The Werewolf Bodyguard (Moonbound Book 2) (9 page)

“Thank you.”

“I’m going to go speak with Rain. He doesn’t know any of this yet.” Francis opened his arms. “I’m sorry I withdrew when Reyna left. Just when you needed me more than ever. My sweet Aria.”

She stepped into his arms and nuzzled against his shirt a few seconds longer, soaking up the fatherly affection she hadn’t realized she’d desperately needed. The pack-to-alpha bond between them vibrated with life and she breathed deeply, peace enveloping her completely for the first time since they’d left Somewhere, Texas.

Now her focus could shift to where it truly belonged.

Marco.

S
he and Marco
slipped quietly into the conference room and walked to the far wall where Rain and a couple of other enforcers stood listening.

“What’s going on?” Aria asked, slipping into an opening between the corner wall and Rain.

Rain shook his head. “His mother is recounting what she remembers, for the full summit.”

“She was stolen when she was just a kid. Before puberty,” the female standing on the other side of Rain whispered, a trace of a Boston accent filtering through—the Cavanaugh enforcer. “And there were others.”

Aria’s eyebrows rose. Grabbing the girls young made sense. A wolf before puberty was unbonded to their pack alpha. And a familial bond, unlike the infinite alpha or mate bond, could only reach about a mile.

Mary began speaking again and Marco tensed. His heart rate quickened.

The details his mother was sharing were enough to make even the most steeled enforcer feel ill. Aria was no exception. She thanked the gods this monster hadn’t stolen girls from their pack.

“One of the women slipped us a key one night and told us to run. She gave us the name of a church and a priest who would help us. We were so terrified, but anything was better than staying. Anything. Even death.”

“You told us that you and Lupe were both pregnant by this same man?” Another alpha spoke. His voice cracked, emotions bleeding into the room—anger, pain, fear.

“Yes, and Gabriella. All three of us were. But there were others who weren’t pregnant, at least they weren’t aware of a pregnancy yet. Seven of us ran together.” Mary took a deep breath. “Because we were pregnant, the priest helped us get into America. He helped all the others leave the continent.”

“And all seven of you were wolves,” the Cavanaugh alpha said.

Mary nodded. “Yes. The seven of us and our mothers belonged exclusively to him. But there were so many…so many we left behind.” She blinked and wiped her eyes again. “We had to hide. To never go back to a pack. He has eyes everywhere.”

Air rushed from Aria’s lungs.
All pregnant by the same man.
That meant Elise and Marco were half siblings. And that there could be more out there. A lot more.

“That’s why you were so afraid of Teresa when she met you in the market.” The Vegas alpha’s statement hung in the air for a moment before Mary confirmed it with a quick nod.

“We couldn’t trust wolves. Wolves kidnapped us.”

The room fell silent. The tension was palpable and Aria fidgeted uncomfortably next to Marco and Rain.

The Cavanaugh alpha stood from his seat at the table. “The alphas have met through the night to determine the best course of action, given this new information. We’ve called you here to announce our plans.”

He turned to Elise, who stood along the far wall with her mate. “Elise Blanchard and Marco DiSanti, you are the first wolves we’ve encountered that do not belong to a pack. What this man did to your mothers is unconscionable and against everything being a wolf signifies. You have my word and the word of every other alpha in this room. Justice will be served.”

Aria’s stomach clenched.

The Cavanaugh alpha looked straight at her. “New Orleans has put a claim on Marco and he will be bonded to the Dubois pack upon returning to their territory. His sister Elise has already bonded to the pack family in Somewhere, Texas. For Mary—”

The Vegas alpha stood and waved down the Boston alpha, quieting his declaration. Cavanaugh always played the part of the king, given that his pack was the oldest and richest in America, but he wasn’t a king. Moonbound wolves recognized no king. It was good Francis had spoken to them before the meeting, instead of Marco getting blindsided with it.

“Mary has agreed to bond to our pack so we can protect her if the need arises, but she will be allowed to remain autonomous with her human family with pack interaction only on full moons,” Rivera said, before dropping back into his seat.

“Very well,” Cavanaugh said. “The alphas have discussed these matters in light of Mary’s information. A plan has been formulated.”

M
arco’s mother
backed away from the table, taking Teresa’s offered hand. The big man with a Boston accent kept talking about some plan to go to Guadalajara, and started naming families. Each one stood until there were ten.

“In order to determine the extent of the mistreatment of wolves, and the breeding of unbonded wolves, we must discover the identity of this man and put a stop to his activities, if they continue.” The man continued to speak, but Marco found himself drawn away from Aria’s side.

His mother walked with Teresa out the side door of the conference room and he noticed Elise follow her, also leaving her mate. Marco did the same.

“Mary!” Elise called, once they were in the hall. Marco closed the door behind him and froze in place as his mother turned to face Elise. “Please. Tell me what you know of my mother.”

Tears melted his mother’s face and she gripped Teresa’s hand for support. “I don’t know anything other than what I said in that room,” she said. “I’m sorry that I can’t tell you more.”

“You don’t know how she got to New Orleans? Or anything about the church where I was found?”

Mary shook her head. “I came here after we escaped, and it was important that none of us saw each other. I wish I could help you.”

Elise looked around the hallway with deflated eyes, and they locked on to Marco. She seemed to need something from him, although he wasn’t sure what it was. He could no longer tell one wolf’s energy from another, unless Aria was near. He would have to work on understanding the different bonds.

But he reached for Elise’s hand. “You have a family now,” he said.

Her own eyes teared, and she swallowed hard. “Jared keeps telling me that. I just wish I could have known my mother.” She took his hand, squeezing it. “You’re so lucky you grew up with your mother.”

Marco tipped his head and tried to smile at her, but he wasn’t there yet. Elise was probably a great person, and perhaps after getting to know her better, he wouldn’t want to plant her six feet under for saying that. Or maybe that was just what siblings always felt about each other.

He wouldn’t know.

“Marco grew up without a mother, too.” Mary’s gaze gleamed as she looked at him. “In many ways.”

But instead of the vehement anger that he expected, Marco grimaced almost on her behalf. “Could I have a moment alone with her?” he whispered, trying to keep his calm in front of the strangers whom he’d discovered were his family.

Teresa took Elise in much the same way she’d taken Mary, and they were soon out of sight. Marco rubbed his hand across his face.

“You could have told me,” he said. “But now I think I get why you didn’t.”

Mary reached for him. “It will never stop hurting, Marco.”

He glanced at her hand and held himself back for a long moment. Listening to his mother talk about her ordeals, and what life had been like for her before they came to Nevada… He wished he’d known these things when he was learning about his wolf. He wished he’d had someone like Carl to guide him, and someone like Teresa to mother him.

But he hadn’t. He’d had Mary. He finally reached for her hand. Relief etched across her face like a waking sunset.

“How do you know it never stops?” he found himself asking.

“It’s been my whole life, and it’s never really stopped.” She squeezed his hand. “I hope you can at least understand why I never told you.”

“Will you be safe enough? With Carl to protect you?”

Her dark eyes took on a sad slant. “It was never really me that I was worried for.” She reached for his face and touched the side of his cheek with a light fingertip. “Adrian wants you. He wants Elise. And if there are others, he will want them.”

“Then why not send me to Carl when I was a boy?”

Mary shrugged. “I didn’t know them. Adrian told us that all the packs would shun us, and that we would never be welcome because we didn’t have a family, other than him.”

Marco rolled his head from side to side. “He was a piece of work.”

A bright light twinkled in Mary’s eye. “You are nothing like him, my son.” She pointed back toward the conference room. “You should go back and be with your new mate. With your new family.”

Marco’s brows drew together. “You will always be my mother.”

A lance of pain creased her features and Mary’s tears flowed again. “I’m glad you found me, Marco. I see now that I was wrong to keep you from a pack. You have come alive.”

“That’s all Aria,” he said. “She is hard to read and she’s headstrong, and she never—ever—listens to me, and she makes every part of me alive.”

“She sounds like someone I know.” Mary squeezed his hand. “You be well, my son. I will always love you.”

Marco nodded and watched her walk down the hall to join Teresa. She was small and moved more slowly than she used to, but she still had the same resilient heart. Part of him was even glad she would get to stay with her human family.

He had long ago learned not to begrudge life her caprice. The things that seemed to bring heartache one day might bring a blessing the next. He may have grown up with a hard mother and with some kind of psychopath for a father, but it had brought him to Aria and he wouldn’t wish that away for all the white picket fences in the whole world.

Marco slipped back into the conference room just as a group of people were walking forward to stand at the front of the room. Rain went along, and the redhead from Boston, along with several he didn’t recognize. He found Aria quickly and slipped along the wall next to her. He grabbed her hand.

“You’re smiling like the wolf in the hen house,” she said with a laugh. Marco leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, pausing for a moment to nuzzle the soft flesh of her neck.

“I saw you standing there. I couldn’t help it.”

Aria raised one eyebrow. “Did you speak to your mother?”

“All work and no play,” he said, nipping the flesh below her ear.

“Well, if you did speak to her, I declare a miracle.” Aria pushed him away from her neck. “They’ve selected the group to go to Mexico.”

“I see we’re not in it.” Marco nodded at the formidable group at the front of the room.

“Francis thinks it’s best if you come back to New Orleans with me.”

“For once, I agree with Francis.” Marco went back to kissing the flesh of her neck. There was a round of applause, and he smiled into her skin. “Yes, I agree, I am pretty good at neck-biting.”

“I’m serious, Marco.” Aria came to stand in front of him as the crowd milled around them. “I know we haven’t talked about it much, but…”

“I’m ready,” he said, meeting her eyes. “I’m ready to be part of a pack.”

“Just like that?” One of her brows rounded. “Seems fishy.”

Marco pulled her into his body. “It’s really just a ruse to get you into bed.” He kissed down her throat, then up again, and he could feel her laugh beneath his lips.

“That’s a ruse I can get behind.”

T
hree months
later

New Orleans, Louisiana

L
ight glinted
off every stainless steel surface in the kitchen as Marco flicked the switch and uncovered Aria’s eyes. Her long, dark hair made a trail behind her as she spun in a circle.

“Oh, baby,” she cooed. “You really cleaned this place up.”

Marco slipped his arms around her waist. “I did, didn’t I?”

She leaned back against his chest. “I have to say, when Francis brought me here before Christmas, I didn’t think it was salvageable.”

“Needed some major gutting,” he said. “Katrina did a number on this place.”

“Last major damage in Holy Cross. I think Francis was just as excited about restoring this old Creole church as he was about giving you a place to cook.”

He shrugged. “It fits the character. Although my mother would probably accuse me of blasphemy with my fine dining restaurant in a gutted-out narthex.”

“It’s very New Orleans.” She turned in his arms and met his eyes. “That’s the first time you’ve mentioned your mother since we got back from Vegas.”

Marco was about to wiggle out of her grip, but he could tell by the narrowing of her eyes, she meant to make him answer the hidden question.
Why suddenly talk about your mother?
He smelled the chocolate soufflé, almost ready by his watch, and thought again about escaping her, but her arms were too tight around him.

“She’s very religious, that’s all.” He kissed her forehead. “Come on, Aria. I need your opinion on the soufflé.”

“Marco.” She caught his hand as he tried to walk away. “Why bring up your mother?”

“Babe. There’s a fine line between under-baked and over-baked, here. I want you to taste the soufflé when it’s perfect.”

Aria released him. “Fine, take the damn thing out of the oven.” She pointed at him “But you’re gonna tell me why you brought up your mother.”

A short sniff of a laugh escaped his nose. Aria was so aware of every moment of his life these days, with the moon approaching, and with the restaurant opening. He loved that she cared enough to pay attention, but the no-private-thought-or-feeling thing was still new to him, even after three months.

He checked the egg timer that he’d set for the soufflé. Still ten minutes. Opening the oven to look at it would only release all the perfection he’d striven to achieve in temperature and moisture inside that sealed oven. It would kill the rise in these last few minutes.

Marco sighed and put his hands on the counter, his back to Aria. “Does there have to be a reason for me to bring her up?”

“You wouldn’t insist there wasn’t a reason unless there was a reason you didn’t want to talk about.”

“I didn’t understand any of that.”

She laughed. “You think I won’t ask if that timer goes off and your dessert thing comes out. You think you can distract me with food.”

Marco echoed the humor, feeling the rise of her sarcastic edge. She did love the banter. “Come over here.” He held one arm out and she walked into his side. “I love you, do you know that?”

“I know.” She picked up the whisk off the wooden cutting board and handed it to him. “And I think I know why you brought up your mother.”

“You do?” Marco began to whip the cream.

“You want to go back and see her.”

He paused the whisking motion and glanced over at her. They hadn’t discussed his mother since the last time he’d seen her. Aria had either known not to push him, or she’d been lying in wait, like a predator, to pounce on the subject when it came up. If the latter was true, he had to at least give her props for patience.

“I don’t want to go back to Vegas.” He continued the whipping.

“Then why bring her up?”

“I… I think I want to ask her to come out for the opening.”

Aria picked up the premeasured sugar and poured it into the bowl as he whisked. A fleck of cream landed on her skin and she flicked out her tongue to lick it off. Marco’s blood rushed in his veins.

“I think that’s a good idea.” She made an appreciative noise and snuck her finger along the side of the bowl, missing the whisk and catching another dollop of cream, which went right into her mouth.

“You do?” Marco put the bowl down. It hadn’t reached soft peaks yet, but he wanted to give Aria his full attention.

“Yeah, well, you never know if she’ll come or not, but it’s no use pretending you don’t have a mother.” Aria pulled her finger along the edge of the cream again and took another taste. “This is really good, baby, is there almond in this?”

Marco dipped down to take her mouth in his and the rich, sweet hint of cream lingered on her tongue. He slipped his tongue across hers and mingled his passion with his emotion. He loved this woman so much.

“I love that you get me.” He held the side of her face and rubbed his thumb across her lips.

“Well, you would want to ask her. I get that. At least give her the chance to be a mother. Now that you know more about pack life, I expected you, at some point, to at least want to reach out to her. It’s kinda the expansion of life.”

Marco was just about to kiss her again when the egg timer’s tiny
bing
sounded through the empty kitchen. He looked for the towel so he could pull out the magic dessert he’d been perfecting. “Can you finish whipping that cream for me?”

Behind him, the scrape of the whisk on the silver bowl sounded out, and the kitchen felt like it was finally in use. He’d just given his first order as the executive chef in his new restaurant, and he was about to serve the most decadent, beautiful dessert to the most luscious, gorgeous woman he’d ever met.

“Besides, I figure, if Mom says no, maybe she’ll invite us to come for a holiday some year, or something. I mean, she doesn’t hate me…” Marco pulled the tray out of the oven and placed it on the stove.

The soufflé was beautiful. It had risen perfectly, in a superbly round shape, and even had a delectable crack he could pour some cream into, just to complete the taste experience for Aria.

“She doesn’t hate you.” Aria had stopped whipping and Marco wiped off the last bit of bubbled-over soufflé from the edge of the porcelain dish.

“Plus, I figure, it’ll give her a chance to see what my life is like here. Now that we’re talking, and now that I’m part of a pack, maybe I’ll be less of a threat to her, and maybe she’ll want to introduce me to her children.”

“Yes, baby, I’m sure she will.”

Marco spooned a serving of the soufflé onto one of the round, clear glass plates, and dusted it with sugar. “This is so perfect, babe. I want you to have the first—”

But when he turned around, he found Aria had stripped down to her black panties and painted her breasts adorably with whipped cream. She sucked the end of one finger into her mouth and Marco almost dropped the plate. He recovered just enough to hand it to her, but instead of taking it, she dipped her finger into the soufflé and then took a little swipe at the whipped cream on one breast before plunging the whole thing into her mouth.

She moaned. “Oh, Marco. This is heaven.”

Marco set the plate down and lowered his head to one of her breasts. The whipped cream was a sweet, cold juxtaposition to the raging heat of her skin, and he began to get hard in the middle of his kitchen.

“I figured,” she said, taking another swipe at the other breast, “that we should christen this place in more ways than one.” Aria hopped up onto the steel countertop. “You’re going to disinfect it anyway, right?”

He laughed as his mouth covered her other breast. She helped him shed his chef’s coat and his pants and before the soufflé had even dropped, he had his cock deep inside his new mate, and his mouth was on hers.

Aria’s response drove him on and he climbed up onto the table, hovering over her, both of them naked, and their eyes glowing with lust. He loved that he wanted to fuck her as much today as he had on the day they met, and he secretly loved that she’d embraced his thing for food with a gusto he hadn’t expected. Even as they fucked on his new prep table, she kept sticking her fingers into the whipped cream and painting it onto his body, then sucking it off.

She was wrong. The soufflé wasn’t heaven.

This was.

C
hapter
One

Las Vegas, Nevada

Rainier Dubois pulled the lever on the old-fashioned slot machine and waited for his losing combination to pop up, as it always did. He pushed a button on his phone, but there was still no text from his uncle Francis.

Beside him, one of the enforcers from Boston sipped an uptight drink and scrolled through something NASDAQ-ish on her smart phone. He still hadn’t heard her name, because like the snotty Cavanaugh she was, she hadn’t introduced herself.

On his other side, the daredevil chick from Colorado drank her beer in a can and yelled at the slot machine. Maggie, she’d called herself, like that was a human name. Maybe it was.

He didn’t do names, anyway. Fuck names.

Rain took another long pull on his shitty Scotch and hoped for the buzz to kick it up a notch. The information they’d been fed at the alpha council by some local unbonded wolf and her kid—who Aria was absolutely fucking, probably at this very moment—had Rain on edge.

Someone had been taking wolves from their packs and using them for his own sick pleasure. Like his very own werewolf harem. Heads were going to roll, and Rain could feel it coming.

He wanted a new mission.

“Shit, did you see that?” Maggie pointed at the screen of the slot machine. “It stuck between two cherries and three, and I would have won…” She trailed off, her words slurring together.

A group of them had parked on the first set of slot machines they could find, which in Vegas, didn’t take long. After the meeting of the alphas, they’d all needed to erase the pictures from their minds that were on loop. Pictures of young girls getting raped by an old man, and of women huddling together in a dark, infested room, clutching pregnant bellies and praying they wouldn’t be the next to deliver.

Rain swigged the rest of his Scotch. It wasn’t working fast enough.

“You did see that, didn’t you?” Maggie poked him.

“They’re all rigged,” said Uptight Cavanaugh from Rain’s other side. She didn’t even look up from her Cosmo. “You’re an idiot to keep wasting your money.”

Some dull pull of energy had been wrapping its way around him ever since he’d sat down, and Rain couldn’t quite remember when it had started. It made his blood pound and his ears ring, and most of all, it made him want sex.

After the shit he’d heard in the alpha council, he hadn’t been sure he’d ever want to have sex again, until he got a good gawp at Maggie’s cleavage. It hadn’t taken much.

Too many months on assignment, and not enough time to get his bearings back in New Orleans, when Uncle Francis had called him home. He’d been itching to spend a good long weekend happily naked, with a pretty girl sitting on his cock, and the Vegas trip would’ve been a great distraction, if there wasn’t the threat of getting called back to the alpha council at any minute.

Maggie had decent tits for a skinny girl. She’d done nothing but talk about the BASE-jumping she’d done the previous weekend, and she seemed like she’d be up for anything.

He could use some good, adventurous sex. Maybe experiment a little with a strange wolf. Let his guard down.

It’d been a long time since he’d slept with another wolf.

“Well, fuck that.” Maggie swiped at the lever. “I could re-wire it to win every time if you gave me ten minutes and a screwdriver.” She leered at him. “You, you’re from NOLA, aren’t you?”

“Among other places,” Rain said, smiling back. He signaled for the waitress to come back around, and ordered another Scotch. She had decent tits, too. Maybe he could fuck her.

Between the itchy feeling under his skin and the energy swirling around him, he needed to get his fuck on.
Soon.
The alcohol wasn’t working fast enough to relieve any kind of tension, and he was almost electric with the need for release.

Maggie touched his arm. “You.” She hiccupped. “You look like you need something.”

On his other side, Uptight Cavanaugh laughed. Rain leaned back to get an eye on both of them at once. Next to the Boston girl, two of the Kentucky wolves and some cowboy from Texas filled out the rest of the chairs. They were all drinking and waiting, and there were only two she-wolves in sight. The Kentucky guy had been eyeing Uptight Cavanaugh for a good half an hour, but she was oblivious.

“What’s funny?” he asked her.

She just stared at him with these volcanic gold eyes. Her blonde hair was wrapped up in some tight bun behind her head, and the white, high-necked dress she wore would have been more at-home in some snooty bar in Manhattan than in a dirty casino in Vegas. But it made her neck look long and luscious, and it made her breasts look…lickable. Bite-able.

Shit.
He wanted to fuck Miss Snooty High and Mighty Princess. Nope. No. No, sir, he did not.

“You.” Cavanaugh turned her legs around so she could face him. “You are pathetically obvious.”

Rain raised one brow. “I am?”

“Of course. You’ve been swilling alcohol, both of you, since they let us out of the meeting, and she can’t even stand up.”

He looked back at Maggie, who was pulling on the keypad of the slot machine, no doubt looking for the latch that opened the thing. “She seems pretty okay to me. Who are you to judge? That’s your third Cosmo in thirty minutes.”