by Tami Lund
Change In the Light
Lightbearer, Book 4
Tami Lund
Published 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62210-293-8
Published by Liquid Silver Books, imprint of Atlantic Bridge Publishing, 10509 Sedgegrass Dr, Indianapolis, Indiana 46235. Copyright © Published 2016, Tami Lund. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Liquid Silver Books
http://LSbooks.com
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
Blurb
As the pack master to the Detroit shifter pack, Josh Tigre is obligated to take a mate and produce offspring to carry on his family line. Problem is, the woman he falls for is human. According to the rules of the pack, he can never tell her about his true nature, which means at some point, he has to give her up.
Rachel Whitaker is a human woman trying to survive in a world in which it seems the cards are always stacked against her. When she’s forced to seduce Josh in exchange for her own life, the task is no hardship—until she falls for the one she is supposed to help destroy.
Rachel decides to fight back against the man manipulating her life, starting in motion a chain of events that adversely affect two worlds—and she doesn’t even know it.
Dedication
To readers of paranormal romance. I hope to always feed your inner beast.
Acknowledgements
Writing books is not a solitary task, even if the memes claim it is. There are so many individuals to acknowledge…Sheri, Misti, and Kay for beta reading this entire series thus far, Liquid Silver for publishing it, the cover artists who continue to impress me. And a shout out to my editor, Terri Schaefer, for ensuring Rachel is likable. It takes a village…
Chapter 1
“I have a proposition for you.”
Rachel had heard those words before. It never ended well.
Unfortunately, her current predicament—tied to a chair in a hotel room with literally no means of escape other than her captor’s good graces, assuming he possessed any—forced her to consider all options.
“What’s the proposition?” she asked, wariness in every inflection of her voice.
“You are wise to be leery,” her captor said, as if he could detect her mood. She supposed it wasn’t really all that hard at the moment. She was fighting fear with every fiber of her being. Although now that he’d mentioned the word proposition, fear was shifting to pissed off, still with that healthy dose of wariness. The last time she’d been propositioned, it landed her right here, in this damned room, tied to a chair and feeling helpless.
Rachel hated feeling helpless.
“What is it already?” she snapped. Her shoulders ached from the strain of her arms being secured behind her back. Her wrists were raw from the zip ties he’d used to secure them. Her jaw hurt from when he’d backhanded her earlier. She wanted a hot shower, a couple shots of whiskey, and a greasy burger. Whatever the hell he wanted from her, she’d probably do it at this point, so long as she didn’t die strapped to this stupid chair, and she could have her three top desires before she fulfilled his proposition.
“Impatient to do my bidding?” Her captor sounded amused.
She studied him as he leisurely paced in front of her. She supposed, if he wasn’t such a raging asshole, he might be good-looking. Sexy even. His longish dark hair was lightly streaked with gray and swept away from his face, waving down to brush the collar of his shirt. His eyes were so dark they appeared black. His face was shadowed with a well-manicured salt-and-pepper beard. He wore a black and gray pinstriped shirt tucked into a pair of gray slacks.
Damn. If only he didn’t have her tied to a chair and hoping his stupid proposition wasn’t too dangerous or illegal.
“Impatient to get these goddamned zip ties off my wrists.”
Her captor tsked and shook his head. “You are one of the few humans who has actually impressed me, to a certain degree.”
It was at least the third time he’d used the word “human” in reference to, well, people.
“Just get on with it,” she snapped irritably. PMS had nothing on a woman stuck sitting in a chair with her hands tied behind her back. Her bladder was full, her stomach was empty, and she really wanted a drink. Actually, want had shifted to need a little while back.
She also really wanted to rip this guy’s head from his shoulders, which he had probably figured out from her attitude, so he was wise not to immediately release her.
He paused in his pacing and turned to face her, standing directly in front of her, his feet a shoulders’ width apart, his hands tucked into the pockets of his pants. He was just close enough that she could smell him: a combination of earthiness and male and, curiously enough, an intriguing animalistic scent that once again made her think, if only he wasn’t an asshole…
She’d always had a thing for bad boys—much to her own detriment—but this guy was way over any line she might have construed for herself over the years.
“I have a small predicament,” he finally began, and then proceeded to drone until her head dipped low and her eyelids struggled to stay open.
“Okay, I get it,” she finally interrupted. “You have a predicament. You think you should be the mob leader or whatever the hell you call it, but some other guy is currently claiming your position. What’s that got to do with me?”
Irritation flashed across her captor’s face, and she briefly feared he was going to hit her again. But he managed to control his impulses and resumed pacing.
“You are going to serve as a distraction,” he said, finally getting down to the nitty gritty. “I have it on good authority that my competition enjoys female companionship a great deal, and specifically seems to enjoy…your kind.”
“What the hell do you mean by my kind?” she demanded, and then comprehension dawned. “Wait a minute. You want me to whore myself out to some other guy, so you can move in and take over as mob king? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“So vulgar,” he chided.
“You’re calling me vulgar? You want me to fuck some guy I don’t know so you can be the leader of the pack or whatever the hell you said, and you think I’m vulgar?”
“Considering the position in which I found you, I’d say it won’t be much of a stretch,” he said mildly.
Okay, that stung. Because her job as a secretary for a local nonprofit organization didn’t quite pay the bills, Rachel had picked up a weekend gig as a housekeeper at a swanky hotel in downtown Detroit. And no, she did not always turn down the advances of the wealthy male patrons she happened across. She was a girl with needs—and not just of the sexual variety—and these guys sometimes promised the world for a quick roll in the hay—or several rolls.
Jeremy had been the latest hotel guest who’d hit on her, and she’d chosen not to turn him down. He’d had huge shoulders and arms, with a couple of scary-looking scars and a wad of cash in his back pocket—an MMA fighter in a suit—and his promises to get her out of her current nowhere life had been too hard to ignore.
Rachel liked to think she wasn’t really that shallow, but the truth was, she’d struggled for literally her entire life just to put food in her mouth. It was hard to turn down a piece of the other side. Especially when all she had to do was go out with the guy a few times and eventually warm his bed. Frankly, that wasn’t too much to ask. Prior to J
eremy’s proposition, she’d been taking a stab at being a good girl, and therefore had been experiencing something of a dry spell.
Unfortunately, the bastard who now had her tied to a chair had walked into this very hotel room while she and Jeremy had been in the process of shifting their acquaintanceship to the next level. The intruder had grabbed her by the hair and flung her across the room while snarling something about human whores, and then he’d commanded Jeremy to get the hell out. When Jeremy complained that he hadn’t yet gotten his rocks off, the other guy threatened him with bodily harm, and Jeremy meekly slunk from the room. Rachel had been tied to the chair before she comprehended that the entire thing had been some sort of setup.
But why? For what purpose? Why her?
“I’m not a whore,” she weakly defended herself.
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t particularly care what you are, so long as you serve my purpose. Our…members are far too enthralled with my competition,” he said, placing a strange emphasis on the word members. “I need them to become disenchanted. It’s the only way I stand a chance of taking over.”
“So spread some rumors or something,” Rachel suggested.
“I have. It didn’t work.” Her captor paused and looked as if he were recalling a particular memory. “He comes from a long line of rather…reputable leaders,” he decided finally. “Our members tend to resist change.”
“Well, so far, I can see why they might be resistant to you becoming their leader.”
“Bitch.” Not surprisingly, her captor slapped her again. The force of the blow caused her chair to topple over. She cried out when her shoulder took the brunt of the fall. He grabbed the front of her shirt and righted her again. With his hand still twisted in the material, he leaned close enough that his breath washed over her face, causing her bangs to flutter. Heat radiated off him as if he had a fever.
Holy crap, maybe he was bat-shit crazy. Maybe he had some kind of disease that caused him to be delusional. What if he completely fell off his rocker and killed her?
“I deserve to be the leader of this pack,” he said, his voice coming out like a growl.
For some reason, the song “Leader of the Pack” danced through her head. She resisted the urge to start singing. Maybe they were both crazy.
“And you are going to help me take my rightful place in this pack.”
This pack? “How am I supposed to do that?”
He straightened and rolled his eyes. “Based on the look on Jeremy’s face when I walked in on the two of you, I feel reasonably confident you can figure that out.”
Rachel shifted her gaze to the side and willed her face not to flush.
“While you keep my competition occupied, I’ll work on destroying his reputation, so that I can take over this territory.”
“Territory? Jesus, are you really in the mob? Look, I don’t want to be part of this. I’ve seen the movies. I don’t want to end up in a shallow grave in the middle of the desert. Find somebody else to be your whore.”
“I’ve been contemplating this for some time. Unfortunately for you, you fit perfectly into my plan.”
“Too damn bad. I’m not doing it.”
“The other option is to kill you, which really doesn’t serve a purpose for either of us.”
“You think you can just kill me in cold blood and no one will wonder what happened to me?”
“Why do you think I chose you, Rachel Whitaker? According to my intel, there isn’t anyone who will even notice if you disappeared.”
That hurt worse than the whore insinuation. Because it was true. There wasn’t a single person in the world who cared about her. She really and truly was alone. And this bastard knew it.
“Fine,” she said on a weary sigh. “At least tell me he’s good-looking.”
Chapter 2
True to his word, her own personal Lex Luthor—who had failed to mention his name—had not killed her after she agreed to whore herself out to his number one enemy. Instead, he rattled off a bunch of instructions that Rachel only half listened to, then pulled a bag over her head and untied her from the chair. The next thing she knew, she was dumped out of a vehicle a few blocks from her apartment complex.
By the time she climbed the stairs to her second-story apartment, her captor was already there, standing in her tiny living room, looking out the window at the wholly unimpressive scenery.
That pissed her off, because she’d fully intended to renege on their agreement. But the fact the guy knew where she lived gave her pause. He seemed terribly resourceful, and unless she missed her mark, wealthy to boot.
And he was right about one thing. If she died, there wasn’t a damn person in the world who would care or probably even notice. Housekeepers were a dime a dozen, and she only worked weekends anyway. Maybe the executive director at her day job would notice, but only because of the inconvenience of not having a secretary. Rachel tended to keep to herself. She didn’t let people in. She’d been burned too many times as a kid being dragged through the foster system, her mom a drugged-out loser unwilling or unable to bother taking care of her own offspring.
After he warned her not to do exactly what she had planned on doing, he left. She headed into her bedroom, intending to strip and get into the shower, and stopped short when she saw the display on her bed. A long, golden dress, along with matching shoes, a handbag, jewelry, and even an incredibly sexy pair of panties and matching bra. She touched the satiny material of the dress. What the hell?
The invitation propped next to the handbag explained it all. A fundraiser at a country club located on a road that the residents probably wouldn’t even allow Rachel’s ancient, rusted-out sedan to drive down. Next weekend. Apparently, this was where Rachel would find her quarry.
Rachel was not a country club girl. She was not a high heels and long, fancy dress girl. She’d fought and worked hard—and okay, maybe used a few guys along the way—for every dime she’d ever made in her life, and it still had never been remotely enough that she could have imagined herself in this position—ever. She felt like Julia Roberts in that old movie with Richard Gere. It was an act, a veneer, and it didn’t feel at all comfortable.
But she’d do it anyway. She had just enough healthy fear of the man who’d managed to drag her out of a hotel room and drop her near her own apartment, without anyone around so much as blinking an eye. She didn’t live anywhere near to the high-end hotel, so he had to have done his homework. And he knew she was all alone in the world, too.
To top it off, he’d nailed her bra and shoe size.
Someone like that should be feared, she decided, so six days later she donned the pretty clothes, put on makeup and pulled her hair back into what turned out to be a very messy bun, and teetered out of her apartment on ridiculously high heels—but not before stuffing mace into her handbag. Just in case she had an opportunity to use it. Using it on the man who’d put her up to this would be infinitely satisfying, so long as she could do it without him knowing it was her, of course.
A car pulled up in front of her apartment just as she reached the bottom step, a sleek black BMW. A man dressed in a tuxedo jumped out of the driver’s seat, opened the back door, and invited her to step inside.
“Me?” she squeaked. This was far too Alice in Wonderland for her. Where was the queen, demanding her head?
“I’ve been instructed to take you to the party,” the young, good-looking man said. Another dark-haired, dark-complexed, dark-eyed guy. Definitely a family business, Rachel decided as she slid into the backseat and sank three inches into buttery soft leather. Tuxedo Guy returned to the driver’s seat.
“God,” she said, her voice breathy. “I could have an orgasm just sitting back here.”
His startled look through the rear view mirror told her she’d made the comment slightly too loudly.
“Sorry,” she said as he shifted the car into gear and smoothly pulled away from the curb. “I didn’t mean to say that so loud.”
He flashe
d a brief smile. “It’s okay. I have really good hearing.”
When he pulled up in front of a sprawling, white, southern plantation-like building that was awash with thousands of tiny white lights covering the shrubbery everywhere, she inquired as to her ride home.
“I’ve been instructed not to return.”
“What? How am I supposed to get home?”
The driver slid out of the car and opened the back door, offering her a hand and inviting her to stand. “I wasn’t informed,” he said as he held her steady while she tried to maintain her balance in the stupid heels.
She thanked him anyway and asked if she was supposed to tip him. She didn’t have any experience with this sort of treatment, and she wouldn’t know how much, but she suspected she was probably supposed to tip every damn person she came into contact with at this sort of party. She was going to go broke just being a guest, and she hadn’t even intended to be here in the first place.
He assured her she did not need to bother, and then he was gone, leaving her standing on the edge of wealth and abundance and beauty and the chance to sleep with one of these people, in exchange for her own life—so long as she could convince the man to do so.
It occurred to her as to why the driver had been instructed not to return. Because she was supposed to go home with her quarry tonight. Somehow, some way, she had to convince a perfect stranger, a man who moved in circles that Rachel had before now not even been aware of, that he wanted her in his bed tonight.
She managed to make it to the door without tripping over her own feet or the hem of her dress. A white-tuxedo-clad butler or whatever-the-hell-he-was opened the door with a flourish, smiling widely at her in a way that told her he appreciated the way she looked in the golden satiny gown. She wobbled precariously and grabbed his arm for support.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “I’m not used to these damn heels.”
He wrapped her arm around his elbow and held it tightly. “Allow me to escort you into the ballroom, ma’am,” he said with a broad smile, and Rachel wished this was the man she was supposed to seduce, because she was pretty sure it would be in the bag already. Unfortunately for her, she’d been told her quarry was not an employee of the country club, but was one of the honored guests.
