The Nine

by C. M. Stunich

  "Cold?" Sir asked, placing a cigarette between his lips and lighting it without letting go of my hand. For a brief moment, I was mesmerized by the movement of his lips, picturing them wrapped around one of my nipples instead.

  "Not really." I shook my head, tearing my eyes away from his lips and watching where I was putting my feet instead. I was dynamite in heels, but even the most experienced stiletto wearer could fall afoul of a big city’s shitty sidewalks. "Must be convenient living so close to a shifter club." Okay, so I sucked at small talk. I gave a killer blow job though, so hopefully my social awkwardness would be forgotten once we got naked.

  "Yes, you could say that," Sir commented with an odd tone, "I'm mostly there for business though."

  "Really? What sort of business are you in?" As soon as the question passed my lips I was kicking myself. Rule one of being an assassin: don't talk about people’s work! Inevitably they'd end up asking about mine, and then I would have to make up a plausible lie.

  Sighing internally, I blamed the alcohol. Sir didn't respond immediately, though, so perhaps he wasn't in the mood for chitchat?

  "Experimental research," he finally muttered, his lips tight in a way that said he wasn't planning on elaborating, which was just fine with me. Unfortunately, my mouth had other ideas.

  "In a club? What sort of experiment were you running? How easily you could pick up a woman to take home?" I intended it to come out as a joke, but I found my voice had dropped to a low, husky purr, my body unconsciously leaning in toward Sir’s suited arm.

  Instead of responding to my flirtatious tone, the sexy, mystery shifter grabbed me by the arm with a grip like steel and tugged me into a dark alleyway that we’d been passing. If I hadn’t wanted to go with him, I could’ve pulled away.

  But I did.

  I wanted it so bad, needed it really, all this heady anonymity he was offering.

  "Sir," I started, but my very practical inquiry about protection was cut short as he slammed me against the dirty concrete wall. My assassin training and reflexes kicked into high gear, and the only thing that saved this guy from a snapped neck was the fact that his lips crushed into mine, drowning me in a rush of heat. For a man with such a cold smile, he had a hot goddamn mouth.

  "I’m quite done with the shitty small talk, aren’t you?" he growled, releasing my lips for a quick second before diving back in. As much as I hated men who towered over me, this guy really did ... and a secret little primal place in me was turned-on as fuck about it.

  Come to think of it, I generally hated men who shushed women as well, but in this case, he was right. I was done with the shitty small talk, and this was a much more preferable activity than dodging awkward social niceties.

  My lips parted beneath his and our tongues met as I let Ziff's Armani bag slip down my arm to rest on the ground. He sure as hell didn't need to be getting jostled around while I made out with this stranger in an alley.

  Sir's hands circled my waist, his warm thumbs brushing the exposed skin of my midsection before creeping the fabric of my halter top up a bit. As his thumbs brushed the undersides of my breasts, I shuddered and let out a little moan.

  Yeah, it really had been way too long since I'd seen any attention in the romance department; we'd barely passed the PG-13 level of making out and I was already on the brink of a damn orgasm. Fuck only knew what I would do when he got into my pants.

  "You like that, little fox?" the coldly beautiful man purred into my ear, his teeth nipping at my lobe just as his fingers found my rock-hard nipples, and I moaned. It was all I could do not to let my knees turn to jelly.

  Words were totally beyond me, so I responded by gripping his short blond hair and dragging his face back to mine for another scorching kiss. He was an unbelievable kisser, and I was pretty sure that wasn't just my faded sexual memory speaking. Every touch, every caress of his lips, his tongue, they sent shockwaves of pleasure rippling through my whole body until it felt like I was embracing a live wire or something.

  This guy, Sir, was a drug I was fast becoming addicted to and I just couldn't get enough of him. My palms spread across his chest, then found his tie and gripped it tight, pulling him close and taking our kiss deeper.

  For his part, he left one hand buried up my shirt, tweaking and rolling my sensitive nipple between his fingers and making me thank the Fox Father that my breasts were small enough to have safely gone bra-free tonight. His other hand skirted my waist, then found the base of my tails. Usually I wore pants with a slit to accommodate them, but these babies rode so low on my hips that my tails just hang over the top. Of course, they pushed the waistband of the pants down just enough to flash a bit of crack, but clubs were dark, sweaty, and sexy. Who would notice?

  When Sir’s fingers brushed the silky white fur and then teased the tender bit of flesh beneath them, I almost came. No joke. My borrowed leather pants were soaked.

  "Holy fucking foxfire," I groaned, releasing him enough that I could lean my head back on the wall and force some strength into my legs.

  "Should I stop?" he asked politely, but with an edge of amusement as his strong fingers stroked down the length of one of my tails. The sensation was toe-curling and unbelievably erotic. I could barely formulate words, so I just whimpered and shook my head. "Good," Sir breathed, kissing down the line of my neck and nipping me with his teeth. "I've never fucked a kitsune before, and it’s been a while since I’ve been with a … mature woman, such as yourself. This is quite the turn-on for me."

  "Huh?" I breathed, fuzzy with arousal. "What do you mean, mature?"

  Sir paused, pulling back to arch a brow at me from behind his black-framed glasses. "You have nine tails. Kitsune might be secretive, but only a fool would estimate one of the Nine at less than a hundred years old. I bet you're insanely powerful, aren’t you, Chris?" His light eyes gleamed with ... something. Something more than just arousal or anticipation of a good fuck. It was almost like greed. Or fascination.

  "Uh, something like that." I frowned, winding his tie around my hand again to pull him back to me. "Now, weren't we in the middle of something?" As I pulled his lips back to mine, shaking off the weird feeling of unease, I brushed my free hand down his dirty fur coat.

  To my shock, he leapt back from me like he'd just burned himself, and I gasped.

  "What …" I panted, licking my lips as Sir stared back at me like a caged animal. "What just happened?"

  "Do not touch my fur," he snarled at me, all traces of flirtation erased from his cold gaze. “You do not ever lay a hand on a skinwalker’s pelt. Where is your sense of propriety?”

  "Uh, excuse me?" I laughed caustically. "You were touching mine, remember?"

  The strange man—Sir—glared back at me for a long moment as my chest heaved and confusion creased my face. "This was a mistake," he muttered eventually, despite his gaze flickering to my tails with … hunger? Wow, I was getting really bad at reading people, because that just didn't seem right.

  "No shit," I whispered, still a little in shock. What the fuck had just happened? I knew that a shifter’s fur was an erogenous zone; it was for all of us. Hell, that was why he'd been stroking my tails in the first place! So what was his problem? Skinwalkers were rare; how the fuck was I supposed to know they were special snowflakes?

  "I need to leave," he said, mostly to himself as he adjusted his glasses and tie, then, without waiting for another word from me, turned to leave the dark alleyway we'd just been making out in.

  He barely made it two steps, though, before he pulled up short.

  "You won't be going anywhere, friend," Mikhail's soft, menacing voice trickled out of the darkness and I cursed silently. Of course he’d fucking followed me. He would have been pissed as hell about me not returning his calls, and this wasn't the first time he'd interrupted what could have been a great, anonymous fuck for me. Maybe Bex was right about him thinking he was my dad? Gross.

  "Mik, fuck off," I snapped, throwing all respect for my superior out the window. Fuck
him. If he wanted to watch me making out in an alleyway, he wasn't acting as my boss. "This has nothing to do with you, I'm not on the clock tonight."

  "You—" My new acquaintance turned back to look at me in a new way, with surprise and … respect? Yeah, I needed to put myself back into basic training for emotion-reading. "You work for him?" He jerked his thumb toward Mikhail, who I could just make out in the shadow of a parked truck. A small smile pulled at Sir's lips and I frowned.

  "Uh, yeah. Why? You two know each other or something?" I asked, and Sir snorted a little laugh.

  "You could say we're old friends," he replied, turning back to Mik so I couldn't see his face anymore.

  This was getting weird. Mikhail Ravena didn't have friends, not that I knew of. So how the hell had I wound up with my tongue down this guy’s throat?

  "I take it you didn't introduce yourself then?" my boss asked the guy I had been just about to let fuck me against a concrete wall. Fucking hell.

  "I did," Sir responded, "in the same way she did. Isn't that right, Chris?"

  Mik stepped out of the shadows and arched a brow at me.

  "Uh," I dodged his intense gaze. "Seems like you two need some time to catch up. Fae-Bitch will be wondering where I went anyway." Picking up my bag— with a sleeping Ziff inside, of course—I made to leave the alley, but Mik's friend was still blocking the way. When I tried to squeeze past him, his hand clamped onto my upper arm, and I froze.

  "I don't think so, Chris," he told me, shaking his head. "If you work for Mik, then you're one of his trained pets. Unfortunately, that means I have to kill you."

  "Fucking sorry, what?" I scoffed. "Hate to break it to you, sunshine, but that's not happening." Sure, my magic was bound, but I was still a kickass assassin in my own right. I threw an elbow back into Sir’s face, connecting solidly with his nose and feeling a satisfying crunch of cartilage and glasses. The pain from my hit loosened his grip on my arm enough that I slipped from his grasp and scooted a couple of safe yards out of his reach.

  Too late, I realized he was quicker than I'd given him credit for. As I'd twisted and ducked to break his hold on me, he'd grabbed the strap of my bag. When I slipped out of his reach, my bag slid free from my shoulder with barely even a brush on my skin.

  The psycho had Ziff.

  "Give him back," I ordered, but couldn't help the quiver in my voice as I extended my hand. The blue-eyed devil gave me a humorless smile back, wiping his bloody nose on the sleeve of his shirt as it healed with shifter speed.

  "Of course, I do apologize, your bag must have gotten caught on my watch or something." He took his broken glasses from his face and folded them, slipping them into his pants pocket. "Here." He held Ziff's bag out to me, but it still required I close the distance I'd just gained in order to take it.

  "Thea, don't," Mik hissed from nearby, and I flicked my gaze over him, noticing he'd glided a few steps closer to me. He was tense like I'd never seen him before, which told me this guy was probably more dangerous than he looked. But … Ziff …

  Not hesitating a moment longer, I closed the few steps between myself and Sir, and snatched the bag from his outstretched hand. He moved with the lethal grace of a wild animal. While my focus was on taking the bag from him, his other hand shifted into deadly looking claws which he swiped at my ribs in a move that would have disemboweled me had I been a fraction slower in my reaction. As it was, he only nicked me as I twisted free with a swish of tails.

  "Nix! Stop!" Mikhail bellowed, and I gasped.

  "Nix?" I repeated in a startled squeak. "Nix Locklear?!"

  The guy I'd literally been planning to fuck if all had gone to plan, dipped a sweeping bow to me, like some sort of 1920s gentleman. "In the flesh," he acknowledged, "however, that’s the problem we now face. You've taken my scent, and we all know how good a kitsune's nose can be for tracking. No matter how much I change my physical appearance, you'll forever find me. I just can't have that."

  Holy. Shit.

  I looked from Mik to Nix and back again.

  My dossier had said to be on the lookout for a tall, thin, Native American man with ebony hair, brown eyes, and bronze skin. Except for the tall part of that equation, this guy was the exact opposite: pale, muscular, blond-haired and blue-eyed with skin as white as fucking snow.

  “Mik,” I began, and my boss exhaled sharply, like he knew he’d made a mistake.

  “A skinwalker can change more than just their animal skin, Thea,” he told me, and I felt all the blood drain from my face. “It’s not something they can pull off more than once a century, but Nix …”

  “You like the new look?” he asked, the edge of his mouth curling up at the corner. Even that ugly smile was sexy, and I hated him for it. “Before I started my current research project, I figured out how to speed up the process. I’d explain the complexities of DNA absorption to you, but you wouldn’t understand. It’d just be a waste of time on both of our ends.”

  "Nix, that's enough. Thea isn't going to hunt you; she's just a foolish kit who needs to learn how to answer her fucking phone." This last part was growled at me, but I just flipped Mikhail off. The foolish kit comment stung, and my cheeks flushed with heat.

  Sir—Nix, fucking hell—snorted a laugh at my boss, and it was pretty damn clear he wasn't falling for that line.

  "Mik, you must think I've gone senile. I'm not that old." Nix loosened his tie, undoing the knot then rolling it around his fist a few times before pocketing it. "I'm certainly still young enough to kill your pet kitsune and get away before you can take my head."

  Mikhail didn't fuck around with insults or name calling. He moved faster than the eye could follow, slamming into Nix with the force of a hurricane and throwing him into the wall so hard that it cracked the brick.

  The two men fell to the ground as I made a split-second decision.

  Stand by Mik … or stay out of this fight.

  But Nix was my target, and Mikhail was my boss.

  The choice was easy.

  Moving toward the pair of men, I was surprised when Mikhail stumbled to his feet and put his hand out, slamming his palm into my chest and knocking me to my ass next to my discarded bag. Ziff poked his head out with a scream of rage and clawed his way up my arm to cling to my shoulder.

  "Stand down, Thea," Mik shouted at me, chest heaving, a bit of blood leaking down the side of his face. His sapphire blue eyes flicked from me and back to Nix, just in time to see the other man rise to his feet and lunge forward with an impressive amount of speed and strength—even compared to my vampire boss.

  "Stand down, my ass," I snarled as I shoved to my feet and put a hand on Ziff's back. All vulpes—that is, foxes—had a little bit of magic in them, even ones that weren't shifters. I might not have any magic, but Ziff did. To be fair, what he had was like a raindrop in the ocean of my own magic, but even a dribble of vulpine power was enough to pull off a trick.

  Mikhail and Nix tumbled across the gravel and garbage strewn alley, clawing at one another like animals. There was something … off about the way Mik was fighting. I'd sparred with him enough times—seen him in action almost as much—and it was like he was handicapping himself.

  He doesn't want Nix dead.

  That thought was like a punch in the throat. Why would I be assigned Nix Locklear as a target if he wasn't meant to die?

  The two men broke apart, spattering blood across the pavement, across my bare toes. I had no idea whose blood it was, but they were both covered in it. Crimson streaks dripped from the edge of Mik's ebony hairline, and sluiced tantalizingly between Nix's lips. The man in question flicked his eyes over to mine and then slowly, carefully licked some of the crimson from his mouth.

  "Do you like the show, sweetheart?" he asked in the most condescending tone imaginable and using the rudest fucking nickname known to man. Nix Locklear rose to his feet, still handsome and impeccably dressed in his suit and tie. Even the blood and dirt couldn't subtract from his elegant manner.

  "Thea,
go." Mikhail was panting hard now, his gaze focused on a man that was supposed to be our combined enemy. And yet, Mik was holding back. The men were fairly evenly matched, so any self-imposed handicap was a big goddamn deal.

  "No stay, Thea," Nix purred, reaching up and unhooking the silver chain that kept his ratty fur cloak in place. With a flash of fang and a grin, Nix threw the skin over his head and I watched in abject fascination as it bound itself to his flesh.

  When a shifter changed forms, it was like watching a goddess play with a ball of clay—only in fast forward. We were reshaped and molded from what we had, like water being poured from one container to another. This was … different.

  I'd never seen a skinwalker change in my entire life, and after this, I wasn't sure that I wanted to ever again.

  Nix screamed this strange sound that was part animal, part human … part pain, part pleasure. Light exploded from the underside of the fur as it clung to his body and sealed against his flesh, pulling and stretching his face. It was as if the fur was a living thing, one that was skinning Mr. Locklear like an orange.

  Pale human flesh pulled back, flashing muscle and bone underneath as Nix dropped to all fours. He looked vulnerable as hell, the perfect chance to strike. And yet, Mik wasn't making any move to approach him.

  "Don't go near him," he growled at me, suddenly standing by my side, his lip curled into a snarl, hands in tight fists. Mik looked like he wanted to punch me about as much as he wanted to strangle Nix.

  "You're trying not to hurt him," I said as Nix's body was eaten alive by the ratty fur. It was one of the most fascinating—and most disturbing—things I'd ever seen. "Why?"

  "If you answered your damn phone, maybe you'd know the answer to that question!" he roared at me, all six foot five of his massive form … towering over me. And yeah, not in a good context at all. He smelled like copper, like blood, and his pupils were rapidly dilating. I'd never been worried about Mik losing control before. I was worrying a little bit about that right now.