by E A Price
“I can’t tell you the rest,” she admitted uneasily.
He stared at her for a few beats before blowing out a breath. “Fine, I guess that’s fair – it’s your job and all. I won’t push you to tell me everything.”
“Thank you.”
“See? I can compromise. That’s what you do in a relationship - compromise.”
She was about to object that they weren’t actually in a relationship before he blundered on.
“So, what do we do first?”
Juliet rubbed her hands together, trying to ignore how much she was actually starting to enjoy herself. She’d been an investigator for many years before being promoted, and honestly, she had loved it. Investigating gave her purpose, a reason to get up every night, a chance to fill the enormous hole festering in her heart. Being Director was fun too. Well, not really, but it gave her purpose. But investigating again, it made her happy, made her forget about all the things she missed out on being a vampire.
“Well, I’ve got Zane hunting for the ex-boyfriend and possibly finding out something about the new boyfriend if one exists, and my people at the SEA going through her financials.” Juliet started pacing up and down. “I want to know how a college student can afford to stay in an off-campus apartment on her own, especially given that she had no job.”
“Yeah, according to this, her parents thought she was still in a dorm room,” said Ryder holding up a statement.
Juliet felt a swell of pride that he really was trying to help and then quickly ignored it. Distance she repeated to herself. Distance was the key. No need to get mushy just because he can read a few statements.
“Exactly, so however she was paying for it can’t have been good otherwise her parents would know. Maybe the new boyfriend?”
“Maybe she was a drug dealer or a prostitute. Maybe she killed the previous owner of the apartment. Maybe she was a jewel thief!” Ryder lit up with excitement at the possibilities.
“Or maybe she won the lottery and didn’t want to share it.”
Ryder shook his head. “That’s not very juicy.”
“The truth rarely is. For now, I would like to speak to her neighbors and landlord myself. They’ve already had a soft approach, perhaps a tougher line of questioning may help.”
Ryder smiled. “I’ll drive.”
*
“You’re beautiful when you pout,” murmured Ryder.
She was too. She had a face made for pretty pouts. All delicate and fine like a china doll.
“I am not pouting,” she sniffed. “I just can’t believe you would change the locks on my house without telling me!”
Something that came up when she tried to lock her door on leaving the house.
“Hey, I needed to make sure you were safe.” Whatever it took, he would. If she thought the locks were bad, he best not mention the lasers he was having installed.
“I can look after myself,” she muttered, though without much fire.
His fingers brushed the back of her neck as they climbed the stairs up to Carrie’s floor. Her long black hair was artfully piled on her head, small ringlets cascading around her. He kind of preferred it down more, but the back of her neck was kind of sexy. Not a thought he’d had about another woman. Necks weren’t usually sexy. They shouldn’t be sexy, but Juliet could turn linoleum into a weapon of mass seduction.
He walked a step behind her, staring at the small expanse of pale skin, speckled by dark strands of hair and artfully dappled with a few freckles. His fingers itched to touch her again, to stroke that skin, to join the dots between her freckles. He resisted the urge. She was already pretty steamed. Which, while that was hot, also meant she wasn’t open to any accidental fondling.
Perhaps it was the idea that one day his bite mark would adorn that perfect neck. Ragged, red teeth marks to show everyone she belonged to him. Unless she healed the marks. That thought brought him up short. No, she couldn’t heal them – there was something magical about bonding that meant they never healed. But then, he’d personally never seen a vampire with a bonding mark. He put that down to most vampires being so repulsive nobody wanted to bond with them. Juliet was special, though. But maybe he should ask Kalinda about the bonding. Still, if it did heal, he could always mark her over and over again until it stuck. Yes, he liked the sound of that. Burying himself in her body, making her shake with pleasure, begging for more as his fangs pressed into her flesh.
Juliet turned back to look at him. Her nose twitched as she scented his arousal and Ryder resisted the urge to tap it with his finger.
“You can stop that for a start,” she scolded.
He chuckled inwardly, but his beast merely harrumphed. His inner sabre-tooth tiger was frustrated with the lack of progress in the mating department. Maybe Ryder could tolerate moving slowly but the tiger couldn’t. As far as he could see, they had met their mate, now was the time to take her, bite her and bond her to them. Wooing was a dirty word to the animal.
Well, tough shit. When Juliet did submit, it would be that much sweeter to him.
Juliet flipped open her notepad as they reached the fifteenth floor. She thought to annoy him by suggesting the stairs. As if. Walking behind her, watching her ass sway, staring at her neck – he could do that all day.
“Okay,” she muttered. “Our victim was in apartment one-five-five. According to statements, the lady in one-five-three saw her mystery guest leaving in the middle of the night.”
“Awesome.” Probably a nosey neighbor with too much time on her hands. Probably watches all the neighbors coming and going. She should be easy to crack.
He strode past her, ignoring her protests and firmly banged on the door to one-five-three. The woman who answered the door surprised him.
Chapter Seventeen
“Can I get either of you a drink? Carlton! Put that down! Put that down, right now or so help me god! I have apple juice or… No, Missy, stop that, leave the lady’s purse alone!” There was a distinct crash from the back of the apartment, and a baby started screaming. She gave them a harried smile before excusing herself and leaving to either get the baby or deal with whatever was causing the crash.
Their witness, Lina Harper, turned out to have six kids, and an apartment that looked like a bomb dropping on it might actually improve it.
Ryder navigated the sticky, toy-strewn floor to the couch and made a space for himself and Juliet among the cheerios and plastic army men.
Carlton who looked to be about six narrowed his eyes at Ryder while clutching a plastic hammer menacingly. While Missy, a dimpled four-year-old desperately tried to make her way into Juliet’s purse, in spite of Juliet’s objections. Two more were running around, though they didn’t stay still long enough for Ryder to get a good look at them.
Ryder scowled at Carlton who was in no way perturbed and went so far as to throw a peanut butter sandwich at him.
Cubs grouched his beast.
“Carlton, stop that!” howled a returning Lina. She was now carrying a baby and dragging a teenage boy by his ear. “Round up your brothers and sisters and set the table,” she ordered him. He gave her a sulky expression, but he did try as he dragged Carlton and Missy away.
Lina smiled apologetically, particularly as Juliet pulled a juice box out of her purse.
Ryder sniffed Lina again, this time ignoring the scents of baby powder and peanut butter and the other myriad of smells that seemed to hang around children. She was an ocelot, and all her children were probably ocelots too. It would explain why they were so active at night. Young cubs tended to act like their animals even before their first shift.
“Now, about that drink…”
“We’re fine, thank you,” said Juliet smoothly.
“We’re not usually this chaotic,” said Lina almost defensively. “My mate is away on business and… well, it was his idea to have six kids!”
Juliet wrinkled her pretty nose. “I think something is about to burn.”
“My pie!” wailed Lina as she thr
ust the baby at Juliet and ran into the kitchen.
Ryder shook his head and then rolled his eyes as he realized he was sitting on a piece of toast. His tiger let out a snort. Kids really were an acquired taste. Perhaps they were tolerable if they were your own, but his tiger was about ready to leave this bunch to fend for themselves out in the wild. He’d never considered having children before, and that was a good thing now that he was planning on claiming a vampire as a mate.
He was about to make a comment to Juliet, laugh at the harassed Lina and her demonic offspring but he caught the look on Juliet’s face, and he stopped.
Juliet was carefully cradling the baby in her arms, giving it a strange expression, half-sad, half-pleased. But altogether, she looked at it with such longing and disappointment that even Ryder’s breath was taken away from him.
Lina rushed back into the room. “I have like two minutes before I need to serve dinner to my hellions, you better hurry.”
Juliet looked up, her eyes shining. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
Ryder jumped in to help her. “So do you think your neighbor was a prostitute or was she dealing drugs?”
*
Lina slammed the door behind them.
Ryder was shooting her concerned little looks. As well he might. She froze in there. Usually, she could keep a lid on things, but most people didn’t trust her to hold their babies. Most people didn’t give her the chance to hold the one thing in the world she could never have but desperately wanted.
When supernaturals were revealed to the world, she looked into the chance of maybe adopting, but no adoption agency on earth was desperate enough to give a baby to a vampire. Then she joined the SEA, and she was appeased, but holding that baby… that was the closest she’d been to one in absolutely years. She’d forgotten how tiny they were. Forgotten how beautifully they smelled. Almost forgotten her consuming desire to have one.
“That could have gone better,” she muttered.
Ryder pulled a piece of toast off his ass. “I’ve been thrown out of worse places.”
After Ryder’s doozy of a question, Lina wasn’t exactly pleased. Especially when her darling offspring started shouting the words prostitute and drug dealer over and over. Nor was she delighted when Ryder roared at them to shut the hell up, and they all burst into tears. He then started haranguing Lina about the man she saw leaving their victim’s apartment early in the morning. In spite of questionable tactics, he did manage to get more out of her than the SEA agent who questioned her previously. Juliet imagined her loquacity was down to her desire to get Ryder away from her so that she could deal with her sobbing youngsters and the smoke billowing out of her kitchen.
When she saw the male leaving Carrie’s apartment, Lina – at her wits end with the baby – was just returning from a night-time drive. The motion of the car occasionally put the baby to sleep. Despite being tired, Lina told them what he looked like and what he was wearing. She also gave them a description and a partial plate number of the car she suspected he was driving – it was the only car in the parking garage she had not seen before so assumed it was his.
Lina also told them never to come back to her apartment again, or she would go full ocelot on them.
“I’m sorry I froze in there.”
Ryder cocked his head to one side. “Yeah, about that…”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He waited a few moments, and she hoped he wouldn’t push her. She was feeling pretty brittle at that moment. It was a pleasant surprise that he didn’t. Just nodded and pinched her nose again. The nose thing was starting to become endearing.
“Apart from all the sticky surfaces, that was pretty fun,” he said.
“You like annoying people?”
“Well, I certainly don’t hate it.” His eyes flashed. “You want to talk to some more neighbors?”
“Sure.” She could do with the entertainment.
Chapter Eighteen
Ryder answered Juliet’s phone. “Hello?”
There was a pause on the other end. “Who is this?” a female voice asked crisply.
“Ryder, who’s this?”
“I am Emily, Juliet’s assistant. Where is she?”
“Taking a bath.”
After Ryder made a decent stab at bullying and alienating all the other neighbors on Carrie’s floor, and then her landlord, they returned to Juliet’s house. Still somewhat quiet, Juliet decided on a bath. Ryder made a half-hearted attempt to join her, and she shot him down with a weak smile, but he thought it was a good idea. A little relaxation couldn’t hurt.
Emily clicked her tongue in disapproval. “What are you doing answering her phone?” her voice becoming increasingly disagreeable.
“She can’t answer it herself. She’s in the bath,” he explained slowly as if she were an idiot. Hey, to his knowledge, she could be.
He could hear her teeth grinding and tried not to snicker. “Want to leave a message?”
“No,” she snapped. “I’ll call back.”
With that, she hung up.
“Who was that?” asked Juliet, gliding into the room.
His tiger inhaled her scent and flopped to the ground. She smelled fresh and lovely and beautiful and dressed only in a towel with wet hair licking her shoulders… Rawr.
His fangs pushed out as he struggled with his horny beast. Juliet gave him a small smile before covering herself in a robe.
“Spoilsport,” he growled.
“Who was that?” she insisted.
“Your assistant, Emily. I don’t think she likes me.”
He passed her the phone, and she shook her head. “Emily’s pretty protective.”
“Humph. You have me for protection.”
“Umm hmmm.” Juliet paid him no attention as she dialed and spoke to Emily.
“Hello, Emily… Oh him?” Juliet looked at him, and he did his best to look guileless. Not an easy feat for a sabre-tooth tiger. They naturally looked like a prehistoric beast up to no good.
“He’s just a friend,” she finished.
Ryder placed his hand over his heart and affected a wounded look.
Effortlessly, Juliet shimmied out of her towel and threw it at his head. He caught it, sniffed it and waggled his eyebrows at her.
She pouted ever so slightly and returned to the bathroom while chatting to Emily. She emerged, ten minutes later, her hair braided and wearing a baggy nightgown that wouldn’t have looked out of place on his grandma. Though Granny certainly never looked so hot.
Juliet tossed her phone on the bed. “Emily e-mailed over a report on Carrie’s financials.”
Ryder grabbed the laptop. Juliet hovered in the doorway. “Maybe we should do this downstairs… not in my bedroom.”
He bounced up and down on her bed a couple of times. “Nah, I’m pretty comfy here.”
“I’ll bet,” she muttered.
Carrie’s landlord admitted that he had no idea who was paying the rent. He was contacted by e-mail about the rental agreement, and the rent was directly sent to his bank account. He was informed Carrie would be living there and one day she just showed up. The landlord didn’t ask any questions. He was paid two hundred dollars over the asking price for the rent not to.
They wanted to find out who was sending the rent, but when that was suggested to him, the landlord declared they needed the warrant to see his financials. No amount of bullying by Ryder could make him change his mind.
“I asked Emily to find me a friendly judge in case we need the subpoena after all.”
Her phone started ringing again, and Ryder snatched it up before she could lunge at it.
“Juliet’s phone.”
“Give that to me,” she hissed.
Ryder shook his head.
“Who’s that?” asked a deep voice.
Here we go again he thought as his tiger grumbled at the masculine voice.
“Give me the phone!” insisted Juliet.
She grasped hi
s arm in an extremely firm grip and tried to pull the phone toward her.
“Ryder,” he replied to the male, struggling against her. She was disturbingly strong.
“Ryder who?” asked the voice suspiciously.
Juliet bared her fangs at him and grasped his arm with both hands. Ryder tried not to laugh too hard. She looked like a pixie with sharp teeth.
“Just Ryder, I’m her sex toy.”
Juliet let out a squeal of irritation and pulled on him even harder.
“Really?” chuckled the voice. “I’m Zane. Is Juliet there?”
Ryder tried to shuffle up the bed, and Juliet stopped him by straddling him and pinning his arms. Give me the phone she mouthed.
“Sure. One second. It’s for you.”
Juliet snatched at it and virtually yelled hello into the phone. “Oh, Zane, thank you for calling,” she said, calming slightly. “He’s nobody, ignore him. A crazy man got hold of my phone.”
Ryder snickered and folded his hands beneath his head, enjoying the view of Juliet, sitting atop him, a scowl on her pretty face and her nightgown askew.
“Thank you, Zane, that’s good work. Send an invoice for your hours to Emily… I’ll let you know.”
She hung up and growled at Ryder, her fangs still visible. His tiger let out a happy roar. Everyone always thought vampires were such scary creatures, but the fangs just made Juliet cuter.
“You aren’t funny.”
“What did Zane want?”
Juliet shifted herself on his stomach but made no move to get off him. “He managed to find the name of Carrie’s last boyfriend. A fellow student. Her friends didn’t mention him because they didn’t think it was relevant, or because they were convinced he had nothing to do with her death and didn’t want to get him in trouble.”
“Why not?”
She placed her hands on his chest. “Because he has a new girlfriend, and because, they say the break up was amicable, and the two remained friends. Plus, he’s human, so they doubted he could rip her throat out.”
“He wasn’t one of the friends your agents interviewed?”
“No. They interviewed the friends she texted the most and the ones who came forward after her death. He wasn’t one of them.”
