Chapter One
“Please be able to help,” I muttered as I looked up at the sign over the door in front of me. It read ‘Paranormal Protection Agency’ and if you’d asked me six months ago if I’d be here knocking on their door needing help, I’d have told you to take more water with it. Now? I’d have the bottle from you quick as a flash and you could keep the damn water.
“Jared, I know you were a cop but for f**ks sake, when did ‘protect and serve’ become ‘protect and service’?”
Since my name wasn’t Jared and I’d never been a cop, it was obviously someone else getting the dressing down. But I still stopped halfway through the door and considered doing an about-face to escape from the irate female voice.
Yeah, a place that proclaimed itself as the ‘Paranormal Protection Agency’ was bound to be a little different, but that was a little far out, even for me.
Given the current conversation going on further back in the officers, my timing was as much a SNAFU as my life. Staring down the business end of a nasty little curse my bastard of an ex had arranged after we split, and with an important function tonight, I was rapidly running out of options and that more sacred of commodities: time.
Before I could turn around and beat a hasty retreat, a male voice issued from further within. Deep and rich, it sent a soul-deep shiver through my body right down to my curling toes. There’s nothing as sexy as a man’s voice, especially the deep, gravelly ones and this one had more gravel than a landscaped garden.
“Sorry boss, but she was hot, and by that I mean haaaaawt. Besides, how will I satisfy my mate when I find her if I don’t take advantage of every learning experience now?”
“Jared! She was a f**king German Shepherd!”
WTF? A German Shepherd? What kind of place were these people running?
“And I’m a wolf. Your point is?”
The reply was so nonplussed that it caught my interest. With a sick sense of fascination I stepped through the door and let it close silently behind me.
The office beyond was standard for small offices the world over. A cluster of desks sat under one of the windows while a lone plastic plant guarded the door. I checked. Yup. Scrunched up sticky notes in the pot indicated it had been used as target practise. Seemed normal so far. I shivered and ventured further into the lion’s den.
“My point is you don’t screw the client’s pets! The last thing I need is for my best shifter to be banged up for…what the f**k would that be called anyway? It’s gotta be illegal.”
I pursed my lips at the thought as I headed toward the back of the office. If both participants were technically animals, would the law give a damn? Long practise kept my mouth shut but it was a struggle. That had always been my problem: open mouth, insert foot. No apparent intervention of brain.
“No screwing the client’s pets. Got it, boss.”
There was a pause, and I reached out to knock on the half open door in front of me, but something warned me to wait.
“Does that mean I’m okay to screw the client’s wives instead?”
“Stone!”
“Just checking the ground rules, boss.”
I stopped at the near bellow of outrage, recognising a woman only just holding onto control in the face of total male provocation. Any woman who’d been married was more than familiar with the feeling and I felt a sense of kinship with her.
“Out, just get out! Before I get Cal to kick your ass from here to kingdom come!”
“Awww don’t be so mean, Iliona. You love me, you know you do!” A male laugh sounded, rich and silky, as the door was yanked open. Startled, I withdrew my hand and stepped back sharply, not wanting to get trampled by however many paranormals spilled through the opening.
Just one man filled the frame, the width of his shoulders blocking the light from within. I was forced to look up, which was no great surprise. At five foot nothing in my bare feet, pretty much everyone was taller than I was. What did surprise me was the fact that I was in the presence of a god, or at least the movie version of one.
Tall, dark and handsome didn’t cut it. Ice-blue eyes focused on me, zeroing in with the accuracy of a laser-sighting system. The ice warmed instantly, the blue flooding with heat as his gaze swept my body with a slow, assessing look.
Tingles ran riot over my skin, covering each inch after his warm gaze moved on. I squirmed, clenching my thighs together, needing to do something, anything, to try and ease the sudden, savage ache between them.
Heat swept over my cheeks. I forced myself to stand upright and look bored as I waited for him to look me in the eye again. Although short, my bust was big enough that the girls regularly held conversations with members of the opposite gender. So much so that I’d long since gotten past the whole clickey fingers ‘my eyes are up here, buddy’ thing. It got old, fast. These days I just waited for attention to return to my face. If it did, the guy was a keeper.
To his credit, he looked up within seconds, the assessment swift but full of interest as he stalked toward me. I back-pedalled instinctively, the automatic desire to retain my personal space warring with the need to get all up close and cosy with the lean hard body under the simple t-shirt and rugged cargo pants. He didn’t give me an option, determination in his eyes as he easily backed me up to corral me in a corner.
My shoulders hit the wall and I brought my hands up as an ineffective ward. The gasp that whispered around the silent office was mine, escaping from my throat as he walked right up to me until my hands rested against the solidness of his broad chest. I looked up, unable to turn away, unable to do anything as he dominated my world.
“Fuck me.” He paused, eyes searching mine as though looking for the answer to a question that had been bothering him for years. What it was, I had no clue, but pleasure and satisfaction displaced the heat for a second. “Or marry me. Then I get to f**k you lots.”
My hand moved on automatic, the loud crack of my palm contacting his cheek making me jump but he just grinned. Anger cancelled out any mortification I felt at the red mark over his face.
“Watch your language, young man. Do you talk to your mother with that mouth?”
The grin grew broader, a white flash of teeth in the semi-darkness of the office, as his hand slid around my waist. With my hand on that side occupied by pushing at his chest to stop him pinning me with his body weight, I was all out of ways to stop him.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to f**k my mother, or marry her. But I’d sacrifice myself on the altar of marriage for one lick of your creamy cunt.”
I raised my free hand again but he was ready for me. His large hand wrapped around my wrist with a casual strength that stole my breath away and he clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth in disapproval.
“Careful, sexy. All this rough stuff and I’ll think you’re trying to come onto me.”
“Stone! Put her down!”
The order from somewhere behind the wall of his broad shoulders made me jump. In the heat of the moment I’d forgotten where we were, and what I’d come here for in the first place, but the sound of my Casanova’s boss brought me down to earth with a bump.
Stone didn’t move, just looked over his shoulder at his boss, who I still couldn’t see. “Whatever she wants.”
I couldn’t help it. The snark just had to get out. Keeping it inside had to be unhealthy or something. If nothing else, I’d always been careful of my health. Shoving at the brick wall that was his chest, I lifted an eyebrow in my best ‘Oh really?’ expression.
“And what if I want a bottom for my bisexual male lover?”
He turned and looked down at me, the heat in his eyes reaching inferno level as the hand at my waist slid around my back. My pitiful pushing on his chest was no match for the strength in his muscled frame as he yanked me up against him. He was hard, aroused…the thick bar of his c*ck pressing against the soft swell of my belly. A belly that carried a little more padding than I was comfortable with.
But there was no arguing with the heat in his eyes as he bent his head, his lips a hairsbreadth from mine as he whispered. “I’d get rid of your lover, then prove to you that you only need one man ever. Me.”
“Stone, put her down, or else!” The order was barked and no nonsense. Slowly I was set back on my feet and my new admirer stepped back, hands raised as though someone had a gun trained on him. Perhaps they did. As he moved back, a small woman rushed into my line of sight, her expression swinging between pissed off and apologetic.
“I am so sorry about Stone,” she assured me, casting him a furious glance as she got between us. “I’m Iliona, I run the agency. Please, come sit down and we can discuss why you’re here.”
The two men behind her… I blinked, sure I was seeing double before I realised they were twins…stepped between Stone and us as she led me through into the office at the back. Abruptly I felt bereft. Even though he’d almost assaulted me, there was an aura of capability about him. Instinctively I knew that whatever he set out to do, he would succeed at.
“It’s okay, I’m okay…honestly,” I assured her, smiling to put her at ease that I wasn’t going to sue the company over their wayward werewolf. I looked over; he was prowling like a caged dog behind the twins. I took a deep breath and looked at Iliona directly.
“I need your best man for a…delicate assignment. Is he up to it?”
She nodded, her expression firm. “He’s an ass but he’s the best I’ve got. Whatever you need, he’ll get it done.” She grinned suddenly. “Or I’ll have him neutered in the morning. With a blunt spoon.”
* * *
“Shaken, not stirred. Yeah, right Eloise. You’re stirred in the freaking head.”
Shaken was not the word. Even now, hours later, I was still unsteady on my feet after that near kiss in the PPA offices. Stone had turned out to be Jared Stone, one of the agency’s operatives, and a werewolf. A hot, sexy as hell werewolf with a hard, muscled body just made for…things I shouldn’t really be thinking about since he was…well, since I was paying him to escort me to the hospital’s charity ball tonight. Thinking about sex and money in the same sentence just didn’t sit well with me. There were words for things like that. Not nice ones.
It was bad enough that I’d needed to book an escort in the first place. The admission that I couldn’t find a date, a human date, that was willing to take me. Thanks to Pete, the ass-wipe. It hadn’t taken me long into our relationship to work out that my ex was vindictive, but even I hadn’t guessed he’d stoop so low as to have a curse put on me.
Nothing serious or life threatening. Just…things tended to happen to every guy I dated. James had been wonderful, great company over dinner with a fantastic sense of humour. He’d ended up with a three-week case of acne. Green and pink acne.
Liam had taken me to the skating rink, holding me in his wonderful strong arms as he’d guided me on my unsteady way around. The next morning he could have played Pinocchio without resorting to prosthetics.
Steve had spent three days squawking like a chicken.