by Dannika Dark
Kat gripped Prince’s bicep. “Hey, just in case I shift, do me a favor and stay in human form.”
“Why would I do that if it means putting you in danger?”
“Because you’re an alpha and you’ll be able to get me to shift back. Sometimes my wolf is a stubborn partner and doesn’t want to give up control.”
Humor danced in his eyes. “I’m familiar with that feeling.”
Kat poked him in the ribs. “Very funny. If he takes off in his car, my wolf will try to chase him down on the freeway. She did it once,” Kat said, strolling toward the house. “I ended up with blistered hands and feet and had to shift a couple of times to heal. I’m not going through that again. Shall we knock?”
Her attention drifted down to the cigarette butts littering the cement porch. She remembered Vlad smoking in the bar where she’d first seen him. Kat wrinkled her nose and held her knuckles against the door, frozen in thought. If they knocked, would Vlad be stupid enough to just open up? As much as she loved feebleminded criminals, she had a feeling that wouldn’t be the case with him.
Her mind began dissecting their situation. This wasn’t going to work. He was expecting an exchange. The last thing she needed was for him to barricade himself in the house with weapons.
Kat tied her flannel shirt around her waist and got on her knees, her long hair shielding her face.
“What are you doing?” Prince hissed.
“Take your hair out of the ponytail.”
“What?”
She peered up at him, her voice at a whisper. “He’s going to recognize you. Ponytails aren’t exactly the popular trend. Scramble up your hair a little and let’s play this out. He’s probably going to peek through the window so he can get a better look at who he’s dealing with.” She gestured toward the glass. “He’s only ever seen you in a suit, so let’s not tip him off. We just need him to open the door.”
“And then?” Prince removed the elastic band, shaking his hair loose.
Kat forgot her name. As soon as his lush, dark hair came unbound, it slipped in front of his face and gave her goose bumps. He didn’t look like a prince anymore; he looked like a king. She swallowed thickly and leaned against his leg, wanting to rub all over him like a cat in heat.
“Hold me by my hair,” she said.
Prince reached down and gently grabbed a handful of her hair, sending tiny prickles across her spine. When he knocked on the door several times, her heart leapt into her throat. This was going to look really stupid if it didn’t turn out to be Vlad.
After a moment, the door hinges creaked. “James?”
“Yep,” Prince replied.
Kat smiled, remembering when she’d asked rhetorically if he ever just answered with a yep.
“You must be new to this line of work. Usually they come drugged and bound. You’ll find out when one of them gets away and you’re out money.”
Kat instantly recognized the voice as Vlad’s.
“I beat her into submission,” Prince said. “Step outside and I’ll show you the goods.”
Kat watched patiently as he drew closer.
“Wait a second… I remember those shoes.” Vlad stopped in his tracks and backed up a step.
She flipped her hair back and bounced to her feet. “You better believe it, Dracula, because they’re going to be kicking your ass in about two seconds!”
Vlad narrowed his eyes at Prince and splayed his fingers, sharpening his Mage light.
Kat’s stunner was infused with enough magic to paralyze him—if she could just get him to stand still long enough for her to drive it into his chest.
As if their minds were linked, Prince and Kat began to space apart and flank Vlad from either side.
Vlad reached out to grab her wrist, and she snapped it back, tightening her grip on the knife. Prince rushed Vlad and managed to get his right arm locked behind his back, but Vlad struck him in the face with his elbow and maneuvered out of his grip. They fought with incredible speed and agility—Prince holding his own in hand-to-hand combat against a Mage.
“You’re moving too fast!” Kat yelled, flustered at the thought that she might end up stabbing Prince in the neck instead of Vlad. It wasn’t easy to get her hands on a good stunner, and Kat didn’t want to chance losing her knife.
“Get back!” Prince said in clipped words.
“Did you really just say that to a bounty hunter?” she asked, twirling the knife in her hand. “I’m going to stab you if you don’t get out of the way.”
Prince slammed Vlad against the wall, hand on his throat. “You scum. I’ve waited centuries to get my hands on you.”
Vlad put his hands up as if he were going to gouge out Prince’s eyes. “You left Russia like a dog with its tail between its legs.”
Prince roared and flew back two feet, covering his eyes.
It took Kat a minute before she realized he’d taken a blast of energy to the face. She sprang forward and lunged with the dagger, but Vlad flashed around her.
“Fight like a man!” she yelled, turning around.
“Only if you fight like a woman.” He glanced down at her jeans. “Are you sure you don’t have a penis in there?”
“Are you goading me? Bad idea.”
Prince lunged a nanosecond later, knocking Vlad off the porch and into the dirt. He struck him with repeated blows, but Vlad used his hands to shock Prince with more of his energy. Vlad struggled to his feet and gave his car a passing glance.
“Forget your keys?” Kat sang. “Come inside and get them. You’re not going to get far without a car.” Kat tapped the dagger against her thigh, irritated by her unintentional rhyme that made her sound like Dr. Seuss. “You can only flash for so long before I’ll find you asleep in a ditch, drained like a dead battery. I’m willing to bet this Audi can drive a hell of a lot faster than you can sprint down the main freeway. All I want are answers. Where is my father?”
Vlad flashed forward and punched her in the face, leaving her no time to react. When he reached for the knife, she thrust it into his left side, but he moved too fast and it only pierced his flesh.
Kat’s lip throbbed and she reacted in anger, slicing the blade in crisscross motions. With each swing, Vlad stepped farther out of reach.
A blood-curdling growl sounded to her right, sending a chill up her spine. From the corner of her eye, she could see Prince had shifted into a stunning black-and-grey wolf. The closer he stalked toward the house, the more she recognized him by his brown and blue eyes, a piercing contrast against his dark pelt.
Vlad backed up against the banister, cornered and eyeing the wolf.
“I’ll leave you alone if you just give me what I want,” she offered.
“Daddy’s precious little girl can’t let go, can she?” He settled his eyes on her in a different way this time. “Just how close were you two?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Prince’s wolf snarled, his fangs intimidating Vlad, who knew exactly how fast a wolf could strip flesh from bone.
“Did he leave you any parting gifts?”
Kat frowned and couldn’t figure out his angle. Why did guys like him have to be so damn difficult? She thought he might be going for the incest jokes since that was the most common insult made toward wolf packs, but before she could formulate a reply, he flashed past her so heart-stoppingly fast that the force knocked her down. Stunned, Kat looked up just in time to see him leaping through the treetops.
“A Jumper. You slick little bastard, I should have known.”
Prince’s wolf took off after him like a torpedo, and Kat was left alone on the dirty porch with a trail of fire ants chilling out near her face, oblivious to the battle of giants happening all around them. Kat hopped up and put her dagger back in the sheath before going inside. Vlad wouldn’t stay away for long, so this was a good opportunity to search his house.
“What was I thinking eating six tacos?” She groaned, rubbing her belly. Spicy food and hand-to-hand combat ra
rely mixed.
She did a quick check inside to make sure the house was empty, wishing she had brought her gun. “You live like a pig.”
A beer can clacked against the dingy wall when she kicked it out of the way and sat on the living room sofa—a checkered monstrosity that was crying out for someone to take a blowtorch to it and put it out of its misery. She shuddered at the crusty stain on the carpet and reached for his laptop. The computer screen came up without a password lock.
“Not only that, but you’re a tool. Didn’t anyone ever teach you about password protection?”
Kat scrolled through his files. He’d labeled his folders in Russian, so she was able to figure out which ones were important. One had pictures of the Shifters he’d bought and sold, while another listed every transaction he’d made over the past ten years. Since he was an outlaw, he couldn’t use a Breed bank without getting caught, even with an alias. Vlad must be hiding his money somewhere.
When the door creaked, she glanced over her shoulder at Prince and then turned away. He moved silently around the couch and knelt before her, his slender fingers lightly touching her face.
“Are you injured?”
“I almost had him, but he wiggled out of reach. Did your wolf tire out?”
Prince stood up and crossed the room behind her, rattling something in the quaint kitchen.
“Where do you think he keeps his money?” she yelled out. “Maybe we can hold it for ransom.” The thought amused her and she laughed quietly.
Prince reappeared and pressed something cold to her face. She hissed and recoiled, trying to shove his arm away.
“Keep still. Your lip is bleeding. Do you want to shift to heal?”
“A little boo-boo on my face isn’t traumatic enough to unleash my wolf. If it swells up to the size of a grapefruit, I’ll do a quick shift, but right now I need to look through these files.”
Kat took the ice-filled towel from him and held it against her mouth. Having a man fuss over her was bad enough, but the fact that she liked it wasn’t helping matters.
“Can you search the house while I finish this up? Maybe we can find something of value and strike a bargain. I’d take the laptop, but I’m betting he has a backup and I’d rather him not know I’ve downloaded his files. Thoughts?”
Prince paced in front of her barefoot, and Kat couldn’t tear her eyes away. His shoes must have still been in the yard, not that she had any complaints. Kat liked seeing a sexy man barefoot, just so long as he didn’t have excessively hairy toes or something growing on them. Prince had nice feet—the kind that were probably bathed in scented oils and massaged by virgins.
When he moved out of sight, she reached beneath her shirt and pulled out a flash drive.
“What else do you have in there?” he asked with amusement, threading his long hair away from his face.
She plugged it in the side of the laptop and began copying files. “Having a good strap to hold my knife is great, but it also came with a few small pouches. I have a pack of gum in one, but I always carry a flash drive for opportunities like this.” She pulled out a stick of cinnamon gum. “Want some?”
Kat expected him to berate her for foolishly fighting a Mage and then acting as if nothing had happened. That was how most people reacted to her job, and she could hardly blame him since she lived outside the lines of normalcy.
But Prince accepted the gum, folded it into his mouth, and sat on the couch beside her. That fluffed up her ego just a little bit, although Prince was a man who chose his words wisely and was probably taking his time to think of the right manner in which to reprimand her as all Packmasters loved to do.
“You have admirable control over your wolf,” he said, bumping shoulders with her.
Kat ballooned with pride, attempting to suppress her smile. “We’re a team. She knows when to hang tight and when to attack. This guy’s gonna be hard to catch,” she said, pulling out the flash drive.
“Next time give me the knife while you lock him in restraints.”
Next time? she thought. It roused all kinds of emotions—a sense of camaraderie with someone who was willing to be her partner, even if it was just temporary. Someone who wanted to see this thing through until the end. Someone whose skin was brushing against her arm and giving her all kinds of indecent thoughts.
Mated wolves were amorous after battle. Prince wasn’t her mate by a mile, but after seeing him in action today, she was having lustful thoughts about him fighting to protect her life. Her wolf was pacing anxiously within, signaling she was eager to be mounted.
“Oh, hell no,” Kat blurted out. She snapped the laptop shut and sprang to her feet.
“Is something wrong?”
She dropped the bag of ice on his crotch and he tensed. “You sitting on that sofa, rubbing up against me, is what’s wrong. You can’t just sit there smelling good and speaking in that smoky voice like it’s no big deal. And stop smiling with your eyes. They’re sexy enough without you having to draw more attention to them. And don’t compliment my wolf after battle; you know what effect that has on a Shifter. And put your hair back into that ponytail while you’re at it. I can’t concentrate with you walking around looking like a man who wears tear-away pants.”
“Tear-away what?”
“You heard me, Charming. Search the house so we can get out of here. And next time you take me out for tacos, three is the legal limit.”
Chapter 8
While Prince scrubbed the basin of the stainless-steel sink, thinking about all the events that had transpired that day, he had a feeling it was going to be another sleepless night. After leaving Vlad’s house, he drove Kat to Nadia’s apartment and suddenly found himself cleaning the kitchen.
Prince didn’t clean.
Ever.
But it gave him a reason to stay longer since that scoundrel was still on the loose. While Kat was a competent fighter who could take care of herself, Prince found himself battling instincts he’d never felt for another woman. The desire to protect her took over all sense of reason. In any other situation he might have hired one of his men to watch over her, but this was something he couldn’t walk away from. At first he thought it had to do with her being Alex’s daughter, yet that didn’t explain why his wolf stirred in her presence.
Being near Kat was intoxicating. Her feminine scent. Her confident voice. Her alpha temperament that made her capable and fearsome. And most especially… her candor.
A warm breath skated across his left arm. “If that sink gets any cleaner, I might take a bath in there.”
He set down the scrubbing brush and looked over his shoulder at Kat. “It’s the least I can do for the inconvenience I’ve caused your sister.”
“I’m the inconvenience. You haven’t done anything to deserve shining her garbage disposal.”
He turned and leaned against the counter. “Our dinner was not up to her expectations.”
“Because of me.”
“I haven’t spent as much time with her as I should have.”
“Because of me.”
Prince brushed a lock of hair away from her face, admiring her gentle features. “Why are you so eager to take all the blame?”
She shrugged and tucked her hands beneath her armpits. “It’s just easier that way. You shouldn’t have to apologize for something that’s not your fault. If she’s going to hate someone in this scenario, let her hate me so you’re off the hook. Anyhow, you’re going about it all wrong.”
He inclined his head, amused by the last statement. “And how is that?”
She motioned toward the sink and lowered her arms. “Nadia doesn’t care if you make her toilet and sink sparkle. She wants devotion, not servility. Most of the guys treat her good at first, but then it’s all downhill. Every girl wants to be a princess, but she has a warped sense of reality and expects no less. I think what she really needs is someone who’ll see past all that—who can get her to open up. But she thinks devotion is a man at her beck and call. If she ask
s you to take out her trash, tell her no. Then kiss her neck and suggest a rooftop dinner or something fancy. There’s a difference between devotion and obedience, and a woman will never respect a man who isn’t her equal.”
He sighed and looked around at the immaculate kitchen. “You’re giving me advice in love?”
“Maybe I don’t know anything about it firsthand, but I thought I’d give you the inside scoop. No charge. I understand Nadia better than anyone, and I know what she wants even if she doesn’t.”
He stepped closer and placed his hand on her shoulder. Kat’s expression softened, and she gave him a guarded look. “And you would have no qualms about me pursuing your sister?”
“If… if it’s what you want.”
Had he only imagined the heat between them? “Your face looks better,” he said tenderly, caressing his knuckles against her cheek.
“I shifted in the bathroom.”
Prince stepped closer and leaned down, whispering in her ear. “If any man ever harms you again, I’ll disembowel him.”
Her body hummed beneath his touch, and he remembered their brief kiss before she’d blacked out. Did she remember it?
“How old are you?” she whispered.
“Ancient. I’ll live many more centuries to come.”
“Did you have loving parents?”
No one had ever asked about his mother and father. His cheek brushed against hers, moving lower—his mouth grazing across her smooth skin as he drew in her scent.
In such close proximity, he became aware of her flattering shirt. Her breasts took on a more rounded shape as they pressed to his chest, and in the silence of the room, the only sound was her unsteady breath. Kat was tall for a woman, but still fell short of Prince’s stature. She was tall enough for him to place a kiss to her forehead without hunching down to meet her, but it seemed like she was standing on the tips of her toes to make up the difference. Her power overwhelmed him, and when her liquid brown eyes met with his, primal heat began to flood his veins, reaching every extremity before awakening his ancient heart…
