The Alpha's Captive: Pursuit (BBW Werewolf Shifter Romance, #2)

by V M Black

  “Really, that’s what you’re going to focus on? The fact that I used the word ‘more?’ Look, when you can get shot point-blank and walk away, you can quibble about my word choice.”

  “Okay. Point taken.” Her mouth twitched, as if despite herself.

  “So, I’m a shifter. A werewolf.”

  “Yeah, I caught that. My first clue was the fact that you changed into a great freaking wolf, see. Took lots of brains to figure that one out.”

  He ignored her sarcasm. “Well, shifters aren’t the only more-than-human kinds of people out there.”

  “Let me guess. Vampires. It’s always vampires, isn’t it?” She gave a tiny giggle, then adopted an exaggeratedly serious tone, as if she were doing a movie voiceover. “The werewolves and the vampires have battled over centuries—”

  Levi glared at her. “It isn’t funny. And it’s not like that. It’s...complicated,” he said. “I’ll explain later, but that’s not the point right now. Some vampires are okay. Others are really nasty SOBs, and they think shifters exist to do their dirty work. It’s hard enough to hold down a job as a shifter—”

  “What, do you turn into a wolf every full moon?” she interrupted.

  Ah, yes. The other reason he didn’t tell women about his nature. If they didn’t freak out, they asked him questions like that. “No. But sometimes, the other form needs to...come out, so you have to take a break from being human for a while. It’s not predictable, so this doesn’t work well with a nine-to-five kind of lifestyle.”

  “I could see that,” she said.

  “Anyway, this particular vampire, Mortensen, he’s one of the worst. He’s been throwing his weight around all up and down the East Coast, paying off shifters to do some of his nastier bits of business, and if they don’t agree to payment, threatening them until they do it for free. I was tired of it. I started paying attention to the various strings he was pulling, and I figured out that he was smuggling something back and forth from Europe. I dug into it until I was sure that it was his account books—his real books—that cover his international operations, including smuggling at several major American and European ports.”

  Levi’s double life as an art investigator was not only a role excellently suited to the vagaries that being a werewolf demanded, it had also uniquely positioned him to recognize Mortensen’s crude gambit for what it was. Once a quarter, a forgery would appear in a Sotheby’s auction, a forgery that Sotheby’s would never ordinarily miss. And once a quarter, one of Mortensen’s pawns would buy the forgery at auction, no matter how high the bid was run up. Not that it mattered, since he was selling them to himself....

  And that was how Levi discovered how Mortensen’s international interests were transporting copies of the real books—the ones with the real transactions, every bribe, every extortion, every theft, everything that would damn him in the courts of a dozen countries. When all his enemies, vampiric or otherwise, were busy tapping his computers and cellphones, he was shipping his books physically, on storage cards hidden inside forgeries commissioned for the purpose, as closely guarded by Sotheby’s as if they were the priceless piece of art they pretended to be.

  Paranoid bastard.

  “What good will that do you?” Harper asked.

  Levi gave her a toothy smile, savoring his plan. “First, it’s evidence that can put him behind bars for a very long time. Sure, his cronies can influence the judge and jury, but he’s got vampires among his enemies who’d be just as happy to flip them the other way. And vampires don’t like weakness or exposure, so he might not even survive long enough to get to trial. Second, there should be account information on the card that we can use right away.”

  Harper still looked skeptical. “Stealing from a vampire doesn’t seem like a good way to get him to leave us alone.”

  “If we take just a little from his accounts, he’ll know that we have him, but he won’t know how much more we could get. Sure, he can change accounts, but he’ll never know how many of them we’re able to trace—how many we can take over at a moment’s notice. And because the books will give a very detailed view of his operations, they’ll let us track any changes he makes. So if we’re good enough, we’ll have a gun pointed at his head pretty much forever.”

  “Yeah, stealing that knife seems to be working out great so far,” she said sarcastically. “You should have kicked his dog, too, while you were at it.”

  “As long as I’m the only one with the data, he’ll keep coming after us,” Levi said patiently. “But once enough people can pull the trigger, and once we have an automated system in place so that even if he takes us all out, the trigger will be pulled automatically—”

  “Okay, I’ve seen this movie. So now you need to get the SD card to where you can do all that,” she said. “Are you a computer genius or something, too?”

  “No, but my friend is. And we don’t need to get the SD card anywhere. We need to get the information on it.” Which he wasn’t going to do flapping his jaws at her. He turned his attention back to the browser on the phone.

  “Which was what you want a reader for. Right. So, what, you’ll just stroll into a Best Buy, buy the reader, send off the info, and be done?”

  The search finished. He frowned at the results. “Not a Best Buy. Walmart. They carry ammo, too. And it’s only half an hour away.”

  She laughed again. He liked that sound better than he had any reason to. “Walmart. All the supplies for when you need to take down an evil vampire mastermind. Of course.”

  Chapter Three

  Levi directed Harper to an exit, and they drove down another highway for a dozen miles before turning off onto a county road. The Walmart was only another mile down the road, next to a clutch of gas stations and a couple of fast food restaurants. She’d been there before—her cousins had some land not too far away. But she didn’t see any reason to tell Levi that.

  “Let’s gas up, first,” Harper said. “Just in case we can’t switch cars here. Give me your shades.”

  Levi flipped his jacket over to get to the pocket. “Why?”

  She gave him her best arch look. She still found it a little hard to believe that he was sitting in the car with her. Pretty much everything about him was unbelievable, from his scorching attractiveness to his tale of vampire blackmail to, of course, the fact that he was also a wolf.

  Yeah, there was that.

  “You’re supposed to be James Bond, not me,” she said. “I’m worried about the security cameras, of course. If these bad guys are all that, like you say they are, they’ll be able to get a hold of the tape. If that guy I nearly flattened didn’t get a clear look at my license plate, I might still be in the clear—but I won’t be as soon as they know what I look like.”

  She plucked the glasses from his fingers and slid them on, and the gathering dusk became abruptly darker. She checked her reflection in the mirror. Well, her mother would recognize her still, and there was her distinctive bright red hair, but the sunglasses did a pretty good job of hiding her upper face.

  “What about me?” He looked bemused but more like he was teasing her than asking an honest question.

  “They already know your name. You really think they don’t know what you look like?”

  He cocked his head to the side. Features that chiseled must violate a law somewhere.

  “Guess there’s that, babycakes.”

  She stopped at the pump farthest from the convenience store, killing the engine.

  “You can quit calling me that any time you like, mmmkay? Now, knock yourself out.”

  “This one’s on me?”

  Harper couldn’t decide if he looked more amused or annoyed.

  “You’re the reason I’m here,” she said. “The least you could do is buy a girl a little gas.”

  He locked gazes with her, and after a second, he nodded and got out of the car.

  Harper’s muscles tensed involuntary. He was gone, which meant that all she had to do was start the car and drive away....


  Except that chances were good that she already had some really nasty men after her, and if she didn’t now, she would soon. And she did believe Levi’s story, crazy as it was. It was pretty easy to buy even a crazy story from a guy who turns into a wolf, after all. If it was true, he needed all the help he could get. A part of her, a very small part, was willing to recognize that she felt more alive with him now than she had in a very long time.

  Not that her life wasn’t exciting, of course. But waiting tables in a diner and hanging out with her friends wasn’t exactly the same level of excitement as being in the company of an astonishingly handsome supernatural man who was being chased by a vampire criminal mastermind.

  She regarded Levi’s long, lean body out of the window as he circled the car to the popped gas cap. She really was a sucker for bad boys if she’d consider, however glancingly, the idea that being hunted down was worth it for a chance to ride with him.

  After a couple of minutes, he hung up the gas nozzle and popped the gas cap door closed before swinging back into the passenger’s seat.

  “You didn’t run,” he observed.

  Harper tossed her hair over her shoulder as she cranked the car on, hoping that she looked like the thought had never entered her mind. “Did you think I would?”

  His warm eyes glittered with amusement. “Well, as highly as I regard my charms, I was a bit suspicious that you might.”

  “So I shoot a guy for you, and that’s the gratitude I get,” she grumbled as she rolled out of the gas station. She was a little shocked that she could joke so casually about it already. To cover her own reaction, she added, “It wasn’t your charms that kept me here. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d help out. It’s a dumb idea to take off until all this is settled.”

  Which was only half of the truth, but she wasn’t going to admit that to him.

  “I’m glad you’re still seeing sense. Food next,” he added, nodding to the fast food restaurant down the country highway. “As you said, we may need a quick getaway.”

  Harper rolled her eyes at his tone, but she steered to the drive through. “You’re paying again.”

  “I figured as much.”

  They reached the lighted menu, and the speaker crackled to life.

  “Hi-welcome-to-Wendy’s-can-I-take-your-order?”

  Harper ordered a meal, then nodded to Levi, who ordered two.

  “Really?” she asked as they rolled forward to the payment window.

  “Shifting’s hard work,” he said.

  Once their orders were in the car, Harper pulled away, finally heading toward the Walmart. She raided her fries as Levi practically inhaled a burger.

  “Look, maybe you should wait in the car, and I’ll go in and get what you need. They’ll be less likely to be looking for me.” Harper said as she pulled into the parking lot.

  “Not a chance,” he said flatly. “If you get in trouble, you aren’t going to be able to shoot your way out of it in the middle of a Walmart. But anyone that Mortensen’s got in his pocket who isn’t one of his private mercenaries will all be looking for me exclusively as a man.”

  “You can’t seriously—” she started, but Levi cut her off.

  “Park on the side.” He indicated an area of asphalt next to the outdoor department, a section of the parking lot that was scattered with pallets of mulch and carts of perennials.

  Distracted for a moment. Harper gave up arguing and turned where he indicated. There were no other cars amid the clutter, and she rolled the Skylark into the first open space. “If my Baby gets scratched with a runaway cart, you’ll be paying for the repairs.”

  “What about the bullet holes?”

  Her head swiveled to face him almost of its own accord. “You’d better be joking.”

  “’Fraid not,” he said. “There are a couple of big ones in the trunk. I saw them when I gassed up.”

  “Then you owe me a professional repair and paintjob,” Harper snapped, putting on the parking break.

  “It doesn’t look that bad.”

  She ignored the protest, retrieving the nine mil Walther from beside the door and double checking the safety before shoving it into her purse. “I don’t want any of that patch-and-blend crap, either. That’s bullshit. I want a brand-new paint for the whole car, bumper-to-bumper.”

  “You’re crazy. The spots’re smaller than a quarter.”

  “You got my car shot.” And no man was worth that. Her car was sacred. No, she told herself—not even a hot biker werewolf.

  Harper set her cup in one of the floor console’s cup holders and slung her purse onto her shoulder. She got out of the car, locking the door before closing it with a little more force than was strictly required.

  Levi rolled up the window before getting out, then stood by the open passenger door. Harper circled around to stand in front of him. She folded her arms over her chest.

  “Let’s talk about this wolf-thing. You’re not even believable as a dog, and there’s no way I can sneak you in. You’re like, what, one hundred eighty pounds? You must come up to my waist!”

  “One ninety-five,” he said. “Though mass isn’t actually always the same in our shifted state. And no one said anything about sneaking. Haven’t you heard of a service animal?”

  She laughed, then she looked at him and realized that he wasn’t joking. “Oh, no, you’re not.”

  “It’s going to work,” Levi insisted.

  “It’s so not going to work. Who’d even believe that?”

  “Think about it for a second. Would you argue with a girl with a two-hundred-pound dog?”

  Harper shook her head. “You’re crazy.”

  “Crazy like a—well, more like a wolf than a fox. Can you think of a better idea?”

  Harper paused, racking her brain. But the truth was, they needed that reader. And if he wasn’t going to let her do alone...

  “Fine, whatever,” she said. “Don’t come complaining to me when we get security called on us. Before you go all wolfman on me, give me the list. What do we need? Ammo, toothpaste, toothbrush, jacket for me, and what kind of reader?”

  “Micro SD card to micro USB,” he said. “Food that doesn’t need to be cooked. Bottled water, paracord, duct tape.”

  She took that in. “So pretty much a whole survival kit. If we get a reader, why do we need all the other stuff?”

  “Because I’m not sure that it’ll work,” he said.

  She let out a puff of air. “And when were you planning on telling me that?” That was a pretty big damned thing not to let her know—Oh, by the way, the plan we’ve hinged everything on? It might not actually work.

  He shrugged. “I just did.”

  Harper rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Let’s go for it, then. Give me your wallet and the SD card and the dagger. We don’t want to leave those in the car. Then get your wolf on.”

  Levi handed them over and grinned at her with that bright, killer smile. No man had any right to look that good. “I don’t know why I trust you. I already know you’re nuts.”

  “Maybe because I saved your life,” she returned loftily, smiling back despite herself as she took the wallet, dagger, and the pouch with the card in it and secured them in her purse. “Maybe also because your wolf can run me down in five seconds flat.”

  “Could be. Guess we’ll never know which it is.”

  “And I’ll keep your shades. Maybe they’ll think you’re my guide dog or something.” Or something was probably right.

  “Whatever rings your bell.” Levi pulled his shirt off in a quick, fluid motion.

  Harper raised her eyebrows. It wasn’t that she minded another look at his washboard abs, but the Walmart parking lot hardly seemed the place.

  “You can’t just morph in your clothes? Like, make them a part of you?”

  His expression was condescendingly amused. “No, they don’t become part of me. It’s not like I conjured them out of the air. And sure, I can shift with them on, but only once,” he said, his
hands going to his fly. Harper’s hands itched to help, but that would lead to something quite different than him shifting into a wolf.

  Or at least it’d better.

  He finished with his fly and pulled off his boots as he continued. “Shifting is pretty hard on clothes. It’d shred the pants. And it’s pretty damned uncomfortable, too, shifting inside of something that’s the wrong shape.” With that, he skimmed his pants down his hips and off.

  He looked every bit as good in the moonlight as he had in the barn, and Harper didn’t even pretend to stop her eyes at his waist. The tracery of scars across his body was almost invisible in the faint light.

  “You might want to look away,” he suggested.

  “Modest?” Harper teased.

  He flashed his dazzling smile. “Not at all. It’s just that most people find the bits in between the two forms to be...upsetting.”

  Reluctantly, Harper turned her back. “Does it hurt?” she asked.

  There was no answer except a cold, wet nose against the palm of her hand. She jumped and turned.

  “Oh, hell, no,” she said, taking him in. “There is no way anyone’s going to think you’re a service anything. You’re practically the size of a pony.”

  Chapter Four

  He was a huge, barrel-chested monster of a wolf, his shoulder at the level of her hip. For a second, Harper had the strange sense of looking down at both of them from outside herself, and she thought, Yep, this is the moment I lost it.

  But the laughing amber eyes were the same, and she knew she was talking to Levi even though it was completely impossible that it was him.

  Sure, she’d seen him shift before, but in the rush of fear and adrenaline, it hadn’t fully registered. Even talking about it had seemed slightly unreal. But now there was no escaping it. One minute, Levi had been standing next to her, as real as any man. And now he was a wolf—not just any wolf, but an impossibly huge one.

  He walked a few feet toward the big, rectangular block bulk of the Walmart, looking back at her as he shouldered the passenger door closed.

  Harper sighed. He was right about one thing. She wouldn’t want to argue with someone with a beast like that, either.