by Diana Seere
Dizzy with pure, unadulterated desire, he followed her, eyes adjusting to the dark. Wine bottles gleamed in the low light, half circles shining like voyeurs watching them.
“I don’t even know your name!” he said in a low, barely controlled voice, blood pumping desperately through him as if this were the end of the world, his last chance for redemption, his final stand.
A skittering in the corner made him rush to the far back of the room, where he found her leaning against a wood table, hands gripping the edge behind her, facing him. Her chin tipped up with defiance, the stance making her breasts call out to him, nipples like perfect pearls beneath the fabric of her top. Her scent called out to him, seductive and ready. She was a shifter, he knew. A tiger, like him.
The beat of his flashing blood turned stronger until it crowded out all thought, hands clenched to hold back from devouring her, putting his head between her legs and ripping her panties off with his teeth, from giving her what she wanted too.
He smelled it on her.
And as she leaned forward, her eyes in the light, he saw her pupils, two pieces of round onyx, wide for him.
“Kara,” she said. “My name is Kara. Please leave me alone.”
“Kara.” The sounds felt like a puzzle piece that clicked into place in his unfinished heart. “I’m Lars.”
Her incredulous laugh felt like mocking. “I know exactly who you are, Lars. Who doesn’t know Lars Jensen? Drummer for The Fates, international playboy, wealthy shifter heir.” Trying to get past him, she walked in an arc.
He sidestepped and caught her arm.
“Don’t leave. You left me that night, nearly three years ago. The party at Woodside. I’ve spent years trying to find you.”
“Why?” He could tell she didn’t want to talk.
Too bad.
“Because that night ruined me.”
She reeled back as if slapped, two bright red spots on her cheeks. “What?”
“Ruined me for other women.”
“Your reputation precedes you. If I ruined you for other women, you have a funny way of showing it, Mr. Playboy.”
“Do you always believe rumors? Stereotypes are for the weak.”
Her nostrils flared, the reaction surprising as she clenched her jaw and gave him a look of unfiltered rage. She ripped her arm out of his and looked at a piece of paper. “I need to do my job. Some of us have to work for a living. Am I being stereotypical?” Her smirk cut him like a blade to the heart.
He snatched the paper out of her hand and quickly found the three bottles listed, holding them hostage. “Have I offended you?” Confusion made his head spin more, the beat in his lungs, his heart, every organ he possessed making it hard to think.
Without a word, she reached for the wine bottles. He pulled them away.
“I’ve clearly upset you. Let me make it up to you with dinner. Your favorite restaurant. Tonight.”
“No.” She started toward the doorway.
Determination made his blood beat faster. “Please,” he said, drawing the word out, turning it into a caress. She halted right before the door, turned around, and marched back to him. He set the bottles down on a large butcher-block table, the top scarred and rubbed to a fine patina, old and well used.
Her eyes flitted to the bottles, then back to his face. The evolution of her emotions captivated him, her scent overwhelming. She evoked so much. He couldn’t help himself, stepping forward, fingertips on her tight jaw, lips lightly brushing hers as he punctuated the please with so much more. The word needed an action, a caress.
A kiss.
This time Kara was the one who took it further, surprising Lars, making him bloom with unbridled, craven need. Her hands played at his waist, unbuckling his pants, the zipper’s release a love song. She stroked him, his hand hungrily eating her skin, riding up to squeeze her ass as she—
Click click click.
The doorway. Someone was entering.
Cool air struck him suddenly as Kara shoved him away so hard he knocked into the table. One of the bottles wobbled and started to fall, feet away from shattering on the stone floor.
Kara dived and caught it with the reflexes of a cat.
And that was how Eva found them, disheveled and breathing hard, Kara bent at his feet in supplication, holding a wine bottle at his knees, his legs wide, belt unbuckled, pants open.
Eva sighed, her eyes rolling to the right, an uncharacteristic display of emotion from the ice queen. She looked around the wine cellar, muttering something to herself. Then she caught Lars’ eye and said:
“Who put a magic spell on this wine cellar? What is it with you shifter men?”
Without another word, she exited.
Chapter 3
Kara knew she had to get away from him. She jumped to her feet, flushed with lust, shame, and fury. “I told you to leave me alone!” she cried, cradling the bottles of wine at her chest as she hurried out of the room. The floor was cobblestone, far older than the building above them. It truly was a cellar, probably hundreds of years old.
“Kara,” he called after her, his voice like a song. The sound of her name on his lips made her pause, longing for him. But then she pictured little Jamie’s face, so similar to his father’s, and found the willpower to keep moving.
If Lars ever saw Jamie, he would know. Those eyes, such a particular blue, the white-gold hair, and that dimple. Given his fame, even strangers would joke about how much the two-year-old baby looked like the famous blond drummer. Of course they were joking, assuming there was no way a curvy, unglamorous waitress could have had the rock god’s baby.
But Lars would know. If he ever saw Jamie, he would know instantly.
And he couldn’t ever, ever know. His family would take Jamie from her and kick her out in the cold. They had the wealth and power to separate mother and baby forever, out of the reach of any law or country. Whatever sexual attraction was sparking between Lars and her now—and a few years ago—was only chemistry. The mystery of her name, her hidden face, her disappearance—this alone had fed his interest. It wasn’t serious, and it wouldn’t last.
But her love for her baby was serious and forever. She couldn’t let the wealthy Jensens rip her little family apart, and they would. A baby weretiger with Lars’ dimples? Those sparkling pure-blue eyes and chubby pink cheeks? His Jensen relatives would claim him and fight to own him—with teeth and claw.
She couldn’t let them ever find out about Jamie. Whatever she had to do, whatever she had to sacrifice, she would.
“Kara,” he said softly behind her. He didn’t grab her, but he was close enough to smell.
Although given the heightened senses of her lust at the moment, she could’ve smelled him in Denmark.
She stabbed the elevator button, cursing the lack of a modern stairwell. This place was dangerous.
“Dinner tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll be a gentleman. We’ll talk, learn about each other. Tell me where to send the car and—”
“We can’t—” she began to say, but stopped herself. If she refused him now, he’d follow her, demand she change her mind, make a scene at the bar, maybe even follow her home.
To Jamie. She couldn’t risk that.
The elevator arrived, and she stepped in. Without looking up at him, she hit the button for the Platinum Club. “We can’t be seen together here again. Give me a number where I can reach you.”
He placed one strong leg in front of the elevator door, blocking it open, and pulled out his phone. “Tell me yours, and I’ll send you mine.”
Again, she couldn’t risk it. Pushing his knee away from the door, she rattled off a number with a Boston area code and hoped he wouldn’t discover it was fake until she was safely out of the building and on the bus home.
The door closed, leaving her alone inside the car with the three bottles of wine, and as it rose up to the Platinum Club, she wondered what she was going to tell Eva. Quitting in the middle of her first shift would need a good excuse. Cancer? A
liens?
When Carl saw her reappear on the floor, he stepped out from behind the bar and took the bottles out of her arms. “Eva wants to talk to you. Her office.”
Kara let out a breath. Looks like she wasn’t going to have to quit; Eva was going to fire her. “Thanks.”
He gave her a sympathetic look. “Nice knowing you.”
Instead of laughing, she felt a wave of sadness. This would’ve been a nice place to work. “You too.” Before he’d see her start to cry, she spun away and strode to Eva’s office.
Eva stood at the window, looking out on Boston from a dozen floors up. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “You think you’re going to leave us.”
Kara paused in the middle of Eva’s tastefully elegant office. “I figured you were firing me.”
“Of course not. It’s not your fault shifter men seem to be drawn to that wine cellar like bees to honey.”
Throat dry, Kara struggled to find words. “There’s something else. Some other reason I can’t stay.”
“The baby,” Eva said.
Kara gasped. She’d been so careful. Nobody in Boston knew, and Kara had made few friends back in LA, none of whom ever found out she’d gotten pregnant. Nana never spoke to strangers, and Kara had given a friend’s address on her tax paperwork. “How…”
“Sometimes I know things,” Eva said. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
“You spied on me.” Kara looked around Eva’s office, wondering what else the cool, clever woman knew. “Was that why you offered me the job?”
“You’re a skilled waitress,” Eva said, “and my club needed one.”
“You didn’t know my mother, did you?” Panic rose in Kara’s gut. “Did Lars send you? Is he looking for me? Does he—”
“Calm yourself. Lars knows nothing. And I did know your mother, although we were only acquaintances. She was traveling in Europe with a very handsome green-eyed werewolf who adored her but was prone to getting in fights. The jealous type, I believe.”
Kara crossed her arms over her chest. “My father,” she said in a low voice. “I never knew him. He died when I was a baby.” In a fight to the death with the bear shifter who became her stepfather. Briefly. He left when she was seven, and Kara barely remembered him. The first of many stepfathers.
“I can appreciate why you want to build a happy family of your own,” Eva said.
“If the Jensens find out about Jamie—”
“Jamie,” Eva said. “A boy?”
“James,” Kara said softly. “He’s my life.”
“He’s part of your life. There could be more.”
Kara looked out at the city lights, sending her thoughts out to her little one, her bright heart. “I can’t risk losing him for anything.” She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, but I can’t work here after all. I didn’t realize how many shifters would be here at the Platinum Club. I expected the Stantons, but—”
“Lars is only here for a meeting with the Stantons over a security matter. Nobody expects him to stay or to return.” Eva walked over to her desk and tapped a screen. “His personal jet is scheduled to fly to Tokyo the day after tomorrow. His rooms at the Mandarin are booked through the rest of the month.”
“He thinks we’re having dinner together,” she said softly.
“When?”
Her mind was spinning. “Tomorrow, I suppose. I gave him a fake number.”
“Then I expect to be hearing from him very shortly.”
“That’s why I have to leave,” Kara said.
“Why run? He’ll find you. He’s a predator, Kara. When you bolted, his instincts were to chase you down. Perhaps, if you want to get rid of him, you should stand firm, at least for one meal.”
Hadn’t Kara suspected the same thing, that he was only interested in her because she’d run away? “But if he sees… If he finds out about…”
“Leave the infant with his nanny. I suspect that the dining establishments Lars frequents are not the kind to have booster chairs and chicken nuggets.”
The thought of seeing him again—not for sex but talking and laughing with one another like friends—filled her with warmth. She’d missed him. They’d only had one evening together, but she’d felt a bond between them. It hadn’t lasted, but she’d felt that, under different circumstances, in a different life, they could’ve been close.
“You’re sure he’s leaving the country?” Kara asked.
“After Japan, he’s due to move into his new home in Tuscany. He only comes to the States for brief visits.” Eva gave her a pointed look. “His mother died last year, and his father lives overseas.”
One dinner. How dangerous could it be? “If he comes to you, could you tell him to pick me up here at seven? I’m on the lunch shift.”
Smiling coolly, Eva ushered her to the door. “Certainly. And may I remind you that right now you are on the evening shift? Carl is probably pulling his hair out, and at his age he’ll cry over each strand lost.”
By the time he reached the Novo Club and the elevator doors opened, he knew the number she’d given him was fake. Halfway through dialing it, he stopped, closed his eyes, and focused.
Oh what those few kisses had done to him. No stranger to women who offered their bodies like beads in a Mardi Gras parade, Lars had tasted plenty of women over the years. His body responded, enjoying the wilder, forbidden lust of two bodies joining for the pure sake of pleasure. No walls, no boundaries, no self-consciousness, no judgment.
Just touch and taste and slick and musk, all rolled together in bedsheets, bent over countertops and tables, pressed against high-rise patio doors and garden courtyard brick walls. Being in a rock band meant groupies. Human women, shifter women—he wasn’t particular.
Just women would do.
Shifters knew who he was, though. As a Jensen, he held power and wealth that many ambitious women found appealing. Sniffing out a fake from the real thing was an art form.
But nothing gave him what she gave. No woman made him feel such depth. Such authenticity. No woman made him crave like Kara.
“Kara,” he whispered to himself. Kara. Now she had a name. A location. Eva knew her. Kara worked at the Plat. Nearly three years of questions all answered in one chance encounter.
One kiss.
Okay, more than one kiss…
“Lars!” boomed a deep voice, unmistakable in its tone. Only Derry Stanton could make stone vibrate with his deep bear-shifter voice. A reformed cad and one of Lars’ favorite party-scene friends, the ex-playboy was recently engaged to be married.
Pigs should be flying. Pig shifters, of course.
The two shook hands, Lars holding his own, as the secret club’s butler appeared out of a dark nook. Morgan was older than the Dead Sea scrolls, and Lars found the man infuriatingly dull. But he was a stalwart figure in the exclusive, secret shifter club, buried deep in the bowels of the Boston, Massachusetts subway system, and Lars gave him a polite greeting.
“The usual, Mr. Jensen?” Morgan asked, knowing Lars’ penchant for dark lager beer.
A simple nod and the man disappeared, leaving Derry to plant one of those baseball glove-sized hands on Lars’ shoulder and ask quietly, “Who is she?”
“That obvious?”
“You smell like pussy.”
“I am a cat.”
“That joke never gets old for you felines, does it? My brother flogs it too.”
Lars laughed, appreciating the diversion. The Stanton family, unlike the Jensens, was a motley crew, a mix of wolf, bear, and lion shifters. The Jensens were all tigers. Shifter DNA was a complex mystery, more magic than science, and the quest for research was ongoing.
And was the very reason Lars was in Boston.
He tensed at the thought. “Any word on Tomas Nagy’s location?” Recently one of their own had turned against them, stealing blood and serum samples that unlocked shifter DNA secrets. Tomas Nagy had created a biological weapon that could destroy shifter culture—and possibly kill all shifters
, if unchecked.
Time was of the essence in finding Tomas, controlling the weapon, and bringing peace to the shifter world once more.
Until he had run into Kara—how odd to think of her by name!—Lars had been consumed by the hunt for Tomas Nagy.
Now he had solved a completely different missing persons case.
“Drink first. Settle down,” Derry said softly, leading Lars to a comfortable wingback chair by a roaring fire. Soft, cracked leather met his tense hands as he settled in, a thin layer of foam kissing the top of the pint of beer Morgan set on the table next to him. Dim lighting from dark sconces on the stone walls made the room both warm and cold at the same time. Tipping his head up to drink, Lars let his gaze soar to the top of the arched ceilings, the sense of boundless space unsettling, given their subterranean quarters.
“So?” he prodded.
“Asher says Tomas’ exact position has been pinpointed. For now. He’s nowhere near the United States, but we don’t know more than that.” Asher was Derry’s eldest brother, the patriarch of the Stanton clan and arguably one of the leaders, if not the leader, of the shifter world. “Gavin says that his biotech firm is feverishly studying shifter DNA to halt any biological weapons Tomas creates.”
Lars wanted to relax. The news was positive but not encouraging. He sighed.
“Never forget,” his father had once told him. “Shifters created the Novo Club to hide from those who seek to kill us. Eradicate us. Make us disappear.”
No one suspected that one of their own might be the source of that destruction.
He guzzled half the beer, desperate to shake the strange melancholy that hit him suddenly. Derry gave him a puzzled half grin, a long, slow inhale making it clear Lars was being studied.
“Pussy,” Derry replied, his face splitting with a lascivious grin. “But only one scent.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got nothing better to do. Gavin is running a few minutes late.” With long, dark brown hair, so inky it was nearly black, and incongruously blue eyes that had always put Lars at ease, Derry was an unlikely confidante.
