by Olivia Arran
Straight line, remember? Eyes on the prize. The prize being my freedom from this life. I shrugged, my smile widening until my jaw ached. “Baby steps, right?”
Turning, I strode off in the direction of the tent. Most of the crew had scattered, and Jorge was nowhere to be seen. Catching the director’s eye, I diverted course. “When do you want to start shooting again?” I asked. I wasn’t going to apologize and he wouldn’t expect one. Supermodel Natasha Silk didn’t apologize to anyone. She didn’t have to.
He shot a pointed look at the sky, then over my shoulder, his glare aimed at Cole. “Tomorrow. The light is wrong now.”
“See you tomorrow then,” I called over my shoulder, already on the move again. That was the trick, to act as if you were more important than everyone else. Then they believed you were.
“Natasha!” a female voice called out.
Cole was immediately in front of me, shielding me from the woman who was running at full pelt toward me. “Stay there,” he barked out.
“Cole—”
He shot me an annoyed look. “Do as you’re told, just once!”
“But, Cole—”
“I mean it, Natasha…”
So, we were back to Natasha. Folding my arms, I waited.
The woman stopped a few feet away, her eyes wide as she craned her neck, trying to see around the human-shaped boulder in front of me. “Natasha?”
I peered at her, giving her a quick wave.
“Keep your distance,” Cole growled, one arm reaching back and curling around my hip, presumably to make sure I stayed put.
I was staying put. Nothing was going to drag me away from watching how this played out.
“Why? Who are you?”
Cole took a deep breath, then froze, his muscles flexing and bulging before my eyes.
Tapping him on the shoulder had no effect. I whacked him across the arm. Still nothing. He still held me around the hip, so I moved closer, pressing myself against his back. “Say hello to my sister, Scarlett,” I whispered in his ear.
“Who is the big hunk of a wolf, Natasha, and why is he manhandling you?” Scarlett’s voice was a low drawl as she circled around Cole, her brows arched high as a small smile played on her lips.
Cole’s arm dropped, and, ignoring the jarring sense of loss, I hurled myself into my sister arms, letting her spin me around. “Scar! I didn’t know you were coming up!”
“I didn’t either!” She grinned back at me, her dark blue eyes flashing with pleasure. “But when Mom and Papa said you were back in the States I couldn’t resist!”
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t.” Linking arms, we turned to a still shell-shocked Cole.
“Does he speak?” Scar mock-whispered.
“Sometimes. Other times he grunts or growls.”
“That’s a male wolf for you.”
“Exactly what I’ve been thinking.”
Nudging me, she continued, all joking disappeared. “Why have you got a male wolf as a bodyguard?”
I didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t want her to worry. Hell, I didn’t want any of my family to worry. But she was here now, and there was no way around it. “I’ve been getting threats, Scar.”
“You always get threats…is it different this time?” Her wolf flashed into her eyes, lightening them to molten silver.
I squeezed her tight, already regretting not having told her. I’d been wrong, keeping it to myself.
“Someone actually tried to kill Natasha. Nearly succeeded too.” Cole’s deep voice shocked me. He was staring at me like I’d grown another head, his eyes flicking back and forth between me and my sister.
“Kill you? How?” Her voice was hoarse and coated with shock. Her fingers tightened on my arm, as though she expected me to be ripped away any minute.
I winced, poking her fingers. “Human, Scar, remember?”
“Sorry!” she muttered, removing her hand.
“Poison,” I muttered, rubbing at the mark and waiting for the inevitable.
“You have to come home. We can protect you!” she exclaimed.
Cole was fast behind her with his demands. “It was actually an explosion. And we need to talk.”
Scar turned on Cole, her hands planted on her hips. “She doesn’t need to talk, she needs to be protected!”
“Just what do you think I’ve been doing?”
“Not much, from the looks of it! Someone managed to send her a bomb!”
“It wasn’t a bomb, not really. And she’s alive. Not a scratch on her—”
“She could have been killed!”
“No one is going to kill her, not while I’m—”
“Stop!” I screamed over the growls and snarls. “Scar, I am fine where I am. Cole isn’t working on his own; there’s a whole team of guys looking after me.” I turned to face Cole, determined to wipe the smirk off his face. “And you—” I poked him in the chest, “—you don’t get to demand anything. Not after lying to me all this time—”
“Seems like you’ve been lying too—”
“About what? I’m human. I didn’t lie there!”
“You have a sister who’s a shifter—”
“And how is that anything to do with you? It’s not like we’ve been exchanging life stories or anything. You’re either snarling at me or jumping on me!”
I could feel Scar’s eyebrows shoot up at the last comment, a strangled cough coming from her direction.
Cole opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again.
Good, maybe the man could learn.
Swiping a hand through his hair—and flexing his impressive biceps in the process, dammit—he nodded once. He tapped his ear, then seemed to remember he’d flung the earpiece earlier. Scanning the ground, he eventually gave up. “Let’s go back to the house. We can all talk there.” It sounded like a threat, and from the look in his eyes he wasn’t going to let this one go.
“Sounds good to me.” Turning to Scar, I added, “Just wait until you meet the rest of the guys…”
Her eyes lit up, mischief sparking.
Giving her arm a squeeze, I tugged her toward Cole’s monstrosity of a truck. Maybe today could be rescued after all.
Chapter Fifteen
Cole
I could hear the women whispering upstairs, their voices high and excited and accompanied by peals of tinkling laughter.
“What do you think they’re talking about?” Vin’s voice was nervous as he picked up his sandwich, pausing with it halfway to his mouth as another high-pitched squeal rang out.
“Us, of course.” Angel sounded confident, but his shoulders were tense as his eyes darted to the ceiling.
I grabbed the coffee pot, filling my cup to the brim. Pulling out a chair, I threw myself down.
“Sooooo…” Angel started, eyeing me carefully, as though I might bite.
“She knows about shifters,” Greg added helpfully, his fingers tapping away on his laptop.
Abel grunted from where he hovered in the corner. “That explains some things.”
Like why she wasn’t scared of Abel. As well as a hell of a lot of other things. “But…how?”
“How what?” Vin asked, around a mouthful of sandwich.
“How are they sisters?”
“She’s obviously adopted,” Angel stated.
“Maybe—” I started, considering the idea.
“What else could it be? She’s not a shifter, her sister is. Adopted.” Angel jabbed the table to underline his point.
“There have been cases of shifters having a human child,” Greg offered.
Vin snorted, getting up to wash his hands. “Rare.”
“But it happens,” Greg argued, not willing to let his point go.
“More likely adopted.” Angel wasn’t going to let it go either.
“Why don’t you ask her?” Abel’s quiet suggestion sliced through the argument, stopping it dead.
“Does it matter?” Vin added. “She knows about shifters, which will make our job
easier. It also means she probably knows about the way things with shifters work.”
I had a pretty good idea what he’d been about to say. True mates. Tasha knew about shifter mating, what it meant, what the signs were. Dammit! I scrubbed a hand over my eyes, wanting to bang my head against the table. All this time I’d assumed… Fuck! I’d claimed her as mine in front of Abel.
“I think you need to go have a talk with your mate.” Greg’s quiet suggestion spoke volumes.
They knew, they understood. They weren’t judging. Not yet, anyway, but from the way the guys were around Natasha, if I hurt her in any way? Yeah, the look in their eyes promised a world of pain. Somehow, she’d won them over. They would protect her, even if it meant against me.
I dragged myself to my feet, a headache already starting behind my eyes. “What about Scarlett?”
“Leave Scarlett to me,” Angel drawled, leaning back and putting his hands behind his head in a relaxed sprawl.
From the looks the others shot him, he was going to have a fight on his hands. It wasn’t often a single she-wolf found herself surrounded by alpha males. Unattached alpha males.
For the first time I was grateful I’d already found my mate. Chuckling, I headed out of the room for the stairs.
Natasha
“So, what’s he like?”
Flopping down on the bed next to Scar, I turned my head to look at her. “Who?”
Giving me a shove that threatened to send me flying off the bed, she crossed her legs, pulling them into a yoga pose that made me wince. “Who do you think? How many wolf shifters do you have sniffing around after you?”
“None.”
Another shove.
“Okay. One. Cole.” There. I’d said it. But he wasn’t sniffing.
“He is so sniffing.”
Had I said it out loud?
She laughed at the look on my face, her fingers twisting a dark lock of hair around her shoulders and braiding it down her chest. “You didn’t have to say it. Your curled lip did it for you. He’s a wolf. He sniffs around a woman he wants.”
“He might act like he wants me, but he doesn’t, not really.” It wasn’t a whine, okay, maybe a little, but it was my sister I was talking to. She knew me too well for me to get away with lying.
Uncurling her legs, she flopped down onto her side next to me. “What do you mean?”
“At first he was all hot and heavy, flirting and stuff. Then we kissed—”
“Whoa! Was it good? Come on, let me live vicariously through you. It’s not like I’m getting any.”
“There are four perfectly attractive men downstairs who’d be happy to—”
She waved a hand in the air, dismissing my suggestion. “Not happening anytime soon. Back to you. And Mr. Dark and Delicious.”
“Mr. Dark and Delicious?”
“Mr. Yummy?”
I snorted, imagining how Cole would react, how his eyebrows would arch, his jaw grinding as his cheek twitched. “Okay, let’s go with Mr. Yummy.”
“Okay, so…the kiss?” She poked my side, her fingers digging and switching to tickle mode.
“Okay, okay!” I squealed, pushing her away. “It was…” I fanned a hand over my face, blowing out some air, “hot. He is really hot.”
“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to give me?” Collapsing onto her back, she stared up at the ceiling. “Mr. Hot and Yummy.”
Mimicking her pose, I bumped her shoulder with mine. “Yeah. I can’t explain it. It was like... consuming. That’s the word. He consumed me. I couldn’t think of anything else.”
“Wow,” she exhaled the word on a sigh. “So that’s what it’s like.”
“What?”
“Finding your true mate.”
“What? We’re not!”
“Of course you are. I’ve seen the way he looks at you, how torn up he is about you.”
“Torn up?”
“It’s in his eyes. His big, soulful green eyes. You’re a lucky girl. He’s yummy.”
And we were back to yummy. Though it was a good description. He was. “You’re wrong, Scar. I’m not his mate, true or otherwise. Don’t you think he’d have mentioned something like that?”
“Just like he told you he was a shifter?”
She had a point. “But he wouldn’t have stopped in the woods if…”
The bed dipped as she rolled onto her side, putting her face next to mine. “What happened in the woods? Are you holding out on me?” Fingers threatened to attack again, poised above my ribs.
“No! Okay. He stormed the set and dragged me off to the woods—”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“What were you doing when he stormed the set?”
Okay, I did know.
“You’re blushing!”
“It was just a kiss. For the commercial.” I clamped my mouth shut, refusing to say any more until she stopped laughing.
“Right. So he stormed the set and carried you off into the woods because you were kissing another guy.”
“I was working! And I didn’t kiss him because Cole pulled his caveman routine before anything actually happened.”
“Even better. So what happened in the woods?”
Images of falling to the ground, his weight heavy on me as he licked and nibbled, his fingers searching, the heat riding me…
“That good, huh?”
Shaking my head, I blinked my eyes open. “What? Nothing happened.”
“Yeah, right.”
“It didn’t. He jumped off me like he’d been burned.”
“Jumped off you?” Her words were a slow tease. “Did you happen to trip and he fell on top of you?”
I scowled at her. “Whatever it was, he couldn’t wait to get away from me. The man flashes hot and cold so fast I don’t have a chance of keeping up!”
“But you want to?”
Did I?
“Should I tell you what I think?”
I groaned, grabbing a pillow and shoving it over my head. “Do I have a choice?” My words were muffled but I knew she’d heard them. She was a shifter, after all.
The corner of the pillow lifted as she peeked at me. “Natasha, you always have a choice. If you don’t want Cole, then I’ll make him go away. Somehow.” Her face scrunched up as though she was trying to figure out how to get rid of a heavily muscled, determined, male shifter in his prime.
But she’d do it. I knew she would. After everything she’d done for me in the past, I had no doubts. None.
“Tell me,” I eventually said on a drawn-out sigh.
“Good choice. I think even I would have trouble getting rid of this one. Drumroll please…he’s confused.”
I waited for her to go on, but she sounded like she’d finished. Peeling the pillow off my head, I thumped her with it. “Go on.”
“That’s it. He’s confused. It’s a well-known phenomenon, not restricted to shifter males, but highly prevalent to our species. It’s all about the testosterone. The more they have, the harder it is to figure them out. There’s something stopping him from claiming you as his mate—”
“If I’m his mate.”
She waved away my concern, her brow furrowed as if trying to read Cole’s mind. “If you’re his true mate, which I’m pretty sure you are given all the signs, then something is preventing him from committing to you.”
“So what you’re saying is I’ve found the only male shifter in the state who has commitment issues?” Sarcasm dripped from my voice. In all my years of living with shifters, I’d never met one who wasn’t ecstatic to find his mate.
“Uh, yeah. That about sums it up.” Scar looked like a balloon that had just been popped, her shoulders sagging, her lips dipping in a frown. “Now I want to go beat the shit out of him for messing with my big sister,” she growled. Her head snapped around, eyes locking on the door. “Speak of the devil,” she muttered, stretching out her legs and sauntering over to the door.
Throwing it open, she b
raced an arm along the door frame, cocking her hip. “Well, well, look what the cat dragged in…”
“Scarlett.” Cole’s greeting was brusque.
“Cole,” she snapped back.
His dark head loomed over hers, peering into the room. “Tasha. Can we talk?”
Scar planted a hand on his chest, giving him a shove back. “Are you going to stop acting like an ass?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he growled under his breath, but there was no heat to his words.
Sitting up, I looked closer, trying to get a read on him.
As always, he was made up of hard lines and angles, from his squared jaw to his broad shoulders. Even from here I could see tension humming through him. When we had first met, he had been laid-back, charming. Funny. What had happened? “Let him in, Scar,” I murmured, making my mind up. If what Scar had said was true, then I wanted to know why.
What was it about me that Cole despised so much that he’d rather be alone that claim me as his mate?
Chapter Sixteen
Cole
Scarlett gave me one long last look, her eyes threatening blood and torture if I so much as laid a finger on her sister. That was okay. I wasn’t planning on touching her.
Silent agreement reached, she ducked past me, heading toward the stairs. Watching to make sure she actually left, I couldn’t help but cringe when I thought of the guys downstairs. She’d eat them for breakfast, given the chance.
“Are you coming in?”
My attention snapped back to the room and Tasha, all other thoughts fleeing. “Is that okay?”
She nodded, then stopped, her eyes narrowing. “Unless you don’t think it’s a good idea?”
I knew it was a bad idea. Being alone with her. In a room. With a bed. Bad idea. But I still crossed the threshold, pushing the door shut behind me with a soft click.
She was sitting on the bed, her legs folded underneath her, hands resting in her lap. She had changed—luckily for me—and was now wearing some kind of stretchy trousers and a vest. Unluckily for me, the vest dipped, and the black lace of her bra played peekaboo before my eyes.
