by Thorne, Elle
No. It was much worse than that. Not only was she not immune to him, he filled her panties with cream every time he came near, every time he said a word, even if it wasn’t directed at her.
What she hated was she was sure he could scent the desire in her. She was sure he could tell how bad she wanted him. Every bit of him, every taste of him, every lick of him.
Her eyes drank him in. His short dark hair, his chiseled face, his beautiful full lips in an austere face. The scar over his eye that left a yummy white line in the middle of his brow. The chin, with a groove in it offering just the barest hint of a cleft, begging for her to slip her tongue in it and taste his chin the same way a part of her wanted to dip her tongue into the slit on his cock. She’d daydreamed about his cock, having seen it once, in silhouette, against the fabric of his swimwear, partially erect, while he came out of the pool.
Oh, heavens above, take me now.
She feasted on the shirtless vision. He had tattoos, tribal tattoos covering his arms with bold, dark, stark lines that ended in points. The arm tattoos extended up to his shoulders and over his pecs, ending a few inches above nipples that were meant for sucking, licking, and nibbling.
What had come over her?
She and Gavin had become friends while she recuperated. She’d thought they had an awesome friendly connection. More than friendly actually. And then one day, she went from a good friend to what felt like an enemy.
She hadn’t done anything, said anything, seen anything. All she knew was he had flipped a switch, and now he would barely look at her. When she tried to talk to him, he’d answer in curt sentences then vanish from the room, saying he had something to take care of related to Tiero security.
Gavin was the head of Tiero security, and he took it seriously. She got that. She did. Her father had a security team, and they were invaluable at keeping the family safe. But what happened to the Gavin she used to know? The one that would give her an easy smile, showing off his white teeth. What happened to the man who used to share an occasional talk with her?
Better question was, what had happened to her? Since he’d started acting so squirrely, she’d turned stalkerish, using any excuse as a chance to get to see him.
This is so unhealthy.
Her arctic fox snarled in agreement. It was unhealthy, but her fox was as equally frustrated at this as Layla. Her fox had already made it clear Gavin was her mate. Layla had insisted Gavin was just a friend, at first, but the fox wouldn’t hear of it. Layla knew the fox was right. There was no other explanation for the feelings she had. There was no other reason for the desire he’d awakened in her, the first time she’d ever felt this way about a man.
She sighed. What had changed? When she’d first been freed from the Rafferty wolves, Gavin had been nice to her. She’d thought they were friends. She’d opened up and let him in.
Okay, she hadn’t let him completely in. She hadn’t told him who she was. She couldn’t. Any time someone found out who she was, she had to deal with the baggage of their hang-ups about her family. It’s not like she could go around telling people.
She appraised his body, the scars on it. He’d clearly been in many skirmishes, judging from the long, thin white marks crisscrossing his body.
She wanted to clear her throat, hoping that by announcing her presence, he wouldn’t find a reason to leave. Hoping he’d stay and talk to her.
Or more than talk to her, the fox insisted.
I wish.
* * *
Gavin scented her approach. He squinted, pretending to keep his eyes closed, appreciating the way her ass swung. Her silhouette, a luscious exaggerated hourglass, full-hipped and full-breasted, tapered to a middle he’d love to hold on to while she rode his cock.
What the fuck?
He had to quit this. Nothing good could come for his feelings for this woman. She was trouble. Women were trouble. Hadn’t he learned that lesson well enough during his time with Lila?
He’d wanted Lila since he was a young one. He’d always wanted Lila. Or so he’d thought. So why was this damned arctic fox with her red-flame hair and her luscious body confusing him?
His tiger roared, arguing with him as it always did when Gavin insisted Lila was the one for them. His tiger had never thought Lila was right for them.
They’d never agreed on that, and the only times he’d had dissent with his tiger had always been centered on Lila.
It didn’t matter. He needed to change the way he thought. There was no space or time for women in his life because he had to concentrate on his job. He had to keep this career. He couldn’t go fucking it up like he had the last time.
His tiger snarled at the injustice of Gavin’s thought. It was the system that said Gavin failed at the last position. It wasn’t his tiger, and Gavin did agree with his tiger on this. What they’d done was justified. He’d do it again in a heartbeat if he were in the same place.
He smelled her sex. He smelled the delicious scent of her cunt. It drifted his way on the slight breeze the air conditioner created in Sanctuary. His nostrils flared; his cock hardened.
She was watching him, he knew this.
He could smell her arousal and her confusion. It baffled her that they’d lost their easy amiability, and he wasn’t interested in explaining it to her. How could he? How could he tell her how he felt about her? Then they’d have to take it to the next level, and he’d be letting Vax down. He wasn’t letting any more friends down. He wasn’t going to allow a single Tiero to come to harm. Not on his watch.
He fought the urge to reach for his cock. He pushed back the desire to touch himself. He couldn’t do that, not while she watched. Not while she was there. No, he couldn’t.
And yet, on its own volition, as if he had no control over his hand, it drifted downward toward his ever-growing hardness.
Christ, I’m fucked.
He wished he was. His hand left its position from behind his head and skimmed over his chest. Fingertips traced their way over his abdomen, hard to the touch for all the time he spent in the gym. He drew in a sharp breath and pushed his hand into the drawstring waistband of his workout shorts.
His fingers wrapped around his dick.
Fuck.
His eyes were still open in a slight squint, his thick lashes hiding them from her view.
She had no idea he watched her. She had no clue he could see her nipples growing hard into pebbles under her peasant top. She wore a lacy bra—he could see that from the lighting behind her. Her breasts swelled, filling the top, and her nipples pressed out, pushing the fabric taut, making him wish he were scraping his teeth against them, sucking on them, pulling on them with his mouth and releasing them while he fingered her sweet-smelling, wet cunt.
The aroma of her wetness grew stronger, and he could only imagine the pool forming between those thighs. His grasp on his cock was firm, making him groan.
Chapter Two
Layla often found her extra sensory shifter skills to be a blessing. This was one of those times. Her spectacularly sensitive shifter hearing allowed her to hear his groan, to hear the way his hand moved up and down his shaft, to hear the way his breathing had become a lust-filled pant, and, lastly, to hear his pulse as it began to thump a beat that synchronized with hers. Oh, but damn, this man could make her have an orgasm with just the sight of him.
She opened her eyes. She’d closed them when she’d found herself overreacting to the sensations he gave her. Keeping them closed was not an option with this kind of a show. A once in a lifetime show, based on his newfound distaste for her.
Another blessing? Her fantastic shifter vision. She could zoom in on his cock, the beautiful magnificent shaft he’d pulled out of his shorts. Fully engorged, it strained for release, a vein in it keeping rhythm with his pulse, and hers. The mushroom head perfectly ringed the top of his shaft, a crown of glory she’d love to wrap her lips around and feel the texture inside her mouth.
The heat of a blush rose from her chest to her neck
and splashed across her face. She’d never had thoughts such brazen before. Gavin brought them out in her. He’d awakened a part of her she’d never known existed.
She couldn’t stop what he brought out in her unless she died, that was how intense he made her feel.
She reached inside the peasant blouse, cupped her breast, and let her fingers brush across her nipple. The rosebud peak jerked to attention within her sheer lacy bra and pushed back against her hand.
Layla slid her other hand downward, lower and lower. Grabbing the fabric of her skirt, she pulled it up until she felt the bare skin of her thigh.
She held her breath while watching Gavin pumping his shaft with his big hand, a hand that should be cupping her breasts, weighing them, tweaking her nipples with just the right amount of pleasure mixed with pain.
She released a tiny sigh as her fingers crept upward and touched the folds of her pussy through her panties.
Damned fabric.
She pushed the satin material aside and let her fingers graze the velvety softness of her skin. Her lips were supersensitive because, on a lark, she’d decided to shave completely, totally bare. All that hyperawareness hadn’t helped when she’d been walking around during the day, her panties teasing her lips and folds. Nope, hadn’t helped at all. She’d been in a walking, talking, almost-orgasmic state all day.
And now this.
Gavin. In the flesh, cock in hand, showing her all he could give her if only…
What?
What was the problem?
Her mind immediately flew to Lila. She’d heard they had something, but now that was over, wasn’t it?
Maybe for Gavin’s heart it wasn’t over with Lila.
A grunt penetrated her thoughts. Her fingers on autopilot, she had parted her lips, found the little core of sensitivity, and began making furiously fast tight circles on it.
She refocused on Gavin, his passion, his cock, his deliciously muscled and scarred body.
“Ah, God. Fuck. Fuck. Fucccckk.” He grunted as every word came out of him in spurts the way she hoped she’d get to see his cock deliver its pleasure.
She moved her finger faster and faster, keeping rhythm with his hand as it still had a tight grip on his hard cock, pulling, tugging, rubbing, up, down, up, down.
Up.
Down.
Circle after circle, she rubbed her clit, head thrown back, body arched, she released her breast and grabbed the tree behind her for support.
A gushing squirt, then another, her desire poured down her legs as her climax claimed her, making her a slave to pleasure.
“Fuck! L—” Gavin sat up and exploded, a geyser of shots released from the slit she wanted to tongue. Shot after shot spurted forward, filling a hand he held out, cupping and catching his release.
She sighed as another convulsion overtook her channel, bringing her pussy into yet one more orgasm, another squirting sequence creating a river down her thighs.
What was he about to say? L—? L what?
Damn that man for making her want him so much. She braced herself, leaning out of sight, hoping he couldn’t smell her from here. Ignoring the scoffing snort her fox made that said, if you can scent him, what makes you think he can’t scent you?
She hoped she was upwind of the vents gusting the cool air in the tiger sanctuary—her favorite place at After Dark.
* * *
Gavin blew out a breath. He hadn’t planned that, but the sight of her touching herself had been too much. He’d heard the squirt when she’d come undone, and it had been too much for him. By the time she’d hit her fourth or fifth one, he’d been a goner. He had to release his lust or walk around in pain the whole day.
This wasn’t the kind of pain Gavin took well. Shit, he could handle all the torture he’d dealt with during the war. He could handle the physical abuse of boot camp during Sigma Eps Special Ops, the training for the paranormal equivalent of the U.S. Navy’s SEAL program. But this kind of exquisite torture…
Fuck it was just too much. Way too much.
Now he had to get back to work. He’d been gone long enough. And though his second-in-command, Dane, was more than competent, Gavin didn’t like the idea of not being on point and in position. He wiped his essence on his shorts and leapt to his feet with the ease and sexuality of the white tiger. Grabbing his T-shirt from the boulder behind him, he yanked it over his head, rammed his arms in it, and pulled it down.
He did all this without so much as a glance in her direction. He knew she was still there.
He wished to God she’d leave. Pack her shit and go and stop complicating his life and his emotions.
What business did a white tiger shifter have with an arctic fox shifter anyway? He should stick to his own kind.
No, he should stick to no kind. He should stay away from women and make sure he performed his duty well.
Yes, that was exactly what he should do. Right now.
He made for the exit from Sanctuary to After Dark quickly.
He was head of security for After Dark. He was head of security for all of the Tiero operations on the American continent. He’d earned the position by virtue of his prowess on the battlefield—dishonorable discharge or not.
Chapter Three
“What was that?” Gavin turned to look at Dane. He hadn’t heard a word his second-in-command said. The black panther shifter looked back at him, his scrutiny bold and unreadable. “What’d you say?”
“I said one of the guys picked up a scent on the outskirts of town,” Dane repeated, this time giving Gavin a look that said, “Where the hell is your head?”
His head? It was buried too damned deep in that sexy arctic fox shifter that had jacked his mind and his body.
His tiger snarled.
Yeah. I didn’t forget it. My heart, too.
The tiger roared.
Fine. Our heart. Better?
Dane and Gavin had served together in the Middle East. When Gavin had told his employer and best childhood friend, Vax, about Dane, hoping to get him a position with him, Vax had told Gavin to sign Dane on, that worthy soldiers were a good thing to have on their security team.
“But he’s a panther,” Gavin had said, in case Vax had forgotten. Gavin knew Tiero policy on hiring other shifters. The Tieros were a tiger-only clan. They’d always been that way when Vax and Gavin were young boys in Europe, before Gavin left for the US and Vax for boarding schools. It was a given white tigers didn’t have an open-door policy when it came to other species.
“That’s old Tiero policy,” Vax had said. “I don’t subscribe to it. A shifter is a shifter.”
“What about blowback from Giovanni?” Giovanni was Vax’s old-school European shifter father.
“I’ll deal with my father. I’m planning a trip to Europe shortly. I’ll be handling a lot of the problems and differences we have from the European Tieros. Things will be run differently in the Americas.”
“Hate to put you in any sort of position,” Gavin had added but was happy to bring Dane on. He’d trusted Dane since they’d served in the military together, and justifiably so.
And by the same token, Vax had been Gavin’s friend since childhood. Gavin’s father had been on Tiero payroll all Gavin’s life, also in security, so the trust element there was high as well.
Gavin and Vax grew up on the streets in Italy, Greece, and the Balkan States, before Gavin moved to the US. They’d had their share of adventures and scrapes.
Later, Gavin and his cousin, Niko, became a part of Sigma Eps. That’s where Gavin met Dane. A short time after, Gavin’s baby brother decided he wanted to be in Sigma Eps. Had Gavin known, he would have tried to talk his brother out of it.
Sigma Eps forged Gavin into the man he was. The tours in the Middle East had tested his mettle, tempered his strength, and, ultimately, almost broke his spirit, especially when Gavin’s baby brother had died in the war. Gavin’s father still held Gavin responsible.
“Earth to Gavin.” Dane punched him on the
arm.
Right. Back to the job at hand. Funny how Layla’s entrance into his life had made him become retrospective
“Got anything more on who the shifters are? Any visual?”
“None. And the scent is gone. Probably using block.”
“What shifter would have a reason to be here?” Gavin didn’t want to bother Vax with this.
Vax had a pregnant mate to concern himself with. Plus, he was readying for his trip to Europe. He had enough to do, enough to deal with. What Vax had done the last time the European Tieros—his father, Gio, and his two uncles, Tito and Federico—visited had created an uproar. There was a new regime of Tieros in the United States, and the European Tieros weren’t happy. Vax had to go back and smooth ruffled feathers.
All of this had started when Vax took a human as a mate—a practice many shifters already engaged in, but not one which the older European shifters approved. Gavin shook his head at the thought of the old code.
They couldn’t take humans or shifters of a different species as mates. But, oh, the double standard of it, for many of the European old school shifters had mistresses that were human and shifters of a different persuasion. They just weren’t good enough to have as mates. How asinine.
His tiger agreed with a growl.
Of course we’d feel this way, now that we know Layla, Gavin reminded his tiger, picking on his feline for having found a mate of a different species.
His tiger snarled, appreciating Gavin’s joke.
Dane looked at Gavin expectantly, waiting for his solution to the problem.
“I’ll go check it out.”
Chapter Four
Layla snuck away from Sanctuary, toward her guest apartment, taking the stairs two at a time. She avoided the elevators so she wouldn’t run into any other shifters. The last thing she wanted was for them to scent the smell of sex on her—even if it had been solo.
