CHAPTER
20
D ee decided to walk in the front door of
Ric’s building, rather than skulking around the back until she
found a way in. As she approached the big glass doors, the doorman
rushed to open it.
“Good evening, Miss Smith,” he said,
tipping his hat.
Dee froze, her body tensing. She
scowled at the full-human, but he only smiled and waited for her to
walk through the door. She did and entered the elevator, taking it
to the penthouse.
Going against everything she practiced
on a daily basis, she used the set of keys Ric had given her and
opened the front door. She pulled off her jacket, hung it up in the
closet, and walked down the hallway. She still felt like she was
skulking, sticking to the shadows of the dimly lit apartment.
Deciding she didn’t want to skulk around the man’s apartment any
more than she wanted to skulk around his building, she stepped more
into the middle of the hallway and headed toward the kitchen. The
one place he always seemed to be.
“Ric?” she called out, assuming people
who didn’t skulk made noise. They always did in movies and on TV.
She pushed open the swinging door and stepped in to the kitchen.
“Ric? Are you here?” That always seemed like a stupid question
coming from shifters since she knew the man was somewhere in the apartment.
Her nose picked up his scent, her ears could hear him moving
around, and she could feel his presence. But it was a normal
question and she could do normal in short, controlled bursts. Like
gunfire.
A low growl came at her from the
darkness and Dee stepped out of the kitchen, letting the door swing
closed behind her. The growl moved closer, and eyes reflected the
light from the few lamps that were lit.
Smiling a little, despite the problems
she and her team had walked into, Dee moved away from the kitchen
door and more into the hallway.
“Now what do you think you’re doing,
Mr. Van Holtz? To some poor little gal all alone in the middle of
your big ol’ apartment. Defenseless.”
Big paws padded softly against the
marble flooring, the wolf circling around Dee-Ann, staying hidden
in the shadows, but she knew where he was at every
second.
Thinking that play should wait,
Dee-Ann said, “We need to talk, Van Holtz.” But he snarled at that.
“I know what you’d rather be doing but that’s not the point. We
should talk. About business. Like two professionals.”
He stepped out of the darkness, all
rippling muscle and power passed down from ancestors hundreds of
years gone. He lowered his head, bright blue gaze locked on her
face.
Dee stepped back and shook her head.
“This ain’t professional, Ulrich.”
And that’s when he charged
her.
Dez walked into the Brooklyn home she
shared with her husband and mate. Her two purebred Rottweilers met
her at the front door, greeting her with wet kisses and excited
tail wags. She’d refused to dock their tails like some owners and
she was glad she hadn’t. Nothing drove Mace crazier than when her
dogs knocked shit down with their tails.
She petted them and scratched the spot
where their tails met their rumps until they were nothing more than
wiggling dog flesh on the floor. Standing up, she pulled off her
jacket and placed it over the banister. Her backpack dropped at the
front door, Dez walked toward the kitchen, but before she got too
far, the door opened and the most important thing in her life
charged straight at her. Dez fell to her knees and opened her arms
wide, laughing as the hyperkinetic bundle slammed into her body,
knocking both of them to the ground.
She showered Marcus with kisses,
knowing that everything she did during these long days and many
nights was to ensure that one day he’d be able to roll around on
the floor with his own son or daughter or both and all their
dogs—because her son would have dogs. Even if he was a cat. Because
what was a life without dogs?
“What is this on your face?” she asked
him, realizing it was probably all over her face now,
too.
“Okay,” Blayne Thorpe told her,
barreling through the kitchen door. “It was just a slight mishap
with the brownie mix. No reason to panic!”
Except Blayne appeared worse off than
Marcus. Christ, the kid was covered. Did they actually
bake any
brownies?
“But I called in the heavy artillery,”
Blayne went on, “to get this place spic and span.”
Dez got to her feet, lifting Marcus up
until he wrapped his arms around her neck. “You called your
boyfriend in to clean my apartment?”
“Someone had to do it,” came a voice
from behind the kitchen door.
“Any other problems?” Dez asked,
turning toward the front door as it opened and her husband walked
in, his dog beside him.
Apparently the mixed Rottie rescue was too good to stay at the
house among Dez’s average, run-of-the-mill purebreds. Instead, she
had to go into the city with Mace to help him endure the work day
and keep Smitty’s dog, Shit-starter, from bothering
him.
The little
whore.
“Sorry I’m late,” Mace said. “Job ran
long.”
“No problem,” Blayne chirped. She was
perhaps the chirpiest person Dez had ever known. Marcus adored her
and Mace . . . tolerated her more than most. And that said a lot.
“No derby practice tonight.”
“My son,” Mace said, pulling Marcus
out of Dez’s arms without an invitation and holding him high above
his head. “Future of my bloodline.”
Dez shook her head in disgust, Blayne
giggled.
Marcus scowled down at his father,
pulled back his arm, and slashed at Mace’s handsome face with
nonexistent claws.
“Viper child!” Mace
snarled.
Holding out her arms, Dez ordered,
“Give me my son, Llewellyn.”
“Momma’s boy. That’s what you’ve
turned him into.” He shoved his son back into Dez’s arms. “An
ungrateful momma’s boy. I allow you to live, boy! Don’t you forget
it!”
“Thank you, Blayne,” Dez said over all
the bellowing and her son’s giggling. “Are you sure we can’t pay
you?”
“Absolutely not!”
“Yeah, because everything should be
for free,” Bo Novikov complained from the kitchen. “So we can live
in a Blayne-like utopia.”
Blayne smiled and said, “Excuse me a
moment.”
Dee waited until Blayne had gone back
into the kitchen before she faced her husband. “We need to
talk.”
“What did I do now?”
“Nothing.”
“Because whatever it was, I’m sure I
didn’t mean to do it.”
“You’re not helping yourself, Captain
Ego.”
“And if I want to help a friend,”
Blayne bellowed from behind the kitchen door, “I’ll do it! And
you’re not going to give me any shit over it, you oversized
Visigoth!”
“ ‘They’re such a cute couple,’” Mace
imitated back to Dez from a recent wild dog party where she’d had a
tad too many margaritas.
“They are a cute, if unstable
couple.”
“He’s more bear than
lion.”
“Which means what? That his head’s not
as big as yours?”
“Okay.” Blayne came back through the
door, her hand gripping Novikov’s forearm. Dez would never say it
out loud, but the size of that man was . . . off-putting. To her
anyway. Mace was only a nice, relatively normal six-four, but
getting into the seven feet and over range just freaked Dez out.
What was it like to fuck someone that size? Could you be smothered?
Especially when he wasn’t some skinny basketball player type but
nearly four hundred pounds of muscle. God, what if he died on top
of her? Would Blayne be able to drag herself out?
Mace bumped her with his hip and Dez
realized she was staring at Novikov again. She probably had what
Mace called her “look of abject horror” expression. She had to work
on that.
“Thank you both,” she said to hide the
fear.
“No problem,” Blayne kissed Marcus on
the forehead as the boy tried to latch on to Blayne with one arm
while still holding on to his mother.
“You’ll need to buy more cleaning
products,” Novikov told her, scowling down at her like he might
bite her head off at any second. “I had enough to clean the kitchen
but that was it.” He glanced around. “Although you really need
someone to clean the whole house. It’s kind of a sty.”
“Okay!” Blayne began to charge toward
the front door, dragging Novikov behind her. “Anytime, Dez. You
need me, you call, and I’ll be there! ’Night!”
“ ’Night, Blayne.”
The door slammed shut behind the
couple and Mace headed to the kitchen, shaking his head. “I think
our house is clean enough, thanks. What a freak.”
He disappeared behind the
door.
“Let me put Marcus to bed,” Dez said,
“and then we can—”
The kitchen door slammed open again,
Mace standing there, his eyes wide. “Dez, you have to see this
kitchen. It’s like something from a freakin’ Lysol
ad.”
Cella disconnected her call with her
boss and tossed the phone onto the old kitchen table. It was one of
the few things her mother hadn’t replaced as she’d done with almost
all the other furniture in the Malone Long Island family home Cella
had grown up in.
She knew that now she was back in New
York, she’d have to get her own place. Probably a place in the
city, but at the moment she was enjoying living with her family.
One of the rare tiger families that had a male involved who wasn’t
a son. Most She-tigers couldn’t stand having a tiger male around
once they’d gotten pregnant, but her parents had met each other in
grade school and had been together ever since. That was her
parents, though. Cella had gone about things a little
differently.
“You just getting home?” her
seventeen-year-old daughter asked, closing the door to the basement
that had been her bedroom since her mother had joined the Marines
and left her in her grandparents’ care.
“Yep. Busy night.”
“Busy couple of days. There’s some
leftover lasagna from dinner. You want me to put some in the
microwave?” Her daughter always phrased such things as a question
even while she was already cutting up the leftover lasagna, putting
it on a plate, and dropping it into the microwave.
“Sure. Thanks, baby.”
“No problem.”
Cella stood, heading toward the stairs
to her room. “I’m going to change clothes. I’ll be right
back.”
“Okay. But Uncle Kevin spent the night
so—”
Before her daughter could even finish,
Cella was tackled from behind, her younger-by-four-years brother
slamming her to the floor.
“Your skills are weak!” he told her
like he told her every time he did this. “As always, I am the
stronger sib—owww! Damn, Cella! Why do you always hit so hard? I’m
telling Ma!”
Dee’s naked body collided with the
wall, Ric buried deep inside her, his face pressed against her
neck. He slid his hand under her thigh and lifted her leg, his
condom-covered cock tapping some delicious new angle that had her
panting hard and gripping his shoulders.
“I thought you’d never get home,” he
gasped, nipping the tendons along her neck.
“Working,” she said, yipping when his
fingers tugged at her nipples, his hips grinding against
her.
“I have to give you better
hours.”
“Ric—” But he kissed her before she
could finish, his tongue plunging into her mouth. She kissed him
back, unable not to. He had the sweetest-tasting
mouth.
His body kept her pinned to the wall,
his hands moving off her breasts so that he could force her arms
against the wall.
“We have to talk,” she tried again
when their mouths separated.
“Later,” he told her, now fucking her
with powerful strokes. “Tell me all about it later.”
“Okay,” she squeaked.
Mace Llewellyn pushed the dark
chocolate ice cream he’d scooped out for himself and Dez away,
shaking his head at her words. “That can’t be right. They’re
lying.”
“They have no reason to
lie.”
He paced away from the stainless-steel
kitchen counter and back again, the dog he’d made his own right by
his side, sensing her master’s mood.
“The information has to be wrong,
Dez.”
She came out from behind the counter
and put her arms around his waist, understanding how hard this was
for him. “But it’s not. You know it’s not.”
Dez held Mace tight, relieved when she
felt his arms wrap around her body and hold her.
“We’ll fix it,” she said. “I
promise.”
“There’s only one way this will get
fixed,” he said, and buried his face against her neck.
And she knew he was
right.
Ric sat up in the middle of his
hallway floor and gazed at Dee-Ann.
“Missy Llewellyn? Mace Llewellyn’s
sister?”
“That’s where the money
leads.”
“Are you sure? We have to be
sure.”
“I’m sure that the information I have
is right.”
He scratched his head, unable to wrap
his mind around this. “It can’t be Missy, Dee-Ann. It can’t be
coming from her.”
“Why not? Because she’s too
rich?”
“No,” he argued. “Because she’s too
damn lazy.” He laughed, resting his arms on his knees. “I’ve known
Missy for a lot of years. We run in the same society circles and
although she’s not a fan of hybrids, Missy isn’t a fan of
anyone. She hates equally
across the board. But to invest this kind of money and risk, you’d
have to really hate hybrids with a passion. Missy doesn’t do
anything with passion except complain. My God, can she
complain.”
Dee-Ann sat up and Ric forced himself
to focus on her face. If he looked any lower, he’d be all over her
again rather than focusing on the bigger issue.
“Then what do you think’s going
on?”
“I don’t know. Unless she’s being set
up. By hyenas, maybe?”
“Hyenas ain’t puttin’ money out for
hybrid fights. They hoard their cash.”
“Very true.” Ric grimaced. “There’s a
Llewellyn on the Board, you know.” The Board had come into
existence in the late 1800s to handle territory disputes that had
turned ugly. Representatives from the bigger Prides, Packs, and
Clans now met twice a year to discuss any issues or concerns, but
would meet more often if there were problems that couldn’t be
resolved easily and quickly through phone calls or e-mails.
“Matilda Llewellyn. So we’ll have to be careful how we handle
this.”
“Yeah. Wouldn’t want to insult the
rich felines who’re maybe killing their own kind.”
“That’s not what I meant. So feel free
not to put words in my mouth. And why are we arguing when we’re
both naked?”
“Let’s face it, Ric, to put together
an organization like this, to run it right—there has to be some
serious money involved.”
“The Van Holtzes have money like that.
The Magnus Pack. The Löwes. And that’s what Missy is going to say,
and she’d have a valid argument. What about her brother,
Mace?”
“Forget it.” Dee shook her head. “I
can go on and on about Mace Llewellyn and why he’d never in a
million years be involved in something like this, but most
important is that he’s never had direct access to pride money. Not
ever.”
“Can he be trusted if we go to
him?”
“Absolutely.”
“Let me talk to Uncle Van. He deals
with Matilda, so maybe he has some ideas.”
“Malone’s people may deal with
it.”
“If they do, I might end up feeling a
little sorry for Missy.”
“Oh?”
“Felines are mean, Dee-Ann,” he said, standing up. “Just
. . . mean. At least you’d be in and out quick.”
“True enough.”
Ric started to walk away to get his
phone, but he came back, crouching in front of her.
“You said you need to call your Uncle
Van.”
“I know. I just wanted another
kiss.”
“We start kissin’, you’re not going to
call your uncle.”
“Cousin.”
“Whatever.”
Ric leaned in. “Kiss me anyway. So we
can make up for arguing while naked. We should never argue while
naked.”
“Lord, once you set your mind to
something—”
“—like a wolf with a bone,” he
finished on a whisper.