Lord of New York (Shifter Hunters Ltd. Book 3)

by Tori Knightwood

  He laughed and picked up his stuff. “Okay, okay, let’s see what we can do about it.”

  She led him behind the escalators to what was meant to be a family bathroom. It was the only place she could think of where they could both enter without disturbing someone else, unless a family with a baby came along and really needed the space. But they would have to wait.

  Right now, her wolf urges were so close to the surface, she felt she’d explode.

  They dragged in his bags and she fell against the door, locking it, then jumped on Lucien, her legs wrapping around his waist and continued to kiss him with the passion she’d been holding inside since she last saw him. She leaned back just enough to reach the hem of her tank to pull it over her head.

  “Hang on,” he said. “If you’re in this bad shape, we don’t even have time for that.” He stood her on the floor, unzipped her jeans, and tugged them down. While she stepped out of them, he opened his own jeans and freed his erection.

  “Oh god, yes,” she murmured, grabbing his cock.

  He sucked in a breath. “Come here.” Kissing her, he rubbed her clit and slid his finger inside her. She was hot and slick and ready. He lifted her again and she wrapped her legs around his waist, just as before, all without ending the kiss, all while clenching her walls around his throbbing erection.

  He pounded inside her and it was like coming home. She had never felt so good. But it wasn’t about feeling good, it was about the wolf getting what it needed. She came the first time within minutes, but Lucien kept going, sliding in and out of her as she continued to clench her entire lower body around parts of his body.

  Before she knew it, she had reached another climax, and he still didn’t stop.

  “Are you okay?” she panted. “Do you need to stop?”

  He shook his head. “I’m okay, keep going for as long as you need.”

  “Okay.” The word was barely out of her mouth before she climaxed again.

  A few minutes later, after a total of five orgasms, she finally felt sated. She slid off him and onto wobbly legs. “Wow,” she breathed.

  Lucien zipped and buttoned his jeans and grinned at her. “I could get used to this.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “Don’t know if I can. Whoa.”

  “Are you tired enough? Can we go back to your apartment now?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” She dressed and they left the bathroom and strolled hand in hand to find a car home.

  ***

  When they got back to Ryenne’s apartment, they had a more tender lovemaking session in the shower, cleaning up from their previous bathroom activity and allowing Lucien to freshen up after his flight from Europe.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” she panted after the second orgasm under the punishing hot water.

  Lucien smirked. “Do you have something against bathrooms?”

  “Not when I’m with you. But what’s wrong with the bed? Or the couch? Or the kitchen counter?”

  “Noted,” he said.

  While they dressed, she glanced at the clock. “Shit, we’re going to be late.”

  They took a taxi to her mother’s where Mom greeted Lucien with a big hug and a hand lingering on his shoulder.

  Ryenne gave her mother a look and her mom smirked.

  Lucien and Gavin shook hands and exchanged warm smiles.

  “I’ll get us drinks,” Gavin said, going to the kitchen.

  Lucien whispered to Ryenne, “If he were a shifter, he’d know how we spent our afternoon.”

  “I’m sure he already knows.”

  As if to prove her point, Gavin waggled his eyebrows at her.

  “Oh, before I forget,” Lucien said, drawing a vial of a sappy substance from his pocket. “I have this for you from Pascal. He recreated the stuff from my wound and wants your opinion on his analysis to make sure he got everything.”

  Ryenne’s mother took the vial from Lucien and examined it in the light streaming in from the kitchen windows. She nodded. “I’ll look at this in my lab tomorrow.”

  Her mother wouldn’t let anyone but Gavin help her in the kitchen. She seemed to understand how much Ryenne needed this time with Lucien. So Ryenne took him outside to the tiny patio in the postage stamp sized backyard and told him her suspicions about why the Fangs wanted her mother. “For that gunk.” She told him about Scotty’s case with the sappy stuff in the shifter’s wounds. “The Fangs already have access to this stuff. Who knows how else they plan to use it? With this, they can pick off shifters as if they were human.”

  Lucien nodded, his face grave. “At least now we have it, too. That will even up the odds.”

  “But it doesn’t help the unaligned, innocent shifters out there,” she said.

  He wrapped her in a hug. “You’re such a softie. Like a marshmallow.”

  She pulled out of his embrace and slapped his arm. “Please.”

  Gavin came out to call them inside for dinner. “She made steaks. She seems to think that’s what your kind need to eat.” He laughed.

  They sat at the table in the kitchen, nice and homey. Her mom asked them questions about their time together in Paris, the non-Fang related time.

  Ryenne stared at Lucien as he talked, watching his strong jaw move, the way his muscles contracted and relaxed under his skin. She couldn’t wait until they could run together as wolves. She just had to figure out where. Central Park had enough dark and forested areas that they could probably get away with it. And their heightened senses meant they could more easily avoid people because they’d smell and hear them before any humans saw them as wolves.

  Suddenly, Lucien’s face froze and then she smelled it, too. There was a shifter outside the front of the house. Again.

  It smelled the same as the other night.

  “What’s wrong?” her mother asked.

  She didn’t want to worry her, but there was only so much Ryenne could hide from her. “There’s a shifter outside.”

  She and Lucien stood as in one motion.

  “Friendly or a Fang?” Gavin asked.

  “If it’s friendly, why does it keep lurking out there?”

  They rushed to the door, pulled it open. No one was there. Ryenne heard footsteps pounding the pavement out of sight.

  Lucien wrinkled his nose. “Fox shifter.”

  That was a new one on Ryenne. Then again, almost everything was new to her.

  Gavin and Mom had come up behind them. “What’s that?” Gavin asked, pointing to the railing at the top of the stairs, where a white envelope was taped. It was addressed to Ryenne’s mom.

  Ryenne pulled it off and handed it to her mother. “Let’s go inside. We don’t need an audience for this.”

  They went in and closed the door. Mom and Gavin returned to the kitchen but Lucien stopped Ryenne with a hand on her arm. “I still smell one.”

  “Me, too,” she said, “but it’s different.”

  “I think it’s a lion.”

  “A lion in New York? Do you think it could be related to our case in Kenya?”

  Lucien shrugged.

  They rejoined the others in the kitchen.

  “What is it?” Ryenne nodded toward the letter in her mother’s hands, her stomach in knots.

  “Another letter from T.O.”

  “What do they want this time?”

  “To meet me and to give me information,” her mother answered in a halting voice tinged with fear.

  “You can’t go,” Ryenne said, voice rising. “We don’t know who this person is or what their motives are. But the Fangs want you, and if this person is a Fang then the meeting is a ruse.”

  “But if I don’t go, then I’ll never know the truth,” her mother said. “They claim to have information about your father. For fifteen years we assumed he was dead, but we never knew for sure. Now we have a chance to find out.”

  “Not if it’s a trap!” Ryenne insisted.

  “How else will we know?” her mom asked.

  Ryenne turned to Lu
cien for help. “We can’t let her walk into a trap.”

  “Not alone, at least. We can all be there.” He looked at Gavin. “You up for it?”

  “Of course. Anything for Willow.”

  “Where do they want you to meet?” Ryenne asked, resigned.

  “In front of the Empire State Building at noon tomorrow.”

  Ryenne and Lucien exchanged a glance. What an odd choice of location and time.

  “It will be harder to keep track because of all the tourists, but at the same time, should be harder for them to hurt her,” Lucien said. “We’ll get there early, the three of us will set up at different vantage points, and we’ll keep Willow safe.”

  “Maybe we’ll finally find out who has been sending you these letters,” Ryenne added. “I have a few choice words for them.”

  FIVE

  The next morning, the four of them met at a coffee shop a couple of blocks away from the Empire State Building.

  “You know, Mom, we could go in your place. You don’t have to do this.” Ryenne still wasn’t convinced this was the smart thing to do. How could they ensure her mother’s safety in a crowd of humans?

  “I need to see it through, sweetheart.”

  Ryenne hung her head in resignation. Obviously, she got her persistence from her mother.

  “Will they bail if they smell shifters?” Gavin asked.

  Lucien shrugged. “This is New York City. There are shifters everywhere. We should be well hidden.”

  Lucien assigned them each a position. Gavin would be closest to Mom because he was probably the least recognizable to any of the Fangs. Ryenne would be across the street, and Lucien at the corner of Fifth Avenue.

  At 11:30, they left the coffee shop.

  “Willow, give us about ten minutes to get into position, and then head to the Empire State Building,” Lucien said.

  Mom nodded, her lips in a straight line and her chin up in the air as if she was determined to see this through.

  Ryenne wanted to grab her, stop her, change her mind. But she’d already tried so many times.

  They left Lucien at the corner and Ryenne and Gavin continued along 34th Street. “Don’t let anything happen to her, Gav,” Ryenne said.

  “I won’t,” he said. “You know she’s like my own mother to me.”

  Ryenne gave a curt nod. They’d been through a lot together. She knew Gavin wouldn’t give up easily if someone were trying to hurt her mother, but she had to say it.

  Gavin crossed the street to mill among the tourists. Ryenne watched him from under an awning, where she flattened herself against the wall and scanned the crowd. No one looked suspicious. Mostly, there were business people in suits with glistening foreheads and tourists in shorts, tank tops, and flip flops.

  Minutes passed and she didn’t see her mom turn the corner. She pulled out her phone and sent Lucien a text.

  RYENNE: Do you see her?

  LUCIEN: Not yet. Too many people. I’m sure she’s fine.

  Ryenne didn’t need someone else to tell her it was fine; it didn’t feel fine. She texted Gavin to stay where he was and keep an eye out, and she ran to the corner.

  Before she reached it, Lucien dashed off north on Fifth Avenue. She ran to catch up, her heart pounding in fear for her mom. When she turned the corner, she scanned the crowd for any sign of Lucien or her mom. She saw Lucien duck into a building and she hurried after him, pushing between a young black-haired woman with a stroller and an older woman with short gray hair, who were ambling along the sidewalk as if they had nowhere to be.

  “Hey,” one of them shouted.

  “Sorry.” Ryenne kept going.

  When she got to where Lucien had disappeared, it was a shop. One of those souvenir shops that were all over Midtown Manhattan.

  “Lucien,” she muttered, “where did you go?”

  His voice came to her as if on a wind. “Inside the shop. Come to the back.”

  How could she hear him? The shop wasn’t very busy, so there weren’t a lot of sounds or voices, but she couldn’t see him. She dashed to the back of the shop where she found a narrow hallway and a door that looked like it led to the outside. As she ran to it, she heard sounds of a struggle from beyond the door.

  Outside, her mother was being held by a man she didn’t recognize, and Lucien was fighting with another. She could tell they were shifters. In fact, they smelled like damp earth and trampled leaves, like the ones who had left the note last night, which meant they were fox shifters. She could believe it from their general appearance; one had red hair and one was reddish blond. Both had pale skin and light eyes, and the one holding her mother had freckles.

  The space was a small courtyard with an alley leading off to one side. Garbage cans were ranged outside doors dotting the courtyard, giving the entire place a pungent stench in the summer heat.

  Lucien seemed to be holding his own against the blond, so Ryenne launched herself at the redhead holding her mom. Anger flooded through her at the sight of this stranger restraining her mom and she aimed a wild kick at his midsection. At first he fought back while continuing to hold onto her mother. Ryenne chopped down on his wrist with the side of her hand, her other fist knocking into his jaw, and forced him to let go of Mom. Ryenne swung her body into his, pushing him away from her mother.

  Once Mom was safely out of the way, Ryenne’s actions became less controlled. Rage consumed her like a fire burning its way through her mind. Grunting and screaming, she pummeled the rogue as a red fog blurred her vision.

  How dare this man put his hands on her mother?

  Punching and kicking, landing most but not all of the hits, she was a whirlwind of movement and anger.

  She would rip him apart. She would make him bleed.

  Just as she thought she was getting the upper hand on the redhead, his knife slashed her arm through her long-sleeved shirt and the sudden pain broke her attention for a second. Long enough for him to headbutt her in the nose. She saw stars and stumbled backward a few steps.

  Lucien grabbed the man’s arm and twisted it, making a sickening crunch. The blond was on the ground, bleeding from several superficial wounds. He scrambled up, grabbed the redhead, and they ran to the alley.

  Ryenne glanced at her mom. “Are you okay?” she panted.

  Her mom nodded.

  Then Ryenne gave attention to her arm, pulling the sleeve around to get a better view. She touched the wound with a finger. “Sticky. The knife must have had the sappy stuff on it,” she said. “Same as when Patrick Grieux stabbed Lucien a few weeks ago. Uh, it hurts, worse than some of the wounds I got in the battle in Paris.”

  Her mom approached and inspected the wound and sticky stuff. Ryenne winced at her touch.

  “Sorry, darling.”

  “It’s okay,” Ryenne gritted out.

  “Let’s try cleaning this stuff off and see if it helps.”

  Ryenne and Lucien straightened their clothing and followed the path the rogues had taken through the alley.

  “Did you recognize them?” Lucien asked.

  Both Ryenne and her mom shook their heads. “Never seen them before,” Ryenne said.

  “But we’ve smelled them before,” Lucien said and Ryenne nodded.

  “Now we know those notes were a trick,” Ryenne said. “They must be Fangs. They want to kidnap you, Mom. Probably to work on this gunky stuff.”

  “I’m sorry I put you in danger,” her mom said.

  Ryenne put her good arm around her mother’s shoulders. “You didn’t. They did. And they’ll pay.”

  They found a casual dining restaurant nearby, and Ryenne and her mom went into the ladies’ room. Ryenne removed her long-sleeved shirt and washed the gunk out of her wound, gritting her teeth through the pain.

  “I wonder how soon you have to get it off to counteract its properties,” Mom said. “It shouldn’t slow down your healing for long, now that we’ve cleaned your wound.”

  When they finished washing the wound, Ryenne shrugged into
her shirt—to hide her useless weapons—and they left the restroom. Good thing the dark color of her shirt hid the blood, but there was nothing she could do about the tear above her cut. She was quiet but inside, she was fuming. She couldn’t wait to track down these rogues and make them suffer for trying to kidnap her mother.

  SIX

  Lucien paced while the women were in the bathroom, mentally beating himself up over letting Willow get taken from under his nose. On top of it, although Ryenne fought off one of the rogues, he’d never seen her so wild and undisciplined. She’d been a better fighter before she became a shifter.

  He called Gavin and explained what happened and where they were now. Gavin reached the restaurant by the time Ryenne and Willow came out, with Ryenne’s arm cleaned up and again hidden under a long-sleeved shirt.

  Now, sitting at a table, waiting for burgers, Lucien was kicking himself. “I’m sorry, Ryenne. It happened so fast. I had just caught a glimpse of her coming toward us when a person suddenly yanked her back. That’s when I took off running after her. But I’m sorry I didn’t get to her sooner.”

  Willow patted his arm across the table. “It’s not your fault, Lucien. As soon as you saw, you came chasing after us.”

  “Yeah,” Ryenne said. “Luckily, you were watching for her and saw them grab her.”

  “It just happened so fast,” he repeated.

  Ryenne nodded. “Thank you for helping me rescue my mom.”

  “Anytime,” Lucien said with a wry look. His stomach was in knots. If it had been his mother, he would have reacted just as Ryenne had. He would have flown at her attackers and torn them apart. But his mother was a shifter and would’ve been able to defend herself. Then again, it had happened in a blink of an eye.

  “I’m famished,” Ryenne announced, interrupting Lucien’s wallowing. “Where’s our food?”

  Lucien caught the scent of meat on the stale air. “Here it comes.”

  Sure enough, the server arrived within seconds with their burgers. Everyone ate in silence, except Willow, who only picked at her food.

  Lucien looked a question at her.

  “I’m not that hungry.”

  As a human, her reactions were different from shifters’. After action, shifters needed to eat. After sex, shifters needed to eat. After pretty much anything, shifters needed to eat. Humans had varied reactions and would sometimes forgo basic needs if their emotions or routines were disrupted.