The Wolf's Heart

by Jenna Leigh

  She’d last until he tired of her, or killed her. Whichever came first, it was all the same to him. In the end, she was disposable. Her genetic makeup wasn’t compatible with the Lune Gene, so she was just for fun. His teeth grazed her neck as he carried her through the door of the private suite located off his office.

  She whimpered, but didn’t move otherwise. Good, she was learning. “Take the dress off.” He let her feet slide to the floor. She hurried to obey, giving him a view of her sweet ass when she turned and laid the dress over the foot of the bed.

  “Bend over.” His hands were at his belt, undoing it. He freed his cock and pumped it once with his fist.

  She hesitated and that was her first mistake.

  He slammed her face down on the bed and smothered her screams in the covers. Soon the only sounds in the room were his grunts as he pounded into her. Little Bibi had outlived her usefulness today, it seemed.

  Much later, he sat in his office while one of his unobtrusive staff carried Bibi’s remains down to the incinerator. Stroking his chin, he picked up the files on the Breeders. Elaine Westerbrook was a potential candidate, though it was unknown whether she qualified for the Lune Elixir. Maybe he’d play with her next and find out.

  Chapter Nine

  The next morning, Lainie woke to the sound of Marcus telling his secretary to hold all his calls and reschedule any meetings he might have. She peered out from under the covers, watching him as he stood at the doors that led onto the balcony.

  Her eyes opened a little wider to take in the lovely view. He was beautiful; his legs were long and lanky, muscular but not bulky. Today he wore a pair of old jeans that molded themselves to his ass and a T-shirt just tight enough to show the rippling of the muscles in his back when he moved. “I don’t care, tell them anything you want. I’m not coming in today.”

  “Marcus. Go to work, I don’t need a babysitter.” She sat on the side of the bed, wrapping the sheet around her.

  He whirled around and grinned at her. “Let me call you back, Dee.” He hung up the phone and moved toward the bed. Her gaze drifted up and down his frame as he approached. He prowled; there was no other word for the graceful and self-assured way he moved.

  “Good morning.” He sat on the side of the bed and looked down at her with a strange smile on his face.

  “What?” She put her hand to her hair, to do something to tame it, but he stopped her.

  “You look cute. Leave it.”

  “Go to work. I mean it.” She frowned at him when he laughed. “What the hell is so funny?”

  He shook his head and shrugged. “Are you hungry?”

  “Maybe, are you cooking?” He was horrible at it, or he used to be.

  “No.”

  “Then, yes, I am starved.” Her grin was unrepentant even in the face of his scowl.

  “I’m not that bad.”

  “Yeah, you are.” She threw the covers back and stood with a stretch. She’d gotten up sometime in the night and put her gown back on. She hadn’t been able to find her underwear though. She spied them in the corner now and flushed in remembrance of how he’d flung them there.

  “Meet me downstairs.” He shut the door behind him and she hurried to get dressed.

  Once she finished, she opened the door to her room and looked out into the hall. “Where the hell is the kitchen?” she wondered aloud.

  “Ma’am.”

  “Shit!” She whirled and faced Allen. “Oh, sorry, you scared me.”

  “I apologize.” He had a pained expression on his face.

  “It’s okay.”

  “If you will follow me to the breakfast room.” Marcus had a breakfast room? She was a little out of her depth here. She and Joanna lived in a six-room cabin. They had the one room for eating and cooking. It was called the damn kitchen.

  Allen wasn’t the best of conversationalists. All of her attempts to draw him out were, if not rebuffed, then discouraged, albeit politely. He was nice, but he didn’t like her and she knew it.

  “Here we are, ma’am.” He indicated the door to the right.

  “Thanks.” She gave him her brightest smile, which he returned with another constipated look. Damn, the man needed some fiber.

  She forgot all about him when she opened the door to the breakfast room. It faced the east, and the tall windows blazed with the morning light. The room was warm in color and in temperature, and it felt wonderful.

  They were at a higher elevation here, and she’d been a little chilly. No more, though, the sun warmed the floor beneath her sock-covered feet. She laughed and wiggled her toes.

  “I take it you like the room?” Marcus sat at the table with a coffee cup in one hand and the paper in the other.

  The coziness of the scene struck her, making her chest ache with the wish that they could be a real couple. With a small sigh, she put it out of her mind and moved to take the seat he indicated “I do.”

  “What’s wrong?” He put down his paper and tugged her onto his lap instead.

  “Nothing, I was just thinking.” She scooted around to get comfortable and the inevitable reaction occurred. The bulge of his arousal pressing against her backside made her roll her eyes. “You have to go to work; we don’t have time for that.”

  “There is always time for ‘that’ as you put it.” He pulled the clip out of her hair. “I like it down.” Ignoring her protests, he began feathering kisses from her temple to her ear, so she tipped her head back to give him better access. He inched his hand under her shirt and her nipples hardened beneath the lacy barrier of her bra. He pinched one between his thumb and forefinger, making fire streak from her breast straight to her pussy.

  “Are you sure you want me to go to work?” His laughing question had her glaring at him. “Fine.” With a sigh of defeat he released her. “Anticipation makes the dick grow harder.”

  “That’s not how that saying goes and you know it.”

  “You have your proverbs, I have mine.”

  “Freak.” She tried to wiggle free.

  “Baby, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” He let her stand and smacked her butt.

  “Hey!” She whirled with her hands on her hips. He only raised one brow at her. She stuck her nose in the air and sat in her chair, serving herself, trying to ignore his stare.

  Soon enough, they finished their breakfast and he stood. “I have a phone conference this morning and I have to meet someone for lunch, but then, I’ll be back.”

  “Enjoy your day. I need to call my boss; he’ll be worried about me.” He nodded absently and kissed her before heading toward the front of the house.

  She sat in the morning sun, wondering what was bothering her. When she finally figured it out, she felt stupid. He hadn’t said he loved her. While she hadn’t made any declarations either, it would have been nice to know to have some clue.

  She let out a heartfelt sigh and put her chin on her hands and stared out the window. How did she feel about Marcus? She wasn’t actually sure. Aside from some mind-blowing sex the night before, they didn’t really know one another anymore.

  When they were younger, they’d been close, but sometime in the last ten years, her ability to read him had deserted her. Or had she been fooling herself the whole time? If she couldn’t figure him out one way, there was always her favorite pastime that would help her do so.

  Lainie, the super sleuth, investigative reporter and all-around snoop. She was nosy, it wasn’t just a characteristic trait with her, and she’d made a career out of it after all.

  So with Marcus away, the curious cat would play, and hopefully, he wouldn’t catch her at it. If he did, she’d plead the fifth, on her knees, maybe naked. She grinned at the thought. He’d be begging by the time she was done.

  Chapter Ten

  Marcus thought about heading back to the house and chucking his attempts at working today. He couldn’t concentrate; he kept remembering Lainie in his arms last night, or this morning rather. She’d responded to every caress, every touch,
better than his wildest dreams.

  He’d kept his distance, afraid of what he’d do if they encountered each other. That and the fact he knew she’d do much better without him complicating her life with his own particular lifestyle.

  The leader of a pack had to do things a certain way. He had to have the appearance, at least, of controlling everyone around him, his subordinates. Lainie, being his lover was his subordinate in every sense of the word. She wouldn’t see it that way and he wasn’t ready to make her either. He didn’t know if he ever would be.

  He would have to move slowly. But he had a feeling time was running out and he was racing toward something. It was her, in a way, but in another it was answers to questions he had about his own origins.

  He knew it all started with WWII and the imprisonment of Asian Americans during that time. An encampment high in the Colorado Mountains had been the location of a top-secret experiment, with his father at the forefront. Samuel was a scientist, a brilliant one. Too bad he didn’t have a damn conscience to keep from making what was an abomination to some and a potential weapon to others.

  Samuel had taken David’s magic and used genetic splicing to create a race of werewolves who were slow to age, with other enhanced abilities like speed, keen smell and hearing. While Marcus still didn’t understand it all, he did know that only some of the later generations had been able to transform into the Wolfkin, the two-legged and more dangerous creature. The Wolfkin both puzzled and angered his father because the man couldn’t change into it himself.

  He wondered where his father was, and if he had landed on his feet since he’d been ousted from the pack eight years ago. It had been a combination of voting and fighting that made him leave. When Marcus was old enough, the elders came to him with a proposal about leading the pack after helping him oust Samuel. Of course, he’d agreed, happy to be rid of his father. Marcus knew that his position as Lupin irked Samuel. As if he gave a damn—he hated his father, always had.

  David Crow, his maternal uncle, on the other hand, had been like a father to him when he was younger. Marcus had respected him, believed in him and looked up to him. And now to find out David had more than likely faked his own death to disappear out of his life rankled Marcus. Why did he leave?

  It came to him suddenly. David left to protect Lainie. There had been some sort of upheaval, Marcus hadn’t been high enough in the ranks at the time to know all of it, but he thought it involved breeding mates. David always opposed Marcus’s father’s wishes. Which meant it was probably morally wrong at the least and ethically reprehensible besides.

  “Father, what in the hell were you up to?” Breeders, Lainie and something else. There was a connection there. He knew Samuel had been grooming Lainie for his own mate, which was sickening to Marcus because she’d been a little kid. He knew that his kind aged differently than humans, so while his father was over eighty, he could live much longer--unless Marcus got lucky and killed him. In his father’s sick, twisted mind, teaching Lainie pack ways while she was young was logical. However, that went awry when David came and took her away.

  Joanna was an enigma as well. Maybe she wasn’t the evil bitch his father always said she was. Samuel hated her, with a passion he usually kept in check. The animosity between the two had been obvious. She wasn’t just a human. Her natural psi abilities had been enhanced as a byproduct of the gene-splicing experiment gone wrong. His father fucked up and gave her something he didn’t have control over, that was it. Joanna was a dark horse, an unknown. Marcus smiled at that. Well, go on, Joanna.

  Lainie had lived with the woman, thought of her as her mother. He sighed and rubbed his eyes. As soon as he got through with this annoying, yet necessary bit of business, he was going home to talk to Lainie about her life with Joanna and his uncle. No more beating around the bush, they were going to get to the bottom of this.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lainie called her boss and was slightly unsettled when he answered with a panicked note in his voice. “Elaine? Where are you? Are you all right?” Mr. Fargo was never upset; he was stern and quiet, almost cold.

  “I’m fine. That’s why I called. I do have a lead on this story though; I have a way to get closer to Jacob Caulder.” She went on to explain that her house had been broken into and she didn’t think it was safe to stay there. She acted as if the move was her idea. It made her seem more mature than it did to be dragged willy-nilly to Marcus’s house like a recalcitrant child.

  “Where. Are. You?” Each word cracked, making her flinch.

  “Oh, sorry.” Her face heated up and she was glad he couldn’t see it. “I’m staying with an old friend of mine. You might know of him. His name is Marcus Bei.”

  He sighed gustily. “Thank God.”

  “Um, what?”

  “Look, you just stay there. I’m sure Mr. Bei knows what’s best for you. Listen to what he says.” His voice took on a jovial note. “I wasn’t aware you knew him.”

  “Yeah, we go back a long way. I’ve known Marcus for over fifteen years.”

  “Great.” The sound of phones ringing in the background made her slightly homesick for her tiny cubicle. “Look, sweetheart.” Her brows went up at the endearment. “You take all the time you need. Mr. Bei is a major shareholder with the company that owns our paper.”

  “Is he now?” She frowned, wondering if that was why she got her job so damned easily. “You can bet I’ll report in every day. The function is Friday. I’ll have something in your e-mail by Sunday at the latest,” she promised, determined to get proof of Caulder’s nefarious activities.

  “You do that. Be careful, Caulder is a powerful man.” Mr. Fargo sounded strangely afraid.

  “The higher they are, the farther they fall.”

  “Yes, my little bloodhound.” The warm chuckle was more like the boss she was used to so she relaxed slightly. “Give Mr. Bei my regards.”

  “I will.” She hung up the phone and pursed her lips. How powerful was Marcus to make her normally arrogant boss toady to him that way? She intended to find out, but not today. She slapped her hands on her knees and stood, heading toward where she thought his home office was. Last night, she’d glimpsed a computer on a large desk as they walked through. She’d been distracted by him, but now that he wasn’t here, all her instincts came back online. He was hiding something from her and she intended to find out what it was.

  Lainie checked to make sure the coast was clear before she slipped inside the office. She stopped and looked around the room, whistling silently. The desk was antique and huge, made of mahogany and waxed to a high sheen. She had a little prefab one from the local discount store that she used for her own home office.

  She clicked the door shut and crept behind the desk. With a nervous laugh, she sat. What was she doing, sneaking up on the damned computer?

  She booted it up and cracked her knuckles, wiggling her fingers back and forth. “Come on, hacker skills, do your worst.” She’d been friends with a guy in college; he’d taught her a few things about computers in between bouts of sweaty, athletic sex that she’d thoroughly enjoyed.

  In a flash of insight, she realized something. The computer whiz had been a lot like Marcus. Time and distance let her see that. So had just about every guy she’d dated for any length of time. She frowned, trying to decide if she should worry over her sanity or feel happy that she’d finally gotten it right. That was how she felt last night. When he put his hands on her, when he slid inside her, she felt right.

  She shook herself out of her reverie, unwilling to allow the memory to distract her. Instead, she got busy sneaking in the back door of Marcus’s well-protected, state-of-the-art computer. Her mouth watered when she looked at the screen. Damn, this thing was fine. “I wonder how many… Oh please, get a grip, it’s just a computer.”

  After a few minutes, her lust turned to something else. Her heartbeat quickened when she found the file marked S. Bei, Experiment Files. She opened it and found a list of files. Another with the title Br
eeders caught her eye. The word resonated in her subconscious. When she thought of Samuel and experiments, she thought of that word. Dread grew in the pit of her belly. She wanted nothing more than to stop reading and forget about the whole thing. She tried to get into the file, but failed repeatedly, so she turned to the one marked Lune Gene instead. It opened without a problem.

  “What in the hell did he do?” She looked at the dates, surely that was wrong. Samuel wasn’t old enough to have done those things in 1944 was he?

  She noticed another file, titled Progeny. The files within this database were unprotected, so it was the work of a moment to open them. The first name on the list was Jason Bei. It stated that he was deceased, beside that were the ominous words “experiment failed”. She shivered and read on down the list of various names. They had one thing in common, the surname of Bei. Beside each name was either the words “experiment failed” or “subject terminated”.

  At the bottom was a folder by itself. It was Marcus, of course. Marcus Bei, born 1976 to S. Bei and non-Breeder female. Her brows drew down at that term. “Breeder female, what the hell?” She remembered his mother’s name was Diana.

  She continued to read. “Marcus Bei is a successful result of the Lune Gene. His intelligence is markedly higher than others in his age group. While he shows signs of stubbornness, he will likely become more malleable as he grows. He has claimed his mate at an early age, even if neither is aware of this yet. It is not known whether the mating was successful. Attempts to locate the Breeder female have not been fruitful. Addendums will be added when further information is available.”

  “Who in the hell is his mate?” Lainie wondered as she printed everything off as quickly as she could. As the pages shot out, she looked around. The room was nice, lined with books of all sorts. The last page was printing out when a soft footfall outside the room alerted her to someone’s presence. She quickly turned the computer off. Her palms began to sweat when she saw the doorknob turning. She dove beneath the desk and peered out from under the bottom edge where it didn’t quite meet the floor.