by Diana Seere
Sophia felt her face flush. “Don’t call him that.”
Sam, still kneeling at Zach’s side, said, “Asher doesn’t have the strength to admit Zachary was a victim of his own brother’s—and my—recklessness.”
“On the contrary,” Asher said. “I’m quite able to admit you and Gavin were unforgivably reckless to allow the existence of a creature who threatens not only the physical and mental health of my beloved sister but the continued safety of my kind’s way of life.”
“Give me a break,” Sophia said, kneeling in solidarity next to Sam and Zach. “You’re exaggerating.” She wanted to touch Zach but stopped herself when an unfamiliar shyness gripped her.
Asher’s voice struck like the needle-sharp dart that had felled Zach. “I exaggerate nothing. The danger of him shifting in the Platinum Club, which at this moment contains the governor of a major state, a former FBI director, and a pair of gate-crashing journalists from television, not to mention the other humans now walking around with video devices on their phones, cannot be understated. You don’t think the sight of a werewolf would threaten our privacy and independence?”
“They didn’t see him,” Sophia said.
“Only because you removed him just in time,” Asher replied. He pushed Zach’s motionless leg with the toe of a custom-made leather shoe. “You’re unlikely to be there on the next inevitable occasion.”
Sam slapped Asher’s foot away. “Don’t you kick him. He’s suffered enough. Do you realize it took two months before the poor man could even walk without assistance?”
“I’m quite aware of the extent of the damage done to him,” Asher said. “Which is why I insist he be removed immediately to the clinic, where he and everyone else will be safe. The only alternative is elimination.”
Sophia felt as if she’d been smacked in the stomach with a cannonball. Her lungs emptied of air, her eyes burned, and her heart squeezed painfully inward. She slumped forward, resting her hands over Zach’s broad chest for support.
And immediately regretted it. The contact only amplified the emotions churning through her. She jerked her hands away, blinking back tears and fighting for breath.
What the hell was the matter with her?
While Sophia was falling apart on the floor, Sam jumped to her feet to deal with Asher.
“What did you say?” Sam demanded. “Elimination?”
“You heard me,” Asher replied. “If it had been up to me, that step would’ve been taken immediately, preventing today’s situation from arising.”
“You don’t mean that,” Sam whispered.
“Surely I do. It would also have prevented the months of indescribable suffering I understand he endured. In the recent past, even a full-breed born shifter could die if he failed to make his first shift until after he’d reached full maturity. The adult body simply isn’t designed for such changes. An adult human… Well, it was cruel to keep him alive.”
Sam’s skin was almost as bright as her stunning red hair, and her eyes were wide and sparking with outrage. “You… you…you can’t…” Her voice caught in her throat.
Sophia, recovering from her second shock of the day, rose to her feet and put herself between Asher and the kind doctor. At his core, Asher’s problem was not caring too little but too much. Her big brother could be an insufferable pain in the arse and an arrogant bully of the first order, but Sophia knew a horrible tragedy was to blame for the man he was today. She would never forget what he was like when she was little, how he taught her how to read, how to swim, laughing and playing with her when nobody else would take the time. How she’d idolized and adored him, the most handsome and charming of her (too many) brothers.
And then his wife, Claire, and their baby had died. And with them, a major portion of Asher’s heart.
Those days were long, long ago, but Sophia held them in her heart, praying silently for a future in which the memories wouldn’t seem like a strange, impossible dream.
“Where is the clinic?” Sophia asked. “I’ll see to it he’s taken there.” She wouldn’t risk touching him again, but she’d call for Derry. He could lift two werewolves and a fellow bear shifter without breaking a sweat.
“No!” Sam got between Sophia and Asher. “You can’t send him back there. He was there long enough.”
“Obviously not,” Asher replied.
“He can’t be held a prisoner any longer,” Sam said. “He’s strong and healthy, fully recovered—”
“Too strong,” Asher said. “Too healthy.” He gave Sophia a dark glance.
Suddenly remembering all those strong, healthy parts that had embraced her and promised to take her completely, Sophia’s heart began to race. If Zach were experiencing the involuntary shifts and sexual aggression of shifter adolescence, he couldn’t be wandering around the streets of Boston. A sexually sophisticated bear shifter like Sophia wasn’t in any danger, but every other woman could be.
Because if he touched another woman, Sophia would kill her.
Wait. What? No! She’d kill him. Him.
Except she wouldn’t kill him. That would be wrong. Like Sam said, he was the victim here. She had to think of Zach as a pitiable, inexperienced being, or else she’d be obligated to teach him a lesson.
A firm, deliciously slow lesson.
No, no, no.
“I agree with Asher,” Sophia blurted. “He has to go back to the clinic.”
“He can’t,” Sam said, her voice rising. “He just can’t. It’s not designed for long-term accommodation. Heck, it’s not designed for short-term accommodation. It’s just a makeshift space where we could keep an eye on him and shifter-specialist physicians could keep him alive. There’s a treadmill and a TV and a tiny patio where he can look at the sky, but it’s no way to live. He won’t stay. We don’t have the power to stop him. That’s why he has patio access, actually. He broke a door and followed me out there a few weeks ago, and I didn’t have the heart to refuse.”
Asher, who had leaned over to inspect a scar on Zach’s shoulder, suddenly turned and spun to face Sam. “Did he touch you?”
His low voice sent a shiver down Sophia’s spine.
“Of course not!” Sam snapped. “He just wanted some fresh air.”
“I’ll increase security. I’ll hire the best in the business,” Asher said. “You— Everyone will be safe.”
Sam’s complexion turned a darker shade of red. “I—we—are completely safe from Zachary, I promise you.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know shifters. You have no idea what we’re capable of. What damage we can do to human beings.” Asher’s voice dropped so low it was almost inaudible. “We can destroy you.”
Sophia forced herself to look honestly at Zach—scarred, traumatized, unconscious—and see the truth in what Asher was saying. The man had nearly died and had a broken life ahead of him that they, the Stanton family if not all shifters, were responsible for.
When she had gone to nursing school, even her own family couldn’t understand why the fun-loving, daring, independent—and filthy rich—Sophia Stanton had done it. But she had an impulse to care for people that she kept carefully hidden, even from her twin, Derry. It was an impulse that could get her into trouble, and she always regretted indulging in it.
Like now.
“We can’t send him back to the clinic,” Sophia said.
“Oh thank you, Sophia,” Sam said. “Thank you for understanding. He never would’ve harmed you, of course. In all these months, not once has he touched another human being. Or shifter. Not once.”
Sophia was annoyed at how smug she was to hear that.
“It’s not up to my sister to decide,” Asher said. “He’s too dangerous.”
“He is,” Sophia agreed. “I’m sorry, Sam, but you might not realize the harm he could do.”
“Precisely,” Asher said. “Your logic is slow to develop, Sophia, but I’m glad it won out in the end. I’ll call Morgan to have him brought to the clinic, and then we can—
”
“No, Asher,” Sophia said. “There’s another option.”
Sam’s hands flew up to her mouth. “No! Surely you don’t mean…”
Sophia shuddered at the thought of harm coming to this man. No, he was a novice, a changeling. Don’t forget he’s little more than a pitiable adolescent.
And he’s mine.
“Of course not,” Sophia said, pulling out her phone to summon the pilot of the Stanton’s private jet. “He’ll have to go to the ranch.”
“Ranch?” Sam asked. “Do you mean…”
“Yep. Montana.” Sophia texted Roger the time he should expect them. “He won’t be able to do any real harm way out there. That’s why we have the place.”
Asher began to protest but then seemed to see something in Sam’s face. She looked so hopeful, so grateful—and, Sophia thought with amusement, more than a little beautiful. Asher was arrogant and impossible, but he was still a man.
“All right,” he said carefully, eyes narrowed in skepticism. “But remember, Sophia. It was your idea.”
Chapter 3
Her back, broad and nude, was the sight that greeted Zach as he opened his eyes, the gentle rhythm of their lovemaking teasing him out of slumber. Gripping her lush hips, he guided the beat, somehow doing it in his sleep, now fully awake and grinning.
“Oh God, Zach,” Sophia moaned as she rode him, reverse cowgirl style, her ass coming up and down as she impaled herself over and over on his cock, the juicy sound of her body meeting his making him harder.
Impossible, but true.
Slick and hot and wet and oh, so fucking gorgeous, Sophia straddled him, balancing on her knees, one hand cradling his sac while the other reached back and pressed on his thigh. As she pulled up, his groan made her rotate just so, the change in angle tightening his thighs, his thumbs digging into the full curve of her ass. That would leave a mark later, he thought, as her throat let out a choked cry of pleasure, her body a vise that clamped him in place as he roared up and turned her around, heedless of the momentary loss of connection.
“Don’t stop,” she murmured. “I’m so close. So close…”
Bending her back, he rode her now, their mouths dueling in a wet jostle, tongues dancing. Her breasts smashed against his broad chest, then rippled with their rhythm.
“Harder,” she begged, her nails biting into his back, fingers roaming over his ass. “Harder.”
He obliged, using all his strength to drive into her, his reward the bloom of lust in her eyes, the ragged cry of passion as she came, the unbridled ecstasy of their heated bodies coming together. She was tight—so tight. Tighter than he’d ever imagined, until he couldn’t move, encased and pinned in place.
Their eyes met and he saw why.
Those whiskey-brown eyes grew by the second, the whites of her eyes going dark—
With a painful, tearing gasp Zach sat bolt upright, his hands balled in cool sheets, his eyes still seeing the vision beneath him as he shook his spinning head. He tried to understand what he saw as the dream faded out, his new circumstances coming to him as if he were underwater and surfacing, disoriented yet desperate to break the surface.
And take a deep breath.
He reached under the covers to find himself naked and hard as a rock, though his erection was fading. An all-too-familiar slickness coated the web of his right hand, and he groaned, embarrassed. That dream made him come? In his sleep? What was he—thirteen?
Feeling oddly guilty, he looked around the dim room and dispensed with that emotion quickly. It was dark outside. The room was unfamiliar, nothing like the clinic. A small lamp on a corner table illuminated large timber support beams, like thick tree trunks, that created a peak to the soaring cathedral ceiling in the room. Sprawled out on a mattress bigger than his entire bedroom nook in his studio apartment back in Boston, Zach took in the enormity of his surroundings. All the decorations emphasized some kind of Western theme with a lodge feel.
Where the hell was he? And how long had he been here?
He needed to know for his own sense of order. After the accident, he’d drifted in and out of a coma that had lasted weeks, time he would never get back. The loss of his old life weighed on him like an invasion, the theft of something precious to him.
Jumping to his feet, he snagged the sheet off the bed, avoiding any wet spots, and wrapped it around his hips. As he reached for the bedroom’s doorknob, he paused.
And listened.
“We need a plan. We need to follow a plan so that we can properly evaluate him and his powers. And the plan we need to follow is the one I’ve outlined right here,” said Asher Stanton, tapping something Zach couldn’t see. They sounded like they were in the next room. Was this some sort of bedroom at LupiNex? Wait. No. Not his workplace.
The last thing he remembered, he’d been at the Platinum Club, talking to Sophia Stanton. She’d urged him to get on an elevator, and then…
Oh God.
Flashes of memory sliced through him as if he could only see through cracks in a wall that separated him from the past. Like lightning strikes illuminating the pitch-black reality of his mind, he saw the events in violent snapshots.
A hot kiss, the taste of her driving him for more.
Rubbing against her ass, seeking home.
Pain, then her brother’s face.
A wolf’s sneer.
Zach took a long, deep breath as he listened to the argument. He smelled pine and chlorine, rosemary and Earl Grey. A tickle of Sophia’s perfume. A man’s arousal, woodsy and ancient, like old pages of a book in a monastery’s library. And then:
“Tomas Nagy is still on the loose, and who knows what he’s done to develop the serum beyond what we know at LupiNex,” said Sam, her voice clipped and professional. Yet Zach could hear a subtext in her voice, an attention to Asher that was anything but professional. Involuntarily he quirked one eyebrow and continued listening, his nose picking up a floral scent mixed with clove.
Wait. Tomas Nagy? His old boss at the lab? What the hell did Tomas have to do with any of this? The guy had been a bit of a sleaze, always ready to claim credit for other people’s ideas, but he’d been okay to work for. No better or worse than most bosses. What the hell did Nagy do to be entangled in this mess?
“Asher, the ranch is the most secure place on earth for shifters,” Sophia said, her voice pure argument. “This is where he belongs. You’ve already summoned Gavin and Lilah. Edward and Molly are here. Jess and Derry were in Boston last night but were about to fly to Hawaii. Did they change their plans?”
“No. But Derry assures me he’ll bring her as soon as possible, after their fun. Typical Derry. Fun first, duty later.” Zach could hear the smirk on Asher’s face. The guy was a walking prick. A big bad wolf with no good reason for being such a fucking asshole. Zach’s fingers itched to do something, to act, to bring Stanton down a peg.
“It’s not as if it’s a dire emergency,” Sophia scoffed. “And Lilah should be here for the birth, anyhow.” Her words didn’t surprise Zach, who knew that his boss’s wife was pregnant. But why should Lilah Stanton give birth at a ranch? Wouldn’t a hospital or birth center be better?
“Yes, she should,” Asher agreed. “We’ve assembled the finest shifter medicine team possible. Led by Dr. Baird, of course.”
Shifter medicine? Zach couldn’t believe his ears. Lilah Stanton was a shifter too? During his work on the shifter serum, all he’d been told was on a need-to-know basis. Only after The Incident, when he had questions, did Zach learn the truth: the owner of LupiNex was a wolf shifter. The details had emerged piecemeal, and he’d have thought it all part of an elaborate hoax if he himself hadn’t turned into the Werewolf of Boston.
For a few seconds, at least.
“I am not an obstetrician, Asher,” Sam said. “I’ve reached out to the best specialists in the shifter world, but still. I’m not sure what kind of value I offer to a birth, even one as unusual as this. Add in the complication of twins, and…” She s
ounded very worried.
Twins? Zach had no idea. Then again, Gavin Stanton wasn’t exactly a close personal friend. The man was private, his life a locked box. Now Zach understood why.
“You created an injection designed to prevent Birthdeath for humans who procreate with shifters,” Asher responded to Sam in a low, mournful voice. “Your contribution to my world is priceless, Samantha.”
“Asher,” she whispered, her voice full of emotion Zach could almost feel on his skin. Eavesdropping like this really wasn’t his style.
Doing it naked, wearing only a sheet, really pushed his own boundaries.
As he looked around the room, he spotted a small envelope on a bureau, one that had escaped his attention when he’d woken up. Letting go of the doorknob, he crossed the room, opened the flap, and pulled out an embossed card with the initials SMS.
Zach,
When you awaken, please dress and meet us in Asher’s office.
Yours,
Sophia
Yours? Hmmm. Zach liked the sound of that. He reread the letter, then opened one of the dresser drawers. Underwear, the same kind and size he wore at the LupiNex clinic. Black socks. Crossing the room with long, swift strides, he found pressed shirts in the closet, along with business-casual slacks. Shoes in his exact size.
As he grabbed an outfit and walked into the bathroom, he half wondered if his favorite toothpaste and nose-hair trimmer would be provided too.
Close. Toothpaste, yes. Trimmer, no.
Huh. Asher Stanton wasn’t infallible after all, then.
A five-minute shower did wonders for his mood, but all the movement made his stomach gurgle. He shoved his arms into a button-down, plaid shirt, the kind you’d expect to see on the owner of a British country estate, out for a walk with his hounds. Not a Boston lab rat who did CrossFit for fun on the weekends and enjoyed avocado toast in spite of the social media mocking.
As he buttoned from the bottom up, he did a double take. His navel, perfectly round, was tucked under an eight-pack, dotted with the scars he’d come to accept, the ones all over his body now. That wasn’t the unusual part. Looking up, he found himself staring at his image in the mirror.
