Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed

by Madelaine Montague

  “Now I’m starting to wonder what the hell’s going on, though. You’re sounding damned possessive to me, and I’m thinking I don’t like the reasons for that that occur to me.”

  “Like what?” Lucien snarled, almost nose to nose with his brother by that time.

  “Like you’re fucking her or you’re seriously considering it!”

  “And you have a problem with that?” Lucien growled.

  The question rocked Damien back on his heels for a split second before rage rushed in to fill the void shock had left. “You’re god damned right I’ve got a problem with that!”

  They’d just seized one another by the throat when the door swung open. Instantly focused on the possibility of attack, both men swung toward the door and crouched to spring.

  “What the hell is going on in here?” Basil demanded. “You two trying to get us thrown out of the frigging hotel?”

  Chapter Five

  Damien supposed Lucien’s theory might make sense in a weird sort of way, maybe scientifically, but he was beginning to wonder if there were holes in it that they should explore.

  Just in case his own theory was wrong and they were stuck here for eternity.

  He’d never actually grasped the matter/anti-matter thing beyond a vague notion that it was sort of like the opposing poles of a magnet—and that it sounded scary as hell—and wasn’t something he had any desire to experiment with. He had to wonder if it had anything at all to do with them and their situation, though. Wouldn’t they be able to tell just from looking that they weren’t the same? That one of them was anti-matter and one matter?

  Not that Lucien had insisted that they were. He’d simply suggested that they might be.

  Even if he was right about that, though, and they were matter and their counterparts anti-matter or vice versa, and couldn’t occupy the same space, who was to say they were occupying the same space? It wasn’t as if they’d run in to themselves since they’d arrived.

  They could be occupying the same universe/plane as their counterparts, but he’d always figured that that storm that had brought them over had flung their copies that were living here back into their universe to take their places—that they’d swapped places.

  Poor bastards!

  If it had they were probably in a much worse situation because it had been hell for them trying to adjust and they were no longer involved in a war halfway across the known universe from home. They were home, at least—a really bizarre copy of home in some ways but also very familiar in some ways and not nearly as miserable a place as Xeno-12.

  But if he was right and they were all made of the same stuff then there shouldn’t be a problem interacting with people on this side—not an explosive one, anyway.

  He’d figured Lucien was right about not getting too involved with anybody here more from the standpoint that that was just looking for misery than the suggestion that it was possible they might both disintegrate if they touched. They didn’t belong here. Sooner or later, it seemed to him, they were going to get snatched back to where they did belong even if they never figured out how they’d gotten here. That part didn’t matter in the scheme of things. Whether it was a natural occurrence or unnatural—meaning somebody had fucked something up and caused a rip or something—nature would right itself … eventually. It always did, given time.

  Given those thoughts, he hesitated to knock at Laurie’s door, but he figured one of them needed to keep their head and check on the client.

  He was relieved for about two seconds when she opened the door a small crack and he could see she had the security lock on. Not that that would stop a determined man or even slow him down a hell of a lot, but it showed she was alert to danger and doing what she could to remain secure.

  As she’d pointed out herself, it wasn’t as if she couldn’t be shot through the door as soon as she answered it.

  Then he noticed she wasn’t wearing anything but a loose t-shirt and panties and he could almost see through the sheer t-shirt.

  The blood rushed to his groin and inflated his dick so fast, his head swam. He swallowed with an effort because it felt like his balls were lodged in his throat. “Just wanted to check on you and let you know that we’re occupying the rooms on either side of you if you need anything,” he managed to say a little hoarsely. In retrospect, he didn’t think he would’ve managed that much except that he’d rehearsed it in his mind all the way to her room and it just sort of spilled out of his empty brain.

  She blinked at him. “Oh. Well … now I feel a lot safer,” she said after a prolonged moment and then smiled at him.

  She had a really nice smile. Damien felt his heart flutter.

  That wasn’t all that fluttered either.

  He struggled to think of something to say to keep her standing in the door a little longer so he could get a better look at her in the t-shirt and panties, but not only did nothing come to mind, he also couldn’t really see what he wanted to when she was staring straight at him. His peripheral vision just wasn’t cutting it.

  He swallowed several times. “Maybe I should check the room?”

  She looked surprised but finally shrugged. “Ok.” She closed the door. Then he heard the scrape of her removing the security bar lock and the door opened again. “I’m not exactly dressed for company,” she said, heading away from him and looking around like she was searching for something. Finally, she merely climbed back on the bed—a spot he could see she’d been occupying when he arrived—and covered herself with the coverlet to the waist. He was disappointed, but he could see her fine breasts just fine. He stood staring at them for several moments before it dawned on him that he was supposed to be checking the room.

  And he needed to do something before he gave in to the impulse to dive into the bed with her.

  Moving to the windows, he checked them and made sure there wasn’t a ledge wide enough for an intruder or a balcony close to her window.

  “You don’t really think anybody would try the window? I mean, we’re on the tenth floor. Who in their right mind would try something like that?”

  Damien felt his face heat but struggled to regulate his discomfort. “Not too many people,” he agreed. “Then again most people wouldn’t walk up to a federal agent and blow them away. He’s pretty ballsy.”

  Laurie gaped at him. “Federal …?”

  Damien glanced at her sharply. “You didn’t know?”

  Laurie frowned, but she knew nobody had told her and she certainly hadn’t heard it in the news. No wonder they were acting like this was such an important case! “And you think he knew the guy was a federal agent when he killed him?”

  Damien shrugged. “Who knows? I do know it was broad daylight and you were standing close enough to identify him without any trouble at all. Unless he’s a gecko, though, the windows are safe.”

  Laurie shivered. “What about that door?”

  Damien stared at her when she pointed, discovering when she lifted her arm at just that angle the sleeve of her t-shirt gaped just enough to give him a completely unrestricted view of her breast. His mouth went dry. “What?”

  “The door?”

  He glanced toward the door, trying to make sense of what she was asking when he hadn’t actually heard more than a couple of words above the sound of the blood rushing through his brain on its way to his dick. “Me and Lucien are occupying that room.”

  “And Basil and Kane there?”

  “Right,” Damien responded slowly. “So if you need us all you have to do is bang on the door. We’ll be here inside of two seconds.”

  “That’s reassuring anyway,” Laurie told him with a weak smile instead of informing him that he’d just screwed up any chance of her getting a wink of sleep!

  He smiled at her and Laurie felt her brain shut down for a handful of seconds. My god! The man was a heart stopper! Almost literally.

  Don’t get your hopes up, stoo-pid, she told herself. No man that looked as good as he did was ‘free’ and if he was it wa
s because he was too busy screwing everything that moved to settle down—in which case he couldn’t be had. And she shouldn’t want him if she had an ounce of brain matter—that wasn’t tied up in her crotch area!

  Oh for a wild fling with something that drop dead gorgeous, though!

  That was scrapbook material!

  Nothing one would want to pass down to the grandkids—Well, she supposed mature grandchildren could appreciate that sort of thing. ‘Boy grandma must have been something else in her day!’ Sigh!

  She was so wrapped up in the daydream she almost forgot to follow him to the door to put the deadbolt and security lock on. Seeing he was heading for the door ‘woke’ her though and she bounded out of the bed. “Thanks for checking everything for me,” she chattered as she followed him to the door. “Honestly, I’ve hardly been able to sleep since it happened. I’m going to be so glad when this is all over and I can have my life back!”

  Damien paused at the door and stood staring down at her. Lucien was right. She might look like Lindsey, but this wasn’t Lindsey. He couldn’t resist lifting a hand to lightly touch her cheek. In all honesty he wasn’t really aware of the gesture. He was just thinking how soft and sweet she looked, how vulnerable. Contact was electric, but not the sort of annihilation Lucien had feared.

  He came within a hair’s breadth of kissing her before sanity intruded. He’d leaned close enough he could feel the gentle tickle of her breath against his lips, taste her scent. Truthfully it was the annihilation of his brain function that made his instincts for survival kick in and brought a wall down in time to save him from his folly. He checked his advance, eased away from her and glanced down the hall.

  Kane, an ice bucket in his hand, was staring at him from the next room over, his expression perfectly blank. Even as their gazes met, however, Damien saw Kane’s hackles rise, almost literally.

  He stepped away from Laurie. “Just knock on either door if you hear anything or even if you just get uneasy. We’re close.”

  He didn’t hear her door close and the deadbolt shoot home until he reached his own door and paused to look back. Kane was still standing at his own door, glaring at him now, the ice bucket in his hands slowly crumpling from the strength of his grip. Damien shook his head at him and went inside.

  Obviously, they were going to have a problem.

  He encountered Lucien’s fist as he turned from bolting the door. It caught him squarely on the jaw and sent him back into the door behind him hard enough he was surprised it didn’t buckle. A red haze of rage clouded his vision as he rebounded.

  Fortunately, Lucien was ready for him and caught him in a chokehold. By the time he was seeing black dots swarming in his vision, he’d had time to consider the wisdom of losing control of his beast in the posh hotel and Lucien had, too. Lucien released him and stepped back.

  Damien glared at him. “What the fuck was that all about?”

  “Don’t play stupid with me,” Lucien growled. “You questioned my fucking professionalism and then went straight over there and started slobbering all over Laurie?”

  Damien flushed—partly with anger and partly with discomfort. “Do you think you could bellow a little fucking louder and announce it to everybody on this fucking floor?” he growled.

  The comment struck home. Lucien’s rage abruptly collapsed. “I wasn’t that loud,” he snapped.

  He didn’t sound convinced, however, and Damien thought that was probably a good thing—the doubt. He shook his head. “I think we’d do better to shelve this and discuss it when we have a little more privacy.”

  It was unfortunate that two things struck Damien just as he was about to doze off because one of those two things really pissed him off and made it damned near impossible to get any sleep.

  Laurie hadn’t tried to evade him when he’d almost lost his mind altogether and kissed her.

  And he didn’t have a fucking clue of whether she’d known it was him or if she’d thought it was Lucien who’d come back to check the room!

  He’d pointed out that he and Lucien were sharing the room next to hers, but had she caught that?

  * * * *

  Considering how wired she was when Damien left Laurie didn’t know how she’d managed to calm down enough to sleep.

  He’d almost kissed her!

  What worried her was why the ‘almost’? Why had he reversed engines just when things were starting to look real promising?

  She’d checked her breath, but she hadn’t eaten the onions that came with her meal and she couldn’t find anything offensive about her breath and she hadn’t discovered she had food on her face. She didn’t think that had turned him off.

  Maybe he’d meant to tease her for some reason?

  Just to drive her batty, maybe?

  Or to butter up the client?

  But she hadn’t hired them. The DA apparently had so it wasn’t as if she could make or break the job—or that she’d be hiring them for anything else later.

  So it couldn’t have been an effort to make points with her for the sake of income.

  He’d looked pretty turned on, though. He’d had that ‘look’.

  Thought better of it because he realized she was a job and it might not seem very professional to try to hump her?

  His brother had already called dibs on her and he remembered that at the last minute?

  Oh yeah! That sounded good, but how likely was it?

  Probably not very.

  Well, she didn’t know why, damn it! All she knew was that he had almost kissed her and she’d gotten all worked up just to be let down and left hanging, damn it to hell!

  She thought maybe she’d just exhausted herself making the rounds over and over as she tried to figure out how to piece a puzzle together when she didn’t have more than a couple of parts.

  She knew one thing, though! She was damn disappointed and if he tried it again she wasn’t just going to stand there frozen to the spot. She was going to snub him! She didn’t know what kind of game he was playing, but if it was just some play to keep her distracted, she didn’t want any part of it!

  As it happened, everybody seemed to be in a pretty foul mood as they headed back to the courthouse the following morning to finish up the deposition. Laurie was in such a bad mood herself that it wasn’t until they got there that she discovered that nobody looked like they’d gotten much sleep and that they all looked like somebody had pissed in their cornflakes. She doubted that it had anything to do with her own bad mood, though, so it didn’t especially cheer her to see that they weren’t happy either.

  Things didn’t really get better once they got to the DA’s office. It almost seemed like a repeat of the day before with one exception. When the DA dismissed her that afternoon, he dismissed her. They were done with the deposition and he was placing her in protective custody until the trial.

  Laurie gaped at him in absolute disbelief. Finally, she blinked as her brain kicked into gear again. “When’s the trial?”

  The DA shrugged. “We’re set to start jury selection next Friday. That could take anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks. Probably closer to a week, though, and then the trial date will be set.”

  Laurie went back to blinking in shocked disbelief. “But … I’ve only got two weeks’ vacation!” And she hadn’t planned to spend both of them in Atlanta kicking her heels while she waited for the trial to start! Alright, maybe it would be more accurate so say that she’d hoped to wind up her testimony before her vacation was over and have a couple of days to unwind before she went back to work, but she certainly hadn’t expected to lose her damned job over the trial! And she was liable to if she had to take off more than a week! Even if she didn’t, she was going to be in serious financial trouble if she didn’t work for weeks!

  The DA’s lips tightened. “If you’re dead you won’t have to worry about the job.”

  Laurie felt a little faint. “You don’t seriously believe I’m in danger …?” she asked, hoping he’d tell her it wa
s just insurance.

  “The word on the street is that somebody is looking to hire a kidnapper. What do you think? Why do you think I hired security and sent them to escort you up here? As a matter of fact I do believe that you’re in danger and I do believe that you won’t live to testify if you refuse to go into protective custody.”

  “Oh my god!” Laurie gasped. “But … but …what about after I testify?”

  “What would the point be in killing you once you’ve testified?” the DA pointed out reassuringly.

  Laurie glared at him. “Revenge?”

  He shook his head dismissively. “The danger to you is going to be there as long as he’s a free man. Once he’s convicted, you can have your life back. But I don’t think your chances are good of making it to the trial if you refuse to go into protective custody. You can notify everyone, including your boss, that I insisted on putting you into protective custody and you will be back when you’ve testified. But you won’t be able to contact anyone after that until the trial is over—or at least until you’ve testified against Smith.”

  Laurie was too angry and upset as they headed back to the hotel to think straight. She realized it wasn’t actually the DA’s fault that she was in the mess she was in and that he was looking out for her best interests—and his of course since he didn’t have a case without her—to insist on protective custody, but she still didn’t like it!

  She also didn’t like the fact that she wasn’t actually given any kind of notice where she could have prepared herself, either mentally, emotionally, or physically. She would have brought a lot more stuff from her place if she’d known that there was no telling when she’d get to go back!