finish the sentence.

The woman suddenly collapsed to the ground. Her entire body just went limp. He dropped the flowers again and knelt down beside her. Nick reached out, brushing the fake hair aside so he could check her neck for a pulse. But the second he touched her sweaty skin the woman’s head jerked and she snapped long, sharp teeth at him.

Nick jumped back, staring into a face that had shifted to something grotesque, half female, half creature. She snapped again and slid her body along the concrete like a slug. He stood then, looking down at her wondering what the hell was going on.

Reaching into his pocket he hurriedly pulled out his phone to snap a picture. Then he pressed a speed dial number.

“You and Ezra get to my place right now. I’m on the tenth-floor parking garage. And call Rome to tell him we’ve got some serious shit going on down here.”

*   *   *

Fifteen minutes later six shifters were lined up in the parking garage of the Allegro Apartments. Nick had just finished explaining what had happened to X, who was looking at him like he’d lost his everlasting mind.

“Are you serious?” X asked.

Nick rubbed a hand down his face. “Man, I couldn’t make shit like this up. She just came at me, pulling at my pants, coming out of her clothes. I didn’t know what the hell to think.”

“And you’re sure you don’t know her?”

“Does that look like something I’d sleep with, X?” he asked, extending an arm to the body one of the shifters had rolled into a garbage bag and was now lifting into the back of Ezra’s SUV.

X could only shake his head. “This is weird.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Rome’s going to freak when he hears about this,” X told him.

“I told Eli to call him,” Nick said.

“He’s out with Kalina tonight.”

At X’s words Nick cursed.

“What now?”

“I was supposed to take Ary out to dinner.” Turning his wrist he looked at his watch. “Shit! We missed our reservation.”

It was almost seven thirty. Nick couldn’t believe he’d been in this garage for two hours.

“Calm down, I’m sure she’ll understand. You know, once you go up and give her your winning smile, slap some of that Delgado charm on her. She’ll be putty in your hands.”

All Nick could think of when X said “putty” was the way that woman had crumpled to the ground. “Shut up and take care of this. I’ve gotta go.”

X nodded. “Go ahead. I’ve got this.”

Nick had turned to walk back toward the elevators even though he wasn’t sure he wanted to go back into that enclosed space again. Flashbacks of the creature-woman were sure to come to mind. Then he had a thought and looked back. “Where are you taking her?”

X shrugged. “I guess this is why we need a headquarters. I need to find a shifter doctor who can look at her and figure out what the hell happened. Hey, you think Ary might know?”

Nick shook his head. “I’m taking her to dinner, not asking her to look at Miss Gruesome in that truck. Find somebody else.”

“You and Rome and these
companheiros
you have to protect. This shit is getting contagious.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ve been vaccinated. No
companheiros
for the big bad FBI shifter,” Nick quipped then moved on to the elevator.

X stood there a minute longer watching his friend go, then walked to his F-150 SVT Raptor and opened the door. Stepping up into the driver’s seat, he tried not to let what Nick had said get to him.

He didn’t have a mate.

He wouldn’t have a mate.

Ever.

Why?

Because he was a deranged sonofabitch that no woman in her right mind was going to want.

That was a good answer, he figured, sticking the key into the ignition and starting the truck. The engine had a vicious roar that X loved because it rubbed along the skin of his inner beast, made the rugged animal in him feel like he wasn’t really as alone as he appeared.

As he maneuvered his way around the garage, X leaned forward and pulled his laptop from beneath the passenger seat. With one hand on the wheel, he slid the other fluidly over the keys, booting up the computer until he came to the database he’d started keeping on East Coast shifters. The way he figured it, they were only as strong as the shifters who stood with them. So they’d better have a damn good idea which shifters were walking around in their backyard, and what side in this impending war they were on. The fiasco with the shifter who had been working for Rome and Nick without either of them knowing was a mistake X did not want to confront again.

So far he had about six hundred shifters listed in his database. He knew where they lived, if they were mated and to whom, kids, jobs, salaries, hobbies; everything the FBI had on them as humans, X had on them as shifters. They were all jaguars, which was another concern of X’s. There were other species of shifters in this world, but so far they didn’t know where any of them were. The cheetah that had shown up a couple months back with Sabar’s crew was an anomaly to them all. Cheetahs did not normally run with jaguars.

Still, there were new developments every day. Like whatever it was that Ezra was carrying in his truck. They needed to find out what it was and where it came from, and heaven forbid if there were any more. Driving through DC streets wasn’t easy on a good day. At almost eight o’clock in the evening, while his attention was divided between his laptop and the traffic, it was damn hectic. But X wasn’t intimidated. He was the one who did the intimidating. Always.

When he found a name he thought was a good match, he picked up his cell and dialed the number. Frank Papplin was an internist at George Washington Hospital. He was mated and had two children whom X had already tagged as up-and-coming shifters to watch.

“Dr. Papplin,” he said when the man answered his cell phone. “This is Xavier Santos-Markland. We need your help.”

Dr. Papplin’s response to the situation was exactly what X had expected. He was a jaguar shifter with a history of returning to the Gungi to help the family he still had there.

“Bring her to the morgue. I’ll come down and sign the body in myself,” he’d told X.

In the next few minutes, X emailed the info to Ezra, and they headed to the hospital.

He didn’t give another thought to not having a mate—or the urge to fuck the first woman he saw, either.

Chapter 16

“If you didn’t want to take me out that’s all you had to say” were the words that greeted Nick the second he walked into his home.

His temples throbbed from the scene he’d just left, and guilt pressed heavily against his chest. “Something happened,” he said, immediately moving into the living room where he could fix himself a drink.

“What happened?” Ary asked, following behind him. “Is it Sabar again?”

Nick stopped, glass in one hand, bottle of Hennessy in the other. “Why would you think it concerned Sabar?”

He hadn’t really looked at her when he came in; his mind was already screaming that it needed a drink with every step he took from the garage. Now he could see that her hair was pulled up high in twirly curls that draped down to brush lightly over her neck. The dress she wore had his dick twitching without a doubt. It was black and had straps that wrapped in an intriguing maze all around her, leaving as much skin bare as it did covered. She looked fine as hell. But she’d asked about Sabar as if she knew something was going to happen with him. Nick was curious about that.

“I just figured that’s what held you up” was her cool reply.

Nick fixed his drink, lifted the glass to his lips, and let the powerful liquid run down his throat to move in a quick trickle through his body. One sip wasn’t enough; he took another and another. All the while his gaze continued to pierce hers. She was uncomfortable, her fingers twitching at her sides. Then she folded her arms over her chest and let them drop again.

“Is there something you want to tell me about your time with Sabar, Ary?”

Jerking her head back, she looked a little startled at his question. But Nick sensed she was hiding something. He only prayed that something wasn’t going to help Sabar build his army of Rogues.

“Why would you ask that?”

Finishing off his first glass, Nick shrugged. “Don’t know. Just find it strange that he was the first person to come to your mind the minute I walked in.”

“The first thing to come to my mind when you walked in was that you’re too arrogant to even call me and say you would not be taking me out. I could have saved the time getting dressed and primped and all this if I was going to simply stay in this house tonight.” She took a step toward him when she finished, then thought better of it and stopped, just about a foot from where Nick stood at the wet bar.

“My next thought when you said something happened was immediately about Sabar because that’s all I know. Or did you forget you just brought me to your big city last night? If there is something besides Sabar happening, how would I know that when you’d rather fuck than talk to me!”

That was said in a voice much higher than the one she was previously speaking in. So much so that Nick fixed himself another drink and swallowed half of it before putting his glass down. Wiping both hands down his face, he took a deep, steadying breath.

“I’d rather fuck you? Where did that come from?” he asked in the calmest voice he could muster. Even though the last thing he’d say he was feeling right now was calm.

Inside his cat paced and scratched and wanted to break free. It wanted to fight, to find Sabar and kill. The rage inside him was at a bare simmer, only because Rome and X kept telling him that to kill now and ask questions later wasn’t going to work in the States. There was also this infernal heat that cloaked him every second he was away from Ary. It covered him in need, had his dick in a state of perpetual arousal, his nuts bursting to let free his essence.

And here she was, standing in front of him in fuck-me heels with straps that wound their way up her bare legs and a dress that screamed
I’m ready!
and she could wonder why he wanted to fuck her all the time. Man, he needed another drink.

“It comes from your actions that speak louder than words. Although I don’t get a lot of words from you anyway.”

Nick could only shake his head. He had no idea how this conversation had changed or why it had changed so drastically. And maybe that was the point.

“I asked you about Sabar.”

“No. I asked you about Sabar, Dominick.”

She said his name succinctly, with a click of her tongue and a heated flash in her eyes.

Nick closed his eyes and tried again to take a deep breath because any minute now he was either going to rip that dress off her and fuck her senseless or he was going out to find somebody to pummel. Those were his only options.

“I’m going to shower. We’ll leave in fifteen minutes.”

He walked away before she could say anything and prayed she didn’t have anything else to say.

*   *   *

Okay, in his defense he did look like he’d had a bad day. Even though for Nick, that meant he still looked damn good. Still, Ary had seen the worry in his dark eyes. The neatly trimmed goatee had masked the tight line of his lips only slightly. He was upset about something. And she’d instantly thought it was Sabar. Considering his reaction, maybe that wasn’t the right guess.

She didn’t want to go to dinner now. Ever since she’d come back from the mall with Kalina, she’d been thinking this was a mistake. She and Nick did not talk, they did not do what Ary supposed was civilized dating. They had hot and passionate sex. That was it.

Companheiro
or not, there was nothing else between them but the physical. And, unfortunately, they could not deny the physical if either one of them wanted to function at least semi-rationally. It just wasn’t a choice for shifters.

The simple truth was, Ary wanted more. She wanted so much more than her parents had ever had. The Serinos had a partnership, where Davi gave the orders and Sheena acted them out. Ary knew she shouldn’t be thinking such harsh thoughts about her parents who had just died in a bloody battle of shifters, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to be like them, ever. Alone was a much better option, to her way of thinking.

Sitting on the couch, she tried to think of a way to get out of this dinner, to get out of this dress. While they were out Kalina had also shown her two local colleges where Ary could enroll in something Kalina called pre-med courses. She wanted to be a doctor, and this was the way to go about it: She’d have to become a student. She could do that. Actually, she’d been a student for most of her life, learning from first her parents then from Yuri.

A pang in her chest at the mere thought of the old shaman reminded her that she wouldn’t have her weekly visits with him anymore. He would no longer teach her the art of spiritual healing. She’d miss that terribly.

Ary sat up straight on the couch, her eyes blinking as if something were in front of her and she couldn’t help staring at it. But nothing was there. She was staring blankly because she’d just figured something out, something that might help them discover what Sabar wanted.