Curves & Alphas: A Paranormal Box Set: (BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance)

by Willow Brooks

  Yet, since meeting Ms. Sexy Enough to Fuck in a Lawyer Suit with the shapely legs that he wanted to see more of, his entire mood, and thus the rest of his day had been off as she occupied most of his thoughts.

  Looking down at the document he was supposed to be reviewing and signing, along with a stack of others that he had not made his way through like he should have already, he could see the remnants of the pen, a gift from his personal secretary, scattered all over the top page.

  Special resins made to look like semi-precious stones in the colors of warm browns and creams and sepia that Sandra had told him reminded her of him, rested now in shattered squares. At the first drip of ink from his fingers he swore and threw his hand toward the trash can.

  Hitting it too hard, as he was looking to see where else the ink may have landed, the brass-colored can hit the desk before tipping over to the ground. The clink of it against the wheel of his chair once it had rolled had set off another string of curse words as he set to motion to stop this ridiculous, yet out of control mishap. To top it all off, his secretary came in to see what all the cursing was about.

  “Something wrong, Alex?” she asked, catching sight of the pen and trash can mess. Coming around to help him out, always too forward and touchy, she grabbed up some tissues, recuing his hand from what was left of the pen.

  “You have been in a surlier mood than usual today since you got back from that new lawyers. I hate to tell you that she called moments ago to ask some questions she had looking further into the situation. Congrats though, whatever is bothering you, you killed the pen.”

  While Sandra remained professional, her attraction to him never went unnoted, not to him or to his brothers. She was part of his lion pack, a suitable mate, except, he just wasn’t attracted to her. She had long blond hair, with overwhelming reddish highlights like a mane that hung halfway down her back in loose waves.

  Built like a runway model with a slim figure, barely any boobs, though solid and strong, characteristic of his kind, she just didn’t have the curves he personally desired. Something a man could wrap his arms around, grab a hold of to bend the woman, a sturdy advocate, to his wills. Like Katrina Walton.

  “Just a rough day. Business. Nothing. Sorry about the pen,” he muttered.

  “Not a problem. I already know what to get you for your birthday now,” she said with a wink as she wiped down his fingers, clearing them of excess black ink, inspecting them for any injury though it couldn’t have mattered a few scrapes to a man like him.

  Even this attention, something he usually saw as cute, irritated him to no end today. Even though he wasn’t interested in Sandra, she still stroked his ego with her undying attention. Today it was just another interruption in his thinking about Katrina.

  To top it all off, that thinking irritated him more because he couldn’t act on his attraction, no matter how fierce it was. He went over it in his mind again, the dos and don’ts, more don’ts, a stupid long list of don’ts, as he smelled Sandra’s forest-like scent, and compared it to the rose like perfume Kat had worn.

  Dating a human was forbidden. While one night stands were allowed, most never risked it outside of a good lay with a woman they had no interest in outside of a warm body. The fear of mating with one couldn’t be taken lightly. It meant eternal torment for that shifter, as the relationship could never happen.

  Since the shifters had come out in society, something that had been seen among the packs at the time, due to an unfortunate series of incidents, as a necessary evil, they had made rules about their place in this new world, rewriting the old ones. Some had stayed though, like forbidding romance with humans to protect pack secrets. Yes, they still had some.

  A human could never be made to fully understand their life, from their shifts, to their superhuman skills, to the crossover between man and beast. It only ran along logic that the way they lived in the world would be different, and thus, humans wouldn’t be able to fully understand that either.

  There had been a few cases, ones tried before the packs, of a female werewolf and a human male, and also a male skin-walker and female human that had actually won out, but they were made to seem rare, extraordinary circumstances that made no real impact against the rules.

  Besides, skin-walkers were a pack of wildcards anyway. The only ones among them that could turn into whatever animal they chose at any given time, with no pulls like the werewolf had say with the moon, they remained more elusive, off the grid, into the worst of the criminal circuit among the packs. They were dangerous even to other shifters. That case of a shifter being with a human had been thought won on just that fact alone. They were rarely challenged.

  His mind wandered back to Kat, in her office, the way her suit, a charcoal grey, had hugged the generous swells of her breasts, her hips among other things. The shocking pink color of silk under the jacket had dipped between her breasts, revealing a line where they pressed together, threatened to fall from the clutches of her bra and tempt him into denying all he knew for just one bite of her.

  No!, he growled at himself, the sound actually emanating in his chest making Sandra look up into his face, distracting her from her business of cleaning up his mess.

  “Something sure has you wound up. It has to be the case. You are not going to be happy that Katrina called about the black jaguar accounts in the southern part of the state, the Munick clan.”

  “Damn it all,” he grumbled. “I knew she was going to be too good at her job for her own good.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Leave it. I’m fine,” he said to Sandra, pulling his hand from hers so abruptly that he felt guilty at the stricken look on her face. “Sorry. Forgive me. Just please, call Katrina Walton, criminal lawyer extraordinaire, and set up a business dinner for tonight. It isn’t optional. She needs to know that. When we call, she comes.”

  “Yes sure,” Sandra said, scurrying from the room, always eager to please.

  The word ‘come’ in reference to the lawyer had him getting hard, and he gripped his hand into a fist not to rub the ache in his hardening cock. He couldn’t date her. And, given the way his body reacted to her presence, a one night stand just to ease the ache was definitely out. There could be no half way if he ever got his hands on this woman. He knew that, and already it made his life resemble misery.

  Business however, like always, was allowed with humans. They had no choice. This meeting with Katrina was again, a necessary god-damned evil. She couldn’t go snooping too much, or the brothers would have to listen to him and tell the truth to their lawyer. Or, at least some version of it.

  A dinner was above and beyond, but something about the luxury of getting to spend time with her had seemed like a good idea in the desperate moment. It would be a mistake. He couldn’t play with this, but he needed time with her. He needed to see her, face to face, alone, so he could work all he was feeling out. Yes, he was going with that.

  The damned thing was a mess from day one. He didn’t know why the IRS couldn’t just leave them alone. Or the feds, or any other section of primarily human-run government or enforcement agencies. They left them no choice but to exist outside of the laws, just as they always had when their full identities had not been known.

  He figured, as they all did, that since human men couldn’t take them on in a fight, they took them on with the law. In a pack world, human laws were only made to be broken, from a man staying in human form in public to whatever regulations they had about how money could be maintained.

  A prime example of the struggle of this new world was the black jaguar Munick pack. They made their money producing and selling drugs. Sure, some were sold on the streets, mere hallucinogens to humans, but to the pack, they were vital, helping them to control animal urges when in human form. Not all of the packs had it easy when it came to assimilating.

  And since they had all been outed, some were having a harder time of it, fitting in. They had not had to answer for so much when their dual identities had been off
the radar. Now, humans wanted to know about them, the damn curious lot of them. It served no good for them to know all like most of them thought themselves entitled to.

  Faust Financial Services provided a much needed service to packs like them. They laundered their money, to use the human terms, to hide the wrong doings basically, and to provide much needed funds for that possible day that the packs may need to defend themselves against the humans if they pushed too far. Many dealt in weapons, with the guns on the increase in human hands since the shifters had emerged. Now, guns were pointed at them all the time, as if they were always a threat. So, they had to fight back bullets for bullets.

  Plus, if all went wrong, they would need money to build themselves lives elsewhere, in remote parts of the world as many already had. All the money went to those projects that the government could not know about, secret retreats off the grid.

  Sure, it was a risky business, money laundering, but it allowed them to begin building the same for their own pack if the need ever arose for them to get away. His mind wandered again, to getting him far away from all of this with Katrina by his side.

  In his daydream, he pulled from her dark hair whatever clips or pins she had holding it up until it fell down around her shoulders, maybe over her breasts, in a messy wave of dark silk. He’d run his hands through it first, lovingly, until he saw a certain look in her eyes of lust, of falling under its spell, and then he would grasp it into his fist, gently yanking her neck back until he had the skin exposed for his lips, his teeth.

  His phone buzzed. Sandra. He repositioned himself in the chair, trying to give his erection some much needed room in his pants as he hit the button that unleashed her sultry voice which would only serve to annoy him further at this moment as any distraction from his thoughts of Kat would.

  “Yes,” he grumbled.

  “Brad Munick for you on line one.”

  “Perfect. I’ve got it,” he said, slamming his finger down on the buttons to make that happen.

  “Brad. What can I do for you?” Alex said, waiting for the man to explode over the phone.

  While Alex himself was known as an impatient man, wanting what he wanted and wanting it now, the Munick’s were a combative group. Much like jaguars, again the animal also ruling the man, they were always on the prowl in every part of their lives, and they felt they had some edge up over the rest of them.

  In a way, all packs did whether lion or wolf or tiger, they all were alphas, and yet they had found some tenuous line that made it possible to all work together or die at the hands of the humans, in public life, or in the wild at the end of their guns.

  Most men were armed in this day and age, knowing themselves no match for shifters without bullets, most of the semi-automatic kind if they could get away with it. Alex, himself had a glock he carried always, but in his office, in a secret drawer under his desk, always above his thighs, there was a semi-automatic weapon at the ready, same as he had at home in a few places. They had to fight on their terms as well if they wanted to survive.

  “We got a call from some new lawyer of yours asking questions. Look, we know all about the IRS trying to build a case against you, and that makes us nervous enough, but to have some lawyer, supposedly working for you, asking questions, well that doesn’t sit right at all. She should only be talking to you, not bothering us with your mess. We were promised that our accounts were safe and that this would not blow back on us. We don’t need the heat.”

  “I’m sorry, Brad. I get it. Our mistake. She wasn’t told enough at our preliminary meeting. I have her coming here in a few hours to rectify the situation. I promise, it is the last you will hear of it. I have it covered,” Alex went on, the anger in him spilling out into his voice.

  “Fine. We are trusting you. Fix this, or the packs will be meeting.”

  Chapter Three

  She concentrated on her trembling breaths as the elevator climbed to the top floor of the building that housed Faust Financial Services. For the millionth time, she smoothed her hands over her waist, tugging on her suit jacket. Throwing her hands down, she realized that fussing with her clothing undid the deep breathing exercises she’d just gone through. Katrina began counting backwards, but got distracted by the numbers in the elevator that marked off the floors she traveled by.

  By the time the doors opened on the twentieth floor, she was chastising herself for even caring a bit what this guy thought of how she looked. All he had to like is how she did her job. While she had known one of them would call, would take her bait, the message she had sent, she had no idea why they were so suddenly having this dinner meeting in his office, she felt on shaky ground on all sides, no matter what she decided to care about. With one last deep breath, a woman with long strawberry blond hair, built and dressed like she just got off of some flipping runway gestured her to follow.

  Probably how he likes them, she thought, skinny and athletic. As much as that brought her an odd relief to be out of the running, dropped her heart rate to a steady beat, an ache formed in her chest that she didn’t want to analyze. Didn’t matter. Couldn’t matter. This was not about looks or getting to know each other. It wasn’t a date. It was a business dinner, in the privacy of his office. Hopefully he was in the mood to confess a few things.

  Their heels clicked across the floor, a familiar and comforting sound, reminding her of business. She had a job to do. Still, as his secretary opened the door, one hip swaying naturally to one side like she was presenting the door as a prize on a game show, Katrina looked past the woman forcing her eyes not to roll as she looked into the spacious office of Alexander Faust.

  The man sat more than twenty feet from her behind a large black desk riddled with the usual executive lamp, files, and laptop among other things. Behind him the backdrop was a floor to ceiling bookshelf that spanned a large section of the wall. He stood when he saw her, giving his own jacket a tug which made her mouth want to break into a smile, but she kept it serious, more like a scowl.

  He came around the desk as she walked toward him, each step an effort, an attempt at not rushing at a man that attracted her so badly and acting all professional at the same time. When his hand reached out to shake hers, a spark of electricity formed between their palms, zinging up her arm, setting her heart to fluttering again.

  She’d met shifters before, and never had they had this sort of animal magnetism, so she couldn’t blame her unsettling reactions on his species. While the body wanted who the body wanted, hers hadn’t reacted this way to a man in a long time. What made that all the more disturbing is that she couldn’t act on it, had to block it all out, attempt not to focus on the almost grimace he had set on his face as if it pained him to have to be around her.

  “Thank you for coming on such short notice,” he said as he released her hand only to grab her arm and turn her toward a table to the side of the room.

  “I was summoned. In fact, I was told I had no choice. Which is fine, but I am sensing you are upset about something. Has there been some change over the afternoon?”

  “Sit. My secretary has ordered us in some food, and we can talk as we eat,” he answered, evading her question.

  Her eyes rolled up with the sigh she held back. She wanted her arm back, out of his too tight grip that tingled right where the heat of his palm penetrated the sleeve of her jacket. A sudden hot flash hit her, and she blamed the dome-shaped sky light above them.

  The bright sun of the dinner hour made his blond locks sparkle, the flecks of gold in his dark brown eyes glisten. While she hadn’t thought it possible, as he looked even fiercer the cuter looking he got.

  Damn, she thought as he pulled out her chair for her to sit in. Gentleman or not, at least he was no longer touching her. Grateful to be off her shaking legs, she sat where he directed her to, her hands gripping the arms of the black leather chair, as he stood over the table, too close beside her, pouring each of them some sort of amber liquid, maybe scotch.

  Glasses of water sat on the table, but t
he way he pushed the tumbler with the alcohol at her, she didn’t dare not at least take a sip. As the liquid burned her throat, she gave into the distraction saying a silent prayer that it would calm her down, nerves and sex drive. He sat as he waved in a woman with a wheeled cart full of covered plates. It seemed a bit elaborate for a business meeting.

  He actually waved the woman away once the serving cart had been delivered, surprising her once again, but then, this seemed all about privacy. He sat still, not poised but tense, as he watched the woman in a simple black dress walk out of the room, his beautiful assistant had waited to close the door behind her. The tiny sound of the lock clicking made Katrina jump, trapping her in this room alone with this man that was dangerous in so many ways.

  “Artichoke and arugula salad with calamari,” he said, shocking her out of her reverie as he placed a plate in front of her and lifted off the metal cover.