by Lisa Oliver
“Do you see him every night? Does he go home with you?”
“Well, no. He can’t. There’s gossips everywhere. If we got found out….”
“Yeah, I know, your father. But your father’s been in Europe this past year. Why didn’t you two talk to Dirk if Merv’s worried about his job? I’m sure Dirk wouldn’t have given you a hard time.”
“I don’t care who you’re sleeping with,” Dirk agreed.
“Well…we haven’t…we don’t…I don’t know.”
Dirk could guess. Most of Samuel’s story revolved around Merv’s sizable dick and his tongue prowess.
“The thing is,” Jon came closer but the lower half of his body was still covered, much to Dirk’s dismay. “Merv’s a multi-format lover.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I have his texts, he promised me he’s faithful. He wants to claim me. Look at my phone if you don’t believe me.”
“I don’t need to look,” Jon said sadly. “I imagine you got texts like, ‘I can’t wait to see you,’ ‘you’re the only one for me,’ ‘my cock burns at the idea of sinking into your hot flesh,’ ‘this separation is killing me baby,’. Am I close?”
“Yes.” Samuel sat up, a deep furrow between his eyes. “How did you know. Have you been hacking my phone?”
“Not your phone, no. But I read exactly the same thing in emails between Merv and your cousin Jeremy. Their affair has been going on at least six months according to the emails.”
The resulting silence was punctured when Samuel leaped to his feet, screaming “NO,” at the top of his lungs. “I will kill him. I will hunt him down and burn the scales from his fucking body.”
Typical. Samuel wasn’t pissed at Merv, he was ready to kill Jeremy. Dirk moved swiftly, caging Samuel in his arms, surrounding them both with the power from his dragon. “Calm the fuck down,” he growled. “Now,” he added when Samuel wouldn’t stop. The two men engaged in an eye lock, Dirk determined not to back down. He was the head of their clan and Samuel would obey.
It was tense. Buoyed by his anger, Samuel was pushing hard, trying desperately to get free. Dirk’s dragon lingered under his skin, ready to break free if Samuel raised a hand against him. In the end, Samuel wasn’t strong enough to resist. Slowly, very slowly, the fight drained out of him and Samuel slumped against Dirk’s body, his face wet with tears. “Why did he lie to me? Why didn’t my dragon warn me?”
“When was the last time you communed with your dragon?” Jon asked softly. “Is it possible he tried to warn you and you didn’t listen?”
“He didn’t like Merv,” Samuel admitted, his words muffled by Dirk’s shoulder. “But I thought he was being a snob and he didn’t want to bond with Merv’s wolf spirit. I never dreamed, I didn’t know dragons didn’t care about species. Oh shit, I should’ve listened.”
“Illuminating as this is,” Dirk said drily, carefully disengaging himself from his brother’s grasp, “it still doesn’t bring us any closer to finding out who put the rogue bit of code in our system. Merv’s been too damn busy getting his rocks off to have the time to do something like that.”
Samuel’s face went white, but he didn’t fight Dirk’s assessment. “Do we question him anyway?”
“Actually, if Bryce could bring me my clothes and my laptop, I think I can work out who did this, with Merv’s help.” Jon winked at Dirk. “After all, the man’s been using the elitist attitude of dragons to play the field and not make a claim on anyone. Maybe we should call his bluff?”
“I don’t want him to claim me now,” Samuel said crossly.
“He doesn’t know that,” Jon said grimly. “But it’s going to take some wicked acting skills on your part, Samuel. Merv’s nose is as keen as mine, if not more. You are going to walk into that IT room with us, and be over the moon that the barrier to your claiming has now been lifted.”
“He’ll just lie and make out he’s happy about it.”
“Not with me there he won’t.” Jon waggled his fingers at Dirk who promptly pulled out his phone and sent a text to his PA. He adjusted his rock hard cock in his pants as he put his phone back in his pocket, hoping no one noticed. Although, the wink Jon sent him suggested that his keen nose could pick up the slightest hint of arousal.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Armed with his laptop and fully clothed again, Jon followed Dirk and Samuel into the IT room. Like most of the offices at Hollingsworth, it was a large, airy room, with plenty of natural light, well-tended plants in every corner, and state of the art computer equipment covering the walls. Merv, the IT supervisor with the overly high sex drive was tall, well-built, and he exuded that lazy bad-boy charm that came with long dark hair and a chiseled face graced with the fullest lips Jon had ever seen. The hint of a tribal tattoo peeked above his starched white shirt collar and both of his arms, visible below the rolled up sleeves, were covered in the same. He jumped as Dirk entered the room and his eyes widened just a fraction when he saw Samuel with him.
“Mr. Hollingsworth,” Merv tilted his neck. “What brings you here?”
Jon poked Samuel in the back and the man plastered on a smile as he ran over to Merv and threw himself in his arms. “Isn’t it wonderful, darling? I told my brother all about us and he’s agreed to our bonding. Now you can claim me as your bond mate, just the way we’ve planned for so long.”
“Er…er….” Yep, Jon smirked. Merv was showing all the actions of a cornered animal. Eyes wide, scouting the room, looking for an escape.
“Claim you?” A young intern with a mop of blond hair clad in jeans tight enough to cut off circulation, jumped up. “You told me I was your one and only. We’re supposed to be going to meet my father this weekend.”
“Told you?” A young woman screeched, her red hair flying as she leaped to her feet. “He told me just last night he wanted to have babies with me. What the hell, Merv?”
Jon was glad Dirk was in front of him. There was no way he could hide his grin. Merv’s sins were coming back to haunt him. Samuel played his part beautifully, pulling out of Merv’s arms, his bottom lip dropping, although chances were he wasn’t acting now. “What are all these people talking about, Merv? Have you been sleeping with other people? When you promised you were faithful to me?” Samuel’s voice rose, his anguish genuine. Jon hated that Samuel had to go through this, but then how was he to know Merv was managing four affairs not two.
“Can we talk about this later?” Merv hissed as he tried to wave his colleagues away. “Mr. Hollingsworth, sir. I don’t know what you must be thinking but I…I….”
“You’re right, Merv, you have no idea what I’m thinking,” Dirk growled. “Let me enlighten you, shall I? Imagine my surprise when in a routine discussion with my brothers earlier today concerning some irregularities I found with some of our accounts, I expressed concerns over your performance and my youngest brother jumps in to defend you.”
Merv glanced over at Samuel who was watching him with a mulish expression. Jon was mentally commending Dirk for not actually lying at all. He had a very smart mate and Jon wasn’t just referring to the suit that covered Dirk in a ‘strip me off and see what I’ve got underneath’ fashion.
“Obviously, I was surprised. I didn’t realize Samuel had a lot to do with the IT department. That’s my cousin Jeremy’s responsibility.” Merv’s eyes flicked to his computer screen. He immediately looked back at Dirk, but Jon caught the gesture. His grip tightened on his own laptop. Oh, this is going to be fun.
“However, when Samuel explained the situation; let me know how highly you valued your job, to the point of not claiming the man you’d been deeply in love with for almost two years. I believed that sort of loyalty deserves to be rewarded,” Dirk frowned.
“Sir, Samuel, it’s not what you think.” Merv’s face resembled that panicked expression someone gets when they are neck deep in a sink hole and they are still going down. “My personal life has never interfered or impacted my ability to do my work.”
“Liar.” Jo
n stepped forward and Merv’s eyes almost fell out of his face. “Dragons can’t smell it, I can. Stick to the truth.”
“Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my department?” Merv’s bluster was almost comical.
“Oh, didn’t I introduce you? What with all the commotion, learning how you screwed around on my brother, I forgot.” Jon didn’t call Dirk on his lie. He simply smirked at Merv as his mate dropped his arm over his shoulder and made the introductions. “Merv, I’d like you to meet Jon Erskine, my mate. He’s here in his capacity as a Forensic Accounts and Systems Investigator. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? I understand he’s highly respected in his line of work.”
Oh yeah. Merv had heard of him all right. And from the desperate look in his eyes he knew he was well and truly screwed.
/~/~/~/~/
Dirk couldn’t be prouder of his mate. The calm way he insisted that the two workers, who were still shooting eye daggers at Merv, take the rest of the day off. The confident way Jon hooked up his laptop to the main server, asking Merv questions all the while. Why Jon didn’t insist on questioning the two workers, Dirk wasn’t sure but he guessed it had something to do with the screeds of data he and Merv were watching scroll down the screen.
“We haven’t questioned Jeremy,” Samuel whispered, watching Merv like a hawk.
“Bryce reported Jeremy was seen leaving the building with Byron not long after we started questioning the staff.”
“That’s got to be suspicious, right?”
Dirk wasn’t sure what it meant. Out of all his cousins, Jeremy was the quiet one. He worked hard, kept to himself, and barely ever participated in family matters. To imagine Jeremy working with his father to bring down the company, or even bolster up the European branch didn’t make sense. But then Dirk couldn’t imagine his buttoned-up, fastidious cousin falling for a bad-boy wolf shifter either, although the emails Jon uncovered suggested he had.
“Got it,” Jon gave Dirk the thumbs up. “All the evidence to the thefts points to Merv, as I suspected, but what the coder failed to realize was that after I learned about Merv’s personal history when I was doing my earlier investigation, I added some code of my own to this machine. See for yourself. This is the person who was using this computer when the code was adjusted to increase the amount of money being stolen with each transaction. If Merv hadn’t been so busy getting his dick sucked, this individual wouldn’t have had the chance.” Turning the computer screen around, Dirk found himself staring at a frozen screen image of his cousin Jeremy.
Dirk swallowed to cope with the rising tide of nausea. Even though there was a part of him that knew, he never wanted to believe anyone in his family would deceive him in this way. “Have you removed the code and stopped the thefts?”
“I have and with the passcode Merv supplied I was able to place a tracer in the European system. The money bounces around for a while once it’s stolen from here, but within five days it shows up in the European accounts as a deposit. The amounts are too similar, barring differences in exchange rates and bank fees, to be from anywhere else and all of the deposits are coming from off-shore accounts. They haven’t made money from their investments in months, yet dividends are still being paid out to clients as though they were.”
“Can you get the money back?”
“Only if I steal it,” Jon fixed Dirk with his intense blue eyes. “I won’t do that. I won’t sink to their level. I’m sorry.”
Dirk shook his head. “No. What? I’m the one who’s sorry. I didn’t mean that. I just wondered if the transactions could be reversed, like if a bank makes an error or something.”
Jon shook his head. “Whoever did this was really clever. The funds go through three different banks before they are deposited into the European accounts. Each bank would have its own policy on how transactions are reversed, and unless you’re prepared to lay criminal charges, the banks are unlikely to comply. Theoretically, the money never came into your accounts at all which is why it took so long for the thefts to come to light.”
“Yeah,” Dirk sighed. “I only noticed it because I made a killing with my own account one day and then couldn’t work out why the balance didn’t increase as much as I had calculated it would.” Aware of Merv and Samuel listening in, he kept his anger to a minimum. “Merv, I want to see you in my office at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. If you’re one second late you’ll be dismissed immediately without references.”
“Yes, sir.” Merv twisted in his chair, looking between the screen and Dirk. “I didn’t know…I never dreamed someone would fiddle with the code.”
“It was your job to know,” Dirk snapped, “and if you’d paid as much attention to my accounts as you do to your torrid love life then these issues would have been picked up a lot sooner.” He managed a smile for Jon. “Is the system secure for now?”
“I’ve taken the liberty of overriding everyone’s passwords and shut off access to the code completely. The only one who can do anything with it now is me. I’ve also placed alarms on the firewalls set to activate computer cameras as soon as anyone even attempts to gain access to it. Even if anyone is aware of the cameras,” Jon glared at Merv, “there are other safeguards in place to ensure no one can change the code.”
“I won’t betray your trust in me, Mr. Erskine,” Merv was at least trying to be polite. “I’m in awe at what you’ve accomplished in one afternoon. I’d like to talk to you sometime about increasing my own skill level, for the benefit of the company, of course. Perhaps we could talk about it over dinner sometime?”
Or he’s being a fucking slime ball, hitting on my mate. Dirk roared, his fists clenched, the veins in his neck throbbing as he grabbed Jon from his seat beside Merv and tucked him behind him. Scales rippled up and down his arms and across his face. Yeah. He and his dragon were on the same page. Merv needed to be relieved of his cock.
“Dirk, Dirk.” Jon slipped around to his front and his arms curled around Dirk’s neck. “Look at me, babe. I’m here. In your arms. No one is trying to steal me. I’m right here. Look at me.”
Dirk growled at Merv before looking down. He knew he must look a fright; his fangs had dropped and scales were forming across his cheeks. But he saw nothing but calmness and even the hint of a smile on Jon’s face. It didn’t help. Jon was too trusting.
“Mine. True mate!” He snarled looking over at Merv who was trying to blend in with the furniture.
“Yeah. Got it. Congrats. You’re a lucky guy, and yeah, I’ll just shut up now.” Merv curled away as far as he could get without falling off his chair. His neck exposed, his eyes wide, Merv looked nothing like the cocky bastard who seduced two members of Dirk’s family and goodness knows who else.
“Come away,” Jon urged gently. “I’m hungry. I need you to feed me and I have to check in with my office.”
Care for mate. Feed him. Dirk took in a shuddering breath. His dragon was right. But he didn’t take his eyes off Merv until the IT door closed behind them.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jon stiffened as he and Dirk approached the door of Dirk’s apartment. Overwhelmed with the scents of so many people in the restaurant and in the elevator on the ride up to the apartment, he didn’t realize what was wrong until Dirk put his key in the door.
“Someone’s in there,” he hissed. Dirk frowned and pressed his ear against the door.
“I can’t hear anyone and my dragon’s only responding to your agitation.”
Gods save me from stubborn dragons. But Jon was stuck, trying to think how to explain. It’s not as though his mate knew him well enough to understand the significance of ‘a shiver ran down my spine.’ Jon knew and trusted his instincts.
Instead, he reached for the key. “Fine,” he whispered in a tone that suggested anything but. “Let me go first.”
Dirk looked as though he was going to argue and Jon ran his hand over the bulge pressing obscenely from his mate’s pants. “Let me.”
With a groan, Dirk moved aside but then
pressed up against his back. “Hurry.”
Oh damn, that wasn’t what I intended. Jon wanted his mate alert for danger, not thinking about shoving his dick in Jon’s ass. Flinging open the door, Jon inhaled as he stepped over the threshold. “Get down,” he yelled, pushing Dirk back and slamming the door shut again. The smell of gun oil filled the air and a sharp crack shook his ears. He felt a thump against his shoulder. Looking down, he watched as blood blossomed against his suit jacket.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Jon looked up to see Dirk’s father standing in front of him; a wisp of smoke rising from the gun barrel. Unsurprisingly, Byron stood behind him on one side of him; the man he recognized as Jeremy on the other. “Even now, Dirk’s fighting to find a way in. When he realizes what you’ve done, he’ll kill you and anyone who stands with you.”
“How could you?” The older Mr. Hollingsworth shook his head as the gun in his hand lowered. “You protected my son.”
“You were going to kill him. He was coming through the door first and that’s what you expected, wasn’t it?” Jon felt a flush of heat flow through his body, giving him the strength to stay standing. “For the last time, old man, Dirk and I are true fucking mates. That means if you’re going to kill him, you’ll go through me first. Get it? Because nothing, not even death will separate us now our animal spirits are bonded.”
“Fine. I’ll kill you first,” Dirk’s father raised the gun again. “But it’d be a lot easier if you just backed off. This is a family matter.”
“Uncle, you can’t kill him.” Jeremy said quickly. “He’s shut us out of the investment program. Merv said even he can’t hack into it.”
Dirk is firing that big mouthed bastard first thing in the morning, Jon thought as he eyed the two ceremonial swords that hung on the wall in the entranceway.
“What’s the use of keeping that sleaze ball on staff if he can’t do his job?”
“He kept everyone else away from the system. You know this, Uncle. For goodness sake, I told you. Merv’s a simpleton. He thinks with his dick and will do anything I tell him. He didn’t even know I put that code into the system until this one told him today.”
