by Lauren Esker
"You might not."
"Naomi is going to be worried about me."
"She probably is."
"But she has her own life. And my boss can hire another office peon. It's not like they're going to have trouble finding someone else to do color corrections on pictures of toothbrushes." She had turned to look at the lake, not at him; but now she looked up at him, and her face changed, going suddenly strange and soft. "But that wasn't really what you were asking about, was it? Skara, what are you really asking?"
"I wasn't ... exactly ..."
"Are you asking me to stay with you?"
"I wouldn't say I was asking, as such ..."
"Skara." She tightened her grasp around his shoulders. "If you want me to stay, just tell me. Please."
It felt like stepping into an abyss. But he'd do that for her in a heartbeat, wouldn't he? It would be easier to throw himself into danger for her than to leap off this emotional ledge. But she deserved all of that and more.
"Yes," he said, and there was the breathless catch under his ribs, the feeling of empty space beneath his feet—and then wings, unfurling in his heart to stop his fall. "Yes, Claudia, I want you to stay. I want to show you foreign cities and unspoiled worlds with beautiful stars in the sky. I want to cook for you and introduce you to cuisine from a hundred worlds. I'll give you your own room on the Discordia, and you can get the mods to learn to fly it if you want. If you want to leave, you can leave, you can always leave, but I—I don't want you to go."
Her arms were trembling slightly around him, and tears glistened in her wide, dark eyes. Then, suddenly, she laughed, and lunged to kiss him hard on the mouth.
"I just need you to say it," she said, with another delighted laugh that made joy fizz inside him. "Yes, of course I want to stay. I'd love to come see the universe with you. I don't even need my own cabin, provided you're willing to clean up a little bit."
"It'll be a sacrifice, but I think I can suffer it."
He'd taken the leap, and he wasn't falling. He was flying.
"We'll have to go back and talk to my sister and tie things up on Earth, of course," Claudia was saying, but he barely heard her for the joy filling him, the new galaxy of possibilities opening up in front of him.
Claudia. Claudia and him.
He wanted to take her everywhere. He wanted to explore new parts of the galaxy with her. He would take her to the nebulas where stars were born, and watch the light play across her face; he would take her to the seediest and most interesting bars in the galaxy, and introduce her to new drinks and new alien species ...
"I don't know what to think when you're quiet," she said, and he came back down to the ground to see her looking up at him with a slightly quizzical, slightly amused expression.
He loved it, as he loved everything about her.
"I was thinking you might need more practice with your symbiont, if we're going to be traveling together."
Her brows quirked up. "What were you thinking?"
"I was thinking I could really use a shower back on the ship. Want to portal us there?"
"Just a shower, huh? How much better are you feeling?"
"Want to find out?"
She laughed, and waved a hand in the air. It was nearly effortless for her now. The portal bloomed, a violet-edged hole in the air, with the familiar colorful corridors of the Discordia beyond.
Skara felt his own brand-new symbiont respond subtly to the portal opening near it. That was interesting; he'd never really been aware of the other one that way. Maybe it made a difference that it had chosen him, out of all the people on Rhuad, rather than taking him as a host because he'd taken it off-planet and he was the only one available.
Maybe he could do things now that he'd never thought possible.
Without really thinking about it, he summoned a portal of his own. It was just as easy as it had been before, and it opened beside hers, two windows onto the Discordia. With another slight effort, he merged the two portals. They flowed together and suddenly there was just one extra-wide portal, and it was no effort whatsoever—a burden shared was a burden halved.
"Whoa!" Claudia exclaimed. "Did you know you could do that?"
"Nope." He let it slip away, leaving Claudia's portal alone in the air. "Just wanted to make sure I still had the touch. And apparently I do."
She smiled at him. "You look happy."
"I am," he said simply, and it made him wonder if he ever really had been. He'd experienced happiness, sure. But really, truly being happy?
It was a new feeling.
It was a feeling he could get used to.
"Me too," Claudia said simply, and they stepped through the portal, hand in hand, walking forward together into a new life.
Epilogue: Seattle
Three weeks. That was how long it had been since Naomi's baby sister went missing.
Three weeks since Claudia vanished, leaving behind an apartment with a broken door and a wrecked desk at work. No calls, no texts, no emails. It was so profoundly unlike her that there was no doubt something terrible had happened to her, but the police had found nothing at all.
Who would want to do this? Naomi had asked herself that question over and over. Claudia had no enemies. She was sweet and good-natured and got along with almost everybody. She didn't even have any ex-boyfriends to worry about. The only person Naomi could even think of to suspect was that weirdo at the bar who looked uncannily like The Rock, but she didn't know anything about him, not even so much as his name.
One thing she did know: if Claudia's one-night stand had kidnapped her—or worse—Naomi would never, ever forgive herself for taking her sister to the bar that night.
With every day that passed, Naomi's worry and distress deepened, along with her conviction that she would never see her sister again. There were no clues, no leads. She looked into hiring a private investigator, but before she could do it, there was a knock on her door.
She opened the door prepared to tell whoever it was to go away, and stopped dead at the sight of her sister, wearing a flowing, flowered shirt in a style Naomi had never seen before, and there behind her was the person who still looked eerily like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
"You!" Naomi shrieked. She'd known, she'd just known he was involved in this somehow. She reached for the nearest improvised weapon, which happened to be one-half of her favorite pair of calf-high stompy boots, and swung it at him.
"Whoa! Hey! No!" Claudia tried to intercept it. "Dwayne" ducked and exclaimed something incomprehensible. "Naomi, no! This is Skara. He's a friend. Naomi, stop!"
"A friend who made you go missing for weeks! What about your apartment, sis? Is he responsible for that?"
"Er, sort of."
Skara said something to Claudia. "Oh, I know," she said impatiently. "I still blame you."
Naomi reluctantly lowered the stompy boot. Claudia didn't look upset or scared. "You can understand him?"
"Yes, and he can understand you; he just can't speak English, yet. Can we come in, please?"
Naomi hesitated, then gave Claudia a sudden, hard hug. "I was so worried," she said into her sister's shoulder.
"I know. I'm so sorry. We came back as soon as we could." Claudia hugged her back, and then Naomi got out of the way and they all trooped into the condo that Naomi and her wife shared.
"Why didn't you call? What's wrong with you?"
"I know. I'm sorry."
"Where the hell have you been? You know you lost your job, right? That's what happens when you just stop showing up for work."
"I figured I probably had." Claudia didn't sound worried about it in the least.
Naomi stared at her sister and noticed that Claudia, who had never been a particularly flamboyant dresser, was now wearing glittery lipstick and earrings that seemed to consist of concentric circles gently rotating around and through each other.
"I hope your plane crashed in the middle of the Brazilian rainforest," she snapped, trying to recover some degree of mental ap
lomb. "That's about the only thing I'll accept for an excuse."
"Not the Brazilian rainforest exactly." Claudia took a breath, and turned to Skara. "Show her. She needs to see the real you."
The real him ...? What ...?
Skara nodded, and what happened next was indescribable. It was as if he melted and flowed, his bone structure rearranging itself, the light brown bleeding out of his skin as purple flowed in.
And then a complete stranger stood there, with purple skin and dark red hair and weird pale tattoos. His eyes sparkled, and he gave Naomi a little wave and said something.
"He said 'hi, sis,'" Claudia translated. "The reason why he can understand you, but you can't understand him, is because he's got a thing in his head that translates for him. I sort of do too, but—Naomi—uh, Naomi, would you like to sit down?"
"Yes," Naomi said faintly, and Claudia steered her to a chair. "What is he?" she asked, staring at him.
"He's an alien," Claudia said. Skara said something. "Okay, yes, I know that, but let's get into the whole 'genetically modified from human DNA' thing in a little while, okay? Alien is close enough for now."
"What," Naomi managed.
"And if you think that's something ..." Claudia's eyes danced, and she held up a hand. Violet light glittered on her fingertips. "Wait until you see this."
About Lauren
Hi, and thank you for reading! I'm a writer, artist, and lifelong Alaskan, and I write my books in a cabin on the highway, surrounded by fireweed and birch trees. I also write as Layla Lawlor (urban fantasy and science fiction) and as Zoe Chant (a shared romance pen name with several other authors; my books as Zoe are the Bears of Pinerock County and Bodyguard Shifters series).
Join my mailing list for new releases, free stories, and sneak preview chapters! Get a free story just for signing up. https://www.subscribepage.com/LaurensList
Email: [email protected]
Facebook page (news and updates)
https://www.facebook.com/laureneskerwriter/
Website: laurenesker.com
Also by Lauren Esker
Shifter Agents
Handcuffed to the Bear
Guard Wolf
Dragon’s Luck
Tiger in the Hot Zone
Shifter Agents Boxed Set #1
(Collecting Handcuffed to the Bear, Guard Wolf, and Dragon's Luck)
Standalone Paranormal Romance
Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
Keeping Her Pride
Warriors of Galatea
Metal Wolf
Metal Dragon
Metal Pirate
Preview - Shifter Agents Boxed Set #1
Three full length novels of paranormal romantic suspense in a convenient boxed set, free on Kindle Unlimited!
Start reading now!
Handcuffed to the Bear- Handcuffed together and hunted, they must rely on each other to survive!
Sample:
Better get up and get moving. Which means waking up Sleeping Beauty here.
Casey rose to her knees and bent over her unexpected companion.
By now her eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness, as much as they were going to. Her new handcuff buddy was a white guy with dark hair and broad, powerfully muscled shoulders. Even lying down, he was big. She didn't really want to think about how tall he'd be standing up.
She started to reach for his shoulder, then pulled her hand back when she noticed a long scar across the shoulder blade, going down his back. What was that from, a knife? Now that she was looking more closely, scars marked his skin like a constellation of past violence. There was a long set of parallel stripes over his ribs that looked like claw marks, and a little puckered scar above his left hip where she was pretty sure a bullet had gone through.
Great, she thought. So not only am I stuck in the woods with an enormous naked stranger, but he's the kind who gets into fights a lot. Really violent fights. Better and better.
Casey sat back on her naked haunches and studied him. She wished her head would stop hurting, and that she had even the faintest clue who he was, or whether he was in league with the people who'd put her here.
There were tattoos on his right arm, the one she was handcuffed to. Casey had a little ink on her ankle, a small rose, but this guy had quite a bit more. She gave the cuffs a tug, shifting his limp arm so she could see it better.
The one on his forearm was a dark blur, and she had to tilt her head to make it out: an assault rifle and the word Defend.
Army, maybe?
Much more dramatic was the big, elaborate tattoo that covered his upper arm, wrapping around his shoulder. It was a snarling bear, standing rampant on its back legs. Grizzly, she thought.
Between the grizzly tat and the claw scars, odds were pretty good he was a shifter like her. Wendy used to be able to say she could tell by the way people smelled, but Casey couldn't. Maybe she just hadn't spent enough time around her own kind to be able to.
Thinking of Wendy made a little ripple travel across her skin, a shiver like the fur rising along the spine of her lynx form.
What do I tell him about me?
Play dumb, she decided. Play innocent victim until she figured out more about who he was and what he was doing here. Maybe someone who got into fights with people who had knives and guns would be a good ally ... if he didn't turn out to be an even more effective enemy.
Guard Wolf- Can two lonely people find a home in each other?
Sample:
The werewolf puppies started howling, a high-pitched squeaky chorus. Agent Hollen winced.
"They were doing that in the car, too," he said. "And wouldn't stay in their box."
"Well, of course," Nicole said. "They're babies. They're cold, hungry, and scared. They don't understand being shoved into a box and ignored." She began mixing formula according to the instructions on the box, and used self-assurance to cover the fact that she hadn't actually done this very much. She did not often deal with extremely young children without a parent, nurse, or someone else better qualified to care for them than herself. Speaking of ... "Where are their parents? Do you know?"
"No, like I said, they were found on the street. We don't know who the parents are. Yet," he added.
"You had better stop that ankle-biter there." Nicole jerked her head at the kitchenette doorway.
"Oh, for—"
One of the puppies, the same ginger-colored one Nicole had caught climbing out of the box, was currently waddling for freedom as fast as she could. Hollen's longer legs overtook the puppy easily, even with his limp, and he hesitated briefly before scooping her up. Nicole watched out of the corner of her eye, but after a moment's awkwardness he cradled the puppy to his chest, tucking her blunt snout into the crook of his arm to shut out sensory input. The puppy settled down, nestling against him.
He's naturally good at it, she thought, filling the bottles. He was awkward enough around these kids that she guessed he didn't have kids of his own, but he seemed to be able to intuit what to do with them, even lacking base knowledge to draw upon. Some people, when handed a child, were miserably inept. Agent Hollen seemed to be the sort of person who could understand and anticipate their needs without realizing he was doing so.
Which was, she discovered, a remarkably attractive quality in a man.
Dragon's Luck- A sexy gambler and a daredevil agent team up in a high-stakes poker game on a cruise ship full of enemies!
Sample:
He'd caught her attention the moment he walked in—and not for the reasons one might expect. There was certainly plenty about Lucky to catch the eye. His face was sharp and handsome: dark hair swept back from a high forehead, clean cheekbones and deep olive skin. And he knew he was good-looking. She could see it in his swagger, sense it in the way his green velvet jacket gaped to show a glimpse of the toned pectoral muscles rippling underneath his black silk shirt ...
Green velvet jacket. Who wore something like that? It was like he deliberately wanted to look like
a lounge lizard.
No, none of that turned her head. Not in the slightest. The guy she'd heard the other gamblers address as Lucky Lucado caught her attention because he was a shifter, and shifters could always recognize each other. In fact, when he first stepped into the card room, she'd seen him pause, looking around, and held her small gecko body very still on the ceiling, heart pattering. Some shifters were more sensitive than others, and just her luck, he'd be aware enough to know she was in the room even without being able to see her. But as she waited and stilled and imagined herself part of the low ceiling tiles, he relaxed somewhat.
She didn't know what he turned into, but he was definitely a shifter. There was no mistaking that flash of recognition.
And if he was a shifter, then odds were good he was involved with the shifter drug trafficking ring she was on this boat to crack, which put him under the jurisdiction of the Special Crimes Bureau.
And therefore, she was here to arrest him.
Shifter Agents Boxed Set #1 - Start reading now!
To be notified when I release a new book, and get exclusive previews of upcoming books and free stories, sign up for my mailing list at this link - https://www.subscribepage.com/LaurensList.
(Get a free story just for signing up!)
And join my Facebook group for cover reveals, sneak previews, book chat and more!
