Angus peered into the niches, but most were shallow and empty. The largest one opened to a narrow hall that bent out of sight.
Angus stepped into the passage and followed it around a corner to find that it ended in another blank panel. He felt around for hidden catches, and finally depressed a piece of molding that let the panel swing open.
Behind it was a very small room, about seven by four feet, which held an old but well-preserved desk and chair under a tiny, high window, the only source of light.
Tamsin sat on the chair behind the desk, her red head bent as she went through a wallet and its contents on the desk before her. When Angus entered, she began reading from a small, laminated card.
“Angus Murray. Shifter type: Lupine. Born 1918. Mate: None. Cubs: One, Ciaran Murray, Lupine. Shiftertown: New Orleans West. Employment: Security, the Dark Moon Club, New Orleans. Approved. Residence: 1442 St. Charles Place. Nice picture.”
She held his Shifter ID, the one that all Shifters were required to carry at all times. On the desk was a slim stack of cash, a few printed photos, and bits and pieces Angus had stashed in his wallet for no reason. He didn’t know when, but sometime this morning, she’d obviously picked his pocket.
Tamsin looked up at him over the ID, her face holding an anger he couldn’t interpret. “Murray,” she repeated. “As in Gavan Murray?”
Angus saw no reason to lie. “My brother. He was, anyway, before his assholery got him killed. You should know—you were one of his followers.”
Fury smoldered in her eyes as well as a stark pity. “I wouldn’t say I followed him. More like I was in the same place at the same time.” She dropped the card and rubbed her fingers over her temples. “I have to process this.”
“You have to get up and come with me. It’s time to go.”
Tamsin lowered her hands, her tawny eyes still, her anger and bravado gone. “Damn it, you should have told me you were Gavan’s brother. I had no idea . . . Goddess, I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry about what? That you fell for his garbage?” Angus snarled, his bitter rage rising. “And what about those dead Shifter Bureau agents in Shreveport? Did you do that?”
“Angus.” Tamsin rose from behind the desk, her hands flat on its surface. “I did not kill those agents. I promise. Do you believe me?”
She held his gaze, something in her eyes speaking of desperation, as though his answer was very, very important to her.
“I haven’t decided yet, and you not killing them doesn’t mean you weren’t there.”
Tamsin looked stricken. “I was there. But I promise you I didn’t kill those men, or tell anyone else to kill them. It was awful, and I took off.”
“Tell me what happened,” Angus commanded.
For a moment, he thought she’d refuse, then Tamsin sank to the desk chair and covered her face with her hands. “I was with this Shifter—Dion. I thought he had the same goals I did, which is to get Shifters free of Shiftertowns and Collars. He seemed reasonable when I first met him.”
She sighed. “But after a while it was clear he was just crazy. I planned to get away from him, but I was still with him when two men from Shifter Bureau found us. They tried to arrest us, but they didn’t call for backup. I guess they thought Shifters would be scared and contrite if we were threatened with tranqs, Tasers, and Collars. But Dion was out of his mind. He went into his half-beast form and attacked. I tried to stop him, tried to fight him away from them. But he killed them—I couldn’t do anything. I knew if I were found anywhere nearby, I’d be executed. So I ran.”
Her words grew more shaky as she spoke, and when she finished, her shoulders moved in silent sobs.
Damn it, now Angus wanted to hold her, hug her, soothe her. Tell her he felt sorry for her for taking up with a murdering Feline.
“What happened to this Dion?” he asked abruptly. “Did they catch him?”
“I don’t know. Probably not if you were sent to bring me in. They obviously knew I was at the scene.”
Tamsin remained hunkered over, her damp hair spreading across her shoulders in an orange-red wave.
Angus hid a growl, moved across the small room, and rested his hand on her back. She was warm through her shirt, her shaking coming to him.
He firmed his touch, his natural instinct to comfort taking over. Shifters helped one another with direct contact, which was why embracing perfect strangers and those of the same gender—for long, soul-healing hugs—wasn’t odd to them.
Tamsin’s horror was unfeigned. Angus imagined she’d have been happy taunting and evading the agents, as she had Angus, but she would not have wanted them dead. Whoever this Dion was, if he was still alive, Angus would catch up to him and explain a few things.
“I’ll help you tell them what happened,” Angus said. “If you weren’t responsible for the killings, I won’t let Shifter Bureau pin that on you.”
Tamsin raised her head. She sniffled, then dug into the pocket of her jeans for a tissue. “Wake up to reality. They won’t care if I didn’t actually commit the murders. I’m a Collarless Shifter. That’s enough to get me caged and terminated.”
She wasn’t wrong. When Collarless Shifters were found, many were simply forced into Collars and put into Shiftertowns, but if one was considered violent and dangerous, termination was the usual result.
“I know people,” Angus tried. “Powerful Shifters from Texas—both with Collars and without. They can help you. But I have to take you in first.”
Tamsin turned to look at him, but she didn’t try to dislodge his hand. He could tell his touch was helping, because her shaking had lessened and her voice no longer quavered. “I can’t make you understand, can I?”
Her face was slightly pointed, like her fox’s, her nose a little longer than most humans would find pretty. Angus thought it fit her perfectly. He also noted that the tips of her ears were very slightly pointed—her fox again. “I can’t let you go, Tamsin. I’m sorry.” He drew a breath. “They have my cub.”
Tamsin’s eyes widened. “What?” Her lips remained parted, moisture behind them.
“They’re making me choose between you and my cub, and I have to pick my cub. So I don’t have the option of letting you go. I’ve already taken too long, but you were hurt . . .”
Tamsin swallowed. Her breath touched his skin. “You should have told me.”
“Would it have made a difference?”
She nodded, her warm hair brushing his hand. “I would have tried harder to get away from you. Not your fault if you couldn’t catch me.”
Angus frowned. “You mean you weren’t trying hard to get away from me?”
“Not as hard as I could have. The house is starting to like me. It showed me this room—I knew there would be secret passages. It will let me go eventually if I can convince it that it’s in our best interests.”
“You don’t sound very worried that you’re inside a haunted house.”
“A sentient house,” Tamsin said. “There’s a difference. I’ve heard of them, though I’ve never seen one. Very, very rare. Have to be on a ley line, built by a person of certain magic, and then it needs to be given time.”
“And you know all this because . . .”
“I read books.” Tamsin’s impish look returned. “You know, they have covers with paper in between. Or they’re words that magically appear on your phone. At least my phone, since I have one made in this century. Or I did. Too risky to carry something around that always wants to know your location.”
Angus didn’t bother answering. He couldn’t seem to stand up either, to rise and walk away from her.
He’d pretty much shut down all interest in female Shifters since April had told him she’d always preferred Gavan and had only accepted Angus’s mate-claim to get close to his brother. He and April had never formed the mate bond, and he’d understood why the day she’d taken of
f with Gavan, leaving a note in case he worried about Ciaran. Angus had tracked her down—he was one of the best trackers in his Shiftertown, far better than Gavan had ever been—took Ciaran, and let her go.
He’d been completely absorbed in raising his son and keeping Shifter Bureau off his back from that day to this.
But maybe he should have sated himself with a few females, perhaps one of the human women groupies who tried to entice him at the club. Then he wouldn’t be inhaling Tamsin Calloway’s nutmeg scent and wanting to close the space between them.
He did close it, and she didn’t pull away. Her gaze flicked to his lips. Angus’s blood fired, his heart banging hard.
The moment hovered, with their faces close, breaths mingling. Tamsin’s lashes moved as she met his gaze, her whisky-colored eyes flecked with green.
Angus waited for his natural cynicism to return, for his common sense to clamp down over his impulses. But he felt need building deep inside him, the frenzy that all Shifters could fall into when they wanted to mate.
He knew Tamsin was not unwilling. A Shifter female made it very clear when she didn’t want a male, in the harshest words possible if necessary, with a follow-up of claws and teeth. Males, unless they were total dickheads, got the message and backed off. The total dickheads usually ended up bloody, or dropped on their heads, as the Shifter female had done at the club.
Tamsin only looked at Angus, as though waiting for him to make the first move. If Angus kissed her, it would lead to more, and more, and this situation would deteriorate from captor and captive very fast. Which was probably what she wanted.
So Angus should back away. Get up, walk out, demand that she follow him, and lock her in a room until they left. Any minute now . . .
As he debated with himself, Tamsin leaned forward and brushed his lips with hers.
Something electric flashed through Angus’s body, and for a second, he thought she’d tased him. But her hands were empty, her eyes closed, and only her mouth touched his.
Her lips were smooth, soft, perfect. The half kiss broke open something inside him, and heat came flooding out.
Angus attempted to pull back, but the ache that would have caused wouldn’t let him. His hand moved before he could stop it and cupped her cheek, pulling her closer so he could strengthen the kiss.
Tamsin stilled, then her hesitancy left her. She leaned into him and met his kiss with a sudden hunger.
Soft, sweet woman under his hands, yet she was strong. Tamsin’s lips moved on his, seeking, giving at the same time. She might have started off trying to distract him, but now she simply wanted to kiss him.
Angus responded in kind. He pulled her closer, slanting his mouth over hers, a groan leaving his lips. She was a fugitive he needed to bring in, but right now, she was a woman, Tamsin, beautiful and fragrant. Her hair was like living fire against his palm, heating, not burning.
If he could send the world away, he’d lift her against him and onto the desk, tearing away clothes to find her.
He parted her lips with his tongue, tasting the mint bite of toothpaste barely covering her own spice. She welcomed him, her small fists digging into his back as she pulled him down to her.
The kiss went on, their mouths connecting, erasing all urgency but this joining. The world spun away, the years of heartache and loneliness, of Angus blaming himself for losing his mate, dissolving to mist. Nothing mattered but this woman and her fiery kiss, her arms around him, their bodies fusing as though nothing else existed in time and space.
A breath of wind touched Angus, but he couldn’t be bothered to wonder where it had come from. Tamsin was real and warm in his arms, her kiss deepening. She made a faint noise in her throat, a sound of surrender.
They were spinning, falling, floating, but no, they hadn’t moved. The floor was still beneath Angus’s feet, his knee hard against the desk. But he felt nothing, no sensation except where he connected with Tamsin.
A voice boomed in the echoing main hall. “Did you find her?”
Tamsin gasped, the touch of it on his tongue. She pulled away, breaking the kiss, her face scarlet.
Reality returned with a slap. Angus was supposed to be her jailor, taking her in in exchange for his cub. He had no business kissing her, touching her, tasting her, and wanting to do it again. No business savoring her, drinking in every second of it.
“Yes!” he roared back. “We’re leaving.”
* * *
• • •
Tamsin couldn’t catch her breath. She struggled for it as Angus pulled her up, grabbed his wallet and money, and dragged her out through the secret passage to the main hall where Ben waited, a worried look on his face.
She still couldn’t breathe as he towed her to the front door, plucking a hooded jacket from a coat hook along the way, the keys to the awful station wagon in his hand. Tamsin hoped the house would imprison him as well, but no, the door flung itself open as soon as Angus touched it.
He wasn’t really going to take her to Shifter Bureau, was he? They’d had a moment. A kiss.
One hell of a kiss. The sensation of that was what kept Tamsin’s breath from her, not Angus’s rapid pace.
Plenty of men in Tamsin’s life had tried to kiss her or more, and she’d evaded most of them. She hadn’t wanted to evade Angus. She’d brushed her lips against his because she’d had the sudden urge to discover what it felt like to kiss him.
Now she couldn’t pump enough air into her lungs. His kiss had been strong but not brutal. He had Tamsin in his power, and he knew it, in spite of her refusal to cow to him. Yet he hadn’t thrown her to the floor and ravished her, taking what he could from his prisoner.
He’d kissed her as though he’d wanted to learn her as much as she wanted to learn him. She still did. Never mind that he was taking her to her execution and he was Gavan Murray’s brother.
Tamsin’s head told her to fight him, get away from him, run like hell. Her libido kept fantasizing about what it would have been like if he had taken her to the floor, covering her with his hard body.
Her heart said . . .
Her heart was all screwed up and always would be. No use asking her heart.
Tamsin dug in her heels as they approached the car. Ben had followed them out, his dark eyes enigmatic. He didn’t like what Angus was doing, but he didn’t try to stop him either.
She jerked against Angus’s hold, but he didn’t release her. “You can’t.” Tamsin continued to yank at him, but she didn’t have any more luck extracting herself than her fox had had pulling its paw from the alligator’s mouth. “Angus, come on.”
Ben reached them, brow puckered with concern. “You know they’ll kill her, Angus. Let me take her—she’ll go so far away Shifter Bureau will never find her, and you’ll be off the hook. They can’t expect you to track someone who’s thousands and thousands of miles from anywhere.”
That solution didn’t sound much better. Tamsin didn’t know exactly what Ben was, in spite of his glib explanation of being a gnome or a goblin—whatever she wanted to call him. Running thousands and thousands of miles away where no one would ever find her wasn’t exactly what she had in mind.
Angus growled, his grip tightening. “She’s coming with me. I’m turning her over and taking Ciaran home. If Haider is too incompetent to hold on to her after that, if she gets away from him right after I’m gone, which I know she can, and if there’s a Shifter waiting around the block to help her out, then Haider can suck it.”
Tamsin ceased struggling as she listened, her mouth forming an O. Angus gave her a long look, gray eyes glittering.
Wait until I have my cub safe and then give this guy Haider the slip, he was trying to tell her. Run like hell, but backup will be just around the corner.
Angus wasn’t interested in pleasing Haider—he only wanted to rescue his cub. If Tamsin kicked Shifter Bureau in the balls and ran
far, far away, he didn’t care. As long as he got his cub first, Angus would be happy.
Tamsin gave him a little nod, hoping she hadn’t misunderstood.
She turned and flashed Ben a big smile. “See you, Ben. Who knows, sometime I might need to take you up on your offer to get me far from here. Is it someplace exotic?”
Ben considered. “Exotic-ish.”
Tamsin hugged him—with one arm, as Angus wasn’t about to let her go. “What a sweetie you are. Why don’t you have a mate? Or do you? Tucked away in this exotic-ish place?”
“Huh. I wish.” Ben returned the embrace, then backed from her, hands out as though showing Angus he hadn’t given her anything. “No one wants an old geezer like me.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. I think you’re wicked sexy. All right, all right, don’t push.” The last was directed at Angus, who had the passenger door open and was trying to angle her into the car.
Tamsin lowered herself onto the seat, her shakes returning. Angus shut the door, and Tamsin cranked down the window and blew Ben a kiss.
“Thanks for breakfast, Ben. I’ll send you a postcard.”
Angus said nothing at all. The car jostled as he dropped into the driver’s seat and cranked the engine to life.
A heavy wind sprang up, bending the trees and making the vines on the house dance. The chimes on the porch rang and jangled.
Tamsin laughed in delight. “It’s saying good-bye to me.” She waved at the house as Angus pulled the car around the arc of the drive. “I’ll be back. Don’t you worry.”
Ben watched them go from the foot of the porch steps, arms folded. Tamsin waved until Angus rounded a stand of trees and Ben and the house were lost to sight.
Angus drove out through the rusting gate to the narrow road that skirted the river. He hunkered over the wheel, a silent bulk of male Lupine, his gray eyes light in the morning sunshine.
He said nothing, no mention of the kiss, no more advice for what she should do when in Shifter Bureau’s clutches. He might have been alone in the car for all the attention he paid her.
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