by Gaja J. Kos
Only our plans were far from done just yet.
I took my time showering at the club while Alec drove ahead to his place. It was a game we often played, seeing just how much I could get done and still beat his ass to his house on two wheels instead of his boring old four. Every single time, I won, although I had a suspicion tonight might turn out to be different.
The fresh air pressed against my leather pants and jacket as the Kawasaki Vulcan veered down the curving road, my pale blonde hair still damp beneath the helmet. I savored every caress, every moment of quiet Olympiapark offered, then joined the steady stream of traffic headed south. I knew Alec wasn’t anywhere near home yet, not with the stoplights piling up cars despite the late hour. It would have been all too easy to gun the engine and let my baby do what she was made for, but I didn’t feel like giving in to the rush this time. Instead, I kept my distance from the main roads, drinking in the ambiance of my hometown after such a long while.
My dad always joked I’d inherited this unfounded love for Munich from my mother, and maybe there was a grain of truth to his words. But I had a suspicion it was all those times I had to spend away from it that truly sealed my admiration.
Sure, traveling the world and having a taste of all manner of cities and countries had its appeal, yet somehow, amidst all the novelty and eye candy, returning home became a luxury.
One I cherished even after I gave up on competitive tennis to become a coach.
Time and time again, it amazed me how the entire city seemed to breathe, how it carried and cradled the history, etched in the architecture, the greenery, even the open spaces that never made me feel as if I was trapped within its walls. From the outskirts to the dead center of town, everything about Munich spoke to me on some intimate level—and after Christian, I needed its serenity to calm my turbulent mind.
Briefly, I contemplated snatching Alec and taking him on a long ride throughout the night, but as much as the thought appealed to me, my body had other ideas. I was pretty sure Alec’s did, too.
A soft smile played on my lips—a foreign sensation after a whole day of feeling almost nothing but the harsh emptiness of shock and loss—and I sped up, entering the thick stream of traffic and cutting my way through it with ease all the way to Alec’s place.
He was sprawled across the sofa when I let myself in, nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist, showing off his honed torso and lean, yet muscular legs. A can of Paulaner rested in his left hand, while his right arm was draped over the headrest, the empty space stretching beneath it beckoning me to claim the spot. I would have, too, if my gaze hadn’t caught on something far more delicious to claim.
“Want a beer?” he asked, obviously failing to note the slight smile I’d hidden away.
I stripped off my jacket and threw it across an armchair, then shook my head. “Just you.”
I did take that beer in the end. Only much, much later.
I swallowed a mouthful before placing the can back on the club table, freeing my hands so that they could roam across Alec’s nude form. His skin was slick with sweat, his heart beating heavily under my touch. From where I sat curled up next to him on the sofa, I had no difficulties seeing he was growing invitingly hard again. I trailed a finger down his abdomen and grinned.
The low growl that vibrated in his chest was masculine and filled with such hunger I instinctively arched my back, offering him my breasts. Alec dipped down to snag one nipple between his lips.
I moaned at the touch of his tongue, riding the wave of pleasure that burned in my veins, my breaths becoming quicker as heat bloomed between my thighs. The same heat he now stroked with his fingers, spilling out promises of every fine torment that would follow until I would be left writhing and begging in his arms.
His lips moved up the mound of my breast, the path taking him across my collarbone, then concluding on the pulse in my neck. With a gentle, but firm push, he dipped us back. I flattened my back against the sofa, while Alec braced his weight on his arms placed on either side of my head.
Breaths deepening, I spread my legs wider to accommodate his form. He assaulted me with his tongue, lips, and teeth, his body covering mine, but not quite touching.
Tease.
“Alec,” I whispered, holding on to the thought I had to voice before the rush of his demand would whisk it into oblivion.
“Hmm?” he mumbled against my skin.
His mouth was on my neck, fingers dipping in and out of my silken sheath with building urgency.
Gods, it felt good.
“Could you cover for me tomorrow afternoon?” I managed to rasp.
Cool air replaced the feel of his mouth. He lifted himself higher, his gaze falling on mine and a teasing smile curling up a corner of his lovely lips.
“If you think seducing me will get you a green card to skip work”—he slipped another finger inside me, raking it against my aching walls—“you might be right.”
Briefly, the reason why I was even asking this of him flashed through my mind, but I snuffed it out with such force nothing but cinder remained.
Not tonight.
I wouldn’t think about it tonight.
I shot Alec a wicked grin, then took the thickness of his erection in my hand, teasing the sensitive, wet tip in lazy circles. “How hard do you want me to bribe you?”
4
My hand hovered over the stationary phone on my desk, sweat condensing in the grooves of my curved palm. I hated this. I hated this so much that every part of me screamed to just forget about what was right, what was proper, and flee out on the clay where I could lose myself in the discipline of the mind and the desperately needed comfort tennis had to offer.
As it was, I picked up the phone and dialed the number, then listened to the call connect.
My heart was hammering in my chest so loudly that when a soft, female voice answered, the thud-thud-thud-thud nearly drowned out her words. But I knew that voice, felt the haunting sorrow that seeped from it.
And it was enough to snap me back to my senses—or at the very least, a semblance of a functional state.
“Mrs. Schiller,” I said, disgusted by how flat my tone sounded, weak and heavy at the same time. “It’s Lotte Freundenberger.”
A sniffle came over the line. “Lotte, dear… Th-thank you for calling.”
Her every word sank like a blade into my gut. I had no idea what went wrong in my teen years to make me so unequipped for dealing with loss.
Maybe it was the War. Or maybe I just wasn’t cut from the same stuff the rest of my family seemed to be.
“Gods, I’m so, so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Schiller. Christian is—” I shook my head, cursing my inadequacy. “He was such a brilliant, talented person. I know there’s nothing I can say to make things better, and I can’t even begin to comprehend what you must be going through. But I just—I just wanted to let you know that to us, to me… Christian was pack.”
“It means a lot, Lotte, to know that he was loved.” Her voice broke on that last word, splintering it into a thousand jagged pieces.
“Mrs. Schiller?”
“I—I don’t know what to do. He was fine in the morning, and now he’s just gone…” A hint of anger touched her voice. “The police won’t tell me anything. They won’t even let me take his body. What kind of a monster does that?”
I bit my lip, struggling to hold back my own tears. “I spoke with them yesterday and will soon again.” The half-truth slid easily off my tongue, the need to reassure Mrs. Schiller a firm, pulsing resolve within me. “I’m sure they’ll release Christian soon, but I’ll see if I can learn or do anything in the meantime.”
“Please.” Her words were a harsh whisper, yet filled with such gratitude a tear did slip down my cheek.
Quickly, I wiped it away. “You take care now, okay? And if you need anything, don’t hesitate to call me or Alec. We’re here for you, Mrs. Schiller.”
“Thank you.” She sobbed. “For everything.”
&nbs
p; The waterworks erupted the instant the call disconnected. I laid my forehead on my desk, breathing deeply as I waited for the rush of sorrow to pass. Fuck. It wasn’t fair—it wasn’t fair that an eighteen-year-old kid had to die.
Werewolves were a healthy species, almost impervious to diseases. Or, at least, we were until the magic hit us all during the War, mixing things up.
It was one clusterfuck of a conundrum, actually. In a world where magic thrived, magic from which every supernatural creature originated, we were completely at home, yet at the same time far more vulnerable than ever before. There was no particular virus or sickness—simply cases where our previously infallible immune system didn’t rise up to the job.
In a way, it was almost as if the world wanted to balance itself out. To give us a weakness so that humankind wouldn’t break under the staggering differences that had become that much more visible in this new reality.
But why did Christian have to be the one to draw the short straw?
Anger stirred in the pit of my stomach, violent and pulsing. I straightened up, wiping away my tears with the back of my hand.
Just in time, too.
I picked up a familiar scent of vampire weaving down the corridor not a second later and growled silently. I really didn’t need my boss to see me cry.
“Lotte.” His voice came on the heels of a soft knock. He pushed the door aside and stepped into my office without waiting for an answer, his broad frame filling up the space. “I’m sorry I have to even ask this, but with the Games coming up, I need you to update the player database now that Christian…”
I winced, but nodded. Business went on, regardless of how difficult the times. People were too used to hearing about tragedies to actually consider the impact even a single death could have on its environment and those closest.
Yeah, messing up the slots for the tournament wouldn’t get us any compassion.
A part of me wished Schultz would give the task to someone else, but even as I thought about it, I knew that would have been even worse. A stranger, archiving Christian’s achievements and scraping his name off lists as if he hadn’t been a part of what they represented just yesterday morning.
No, I couldn’t let anyone else touch his memory like that.
“I’ll have it done by the afternoon,” I croaked.
Schultz’s broad face contorted in sympathy. “I really wish we didn’t have to do this.”
“Yeah, me too…”
I remained sitting behind my desk for a long while after he walked out the door, feeling more wretched than I had in years.
By the time Alec showed up in my office, I was bleary-eyed from staring at my computer and nursing a light headache. My mood, however, brightened the instant I laid my eyes on him.
The savior that he was, Alec came bearing a steaming, extra-strong cup of coffee—precisely my drug of choice. I would have kissed him right there if getting out of my chair wouldn’t have been too much of an energy suck.
And if he weren’t trudging a thick file along with him. Something, I suspected, was destined to make its way to me. I loosened a breath. Wonderful.
Alec parked his ass on the edge of my desk. He placed both the coffee and the documents beside him, then ran a hand through his hair, his dark blue eyes locking on mine.
“How are you holding up?”
I shrugged. “Shitty, as expected.”
“Yeah.” His lips pulled into an apologetic line, and he dropped his gaze to the meaty file leaning against his thigh. “Boss wants you to go through the sign-up list for the Games.”
“Wouldn’t want to do everything last minute, now, would we?” I drawled bitterly, well aware that basically all the clubs were cutting it close.
Not that I could blame them. Even we tended to withhold names until the last possible moment, and the Olympiapark Tennis-Zentrum was basically the one organizing the entire damn thing. But the Munich Games’s system varied from the usual way tournaments were handled, which gave us a few more parameters to work through.
While overall ranking did hold sway, the inclusion system focused on clubs, rather than individual players. There were allotted slots depending on how well club members as a whole performed in the previous Games, meaning that athletes originating from the same base needed to compete against one another for the placement if there weren’t any obvious choices.
The competition was usually fierce, and additional slots opened up only if the participating clubs failed to fill up their quota. In case that happened, the inclusion in the tournament wasn’t team specific any longer, but rather a jumbled heap of criteria I sometimes still struggled to make sense of.
That was why I pushed Rihard as hard as I had.
If he didn’t get his anger issues under control and we failed to fill our slots, someone else would slip in. As well as hurt our overall standings for the following Games.
After years of hard work, no one was exactly thrilled about that prospect.
Curling my fingers around the warm mug, I raised an eyebrow at Alec. “Don’t tell me you’re off the hook?”
“Hardly.” He snorted. “Bossman wants me to find appropriate accommodations in town for the HSC reps. As if I don’t have my hands full with the clubs already…”
“Of course he does.” I chuckled, sipping the coffee. “In case it helps, Nathaniel will probably stay at my parents’ house. At least he did last year, and with the motion for the supe registry they’re pushing through, I suspect he’ll want some peace and quiet. Well, peace. You know there’s hardly any quiet back at home. I can check with Jens and Jürgen to be sure.”
As the head of the Human-Supe Coalition, Nathaniel, my brothers’ friend and blood relative to another were within the pack, had the brilliant tendency of cutting his own path through life. A choice I could definitely get behind.
Dealing with strangers daily and working on politics to maintain peace among the species would make any person want to take some time off from the endless burden.
“If you tell me that he’s going to fly in on his loverboy dragon, you’ll be saving me a whole lot of logistic trouble.”
I smiled. “He just might.”
“Damn.” Alec shook his head, a corner of his lips quirking up. “He’s one lucky sonofabitch.”
“You could always find a nice Perelesnyk to settle down with yourself, you know?” I teased.
Alec shot me an incredulous, but light look. “I’m straight, remember? And they don’t have any females.”
“Your loss.” I shrugged, but couldn’t keep the smile from tugging at my lips.
Unfortunately, it died down the instant my gaze skimmed the wall clock.
“Fuck.” I chucked back the coffee, ignoring the light burn spreading down my throat, and set the cup aside. “I need to run.”
I grabbed my leather jacket and bike keys, then stuffed my cell in one of the pockets and my wallet in another. Alec was still sitting on the edge of my desk, more than likely reluctant to move given he had a nice fat pile of work waiting for him.
He crossed his arms when I shimmied past him. “Where are you going, anyway?”
“The police wanted to follow up with some questions since I was a bit of a mess yesterday.”
Not a lie. But not the whole truth, either.
Alec, thankfully, didn’t question my words.
“I’ll be back in time to work with Rihard on his volley.” I bit my lip. “I hope.”
“Hey, no worries. I know everyone thinks I’m the soft one, but I can bite if I have to.”
I chuckled and pressed a kiss to his stubbled cheek. “Oh, that I’m well aware of.”
Even on my bike, the traffic was an utter bitch. I didn’t have to look at my cell to know I was running late, and I had a sneaking suspicion Senior Agent Vogt wouldn’t appreciate my tardiness. I ground my teeth and ran up from the underground garage sprawling beneath the ICRA building, only to come to a stop at the long line of security checks. Perfect.
; I didn’t dare to think how much time had passed before a red-haired demon, dressed in security black and armed to the teeth, pinned my visitor’s pass on my jacket and sent me up to the eleventh floor. I joined a group of ICRA agents and liaisons in the rich, polished elevator, wincing at every new level we came to a halt, adding precious seconds I didn’t have.
Gradually, the group thinned, and by the time I reached my destination, I was the only one left standing in the metal box. Cursing under my breath, I waited for the doors to finally slide open. I practically exploded out into the hallway when they did—and rammed straight into a statuesque, muscled female.
Crap. This was so not my day.
Just as I started to apologize while my gaze kept searching for any sign of Isa Vogt in the background, the woman’s scent wrapped around me. The familiarity of it filled my veins, and my hasty mess of words became even more jumbled.
I blinked and shifted my attention, a pair of bright blue eyes meeting my confused stare. The werewolf cocked her head to the side, a smile teasing her lips, but continued studying me in painful detail.
She crossed her arms. “What are you doing here, little sis?”
5
Greta,” I breathed, momentarily stunned, then threw my arms around my sister. “What are you doing here?”
I leaned back and took in her flaming red hair, skintight pants and a loose gray tee that only further accentuated her lean, corded muscles. Her badge was pinned to her waist, which meant she was on duty, but it was still a shock to see her at HQ.
Greta was ICRA, but she worked for the Violent Crimes subdivision—which was just a nicer was of saying brute strength and ruthless cases. The faction was filled with agents who could handle themselves even in situations the majority of supes would end up as minced meat.
They were among ICRA’s greatest assets, although thanks to their lethal nature, that didn’t prevent them from being treated like outcasts. Even their base was located in the outskirts of town, far away from here where the Agency’s oh-so-important top dogs overlooked Munich’s vibrant core from their dazzling marble offices.
