by Abby Blake
PUP Squad Alpha 7
Angel’s Touch
Devlin Meyers, recently retired Navy SEAL, isn’t thrilled when his first assignment with Deeks Security seems to be a wild-goose chase, and it sure doesn’t help that the warlock he’s working with isn’t his idea of a nice guy.
Jed Mathewson’s renewed enthusiasm for the job can’t be dampened, not even when he’s given a mission partner stiff enough to use as a surfboard. But thank the goddess it’s only one assignment.
Yet, when the woman they’ve been searching for manages to find them instead, life takes a rather interesting turn. That they both knew her years ago is troubling, but the fact that they both still love her could be a huge problem.
Especially now that Lilly Wicks has a whole new set of skills to deal with.
Can explosive passion, intense circumstance, and boring isolation help undo past mistakes, or are all three doomed to repeat them?
Genre: Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal
Length: 21,975 words
ANGEL’S TOUCH
PUP Squad Alpha 7
Abby Blake
MENAGE EVERLASTING
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting
ANGEL’S TOUCH
Copyright © 2012 by Abby Blake
E-book ISBN: 978-1-61926-945-3
First E-book Publication: July 2012
Cover design by Les Byerley
All art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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ANGEL’S TOUCH
PUP Squad Alpha 7
ABBY BLAKE
Copyright © 2012
Prologue
“I’m sorry to hear about your sister, Dave.”
Dave Jenkins nodded in acknowledgement and bit back the urge to tell yet another sympathetic coworker the truth. It had taken some seriously fucked-up maneuvering, but between himself, Ronan Deeks, and the members of PUP Squad Alpha they’d managed to provide enough information to make Kali’s supposed death look genuine.
It had helped of course that the Paranormal Undercover Protection squads did this sort of thing for a living.
Dave finished the paperwork he’d been doing on an apparent murder-suicide of the average, yet still tragic, human variety and glanced at the clock. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d finished a shift on time. Each day seemed to bring one more reason to stay late, another murder, another innocent victim, another violent offender. It seemed never ending, and on nights like tonight where there was no one to save and no killer to bring to justice, the job felt hollow.
He’d worked homicide longer than most. Maybe, as his wife had been subtly suggesting for months, it was time he moved on. He reached for the phone to ring Kate and let her know he’d be home soon, when one of his colleagues walked into his office and placed a box on Dave’s desk.
“Looks personal,” he said with a shrug as he left the room.
It was indeed addressed to Dave, but it was the sender’s name that caught his attention. April Childes. She was the mother of the pixie assassin’s first victim, Bethany Childes, and had been devastated by her daughter’s horrific murder. It was clear that she wanted answers, but knowing the truth about what had happened would only confuse the poor woman more. Knowing that her daughter had likely been gifted with the knowledge of an Oracle at her birth and then murdered because of it twenty-seven years later would not help the woman sleep better at night. Dave shook his head sadly as he opened the box and found a handwritten note from April Childes.
It read simply, “I thought these might help,” and was signed in a shaky hand.
Determined to do right by a woman who was grieving, Dave lifted the leather-bound appointment diary from the top. A quick glance confirmed it was one of many. He riffled through the pages quickly, feeling the need to at least be able to look the lady in the eye and say that he hadn’t been able to find any answers to her daughter’s death in the diaries.
A strange little scribble caught his eye as he flicked through the pages, but it wasn’t until he saw it for the third time that he took a closer look. He grabbed the other books, opening them to pages that had the same scribble. There was also a carefully written website address listed under the twelfth of January—Bethany’s birthday—in each diary.
Curious, but not very hopeful that it was more than just a dead end, Dave typed the website into his computer. Immediately a small box opened asking for a password. Working on the assumption that the recurring scribble and yearly entry of the website were linked, Dave looked closely at the squiggle, trying to discern letters, numbers, or symbols that might indicate a password of sorts.
On his fifth attempt the password was accepted. Feeling buoyed by the small victory, he was almost floored by the amount of information that came up. Ironically, other than the odd, seemingly out-of-place, repetition of the word Oracle, the rest of it seemed to be in a language he’d never seen before. He scrolled to the bottom of the page, his eyes widening when he saw that it was page one of four thousand seven
hundred and two. No wonder Bethany had been known as a workaholic. Between this diary and her busy schedule as a hardworking public defender she would have had little time for anything else.
He grabbed the phone, dialed a number he knew better than his own, and left two words on the answering machine. “Call me.”
Chapter One
“Thanks, Jed,” Jennifer said with a bright smile as she stepped from the bounce tunnel and onto the dirt road. Her mates, Thomas and Adam, were close behind her.
“Anytime, sweet thing,” Jed said, managing to piss off both werewolves by laughing at their growls of annoyance. Between Hannah’s oversensitive bears and Jennifer’s growly wolves it was likely he’d be torn to pieces by sharp teeth in the very near future. Maybe he should tone down the teasing just a bit.
“Will you stay for the ceremony?” Jennifer asked, either missing or ignoring the tension coming off the two men holding her.
“Sure,” he said, completely disregarding his own advice of a moment ago. He tried to convince himself he was staying because Jennifer wanted him there, but a small part of him acknowledged the inherent mischief in doing the exact opposite of what her mates wanted.
He was still laughing to himself when his mission partner landed not far from where they were standing. The ex-Navy SEAL marched over to stand in front of him. “Sit-rep,” he demanded.
Jed rolled his eyes, making certain the man saw his exaggerated movement. “Relax, Devlin,” he said, smirking when the guy showed no sign of following his order. “This is a celebration. Chill for a while.”
“We need to find Li—” the guy began, but Jed cut him off.
“Lilly has been evading us for weeks. A few hours off to celebrate a friend’s acceptance into her husbands’ wolf pack shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
Devlin glanced around the area as if he wasn’t quite convinced. “I’ll just do a quick security sweep of the area,” he said as he lifted back into the air. Jed wanted to roll his eyes again at the man’s dedication to his job, but grudgingly admired the man’s ability to fly. His wingspan was rather impressive, but it was the fact that to humans, and even to some paranormals, the guy appeared to be just a majestic eagle flying overhead that was truly intimidating.
* * * *
Devlin soared lazily, circling the area several times but finding little of interest. The werewolves’ community was quite impressive and blended well into the natural landscape, but none of it offered the distraction he was looking for.
The fact that Lilly Wicks was still MIA annoyed the hell out of him. As a Navy SEAL he’d never failed to complete a mission. His service record had been exemplary, but when the replacements to his original teammates started retiring, he’d known it was time to move on. It didn’t matter how perfect his record had been. Sooner or later someone was going to notice he wasn’t aging.
He’d considered joining the PUP squads but had, rather ironically as it turned out, chosen to go into the private sector because he’d grown tired of being given orders by people who’d never fought on the front lines. Considering how much he missed the structure of military life, it seemed like a poor decision in hindsight.
Reluctantly he circled the area once more and then lowered himself to the ground at the far edge of the yard where the celebrations were being held. He got there just in time to see Jennifer fall asleep in her mates’ arms. They held her close as they spoke to friends and family, but just like she’d been warned, it seemed Jennifer was going to miss her own party.
“Find anything interesting?” Benjamin asked as he handed Devlin a cup of something that smelled like fruit punch.
“Nothing to report,” he said, biting back the “Sir” at the last moment. Benjamin smiled as if he heard the word anyway.
“It’s a hard habit to break,” he said, “but you’ll get used to civilian life eventually.”
“How long did it take you?” Devlin asked curiously. It was obvious that Benjamin had been a soldier at one time in his life, but he’d been the commanding officer of PUP Squad Alpha for over five decades now. Despite their military-type training and mission protocols, the PUP squads worked mostly undercover and therefore used a less formal structure than the human military.
“Only about a decade or so,” he said with a wide grin. “Relax, Devlin. Try to enjoy the par—”
Benjamin’s words cut off as he reached for his weapon. Devlin did the same, turning and dropping low to the ground, minimizing his exposure and maximizing his aim.
The swirling vortex was like nothing he’d ever seen before. It didn’t belong to a witch, warlock, or dragon, but no other form of transport that he knew about looked like this thing.
The pretty blonde that appeared a moment later had him wondering if he’d lost his mind.
“Lillian?” he asked as the woman glanced around the tense group of people. Devlin was vaguely aware of the tearing of fabric as people urgently changed into werewolves and surrounded the intruder. She looked at Devlin blankly, apparently more concerned with her own mission than the wolves that seemed ready to attack or the man she should probably have recognized. It had been more than four years, but surely the woman would notice a man she’d been involved with for several months.
The woman spun in a circle, seeming to search the crowd of wolves still in human form before muttering a curse and disappearing in the blink of an eye.
One of the larger wolves morphed back into human form and gave Devlin and Benjamin a hard stare.
“Would somebody like to explain to me what sort of creature can step into the middle of a pack of wolves and not even notice?”
“I’m sorry, Xavier,” Benjamin said, addressing the pack alpha with the deference the werewolf deserved, “but I’m not even sure what type of travel she used to get here. I’ve never seen a jump vortex or bounce tunnel like it.”
“Me neither,” Devlin said, still trying to process what he’d just seen. “But she looked a lot like a human woman I once knew.”
“You said Lillian,” one of the other wolves, now in human form, said with a curious smile. “Old flame of yours, Dev?” Daegan and Isaac both stepped closer to shake his hand. Despite the tension, Devlin smiled at the two men he’d known in college. Being the only three paranormals on campus and surrounded by hundreds of clueless humans had been way harder to cope with than Devlin had anticipated. Just knowing Daegan and Isaac shared his paranormal secret had made the longest years of his life almost bearable.
Of course the twin werewolves had studied computers and then come back to the pack and literally made millions of dollars, while Devlin had gone on to join the Navy SEAL teams and risked his life for low pay instead. He was about to explain why he’d said what he said when the vortex appeared once more.
If the woman who appeared wasn’t Lillian, then she was a damn good copy.
“Damn,” the woman said as tears filled her eyes. She scanned the crowd once more, apparently unfazed by the dozens of naked people dropping onto all fours and turning back into wolf form.
“Lillian,” Devlin called loudly, hoping to catch the woman’s attention before she could disappear again. She turned sharply, her eyes widening when she saw him. That, unfortunately, was also the moment she noticed the wolves that circled her.
“Devlin?” she asked without taking her eyes off the wolf in front of her. “Where am I?”
It seemed a rather strange question, considering the woman seemed to be in control of whatever type of transport she was using.
“You’re in the middle of a werewolf party,” he said. Daegan quirked an eyebrow at him, but the wolf in front of Lillian turned back into a man and stood in front of her. She seemed more embarrassed that Xavier was completely naked than surprised by his shift between forms.
“You’re in the middle of my pack, lady. It would be a good idea to explain yourself.”
“Explain what?” she asked with a wry grin. “How I appeared out of thin air? How I ended up apparently at the wrong addr
ess? Or how five weeks ago I was just an ordinary waitress happy to live out my life in a small town.” She sighed tiredly, obviously at the end of her emotional fortitude. “I was looking for an old friend of mine. He might be able to help explain how I ended up here.”
“What’s your friend’s name, Lillian?” Andrea—Xavier, Isaac, and Daegan’s mate—asked in a kind voice as she pushed her way through the three men. “Maybe we can help find him.”
“Jed Mathewson. He was a regular customer at the diner where I worked. I was hoping he’d be able to help me understand what was going on. He used to talk about magic like it was real, so…” She let her words trail off as Devlin stepped closer and pulled her into his arms. It didn’t matter that everyone else was on high alert. He knew this woman, and she wasn’t dangerous. Hell, she didn’t have a mean bone in her body.
* * * *
Lilly held on to the man who looked like her ex and tried not to cry. The past few weeks had been a blur of strange behavior, weird perceptions, and even weirder happenings. It didn’t help her state of mind that she seemed to be seeing people turn into wolves and wolves turn into people. Nothing that had happened to her made a lick of sense, and quite frankly she was very tired of it.
If there was the slightest chance that the man holding her was the man she’d known years ago, then she was holding on until someone explained what the hell was going on.
“Why didn’t you come looking for me?” Devlin asked in a perfectly reasonable voice. Unfortunately all it did was piss her off. Considering that the man had refused a long-term relationship on his assumption that she wasn’t strong enough to endure his absences overseas, it was kind of insulting for him to think she should have run to him with her problem.
