Shifter's Claim (The Shadow Shifters)

by A. C. Arthur

  All night long, she thought with a sigh, closing her eyes and remembering the all-too-vivid dreams she’d endured. He’d touched her, kissed her, taken her like no man had ever taken her before. And he’d done it with that sexy-as-hell grin on his face as if he’d known just how good he was giving it to her. Priya wanted to scream. Not because—opening one eye to peek at the clock on her nightstand—it was zero-dark-thirty, but because with all he’d done to her in her dreams she still felt like she was about to explode with pent-up desire.

  Frustrated and horny as hell, she tossed off the sheets, mumbling as she jerked open the top drawer of her nightstand and pulled out an old friend. Celibacy had begun immediately after the breakup with Jonathan who had been a really nice financing director at the used-car dealership where she’d gone to purchase a newer vehicle. They’d dated for approximately three weeks while he’d worked on the financing for her car. Then one night he’d shown up at her apartment with roses and a bottle of wine. He ordered Chinese food and they sat in candlelight—even though the only two candles she had in the house were mismatched, one from Christmas and the other something fragrant from the grocery store. It had been sweet and they’d topped off the night with sex—first with Jonathan on top, then with her bringing it home. “It” being the climax that had almost completely knocked Jonathan out, but had left Priya feeling a little bereft.

  The next morning Jonathan awoke her with the bad news—she hadn’t been approved for the car, and oh, he wasn’t interested in seeing her again. Jerk!

  Now, just about a year later she could go almost a few weeks without thinking about the sex she refused to allow herself, but only a couple of hours cursing the male population in general. Last night, after being with “him,” she felt like all the cards she’d stacked so neatly in the lovely card castle of her dreams had come crashing down.

  With a huff she lay back against her pillows, the small vibrator in one hand while her other arm lifted to fall over her eyes. She hadn’t resorted to this in months, hadn’t been so desperate for any type of relief that she thought she might actually scream in frustration in far too long. Normally when the urge struck she’d go to the gym, which didn’t really work out for her since that type of physical exertion had never really been her forte. It was after the gym when she went to the ice cream shop on the corner—whose great idea had it been to put an ice cream shop about ten feet from the gym’s entrance anyway?—that she really found her bliss.

  This morning she didn’t think cake batter ice cream mixed with waffle cone pieces was going to do the trick.

  Pulling up her nightgown she cursed once more, all but saying his name but refusing as if it were some type of omen. Her finger pushed the ON button so hard she thought she may have broken the handheld device, but the low hum assured her it was ready and able to perform the task. She lifted her legs so that her knees were touching, then let them fall, not so gracefully, to the sides, bringing the heels of her feet together. Pushing her panties to the side because she was too irritated to simply pull them off, she placed the silver-topped apparatus to the throbbing hood between her legs and made a low humming sound that almost matched the toy’s as it made the connection. No lubricant had been needed since her dreams had excited her sufficiently.

  Biting her lower lip as she moved the bullet up and down and around the tightened bud of her clit, she closed her eyes and saw him once more.

  Sebastian Perry.

  His name echoed in her head even though she’d willed it not to. His eyes hungrily devoured her as they’d done something so cordial as share a drink in a bar. In the dream he’d slid around to the side of the booth where she’d been sitting. His hand had touched her thigh, sending spikes of heat to every pleasure point throughout her body simultaneously. She’d tried to be calm, taking another sip of her wine, but that had been futile. Clever fingers worked her dress up slowly, slipped between her thighs to find her waiting for him.

  “Hot,” he’d whispered against her ear as he slipped the first finger past her swollen lips. “So hot for me,” he’d continued, his tongue licking over her lobe.

  She’d kept her eyes open, acutely aware of the fact that they were in a public place where anyone could walk past and see them. They’d know instantly what was going on as the pad of his thumb pressed against her clit and she’d hissed, bucked, and closed her eyes to the pleasure.

  At the vivid memory of the dream, Priya rubbed the bullet fiercely over her clit, loving the sensations rippling through her body, the fullness of her breasts, the stinging hardness of her nipples. She moaned louder, bit her lip to stop herself, then cursed and let out a long, low scream.

  In the next dream Sebastian held her against the wall in the hallway at the Willard InterContinental. He’d lifted her feet from the plush forest-green carpet, wrapping her legs around his waist and clasping them there. In seconds he’d unzipped his pants to free his erection, pushing his engorged length into her waiting pussy with the gush of her already potent arousal. And then he’d gone to work.

  Her hands moved frantically, one controlling the bullet between her legs, the other grabbing her breasts, squeezing until tears stung her eyes. Her breath was coming in loud gulps now, her head tilted as her back arched off the bed.

  She could imagine him inside her, filling her, pleasing her, and she bucked her hips. A flash of thought and she almost tossed the vibrator and pushed her fingers into her aching center instead, but penetration was cheating, she’d often told herself. It was okay to bring herself to orgasm by stimulation alone, any type of penetration and she might as well kick the celibacy habit and go get laid.

  In the dream he’d rammed into her so hard her head had snapped back, rapping soundly against the wall, but she hadn’t cared. He’d grabbed her breasts, squeezing tightly, groaning as he looked down to see his efforts had pushed them over the rim of her dress. Her thighs clenched around him as her nails dug into his shoulders and when they both came it was like the grand finale at the Fourth of July fireworks display—exhilarating and extremely satisfying.

  On the bed her thighs quivered, her head thrashing against the pillows until she moaned with the rush of release and finally lay slack against her now-damp sheets.

  “Dammit!” she cursed, jumping off the bed and heading straight for the bathroom.

  Leaving the apparatus on the side of the sink for later cleaning, she moved directly to the shower to switch on the hot water. Yanking the nightgown so hard she thought she may have heard it rip, she tossed the material to the floor then stepped out of her panties. In the next instant she was in the shower, letting her head fall back as the sting of the water hit her still-aroused body. She scrubbed herself as if she’d been touched by some sort of disease, raking her nails over her skin while muttering something about arrogant, too-fine men.

  About a half hour and two cups of coffee later, Priya had regained some semblance of control, putting the dreams and the morning’s escapade behind her as she sat down and powered up her laptop. Checking her e-mails was the last thing Priya wanted to do, dread settling quickly in the center of her chest as she pulled up her mailbox. So instead of checking them she composed one to Lolo, her computer-geek friend at the paper. She and Lolo had been the best of friends for the last two years, after she’d felt so bad about turning down his date request that she’d taken him out for a Big Mac meal that had been on special that week.

  She sent Lolo the pictures she’d taken with her cell phone at last night’s dinner and asked him to go through the databases to provide her with names and connections to Roman Reynolds. After sending off that e-mail she thought briefly about cleaning her apartment, then changed her mind in lieu of another cup of coffee. Oh, how she loved the convenience and quickness of her Keurig.

  Then, as if it had been on the agenda all along, she sat back down in front of her laptop and typed his name into the search engine. She shouldn’t have, she knew it and berated herself while waiting for links to appear. She didn’t give
a damn who Sebastian Perry was, he wasn’t going to help her with this story, his parting words after he’d walked her to her door last night had said it all.

  “Stay away from Roman Reynolds and forget about the notion of cat people. You’ll be much better off if you take my advice,” he’d said in a mellow tone that matched his reserved demeanor. He’d stood close to her as he always seemed to do, like at any minute he would reach out and touch her cheek, pull her closer, gently kiss her lips … no, no, NO!

  Priya slammed her hands down on her desk and closed her eyes. “Do. Not. Think of him that way,” she told herself sternly. “Just do not!”

  When she opened her eyes again it was to more than a couple of hits on his name. Words like playboy, eccentric millionaire, and recluse were all mentioned in the descriptions of him. His bio explained why he was so arrogant—heir to a communications fortune and yet he’d earned his own fortune. The rich simply got richer. And good-looking rich guys showed up on the cover of GQ, multiple times. She groaned as she remembered assuming he was Reynolds’s bodyguard last night. As arrogant as Perry was, he was probably thinking she had to be a colossal idiot not to know who he was.

  Pictures of him with various women appeared on gossip pages, all with titles insinuating they were a “hot” item. Yet she never saw the same female twice. Perry’s background seemed to personify some of the things Priya hated about men—entitled, conceited, and distracted. In the midst of all these things that she shouldn’t give a damn about, she came across something important. While Perry owned his own string of resorts across the world, he seemed to be extremely close to Reynolds, Delgado, and Markland, all of whom lived right here in D.C. It was a picture of Perry and Markland at Perry’s Sedona resort taken only a week before that night she’d seen Markland and the other men in the alley behind Athena’s. To Perry she’d made it seem as if someone had given her that information, when in fact, she’d been there and had seen it for herself. She shivered at the memory of those eerie eyes. She and her photographer had been rushed out of the alley by a forceful and attitudinal female and warned not to come back. And the next morning Priya had received the first e-mail with instructions on how she would be the one to reveal the creatures living among them, she would be the one to take Reynolds and his crew down.

  She’d been about to ask who was sending the e-mail and what gave them the right to order her around. The picture of her brother gagged and bound and bleeding from a gash in his head had been the only answer she’d needed.

  Before Priya could think more about the man she’d met last night in connection with the man she was determined to get to, her phone rang. Instantly, she knew who it was and wondered if she should answer it. Nobody used her house phone besides her family, all her business contacts and Lolo used her cell. Prior to receiving that first e-mail, Priya may have ignored the ringing phone, at least for an hour or two until she was able to get some work done. Starting her day with the drama that inevitably came with the Drake family was not something she enjoyed doing. But now that had changed, the e-mails she’d begun receiving had changed how she dealt with her family. They had inextricably connected her family and her work so that this next story was literally do or die.

  If the truth be told, her entire life had been do or die. Born the fourth in a succession of unplanned children to Karen Drake, one of Prince George’s County’s poster children for what not to do when you grew up, Priya had been working toward a better life for what seemed like forever. While her two sisters had followed in their mother’s footsteps, dropping out of school and having babies faster than they could figure out names for them, her brother, Malik, the oldest of the Drake siblings, had been suffering from drug addiction for as long as Priya could remember. It seemed odd and slightly pitiful that as the youngest child who had worked drive-thru at Burger King to pay her way through college, she was the most responsible of the Drakes, the one everyone turned to when they were in trouble.

  Reaching for the cordless phone that sat on the corner of her desk, she answered, “Hello?”

  “Hey, baby,” her mother replied.

  “Good morning, Mama,” she answered, closing her eyes and dreading what might come next. “What’s going on?”

  That was the first question because Karen never called just to say hello.

  “I was just calling because I need a few things from the store. My prescriptions.” She paused, coughed like she might stop breathing altogether in the next minute, and then began again. “I need my prescriptions. Malik was supposed to get everything for me but I don’t know where he is. Haven’t seen him in days.”

  Priya closed her eyes. No, she wouldn’t have seen him in days. In fact, it had been more like weeks and Priya knew why.

  “Just tell me what you need, Mama. I’ll go to the store and bring everything over.”

  Karen gave her the list and Priya shut down her computer, going into her room to get dressed.

  She was just about to head out the door when she saw the envelope that had been taped to it. She stopped, only able to stare at it for endless moments. When she figured that was stupid and beyond unproductive she took a couple of steps, reached out, and snatched it from the door. Willing her fingers not to shake she opened it and read. It was an address and a time and the words: The clock is ticking.

  Angry and helpless to do anything about it, Priya was about to ball up the note and the envelope but stopped because there was something else inside. The black napkin from the bar last night where she’d had the drinks with Perry.

  She looked around the apartment, saw everything was where she’d left it the day before and yet there was something different. She hadn’t noticed anything when she’d come in last night, possibly because she’d been so wound up after being with Perry that she’d gone straight to bed. They would have had to come in after that or maybe just before she arrived home. At any rate, this confirmed someone was following her, just as she’d thought that night in the alley.

  She had just enough time to deliver her mother’s groceries and medications before she had to be downtown, before she had to approach Roman Reynolds.

  Chapter 4

  “I thought you were working on the reporter. You said she didn’t see anything.” Dominick Delgado, Rome’s Lead Enforcer’s voice echoed throughout the spacious corner office of Reynolds and Delgado, LLC.

  Nick, in addition to being Rome’s partner in the law firm, handled all of the training for the Assembly. For almost eight years now Eli and Ezra Preston had been Lead Guards under Nick’s immediate command, personally guarding Nick and Rome while doing an exceptional job of training the new recruits.

  At this late-morning meeting, Ezra leaned forward, planting his elbows on the long conference room table on the far side of Rome’s office. They’d all checked out of the Willard early this morning, after receiving the text from Rome to do so and to meet here. This weekend was supposed to be about figuring out a strategy against the rogues and solidifying their relationship with the nation’s top leader. Now, the focus had turned to something they’d all thought was already handled.

  “I did a full report and e-mailed it to all the FLs. The threat was classified as minimal since she doesn’t even have a byline at the Post. Her stories are mostly editorials on things like what’s the best coffeemaker to buy in the dwindling economy. She rents a small apartment on Georgia Avenue and she’s up to her neck in defaulted student loans,” Ezra reported.

  On one side of the table sat Rome, Nick, and Xavier, three of the highest ranking Assembly officials who often stuck together even outside of shifter business. Jace Maybon, the Pacific FL, and Cole Linden, the Central FL, accompanied Bas on the opposite side. The Lead Guards, Eli and Ezra sat at the two ends of the table.

  “I saw the report,” Rome added. “Since we hadn’t seen anything in the paper immediately following the last killings I figured Ezra was right and she wasn’t a threat.”

  “And now she’s returned,” Bas stated, sitting back in h
is chair.

  “What does she know?” Nick asked in his usual agitated tone. This was the highly volatile leader that had guards and other shifters, as well as probably a good amount of humans he’d come in contact with deathly afraid of him.

  Bas shrugged. “She says she has a source who saw a man whose face began to look like a cat’s in an alley behind Athena’s. The source also stated you were there.”

  With the mention of Athena’s and Bas’s obvious nod in his direction, all eyes went to Xavier, better known to the shifters as X. The muscled arms of this shifter who was built more like a WWF wrestler, were what everyone saw first. The fact that he was a computer genius who used to work for the FBI was secondary, and often unbelievable. X had been the one hanging out at Athena’s. He’d also been accused of killing one of the strippers there who he’d been in contact with. And his companheiro, Caprise, had also danced there.

  “There’s no source, Drake was there in the alley and the next day she wrote a story about the raid on Athena’s,” X said definitively. “We were dealing with the whole Rolando situation. He was the one who was shifting when Nivea dragged the reporter and the photographer out of the alley,” he finished.

  Rome squeezed the bridge of his nose. Nick cursed. And Bas shook his head, rubbing a hand casually over his jaw before replying. “It was dark in the alley. She’d just come out of a nightclub where there’s known drug activity. As long as there’s no one to corroborate the story we’re fine,” he told them in the nonchalant manner he was known for.

  That was Bas’s way, he was the cool-under-pressure FL, the relaxed and always composed owner who didn’t take any crap from anybody but rarely had to get violent. He worked hard as hell to keep that persona as his general profile, preferring that over being considered the vain and superficial one in leadership. A low-level reporter—not even as hot as Priya Drake—could not rattle him because the alternative wasn’t safe for anyone.