Gentleman caller? Who even said things like that?
Then Krista’s heart stuttered in her chest. It must be Blake; that was why she’d suddenly been bathed in a cloud of feel-good. “What does he want?” she asked cautiously. Was he there to file a restraining order on her and her great-aunt?
The medical assistant clasped her hands together with a dreamy look so saccharine-sweet it’d make a vulture shifter sick. “He’s probably come to plight his troth.” The words drifted out on a sigh.
Not likely. After the way her presence had earned nothing more than grunts and glares for the past few weeks? “Plight his… He can damn well keep his troth to himself, thank you very much. I don’t know where it’s been. And for the record, I have the legal power to have you committed for a mental health evaluation.”
“Is it crazy to be in love with love?” Susie trilled.
“The way you do it, yes. Don’t say the L word around me, it makes me break out in hives!” Then she grimaced. “I’ll see him. Can you show him back here without embarrassing me?”
Susie pouted, but disappeared and then returned quickly enough that Krista only had a minute or two to torture herself, wondering why the heck he was there.
She knew when he was in the hall before she even saw him. Okay. Yes. She could hear him, but beyond that, she could feel him. She could smell his wolf. It was like her fox craved him.
Then again, she hadn’t had sex with anyone other than her Battery-Operated Boyfriend in three months—ever since she’d ditched her ex. And she hadn’t had good sex since… well, her memory didn’t go back that far. So it wasn’t a matter of fate, it was a matter of rampaging hormones. An advanced case of lust-osis.
She watched Blake strolling into the room, all muscles and raw power, and tried to remember that hot men were not to be trusted.
Which was difficult, because her body had turned on like an electric current was being put through her. Well, not literally. She was a medical professional. She knew that if she actually touched a live wire, it wouldn’t feel like this.
But maybe a low-voltage wire. Like testing a battery with her tongue. Or… other parts. She squirmed self-consciously.
Dear lord. All she wanted to do was to taste the skin at the base of his neck, to feel the pulse of his heartbeat as she ran her hands along his well-muscled arms. They’d be so hard.
Hard?
Judging by how tight his pants were at the crotch, he was having a similar reaction to her.
Her inner vixen chortled playfully. No sense of decorum.
Susie, pink-cheeked, fanned her face with her hand behind Blake’s back, then slipped from the room.
Krista’s heart rate accelerated as she imagined all the things she’d love to do to that incredibly gorgeous man. She wanted to rip off his clothes. She wanted to hear the sound of his shirt buttons hitting the floor— Oh, it was carpet. Okay, hitting the chair and the desk. She could practically hear him moaning as she felt how hard he’d become for her.
Wait. He was moaning. Or groaning. Or… growling. Not consciously, but the sound rumbled up from his chest as he stared at her.
His amber eyes bored into hers, setting off a series of ever-growing fires rampaging through her body.
She struggled to control her breathing, pressing her fingertips to the desk, a piece of paper crumpling with the effort. All she wanted was to kiss him. Just once. To taste him on her tongue, to sample what he had to offer.
And that was precisely why she wasn’t going to do it. Hadn’t she had the best possible example growing up of what happened if you let your urges override your brain? You turned into Maybelline Ellis, that was what happened, and given the choice, she’d rather be turned into a fur hat and matching cuffs. At least that way she’d be some use to somebody.
She cleared her throat. “What can I do for you? I’m sorry about my great-aunt. She’s a little tetched in the head, as they say back home. Is that why you’re here?”
He didn’t answer right away. He didn’t move, didn’t twitch. He was like a big man-mountain, standing and staring. Finally, he blinked and stepped forward, raising his chin almost in challenge. “No.” His tone was harsh, so much harder than it had been earlier in the afternoon, and laced with defensiveness, too. Why?
“Then how can I help you?” She needed to get him out of there. Fast. Before her inner fox drove her to chew his clothes from his body.
Would that be a bad thing?
No.
Yes! Yes, it would be a bad thing! Totally unprofessional! Damn her trampy little fox! Not for the first time, she wished she could put her inner animal in a time-out.
He stepped closer. Krista tried to back away, but her butt hit the edge of the desk, and all she managed was to sway backward so she was staring up into his handsome face. He moved a touch closer—close enough that she could feel the heat from his big, hard body.
“I need…” His voice was a low, husky, musical growl. His pupils were dilated in those intoxicating whisky-colored eyes, and the smell of his skin was a dizzying musk that had her vixen rolling on the ground and panting for his touch. She squeezed her thighs together and suppressed a little moan.
“Yes?” she whispered.
“I need you…”
Oh my god, he really had come to plight his troth. She still wasn’t clear what a troth was, but maybe she should get her hands on it and find out. She’d bet he had a really impressive one.
“…to help me talk to some people in Flowering Dogwood.”
That was like stepping into a cold shower. Like a slap. Her libido withered like a salted slug.
“I work for an agency called Shifters, Inc.,” he continued. “And we need help from someone who’s an insider.”
She’d heard of Shifters, Inc., a security agency who did everything from personal protection to rescuing kidnap victims.“Pass, thanks.” She didn’t even have to think about it. If she wouldn’t go back for Hattie, she sure as hell wouldn’t go back for a perfect—very, very perfect—stranger.
He blinked, but his expression didn’t alter.
She closed her eyes and shook her head. Of course, this incredibly hot man wasn’t interested in her—just what he thought she could do for him: get him into an area where outsiders weren’t welcome.
She opened her eyes again, her expression firm. “No. If that’s all, you can leave.”
“Did you know that the odds of us meeting were astrological because we’re fated mates?” he blurted out.
“What?” she stared at him in confusion.
“Astronomical! That’s what I said.”
She shook her head, and tendrils of hair slid over her eye. She tucked them back behind her ear, noting how his eyes followed her every movement. “Nope. Pretty sure it wasn’t.”
“It’s what I meant.” His face flushed with embarrassment and he took a shuffling step backwards, suddenly looking awkward and unsure. Good.
“Either way, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sorry.” He winced. “Something about you fogs up my brain. But we are. Fated mates. I’m pretty sure.”
“God, I hope not, because I wouldn’t want to be fated-mated to a manipulative asshole. Did you seriously think I’d just melt into your arms and rush off to introduce you to all the folks back home? You’re hot, but not hot enough to short-circuit my brain, you douchewad.”
She didn’t miss the little spark of satisfaction in his eyes when she said he was hot, but then he heaved a very fake, very manufactured sigh. “I knew this was a mistake. You’re way too smart to be manipulated. I knew you were clever as well as beaut—” Her fangs shot out of her gums and her eyes went murderous. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I’m not a particularly smooth operator, all right?” He held up his hands defensively. “I just got out of the army. Been in since I was eighteen. You’d be surprised how little training time is spent on wooing and reading love poems.” His expression turned business-like. No more fake-seduction glinting in hi
s eyes. Krista’s fox was sad, but Krista’s human side—the side that was in control—was resolute and angry. “So, cards on the table. There’s a missing lion shifter cub, out in Flowering Dogwood. Ethan Coffman. Nine years old.He vanished this morning.”
She could have told him to notify local law enforcement, but both she and he knew it would be a waste of time.
“Why are you involved?”
“We’ve been hired to bring him home.”
Even though the mention of her childhood home should have completely quenched the raging lust-fire that burned inside her, she couldn’t stop watching his lips as they formed words, imagining how they would feel on her mouth, her neck. Her nipples.
She forced her gaze up to his eyes. Rich amber, concerned and sincere. “Why do you need me?”
“Because you’re from there, and you’re close with a prominent family from the very area where the boy disappeared. And I can’t investigate without a local helping me.”
Close with a prominent family—he could only be talking about Dawnie Reed and her little clan of moonshiners. She snorted, leaning back in her chair. “That’s funny.” But her smile hurt her face.
“Why is that funny?”
“Because I’m the last person anyone wants to see back in the holler. You think they hate outsiders? Wait ‘til you see how they feel about me.” Anyone outside of her immediate family, that is. She would be allowed to head straight to the reunion and then straight back out of town, but hanging around would be hazardous to her health.
He narrowed his gaze at her. “Why’s that?”
None of your business, you gorgeous blackmailing bastard. “I left on bad terms. I won’t be any more welcome there than you would. Possibly even less, because they’ve never met you, but me… certain people hold a grudge against me.”
He stared at her like she was prey and he was hunting her.
Her knees went weak. Damn. When had her bones all turned liquid? A brief wave of dizziness washed over her, and she blinked hard.
“Look, I’m sorry about the missing kid. I am. If he’s alive, I truly hope you find him. But if I go there with you, doors will slam in your face so fast it’ll make your head swim. You’d have more luck on your own then you would with me.”
Her heart ached at the thought of a missing cub, but she wasn’t lying to Blake. She’d not only be putting herself in deadly peril if she showed up in Flowering Dogwood after ten years, pounding on doors and asking questions – she’d be putting Blake and the cub right in the crosshairs with her.
Chapter Four
Blake
It took everything Blake had not to leap over that desk and answer the call those slitted amber eyes issued. He smelled the heat coming off her. It rolled over and through him, pushing him past his limitations.
But he really needed her to cooperate. If she didn’t… well, there was the job, of course, but more importantly, there was a missing nine-year-old out there. And every hour that slid by lessened the cub’s chances of coming home.
She looked away, lowering her eyes. He could see the strain in her face, the tension in her jaw. “There’s nothing that I can do to help you, Blake.”
He shook his head in disbelief. Was she utterly heartless? “Did you not hear me, Krista? There’s a little boy missing. I need your help.”
She threw her hands up in frustration.“You know, you’re easy on the eyes, but apparently, you’re hard of hearing. They would not greet me with open arms. More like bared fangs.”
“You’re still the best lead I have.” She was the only one he had.
But he really didn’t want to blackmail her. If he played that card, he couldn’t undo it. Any connection they had, even if it was fated to be, would be undone.
“I have a practice. If I thought anyone would talk to me, I’d go with you in heartbeat, no matter how chilly the welcome. Hell, I’d even go by myself, if I thought it would help, but I’m not ditching my patients for a fool’s errand.”
“You’re one person on a team of people. There are other doctors here, other nurses.” But no one who did what she did. He knew that. Oh, Krista was discreet about the remedies she prescribed under the table to her shifter patients, but he and his team had been gathering intel on her for weeks now, and they were good at what they did.
She shook her head and tapped a stack of papers on her desk. “No. If I go with you, I’ll actually risk making things worse. I’m sorry. You’ll just have to find someone else.”
Why was she making this so hard? “The DEA is already investigating the Reed family. The people who took you in when you left home.” Which was true. It was in the file he’d glanced at before he’d come in. “One call is all it would take to have them arrested.”
She snorted. “You think I don’t know what they do? Believe me, I know better than anyone. They know the risks. They know the damage they do. And they choose to do it anyway. I came to terms with that a long time ago—I had to. So have fun with that. And you’re bluffing, anyway. If the DEA had hard evidence, the Reeds would already be growling through the bars of a prison cell.”
He felt a flare of anger—tempered with sympathy. His instincts told her she was a good person at heart, which meant that whatever had left her this bitter about her hometown must have been pretty devastating.
But that meant he had only one card left to play. Blake thought of a missing cub, hopefully still alive somewhere, and he stiffened his spine. No more Mr. Nice Wolf.
“I know why you’re so popular with the patients.”
She went completely still.
Here was the point of no return. He met her gaze and clenched his teeth, fighting his wolf as he forced the words out of his mouth. “I know about the special medicine you use.” After Stef had assigned him to investigate her, he’d hung around the clinic, eavesdropping with his superior shifter hearing. He’d lurked outside her office window, his wolf howling to be close to her, and heard her telling her patients about the medicinal plants that would cure their ailments better than conventional medicine. “If you don’t come with me, I will be forced to turn you in.”
All the blood drained from her face. “You rotten, flea-bitten mongrel.”
That hurt worse than a bullet—not the words, but the rage behind them. He ground on relentlessly. “You’ll lose your place here, your license. There’s a good chance that the entire clinic will go down with you. Your patients will be forced to go back to real doctors who can prescribe them real medicines backed by the FDC.”
She was so pale he was afraid she was going to faint. He felt like a complete and utter bastard. But he met her gaze squarely, refusing to show how conflicted he felt inside.
Fury flashed over her features. “You’re really going to go there?”
“There’s a little boy’s life at stake here, Krista. I think you’ll find there are more than a few lines I’m willing to cross to make sure he comes home safely.”
She rose to her feet and stalked towards him, her amber eyes flashing with heat, but not the good kind. He found it even more intoxicating, but he didn’t think that telling her she was beautiful when she was angry would go over too well right now.
“Do you think I’m lying when I tell you that I’m not welcome there anymore?”
“I know that if you put your mind to it, you could find a way back in. Otherwise, your family wouldn’t still be visiting you from the holler.”
“Hattie is the only one visiting me, and her belfry is short of a few bats on a good day. If I went home to my family shindig, they’d tolerate me because it’s tradition for everyone to attend, even the black sheep. It’s fine for me to drive straight to the reunion and then straight back to the city. But me poking my nose around in the holler, asking dangerous questions? That’s a whole different game. That’s the kind of thing that is likely to get both of us very, very dead. Which won’t help the cub at all.”
Krista growled with frustration. The sound made lust curl down his spine even as fury
flashed in her eyes. “And how could you threaten my patients like that?” she raged at him. “Do you have any idea what their lives will be like if I lose my license?”
In the civilian world, he’d been told he needed to blend in, to be softer, but this woman drove him crazy. His wolf was already biting, gnashing to get out. Besides, he’d tried the soft approach, and his attempt at seduction had fallen flat. He was just more of a brute force kind of guy. He stepped in closer again, telling himself he was trying to intimidate her with his size—not get closer to her, to breathe in her intoxicating scent. “You don’t have to lose your license. It’s your choice.”
“No, I just have to let you blackmail me.” She gestured to the door with her right hand, then let it fall back to her side. “I just have to go back to the place on Earth where I am least welcome.”
He shrugged, forcing his tone to stay harsh. “The ball’s in your court. We spend a few days there, you tell them I’m your boyfriend—”
“Boyfriend?” Her voice rose to a shriek, half outrage and half hysteria. “That’s not what they call it there! You’d be the feller courting me. Or my mate.”
Mate. I want to be your mate. I am your mate.
He shook the thought away. What the hell was wrong with him?
“Fine. I’m the feller that’s courting you, then.” His lips quirked in amusement at that, which made her claws shoot from her fingertips. With a growl, she retracted them.
“Damn it, Blake!” she spat at him. “You think this is a joke? Push me any further and my fox will snack on wolf jerky.”
He gave a brief bark of amusement at the thought of her attacking him, but he knew deep down it was a flustered attempt to cover the flash of arousal that had shot through him. “I’d love to see you try.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, would you? You think you’d overpower me?”
“You’re a fox. I’m a wolf.” He took another step closer to her.
She took one closer to him until they were practically nose to nose. “I can outplay you. I’m smarter. I’m faster. I could make you into a fur rug and walk all over you.”
Blackmailed By The Wolf (Shifters, Inc. Book 6) Page 3
