by Ashley Shay
The Shifters of Catamount, Texas 1
The Lady Takes a Pride
Carla Barnhart finds a murder-for-hire plot in her boss's e-mail and thinks it's a joke, but when he turns up dead, she knows she's in trouble. Taken into protective custody with a new identity as Carly Barnes, she is stashed away in Catamount, Texas, with alpha Tyler Lucas and his pride of cougars. Most of the pride knows the shy schoolteacher is meant to be their mate, but youngest brother, Cougar, has doubts this human woman will understand his need to dominate and discipline.
Loving her new life and the men of the pride, Carly earns final acceptance by visiting Cougar's BDSM club and showing the Dom she's willing to learn. She thrives under the passionate attention of the shifters, but their happiness is short-lived. Trouble comes in the form of a serpent assassin determined to kill Carly, just as he killed the pride's first mate.
Note: There is no sexual relationship or touching for titillation between or among the men.
Genre: Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Western/Cowboys
Length: 123,127 words
THE LADY TAKES A PRIDE
The Shifters of Catamount, Texas 1
Ashley Shay and Josie Hunter
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THE LADY TAKES A PRIDE
Copyright © 2012 by Ashley Shay and Josie Hunter
E-book ISBN: 1-61926-587-7
First E-book Publication: April 2012
Cover design by Les Byerley
All art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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THE LADY TAKES A PRIDE
The Shifters of Catamount, Texas 1
ASHLEY SHAY AND JOSIE HUNTER
Copyright © 2012
Chapter One
Federal Marshal Gabriel Laughton read through the folder in his hand though he already knew everything about the witness on the other side of his desk. He hated handling normals, especially the women. For one reason or another, they offered nothing but trouble. They either did something stupid—like contacting an old friend—to force relocation or they ended up falling for him. He’d had a few equate “saving your ass” with “in love with you.” Yep. Nothing but trouble.
He glanced up. This assignment might work out okay. She was a pretty enough woman but a little tame for his taste. He liked a woman with sass, one that turned heads in a crowd. Carla Barnhardt wasn’t that sort of woman, not by a long shot. She looked respectable, like someone’s unmarried sister, like a grade school teacher.
Gabriel looked at her over the top of the manila folder, and she gave him a nervous smile. She had large blue eyes with long dark lashes that contrasted with the ash blonde of her shoulder-length hair. He nodded to himself, pleased with her wholesome image. The place he’d chosen for her fit her like a fine glove because there was no way in hell his cousins down in Catamount, Texas would be interested in this kind of woman. And, as luck would have it, the Lucas brothers had a little girl. That bonus offered her a ready job, so suspicion would be minimal.
In the Witness Protection Program, the Justice Department tried to find occupations for their witnesses that had a hint of their former training. If nothing could be found in their field, the department picked something available that interested them. He usually combed the database for a couple of hours until he found the perfect solution. In this case, though, the point was moot. Carla couldn’t be assigned just any location. Oh no, the little city mouse hadn’t just found herself embroiled in a regular criminal mess. She’d unwittingly stumbled across the line that would forever change her life. She’d become a blip on the radar of the shadow world few people knew about, and now, she not only had thugs after her, she had otherworldly thugs after her. She didn’t stand a chance unless he set her up with the right people. And his badass shifter cousins…definitely the right kind of people.
Ms. Barnhardt would make a perfect nanny for his cousin’s daughter. Tyler Lucas lived with his three brothers on a spread that not only had a lot of private land, Gabe knew for a fact it had great security. Tyler hadn’t worked in Homeland Security’s paranormal division since its inception without extensive knowledge of what it took to keep intruders away, plus he had the connections to get the extra oomph it took to keep paras off his land. Tyler’s place would be airtight against the bad elements of both the normal world and the other world few knew existed.
Gabe hoped she’d go for the transfer because they had to get her out of Washington, DC, ASAP. Her safety had been compromised, but Gabriel wasn’t about to tell her that. Being new to the case, he knew he had to win her trust in order to be her handler. The last thing he needed was a scared filly bolting out of town. That wouldn’t look good on his record, and her bloated, poisoned carcass would look even worse. Snake shifters left grisly
crime scenes.
He cleared his throat, and she flinched. “Sorry.” Damn, she was skittish. He’d have to ease into this gently, act like it was just another assignment for him, though it was far from just another assignment. “Let me refresh my memory of your case. You became aware of a murder-for-hire plot aimed at a senator, right?”
Carla nodded, biting her full bottom lip. He watched her for a moment, concentrating on her mouth. He hadn’t noticed how lush and rosy it was when she first walked in. Her small white teeth nibbled seductively, and for some reason, he couldn’t—
“Marshal Laughton?”
His gaze shot to her eyes. What the hell was wrong with him? He obviously needed to get laid if he’d fallen under the spell of Ms. White Bread. “Yes, Ms. Barnhardt?”
“Is everything okay? You seemed…”
He shook his head. “Everything’s fine.” He must have sounded a bit too brusque because she drew back slightly in her chair. He glanced at her mouth again. Just a pair of lips. Nothing more. He wondered, though, if he could get Perkins to switch assignments with him. Perkins had gotten some regular normal Joe, but he looked smart enough to keep quiet. He noticed her hands tightening on the arms of the chair, so he softened his tone. “Please continue.”
“Okay.”
She took a deep breath, like she needed fortification to tell her story one more time. He watched her breasts rise and fall under the cheap material. The white cotton shirt seemed a bit tight. He thought maybe the stress had been getting to her. In a situation like this, women either lost too many pounds or packed them on. Carla Barnhardt obviously found her strength in Twinkies and ice cream. Not too much, but enough that her body held what he thought might be newly rounded curves, curves that he suddenly found incredibly appealing. Damn, he needed to get rid of her.
“I accidentally read an e-mail to my boss, and the details were all spelled out. At first I thought it might be a joke.” Her gaze darted toward the door as though she expected someone to refute her story. “Then that man showed up for a meeting with Mr. Haney, and I knew it wasn’t a joke. The man felt—” She swallowed hard, and her small hands tightened on the arms of the chair. “I’m not even sure how to say this…”
“Words usually work best,” he snapped.
She jerked back in her seat again. Damn, he hadn’t meant to sound that curt, but this woman did something to him. He was having trouble holding on to his essence. The mystical shield he created and wore like a second skin to mask his paranormal aura seemed to be coming unraveled. This woman definitely had something special about her, though for the life of him, he couldn’t figure it out. She seemed just like any other human woman.
His gaze locked on the pulse that fluttered in her neck. He needed to keep her alive. Just keep her alive like he’d done for scores of others. Why did that seem like such a monumental task right now?
He waved his hand. “He felt…”
The word burst out of her mouth with more force than he’d have thought possible. “Wrong.” She sat up straighter now that she’d made a decision. “Just wrong. I know I don’t work for the Justice Department, like you do”—here she lifted her chin to condemn him for his attitude—“but when something or someone doesn’t feel right, I know it. He felt wrong.”
Gabe rubbed his chin. Yep. Most people couldn’t get more specific than that. He’d heard that word a lot throughout his career. Of course, Gabe had heard other words that would have fit this particular thing. Sinister, nasty, repulsive, but the most often used word—“Survey says!”—was “snaky.” People had no idea how close they came with that one.
“We can go with wrong for now,” Gabe said wearily. He already knew what class of shifter they were dealing with. He just wanted to see how in tune she was. Pretty in tune since she’d only caught a glimpse of the shifter and come away with such intense feelings. He’d have been surrounded with some pretty tough magic when exposed out in the open like that, so if this little lady had felt even a second of weird, she had some powers of her own. Perhaps some kind of empath. She’d obviously felt something leaking into her normal air space. Maybe his cousins weren’t the right answer to this particular—
Her voice snapped him out of his thoughts, and she sounded more than a little perturbed with him. “Marshal, why do you keep ignoring me?”
When he glanced up, he saw something shimmering in her eyes. It took him a moment to recognize it as aggression. Was Little Ms. White Bread coming out of her shell, or had the stress finally gotten to her? Either way, she was staring at him like she either wanted to tear her claws into him or jump his bones. He couldn’t decide which, but both were disconcerting.
He tossed his pen on the desk. “Just thinking, Ms. Barnhardt.”
“So what did I see? What do you think it was?”
“Excuse me?”
“That thing…that movement or current or whatever it was I saw under his skin. I mean, for a moment, I thought…”
So she had a lot more than just empathic abilities. She’d actually seen beneath the surface of her visitor at the school. And yet, so far, she hadn’t noticed anything unusual about him. Granted, the cloaking in the department was incredibly powerful, but given the magic the serpent shifter must have used, it seemed entirely probable she’d see something hovering over him as well.
She let her gaze wander to the window as she struggled with what she’d seen. He knew it was hard for anyone who saw the beginnings of a shift. Most often, they were able to rationalize it into their imagination and laugh it off, but Little Ms. Barnhardt seemed to be having a really hard time with that. She chewed on her luscious lip as it trembled. Oh, yeah, this would definitely be a taxing assignment. Might as well go for broke.
“What did you think, Ms. Barnhardt?”
Her eyes held that look he’d seen before, the one that said vocalizing the thoughts in her head would make her crazy. He thought she’d fall the way of all the others and shake her head, those silky strands of hair fluttering around her shoulders. Then she’d give a little laugh and say it had been her imagination and—
“I thought he was going to change…into something else…right in front of me.”
She shocked the living hell out of him. He almost choked on his own spit, but thankfully, she didn’t notice. He coughed then pulled a couple of file folders toward him, still struggling to find his breath. Lord, they were all in a world of hurt here. If that twisted serpentine of shit had even suspected she’d seen him shifting, she’d be dead within days. He couldn’t catch the words before they fell out of his mouth.
“You realize this is a complete clusterfuck, right?”
Her mouth dropped open. He wasn’t sure if it was his language or his acceptance that things were as bad as she feared. Either way, she didn’t say a word. She just nodded and glanced down at her lap, where her ringless fingers toyed with each other.
“As long as we’re both on the same page,” Gabe said. “So let’s get back to the details. Your boss just left this e-mail open on his computer?” He knew no one who walked away and left their e-mail open in an office. Haney must have been an idiot, or he’d thought Carla Barnhardt was. “I can’t see anyone stupid enough to leave details of a murder around for just anyone to read.”
Carla shook her head with a little frown. Her full lips pressed out in a little pout then turned down. When she continued, he had to force his gaze back up to her eyes. “No, no, it’s not like that. Mr. Haney was always very secretive about his mail. In fact, he generally shut down his computer when he left the office, but we had a little emergency in one of the classrooms. He had to respond, of course, because we’re a private school, and we can’t afford to offend any of the parents. Since he is”—she took a deep breath—“or was the principal, you can see he had no choice. He may have been involved in a murder plot, but he’d always been a good principal.”
If she saw anything incongruous about that statement, she didn’t show it. She paused for a moment and stared at him
. He had no idea why, but those blue eyes gazed at him, seeming to want some sort of response. He thought a man could get lost in those innocent, trusting eyes, but he had no idea what she wanted. Generally, witnesses had emotions he couldn’t understand and didn’t really want to. Maybe he needed to validate her misplaced trust. Carla probably felt duped. She’d worked for Haney for a while. He just nodded.
She wiggled her butt in the chair and gave him a tiny smile. He smiled back, not sure why, but that wiggle nearly undid him. His cock twitched in his pants, and for the twentieth time since she’d walked into the room, he thought how much he needed to get her out of his office and off to Texas.
“I meant to turn off the screen in case it was confidential information about a student. You know how it is. Kids wander in and out of the offices without warning, and Mr. Haney pretty much kept his office open and available.” She heaved a huge sigh, and temptingly, her breasts rose up then fell. A button strained, and a gap appeared, giving him a glimpse of satiny skin.
Gabe leaned back in his chair, forcing his eyes from her chest. “Private school. Good principal. Yeah, I get that.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “I really thought he was a nice man.”
Gabe jumped in to stop the waterworks before they started. He didn’t handle weepy females well. Damn, he wanted that regular Joe. “So you read the e-mail?”
Carla blushed prettily and nodded, her eyes sparkling with those unshed tears. “I admit it. I couldn’t resist the temptation. I started reading, and I couldn’t stop. The message said—”
