by Mason, Marie
“Did he tell you about mates? True Mates.”
“He said something about them. Don’t worry, he didn’t lead me on or anything like that.” No, he’d just given her one incredible orgasm with nothing more than the heat of his mouth and the abrasion of his evening stubble. Her orgasms before with men had been, well, they hadn’t exactly been at all. Once or twice she’d felt the beginning of one, but her lovers had finished before she could explore the sensation to its conclusion. Quinn had set her off so easily it was almost embarrassing.
“He said he’d call, but I’m not really expecting him to. You can tell him that. No hard feelings.”
There was silence on the other end. “I’m not going to tell him that, Paige. When he calls, you will go out with him.”
“Stop being so bossy. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Her tone was light and airy but she really didn’t want to talk anymore. She hung up before the other woman could answer. She didn’t want to be interrogated by Deb. Not just yet. While she’d gone on the date with her eyes wide open, she was very heart sore that she wasn’t his mate. From the moment she’d seen his picture she’d felt a stirring inside that she’d never felt before. She sighed, hugging her knees to her chest. Why couldn’t fate have shined down on her just this once and made her Quinn Blackwood’s true mate?
As Deb checked on her children, she debated the wisdom of calling Quinn. She knew she probably shouldn’t interfere and allow true love to run its course. But, she also knew how stupid males could be—especially male bear shifters—and she didn’t want to leave her little brother’s happiness to chance. She’d heard a tone in Paige’s voice she’d never heard. The woman was usually the most upbeat and cheerful person in the office. Tonight Deb had heard a hint of sadness in her voice. Anger she could understand. Her younger brothers were constantly pissing her off. Or use to. She was the oldest of the Blackwood siblings and use to bossing them around. Keeping them out of trouble. No, she couldn’t leave her brother’s happiness to chance. She settled into the corner of her couch and dialed Quinn’s cell.
“I don’t have time for this,” Quinn muttered under his breath when he saw his sister’s number on his screen.
“What?” Ryland, Ryker, and Jason stood beside him on the bottom floor of the building complex. They had just finished running a perimeter check trying to determine who had entered the site and assaulted the guard.
Jackals had definitely been inside the building. What concerned him more was the faint scent of humans that lingered. Nothing had been taken or disturbed as far as they could tell. So far, they had no idea who was entering the site. This time an innocent human had been hurt and that was something he could not tolerate. He knew they had to find out what was going on. That didn’t make his time away from Paige easier. He didn’t want to be here, he wanted to be in Paige’s bed, or better yet in his own bed with Paige beneath him.
“It’s Deb,” Quinn answered Ryland’s question. Right now, Quinn wished his older sister was far, far away. Maybe even in another galaxy. The woman was bossy, damn bossy. No doubt she’d already called Paige and now wanted to know how he thought the date had gone.
“Better you than us,” Ryland grinned.
“Or me,” Jason joined in with a chuckle.
“What’d you do this time?” Ryker asked.
“Nothing.”
“Maybe your date called and complained about your technique,” Ryland razzed him.
“What technique? You didn’t give me a chance.”
“I’d say the girl had a lucky break.”
“Shut up, assholes,” Quinn grumbled and accepted his sister’s call. “This isn’t a good time, Deb.”
“Why, because you left your date hanging?”
“No, because I’m about to toss your brothers over the side of this building. And maybe your mate.”
“You can toss Ryland and Ryker, but I’d like to have Jason back in one piece. Remember he is the father of your niece and nephew, whom you adore.”
“Deb.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll make this short and sweet. Are you willing to take a little advice from your big sister?”
“About the break-in?” Quinn’s question bordered on sarcastic.
“No, dip wad, about Paige.”
Quinn’s big body went rigid. Had she told Deb something? Like she never wanted to see him again? “What about Paige?”
“You need to call her.”
“It’s late, Deb. She’s probably in bed by now.”
“I just talked to her about a half an hour ago. Come on, little brother. Would I steer you wrong?”
“Yes,” Quinn had to bite back a smile, his first since leaving Paige. “Every chance you get.”
Deb sighed. “Okay, if you won’t call her back tonight, you better call her first thing tomorrow. Ask her out and don’t let her say no. She doesn’t want to.”
“How do you know that?”
“Don’t question my powers, just do as I say.”
Quinn hung up and debated the wisdom of doing what his sister advised. He took a deep breath, imagining Paige in her bed, all warm and soft. All his bear wanted to do was shift and run back to her.
“Hey, bro, if you need to go back, we can handle it,” Ryker spoke this time. While it wasn’t difficult for shifters to tell the twins apart, they’d fooled many humans over the years. Which Quinn thought was really weird since the two had such different personalities. Ryland was outspoken and quick to make people laugh. Ryker was harder edged and closed mouth. Both were instinctive and empathic.
“No, we need to do another search. Tonight, before this damn storm breaks.” The twins had discovered both tracks and footprints going in and out of the site. He wanted to pull his hair out in frustration. Nothing made sense and he couldn’t think straight at the moment. He wanted to go back to Paige tonight. Love her. Claim her. Because he knew he’d claim her, sure as shit, if he saw her again tonight. He also knew she wasn’t ready. No, he’d call her first thing in the morning and talk her into seeing him tomorrow night. Then he’d take her back to his house and love the hell out of her.
The twins nodded their agreement to continue the investigation tonight. Jason went home to his mate, promising to come back if they needed him. The brothers quickly stripped and shifted. Soon three large grizzlies were lumbering towards the woods at the back of the construction site. Quinn huffed as he turned toward the north side and Ryland and Ryker headed east and west. It was going to be one long, frustrating night.
Ryker slowed as he neared the edge of the property line, trying to figure out what was bothering him so much about these tracks. He didn’t know if his brothers had noticed any anomalies or not. All had found jackal tracks and human footprints. Here, near the eastern edge, he’d found another set of shifter prints. There were faint markings of a cat of some sort. So faint, he really couldn’t tell if they were fresh or not. He didn’t think they were since the security guards had never reported a cat sighting. He sniffed along the trail of prints, trying to filter through all the different smells of the forest. There’d been jackals for sure. Marcum construction flunkies.
There was something else…
He shifted into human form and knelt beside the tracks. He quickly found the cat’s print and rubbed his hand along the faint impression. He lifted the soil to his nose and inhaled. There was something…something underneath that he couldn’t quite make out. All he knew, was it was driving him—and his bear—freaking crazy. The animal wanted to track the cat. No, the animal needed to track the cat.
“Fuck.” What the hell was wrong with him and his bear? He shifted again and continued the search. They needed something concrete to go on. Solid evidence that the jackals were treading on bear territory, so he, Ryland, and Quinn could kick some jackal ass.
Quinn was convinced he was in hell. The air was hot and humid and he couldn’t wait to get back home, to Paige. It was Thursday morning and he’d just exited the jammed packed air shuttle that had taken him
to North Carolina. He hadn’t been away from his mate twelve hours and already his bear was going batshit crazy. He stretched trying to work out the kinks to his back and shoulders. How the hell did you call five measly seats first class?
He was on his way to see the Council. Yeah, Council with a capital letter. When shifters had decided to ‘come out’ the governments had insisted that controls be put in place. Shifters had insisted that they would take care of their own and they did so with an iron fist. If a shifter, or a group of shifters, got out of line, justice was swift and fierce.
He’d petitioned the Council to review his case against Marcum. The case was weak, but the Council members knew the true reason he was here. To remind the Council if they didn’t deal with the jackal pack in Atlanta, the Blackwood brothers would do it for them. Bears were usually not territorial and he could handle a business competitor. He wouldn’t, however, tolerate someone who deliberately sabotaged his site.
Last night, Ryland had found the concrete mix they’d had on site for another major pour had been contaminated. If they hadn’t discovered the problem, and had used the concrete, the top floors of the building would have collapsed soon after occupation and no telling how many individuals might have been injured, or worse, killed. No, he could take a lot of things. Putting innocent lives in danger to harm a business’s reputation was something he wouldn’t stand for. Plus, damn it, he needed to focus Paige and the mating heat consuming him.
“Mr. Blackwood?” A uniformed driver called out to him as he made his way through the busy airport.
“Yes,” he turned to the man with a frown. Only the shifter who represented the bear clan on the Council had known his flight schedule.
“The Council sent me to escort you to the meeting.”
“And you are?” Yeah, he was a big, bad bear shifter and could take a man out with a swipe of his paw, but he wasn’t dumb. Humans had a way of evening the playing field. With guns, tranquilizers, poison. He wouldn’t put it past Marcum to try something stupid.
The man held out a sealed envelope and Quinn saw the crest of the bear clan. Only high officials had access to this seal. Inside was a letter from the bear representative telling Quinn the agenda for the day. His father had been approached to serve on the Council. He’d refused because he still had young cubs. Quinn hoped someday his father would reconsider. He was a good man and would serve the shifter world well. He stuffed the letter into his jacket pocket. “Okay, let’s go.”
A moment later, his way was blocked by a large man wearing a suit and tie. Bill Marcum. The reason he was in this city and away from his newly discovered mate.
“I think we should talk, Blackwood.”
“What’s there to talk about? My brothers and I found the scent of your flunkies all over our building site.”
“Now how do you know it was my boys, Quinn?”
Quinn gritted his teeth in frustration. He heard the arrogance in the other man’s voice. Marcum wanted nothing more than to see Blackwood Brothers Construction fail. For years, he’d been tossing around unfounded accusations about the brothers. This wasn’t his first attempt at sabotage, but it was the most dangerous to date. During other builds, Marcum had confined his efforts to stolen equipment, misdirected deliveries and other things that had resulted in annoying delays. Not real threat, more like frat boys on a hazing dare.
Two weeks ago, the same things had started on this site. It had quickly escalated into something more sinister. The bolts on some of the I-beams girders had been seared off. Other girders had been compromised by repeated heavy blows to their sides. Blows that could only have been made by a shifter using the beams as a punching bag. Quinn figured Marcum had his nose out of joint because Blackwood Construction had just won a major government contract Marcum had thought he had in the bag. A very lucrative ten story building renovation. All the brothers preferred new construction, but in today’s economy, you couldn’t be choosey, and you certainly couldn’t turn down a government contract.
Normally, they didn’t bother with round-the-clock security on a job. After the first incident, he’d hired a security company. After last night…now Ryland and Ryker would be patrolling the area. He grinned, wondering what the jackals would say when two grizzlies came at them. Probably piss their pants and run.
“This is my last warning to you, Marcum. Cut the crap. I got the contract because I can bring the project in on time and on budget. I’ve put up with a lot from you over the years, but it ends now. If I catch any of your jackals on my site again, you can expect the worst.”
“Now, Blackwood, don’t you think that’s something the Council needs to decide?”
Quinn stepped into the man’s personal space. Marcum was bigger than most jackal shifters, a little over six feet. Quinn towered over him with his seven foot frame, intimidating him. A smile stretched across his mouth. He didn’t mind a bit intimidating this piece of trash. “No matter what the Council decides, remember I’m the one that will finish this.”
Paige knew what Deb was doing. She was trying to distract her from the fact that it was now four-thirty in the afternoon and Quinn still hadn’t called her. Granted, there was no certain timeframe in which the I’ll call you tomorrow went from being a promise to the dreaded I just told you that in order to appease you. She wouldn’t have been so antsy if Deb hadn’t been so worried. Paige knew Deb Quinn to call before now. The only reason Paige wasn’t falling into a deep well of depression was that Deb had told her Quinn had left town early this morning to deal with the trouble he’d been having at his construction site. She figured because of that, she could add a couple of hours to the deadline for him to call.
“Are you sure Quinn didn’t mention true mates to you? About how a shifter knows?”
“Look, Deb, your brother is great. He's big, strong, handsome, and I like him. I really like him.”
“That’s great,” the other woman gave a huge sigh of relief. “I was afraid he’d blown it.”
Paige held up her hand. “Let me finish. I know what you’ve told me about true mates, and I, uh, did some research.” She’d done a lot of research when she’d seen her first picture of Quinn on Deb’s desk. She’d hoped she’d find a website that told you how to turn yourself into a true mate for a shifter you loved. Not that she’d loved him then, or now for that matter. She did have an instant attraction to him. Something he hadn’t had for her last night. Oh, there had been some sexual chemistry—some fuck me now sexual chemistry. There hadn’t been the, I’m Tarzan, you Jane.
The uncontrollable something that every website said was the telling factor—that the animal overcame the man. An attraction so strong, the shifter had a difficult time not having sex with their mate the moment they met. “If I’d been his true mate, I wouldn’t be sitting here now, and he wouldn’t be gone.”
“That’s not true,” Deb denied quickly. “Jason didn’t carry me off until our second date.” The woman blushed even after seven years of marriage and Paige’s eyebrows rose. That must have been some date.
“He would have known. He would have said something.”
Deb’s eyes narrowed. “He didn’t say anything?”
Now it was Paige’s turn to blush. No way, no how was she telling her best friend that her baby brother had practically ordered her to climax as he’d licked and sucked on her nipples. “No, just that he wanted to see me again.”
“My brother is an idiot,” Deb muttered under her breath, but Paige heard it anyway.
Paige smiled her first genuine smile of the day. “No, he’s just a man.”
“An idiot man.” Deb’s mind raced. It wasn’t her place to tell Paige that she was Quinn’s true mate. Even she couldn’t overstep that boundary. Her brother was doing a bang up job—of losing his mate. It was time to get the family involved and knock some sense into the man before he lost his chance with Paige. She couldn’t do anything right now because Quinn wasn’t here. As soon as he returned, however, all bets were off. In the meantime, she d
idn’t want Paige to be alone, brooding and worrying about why Quinn hadn’t called her yet. “Come on, come by the house and have dinner with me and Jason and the kids. You know you want to see Amy and Joseph.”
“That’s not playing fair, Deb. You know I love your children. But I repeat, I don’t want to have dinner with you.” Paige repeated what she’d been telling her friend for the last two hours. Deb had already offered to go to the movies with her, take her out to dinner, and even go bar hopping. Secretly, Paige thought Deb just wanted to do that and was using Paige as an excuse. She’d been very tempted by that offer, but she’d turned it down along with all the others.
She knew Deb didn’t want her to go home and worry about why Quinn hadn’t called. Which was exactly what she intended to do in—she looked at her computer monitor to see what time it was—in exactly twenty-seven minutes. She planned on having a nice quiet evening just like always. But first a stop at the grocery store to pick up another pint—or two—of ice cream. She wouldn’t let herself think about the feel and taste of Quinn. Or the fact that her heart was slowly breaking in two. Just one date. How could she be so enamored with this man after just one date?
Deb sighed and rose from the corner of Paige’s desk that she’d been occupying for the last hour. “If you change your mind, just come on over.”
“I won’t.” She needlessly straightened some folders on her desk. The one good thing about being miserable was that it allowed you to focus on your job in order to forget what caused you the misery in the first place. She’d gotten caught up on some back projects and made some good headway on new ones. The last half hour of the day crawled by. Just as she was about to leave, her office phone rang.
“Hello, Paige.” The deep dark seduction of Quinn’s voice was guaranteed to make a woman lose her breath and Paige was no exception.
