Jax bent down and breathed in her sweet scent, a mixture of citrus and wildflowers and her unique feminine aroma which smelled good enough to bottle and sell in a French boutique.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you to stay away from the big bad wolf?” he growled into her ear.
“Why no, but thanks for the advice. If I see a big bad wolf, I’ll be sure to stay away from him,” she said coolly, without the slightest quaver of fear in her voice.
Nice. A sassy one. Under different circumstances, Jax would love to have her over his knee for that. Unfortunately, odds were against them ever dating.
“Princess, you have no idea what you’re messing with. I’m flattered that you find me so irresistible, but I don’t really get turned on by chicks who stalk me. Been there, done that. I spotted you hours ago, by the way; you’re not that good.”
At that, he felt a faint tremor go through her, and he was pleased to see her jaw tighten with anger.
“You’re not turned on?” she said, moving her body against him. “So you normally carry a flashlight stuffed down the front of your pants?”
Damn it. She had him. He was rock hard, and when she slid her rounded buttocks against him, his cock jerked in response. Half the blood in his body had rushed to his crotch. What the hell was wrong with him? He was the last guy to let sex distract him.
Irritated, he bent down again and brushed his lips against the sweet, soft curve of her neck, and felt a vicious thrill when she drew her breath in sharply and choked off a small whimper.
She wanted him as much as he wanted her. It felt good that she wanted him. Of course, it would never happen, because she was either a crazy woman with a crush or someone sent by one of the many people he’d pissed off in the line of duty, but damned if that whimper didn’t tug directly at his dick.
“Okay, you got me. You’re kinda hot,” he murmured into her ear. “Is that what you want from me, baby? I don’t do relationships, but I’m good for a one off any time you want. If you taste as good as you smell, I might even let you come back for seconds.”
“Seriously? You actually get laid with that kind of line?” It came out in a snarl. Not only was she turned on by him, but she was angry about it.
He grinned and tightened his grip on her. This was fun.
“You know you want me,” he breathed into her neck. “Admit it, and I’ll let go of you.”
“I’ve got nothing but time on my hands, babe. I can stand here all day.”
“Oh yeah?” he ran his tongue up the curve of her neck, and she tried unsuccessfully to stifle a low moan, and jerked in his grasp. God, she tasted sweet. His heart hammered against his rib cage. His cock swelled to painful proportions, straining against the fabric of his jeans.
“Just say it,” he husked, and nibbled gently on her ear, than ran his tongue along the shell like curve, and a shudder ran through her body. Her breath quickened, and he could smell her arousal. He took a deep breath, drawing it in through his nostrils. “Say you want me.”
“I would, but I promised my mama I’d never tell lies,” she choked out.
“Bullshit, sweetheart. You’re lying now.” This time he nipped at her neck, and she gasped and let out a delicious little whimper, and arched her back, straining against his grip and breathing hard. He felt her squirming against him, fighting her arousal, the muscles of her lean, hard body taut as a bowstring.
Heat raged through him, burning down his nerves and sizzling across the synapses. God, he wanted her so bad. He didn’t even know her name, hadn’t even looked her in the eye yet, and if she let him, so help him, he’d take her right there in the alley. He’d taste her, he’d plunge inside her…
He spun her around roughly, pushing her up against the wall with one hand on each shoulder and stared down at her.
Her eyes were big and as green as chips of emerald, as green as rolling hills of sweet grass, and when her gaze met his her eyes widened with shock, and Jax nearly fell over. He felt as if a bolt of lightning shot through him, as if the earth had been yanked out from under his feet. She felt it too; he could see it in her eyes.
Fuck. Oh, no.
“You’re-“ he choked out.
And then she lashed out with her knee and caught him in the groin so hard that he doubled over and fell to the ground, searing pain slicing through his body. Sparks exploded behind his eyes and he struggled for breath.
“I have five older brothers, you moron. That wasn’t even a halfway decent wrestling hold. I could have gotten away from you any time I wanted.”
“Oh yeah? Why didn’t you, then?” Jax wheezed, curled up on the sidewalk and cupping his throbbing groin.
She let out an angry hiss of breath and plowed on, ignoring him. “And for your information, I’ve been following you for days, not hours, Jax Mackenzie. I let you spot me today, because I was starting to get bored. You’re not that good.”
And she turned and walked away, leaving him blinking back the tears of pain and struggling between rage and hysterical laughter.
Fuck. It figured. It served him right, it so served him right that the universe would play this karmic joke on him.
Now he knew why his wolf had been going wild for the past few days, howling and clawing beneath the surface, begging to be let free.
The crazy coyote shifter was his Fated Mate.
Chapter Three
Bobbi didn’t stop running for another twenty blocks, dodging down side streets, racing through alleyways, heart pounding in her chest the whole way.
She stopped when she got to the edge of the warehouse district, a decrepit section of town where business owners rolled down iron gates to cover their store windows at night, and giant neon gang graffiti splashed across the sides of chipped and faded buildings. Sullen teenagers lounged in doorways or slumped against building walls, openly chugging from bottles or huffing out of paper bags. Nobody met anyone else’s gaze.
What the heck had just happened to her? Was that some kind of witchcraft, when that guy stared into her eyes? He’d zapped her somehow, sent an electric shock through her body.
Not for the first time, she regretted being raised by humans. Oh, the foster home where she’d eventually landed had been the best of all possible worlds, considering…but her foster parents had not been shifters. She’d been orphaned in Arizona, an area of the country with very few shifters, and the best match that they’d found had been Meg and Samuel, two wonderful human beings who had no experience or knowledge of raising a shifter child.
She’d heard about the concept of a “fated mate” – supposedly, when a shifter met their fated mate, it hit them like a thunderbolt. Was that what had just happened to her? God help her, please let it be something else, she thought. Like an aneurysm.
Bobbi knew better than to depend on anyone, or anything, to stick around for very long. She’d learned life’s lessons early – when you love someone, they tend to die on you. To her, a “fated mate” just meant someone else you’d come to love and then they’d find a way to break your heart, one way or another.
To say nothing of the fact that the big, handsome jerk who’d just manhandled her was an arrogant bastard who clearly had no interest in anything more than a one night stand. If the whole “fated mate” thing was real, shouldn’t he have felt it too? And since he obviously hadn’t, whatever she’d felt back there must have been something else.
Thank God.
It could have been instant lust, temporary insanity…anything but love.
His final taunting question rang in her ears…why hadn’t she escaped from his rough embrace sooner? Why could she still feel his lips brushing against her skin, and why did she want to go back for more?
Bobbi was so distracted that she barely noticed when someone bumped into her as she shouldered her way through a crowd of surly teenagers standing outside of a pool hall. It took several seconds to register with her as she strode north, and by that time, the purple-haired girl who’d bumped into her was quickly dodging arou
nd a corner.
Bobbi slapped her hand onto the pocket on the inside of her jacket, where her wallet had been. Oh no you don’t, she thought, breaking into a run.
Fortunately, the girl was only human, which meant that Bobbi outran her easily. She caught up with the girl two blocks away, knocked her down on to the sidewalk, and knelt down, pinning her with her knee on the girl’s stomach. She was a pretty girl with a pierced lip and eyebrow, flat-ironed purple hair, and a cheap, fake leather jacket. A pretty necklace dangled around her neck, with an intricately styled leaf dangling on it. It didn’t match anything she wore; odds were good she’d stolen it.
“Get away from me, you freak!” the girl howled. “Get off me! Help! She’s killing me!”
Bobbi let out a cynical bark of laughter. “We’re in the wrong neighborhood for that,” she said, glancing up. “Nobody’s coming to help you. Or me.” A couple of blocks away, a half dozen scruffy emo kids watched with mild interest, but made no move to intervene.
Bobbi extended a handful of claws to grip the girl by the throat.
“Wallet. Now,” she snapped. “And don’t waste my time denying it. I’m having a bad day.”
Sullenly, the girl fished around in her pocket and pulled out a wallet, which she handed to her. Bobbi flipped it open and looked through it. “Who’s John Mortimer?” she asked.
“Oh…crap! Wrong wallet.”
Bobbi stuffed it in her pocket.
“Hey! Give it back!” the girl protested.
“Nope. I’m going to drop it off at the police station.”
“Oh yeah? Well, tell them that he thought he was going to get a blowjob from a 15 year old behind a dumpster,” the girl snapped.
“Will do,” Bobbi said coolly. “And you’re not 15.”
“Yeah, but he thought I was. Fucking pervert.”
“Give me my wallet.”
The girl fished around in her pocket and pulled out another wallet. “Can you get your knee off my chest now? I have asthma. I can’t breathe.” She tried to make a wheezing sound.
“Liar,” Bobbi said absent-mindedly, opening the wallet the girl had handed her. “Who’s Edgar Polacek?”
“Oh, crud! Give that to me!” She reached for the wallet, but Bobbi held it out of her grasp.
Bobbi stuffed the wallet in her pocket with the other one, reached into the girl’s jacket pocket, and pulled out three more wallets, one of which was hers, a coin purse, and a baggie of little white pills.
She stuffed all the wallets and the coin purse into her pocket, and stood up, releasing the girl, who scrambled to her feet and brushed herself off, glowering at Bobbi the whole time. “That was my whole morning’s work you just cost me.”
“Boo hoo. Let me give you a tip; stick to robbing humans. Most shifters are a lot meaner than I am.”
“Thanks, mom,” the girl sneered, turning to walk away.
“Please. If you were my child I’d give you to the goblins to make into stew.”
“If you were my mother I’d run away from home!” the girl snapped, eyes widening with indignation.
“I’d pack your bags for you and change the locks the second you were out the door.” Bobbi walked away, and the girl changed course and followed, stomping with big heavy boots.
“If you were my mother I’d call Child Protective Services!”
“I’d turn myself in to them just so I could be in a nice quiet jail cell, away from you.”
“Oh yeah? Well if you were my mother-” suddenly Bobbi burst into laughter, and after a moment the girl started laughing too.
They’d covered a couple of blocks by then, and the girl kept glancing over her shoulder as if she expected someone to follow her.
“Slow down! Hey, isn’t this the part where you start preaching or something? Or give me a Narcotics Anonymous Flyer?” the girl asked.
Bobbi kept walking. “Why would I do that?”
“Aren’t you one of those do-gooder types who comes around to try to save us from the horrors of sex and drugs? You’re not from our neighborhood.”
“No, I’m not,” Bobbi agreed, without slowing her stride.
“So who are you? Quit walking so fast!” the girl glanced over her shoulder again.
“You looking for your pimp?” Bobbi guessed.
“Not exactly. Kind of. Sometimes. My…protector. I mean, I just have to get him a certain amount of money by the end of the day, and he makes sure nobody messes with me. It doesn’t matter how I get the money.”
Bobbi made an abrupt turn up the steps of an old Victorian style building which had been converted into a coffee shop. The coffee shop was crowded and the air smelled of steamed milk and ground coffee beans and melted chocolate.
They were out of the bad neighborhood now, and in the recently gentrified section of Playa Linda which attracted a mix of punks, emos, gays and soccer moms.
“I’ll buy you coffee, since I ruined your morning. And by the way, your protector isn’t doing a very good job. I didn’t see him anywhere around when I knocked you on your ass.”
“He was watching,” the girl protested.
“I could have ripped out your throat with my fangs and he wouldn’t have done a damn thing,” Bobbi said, earning her an appalled look from a mother who was pushing two babies in a jogging stroller. The mother scowled and pushed the stroller away quickly, shooting dirty looks at Bobbi over her shoulder.
“Coffee for me. Whatever my friend wants, “ Bobbi said, putting her credit card down on the counter.
“Hot chocolate with whip cream, a roast beef croissant sandwich, a turkey sandwich, three chocolate chip cookies, no, make that five cookies, and a bowl of soup,” the girl said, glancing defiantly at Bobbi.
“Whatever.” Bobbi shrugged. “And put the money back in the tip bowl if you want to keep your hand attached.”
“Jeez! Fine.” The girl grumbled. “How do you do that? Are you part witch?”
Bobbi ignored her, grabbing a weekly newspaper from the rack nearby and glanced at the headlines.
Her gut tightened as she read the headlines.
Judge Galbraith Goes Rabid, Kills 5 In Courtroom
The story went on to detail how the judge had shifted right before the preliminary hearing in a murder case and savagely mutilated the defendant, the defense attorney, the court clerk, and two bailiffs, and chewed through the femoral artery of a third bailiff,, before an attorney put him down with a silver bullet.
Next to it was an editorial by Stanford Roosevelt, a conservative politician, raving that this attack was the very reason that shifters should be confined to their own reservations and kept separate from humans.
Shifters made up a minority of the overall population, anywhere from 10 to 40 percent depending on the region. Some parts of the country were known to be more shifter-friendly than others. California was fairly backwards in its dealing with shifters, with far-right politicians rising up on a fairly regular basis and attempting to inflame fear and hatred among humans.
Harsh memories threatened to flood Bobbi’s consciousness, and she quickly shoved them into a far, dark corner of her mind. She glanced at the girl, who was scanning the room for likely marks.
“Sit with me,” she said, and the two of them sat down at a wobbly round table to wait for their order.
Bobbi’s cell phone rang and she glanced at the screen but didn’t answer.
“I’m Bobbi,” she said, glancing up at the girl.
The girl shrugged, attempting indifference. “My street name is Pixie,” she said.
“Is it really now.”
The waitress served their drinks.
“I’m still waiting,” Pixie said, sipping her hot chocolate. The whipped cream left a little mustache on her upper lip, and she licked it off.
“For what?”
“The pitch. Whatever it is you’re going to try to sell me. Salvation. Rehab. A group home. What is it? You’re not buying me lunch just to be nice. Nothing comes for free.”
Bobbi shrugged. “Maybe I just find you amusing.”
She finished the rest of her coffee in one gulp, reached in her wallet and pulled out three twenties, which she handed to the girl. “You could use this to book yourself a cheap motel room on the north side of town, away from your useless protector. There’s a whole bunch of restaurants and bars up there. You’re cute; you could find a job. Or you could give the money to the asshole who didn’t lift a finger to help you when I knocked you on your ass. Your choice.”
She stood up and walked out as the waitress delivered Pixie’s food, leaving Pixie staring after her.
Part of her wanted to run back and shake Pixie really hard, shake some sense into her, just do anything to make her stop living the life she lived, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t afford distractions. She was here for one reason, and she could never lose sight of that. Not for anyone. Not for the big handsome shifter she’d been following, not for the skinny little human who was probably running right back to her pimp with her handful of cash.
Her phone rang again, with a special ring tone, and this time she grabbed it and answered it.
A mechanical voice told her to press 3 if she would accept the call from the federal prison in southern Arizona.
She quickly jabbed the number 3 on her keypad.
“Bobbi?”
“Heath, what the hell? I haven’t heard from you in way too long.”
“I’ve been a little tied up. I’m fine,” Heath said, but she knew he’d say that even if he wasn’t fine. If he was minutes away from dying, he’d still tell her that everything was okay.
“I’m working on it,” she said. “I’m getting really close. Hang in there.”
“I am. It’s no problem. I’m telling you, I’m fine. Are you all right?”
So like Heath. Locked away in the bowels of Hell, and worrying about her safety.
“Everything’s going great out here,” she lied. I just met the jerk who may hold the key to your freedom, and he’s probably my fated mate and definitely the world’s biggest jerk, and I want to hump him like the dog that I literally am, is what she didn’t say.
There were certain things that you don’t share with your brother.
The Alpha Meets His Match Page 2
