Three Southern Beaches: A Summer Beach Read Box Set (25 page)

Chapter 6

“You know, if you would dress up like Beyonce we could do a killer version of
Telephone
,” Dwayne said as he handed me a glass of fresh squeezed OJ and a blueberry muffin he had baked for breakfast.

“Why do you bake if you don’t eat?” I asked.

“It relaxes me. Are you ignoring my suggestion?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

I bit into the muffin and my eyes rolled back in ecstasy. My Vampyre could bake.

“I’d like you to consider my brilliant idea.”

“Dwayne, the point of drag is that men dress up as women. I am a woman with real boobs.”

“True, and your boobs are fabu. You’re hotter than hell and I’d love to see you in some gold lamé booty shorts and a sequined bra. I think it would be therapeutic for you.”

“I have about fourteen sequined bras,” Granny chimed in as she sauntered into the kitchen and grabbed a muffin. “Some of them are nipple-less, but I’m sure I have a few that would work.”

“On that note, I’m outta here,” I said. I grabbed the files and an extra muffin. “Can you two stay out of trouble?” The innocent looks on their faces set my allergy-to-bullshit radar off, but I didn’t have time to babysit them. “Just don’t get arrested,” I muttered and hurried out the door before Granny insisted I try on her sparkly brassieres.

“Lunch?” Dwayne yelled as I ran to my car.

“Yep. I’ll call you.”

***

The office was a disaster—like someone had ransacked it, but I realized as Junior paced the room it was him. He was knocking everything off the tables and walls. He was alarmingly animated and unconsciously destructive. For my own safety, I pressed myself against the door and waited.

“Listen to me, Essie,” Junior pleaded. “You have got to bang my brother. Just bang the living hell out of him.”

“I’m sorry. What did you just say?” The sheriff’s office, which wasn’t large to start with, had just gotten smaller. It felt as if the walls were closing in and I was going to get squished like a bug. Was he for real? Was there anyone in Hung who didn’t want me to bang Hank? Well, I knew of three people who certainly didn’t want me to bang him…

“It’s been a year since he got laaaahhhhhhh, I mean, um…Hang Man is my baby brother’s favorite—you know, ahhh game and I’m going to suggest making it a professional Olympic sport and, ah…” Junior paled considerably and inched his huge body toward the exit, making it very obvious that the potential bangee had entered the room.

“Junior, I can handle my own affairs,” Hank ground out. “If you’d like to live to see tomorrow, I’d suggest you take the rest of the day off.”

“Outstanding suggestion, bro,” Junior agreed shakily as he slunk out of the office. “Should I straighten up in here?”

“No. I’ll take care of it.” Hank groaned as he took in the mess Junior had made.

I closed my eyes for a brief moment before I really looked at Hank. If Junior was telling the truth, Hank hadn’t gotten laid in a year. That made no sense whatsoever and Junior was famous for stretching the truth, so I decided to wrestle with that another time—as in never. However, my lady bits and my inner wolf danced with joy.
Stop
. Not here to bang the sheriff. Here to work. Period. I was a big girl and I could work with him. I was beyond impressed with his attention to detail in the reports and he had some theories I hadn’t considered. He was a colleague and I was a professional. Nothing more. Nothing less. Plastering a pleasant smile on my face I opened my eyes and… Mother humpin’ cowballs… I quickly grabbed the back of a chair so I would continue to appear as if I could stand on my own feet.

He wore a shirt I had given him. A lightweight green Henley that matched his eyes perfectly. Not only was he color-coordinated, he was mouthwatering. His muscles strained against the fabric and begged to be licked.
Wait. What
? I mentally smacked the tar out of my inner wolf and prayed to all the angels and saints for strength. There would be no licking today.

“The files were very thorough,” I choked out as I breezed past him into his office. Blindly sitting on the first thing my butt could find, I realized I was perched on a pile of old newspapers. Nice.

“You comfortable?” he asked with a smirk.

“Extremely, thank you.” I’d be damned if I was going to let on that I hadn’t meant to slap my rear end down on a large stack of paper. “Newspapers are good for posture and lower back,” I mumbled and then bit down on my tongue before I spewed out more inane crap. Why did I let him affect me this way? I was over him. Done. Over and done.

Liar, liar pants on fire.

“So, thoughts?” He settled in behind his desk and waited.

“About?” I asked politely, hoping desperately I’d not uttered any of my incriminating inner monologue aloud.

“The case?” He grinned and raised an eyebrow.

His words were like an ice cold shower. Thank God. The case. I could handle talking business. I was good at that. It was everything else I had problems with.

“The files are good, but why is there very little on the humans running the agency?”

He paused and gave me a smile that resembled a grimace. “They’re not local. Three human males came in from New York and we’re having a hell of a time tracing them.”

“Have you put them in the WTF database?”

“Yep. They’re drawing blanks too.”

“Interesting and not good,” I said as I pulled out the thinnest file and scanned it. “The bodies haven’t been found and the scent trails disappeared. I find that very difficult to believe. How much of a time lapse was there before the searches started?”

“The first victim was three days,” he said tightly and ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “After that it was immediate once we learned they were missing.”

“And you found nothing?”

“Isn’t that obvious, Miss Hotshot?” he snapped. “This is driving me crazier than you sitting across the desk from me. These are my people and I’m supposed to protect them. I can’t even find them,” he bellowed. His concern for our missing pack members and his fury at being unable to locate them filled the room.

I was simply being professional, but felt like a jerk. Again, I was reminded that I was on a case with huge conflicts of interest. Maintaining distance and objectivity was going to be difficult—knowing the missing women was hard enough. Working with the person who my inner wolf was convinced was her true mate was pure hell.

Wolves could mate with whomever they wanted. Some lasted and some didn’t. We had long lives and overactive sex drives. If you didn’t find your true mate,
a fairy tale I tended to not believe
, you often had several relationships during a lifetime.

True mates belonged together…supposedly. If they had crossed paths, even as children, they would never be happy with someone else. Which proved my theory that Hank wasn’t my true mate. If he had been, he couldn’t have cheated on me. It was a virtual, medical and erectile impossibility for a male Were to cheat on his true mate. Junior was full of crap. There was no way in hell Hank the Tank wasn’t getting some. He was the most over-sexed Were I knew…not that I knew about any other Weres sex lives. I’d only ever been with the smug buttknuckle who was staring at me. I was pathetic. I just needed to get back out there. It was beside the point that I hadn’t dated or even shown a modicum of interest in anyone since I’d left him…but I’d been busy. Extremely busy. Becoming a killing machine for WTF had been a ton of work and then I…

“Look,” Hank said, thankfully cutting my ridiculous thought process short. “I don’t want you here because it’s not safe. As much as I want to take you over my knee and spank the hell out of you for leaving, I don’t think I could go on if something happened to you. So you will report your every move to me or I will be on you so fast it will hurt. Do you understand?”

“Do you understand that I’ve done things far more dangerous than this?” I shot back ignoring the fact that the spanking thing was kind of a turn-on.

“Considering we don’t know what we’re dealing with that’s a bold and risky statement to make.” He crossed over to me and obliterated my personal space. Short of straddling the newspapers in a mini skirt to back off of them I was stuck. I hated being wrong, but I was smart enough to admit when I was. Cocky got you killed. I had no plans to die anytime in the near future.

“Fine,” I said and tried to push him away to little avail. “That was stupid and arrogant. I will go into this carefully and I will take as few risks as possible. As far as constant communication…I’ll do my best, but you have to let me do my job.”

“What exactly do you plan on doing?” he demanded. The thick muscles in his neck were taut and I knew it was taking everything he had not to run my wolfy ass out of town.

“I plan to fly by the seat of my pants,” I explained logically as his jaw clenched along with his fists. “Since we don’t know who or what we’re dealing with yet, I can’t give you solids. However, I do promise if it looks dangerous I won’t go in without backup.”

“I call bullshit.”

“What?”

“You’ve gone into situations four times in the last year without backup. The last time you were almost killed.”

“Do I look dead to you?” I hissed. He had some nerve. I’d done all that because lives were at stake. Twice it had been children’s lives.

“You were lucky—and luck runs out.”

“I beg to differ, butthole.”
Damn it, butthole made me sound like an incompetent child. I should have said asshole…
“Luck had nothing to do with it. I’m skilled and I made all of those sons of bitches hurt bad. And how in the hell do you know all this?” I barked.

“Essie, I am always aware of what belongs to me.”

“Well, as lovely as that is,” I sneered, “I don’t belong to you. I belong to me and me alone. You need to move before I introduce your nuts to my fist. I’d use my knee on your man bits, but I’m wearing a mini skirt and I refuse to flash my goodies at you. I did my research and wore something model-y because that’s how I roll. Plus I’m more apt to get the gig if I flash some leg and tit. So move. Now.”

Hank yanked me to my feet and flush against his hard body. “You will wear a wire.”

Gritting my teeth and forbidding myself to rub all over him like a cat in heat, I nodded curtly.

“I will wear a wire.”

“Lift your shirt and unbutton that scrap of material you call a skirt,” he instructed.

“Not on your life.”

He gave me a lazy grin and shrugged. “Fine. Can you wire yourself?”

“Of course,” I snapped. How hard could it be to hide a damn wire? I snatched the pack from his hand and went to work. He stepped back and watched with interest.

I shoved the pack down the back of my panties and clipped it. I then wound the wire around my body with shaking hands. I eased the cord and mic under my bra and attached it to my bra cup.

“Done,” I said triumphantly.

“Look in the mirror.”

I glanced over at my reflection and realized someone would have to be blind not to know I was wearing a wire. Crapcrapcrap. It was a mess.

Sucking in a huge breath and remembering why I was actually here, I gave in. “Help me.”

“Please?” He gave me the sexiest evil grin and cocked his head to the right.

“Please,” I ground out between clenched teeth.

“My pleasure. Lift your shirt and unbutton your skirt.”

I did.

His warm calloused hands on my bare skin as he readjusted the wire and taped it to my body were a mixture of heaven and hell. His clean sexy scent invaded my nose and I held my breath. It was all I could do to not turn around, slam him to the ground and have my way with him.

“I need to move the pack lower,” he said gruffly and slid his hands into the back of my panties.

We both froze and I gasped. Air hissed from between his lips and it burned my neck. A small fire had ignited low in my belly and began to travel quickly through me. His hand slid down and cupped my bare ass and his head dropped to my shoulder. His lips grazed my neck and I shuddered. I was quite sure this wasn’t normal cop procedure, but I couldn’t bring myself to make him stop. It was the first time I’d felt alive in a year and I hated that he made me feel this way. My gums ached and I knew my fangs were very close to the surface. His had arrived and I felt them scrape my skin.

“You have to stop,” I begged, but did nothing to make him. If I wasn’t mistaken,
and I wasn’t
, I was fairly sure I’d readjusted so my butt was more firmly in his hand. What was wrong with me?

“Do you really want me to?” he whispered in my ear, sending chills down my spine and my girlie parts into a tailspin. God, if he kept talking I would come apart by his voice alone. He had that sexy Werewolf magic thing down pat.

I nodded my head yes, afraid that my mouth would tell him to bend me over his desk and make me see Jesus.

“You have no idea how hard it is, pun intended, for me to let you go right now…but I will. We have to find out what is happening to our people and end it, but this conversation is far from over. Do you understand me?”