For Your Paws Only (Supernatural Enforcers Agency #2)

by E A Price

  She almost jumped up the wall in her agitated state when Greensleeves flooded her living room. Jeez, was that Cutter?

  She ran to the door and opening it she… froze. What was he doing there?

  “Hello, Lucie.” It was the II agent, Harvey Blue, smiling genially while pointing a gun at her. “Get back in the house.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Cutter growled and swiped at Bruce, who whined and tried to limp out of reach. Pathetic. Their fight must have lasted all of ninety seconds, and his opponent could barely stand. The other wolf was a masterpiece of cuts and bites; there was barely an inch of his thick fur that wasn’t matted with blood from his many wounds.

  With a pitiful huff, Bruce dropped to the floor and painfully rolled over, baring his belly in an act of submission. Cutter prowled around his prone body. Would the honorable thing be to let him live? This woeful wolf that had tortured him and killed fuck knows how many others. Did Cutter care about honor? No, he cared about Lucie – and time was ticking on. He needed to get to Lucie, and the easiest way to do that was to kill Bruce. It was the most efficient way to ensure that he was taken care of.

  Perhaps sensing what was coming, Bruce shifted back to his human form. He panted and began pleading for his life. Cutter’s wolf ignored him and prepared to rip out his throat – and this time he’d make damn sure he was dead.

  “Cutter!”

  The wolf growled as Wayne barreled through the door. The gator shifter had a gun trained on Bruce. “I got it.”

  Cutter growled at him. The miserable excuse for a wolf shifter was his to kill.

  “Cutter,” snapped Wayne, forcefully. He pulled out a set of handcuffs. “Step back and let me put these on. Please?”

  With a monumental effort, Cutter backed away and wrenched control away from his animal. He shifted back to human, ignoring the blood streaks over his naked body.

  Wayne slapped the cuffs on Bruce, who was groaning in pain. The gator shifter gave him a totally accidental kick that set off a fresh set of moans. “Lucie called me; she was worried.”

  “Lucie’s in danger.”

  “Go, I got this.”

  “Call her; warn her,” he ordered as he started running.

  For three years, he had wondered what he would do if he ever got his hands on Bruce. At the time he thought Bruce was dead, so they were just fantasies. He enjoyed thinking of the ways he would make the bastard scream, and inflict some of the pain he had felt. The old Cutter would never have left him alive for Wayne to deal with. But that was the BL portion of his life – Before Lucie. The only thing that mattered to him at that moment in time was her - he wasn’t going to lose her. He couldn’t bear it. He finally admitted the truth that he had spent a year running from. She was his mate. And lord help anyone who stood in the way of him claiming his mate.

  *

  Harvey checked his phone and scowled. He was stood over Lucie as she sat on her couch; his gun waved aimlessly in her direction, but he wasn’t focusing on her. Maybe she could rush him and take the gun. Women on TV did it all the time. And women on TV also fought crime and chased bad guys in four-inch heels. In other words, TV wasn’t based on reality.

  She was perhaps a little miffed that Harvey hadn’t bothered to tie her up. Was she really so harmless that she didn’t even rate being tied up? Maybe it was the fact that her favorite color was pink, or the fact that she liked to knit that made her seem so non-threatening. Yeah, she did have to admit that she probably wouldn’t get very far against a wolf shifter. Well, physical strength wasn’t going to help, so maybe she needed to distract and conquer him with her rapier wit. Raspberries! She was going to die. Her hedgehog took the opportunity to curl up into a ball – she was too timid for her own good. She had to do something. Maybe if she stalled for time, Cutter would come back and rip this guy to shreds.

  “You’re the mole, right?” she blurted.

  Harvey grunted, and she took that to mean yes, I am the scum sucking, traitorous hound that doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as other SEA agents.

  “You fed information to Maroni.”

  “I see you are well informed, has Cutter been whispering sweet nothings into your ear as he fucked you?”

  She flinched at his language – which was odd because Cutter swore like a sailor, and that never bothered her. Her reaction amused Harvey, though.

  “Or are you his crime-fighting partner? His little sidekick – Robin to his Batman,” he sneered.

  She preferred to think of them as Mulder and Scully but, you know, without the aliens. Not that she was going to get into that conversation with him.

  “You sold out your fellow agents…”

  “It wasn’t quite like that…”

  “Then what was it like?” How on earth could he justify what he did?

  “Like I have to tell you. What did you do with the picture Jessie e-mailed you?”

  Lucie blinked at him in surprise and Harvey gave her a superior smile.

  “It seemed prudent to monitor Jessie’s communications,” he explained, smugly, “given her loyalty to Cutter. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tap her cell phone without her noticing. E-mails though, technically belong to the agency. I guess the picture was for Cutter. Where is he right now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re lying,” he said, blandly. “Tell me the truth, or I will really make Cutter suffer. You’ve seen his scars; a lot worse things can happen.”

  “He went looking for Primrose.” She conceded the truth to him; she just didn’t go into all the details.

  Unease pooled in her stomach as his face brightened. Oh no, it was never a good sign when the bad guy looked pleased.

  “With any luck my brother will have already killed him.”

  “Your brother?”

  Lucie jumped as he burst into laughter. “You really didn’t figure it out, and to think I was worried about Cutter. Bruce Knightley - my brother. Different mothers. He’s the reason I informed to Maroni in the first place. The dumb fuck owed the man thousands in gambling debts. In return for his life, I had to feed that pig Maroni information. The things you do for family. Not that it was hard to do. Maroni, in spite of Bruce’s debt, gave me plenty of money – the information was worth more than any gambling debt.”

  She pursed her lips. “You outed Cutter when he was undercover and got those agents killed.”

  He wasn’t remorseful in the least. “I had no idea Cutter was undercover until my boss got drunk and spilled it to me. Worse than that, I found out an informant in Maroni’s crew was going to out me. So I gave Maroni Cutter and killed the informant.”

  “You didn’t have to kill that tactical team!” She bit her lip – what was she saying? He didn’t have to kill anyone!

  “That wasn’t on purpose – I set the bomb to destroy the house, I didn’t know they would be there. Bad timing.”

  She gaped at him – like a fish caught in headlights. “That’s all you can say? Bad timing?!”

  Harvey shrugged unconcernedly.

  Since he was feeling so chatty… “What about Clayton?”

  “I suspected Clayton knew something when he pulled some files from the archives. My old boss let me know. He keeps me up to date on things on the proviso that I don’t mention his drunken slip about Cutter to anyone. He’d get fired for that.”

  Harvey lowered his weapon; his finger was still on the trigger, but it wasn’t pointed at her.

  “I didn’t really think much of it until I saw Clayton in town – I just saw him by accident outside a Hola Sunshine of all places.” He shook his head ruefully. “So I had my brother follow him. My brother has spent the last three years recuperating in Mexico, and he is more than keen for a little payback. Dumb eagle never knew he was being followed. Knowing that he was meeting up with that whore Sadie, I decided it was time to take out Clayton and Sadie and have Cutter take the blame. I tried to get Cutter arrested back in Ursa, but it wouldn’t stick. Fucking asshole has more luck t
han a bloody leprechaun.”

  “Did Clayton and Sadie even know anything?”

  He snorted. “I doubt it, I asked Clayton but the stubborn fuck refused to tell me anything. I think he was just grasping at straws. But I wasn’t willing to risk prison. Do you know how many years I’d get for the deaths of those agents?”

  Not enough, she thought heatedly.

  “As for Sadie, she knew even less, but I couldn’t risk her staying alive, so my brother tried to kill her – not successfully,” he let out a growl of irritation, “but by now I’m sure he has righted that.”

  He gave her a smile – ugh, it was horrible. “I have to say I am impressed that Cutter managed to get away after I shot him twice. We figured he’d come running to you, but we thought we’d give you two lovebirds a few days together before we killed you. It would make your loss even more devastating for him. Sadly, the photo sped up our plans a little.”

  Harvey had a moue of distaste on his face. “My brother had this big idea to torture you in front of Cutter, to make him suffer, but luckily for you, it’s going to be a shot to the head. Cutter will have the blame for that too. Lovers’ spat, maybe?”

  “There’s just one problem with that,” she said quietly before her eyes slipped over his shoulder as if looking at someone who wasn’t there. “Cutter!” she yelled.

  He spun around, raising his gun and firing wildly at her refrigerator. Poor thing never hurt a fly!

  But Lucie took the distraction to shift, her limbs shortened and she shrunk to her tiny beast. Immediately, she burrowed under the couch cushions. Thanks to Delmonte, the back of her couch had a small hole that the huge cat somehow managed to squeeze into. Another reason, other than Cutter’s blood stains, why she was getting rid of it.

  She scrabbled and scrambled to get inside as he yelled, bellowed and roared and started tearing apart the couch. His claw-tipped fingers scraped dangerously close to her belly. Oh, fiddlesticks, this was a bad plan! She didn’t know how long she could hide.

  Lucie squeaked as windows crashed, and she heard a pair of ferocious roars. Lord the house was under attack!

  *

  Cutter drove like a madman – or mad wolf. He had a few cop cars chasing him at one point, but he drove fast enough and erratically enough to shake them. Lucie’s little compact could really move when pushed.

  As he neared her house, he saw the ambulance and the SEA cars. His wolf howled in agony as his chest tightened to that point that he thought his heart might explode. The Director and Jessie were standing outside with twin grim expressions.

  He jumped out the car and ran to them, ignoring the fact that he was naked and splattered in dry blood. They didn’t seem to notice either.

  “Lucie,” he choked out.

  “We haven’t found her yet,” Jessie informed him, softly. “The scent of blood…”

  The squirrel shifter appeared to be on the edge of tears, and the Director laid a hand on her arm in comfort.

  Cutter watched as paramedics pulled Harvey out of Lucie’s house on a stretcher. His hands were handcuffed, but it was clear from the deep gashes lacing his body that he wasn’t going anywhere. Fucking Harvey, he should have known. Avery and Isis trailed after him wearing matching blankets and sporting twin feral expressions.

  He ignored them all. He didn’t care about anything other than finding his hedgehog.

  “Lucie? Lucie?” he bellowed as his wolf pushed at him to hurry.

  He sniffed; he could scent her delectable blueberry scent. He let his nose guide him; he ran into the house throwing people out of his way. He threw himself at the couch, the frame was intact but the cushions had been mauled and stuffing was strewn across the blood-splattered room.

  “Lucie?”

  He strained and heard a snuffling. He almost cried with relief as a tiny hedgehog ambled out of a hole in the couch. His wolf roared in happiness as he snatched up her prickly little body in his hands, cradling her tiny frame. Her white tipped points tickled his palms.

  “Fuck, Lucie, you are never allowed to scare me like that again, do you hear me?” he barked a little more forcefully than he intended.

  The hedgehog’s nose twitched.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” he sighed, rubbing her rounded tummy.

  He was never going to let her go. Mine.

  Chapter TwentyOne

  After safely ensconcing Lucie at a hotel – a good hotel that the SEA was paying for – with a SEA agent guarding her door – who was on pain of death if he dared leave his post – Cutter helped wrap up the case.

  He wasn’t allowed to question either Harvey or Bruce. Apparently they feared he wouldn’t be subtle and might rip their heads off or something. Well, they weren’t wrong, but he was pretty sure he could find a subtle way of doing it.

  Apparently, as soon as he awoke, Bruce started telling them everything. He was probably too afraid to go another round with Cutter.

  Avery and Isis informed him that Lucie was worried about him and called Avery after he left to find Primrose. Avery was at the bar with Wayne and Isis, so she sent Wayne to look for Cutter while they went to talk to Lucie.

  As they arrived, they saw Harvey’s car parked down the street and approached with caution, at the time fearing that he had just come looking for Cutter. But when they heard him roaring, they shifted and crashed through the window.

  Cutter was relieved Lucie was okay, although he was a little miffed that he didn’t get to be her knight in shining armor. But, he figured he had years ahead of him to save her, over and over. In pretend, naturally, because she wasn’t allowed to be in a dangerous situation again – ever. In fact, he didn’t want her crossing streets without him, and if she thought she was allowed to leave the house without him escorting her, she had another thing coming. What, too much? He didn’t care.

  Primrose was going to be okay; she was already starting to heal. Sadie refused to leave her side. Everyone was just shocked to witness Primrose displaying tender emotions. It was just so… strange. Like watching Darth Vader stop to pet a puppy or something.

  Harvey wasn’t talking, but they had enough evidence to arrest him anyway with the testimony they had from Bruce and for attacking Lucie. Plus, when they really dug, they were confident they could link him to the murders in Ursa.

  The Director was immediately taken off his enforced vacation. He didn’t rub it in his boss’ nose for listening to Harvey… well, not much anyway. The Director did, unsurprisingly, berate Cutter for not giving himself in, but given that the guy framing him was the SEA agent trying to catch him… the Director wouldn’t punish him. But he insisted that Cutter take a week vacation to recuperate. For all their sakes.

  That was fine with him. The old Cutter, BL Cutter, might have argued and insisted he needed to stay, but he had something better to do. He had a hedgehog to woo.

  He even finagled a week’s paid vacation for Lucie. About a week in bed together would be about right for the two of them. They needed to make up for lost time.

  He’d been so scared of hurting her that he’d run from her like a coward. All it took was getting shot by his colleague, framed for murder and nearly losing her to a crazy wolf for him to realize that he needed her. Shame all that hadn’t happened a year ago really.

  He now knew that he did actually deserve her. Well, maybe he wouldn’t go that far, but he was selfish enough that he was going to keep her, and that was that.

  *

  Lucie was kind of sorry she missed seeing Isis and Avery tearing into Harvey. She was sure the look on his face would have been priceless as the tigress and lioness tore him a new one. But she was just pleased that it was over.

  So why did she feel sad?

  Because it meant she no longer had an excuse to keep Cutter in her bed. He was now free to go and do whatever he liked. Bummer.

  Her hedgehog perked up as she heard arguing outside.

  “What the fuck? Were you sleeping?” roared an irate but very welcome voice. Her hedgehog m
ewled in happiness.

  “I was just resting my eyes…” came the muffled reply.

  “What the fuck are they teaching you at the academy? Forget it, fuck off, I’m here now.”

  Her handsome wolf stomped through the door, looking every but a wild romantic hero, and the first thing he said, “Why the fuck was this door unlocked? Anyone could have walked in here!”

  “Not with the guard outside,” she reasoned, patiently, as she ran into his arms.

  “The fucker was sleeping!”

  She snuggled against his chest and felt gratified when he slipped his arms around her and held her tightly. She was wearing a SEA t-shirt that one of the agents had given her. Her own clothes had been destroyed by Harvey when he threw his temper tantrum, and Cutter hustled her out of her house so quickly she didn’t have time to grab something. The thin material was inadequate to hide the puckered points of her nipples, hardened by her arousal at the arrival of Cutter. She tried to pull away in embarrassment, but he wouldn’t let go.

  Cutter clung to her, and she couldn’t deny that there wasn’t anywhere she would rather be at that moment. Of course, his own arousal was almost digging into her stomach at the moment. It was a warm and naughty pressure that made her thighs clench instinctively.

  With a sigh and a disappointed whimper from Lucie, he let go of her and led her over to the bed, so they were sitting, side by side.

  He gave her a searching look, and she felt an urge to fill the silence but she stopped herself.

  “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me,” he said, softly.

  “You don’t have to thank me; I’m your friend.”

  He scowled at the word friend. Did he not even want to be friends with her?! Did her disappointment know no end?

  Lucie looked away from him, afraid she might do something girly like break out into tears. “You don’t have to stay here though; you could actually go back to your apartment.”

  “I don’t want you to be alone,” he replied gruffly.