He nodded. “That’s how many cat shifters I’ve come across. Not all of them are alive now.”
She leaned away from him, a frown marring her brow. “You think he’s in there?”
Owen shrugged. “He sounds like the type who might have a rep. I might have come across him before. There’s something familiar about him.”
He swigged his vodka and altered the parameters of the search to male and height in the six-foot-three to six-foot-six range.
The results came back quicker this time, down to only eight hundred and twenty two.
Cait looked impressed and scanned the page as he scrolled. He was almost at the bottom of the list when she jammed her finger against an entry.
“That’s him.” Her touch brought the record up and she snatched her hand back and blinked at the screen.
Owen had the impression that she didn’t get out of Hell much. “Never seen a tablet before?”
“I have,” she said, a hint of indignation in her tone. “I just haven’t touched one. I wasn’t expecting it to do that.”
He smiled as she peered closer to the device, her gaze flitting around the screen.
“You’re certain this Marius fellow is him?” Owen waited for her to nod before going back to work.
“Marius,” she murmured, still staring at the photograph on the screen. “I think I remember someone shouting that at him once.”
He double-tapped the part of the entry where it had the male down as a panther shifter and corrected it. The notes on the sources of information mentioned that eyewitnesses in a Nepal village high in the mountains in snow leopard territory had described him as a black cat. Owen had presumed he was a black panther. He probably hadn’t even considered the male could be a hellcat.
“I don’t have much on him.” But what he did have was enough to ring some warning bells in his head.
The male followed similar patterns to other fae he had tracked, travelling from one prime location for rare species to another. Nepal. Brazil. Northern India. Siberia. All places with rare cat shifters.
Owen studied Cait as she stared at the tablet.
He had a feeling she might be in serious danger but he didn’t want to spook her by telling her that the male after her probably dealt in the black market. They were both hellcats. There was an equal chance that Cait was right and Marius wanted her as a mate.
Until he had investigated the male further and had more information on him, Owen would keep his suspicions to himself.
He closed the cover of his tablet device and put it back in his bag.
“I don’t go into things blind. I need more information. I think we should go somewhere quieter to discuss the job and so you can fill me in on everything you know… maybe away from your admirer.” Owen took his drink and smiled at her, raising the glass at the same time, hoping the male was still watching them.
If luck was with him, Marius wouldn’t know who he was and would think he was just another mortal in the bar flirting with Cait. A harmless male looking for a good time.
He instantly hardened in his black jeans, his body issuing a painful reminder that it wasn’t wholly a lie. He was looking for a good time with Cait. Her flirting had revved him up, filling his head with thoughts of finding a dark corner and making out with her.
Okay, making out was a little too innocent sounding for what he had in mind, but it had been a while since he had been as attracted to someone as he was to her. Heck, he wasn’t sure he had ever been this attracted to anyone. He had always kept his dalliances short and sweet, a periodic scratching of a biological itch, but something about Cait had him firing on all cylinders and thinking in terms longer than a single hot and heavy moment.
He was thinking in terms longer than multiple hot and heavy moments. Nights were involved. Many of them. As many as she would give him.
More than they might have together when working on her job.
He emptied his glass to kill that thought with the alcohol and set it back down on the bar.
“Where do you want to go?” She sipped her drink, a genuine smile playing on her lips and the fire back in her eyes. It sent a bolt of hot lust through him again and he grimaced and shifted on his seat, trying to get more comfortable as his jeans pinched his groin.
“My place.” It came out a little harder and more demanding, and definitely more hungry than he had intended.
Her eyes widened a fraction before narrowing on his and filling with dark desire that left him in no doubt she was thinking wicked things too, her mind leaping forwards to picture what awaited her at his place.
Owen ground his teeth and shot for professional. “We can discuss the job further there and you’ll be safe, off the radar of your male.”
“He’s not my male.” She leaned towards him and he leaned back, cursing himself when her smile faded and her gaze lost its heat and hunger. She bounced back, taking another swig of her drink and smiling again. “We can go to your place. I’m intrigued. I want to know what a hunter’s home looks like.”
Owen grimaced for a different reason as he pictured it in his head and realised he was about to make a heck of a poor impression.
He took a small silver glass vial from his bag, tipped half of the contents into his empty glass, and knocked it back. The alcohol haze instantly evaporated, leaving his head clear. He always had loved this particular elixir. Tipsy to sober in a heartbeat. A weapon that should be in any good hunter’s arsenal and one that had saved his life a few times. There were plenty of demons and fae out there who saw a drunk hunter and figured it was a good time to take them out of action. His little elixir solved that problem for him. One swift chug and he was fighting fit and it was the opportunistic non-human who was taken out of action by him.
He turned and looked over his left shoulder, along the bar, searching for Kyter. The sandy-haired shifter was nowhere to be seen but the big silver-haired male who worked behind the bar with Kyter noticed him and strolled towards him.
When the man reached him, Owen said, “Can we slip out the back?”
The bartender looked between him and Cait, a dark edge to his eyes as he folded his arms across his chest, causing the sleeves of his white shirt to stretch tight across his muscles. Owen had the feeling he was going to say no.
He turned to face the big shifter. “There’s a male harassing her.”
The bartender’s stormy eyes shifted back to her and lingered for a moment before he jerked his chin towards the opposite end of the bar and walked away.
Owen slipped from his stool, took hold of Cait’s wrist, and led her through the throng around the bar, using it as cover. He kept low and she did the same, skulking through the crowd behind him. Her other hand caught hold of his wrist as someone jostled her and he pulled her closer, looking back to check on her at the same time, fearing for a moment the male had come after her.
It was just the normal crush around the bar and the human man who had bumped her muttered an apology.
Owen stopped at the end of the bar and peered to his left through a gap in the people there, making sure that the huge male lurking in the shadows was looking in the wrong direction before he made a break for the dark door just beyond the bar where the silver-haired male waited for them.
The man opened the dark metal door in the black back wall of the club as they swiftly approached and closed it as soon as they were through.
The brightly lit cavernous pale room was a contrast to the loud dark main room of the club, quiet enough that Owen could hear his ears ringing from the assault of the music and could hear Cait breathing. She turned on the spot, taking everything in, from the doors that led off the large space to his right to the staircase against the left wall that led upwards. He headed straight for the exit near the foot of the stairs that would take them out into a narrow alley behind the club. His car was parked nearby.
Owen adjusted the strap of his bag on his shoulder and took hold of Cait’s arm again as he headed for the back door. It wasn’t the
first time he’d had to exit the club this way, but normally it was because someone had decided to try to claim the glory of killing him. This was the first time he had left because of a job. It was also the first time he had left the club with a woman.
A woman he was intending to take back to his place.
Another first for him.
His father’s string of marriages after the death of Owen’s mother had led to Owen keeping a firm grip on his heart, never allowing anything to happen that might compromise it. Right at the top of the list of risks he wasn’t willing to take was bringing a woman back to his place. He looked back over his shoulder at Cait as he opened the emergency exit door.
She smiled at him, one that reached her blue eyes and set them alight again, restoring the confident woman who had caught his eye and had him enraptured.
Bringing her back to his home felt like a dangerous move. One liable to weaken the barriers he had constructed to stop himself from falling foul of the same pitfalls as his father.
It was on the tip of his tongue to say he had changed his mind and they should go somewhere else when she shifted closer to him, her other hand coming up in a protective gesture to hover over her chest. Her eyes darted both ways along the dark alley and he swore he felt her trembling beneath his fingers.
His need to take care of her roared back to the fore, vanquishing his fears, and he tugged her along the alley towards the quiet road at the end of it. He didn’t release her until he had dug his keys out of his bag, unlocked his small black hatchback, and had the door open for her. She thanked him with another electric smile that sent a thousand volts sparking along his nerve endings, setting them alight, and slipped into the passenger seat.
Owen closed the door, rounded the compact car and slid into the driver’s seat. He twisted at the waist and put his bag on the back seat, and then put the key into the ignition and started the car. The engine growled to life and he flicked the switch for the lights, checked the road and pulled out. He tugged his seatbelt on as he drove and glanced across at Cait.
“Buckle up.” He waited to see she was doing as instructed, tugging the slim black belt across her chest, before returning his focus to the road.
It was quiet, the night drawing on, making it easy going as he navigated the short journey deep into an affluent neighbourhood near the centre of London.
Cait’s eyes grew wider by the moment as she stared out of the windows, taking in the buildings. When he drove through large black wrought iron gates, her eyes shot impossibly wide and she looked across at him. He kept his eyes on the road, unwilling to field her silent question, slowing the car as he drove through the rows of beautiful pale townhouses.
He turned left down another side road where the biggest houses were located and pulled the car into a reserved parking spot outside his one. Cait was still staring at him. He turned the engine off, undid his seatbelt, gathered his bag, and stepped out of the car.
She followed him a moment later, her eyebrows pinned high on her forehead as she finally looked away from him, her gaze settling on the huge four storey Georgian townhouse behind him.
“What you pictured?” he said before locking the car and turning his back on her. He strode towards the short black iron gate, opened it and glanced over his shoulder at her.
She hurried towards him, her eyes flitting between him and the house.
It was too big for him.
He used the sum total of five rooms out of the possible fourteen.
“This is yours?” She spoke at last, her gaze on the white townhouse, slowly drifting up the height of it.
Owen walked up the path, took the steps up to the covered porch with its Grecian columns, and unlocked the wide black wooden door. He pushed it open, proving it was his.
“It belongs to my family,” he said as way of an explanation when she looked at him again. “It costs a small fortune to run, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to part with it.”
“You grew up here.” It wasn’t a question. She looked him right in the eye as she said it, her expression sober, and he nodded.
It wasn’t often he met someone who could see straight through him as Cait could. Most people didn’t seem to understand him at all.
The humans he met who weren’t hunters, and therefore were unaware of the world of fae and demons that co-existed with theirs, weren’t worth his time. He had nothing he could talk about with them, not as normal people did. He couldn’t gripe about his work week over a beer with a buddy. The hunters avoided him because he wasn’t aligned with any of the organisations they worked for and only exchanged information when it suited them.
The fae and demons preferred to keep him at arm’s length because of his profession.
The only people he could really talk to and who had ever understood him were his family, and those who had been closest to him were dead now. He had a handful of relatives remaining, mostly from his mother’s side, and he rarely saw them.
“You live here alone.” Cait’s soft voice drew him out of his thoughts and he sighed as he looked at her where she now stood on the porch beside him, close enough that he could smell her sweet perfume on the night breeze.
He nodded again. “I keep most of the rooms closed and use just the ones I need… bathroom, bedroom… living room… kitchen. I did make one of the other reception rooms into a gym and training room.”
She looked as if she was on the verge of saying it sounded lonely, so he turned his back on her, stepped into the hall and switched on the lights. Thankfully, she took the hint and remained silent as she entered behind him and closed the door.
Owen locked it and pocketed his keys. “Come on. I’ll get you settled in the living room.”
He led the way up the wooden staircase to the first floor and the large pale blue room he used for his living room. He grimaced as he realised he had left it in a worse state than he had thought.
Cait drifted past him before he could say anything in warning, a twinkle in her eyes as they danced over all of the weapons spread across the large oak table on the left side of the room, and all the knickknacks he had left strewn across the square wooden coffee table nestled in the U of his three black leather couches in front of the fireplace.
She ambled around the room and he watched her as she allowed her fingers to drift over a few items on the coffee table and checked out some of his weapons.
“It looks very much as I had expected in here.” She lifted her eyes away from the crossbow she held and smiled across the room at him. “I imagined weapons and books.”
She looked around at the stacked bookcases that lined the wall to his right between the tall sash windows and the one behind him, and then down at the sheets of paper, notepads, and newspapers stacked haphazardly on a smaller coffee table beside an armchair.
“Although… it has an air of bachelor about it too.” Her smile teased him and he shrugged.
She hadn’t seen his bedroom.
If she thought this room looked like a bachelor owned it, she was in for a shock if she set eyes on his inner sanctum.
Her blue eyes drifted over the couches and then roamed back to him, gaining a dark edge of desire that set his pulse pounding and left him feeling she might just want to see that inner sanctum.
He was damned if she was going to see it as it was though.
He wasn’t sure how hellcats lived, or what accommodation they were used to, but he was fairly certain that as a woman she wasn’t impressed by clothes strewn across the floor, unmade beds, and several empty take out cartons, and that was exactly what his bedroom contained.
“You seem to favour magic.” Cait set the crossbow down and Owen stared at her, his heart pounding for a different reason as he took in what she had said. When she frowned and gestured to all the knickknacks covering the coffee table, his gaze leaped there and his heart settled. “The items… they’re magic aren’t they?”
Owen quickly nodded. “I get them in the fae town nearby. Some I use, others are
just part of a collection.”
He backed towards the door.
“You like magic?” She looked at him again.
Owen took another step backwards and gave a noncommittal shrug in answer.
“I have to get changed and get some stuff together. Make yourself comfortable.”
He turned and walked out of the room, feeling her gaze boring into his back, intense and focused, as if she was trying to strip away the layers of his defences to uncover a truth he preferred to keep hidden.
A secret he’d had for most of his life and had kept from his father.
A secret only one living person in this world knew.
CHAPTER 4
Cait could only blink as Owen made a swift exit, leaving her standing in the centre of the eggshell blue room. She looked around, wondering what he expected her to do while he changed, and why he had felt the sudden need to do such a thing. Sometimes, on rare occasions, she didn’t understand males.
She sighed, sat on the leather couch opposite the black marble fireplace and perused the magical items on the square wooden table again. There were many different types. Some looked as if they were meant for defence, while others appeared to be used to heal.
Her gaze drifted to a not so magical healing item near the right corner of the table. A white bottle of pills. She carefully turned the pot around and read the label. Prescription medicine of some kind. She wasn’t familiar with the name of the contents.
She placed her palms on her knees and sat in silence for a while, staring at the unlit fire, listening for a sign of Owen. She wasn’t sure how many minutes had passed since he had rushed from the room, but she felt certain he wasn’t going to return anytime soon.
Cait slid her gaze towards the weapons and then to the door behind her. She was sure he wouldn’t mind if she looked around a little. It could be considered making herself comfortable.
She rose to her feet and padded around the room, snooping at his books first. Most of them were tomes about different species, but others were diaries. She read several interesting entries dated from before she had been born over four centuries ago, and then set the book back on the wooden shelf. She trailed the fingers of her right hand across the spines of the others as she walked, heading towards the wall with the fireplace.
Bitten by a Hellcat Page 3
