Shifter's Claim (The Shadow Shifters) (6 page)

Both of them paled in comparison to who came out next. Her breath should not have hitched, her eyes widening. There should have been no surprise that he was close because her body had already begun to respond as it had only to his proximity. He was dressed in a suit, a dusky gray that she thought might actually match the color of his eyes. Sunlight caught the diamonds that circled his watch as he lifted his hands to pull his jacket together and button it.

He looked up instantly, as if he’d been expecting her to be standing there. His gaze locked on hers and she licked her now-dry lips, cursing the tingle of her nipples at the sight of him. Priya instinctively took a step back anyway. Linden and Maybon had already gotten inside a truck … a black SUV, to be exact. But Perry walked immediately toward her.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Hello to you, too,” she replied, taking a deep swallow but hoping he didn’t notice. He towered over her today, his broad shoulders and chest blocking her vision, encompassing her without even touching her. “I see you still haven’t worked on your greetings.”

“Priya, we should go,” she heard Lolo say from her left. He was pulling on her arm again.

Perry looked over at Lolo, a muscle ticking in the right side of his jaw. “Who is this?” he asked in a voice deeper, sterner than she’d previously heard from him.

“This is a man and he’s with me,” she said slowly as if she thought he might have trouble comprehending, especially since he’d taken on this master-of-the-universe stance demanding answers from her as if she actually owed them to him.

His gaze went to where Lolo’s hand rested on her arm, then back to her face.

“You should not be here,” he stated.

“It’s a free country and I have a job to do,” she insisted.

He shook his head. “Not here. Not now,” he told her. “It is not safe.”

“I told you,” Lolo chimed in. “Let’s go, now!”

Priya watched as Perry looked at Lolo once more. There was dislike and something else she couldn’t quite place, but she shook that off. None of it mattered, only getting into that building mattered and she didn’t have much time to do it. Burning a hole in the pocket of her jeans was a list of questions she’d been told to ask, even more prevalent in her memory was that those questions had been left taped to her mother’s door.

“Listen to your friend and go,” Sebastian told her, his voice taking on an urgent tinge. “Go or I’ll have you physically removed. I don’t think that’s what you want.”

“I want you to stop thinking you can tell me what to do, Mr. Perry,” she said, squaring her shoulders and taking a step forward. There was no way she was letting him or anyone else stop her, no matter how big they were.

He reached out then, grabbing her by both shoulders. “Go. Home. This is not a game.”

“We’re going,” Lolo said, pulling Priya so that Perry was no longer touching her.

She might have felt like a limp rag being tugged from one opponent to the next, but the warmth that had moved through her like a fine wine at Perry’s touch was instantly missed and she almost called out for him to touch her again. She actually considered jerking away from Lolo to run back to him, back to the man she barely knew, but had dreamed about, in full-blown touch-a-vision color.

“Look, there’s another one,” Lolo yelled in her ear when she was still staring at Perry. She looked to her left, to the street where another black SUV was completing a quick U-turn, tires screeching. In seconds there were more men filing out of the Reynolds Building, all of them built like super-soldiers, moving quickly to create some type of formation surrounding the parked SUV. At the door stood four men, covering the entrance, each of them holding big black guns down at their sides. Another one came up behind Perry, touching a shoulder to his arm. Perry didn’t move, didn’t even turn in the other man’s direction, but kept staring at Priya.

Lolo continued to pull her, but she never turned around. She did the backward walk thing while keeping her gaze locked on Perry. To her surprise and stroking her female ego slightly, he held her gaze as well. Even when he finally did move to the truck, he kept staring at her before mouthing the words, “This is not a game” once more.

*   *   *

Bas thought about her while he was on the plane. Staring out the window to the soft white stretch of clouds he let his mind drift. To her.

He had seen many women before, had even slept with his fair share, but none had ever been human. Not since Mariah. And none had ever been one bit like Priya Drake. She was sassy and bold and brash and clever and absolutely clueless to what would happen if she pursued this story. Rubbing a hand over his chin, Bas thought of how many times he’d considered letting Jace and Cole go ahead to the airport and going back to her apartment. He would tell her again to stay away from Rome and anything that involved him. He’d wanted to tell her to be safe, to keep living her life the way she had been before that night in the alley behind that club. But somehow he knew she wouldn’t be able to do that. He’d sensed that urgency last night at the hotel and again earlier today on the street. This was something she had to do, he only wondered why.

Then Bas willed himself to stop wondering. It wasn’t his concern,
she
wasn’t his concern. She couldn’t be and to some that might be a shame. To him, it was his life, his world, the one he’d decided to live in after Mariah’s brutal murder, the only one that allowed him any semblance of peace.

If Priya Drake didn’t have the sense to heed his warnings, then so be it. Rome would deal with whatever came next where the tenacious reporter was concerned. He was the head of the Stateside Assembly for a reason. And Bas, well, he had enough to deal with when he returned home—a shipment of drugs to possibly intercept and the carriers to question. He did not have time to wonder about a female, about what it might have been like to sink his length into her warm flesh, to feel her clutching him tightly, whispering his name, needing him on a level he’d never thought possible.

And that was for the best, he reminded himself. Shifters remaining separate, but still a part, of the human world had long since been a goal of the Assembly. There was no way he would ever go against that.

Not even for her.

Chapter 6

Sedona, Arizona

Midday

Bas was finally home.

Half an hour ago Jacques Germain, Bas’s Lead Enforcer, had been at the private strip of land Bas had designated as shifter airspace, to pick him up. The jet was making its next-to-last stop before heading back to the East Coast to await Rome’s next instruction. Jace would be dropped off last and then all the FLs would be back in their zones, back on the job of keeping the rogues at bay and protecting the humans from the danger that lurked just beyond the shadows.

The airspace was completely off the grid so the FAA had no way of tracking their jets to or from their destination. Just as below the basement floors of Perryville Resorts was yet another twenty-five feet dug into the earth, where the shifter labs and surveillance spaces where kept. The walls of the U-shaped bunker were lined with layer upon layer of reinforced steel and guarded by some of the most high-tech security equipment ever invented. Bas had consulted with Nick on most of the layout and what would be needed to keep the fortress both stable and secure. X had given his input on the technology and the general warfare. Should, for whatever reason, their security somehow become breached, it was Bas’s territory. He had teams of shifters designated by achievement levels in combat, lower levels—the yellow team—that did perimeter checks, and higher levels—the blue team—that worked discreetly among the citizens of Sedona. Bas’s years as a Marine had provided the combat skills required to train hundreds of shifters to protect and safeguard their secret as well as their people. His college years had given him the education and sophistication he needed to rub elbows with the rich and elite of America. The fact that he was a shifter had given him the solid footing he needed to stay sane among everything else.

Sanity was exactly what Bas was thinking of as he climbed into the back of the mocha-and-steel Yukon Jacques drove. Behind the Yukon were four silver Jeep Wranglers—the official vehicle of the guards that had been redesigned and fitted with top-notch technology and warfare on Nick’s orders. All the FLs traveled with what Bas considered a small army even though Sabar Tavares had been confirmed dead. The shifters knew Sabar had not worked alone. His known partner in crime, Darel Charles had not been seen or heard from since that night, so they had to consider that the rogue threat was still alive and possibly planning another attack. But for the moment Bas’s attention needed to remain focused on the incoming shipment he would need to intercept.

“Nick sent me the e-mail,” Jacques reported through the intercom link they all wore tucked discreetly into their ears and activated by small chips embedded in the collar of their shirts.

“Good. I want a blue team in place and ready to roll with me tonight,” Bas instructed while looking through the truck’s tinted windows.

He gazed at the familiar roads, winding around the side of the mountain, traveling low into the valley where he’d built his masterpiece. Perryville Resorts Sedona was located near the secluded Boynton Canyon, sitting on more than eighty acres of natural terrain. Its structure was surrounded by red-rock buttes known for inspiring the mind, body, and spirit. This was the reason Bas stayed here year-round. While each of his resorts had a special place in his heart, a unique something that had drawn him to the locale, this one was his baby. From the moment he’d opened his first resort he knew he’d end up here. His plan was to expand Perryville until it touched every exotic locale in the world, but here, where he could stand on the balcony to his penthouse suite and look at the magnificent orange-and-fuchsia swirls in the sky as the sun set over the beautiful red rocks, was where he belonged.

“The team’s already in place. I’ve scheduled a debriefing in an hour,” Jacques continued.

Bas lifted an arm and glanced at his TAG Heuer Monaco to check the time. An hour would give him just enough time to shower and change clothes and to do a little more research before heading out.

“That’s fine. Have Jewel bring all the mail from my office to my room and get me maps and blueprints to the buildings we’ll be going to tonight,” he told the shifter.

If there was a shipment coming in and they were going to intercept it, he wanted to know exactly where they were going and how they could get out quickly if need be. Because there was a good chance they could be walking into an ambush tonight. A damned good chance.

*   *   *

The minute the SUV drove slowly through the ten-foot gates linked together by the splitting halves of the Perryville Sedona logo, Bas rolled down the window. He inhaled the still and sultry Arizona air and felt strands of tension releasing slowly from his shoulder blades. It was like that here—for him, even the dry heat was a comfort, possibly giving him a taste of the Gungi on a daily basis. He stepped out of the truck the moment it stopped, ignoring the click of his loafers as he walked across the stone-tile driveway.

The front doors of the resort were glass, the logo that had been promised to brand his resorts throughout the world boldly displayed in gold swirls above the entrance. Inside the floors were marbled, leading to the granite-topped front desk.

With a nod of his head to his staff Bas headed toward the private elevators that were located past La Selva, the resort’s signature restaurant, which featured an intricate mix of Spanish and Southwestern dishes, complete with its own wine bar and around the corner from Alma, the resort’s spa that used Native American techniques to cater to the mind, body, and soul.

He pressed the button for himself, feeling the presence of Jacques to his right and two other guards to his left. No doubt there was another guard taking the service elevator up to his penthouse right now to sweep the premises before Bas arrived. When he finally made it up to his suite Bas immediately moved to the desk that sat in the far corner of the room to switch on his laptop.

His footsteps were quiet as he walked across the mahogany-colored carpet to the bar where he fixed himself a quick glass of wine while his computer booted. That’s when he caught her scent. Perfume, a very generic brand, something soft, just a tad floral and most likely meant to be enticing. But she wore too much. There was a secondary scent, one Bas was sure no human would ever detect. But since he wasn’t human, he’d lifted the aroma the moment they’d first met. The tangy, citrus smell of fear comingled with the floral perfume, creating a powerful mixture that often tickled Bas’s nose in an annoying fashion. Then again, she very rarely spent long periods of time in his presence so there was never enough of it to annoy him. Still, he’d known it was there, the fear she carried with her like a cloak. And he’d wondered about it, but never asked. She was a human female and she worked for him, two reasons for Bas to always keep his distance. She was also a female in trouble, an even bigger reason for him to keep her close.

“Your mail, sir,” Jewel announced in her quiet voice as she set the mail down on the corner of the mantel.

She faced him then and Bas stared into now familiar, but still a bit out of place brilliant green eyes and hair that fell to her shoulders in tight, fiery red curls. Her skin was tanned, couldn’t help but be otherwise living out here, but the hair and eyes had never matched for Bas. Instinctively, he’d known they were the result of contact lenses and hair dye, but he’d never asked her why. The fact that she was afraid of something was all he’d needed to offer her a job and shelter. His need to protect the female had been strong from the start and even when he was away it didn’t falter.

“Thanks, Jewel. How’ve you been?” he asked in the cordial manner he always spoke to her. There was nothing between them, no sexual desire and no intention to go beyond the employer and employee relationship, so unlike what Bas had felt with the other human female he’d just met.