by Olivia Arran
Unless I’d fallen asleep.
I checked my watch. Nope, the drive had only taken ten minutes. This had to be a private estate then, one which happened to hold a mini forest. It had to have cost a pretty penny.
He rolled the truck to a stop and clicked it into park.
Seconds passed as I waited for him to make the first move, but he sat still, his back rigid, his hands on his lap, his eyes unblinking.
Sick of waiting, I clicked open the door and jumped down, the height of the truck making a graceful exit impossible for a woman of my size.
It was as if a switch had been flicked and Cole jolted into action, sliding out of his side.
The front door swung open, revealing a large man framed in the filtered light. Tall, with blond hair, he was devilishly handsome. Upon seeing me he tensed, flexing the impressive set of muscles he had on display, a smirk tilting his lips, his thumbs hooked into the top of his jeans as though holding them up. They were the only item of clothing he happened to be wearing. What was it about shifters and their need to run around half-naked?
Cole loped around the truck, his stride slow and easy, his six-pack rippling as he lifted my bags out of the back. Exactly my point! My fingers twitched with the need to touch. Not that I was complaining, nope, no way.
“Angel,” Cole grunted, shouldering the other man out of the way on his way into the house.
I trotted into the house after him. Angel? Sure, the man was all golden skin and hair, but he didn’t look angelic in the slightest. Not with the black ink that decorated his chest, which was Latin or Greek from the looks of it.
Angel stopped me, taking my hand in his and bending over in a theatrical bow. Hot lips feathered over the back of my hand as baby blue eyes tilted to meet mine. “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Silk,” he murmured, the drawl pure Californian, bringing to mind hot beaches and fruity cocktails.
“Call me Natasha,” I replied, my lips curving up in a smile to match his. I couldn’t help it; the man oozed charm as well as a good dose of mischief.
A low growling sound filled the room and Angel released my hand, rising to his full height and putting me face-first with an alarmingly well-developed chest. Cole wasn’t doing a very good job at hiding the fact that he was a shifter. I cautiously glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, but he wasn’t there anymore. He had vanished.
“I’ll show you to your room if you’d like,” Angel said, sweeping a hand toward a winding staircase, but I caught the look of concern he shot toward a still-swinging door. Where Cole must have gone.
Pulling myself together, I shoved my shoulders back and tilted my chin. “That would be great, thank you.” I didn’t look back, didn’t check to see if Cole had returned. Instead I put one foot in front of the other. Two weeks… I chanted what was quickly becoming my mantra inside my head, ignoring the prick of tears that threatened. It had been a long night, that’s all. Once I got some sleep everything would look better. And if it didn’t, well, I was Natasha Silk. I was a master at hiding my feelings.
I’d had enough practice.
Chapter Eight
Cole
“What was all that about?”
I ignored Angel, instead taking another long drag of cold beer.
“First, you ignore her like she’s a wayward puppy, then you growl like you’re marking your territory.” A hand slammed down on the countertop next to me, making the discarded bottle top jump. “Then, to top it all off, you disappear without a word, leaving her staring after you.”
“She did?” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. Angry with myself, I grabbed the bottle cap, sending it soaring toward the garbage can. It pinged off the side, ricocheting off the wall and came to land on the floor by my feet. Figured.
“She did. Big, brown, puppy dog eyes. What the hell did you do to her? You were only gone a couple of hours.”
“What does it matter to you?” I snarled.
“It doesn’t. I’m pretty sure I can make her feel better, just wanted to check—”
We hit the wall with a thud, my bottle crashing onto the floor, forgotten. I crushed my elbow into his throat, strangling his words. “She’s off-limits to you.” My voice was a growl, my wolf lighting my eyes as I stared him down.
“Whoa! What’s going on? Did I miss the invite?” Vin called out as he strolled into the kitchen. Grabbing two beers out of the fridge, he propped himself up against the wall, then gestured for us to carry on.
The door swung open again and Vin lobbed the beer. Greg snatched it out of the air.
What was this? A motherfucking party?
Twisting off the cap, Greg lobbed it toward the trash where it didn’t ping off and fly to the floor. He raised an eyebrow, staring me down. “Is this work or woman trouble?”
He had a point. With Angel it was always work or women that got him in trouble. But not usually with me.
Angel raised his hands in the universal symbol of surrender and I loosened my grip a fraction so he could breathe.
“Okay, off-limits,” he muttered, but he was grinning as he shoved me away.
“Who’s off-limits?” Vin asked, his eyes lighting up.
“His woman,” Angel grunted, his voice still a little hoarse from where I had tried to grind his voice box into dust.
“She’s not my woman,” I snapped, grabbing a brush and sweeping up the broken glass, anything so I didn’t have to meet their eyes. I knew they were all staring at me. I was the calm one. The easygoing, chilled, happy-go-lucky guy. Not a psychopath who walled a friend up for looking at his woman. Not my woman. Fuck! She was, and that was the problem.
I disposed of the glass, dragging the moment out. Their eyes burned into my back. “Where’s Abel?”
“Out,” Greg replied, not needing to explain anymore.
Abel did that, disappeared now and again. We didn’t know where he went, or why, but when he got back he always seemed a little more grounded. More at peace with himself. For a while, anyway.
I nodded, finally turning around to meet their eyes. “What?” I grunted out, already not liking the dawning looks of understanding in their eyes.
Vin spun his bottle between his fingers, then took a swig. “What is she like?”
I leaned back against the wall, shoving my hands into my pockets. “Don’t you want to know what the assignment is?”
“Yeah, but first I’d like to know what she’s like. I mean, she’s famous—”
“And?” I broke in with a glower.
“In my experience, famous people usually aren’t like what you’d expect,” he finished.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “And you have a lot of experience with famous people?”
Within the team, we had an unwritten rule. You didn’t ask. That was it. If someone wanted to share their life story with you, that was fine, but you didn’t ask. All I knew about Vin was that he was British. And he watched rugby—which from what I could tell was a version of football but without pads.
“Something like that,” he muttered, his eyes sliding away from mine.
Huh. I stored that nugget away to think about later. He was right though, she was different from what I’d expected. Softer yet harder, approachable yet standoffish, and even more beautiful than the camera had portrayed. “She’s…” I tried to put it into words and failed.
“She’s beautiful,” Angel offered from the other side of the kitchen.
I snarled at him before I could stop myself.
Greg let out a low whistle as he dragged an open bag of chips into the middle of the table. Grabbing a handful, he bit into one thoughtfully. “Okay, tell us about the assignment.”
Now that I could do. I filled them in quickly, leaving out the part where I’d half-mauled her in the stairwell.
“Why two weeks?” Angel was the first to break the silence that had fallen over the room.
“I don’t know. She seems to think that’s when the shoot will be finished.” I shrugged, at a loss.
/> “But, that doesn’t mean that the—”
“Don’t you think I said that?” I growled, cutting Vin off. “Whatever her reason, we have two weeks to find whoever it is that’s doing this and dispose of him.”
Greg coughed, choking on a potato chip. “And then you’ll let her go? Really? But she’s your—”
I silenced him with a sweep of my hand and a stone-cold glare. “Whatever she is to me, it’s my business how I deal with it. The only thing you guys have to worry about is helping me keep her safe. Okay?” My gaze swept the room, sizing up my team one by one, until they nodded their assent.
Satisfied, I collapsed into a chair, blotting out the conversation around me. I knew what I had to do. I had to keep her safe. I had to find her stalker. I had to make sure she finished her shoot. Simple.
What I didn’t have to do—claim my true mate. Just the thought of what it would mean had me breaking out in a cold sweat. There was one thing I knew for sure. I was a fucked-up wolf, and I was pretty sure I knew why. Bullshit, I knew exactly why. Which meant I also knew I wasn’t going to do a damn thing about it.
Good thing she didn’t know anything about shifters, or true mates, or I’d have some explaining to do. And I wasn’t ready to deal with why I was so screwed up. Not now, maybe not ever.
Chapter Nine
Natasha
My stomach had been rumbling for a good hour or so, the sound almost deafening in my silent bedroom. Finally giving in to the fact that sleep wasn’t coming anytime soon, I left my room and retraced my steps back down to the ground floor. The kitchen couldn’t be that hard to find. Maybe a mug of hot milk would calm me so I could sleep.
The thought of my makeup artist’s scowl when she caught sight of the bags under my eyes had me muffling an undignified snort. Suitcases, more like. Not to mention the small scratch at the corner of my eye. Or the stubble burn that still dusted my chin.
That one would come as a shocker. I’d never done the party scene, instead preferring to keep to myself. In the modeling world I was known for being cold and stuck up. The ice queen.
I crept across the foyer, my bare feet silent on the polished wooden floor.
“Who are you?” A deep voice growled from the shadows. The front door slammed shut behind me.
Whirling around, I nearly stumbled backward as a man advanced toward me, his stride menacing, his face twisted in a scowl.
My mouth had gaped open and I closed it with a snap. “Natasha?” I finally blurted out. Why it had come out as a question, I didn’t know, but recently I was questioning everything. Why I was here, what I was doing?
The man didn’t stop until he towered over me.
I stared at him, refusing to back down. The thought flew through my mind that if I did, then that would be it. I’d have lost. I’d been around wolf shifters enough to know that dominance ruled; to show any weakness at all when challenged meant you lost their respect. I pressed closer to him, my bare feet brushing against his clunky boots.
Black boots coated in thick mud. Black trousers sticking to thick thighs, soaked through with rain. A black T-shirt molded like a second skin to a broad chest. My gaze traveled higher still, past the close-cut beard, the thin lips twisted in an unwelcome snarl, to the pale gray eyes narrowed in obvious distrust.
“What are you looking at?” The words were a quiet whisper, but carried an edge of fury.
“You,” I whispered back, refusing to look away as his eyes narrowed even further. I pressed forward a little more, wondering if he liked his personal space enough to back off.
“Don’t.” It wasn’t a request, or a plea. The word was flat, like he didn’t care.
I cocked my head to one side, a crick starting to form in my neck. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” he growled, but this time he sounded unsure.
I took a closer look. “Because of your scar?” At first glance I hadn’t noticed the scar that wrapped around his cheek, threading down into his beard. I had been too busy trying to hold onto the courage to face this giant down without peeing myself.
He grunted, appearing satisfied, his gaze finally breaking away from mine.
I smacked him in the chest to get his attention. “Hey! I didn’t even notice it until you asked me! Just because you’ve got a little scar doesn’t mean you get to act like a jerk! I’ve had one of the worst nights of my life tonight and I’m meant to be a guest in your house and you getting all growly and pulling a scare-the-little-woman routine isn’t very hospitable!” I smacked him again for good measure.
I don’t know who was more shocked—him or me.
His eyes widened, a low growl rumbling through his chest.
I swallowed hard, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.
“Abel, leave her alone.”
I had never been so happy to hear Cole’s voice in my entire life.
The low growl cut off abruptly as the man towering over me glanced over my head. “Is she yours?”
A hesitation, the tension palpable in the air. “Yes.”
With a curt tilt of his head, the man—Abel, Cole had called him—turned and strode back out of the door, letting it slam shut behind him.
On a whoosh I let go of the air that I had been holding, and my shoulders sagged.
“Natasha, what are you doing wandering around?”
I didn’t want to turn around, didn’t want to face him right now. I was bone-achingly tired, more than a little pissed off at life, and scared that if I looked at him I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from running into his arms.
Not that he’d be holding them open for me. He’d made it brutally clear earlier that what had happened between us had been a mistake.
“Natasha—”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to get a glass of milk.”
“Oh.”
Did he think I’d come looking for him? I risked a glance over my shoulder. He was staring intently at the wall, his hands shoved deep into his pockets as he rocked back and forth on his heels. For a second I thought he looked lost and vulnerable, but then he met my gaze, blowing that theory clear out of the water.
“What is your problem with me?” The words were out before I could slap a filter in place.
He rocked back on his heels, his brows arching. “I don’t have a problem with you.”
“Then what is it?”
He stilled, a twitch working in his jaw. “Can you expand on the question?” he replied, his voice even and calm.
That just annoyed the hell out of me. What gave him the right to be so…so… He was the one who’d started this, turning up at my door and working his charm, making me want him then pushing me away like he didn’t care. Not that I cared; I had learned the hard way that relationships didn’t work in my line of business, but—
“Argh!” My hands flew up in the air as I stalked toward him. Reaching him, I poked him in the chest, and the way my finger bounced off the sheer wall of muscle wound me up even more. “When we first met you were all over me, flirting and being nice. Then we made out in the stairwell. I, personally, enjoyed myself, but ever since you stuck your tongue down my throat you’ve been acting like I have a goddamn disease or something! What gives?” I glared up at him, baring my teeth for good measure. I could do dominance displays as good as the next wolf shifter.
His face was impassive, but the muscle in his jaw was still jumping and his fingers were twitching at his sides. “You are my client. What happened earlier was poor judgment on my behalf, and unprofessional. It won’t happen again.”
It was all wrong! The flatness in his voice didn’t match the fire burning in his eyes. I pursed my lips, satisfaction roaring through me when he stiffened, unable to tear his gaze away from my mouth. “If that’s what you need to tell yourself so you can sleep at night,” I purred as I pushed past him toward what I figured must be the kitchen. Pausing, I called over my shoulder, “But, if that’s the case, then why did you tell Abel that I’m yours?”
Not waiting for an answer, I shoved the door open. Okay, I might have put an extra little something into my walk. After all, he deserved a touch of torture. He was infuriating!
Chapter Ten
Cole
The door swung shut.
Rubbing a hand over my face, I groaned out loud. I had never met a more exasperating, contradictory woman in all my life! She was going to drive me crazy. One second she didn’t want me near her, the next she was asking why I hadn’t jumped her again.
And I was asking myself exactly the same thing. Any normal, hot-blooded wolf shifter would have pinned her against the wall and kissed the pout straight off of those luscious lips. I would have grabbed her by her full, rounded ass and carried her upstairs, then proceeded to show her exactly what my problem with her was. Several times.
Only a cast-iron grip on my willpower was stopping me from storming into the kitchen and giving in to the mating call.
But that was exactly the problem—she was my true mate. Could I be with her without making her mine? The half-formed question hammered home exactly how far from normal and sane I truly was. Sorry-ass excuse for a wolf. I growled at myself, the sound echoing loudly in the empty foyer. Why the fuck couldn’t I just leave it alone?
I needed a kick up the backside, that’s what, and I knew exactly who would give that to me. Flicking open my cell, I keyed in a number. The phone rang against my ear. A feminine laugh echoed from the kitchen, followed by low masculine chuckles of appreciation.
My hand tightened on the plastic, my teeth grating together. Pick up…pick up…
“Hello?” A woman’s voice, tight with sleep, answered the phone. A muffled scrape, some static, then, “Do you know what time it is?” This time the voice was deep with a slight accent that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t lose.
