The Alpha Claims A Mate (9 page)

She stood there in the warm, humid, night air,
bewildered and shaken. 

“What…what’s wrong?”
she stammered.

“Give me a minute.”
Loch staggered back several steps.  He was breathing hard, his eyes were glowing amber, his ears had started to lengthen and turn pointy.  She could see him struggling to regain control of himself.

“What is it?”
she pleaded. “Was it something I did wrong?”

A man walked up to them and looked Ginger up and down.  “Nice, Loch.  Would your new playmate like a threesome?”

Suddenly Loch shifted into wolf form and leaped through the air, knocking the man down and snarling and snapping at his throat. The man shifted into wolf form as well, crying out and waving his paws in the air.

Instead of backing off, Loch stayed where he was
, his jaws snapping inches from the man’s throat, and the man cringed, howling in fear.

My God, he’s going to kill him, Ginger thought.

“Loch, stop!” she screamed.

Loch shifted back into human form, breathing hard.

“I’m sorry,” he groaned. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

He rushed her into the car, panting for breath and shaking.

They rode in silence back to the boarding house.   The whole way there, she could see him shifting between wolf and human, struggling with the wheel. The car jerked on the road and she clutched at the door in alarm, pressing herself back against the seat.

When they got to the boarding house he let her out with a tortured groan.

“It was a mistake,” he growled, burying his face in his hands, which were covered with fur, thick black claws curving out. “Bringing you there. It was a mistake.”

Ginger lay in bed, stripped naked, burning with desire and head whirling in confusion.

Did the sheriff have feelings for her?

Apparently not. Apparently he regretted his very public scene with her.

Damn it
…she wanted him so badly she couldn’t even think straight. Her brain was fogged with desire.

She gripped the rubbery shaft of her vibrator, closed her eyes, and, shamefully, pictured the sheriff in her mind. It hurt to want someone who didn’t want her.

She imagined herself naked, lying on this bed. Tied down, arms and legs secured to posts. He’d be on top her, straddling her…

She pressed the vibrator against her tiny, tight opening and worked it in, moaning wordlessly as she slid it in and out. Picturing his thickness, she felt heat gather inside her again and then sweep over her, pulsing to the ends of her fingers and toes.
It wasn’t the same, though; her orgasm felt dull and muted, and left her aching for the feeling of Loch’s arms crushing her against the broad wall of his chest.

That night she tossed and turned for hours, tormented by vague dreams she couldn’t remember.

The next morning, apparently everybody was out of sorts. Marigold looked tired and sulky.  Brenda and Tallulah sat glaring at each other. The professor didn’t even bother to show up.

And even Winifred was unusually quiet, although Ginger caught her staring out the window at the handyman, who was outside repairing a fence.
At least she wasn’t doing the pencil thing any more, and she’d unbuttoned her shirt a couple more buttons, so she was actually showing a wee bit of cleavage.

Halfway through breakfast, Brenda threw down her napkin and stood up. “I’m going to go get the professor,” she announced. “He never sleeps in like this. Maybe his alarm clock is broken.”

“No, I’ll go!” Tallulah jumped up.

The two stood there, glowering at each other.

“Oh, for God’s sake! I’ll go, because I assure you, I have no interest in the professor whatsoever.” Ginger snapped, and turned and headed up the stairs, with Brenda and Tallulah on her heels.

She knocked hard on the professor’s door. There was no answer.

“Professor! Hey, professor!” she yelled.

Still no answer.

She reached down, turned the knob and pushed the door open.   She could see the professor’s bed from where she stood.  The handmade quilt was tucked in, the bed was neatly made, and the professor was nowhere in sight.

“Oh my God. He never came home last night!” Tallulah gasped.

“He was at dinner. What are you talking about?” Brenda protested.

“No, last night after dinner I was in the back yard when I saw him headed out.  I asked him where he was going and he said he forgot something at the dig, and he’d be back later. Something must have happened to him!”

Ginger felt uneasiness roiling in her stomach. After yesterday afternoon’s confrontation, and with the heated emotions that had been stirred up, she wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he’d come to harm.  Maybe the panther shifters had come back to check the site for stolen artifacts, and he’d surprised them?

She glanced at her watch, and was surprised to see that it was quarter after 8. The sheriff had picked her up promptly at 8 a.m. the day before.

And he hadn’t called. That didn’t seem like him at all.

She felt an iciness creeping over her. Apparently, this was it.  He’d briefly flirted with the idea of seducing her…and he’d found the idea unappealing.

Last night, she’d sort of let herself hope that his violent reaction at the club was jealousy. Obviously it wasn’t. Maybe it was embarrassment.

Her cheeks burned with humiliation at the thought, and she hung her head, blinking back sudden tears and turning away from Tallulah and Brenda.

Apparently not everyone in Blue Moon County was attracted to fat chicks, she thought bitterly.

Brenda put her hand on her arm. “You were in love with him, too, huh?” she said sympathetically.

“The professor? No! Absolutely not,” Ginger spluttered. Her head was whirling. She could have called the sheriff to see why he hadn’t come for her – he’d given her his cell phone number – but stubborn pride kept her from doing so.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It did nothing to diminish the dull ache that throbbed inside her chest.

Focus, she scolded herself. We’ve got a possible missing person here.

“Can one of you try to call the professor?
” she said, and Tallulah and Brenda both whipped out their cell phones and dialed at the same time. Ginger rolled her eyes. Everything had to be a competition with those two.

Both of them got his voice mail.

“Okay.  I’m going to drive to the sheriff’s office and see if he’s in. If he’s not there, I’ll call him and let him know about the professor not coming home last night,” she said.

When she went
back downstairs, Marigold gave her a quizzical look. “Everything all right? Not working today?”

“Can I borrow Imogen’s truck to go to town? The professor went to the dig last night to get something he forgot, and he never came home.”

“Oh. Good heavens. Yeah, go ahead. And if sheriff jerk-wad hurt your feelings, I’m going to punch the fuck out of him,” Marigold added. “Of course he’ll probably kill me afterwards, but it’ll feel really good while I’m doing it.”

“I thought he was Sheriff Sexy-ass?”

“If he upset you, he’s Sheriff Jerkwad.”

Ginger forced a smile. “Everything’s fine. No punching.
No name-calling. I’ll call you from the sheriff’s office.”

As she drove to the office, her phone rang, and she grabbed it quickly.  Her heart sank when she saw that it was her Alpha’s number.

“Ginger? How is everything going there? You haven’t caused any more trouble, have you?” Reynaldo’s tone was aggrieved.

“Everything is going fine,” she said brightly.

“Are you sure? You sound strange. What have you done now?”

“Nothing! Everything is going really, really well. Oh,
gotta go! Another call’s coming in.” She hung up quickly.

When she pulled up out front, she saw that the sheriff’s patrol car wasn’t there yet. Now unease rippled through her stomach, warring with anger and hurt.

She walked inside and saw Jax sitting at his desk. He glanced up at her, his expression neutral. “Do you know what time the sheriff is coming in?” she asked.

“No. He called and said he’d be in a little late.” He went back to
his computer.

Oh. So he’d called
Jax, not her.  So at least he was all right…he was just making it quite clear that he wanted nothing to do with Ginger.

Her heart thumped painfully in her chest.  
First Ashmont, then Loch.  Rejection was becoming painfully familiar these days.

Should she turn around and go back to the boarding house?  But that would make it too obvious to everyone there that something was wrong. And it might make Loch look bad, as if she’d disobeyed his orders and was ditching her assistant duties.

Portia, sitting at a nearby desk, flashed a cold smile that dripped with malice. “Oh, trouble in paradise?” she asked sweetly.

“Cut it out,”
Lola snapped.

“Or what?” Portia’s eyes glowed.

Lola leaped up from her desk and whirled to face her.  “Or, get up off your bony ass and you’ll find out what-“

“
Lola! I need help finding a file on my computer! Could you show me?” Ginger said desperately. The last thing she needed was to be accused of starting a fight right in the middle of the sheriff’s station.

Grumbling,
Lola followed her, shooting dirty looks over her shoulder at Portia, who bared her fangs and let out a long, low growl.

Jax
was sitting at his desk, typing away on his computer.

Ginger sighed, took a deep breath, and walked over to him.

“The professor never came home from his dig last night,” she told him. She hated to tell Jax, because she didn’t want to stir up trouble between the wolves and the panthers, but she had the feeling that the sheriff didn’t want to hear from her.

It surprised her how much that hurt. It hurt far worse than when
Ashmont had texted her to tell her it was over. This was like a bruise that spread all through her insides, deep and aching.

“What do you mean?”
Jax looked up, his brow furrowing.

“He didn’t come down to breakfast this morning, so we went and checked his room. It was empty and his bed hadn’t been slept in.  One of his students told me that she saw him after dinner last night, and he said that he was going to head out to the dig to get something he forgot. And apparently, he never came home.”

“Which student?”

“Her name is Tallulah.”

Jax waved one of the other deputies over. “All right.  We’ll head out to the dig right now. Thanks,” he said, and headed for the door, muttering “Freaking panthers.”

Ginger felt unease ripple over her.  There was no way
Jax would approach this situation with any diplomacy – but after the way the sheriff had flipped out last night, she doubted he was in any better mood to deal with it either. 

She
walked back to the filing room to resume her filing. It was nearly impossible for her to concentrate; she could barely remember the alphabet. 

A little while later, Portia came and knocked on the door. 

“The sheriff wants you at a scene,” Portia said, her expression neutral.

“What kind of scene?”

“Death that was just reported this morning. It appears that the body’s been moved. We want to find out what happened during his final moments. Come with me.”

Portia turned and walked out of the room without looking back.

Ginger scrambled to follow her, head whirling.  The sheriff wanted her to go with Portia? That was hard to believe. Then again, it was also hard to believe that the punctual sheriff had never showed up to pick her up this morning, and hadn’t even bothered to call her to explain what was going on. 

Her heart sank. He really didn’t care what happened to her.

Silently, she climbed in the car with Portia. “Where are we going?” she asked as she shut the door.

“You’ll see when we get there,” Portia said coldly, and took off with a lurch as Ginger was buckling her seatbelt, so fast that Ginger slammed into the dashboard in front of her and then was slammed back into her seat.

Portia’s lips curled into a small, cold smile as they headed out of town.

After several minutes of driving, Portia suddenly took a turn down a narrow country road that was shaded by trees.