by Kate Rudolph
But that wasn’t exactly practical. So, with a sigh, she looked over to where Kay had been pointing, but the man in uniform had disappeared into the crowd and Cam had no idea who she’d been talking about.
***
High Street duty was worse than the night shift. Dom always ended the night smelling faintly of vomit and would be happy if none of it actually ended up on his uniform. He and his partner were here to discourage any trouble. But on a Thursday night at High Street Bar, trouble wasn’t easily discouraged. Though they were both detectives, they posed as patrol officers and kept their eyes peeled for a local would-be drug runner who was trying to set up shop. The place would have been fine, if he had a drink in his hand and a woman on his arm, but with female shiften almost nonexistent, and all the One True Mates belonging to much more important wolves than him, he was left to duty.
But tonight it didn’t smell as bad as usual. He kept catching hints of a faint sugary orange smell, something that reminded him of a home he’d never had. Nights by the fire, snow on the ground, and a family all sitting around and smiling.
Clearly Dom was going crazy. A few more weeks of this and he was bound to have a breakdown, giving Brenner just the impetus he needed to bounce Dom from the Blue Valley PD. And a wolven without a force was a man without honor. Who was he if he couldn’t serve?
“You think he’ll ever show up here?” his partner, Logan Litchfield, asked. Logan was a transfer from somewhere in California. Something had happened to him down there, necessitating the move. But he and Dom weren’t close and Dom didn’t care to learn the whole sordid tale.
There was only one ‘he’ that Logan could be referring to. Khain. The monster they’d been fighting since their very creation, the sick fuck who’d killed all of their women and very nearly destroyed the shiften. If Dom ever got his hands on that bastard, he’d tear him apart. Who needed the KSRT? “No,” he replied. “He’s obsessed with the One True Mates, no way he comes here while he can chase them down.”
Normally, they wouldn’t speak so openly, but High Street Bar was loud and no human could hope to overhear them. Dom studied the sea of humanity in front of them. None of these people knew what he and his brethren were. None of them knew that a demon was out there who would crush them to dust if he was given the chance. No, these humans danced and drank and mated like nothing was wrong.
Dom envied them. Nothing would ever compel him to give up his wolf, but on some nights when he was so lonely that his soul wanted to tear itself out of his body, just to find anyone who might make him feel… anything… he wished he didn’t know the pain of the loss of the females. Or feel the crushing sense of duty that came from the need to fight Khain. Leave it to those guys who were named in the prophecies. He was just one wolf, and not a special one at that.
“You okay, man?” Logan asked, one eyebrow raised. He had the faintest hint of a California surfer bro accent.
“Yes.” They weren’t friends. Even more important, they were men. No need to talk about pesky feelings and inadequacies. “I’m…” Dom trailed off as he caught a whiff of something that wasn’t stale beer, fried food, or vomit. No, it actually smelled good. It was the same sugary orange smell he’d caught earlier, but stronger now, like it was coming from something specific, rather than something ambient. He turned away from his partner and followed his nose, stepping around people and glaring until others got out of his way. As he got closer, the smell grew more complex, with hints of mint and thyme and something indescribably feminine. This scent was coming from a woman, he’d bet his tail on it.
And he needed to see her.
He’d never felt this driving urge before, hadn’t even cared to find a woman for nearly three years. But suddenly the taste roared back to life and he honed his senses, narrowing in until it was only him and the tantalizing scent that tickled his nose. Where was she?
He snarled as one of the patrons tripped into his path, and the man backed up, eyes downcast, the sick odor of fear fighting with the citrus scent. But as Dom moved away, the fear cleared and she was back. It wrapped around him, caressing his shoulders and wrapping a silken tendril around his cock until it twitched. Fuck the night shift, fuck High Street duty. He needed her, and a good fuck.
Blonde hair flashed and Dom knew it was her. But by the time he made it to where she’d stood, she was gone, only two empty beer bottles and a half-eaten plate of nachos evidence that she’d ever been there. That wasn’t enough. Dom picked up the bottle he could tell was hers and wrapped his hand around it, as if he could feel the imprint of her palm on the glass. Her smell was stronger here, mixed with the food and the beer, and he’d dream about it for the next month, he was sure. If he couldn’t find her.
He scented the other bottle and smiled when it, too, gave off a feminine scent. Good, she didn’t have a man. He didn’t have—
“What the fuck, dude?” Logan demanded as he burst through a group of people.
Dom put down the bottle and looked his partner up and down. The woman’s scent was wrapping around him, not caring that she belonged to Dom. He growled, the sound reverberating in his throat and making Logan’s blond hair stand on end.
“Calm the fuck down,” Logan said. He took a step back and glanced around, bringing attention to the humans that circled them. “We’ve got a job to do.”
Dom stopped growling. And though his every instinct told him to breathe deep and memorize the woman’s scent, Dom opened his mouth and took shallow gulps of air. What in Rhen’s name had gotten into him? He was an officer of the Blue Valley PD, not some horny kid who got hard every time he smelled a pretty girl’s perfume.
The atmosphere in the building shifted and the crowd around them slowly turned their attention away from the two cops to something on the other side of the room. Dom and Logan looked over, and as a pair, they grinned.
The call came up from one of the drunken revelers. “Fight!”
As a unit, the two officers dove back into the crowd to break it off and let off a little steam. They were wolves, after all. They needed the exercise.
Chapter Three
On Monday, Cam woke with the smell of the forest heavy in her nostrils, unable to escape it no matter what she did. It was just after four in the morning and the sun wouldn’t begin to wake for another couple of hours. But a baker never rose after sunrise. Not if she wanted to stay in business.
But Cam’s mind hadn’t been on business since Thursday night. No, she kept going back to thoughts of her mystery man. Why now? She hadn’t obsessed about him before. Sure, a few naughty dreams, a few fantasies, one suggestively named sex toy, but nothing other than that. And now he was branded on her frontal lobe, where her newest pastry recipes should be.
If she hadn’t been so messed up thinking about him, she might have noticed that something was wrong before she got to the front door of the shop. The street was as quiet as usual—none of the shopkeepers would be there for hours and the residents in the second and third floor apartments were all asleep. She didn’t notice the sparkling glass on the sidewalk that made a trail back to her shop, and she didn’t see the flashing light of the alarm system until she was right on top of it.
But when Cam finally woke up enough to realize what was wrong, she screamed. Not in fear—anger overwhelmed her and she let out a torrent of curses that would have made her Uncle Charlie blush. Those bastards! Her beautiful shop window, the one she’d designed herself with a floral design and red accents, was no more. Shattered shards of glass littered the sidewalk and the inside of the display case. Deep inside the shop, a strobe light flashed its dizzying pattern.
Cam stuck her hand in her pocket and pulled out her phone, wondering why the security company hadn’t contacted her. When she saw the device was off, she cursed her own stupidity and pressed the power button, hoping the battery wasn’t dead.
She jerked around when the sound of screeching tires squealed down the road. Red and blue lights flashed, and before she realized they were cops, one
of them had his door opened and a gun pointed at her. “Freeze!” he yelled. All she could see was his blond hair and a gun that was more than big enough to leave her brains splattered on the pavement.
She raised her hands. “It’s my shop,” she said. “I just got here.” In the very back of her mind, she could remember her aunt drilling it into her head that you didn’t talk to cops without a lawyer. But that was different. She was the victim here. And if she didn’t say something, she didn’t know how else to deescalate the situation.
Seventeen minutes.
What? Her brain offered the countdown but Cam had no idea what it was for. It couldn’t be about this cop, as he was already lowering his gun. He ducked back into the car and she faintly heard him speaking into his radio. Now that she had a moment, she realized he wasn’t driving a cop car, but a dark SUV with lights built into the window. Unmarked, she recalled. Did that mean he was a detective?
Did it mean he could help?
One minute and thirteen seconds later, he exited the car, his weapon holstered. He held up a hand as if to tell her that he was no threat to her. “Your security company notified us when you didn’t answer your phone, ma’am. Would you mind showing me your ID so we can get this sorted out?”
Her first instinct was to tell him no and continue inside like nothing had happened. But she’d been trying to get the cops to listen to her for the past few weeks, and pissing this one off would do jack squat to solve her problems. Cam’s fingers shook as she reached into her pocket and pulled out her wallet.
Someone had thrown something through the window. Who did that? Why? She’d never hurt anyone. She’d never made trouble. The only person she could even playfully call an enemy was the owner of the subpar coffee shop with pretensions of grandeur on the other side of town. But that was business. Not this.
Cam walked down the steps on unsteady feet and offered her license to the blond cop. He didn’t see anything wrong with it, and a minute later, his car was turned off and he was leading her inside.
“Should we go in before…” she trailed off, unsure of how to ask the question.
“I’ll go in first, make sure this was just vandalism. Normally, they take off after something like this.”
Cam nodded and stood back. For some reason, the cop made her jumpy. To keep her hands from shaking out of control, she punched them into her pockets and kept her fists clenched, but that only sent the shakes further up her arm until she started to shiver, despite the warm morning.
Six minutes.
Was that when the cop would leave? What use was that?
The cop motioned her inside and Cam ran up the steps. Though her display was covered in shattered glass, most of the front of the shop was undamaged. A broken brick lay on the floor, probably stolen from the construction site on the other side of the street.
Without waiting for him to tell her, Cam sat on the bench behind the counter. She flipped on the lights as an afterthought, but she couldn’t make herself do anything else. This was so much worse than graffiti. “We’re supposed to open soon,” she said. June couldn’t be far from the shop.
“This won’t take long, ma’am. I’m sorry that you’ve had this fright.” He spoke to her like she was an idiot, or a jumpy animal.
That, more than anything, set Cam into motion. She grabbed a notebook and made a list: call window repair guy, get tarp, get heavy tape, call June. Though it hurt, she would close the shop for one day. Better to get everything under control than let it spiral out of hand. Her body stopped shaking and she turned to the officer with something resembling a smile. “Would you like to see the security footage? This isn’t the first incident.”
***
Dom knew the Thorny Rose Bakery by the smashed window and the police vehicle parked out front. It sat in a row of shops on one of the main thoroughfares, in the only place in all of Blue Valley that saw significant foot traffic. For that reason, Dom steered clear. For another, something about the thought of thorns in his coffee put him off.
But there was something about this place. It smelled like sugar. And oranges. The insanity of Thursday night rose in his mind and for a second, Dom could feel it try to seize hold, but after a moment it faded as if it had never been there. Of course the bakery smelled like sugar. He’d be more worried if it didn’t.
He followed the trail of broken glass and the sound of voices through the front door and found Logan speaking to a blonde woman whose back was to him. Without even pausing to examine the scene, he crossed to them, intent on the victim. Who was she?
He vaguely heard Logan say something, but then she turned and his heart stopped, stuttered, and restarted with a vengeance, beating so hard the blood pounded in his ears. He saw how close Logan was sitting, how his hand was casually resting against the table, only inches from her, and he wanted to cut it off so he couldn’t touch her. So no one could touch her. No one but him.
Her blonde hair was almost that pure white that most women could only hope to match with a dye. But he didn’t smell the astringent scent of chemicals. Ice blue eyes pierced him, and he saw something unfathomable in those depths. Her nose had a bump in it, probably from a run in when she was younger, but the imperfection only elevated her beauty, and her lips were so soft, so pink, so damn kissable that he could already taste her on his mouth. And he didn’t even know her name.
He wanted to lay his hands on her full hips and carry her away while she wrapped those thick legs around him. Supple wasn’t a word he’d ever wanted to use, but when he thought of her breasts, there was nothing better. His eyes came back up to hers and he saw a fire he’d never before seen in a human woman.
No, not never.
“Seventeen minutes,” she said, her tongue darting out to lick her lips.
Dom almost groaned as he imagined what she could do to him with that devastating instrument. “What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s now.” She didn’t stop staring at him. Logan could have caught fire and he doubted she would turn her head. He already liked that about her. And then her eyes widened and her jaw dropped open the tiniest bit. “You’re…” she trailed off with a grin, leaving Dom only more intrigued.
And as he stared, he had the strangest sense of knowing. It wasn’t just that she was the girl from Thursday, though she was. He’d realized it the moment her scent wrapped around him and held his cock tight. He’d met her before, and he’d been a fool to let her go without a taste.
He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
But Logan had other plans. “Thank you, Miss Watson. This is my partner, Soto. One of us will be in touch after we’ve reviewed this and the brick.” He stood and grabbed a small brick that had been wrapped in a plastic bag that must have been purloined from the kitchen. Without giving him a minute to think, Logan ushered him out and Dom had no choice but to follow, no matter how much he wanted to stay.
“Where’s your car?” Logan asked when the door closed behind them.
“I walked.”
“The station is two miles away.”
“I walked fast.” There was no need for the second car this early in the morning and Dom had wanted to time to think. Now he cursed himself for not bringing his own vehicle. If he had, he could have found an excuse to stay longer, to learn more about Miss Watson and see if she tasted as good as she smelled. “Some punk threw a brick through her window?” he asked, just to make sure he wasn’t making eyes at a perp. A man had to have standards.
Logan stared at him from the driver’s seat for a solid ten seconds, as if he couldn’t believe the question that came out of Dom’s mouth. “What?” Dom asked.
The other detective narrowed his eyes but finally let out a sigh and turned the car on, looking back towards the road. “Seems some kids have been hassling her. She reported two incidents of graffiti, but this is the first time anyone’s done real damage. She was shaken. I’ve got security video on a flash drive she gave me and we’ll canvass the neighborhood later if the chief wants it.”
For one thrown brick? “Small towns.” Dom shook his head. “It’s not like we’re looking for a murderer.”
“You didn’t scent it?” Logan asked, disbelief hanging on every syllable.
“Of course I did. Her scent was all over the place.” And even now it clung to his skin. Dom turned to look out the window and surreptitiously take a long drag.
“So you didn’t smell the foxen?”
No, he hadn’t. The second he’d caught a hint of her sugar and orange scent, all thoughts of anything else had fled. It was a strange scent for a human. Normally they smelled of soap and skin, unique but unremarkable. What came off of Miss Watson was anything but that. It hadn’t been soap, no, she was what created the scent. Even if she were deep in the jungle for a week, she’d still be covered in sugar and oranges under all the muck.
“What did she smell like to you?” Dom asked. He didn’t want Logan dwelling on it, but he had to know.
“What the fuck, dude? What’s next? Are we going to braid each other’s hair and talk about the girls we like?” Logan pulled them into the station, but before he could open the door, Dom grabbed his arm.
“Just answer the damn question,” Dom growled.
“You’re being fucking weird. She smelled like a woman, maybe a bit sugary, but we were in a bakery. Now let me the fuck go.”
He wanted to ask more, but Dom saw the violence swimming in Logan’s eyes, and he didn’t need another fight on his record. He raised his hand and backed up, sliding out of the car and slamming the door behind him.
Chapter Four
Cam was glad when the cops were gone, and not for the usual reason. She didn’t know what she would have done if the second officer kept staring. The second officer who’d been her dance partner three years ago. And now she knew what seventeen minutes meant. A quarter hour and her life was changed. She hadn’t really thought that she’d ever see him again. Why should she? When he walked into the shop, her whole body hummed, vibrating like a tuning fork.
