Priceless

by Shannon Mayer

  “Oh, I understand that . . . Poopsey.”

  He grunted as if I’d hit him. I snatched the papers out of her hand and threw a rumpled twenty over the desk. “That should cover any paper costs,” I said over my shoulder. “Poopsey” snuggled into my hair as if we were long lost lovers.

  The elevator slid open and we hustled inside. What I didn’t expect was O’Shea almost pinning me up against the far wall, his face now against my neck.

  “Cameras,” he said, his lips tickling against my collarbone.

  “You beyond owe me,” I said. “I am going to own you after this.” I was trying not to feel the hardness of his body against my own. I knew how the man worked out; like it was his religion. He wasn’t the only one who knew how to tail a person. I placed my hands on his shoulders and tried very, very hard not to think about how this looked. When the door binged, O’Shea grabbed me around the waist and slung me over his shoulder.

  Slapping me on the ass, he said, “If you’re going to own me, I might as well make this worth it.”

  I squawked, but didn’t protest overly much. His words were playful, but I could feel the strain in them, the tremor in his hands against me.

  We got to the room and he slipped me off his shoulder, pressing himself against my back.

  “Hey,” I said, fumbling for the key card. “You might like all this touchy feely, ram-Rylee-against-the-wood-paneling business, but I can’t get the damn door open if you don’t give me some room.”

  O’Shea eased off me, just enough that I could take a deep breath and slide the key card through the reader.

  With the click of the door, the air whooshed around us, a distinct scent of wet dog swirling towards us. Crap, this might be a problem.

  “Ryleeeeee!” Alex howled out, his black fur soaking wet, the sound of the shower still running. Bugger, I hadn’t thought to tell him to stay out of the water.

  The door slammed and I spun, pinning O’Shea against it, tipping a short sword up into his groin. “Don’t pull your gun, big man.”

  He stared over my shoulder, his eyes wide. “What the hell is that?”

  “Did you hear me?” I didn’t ease up on the blade.

  “Adamson.” Mild tremors went through him. Moving slowly, he lifted his hands up over his head. “Now, what the hell is that? It can talk?”

  I stepped back, bumping into Alex who peered around my legs. “This is Alex. He’s a werewolf.”

  Alex, being who he was, lifted one giant paw and flopped it at O’Shea in a loose wave.

  “A werewolf?” He started to lower his hands and I poked him with my knife.

  “No guns.”

  “Does he bite?”

  Alex shook his head. “No bites.”

  O’Shea pushed himself back against the door, his eyes wide and so dilated I would have thought he was high if I didn’t know better. “A talking werewolf. . . before, I thought maybe I had been hearing things.” His voice was soft and his eyes lifted to mine. I’d only ever seen his nearly-black eyes angry, not this shell-shocked confusion. It actually made me feel bad for him.

  I lowered the sword, propping it against the wall next to the bathroom. Just in case. “Alex is not like most werewolves. He’s submissive, and for all intents and purposes, I’m the boss. Right?” I dropped a hand on Alex’s damp head. He pushed into my fingers, forcing me to scratch behind his ears.

  “Go dry off, Alex.” I pointed to the bathroom. With a grunt and a wag of his tail, he did as I said, leaving O’Shea and me alone.

  “First of all, how did you find me?” I slipped out of my jacket.

  O’Shea’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you didn’t carry guns.”

  I fingered the shoulder holster I wore, then turned so he could see the back, how it criss-crossed and held the sheaths for my blades. “Swords, not guns.”

  “Why?”

  Big breath in. Realize he has no idea about your world. “As you may have noticed, guns and bullets do weird things when placed up against the supernatural. Like take corners and kill people they shouldn’t. Swords don’t. And if they are edged and spelled right . . .” His eyes continued to widen and I thought about what I’d said, and how he’d not answered my first question.

  “I’ll explain everything, if you tell me how you found me. Otherwise, I’ll pick up that phone over there and dial 9-1-1,” I said, doing my best not to be too bitchy.

  “I’ve been profiling you for years. You have a pattern. Every fourth time you need a room, it’s either this hotel or the one across the street when you are on a . . . case.” He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees.

  Hmm. That was interesting and not in a good way. If he could find me that easy, we were going to have to move, sooner rather than later.

  Hands clenched into his dark slacks. “This can’t be happening.”

  I barked out a laugh and kicked off my boots. “Really? This is my life, man. And it looks like you’re about to get a serious dose of the true reality of this world. Want to tell me what really happened when I was locked up in the cellar with the ones who you were shooting at?” I was betting there was more to the story than he’d told me already.

  “Besides my partner being shot with my gun even though I wasn’t pointing it at him?” His dry tone told me he was coming out of the funk.

  “Yes.” Best to keep things short and sweet at this point.

  “They hit me with—” O’Shea flipped his hands in the air and then jumped as the blow dryer came on in the bathroom. “How can he manage that with those claws?”

  “It’s one of the things that takes him a while, but he can manage,” I said, going right back to my original question. “What did they nail you with?”

  Pushing off the door, he started to pace the small space between the far window and the door. “It was, I don’t know, a spell?” He lifted his eyes to mine for confirmation, and it hit me how fast our relationship had changed. All of a sudden he was looking to me for help.

  “Most likely. Can you tell me what it looked like? Colours, density, sound?” I leaned back on the bed, letting out a sigh. This hotel had good mattresses. I flipped an arm over my eyes. “All those things can help me figure out what they might have spelled you with.”

  The bed squeaked and I looked out from under my arm to see O’Shea crawling toward me, his eyes dilated, a smile on the edge of his mouth as he took in a deep breath. Oh crap. “Never mind,” I said, rolling away from him. “I know what they hit you with.”

  “You do? How?” Those dark eyes roved my body as if I were naked. Yup, though that was not the worst spell he could have been hit with, and at least I knew how to counter it.

  I was already slipping on my jacket. “I’m going to go and get something to break it. You stay here.” Already my boots were back on.

  O’Shea stood and his eyes clouded over. “You aren’t going to tell me what it is?” Now that was a defiant thread of anger I heard.

  “It’ll only freak you out.” I took a breath. “Alex, stay in the bathroom until I get back.”

  He barked out. “Yuppy doody.”

  A dark eyebrow lifted in my direction. I shrugged. “He’s got a weird lingo. You’ll get used to it.”

  The former FBI agent snorted. “This is not a permanent arrangement.”

  It was my turn to snort. “Really? And who else is going to believe that your bullet went fucking about on its own trajectory to kill your partner? Who else is going to believe that you have a spell on you that has messed with your emotions, ability to think clearly, not to mention your ability to control yourself?”

  He blanched and sat down on the edge of his bed.

  I shook my head. “I won’t be long. Don’t move and don’t kill Alex, because that would seriously piss me off, and right now I am your only friend in this whole messed up world.”

  Slamming the door behind me, I trotted to the stairs. Damn, this was getting complicated.

  17

  With Adamson gone, O’Shea final
ly let himself relax, or at least take a breath. His mind was full of things he should not be thinking about. The feel of her skin, the flush in her cheeks, the curve of her ass under his hand. What was wrong with him? Ever since the . . . incident at the farmhouse, he couldn’t get her out of his head, couldn’t stop the thoughts of her naked and writhing below him—maybe didn’t want to. He’d been crawling across the bed toward her. Was this what that blue and green stuff they’d shot at him was doing? That spell? He scoffed at the idea and then his thoughts swung back to Adamson.

  In an attempt to take his mind, and better yet the mind between his legs, off her and to gain back some control, he flicked on the TV. And there he was in full living colour, a wanted man, armed and dangerous, charged with gunning down his own partner and possibly kidnapping one Rylee Adamson.

  “Ah crap,” he muttered, turning the TV up slightly, the clear voice of the female news anchor making his ears buzz. All he could see was that as beautiful as she was, there was no comparison to his girl.

  Everything around him froze. His girl?

  Sweat beaded on his forehead as he tried desperately to make sense of what was happening to him. Bullets swerving, magic spells and werewolves? It sounded like a bad joke at a geek convention.

  He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. Adamson thought she had a cure for what ailed him. A part of him hoped she did. The other very vocal part wanted nothing to do with any sort of a cure. For the first time in his life, passion overruled his better senses and, though logically he knew it, surprisingly it wasn’t bothering him as much as it should have.

  Eyes closed, he could see her clear as day, smiling up at him; he tasted her lips under his, watched those amazing eyes light up just for him.

  “I am in so much trouble,” he said softly.

  From the bathroom came an unexpected reply from Alex. “You’s in trouble.”

  Yes, when even a werewolf could see you were sinking fast, it had to be bad.

  *-*-*-*

  Lugging three grocery bags back up to the room, I stumbled when the door opened for me.

  O’Shea had his shirt un-buttoned and his hair was a mess. “Alex heard you coming.”

  The werewolf had not listened to me and was even now sitting on the window seat staring out at the traffic below.

  “Alex, stay away from the window.”

  He slumped and slid to the floor in a comical move that left him half sitting, half resting against the chair. I bit back the smile as I took in his chagrined face.

  I wasn’t surprised Alex alerted O’Shea.

  “Come on, Agent. Let’s get you into the bath.” I held up the plastic bags and jiggled them. “Then we’ve got to get out of here. If you can find me that easy, the pack won’t be far behind if they’re tracking us, and close behind the pack may be those little lovelies who locked me in the cellar and killed your partner.”

  I started the bath, the scent of wet dog lingering even with the bathroom fan on. Running the water on full hot, I poured six large containers of salt into the tiny tub. Looking over my shoulder, I considered the options. There weren’t any others. If we were going to break the spell on O’Shea, he was going to have to cram his overlarge frame into the standard-sized hotel bath. Tight fit was an understatement; it would be like jamming a werewolf into a Chihuahua’s winter sweater.

  “Come on, in you go.” I gestured to the tub.

  A smile quirked across O’Shea’s lips. Very slowly, he started to peel out of his clothes.

  “Clothes on big man,” I said. “The spell hit those too, and since we don’t have spare clothes in your size, everything’s getting dunked. The only thing we have to be grateful for is that it seems to have some sort of delay on it; otherwise, the spell would’ve had you in its grip far sooner.”

  His smile slipped, and I wondered at the thoughts whipping through that head of his without his usual control to keep things in line. I had a feeling he was going to be a mighty grouchy man when the spell was taken off him and he remembered how he’d been acting toward me.

  I laughed out loud at the thought. “I mean it, all of you in there.” I pointed at the tub, which seemed to be shrinking by the moment with O’Shea standing there beside it.

  With some difficulty, he squished into the nearly scalding water, a long hiss erupting out of him.

  “Too hot?” I kept my face a mask of innocence.

  “No, I like it.” Again his eyes roved over me. Buggers, maybe he really did have a thing for me. Nope, best not to go down that route; too dangerous by far.

  “You need to soak for at least ten minutes, make sure you dunk your head. We’ll put your shoes in after.” I stepped out into the main room.

  While I waited for O’Shea, I started to go through the list of mineshafts Kyle sent me. There were four, as Kyle said, and one was cemented, so that was a no go. Which left only three to consider. One of those three fell short of the two hundred feet by six inches. But if there was one thing I’d learned, it was if a Shaman said two hundred feet or better, they meant it in a very literal sense.

  I stared at the last two mineshafts, my gut clenching as the details became clear. One was relatively new, only fifty or so years old, and there were ongoing happenings around it, including a still active mine with employees working there on shift 24/7.

  The other was pretty much out in the middle of nowhere; the closest town and actual road was over sixty miles away from it. Not to mention—I flipped the page to make sure I was getting the facts right—it was closer to two hundred and fifty feet and was about to be capped as several people had fallen into it over the last few years. Kyle sent me a newspaper clipping on the last victim of the mineshaft fall. “The body was so badly mangled that the coroner repeatedly questioned the rescuers on the location of the body. He stated that it looked like some of the wounds had not been inflicted by the fall itself, but by some other source.”

  Interesting they didn’t actually mention what the other source of wounds might be.

  Alex let out a fart and rolled over, his tongue lolling out in a toothy grin.

  I opened the window with a grimace and, as I turned back to the bed, a soggy, grumpy agent stormed out of the bathroom.

  “My clothes are ruined,” he snarled.

  “Ooh, now that was the O’Shea I’d been missing,” I said, shrugged and continued. “Better that than having you strip tease for me and putting the clothes in after.”

  His face slowly turned red and the veins running up the side of his neck pulsed, but he said nothing.

  I smirked and enjoyed the momentary silence. It didn’t last long.

  “You said you’d explain everything,” he said, his eyes hard and flinty. He was not a happy agent.

  Alex jumped up and looked out the window as I started to give O’Shea the rundown. Witches, Daywalkers, werewolves, and Ogres. Just to start. He dried his hair with a towel, which gave it a very, very sexy rumpled look.

  Sexy? Who said that? I caught the turn of my thoughts before they could get me into trouble. Damn, but it was sexy. His hair was still damp, and the moisture caught the little bit of light coming through the window. He leaned back and ran one hand through his hair, his bicep flexing under the wet cloth of his shirt. I scrambled back, blinking. Maybe I’d got some of the spell on me? Like when he’d me pinned up against the wall in the elevator, or thrown me over his shoulder. I was only “mostly” immune to magic. Some of it could stick. Damn, this was not the time to have my immunity fail me.

  Problem was, being a supernatural myself, when I did get some sort of spell on me, I was way more susceptible to it than others. Almost like an allergy. What made O’Shea horny was about to send me over the deep end of whoredom. I was about to make Milly look like the Virgin Mary. Crap. I tried to sidle past him to the bathroom, but all I could think about was how I’d kissed him the other day, the sharp tang of mint on his tongue, how his body felt holding me against the wall.

  “This is bad,” I whispered, my ha
nd reaching for his hair as I struggled to make it to the bathroom without pouncing on him.

  “What’s your issue now?” He grumped at me, the deep bass of his voice giving me chills in a not unpleasant way, his dark eyes glaring at me. Never in all the years he’d tried to pin Berget’s death on me had I thought him attractive. Of course, I’d hated him with a passion, and it would have been impossible for me to see past that.

  I clenched my jaw, pulled my fingers back and ran the last few steps into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. My body shook with the need to feel him against me, skin on skin. I let out a low groan and sat on the edge of the tub, relishing the unfamiliar sensations rippling through me. A sex life was just not something I’d engaged in. Too dangerous to get close to people, not to mention messy as hell. But this, as much as it was a spell, was in its own way, safe.

  Striping down, I could imagine his hands roving my body as he undressed me, kissing his way down to my navel, and then dipping lower. Again, I let out a groan; let my fingers caress the skin of my belly and imagined it was his lips.

  “Adamson,” the door creaked open. “Are you hurt?”

  “Oh, fuck me,” I whispered, meaning it whole-heartedly. I was half-naked and he was coming in, his body filling up the space in the tiny bathroom. I gripped the edge of the tub, my shirt on the floor, bra undone and pants unzipped. His breath caught; I heard it a split second before I lifted my eyes to his.

  Tension filled the small room and he shut the door behind him. “Put your clothes on.” There was a definite crack in that voice.

  I stood and stepped toward him. “What are you going to do if I don’t? Handcuff me?”

  I looked up at him now, brazen with the spell working fast and hard on me, wishing he’d do the same. Even knowing it was a spell, my brain screaming at me that I didn’t even like O’Shea, never mind want to bed him, I couldn’t seem to stop.

  Running one finger up the damp shirt clinging to his ribs, I said, “Is that what you’re going to do? Handcuff me?”

  “The same spell has you, doesn’t it?”