First Surrender

by Katie Reus

  At least this guy wasn’t sensitive. She’d guarded enough men like that for a lifetime. Men who wanted her to stroke their ego—among other things. As if they thought that was part of her job. Fucking losers. They found out soon enough that she wasn’t just a pretty face. It was always a pleasure watching the shock on their faces when some moron thought he could lay hands on her then found himself flex-cuffed and flat on his face with her boot in his back. Her boss always warned their principals how things were done and made them sign very detailed contracts regarding their own behavior with her, but some of them never listened.

  “The meeting starts in five minutes. We’re going to get you in, you’re going to take care of business, then my team is escorting you out. There will be no socializing or bullshit tonight. I refuse to put you at more risk than you already are. Understood?” Iris didn’t sugarcoat anything because it clearly wasn’t necessary with Berr. They’d already been over all this before, but she’d go over it a dozen more times if she felt it necessary. She didn’t think he would ignore her, but the last thing they needed was for anyone, including her team, to get hurt. Not only was she protecting Berr, but as team leader tonight, she considered her people her responsibility too.

  “You’re the boss,” Berr said good-naturedly as they continued their slow trek across the marbled floor.

  A few people nodded at Berr, but when he kept his expression stony and didn’t invite conversation, everyone stayed away. Which made her job easier. A jazz band played a slow song on the stage on the west side of the dimly lit room. A few giant chandeliers glittered prettily above them with what she guessed were real candles flickering from them. She was pretty sure the lighting was supposed to be romantic, but she didn’t like it. The brighter it was, the better she could see a potential threat. It was too dark right now. The sound of clinking glasses and laughter filled the air, various perfumes trailed around her, but she didn’t see anyone particularly threatening. Any server with a tray that got too close was smoothly cut off by Kell. The man was huge but moved with a stealth that impressed her. But if someone had managed to slip a gun past security…no, not with her team manning all the doors. It wouldn’t have happened. Still, she would never let her guard down.

  “Iris, there’s a man at your six bearing down on you two. I’m intercepting.” Vincent’s voice had a deadly edge to it.

  “Slow down,” Iris murmured to Berr, who immediately complied. Turning to the left so that Berr’s body was blocked from whoever was coming up on them, she swiveled and used her own body as a shield.

  Then froze when she saw the man walking toward her, a determined glint in his piercing blue eyes.

  What the hell was he doing here? Seeing him in the flesh after a month was a jolt to her system. She felt as if she’d been doused in ice cold water. Or punched right in the face. Somehow she found her voice. “Stand down, Vincent. Now. He’s not a threat.” Well, not to Berr. But he was a complete threat to her sanity.

  She didn’t have to give any more explanation than that. Vincent stopped where he was, but his hand was close to drawing one of his concealed weapons from beneath his jacket.

  Berr stiffened beside her, but then he shifted and must have seen who was walking toward them because he relaxed. “He’s fine, Iris. He’s joining in the meeting tonight. Last minute addition.”

  Okay, that would have been nice to know, but she held her tongue. Mainly because she was having a damn hard time finding her voice. Her stomach tightened because of a whole mess of reasons, none of which she wanted to contemplate right now. As her pulse started to race, she bit back her anger at the affect he always had on her. Shit, shit, shit.

  “Wyatt, good to see you. Thought you’d already be in the meeting by now. We’re running a bit late.” Berr held out a friendly hand to Wyatt, but the other man’s laser-like focus was all on Iris. And he was pissed. The anger rolling off him was almost palpable. “This is Iris Tarango, my date for the evening.”

  Iris swallowed hard. Oh, Wyatt freaking Christiansen knew her very well. Too well. They’d grown up together, been friends for a long time, then a month ago she’d gone and done the dumbest thing ever.

  She’d married the frustratingly sexy man.

  Excerpt from

  Claiming His Mate

  by Savannah Stuart

  Copyright © 2013 Savannah Stuart

  Lauren Hayes shoved a wayward strand of hair under the knit cap she wore as she slid up to the outside back wall of the quiet, two-story house. The black cover over her hair had nothing to do with the chilly October weather. Right now she was all about blending into the shadows this cold fall night. Which meant dressing in all black, like a sneaky burglar.

  Because she was about to do something stupid. Incredibly stupid. She inwardly berated herself.

  There was no turning back now. Shifters were notorious gossips and word had spread through the grapevine that Grant Kincaid, alpha of the Kincaid wolf pack in Gulf Shores, Alabama was on a honeymoon.

  With his new human mate.

  That by itself had shocked the shifter world. Kincaid’s father had been a brutal bastard—before he’d died. A shitty alpha who’d hated anyone who wasn’t supernatural. Or at least that’s what Lauren had heard.

  The current alpha was two hundred years old and she was twenty-five so it wasn’t as if they’d ever run in the same circles. She’d also heard Grant wasn’t like his father and from the brief meeting she and her pride had with him six months ago, she had to agree that he seemed pretty decent.

  Even if he was a stubborn ass who refused to give her family back what was rightfully theirs. Now that the alpha was out of town, she and some of her pridemates had decided to break into his house.

  To steal from him.

  Maybe steal was a bit of a stretch, she thought as she moved against the side of the house. Wind whipped around her, sending another shiver racing through her. She was simply taking back something that belonged to her family’s pride. She had to remind herself of that. Her sister was getting married in two weeks and the broach the elder Kincaid had taken from her family almost a hundred years ago was supposed to have been a wedding gift when the oldest Hayes daughter got married. The piece of jewelry had been in their family for centuries. Well, the jewels had been. Three, four-carat—colorless—diamonds and a handful of emeralds had been passed down from oldest daughter to oldest daughter in some form of jewelry ever since. When Lauren’s mother had received a necklace from her mother, she’d had the jewels put into a broach instead.

  And Lauren desperately wanted to give it to her sister Stacia as a wedding gift. She deserved it.

  Since Lauren was one of the few shifters on the planet who could mask their scent from other shifters, vampires and pretty much all supernatural beings, she’d been more or less volunteered for the job by her cousins. She also had a knack for breaking into places. Not that she was normally a thief. Her cousin Tommy, however, was. When she’d been twelve he’d taught her a lot of tricks, including picking locks and hotwiring cars. Her parents had been so pissed when they’d found out. After she stole back what was rightfully theirs, she bet they’d be glad she had those extra skills. Of course they’d be angry at her for doing this, but she’d known if she told them they would have ordered her not to. She figured it was better to do this then beg forgiveness later.

  She had a few pridemates waiting a mile away in case she ran into trouble, but they had to stay out of sight unless she called them.

  Right now they were all on Kincaid territory. Didn’t matter that it was a touristy beach town right on the Gulf Coast and that humans had no idea a shifter pack had carved out an area to live here. As a jaguar shifter, she knew she shouldn’t be here without permission so if she got caught she was so screwed. Wolves weren’t known for being forgiving. And stealing from an alpha? She shoved those thoughts out of her head. If she was scared, she couldn’t work.

  Here goes nothing.

  The two story house was raised like mo
st houses on the beach but he also had an upstairs patio that she planned to use to her full advantage. She shimmied up one of the columns with a preternatural speed and hoisted herself up and over the lattice style barrier. Being a cat, she was nimble and quick on her feet, but it still took strength to do this in human form.

  Crouching low to the ground, she carefully looked around the large patio at the closed French doors and then back at the beach. The waves sounded softly about a hundred yards away, the calm methodic rhythm doing little to soothe the nerves punching through her. She was about to break into an alpha’s home. So, so, so stupid. But it would make her mother and sister happy.

  Thankfully the quarter moon was hidden by clouds, further helping her cover. She’d been watching the Kincaid pack’s comings and goings for the last week in preparation for tonight. It was midnight so almost every one of them was at one of the many bars or the hotel Kincaid owned. They all worked together as a big family. Their hours were more like vampires’ than shifters’, but clearly it worked for the pack because they were ridiculously wealthy.

  Owning beach front property anywhere could be pricey, but they also owned an entire condominium building next door to Kincaid’s personal residence. At least almost everyone was at work. And even though she knew for a fact they had a security system, she’d thrown a giant boulder through the back French doors a couple days ago in preparation.

  Lauren had felt like a total jerk doing it, but she’d needed them to replace the doors. Which they’d done this morning. The chances of them having already replaced the security contact that would be standard with the system on the new doors was about five percent. More like zero percent considering she’d been watching the house practically ever since she’d ruined the doors. And when she hadn’t been spying, one of her pridemates had.

  As she examined the French doors now she realized the lock was also new. And it wasn’t the cheap kind either. But, she was very good at getting into places she shouldn’t.

  Less than sixty seconds later she was inside the master bedroom. After a quick perusal of the top part of the door frame she breathed a sigh of relief to see no new contacts in place. Carefully closing the door behind her, she paused and glanced around the giant room. With her supernatural eyesight she didn’t need to turn on a light to see everything—not that she would anyway. Might as well just put up a bright neon sign that she’d broken in.

  The furniture was masculine, but there were definitely feminine touches. Not that Lauren cared about any of the décor. Now she was focused on looking for a safe. If he were going to hide diamonds and emeralds, it would definitely be in a safe. There was a slim chance he’d put it in a bank vault, but shifters and vamps, especially one as old as him, were weird about that stuff. No, they liked to keep their valuables close on hand.

  For all she knew a silent alarm had gone off. There weren’t any visible sensors in the bedroom, but that didn’t mean shit. She knew that by breaking in blind without knowing the complete layout of the security system she was taking a chance but almost no one had sensors in their bedrooms. It didn’t make sense. Living room areas and downstairs areas of course, but bedrooms and any upstairs saw too much foot traffic on a daily basis.

  Moving quickly and quietly she went to the most obvious place to hide a safe. The closet. Nothing there. She searched behind picture frames next, then everywhere else she could think of before moving to the next room. The door was open to reveal an office.

  Pausing, she could hear only the wind and waves outside. There were residual scents in the house but that made sense. She stepped inside the room, her boots silent against the rich hardwood floor. Two steps in, she realized she wasn’t alone. It was like an abrupt assault on her senses and her inner animal simply knew.

  Before she could turn fully around, she was tackled to the ground by a huge male. Definitely supernatural.

  Strong, muscular arms encircled her from behind, throwing her to the ground, the male on top of her. Somehow he managed to angle their fall so he took the brunt of the impact on his arms. All the air left her lungs in a whoosh as panic slammed through her. She hadn’t heard him, hadn’t even scented him. That alone told her how dangerous he was.

  Though all her animal instinct told her to fight, she knew she was at a disadvantage. Going limp, she didn’t struggle. The second she was set free or her captor loosened his grip, she was running. Wolves might be strong, but jaguars were wicked fast. In human and shifter form.

  “What the hell are you doing sneaking around in wolf territory in my alpha’s fucking house?” a familiar male voice said near her ear, a trickle of his fresh scent that reminded her of the beach in winter enveloping her.

  She hadn’t scented him before, probably because of her own fear and panic at doing such a stupid thing—but now his scent covered her. She shivered at the sound of Max McCray’s voice. Kincaid’s second-in-command. He was supposed to be at the Crescent Moon Bar tonight working.

  Lauren swallowed hard. “I want my family’s fucking jewels back,” she gritted out. There was no sense in lying. He’d be able to scent the bitter, acidic stench if she tried. She could normally cover her scent well, but right now she was nervous and couldn’t keep her gift under control. Blind panic hummed through her, her inner jaguar telling her to run, run, run.

  But she couldn’t. Not with Max’s massive body on top of her, keeping her pinned in place.

  She was ashamed to admit that she’d had more than a handful of fantasies about the dark-haired, muscular shifter with the piercing blue eyes. None like this, with her flat on her stomach and him behind her… Okay, that was a lie. She’d had those types of fantasies too. Of course they’d both been naked and she hadn’t been working as a thief.

  Acknowledgments

  I owe a big thank you to Kari Walker, Cynthia Eden and Carolyn Crane for reading early copies of this story. Thank you all for your insight! I’m so lucky to have you as friends. And as always, I owe thanks to my lovely readers. You all are amazing and I hope you enjoy this new series!

  Complete Booklist

  Red Stone Security Series (romantic suspense)

  No One to Trust

  Danger Next Door

  Fatal Deception

  Miami, Mistletoe & Murder

  His to Protect

  Breaking Her Rules

  Protecting His Witness (September 2013)

  Non-series Romantic Suspense Books

  Running From the Past

  Everything to Lose

  Dangerous Deception

  Dangerous Secrets

  Killer Secrets

  Deadly Obsession

  Danger in Paradise

  His Secret Past

  Paranormal Romance

  Destined Mate

  Protector’s Mate

  A Jaguar’s Kiss

  Tempting the Jaguar

  Enemy Mine

  Heart of the Jaguar

  Moon Shifter Series (paranormal romance)

  Alpha Instinct

  Lover’s Instinct

  Primal Possession

  Mating Instinct

  His Chosen Wolf (January 2014)

  Avenger’s Heat (February 2014)

  About the Author

  Katie Reus is the USA Today bestselling author of the Red Stone Security series, the Moon Shifter series and the Deadly Ops series. She fell in love with romance at a young age thanks to books she pilfered from her mom’s stash. Years later she loves reading romance almost as much as she loves writing it.

  However, she didn’t always know she wanted to be a writer. After changing majors many times, she finally graduated summa cum laude with a degree in psychology. Not long after that she discovered a new love. Writing. She now spends her days writing dark paranormal romance and sexy romantic suspense. For more information on Katie please visit her website: www.katiereus.com. Also find her on twitter @katiereus or visit her on facebook at: www.facebook.com/katiereusauthor.

  Table of Contents

&n
bsp; Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Dear Reader

  Sneak Peek—Breaking Her Rules

  Sneak Peek—Claiming His Mate by Savannah Stuart

  Acknowledgments

  Complete Booklist

  About the Author