Eli leaned over and braced his elbows on his knees. “Okay, so we know all the women targeted so far have been mates. There has to be some way of leading the police in the right direction. Hell”—he threw his hand in the air—“we’ve got fucking shifters on the force. Can’t that asswipe, Hayward, drop a hint or something?”
Caelan shook his head. “Not without giving himself away in the process. But since we haven’t been able to trace a scent marker, there aren’t a lot of hints to drop. Our police shifters are stuck using conventional methods just like the human crime scene techs. And so far, there’s been nothing to pick up.”
“Shit. By the time they get all their i’s dotted and t’s crossed, we won’t have any mates left.” Eli slapped his thighs and rose from his chair. “You going to see her now? In the flesh I mean?” His smirk said he’d known all along where Caelan’s thoughts had been today.
Caelan threw his pencil down. It bounced off the desk and javelined toward Eli who caught it with a lightning-quick reflex, his grin spreading from ear to ear.
“Yes, I am.”
Eli nodded once. “Keep her safe.” He strode to the doorway. “I have a feeling she’s going to do great things for us.”
Caelan snorted. “The great eagle in the sky tell you that?”
“No.” He laughed. “Just my gut. Later, Bro.”
“Yeah, later. Hey, don’t you have a meeting tonight? Who is it with?” Caelan asked his brother’s retreating figure.
Eli tapped his fingers on the doorframe, a strange look marring his features. “Yeah, with Dane Christian.”
“You ever figure out what he wanted?”
This time it was Eli’s turn to shake his head. He stared out the window of their home office, almost distracted by whatever he saw. “He said a friend recommended me. Mentioned something about needing me to do something for him. I’ll see what he wants and get back to you after.” He gave a two-finger salute and walked out.
Caelan sifted through his papers until he found the file with the bright pink tab. Not that he needed to look at it again, he’d memorized the contents.
Twenty-one sixty, West Springdale. His mate had been living in the same city as him all along.
It was time.
* * *
Tieran stared at her front door with pure contempt. She’d woken up later than usual this morning, courtesy of the erotic dreams she’d had of Caelan—all night long, thank you very much—and now she was grouchy. Lack of sleep was not the only reason for her current mood, though.
She’d worked an extra long day yesterday trying to finish her current project then had to deal with the situation last night, only to get up extra early this morning to go back into work.
“My hands are full, my head is splitting and now I’ve dropped my keys. Do you think you could just open sesame?”
She glared at the door, willing it to open, and sighed when it didn’t. She blinked hard and nodded. Nothing. Were you supposed to cross your arms also?
“What happened to the psychokinesis, Gramama?”
“Aw, sweetheart, it didn’t pass to you.”
“Damn. Oh all right.” Tieran bent down to retrieve her keys and rapped her forehead on the wooden frame. She had to bite her lip to ease the pain in her head and hold the tears at bay. With a sniff, she rotated her neck, popping the kinks out.
With her bags teetering, Tieran unlocked and turned the knob, only to discover that because of the rising temperature, or whatever other reason the door chose today, it was stuck again. It would take more than a twist of the wrist to get through this stubborn piece of wood. Preparing herself for the battering, she shouldered the door open. It flew inward with little resistance, causing her to stumble forward and step on one of her plastic grocery sacks.
When she tried to straighten, she nearly ripped her arm out of its socket. The corner of a box inside the taut bag gouged a hole, then used its scalpel edge to slice its way out of the confining plastic. It leapt to the ground, urging all its fellow inmates to follow.
Before she knew it she was on the ground on her hands and knees, just inside the foyer, the door standing open, her butt in the air, her keys stabbing her palm, and approximately thirty bucks worth of groceries strewn about the hardwood. Her dinner, the offending box of frozen grilled chicken fettuccine, was smashed beneath her knee, where it had gotten caught in its misguided attempt to keep from being eaten. Ironic, the damn thing had accomplished exactly what it had set out to do.
“Tullabelle, you really should be more careful.”
“Thank you, I appreciate the help.”
Groaning, Tieran hung her head and slapped the floor with a hand still entwined in the handles of her now-shredded bag. She stood, with as much grace as possible, and turned to the door.
“Someday, I’m gonna shred your ass, then we’ll see who’s laughing.” With the toe of her shoe, she kicked the door with all her strength and smiled in satisfaction as it slammed against the frame. The moment was lost, however, when it flew back open and smacked against the wall, leaving a small dent where the knob hit. As always, she did not get the last word.
Her smile faded into a snarl. In order for the door to shut, you had to turn the knob to loosen the locking mechanism, which she did now. It was just one of the quirks “possessed”—and she meant that in every sense of the word—by the house her gramama had lived in until the day she died. Tieran loved the house because it was where she felt the safest, but it was the most ornery dwelling on the planet.
Pushing her disarrayed hair out of her face, she stalked toward the kitchen, ignoring the mess surrounding her. Her shoulders drooped when she squashed a loaf of bread and kicked a can of green beans under the desk.
“So much for walking away from a conflict,” she muttered.
Ten minutes later, Tieran sat in her breakfast nook with a cold Mountain Dew and a bag of Doritos. Lunch. The paper lay open in front of her and she skimmed its contents while she crunched the spicy, cheesy chips.
Blah, blah, blah. She turned the page and wondered why she’d even opened the stupid thing.
Then she saw why. Staring back at her from the bottom of page four was a woman with long, loose, blonde hair that hung like a curtain around a heart-shaped face. Tieran’s eye twitched.
“No,” she groaned. “Not today, please.” She rubbed at her eyelid and prayed it was a simple twitch and not a precursor to a vision. Who was she kidding? She’d never had a normal twitch in her entire life. The stupid twinge was the only warning she got before a full-blown vision. The precursor might happen an hour before, or a day. There was no telling. Good thing she was off rotation the next three days.
Her visions were a curse and a blessing. Most of the time they were simple scenes from someone’s life. She could put those out of her mind. Others, the ones that followed the twitch in her eye, usually depicted something bad that had happened, or was going to happen. Those types stuck in her head for days, causing her to replay them over and over.
“Do not resist him when he comes, Tullabelle.”
“He who?” she asked, knowing full well who her gramama was referring to. Tieran hadn’t been able to put the plea to help Caelan Graham out of her mind since she’d left him standing in her dust.
“He needs your help.”
“Yes, you’ve said that before. If you know he needs my help, why can’t you just tell me the reason?”
“You know I can’t, Tulla.” Her grandmother’s words were filled with remorse.
Tieran did know that, it just confused the hell out of her. Her grandmother sometimes knew what would happen after one of the visions, but not what the vision was about. Tieran sighed, it looked like she was in for another long night.
Stretching her arms above her head, she worked the kinks along the length of her spine. It was only early afternoon but she was exhausted. The sheer magnitude of an upcoming vision was daunting enough without being tired.
Stumbling toward her bedroom, she unsna
pped and unzipped her jeans, prepared to strip down to just her panties and T-shirt and take a nap. She’d be asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Cleaning up the foyer could wait.
The instant she sat on the bed to kick her shoes off, someone knocked at her door. For a second, she thought about answering it but then shook her head. Whoever it was could come back later. She flopped down onto the quilt her gramama had made years ago, the material soft and inviting with its age and memories.
The knock sounded again. “No,” she groaned and covered her head with her pillow. “Go away.”
“Answer the door, Tulla. Now.”
No one who had a little voice in their head had one as commanding as her grandmother’s.
She dragged herself off the bed and back down the hall to the front door. At least she was still dressed. The frame shook as her visitor pounded again. Only people peddling the Word came to her door, and she didn’t have the energy for God right now. She closed one eye and looked through the peephole with the other.
God was not standing on her porch. Instead it was the incredibly yummy man she’d left standing in her car’s dust five days ago. Caelan.
“This is who you thought I needed to get out of bed for?” Her heart skipped a beat. My Lord, the man was more gorgeous than any man had the right to be. He was even more devastating in the light of day and had an animal magnetism about him that drew her in. Love at first sight? No. Not possible. She hated men. Didn’t she?
“Tieran!” her grandmother yelled, yanking her back into focus.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
She grasped the knob with both hands and yanked on the door she’d never locked. It burst open with an unwilling protest. Being partial about her privacy, she quickly placed her body in the foot-wide opening.
“Oh, it’s you.” Did she sound uncaring enough? She wasn’t grinning like a lovesick puppy, was she? She gripped the door, too tired to stand here and discuss life with the man who’d so rudely stared at her before.
“He also saved your butt.”
“Well, there is that.” Not to mention the fact the man was gorgeous.
“It’s nice to see you too,” he said, grinning.
“Is there something I can help you with?” She tried to ignore his devastating smile and the fact that her insides were melting because of it. Then it occurred to her. “Hey, how did you find me?”
A dimple creased his cheek, making her tummy do a weird little flip-flop, and he shrugged. “I own a security company. Finding people is part of what I do.”
“Huh. What about people who don’t want to be found?” she asked, lying through her teeth. If her panties got any wetter, her cream would be dripping down her legs. Who wouldn’t want to be found by this man?
Me, she inwardly shouted. Remember Peter and never wanting anything to do with a man again?
Caelan peered around her head like he had every right in the world to invade her space. “What are you hiding in there?”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Moi?”
“Yes, you. You look like you’re guarding state secrets in there.”
“Oh, that. Well, I was attacked, and there’s a mess—” Her breath left on a whoosh. One second she was in her house, the next Caelan had her pinned to the wall outside by a well-muscled arm. A growl vibrated his rib cage. With his other hand he whipped out an ugly black gun faster than she could blink.
“What are you doing?” she shouted, and struggled to disengage herself from his hold. Not that it wasn’t nice to be held and protected, but she was clueless as to why he’d suddenly gone security guy on her.
“Is he still in the house?” he whispered, controlling her squirming with what seemed like little effort on his part.
“He?”
“You said you were attacked.”
Reality dawned. “By the door, big guy.”
“What?”
“The door. It was stuck, and then I tripped over my bags and spilled everything inside. I was too tired to clean it up, so I left it.” She leaned in close and whispered in his ear, the urge to lick it strong as hell. “I didn’t want you to see it.”
He looked adorable standing there with an expression of utter disbelief.
“The door.”
“Afraid so.”
His eyes closed, his jaw started ticking and he seemed to be counting to himself. She bit her lip to keep from laughing. Then he opened his eyes and leaned even closer to her face. His breath puffed on her nose when he spoke.
“You’re gonna be the death of me and I haven’t even gotten to know you yet.”
He searched her eyes like he meant to find the meaning of life in them and Tieran held her breath. An inch. She’d only have to stretch that far to plant her lips on his. A funny sensation zipped through her body and pooled in her belly. And then he spoke, shattering the illusion.
“What’s wrong with your eye?”
She tried to reach for her eye, but the way he had her pinned, she couldn’t get her hand past his thick biceps.
“What’s wrong with my eye?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you a parrot? How do you even know which eye I’m talking about?”
“Because you’re looking at this one!” She pointed as best she could.
“Oh. Well, it’s just not right.” He looked at her with a more critical eye. “The color’s not the same as the other one.”
“How very PC of you to notice.”
He shrugged. Being a big, tough, security man, he probably didn’t care if he hurt people’s feelings or not.
“Why are you trying to disguise your eye color?”
“Blunt, aren’t you? A lot of people wear colored contacts, and as you so clearly pointed out, I’m only wearing one. I’m weird enough as it is, I don’t need to draw attention to myself through some strange genetic abnormality.” Oops, too much. She could tell he’d latched on to her “weird enough” comment. His nostrils flared.
Tieran pushed against his weight in an effort to dislodge him. They’d stood too close for long enough.
“Oh my God!”
“What?” He tightened around her as if preparing for a new attack.
“You’re touching me!” Panic set in and then she realized what she’d just said. Oops, again. Her cheeks flamed. It wasn’t totally unusual to touch someone and not get some insight about them. It just didn’t happen very often. The only truly safe person she’d ever known was Gramama. To this day, even dead, the elderly woman took care of her, shielding her from harm and guiding her down the right path. Caelan, however, was wreaking havoc on her system, pulling her out of her element and her safe zone. She made a fist and before he could realize what she intended to do, punched him in the stomach.
“Oof.” The air rushed out of his lips as he doubled over. “What was that for?” he croaked.
“I don’t like to be touched.”
“And you forgot that little detail until just this second?”
“Yeah, you got a problem with that?”
“No, but my belly does.” He rubbed the offended part of his anatomy.
“Sorry.”
“No you’re not.”
Tieran tilted her head and pretended to think about that for a minute. “You’re right.” She turned to step back inside but was brought up short when his long, slender, lover’s fingers wrapped around her forearm. She glared at those fingers like they were burning her.
“We’re not done yet.” He righted himself, stretching to his full height, which Tieran guessed to be about six-foot-two, a long way off from her own five-six. He was a whole lot of stud-packed man. She found her gaze wandering south to his groin where his package impressively strained his jeans. Apparently the man was big all over.
The dampness between her legs increased tenfold as she wondered what it would be like to fuck him.
Great, now that he’d touched her and she’d gotten zero images from him, she was letting loose with all sorts of dreams. Dreams that included bein
g with a man she couldn’t read. Now that would be wonderful.
“Maybe you were right, Gramama. Maybe I should let him into my life. If for nothing else than…never mind.”
“I told you so.”
She curled her lip at the smugness in her grandmother’s words.
Caelan drew a breath and steadied himself after the sucker punch to his gut. His mate could pack a wallop with her diminutive frame. He re-holstered his gun and spared a chuckle for the caveman routine he’d just engaged in. It had to have something to do with his species, and their innate sense to protect their mate.
Of course, he should have picked up on her complete nonchalance when saying she’d been attacked. Instead he’d gone into lockdown mode and prepared to defend her life with his own.
He eyed the door with caution and wondered how she could accuse it of attacking her.
Following her retreating figure into the house, Caelan surveyed the area. It was, in a word, homey. His mouth quirked at the mess she hadn’t wanted him to see, and he planted his hands on his hips. Tieran had disappeared. For a split second he thought about the fact that she might run but dismissed the idea just as fast. Why would she have any reason to run?
He flipped the door closed behind him with his heel. It swung back open and slapped him in the rear. Now he could see why she said the door had ambushed her. He pushed firmly on the paneled wood but it still wouldn’t close. He frowned at it. Damn thing was possessed.
Caelan turned when an odd breeze wafted across the back of his neck. The hair on the rest of his body stood on end, a testimony to the eerie feeling he was being watched. He traced the room carefully, looking for anything that may have caused the sudden puff of air, and was tempted to start humming the theme from The X-Files.
“You have to turn the knob to close the door,” Tieran yelled from somewhere deeper in the house.
How had she known he was having trouble with the door? Because she lives here, you idiot.
“Where are you?”
Seeing Eye Mate Page 3
