Brady continued to walk, keeping one step ahead of Rachel, who huffed and grumbled behind him in a clear attempt to get his attention.
Keeping his head riveted to the task was easier to accomplish when he was not looking at the sway of her hips as she walked. Even as he thought up security strategies, his mind kept flashing over to scenes from their previous evening.
Sex and stress relief went hand in hand. Brady’s stress level had gone to eleven, and there was no denying the sexual attraction between them.
But Rachel needed protection at all costs, not only from danger but himself as well. Her life, he now understood, had been a one of mistrust and forced servitude. She’d grown a strong outer shell from her experiences. But no matter how hard the armor, underneath beat a heart. Soft and fragile, the weakest point of all.
And his reputation labeled him a serial heartbreaker.
If given the option, he would eagerly devour her mind and body, making sure they both enjoyed every last moment of it. And just like all the others, he’d end up hurting her when she wanted commitment and he couldn’t give it.
Thinking back to that morning, waking up to an empty bed had been for the best. She had been smart enough to get away. She’d been through enough pain and emotional bullshit.
Yeah. Best to keep a distance, he thought to himself, as he rounded the corner and passed the wolf standing at the end entrance to the security wing.
Rachel followed him closely, and Brady nodded to his man to let her pass.
“So I get to follow you around like a lackey all day?” Rachel’s tone soured when even after they entered his office, Brady still refused to look at her.
In such close proximity, she was pure temptation. He quickly opened his laptop, creating a small wall between the angry she-wolf and himself. “Once I’ve made my rounds, we can stop by your room for a bit.” That did not come out the way he’d planned it. “To... ah... allow you time to prepare for the evening festivities.”
No sex. No more getting involved with this woman. His job was to protect her. Nothing more.
Rachel’s hands came down to rest on her hips. He’d seen that angry stance on many a woman, but damned if it didn’t make her look that much hotter. “I had fun last night too. But let’s leave it there for now.”
Those words hit him like icy water being dumped into his lap.
He hadn’t even offered sex, and she’d shut him down. That never happened! Even with hard-asses like Emma who made a habit of lobbing insults at him. If he offered her another night in bed, she’d take it. No doubt in his mind. Not that he ever would.
What the hell just happened?
Pride kept him from responding to her ‘no sex’ comment, but he couldn’t hide the disappointment in his voice. “We’ll be on a tight schedule, so please do not keep me waiting while you get ready. I do have the security of the pack to worry about.”
“I didn’t mean to insult you,” Rachel said.
Brady fussed with the keyboard, typing and retyping his login unsuccessfully for the third time. “I think you mistook my intentions. I have a duty to ensure your safety. That means we’ll be in close proximity for a little while. I apologize if that makes you uncomfortable after last night.”
“Oh, no. We’re cool,” she snapped at him.
Her annoyance was plain, but the satisfaction he got from it did nothing to dull the sore ego she’d given him. Most women wanted to dig their claws into him. They begged for more, and their anger usually came from him being the one to say he’d rather not be attached. Sitting on the other side of that conversation gave him painful clarity to the animosity he’d created among his former dates.
But wounded pride or not, it was for the best. The pack was already annoyed with him for the previous night as it was. He had a job to do. He would not fail to protect her or the pack.
Damned if it didn’t niggle at him a bit that she could so easily dismiss him.
SIXTEEN
Despite his being annoyed that she’d rebuffed him, time spent away from Rachel while she was locked away in her newly assigned room gave Brady a chance to relax.
He sat with his feet kicked up on the reception desk in the lobby, keeping a casual eye on the hallway leading toward the living quarters.
Wolves milled around, chatting among themselves in the quiet hours between events.
Aiden might have been the brains behind the event, but it was Stephen and Jackson who had done all the legwork to make it happen. They arranged all kinds of events, and even on the last day of the revelry, they’d set a full schedule to keep people entertained and happy: hunting parties, nature hikes, games of skill, and a bit of chance.
Had he not been so caught up in security, Brady would have loved to sit in on a few poker games. Lying to a wolf was damn near impossible, which added a new layer of skill to a game where tells were easy to spot.
Fallon surprised him with a slap upside the back of his head. He’d been so focused ahead of him he’d failed to notice her creeping up behind.
“What the hell?” Brady nearly fell out of his chair as he whipped around to face her.
She set her laptop down next to him on the desk and pulled up a chair. “I thought you weren’t going to be a jerk.”
“Guilty without a trial.” Brady rubbed the tender spot, wondering if she’d hit him with the laptop instead of her hand. “I did nothing wrong.”
“Not from where I’m sitting.” She clicked a few keys on the keyboard.
Brady looked over to the screen but couldn’t make sense of the gibberish she was typing. “I’m going to be the bad guy no matter what today,” he sighed. “Fine. What am I an asshole for this time?”
“As if you didn’t know. What did we talk about this morning?”
“Are we still talking about the fact I slept with Rachel? Gods, what is wrong with you women? Drop it already.”
“Where is she, anyway?” Fallon’s fingers flew over the keys as she talked.
“Getting dressed. I couldn’t wait outside of her door any longer. And on a related topic, why do you women take so long to get ready?”
That earned him a side-eye and a growl from Fallon. “Making ourselves look good for jerks like you.”
“Seriously. What did I do that was so wrong? And why are you so vested in her relationship with me? You’ve never taken an interest in any girl I’ve slept with before.”
“Because she came in here broken, and the first thing you do after killing her mate is to sleep with her?” The accusation in her voice hurt him nearly as much as the fact that she truly felt he had been the villain.
“Whoa. Hold up a minute. You have it all wrong. I did not go after her. I like her. Yes, but she was the one who showed up at my door last night, talking about no strings attached.”
Fallon opened her mouth but no words came out.
“Yeah,” Brady continued. “I was a good boy.”
“But you were bragging this morning.”
“Only because you were egging me on. Talking like one of the guys until you went all crazy girl on me.”
“I did not go crazy girl.” Fallon smacked him in the arm.
Brady looked down to the spot where Fallon had just hit him then back up to her eyes as if to say, “That was crazy.”
Fallon’s expression flashed between annoyance and embarrassment. “Okay... maybe I misjudged.”
“Fair enough.” Brady chuckled. “Normally I am a dog.”
“Understatement of the year!” Fallon laughed.
“One sucker punch at a time, please.”
“Out with it, then. What happened last night?” Fallon asked.
A dog he might be, but a braggart, no. However, knowing Fallon as he did, she wouldn’t just let him go with a shrug of the shoulders. “Just what I said. I went to my room, intending to sleep... alone. She showed up and said she wanted to... relieve some stress. No strings attached.” He cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “By morning she was
gone.”
“Why would a woman who just went through all of that jump into bed with you?” The look on Fallon’s face bordered on horror.
“I don’t pretend to know what goes through you women’s minds.” Brady shrugged. “I tried to stop it, but she was―”
“I really don’t need details.” Fallon turned to her computer screen, but the glow of the monitor highlighted the redness of her cheeks.
“Hey. You asked.” Brady laughed. It wasn’t often he could make Fallon squirm. He enjoyed the moment.
“So then why the grumpiness over her today?”
“Who said I was grumpy?”
“She’s getting dressed, and you’re here in the reception hall looking like someone stole your puppy,” Fallon observed.
“I hate having to wait.”
“Or you hate that she won’t let you into her room?” Fallon asked the question leadingly.
Busted. The fact she’d rebuffed him had been on his mind since waking up alone. And when she’d told him to leave it at that, it had stolen all the wind from his sails. Rejection sucked. “No. She won’t let me in.”
“You’ve met your match.” Fallon laughed as if she were privy to some inside joke.
“Probably.” Brady tried to act as if he wasn’t nearly as bothered as he was.
Fallon went back to clicking away at the keys on her laptop. “Don’t let it get to you. We women love to play hard to get.”
Was that what Rachel was doing? Even if it wasn’t, it sounded a whole lot better than flat-out rejection. He decided to run with that idea. At least then his pride could be appeased.
Brady looked over Fallon’s shoulder, trying to make sense of what she was doing, but it was all some kind of secret code. “Inventing a new language?”
Fallon smirked. “Coding a new database. Aiden asked me to work on our tracking system for the packs in our territory.”
“Yeah, we’ll need that. Did he tell you what was happening?”
Fallon nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been having everyone here fill out their info, and Stephen is getting their pictures. This way we can get a record of who’s attending. And a few of Jackson’s guys are playing photographer so we can capture those who might have slipped through our checks.”
“Don’t we already have some records like that?” Brady asked.
“Your dad wasn’t super technical. No offense. We have a paper trail and boxes of records. This” – Fallon waved a hand around her computer screen like a sales model – “when I’m done with it will be super-fast and easy to use. We can pull up records in an instant.”
“Aiden sure knows how to pick em,” Brady whispered under his breath.
“He’s lucky I love him so much. This is tedious-ass shit.” Fallon laughed, though her nose was firmly buried in the screen. “I keep telling him we need to train some more tech-savvy people. Bring this pack into the modern age.”
The front doors opened, sending a cold blast of winter air inside. Brady looked up to see if another hunting party had returned, but instead found the two wolves he’d banished the night before.
Brady was on his feet, snarling. “Did I not warn you of what the penalty would be if you showed yourselves in my territory again?” He stalked toward the pair of men, like a rabid dog.
The larger of the two, Mark, held his hands up in surrender. “We had to come back. We beg for sanctuary.”
His partner, the twig of a man, appeared more annoyed than fearful of Brady’s approach, but he too held his hands out for all to see he meant no threat.
“Give me one good reason,” Brady growled.
“We’ve been branded cowards by our Alpha.” Mark spoke softly, as if the word pained him to say. “But we’d rather risk death with your pack than accept being branded and made an example of in our own.”
“You deserve whatever fate your pack chooses,” Brady replied.
“See, I told you we shouldn’t come back here,” Louis said to Mark.
“I... We hoped to appeal to your good nature.” Mark took hold of Louis’s hand and continued to address Brady directly. “Our Alpha was furious when we returned with the news. He blames us for his son Craig’s death.”
“You were with him, were you not?” Brady stared down at the pair. “You followed him here. You helped him locate Rachel.”
“We had no choice. Subordinate wolves can’t defy their Alpha. Surely you understand that.” Mark’s tone became pleading, and his grip on his mate’s hand tightened.
Brady watched them both. Their trembling arms. The downcast eyes. He almost believed them, but their story seemed too convenient.
“True.” Brady nodded. “But if you were really that opposed to your pack and the way they do things, then why not ask for sanctuary last night? Why return so quickly?”
“I’m not going to lie, man. You scare the crap out of me,” Mark said.
That Brady believed wholeheartedly.
“We just wanted to get out of here, after everything that went down,” Mark continued. “Only one place to go: home.”
“And now we have no home,” Louis added.
“That’s a pity,” Brady replied.
“Charles is out for blood. He says we should have died like real wolves instead of running home with our tails tucked,” Mark added.
“So why didn’t you?” Brady asked. “You could have come at me. Died like real wolves.”
Louis looked as if he wanted to respond to Brady’s taunting, but he kept quiet. Mark held his hand so tightly his arm trembled.
“You were carrying out justice; I tried to explain that. We had no reason to interfere or retaliate,” Mark said.
“True,” Brady agreed.
If nothing else, Brady could see the pair truly cared for each other, with Mark doing all he could to keep his younger, feistier mate from saying something stupid.
But his wolf didn’t trust them. Something was off in the way they conveniently answered his questions without hesitation. And their timing... being back here so quickly after he’d sent them packing.
“Look, man.” Louis shrugged and rolled his eyes as if this conversation were taking up too much of his valuable time. “Our Alpha doesn’t give a shit about that – his boy could do no wrong. And we let him die on our watch.”
That earned a laugh from Brady, but the horror in Mark’s eyes said he wasn’t too happy with how his mate was talking.
“So now you come here. When war has been threatened between your pack and ours. Convenient.” Brady crossed his arms and stared down at the pair again, waiting to see how they would react more than what their words would be.
Mark dropped his mate’s hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. He let out a defeated sigh before finally raising his eyes to meet Brady’s. “I know how it looks.”
“Like a fucking setup?” Brady locked onto Mark’s eyes, scrutinizing them for any sign or tell. He needed to see beyond the façade of weakness and find the truth, because the human half of him wanted to believe Mark but his wolf kept warning him not to. Never before had he felt so separate from his wolf. They had always agreed on their assessment of strangers. But not now.
Either Mark was damn good at bluffing, or he was telling the truth. Nothing but sorrow revealed itself as Brady gazed into his soul.
“Look, I would rather risk death here than remain where we were with the Alpha gunning for us,” Mark said softly.
“And if we choose to let you stay? What benefit is there for us?” Brady asked, more as a stall tactic than anything else. Since he and his wolf were at odds, he’d have to defer to his brother for a final decision.
“Information,” Mark replied hopefully.
“What do you want to know?” Louis added eagerly.
Mark might be on the level, but his partner’s flippant attitude rubbed him the wrong way. That both Brady and his wolf agreed on.
He took an extra few moments, making a show of his consideration before letting them know.
Behind him
, a woman cleared her throat. But it wasn’t Fallon. He turned to find Rachel at the entrance to the hall, hands on her hips and anger painted across her face. Her sharp gaze passed straight through Brady, shooting daggers at the pair of men he’d been speaking too.
“What are they doing here?” she growled.
Brady bit back his laughter. Deadly as he was, he counted his lucky stars her anger had not been directed at him. For a moment the thought crossed his mind to simply let her at them and see if they survived. “How well do you know each other?” he asked, but his words were all but ignored as Rachel stalked toward them.
“I know we’re the last people you want to see.” Mark held his head in shame. “We couldn’t stay there.”
“Come to drag me back, have you?” Rachel’s hand reared up to strike.
Brady caught her before she could land the blow, noticing how sharp her nails had turned. “No one is going anywhere,” he shouted.
Fallon looked up from her computer as if she’d just realized there were people around her. “None of this is helping me concentrate.”
“Go get Aiden,” Brady commanded. “Before things turn ugly.”
As the Alpha’s mate, she outranked him, and normally he wouldn’t bark orders at her, but with the tension in the room, and all of the other wolves now stopping to see what was going on, it was imperative the Alpha show his face and publicly exert his will.
Seeing the open hostility in the room, Fallon nodded and scooped up her laptop.
Brady turned to Rachel. Before he could open his mouth, she said, “I thought you’d be waiting outside my door.”
“No one was getting down that hallway, and I was not standing guard for over an hour while you put on lipstick,” he shot back at her.
Her eyes narrowed at him angrily. “I didn’t take that long.”
“Check the clock,” Brady grumbled. “Now, if we can clear up a few things... How well do you actually know these guys?”
Rachel looked over to Mark and Louis. “They were part of Craig’s personal guard. Basically paid to be his friends.”
Brady turned to Mark. “This true?”
Mark tilted his head sideways, wincing as if he were trying to come up with a better explanation and failing. “Yeah, we were assigned to him.”
Mated (Olde Town Pack Book 2) Page 9
