Wanted by the Alphas (An Extremely Sensual Paranormal Shifter Romance) (5 page)

“Fish soup?” she asks, trying not to wrinkle
her nose.

He notices and laughs. “I’ll share one with
you. Trust me, it’s divine.”

Twenty minutes later, she is inclined to
agree. The fish ‘soup’ is actually a huge, thick broth filled with
mussels, clams, fish, vegetables and so many flavors that it is
practically bursting with taste. The soup is served with crusty
bread, and Shannon swears she has never eaten anything more hearty
or delicious in her life.

“I think I’m already full,” she declares when
she has finished her fourth piece of bread.

“We haven’t even gotten to the entrees
yet.”

“I know,” she says in dismay. “Can I cancel
mine?”

He laughs. “We can do a doggy bag.”

The entrees are grilled chicken breast on
polenta for her and a rich tomato-based cream pasta for him.
Shannon can only eat half of hers before pushing her plate
away.

“That fish soup really did me in,” she
groans.

“You are a woman of small appetites.” He
grins. “I hope that only pertains to food.”

Again, she catches the double entrende. He
has been flirting with her all night, dropping hints in their
casual conversation. Letting his eyes roam to her breasts now and
again. Letting her know how much he is drinking in the sight of
her. It is extremely flattering and yet disappointing.

Is this all men see me as?
she
wonders.

But the talk all evening has been extremely
pleasant. They chat about small things, inconsequential things. She
asks about his family. He tells her amusing anecdotes. She laughs.
He asks about her family. She tells him it’s too personal and fobs
him off. He accepts this graciously.

“Do you want dessert?” he asks as their
dining draws to a close.

“Oh no.” She shakes her head vehemently. “I’m
stuffed up to here.” She raises her palm to the level of her
throat.

“Great. I’m kind of stuffed too.” He signals
to a waiter. “Check, please.”

“You have to pay to dine at your own
restaurant?”

“It helps keep the accounts clean.”

Once he has signed the bill, he gets up and
offers her his arm. “Shall we?”

“Where are we going?” She wonders if he will
ask her to go to his suite.

“You like gardens. So I thought we’d take a
walk in this one. It’s still light out there and it’s a glorious
sunset.”

“Thanks for dinner.”

“Night isn’t over yet.” His eyes say:
Not
by a long shot, if I can help it.

They grab their jackets and go out into the
reception. It is a lot quieter now that the wedding party has gone
up to the ballroom. The lack of raucous noise is a balm. She
fleetingly wonders what her brother is doing.

“You warm enough?” he asks.

“Yes.”

He puts his arm around her anyway. His
embrace sends tingles all over her skin under two layers of
clothing. She can smell his sweet manly scent, which is not
enhanced by any cologne or eau d’ toilette. There is something else
other than man musk there. It is an undertone of something more
forbidding. Primal. Dangerous.

The garden in twilight is even more glorious
than its initial promise. Carefully pruned bushes are shaped in
spheres and lambs and rabbits. Crazy paving forms paths around the
greenery. A profusion of flowers in full bloom – roses, azaleas,
others native to this region – are laid in careful precision to
make the greatest color impact to the eye.

Shannon’s spirits soar. She dances away from
Lucien and soaks in every glorious sight. He laughs at her
delight.

“This is gorgeous!” she exclaims as she spins
round and round to take everything in. She feels like a little girl
again. “I have never seen anything more gorgeous!”

“I thought that would be me, but I’ll settle
for being second best.” He smiles.

In twilight, all the colors are muted, but
they take on a sleepy hue, as if she is viewing everything through
tinted glasses.

“We have a maze,” he announces.

“A maze?”

“Yes. Very English, I know. It’s a small one.
Come, I’ll show you.”

He shepherds her further down. Here, the
garden is fringed by the forest – dark, mysterious and watchful.
The forest spreads up the hills for as far as the eye can see. A
small shiver of foreboding spears her.

Bad things happen in that forest. She can
feel it in her bones.

“Hey, you OK?” he asks.

She shakes herself out of it. Bad things
happen in every forest.

She wonders where Jared is.

“Sure. I’m just a little cold, that’s all.”
She pulls her jacket tightly over her dress.

He is all protective again. His arm goes
around her and the heat of his body once again brushes against her
skin. He is nice and warm, like a shielded furnace. She knows she
should not be close to him for too long or she will get burned.

The opening to the maze is an arched doorway
made out of hedge. The entire maze has walls of hedges towering
seven feet high so that anyone inside will be not be able to peer
over the top unless he were over seven feet tall.

“I had this designed so that even I won’t be
able to peek,” Lucien explains.

“I take it that you know this maze like the
back of your palm?”

“That I do. Come in. It’s well-lighted in
there and there are surprises to be found at every corner.”

“Really?” She is intrigued.

They enter the maze. The corridors here are
narrow, but can be traversed by two people who are walking side to
side. Lucien is right. Garden lamps are placed on the ground in
every bend and curve to light the way for the maze-crawler.

After the first few bends, the maze starts to
branch out into several options. You can go right or left. You take
a path. This path further branches into a right or left.

“Look, the first surprise.” Lucien points at
the stone statue of a fairy at the turn of a bend. “There are clues
carved at the base of every surprise. You’ll have to collect them
all to discover what the message is in the end.”

“Clues?” This is getting interesting, she
thinks.

“Yes.”

They come up to the fairy. It is a delicate
stone sculpture. To her surprise, the fairy is male – naked with a
fig leaf covering his privates and wings sprouting behind his back.
She is amazed at how exquisitely his face has been crafted. The
statue comes up to her breasts. The fairy’s stone orbs are empty
and they stare unseeing.

“See if you can find the clue,” Lucien
says.

She studies the statue and bends down to look
at its base. The statue is lighted by a low lamp on the ground. She
supposes the whole maze is wired down there.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Look closer.”

Her eyes scan the base, and then she sees
it.

A symbol. It resembles a snail with a long
body.

“Is it a snail?” she asks.

“Horned Viper, actually. It is ancient
Egyptian.”

“You mean hieroglyphs?” Her excitement
mounts.

“Yes.” He laughs at her enthusiasm. “I did
tell you I have a creative horticulturist.”

“Wow.” She digs into her purse for her
cellphone. “I will have to snap photos of this so that I can
remember every clue.”

“Good call. Beats the old pen and
notepad.”

He watches her amusedly – taking pleasure in
her delight – as she focuses her phone camera aperture at the base
of the statue to snap a photo of the horned viper.

“What else is there?” she asks eagerly.

“You lead the way.”

The maze continues, and she feels completely
safe in here with Lucien to bail her out should she lose her way.
The maze is larger than she thought possible, and she is sure she
has not been down any path twice.

The ‘surprises’ come in the form of statues –
nymphs, sprites, fauns, satyrs. The ‘clues’ she has collected now
form a veritable list:

A leg.

A hand.

A leaf.

Another leaf.

A wave, or at least, a blue wavy line
denoting a wave.

Another hand.

An open mouth.

What does it all mean?

“Have I got everything?” she asks Lucien.

“Pretty much. I’m not supposed to be helping
you solve this, but there’s one more clue.”

“Then we’ll have to find it,” she says,
laughing.

She is the one leading him this time. She
figures they must be somewhere at the end of the maze, because she
can see the dark forest looming closer than it did before. The sky
has gotten considerably darker as well, something she hasn’t
noticed because she was so preoccupied with finding the clues. Dark
clouds scud across the horizon and a chill descends.

“It’s getting colder,” he remarks. “You want
to go in?”

“And not finish the puzzle? No way!”

He grins. In the burgeoning darkness, his
face shines like a pale moon – all angles and completely and
dazzlingly beautiful.

“All right. But we should be getting in soon.
Looks like another storm coming. A big one this time.”

She shivers. “Does it always rain so much
here?”

“In this particular region? Yes. This town is
situated on a vortex of trade winds and it has its own
micro-environment. It’s complicated, but if you are interested to
learn more about it, there’s a natural history museum here. It’s
not very big, but it contains a lot of interesting things about
this region.”

Yes, she would be interested in that.
Dolphin’s Bay is beginning to be a lot more interesting than she
initially thought it would be.

She notices that he doesn’t offer to take her
to the museum. It is because he doesn’t intend to see her again
after tonight, of course. She keeps reminding herself about that
fact, and that she doesn’t and shouldn’t care. But somewhere at the
corner of her psyche, it rankles.

Nevertheless, she has a maze to finish.

Turning her face away from him so that he
will not see her sudden cloud of disappointment, she delves into
the next part of the maze.

“Hey, wait up,” he says, laughing.

She stops short, and he almost bumps into her
back. She stares at the final statue at the end of the leafy
passage.

“What’s that?” she finally says.

He is staring too. He doesn’t speak. The
statue is that of a witch. Or at least, a witch in folklore garb –
with robes and a tall pointed hat and a broomstick. But the statue
of the witch is not placed upon the ground like the others. This
one would have come to her midriff as well, like the others, had it
been so.

But now it is hanging by its neck from a rope
which has been fashioned into a noose. The end of the rope has been
tied to a protruding metal stick which has been stuck into the
hedge. Shannon can only imagine the weight of the statue and the
counterbalance on the other side to keep it hanging that way.

Even as she watches, the rope is beginning to
fray.

“Is this meant to be the surprise?” she asks
cautiously.

“No.”

His tone is sharp this tone, but she knows it
is not directed at her.

The light allows her to see the inscription
at the square base of the statue.

The inscription is that of a rope fashioned
in the shape of a noose.

Lucien strides to the statue. He is visibly
upset. He seizes the stone witch by the waist and wrenches it away
from the rope. She already knows how strong he is, and so she is
not surprised to see him successfully do this. The rope breaks away
at its weakest point, and the metal rod is jerked downward,
rustling and snapping the branches of the hedge wall.

Lucien sets the statue on the ground. He is
bristling with anger. He grabs the noose and flings it off the neck
of the witch.

“What is it?” she asks, frightened.

He composes himself. She can see the emotions
struggling on his face.

“It is nothing,” he says. “Come away,
Shannon.”

He grabs hold of her arm and leads her away
from the statue. She turns to gaze at it. The witch’s face is just
as exquisitely fashioned as the rest, and it appears to wear a
saddened expression. Or maybe it is just the play of the growing
shadows.

They exit the maze, her mind in a whirl.
There is so much she wants to ask him. Obviously, the statue was
not hung there by his design. Who did that? And what does it
mean?

Once they are away from the maze and back in
the gardens, he calms down.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says.

“Are you all right, Lucien?”

“Yes. I am.” He says this as much to assure
himself as her, she senses. “Come, let’s go into the hotel.”

He puts his arm around her again, and she is
glad for his embrace in a different way this time. Once they are
inside the reception, the wedding party is in full force again. The
guests are trooping down the stairs from the second level, where
the ballroom is situated. The laughter and gaiety and finery help
put Shannon at ease. It is as though the whole incident of the maze
didn’t happen.

She has her last clue.

Hanging rope.

Pieced together, it would have to mean
something. But she doesn’t dare ask Lucien what it means tonight.
Not with what happened.

He pauses for a while as a stream of giggling
bridesmaids dressed in identical green gossamer gowns troop past
them. Then he turns to her.

“Would you like to come up to my suite for
some coffee?”

His beautiful face is solemn. Whatever demons
which had passed through his head have clearly been exorcised.

The suggestion is unmistakable.

Do I really want to do this? she asks
herself.

The events of the day and night are starting
to take a toll on her now. The accident, arriving at Dolphin’s Bay,
the arm-wrestling duel, meeting Lucien Walker, the wonderful dinner
and its aftermath at the maze. She’s tired, despite her afternoon
nap, but also in need of refuge. And if she were to be honest with
herself, she does not want to return to her hotel suite alone –
although that would be the best alternative.