Quinn Security

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “No, she didn’t,” Conor said easily, which was news to Rachel.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That was Pamela, didn’t you hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Pamela was harassing Lucy. She just confronted her in Yellowstone—”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Conor shook his head and told her, “I can’t believe you’re out of the loop, Rachel. Pamela was shot and killed. She was the werewolf that took Holly van Dyke and Leeanne Whitaker’s life. Troy, Kaleb, and Shane are with the sheriff right now over in—”

  “I have to go,” she said abruptly as she threw the conference door open and hightailed it through the office.

  Conor chased after her, but she wasn’t looking back.

  It was then that she promised herself she’d never, ever let a man distract her from her true calling.

  She was determined to make detective, and falling asleep at the wheel while daydreaming about one of the Quinns had been a colossal mistake that she vowed never to duplicate, ever again.

  What the hell had she been thinking?

  ***

  Sheriff Rick Abernathy really hadn’t liked how that Quinn boy—Shane—had been looking at his precious Whitney.

  Not one bit.

  Of all the reasons he could’ve set foot in Libations bar after the victory of having closed two wolf-attack cases on a sunny afternoon, keeping an eye on his sweet, innocent daughter was priority number one.

  Of course, when he reached the bar to find, in horror, that his darling Whitney was already snugged up beside Shane Quinn at a table in the back, Kaleb and Lucy canoodling like a damn pair of horny teenagers right beside them—that Lucy was a terrible influence!—the lovely Angel Mercer caught his eye.

  She was sitting, long-legged and curvy, at the bar counter, her slender, manicured fingers daintily draped around a chilled martini, as she glanced seductively his way.

  He couldn’t help but slow his step.

  Sure, he had more than half a mind to lift Shane Quinn up by his bizarre army fatigues and throw him through one of the large, picture windows that faced Trout Street, but that wouldn’t make for a very gentlemanly impression on Miss Angel Mercer…

  …and if Rick deserved any degree of a reward, he figured it ought to come in the shape of an impressed woman, and not from the result of being satisfied he’d sent one of the Quinn boys sailing through a pane of glass.

  “Why, hidy-ho there, Ms. Mercer,” he said with a grin as he settled up against the bar counter beside her.

  “Sheriff,” she smiled.

  “Oh, come on now, you know you can call me Rick,” he reminded her.

  “How’s it hanging?” she asked, and the suggestive mention of the effect she had on him was enough to cloud his mind over in a sexed-up fog of hope.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” he grinned back then asked in all seriousness, “you’d like to know?”

  She threw her head back and laughed and it was contagious.

  “Can I buy you another?” he asked and when she nodded that he certainly could, he reminded good ol’ Jack who was finally back behind the bar where he belonged that it ought to be, “On the house with a pint of IPA as well.”

  Jack looked far from pleased, but he obliged without complaint.

  “You look like you’re in a celebratory mood,” she commented, those beautiful blue eyes of hers traveling down the length of him in a way that made his chest swell up with pride and a warm flare of arousal.

  “That, I am,” he told her as they clinked glasses. He gulped down a huge mouthful of beer, feeling lucky, and bragged, “I caught the wolf-man.”

  Angel’s blue eyes narrowed with utter confusion then she perked up all over again and asked, “Did ya now?”

  “I did, indeed,” he assured her. “And it wasn’t a wolf-man.”

  “What was it?”

  “The beast that took Holly van Dyke’s life then Leeanne Whitaker’s was none other than little miss Pamela Davenport.”

  Angel full-on furrowed her confused brow at him now and blurted, “The little pint-sized thing who sells tee-shirts over in Acorn Fashion?”

  “That’d be the one.”

  She cut her astonished eyes to Jack Quagmire, who looked just as thrown, and after a blown-away beat, she asked Rick, “How in the holy hell…?”

  “My very own Whitney saw the beast transform from wolf to human before her very eyes,” he explained. “She shot that were-thing dead. Silver bullet. I gave her the gun,” he added proudly.

  Angel’s dainty arcing eyebrows had shot up to her hairline by this point.

  “I must apologize,” he went on, “if I caused you any grief or stress when I showed up at the diner. I never really thought you could’ve possibly had a thing to do with Leeanne’s death, of course.” He gave it a moment’s consideration as she thanked him, remembering the night he’d raced out of the diner after her only to find a shimmering white wolf far ahead on Trout Street where he would’ve expected Angel to be. He smiled at his silliness, shook his head, and, shifting his tone to one of affectionate concern, asked, “You feeling okay and recovering well from that crazy night of yours?”

  “I am, thank you,” she said demurely. “I wish I could remember what happened, but I still haven’t.”

  “Don’t you trouble yourself,” he advised. “I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if the stress of Holly’s murder had caused it. This is a safe, peaceful town. And when something like that happens… well, there’s no telling how the psyche will react.”

  Again, she thanked him for being so considerate, which Rick was sure would’ve earned him an invitation to explore the treasured tunnel between her legs, but instead she stepped off her barstool and said, “Excuse me.”

  He obliged with a gentlemanly nod, assuming she had to use the little girls room to relieve herself, but the next thing he knew, she was rounding behind the business side of the bar counter where she threw her arms around Jack Quagmire and planted one hell of a kiss on his mouth.

  Rick felt his jaw drop.

  Now, what in the good goddamn was this all about?

  Rick decided he might never know.

  Women!

  ***

  Kaleb did a bit of a double-take when he caught sight of Angel Mercer throwing herself at Jack Quagmire behind the bar. Man, she was really giving it to him, hot and heavy, while the sheriff looked on in awkward disbelief.

  Shane had caught sight of the display, too, and nudged him, commenting, “I’ll have what he’s having.”

  “Christ,” grumbled Kaleb. “What’s gotten into you?”

  But he already knew. There was something about Whitney Abernathy that had brought out Shane’s playful side.

  It was disturbing.

  “You okay?” Lucy asked softly, leaning into his ear when his entire body had gone rigid.

  He told her, “This isn’t over. Not by a longshot.”

  “The sheriff’s been thrown off the scent,” she reminded him.

  But Kaleb had also overheard that Rick was planning on hosting a werewolf expert later this month. The pack might be able to enjoy a brief respite from the sheriff closing in on their kind, but it wouldn’t last forever, not to mention that Dante Alighieri was still out there somewhere. He’d been bold enough to seep into Whitney’s mind in attempts to kill Lucy. There was no reason he’d recede into the quiet, dark night. He was out there, waiting, watching, biding his time, and sooner or later, he’d strike again.

  Lucy was vulnerable, and the nerve-wracking fact of the matter was that so was Kaleb. Until he bonded with his one true mate, he might as well be just as vulnerable as any given mortal in the Fist. Troy was protected, having found and bonded with Reece. But it was Troy’s throne that Dante was after. As far as Kaleb was concerned, none of them would be safe until they had Dante’s head on a stake.

  “We’re going to have a meeting tonight,” he told her quietly, as Shane and Whitney tumbled
together out of their seats to get another round at the bar where Jack and Angel couldn’t seem to keep their hands off one another. The sheriff had left, he realized, following the unlikely couple with his eyes as they neared the customer side of the bar counter. Christ, he hoped they weren’t becoming a couple. He shook the notion right out of his dark mind, then said to Lucy, “I think you should come.”

  “To your werewolf meeting?”

  He turned to her and studied her angelic face for an intense moment. “I need to find something out. Something important.”

  “What?” she asked, sensing the graveness in the matter.

  He wanted to tell her that he needed to know if they were meant to be, if Lucy had been brought into this world to be his one true mate, if he should bond to her through sex and ritual and make her his for all eternity. But how could he casually bring that up in the back of Libations bar?

  He hadn’t even told her that he loved her. He hadn’t heard her say those words either.

  So, all he could think to do in this moment was to take her hand, urge her up from the table, and claim an hour alone with her.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as they crossed through the bar, passing Shane and Whitney who were returning to the table.

  Shane asked, “Kaleb?”

  And he told him, “I’ll see you at the meeting.”

  When he reached the sidewalk outside with Lucy, all he could say was, “I need you. Now.”

  Her apartment was the same mess it had been that morning, but he didn’t care.

  He locked the door behind them, Lucy having realized the exact nature of his need, and they charged into the bedroom in a lusty tangle of rushing hands and urgent kisses.

  As he pawed her clothes off, Lucy yanking his belt open and jerking his jeans wide at the fly then shoving them down his hips despite their tight fit, he caught sight of her naked mattress behind her, that horrible, shaming word—SLUT—and she must have known why his lips had loosened against hers.

  In a flare of light, without so much as a glance over her shoulder, her arms shot up and she flicked her wrist and the bare mattress crashed hard back down against the bedframe. She’d flipped it. The word no longer showed.

  Kaleb felt his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline, impressed.

  “Don’t stop,” she breathed as she fought his tee-shirt up and over his head.

  He kicked his boots off and hopped to balance himself as he pulled one jean leg off then the other, Lucy wrestling out of what was left of her Trail Runner uniform, her own boots, even her socks.

  She skittered backwards and before her legs reached the edge of the bed, she’d waved her arm again with another white flare of organized light, and the fitted sheet stretched itself over the mattress, returning order to the once haphazard bed.

  Plopping down, she unfastened her full-coverage bra—keeping the trails of Yellowstone well-maintained required firm support, he guessed—and as she scooted back onto the sheet-covered mattress, down came her boy-short panties.

  She pulled him over her as he shoved his boxer-briefs down, stepping out of them as he kneeled onto the bed.

  He wasn’t trying to let himself get distracted by her strange magic, the bursts of light, those confident flicks of her wrist, as the pillows zoomed into place on the bed just in time for her to lay her head down, long blonde locks spilling gorgeously over the pillow, the bedspread, and her shoulders, but he couldn’t help it. She was amazing.

  It was hard to imagine her parents being murdered.

  Really hard.

  They would’ve had the same wide array of protective gifts, and Lucy’s hadn’t even been properly developed yet. Roxanne and Harold Cooper’s would’ve been expert, and yet, their home had been breached? They’d been attacked? Fatally? How could that have possibly happened when even Lucy, a Younger of her own kind at this point, had successfully defended herself against a zinging bullet and a werewolf attack?

  As Kaleb lowered over her, hooking his muscular arms under her slender shoulders so that he could cradle her head in both of his large hands, Dante reared up in his mind. Thinking about the rogue werewolf at this particular juncture, when he was launching full-steam-ahead into making Lucy Cooper his, wasn’t exactly an aphrodisiac, but he couldn’t shake the mangled, quasi-Royal from his mind.

  Who else could’ve succeeded at taking the lives of two Astrals?

  No one but Dante.

  But as his Grandmother Sasha had told them all, Lucy was stronger than any of them.

  Which meant that if Dante Alighieri had succeeded of robbing Roxanne and Harold Cooper of this world, he would have to be the strongest of them all.

  It was a dark realization.

  He couldn’t shake it.

  “Hey,” Lucy breathed, searching his suddenly vacant eyes as she tenderly held his face. “Where’d you go?”

  “I’m right here,” he assured her, but he knew he wasn’t.

  Pamela Davenport was no one. A face around town. Another girl who put more emphasis on her looks than on her accomplishments. But Dante had chosen her. He’d turned her just like he’d turned Angel Mercer. Why had her chosen her over anyone else?

  For an even darker moment, as he tried to kiss Lucy and demonstrate that he was still here in the room with her, it occurred to Kaleb that Dante might have chosen, and turned, countless others. But he stuck to his sole consideration of Pamela Davenport. She’d known about Lucy’s parents, how they’d died, even though at the time she’d only been Lucy’s age, a child at best.

  The slut accusation she’d spray painted across the mattress seemed a fitting motive considering that, like Courtney and many others around town, Kaleb had hooked up with Pamela. That particular stroke of vandalism seemed on her level, it made some degree of cruel sense considering Kaleb’s sudden and strong affection for Lucy.

  But the other accusations, guilty and murderer, did not.

  Did Pamela know something no one else did?

  Had that been why Dante had turned her?

  Lucy took firm hold of Kaleb face, lifted her head, and crushed the kind of kiss over his mouth that had the power to jar him right out of his dark head and back into his body.

  He felt how hard he’d grown for her, felt the length of his stiff erection against the warm, slippery crest of her core. She’d helped his member rest at an upward angle in-between her legs so that the pressure of his body could rub and stimulate her externally.

  He groaned into the feel of her as they moved, hips rocking and grinding. He delivered a soft kiss to her angelic cheek as she rolled her head to the side, moaning. Even the way she’d wrapped her slender arms around his shoulders reminded him of how delicate she was, how strong and powerful he could be by contrast. He loved how she brought out the man in him. He wasn’t a beast when he was with her, wasn’t purely driven by lust and urgency. When he was with Lucy, his emotions held the reigns, and his every arousal felt like the physical extension of the real love that was growing for her in his heart.

  She returned her lips to his and breathed, “I want you, now,” and hearing those words sent another rocket of arousal shooting through his entire body.

  As she urged his hips up, spreading her legs even wider for him, he felt his erection harden even more. God, she was sexy, and anticipating where she was going with this, added immensely to his sexual need.

  She took firm hold of his erection, wrapping her warm, slender hand around him, and he groaned, his dark eyes drifting closed for a moment as he savored the feel of her.

  When he opened his eyes, locking his gaze with hers, he felt her angle the tip of his hard shape straight against the slippery wet apex of her hot core.

  All he had to do was press in, all he had to do was penetrate her, fill her tight body with his hard dimensions, watch her melt and gradually expand to accommodate his thick size.

  But something stopped him.

  He wished it hadn’t.

  But it did.

  He shifted so t
hat he’d be in no danger of thrusting in, no matter how much he craved burrowing himself into her warm, inviting body, and rested flat against her, hips to hips, the length of his hard shape sandwiched by their stomachs.

  “Lucy?” he asked, almost apologetically to have prevented their lovemaking, as he stroked her blonde hair back.

  In what seemed like a preemptive response to a declaration he hadn’t officially made, she softly told him, “I love you, too.”

  He grinned, eyes widening, then felt a twinge of remorse. He hadn’t meant to solicit her admission of love, though it had been wonderful to hear.

  Her brow furrowed at his profound lack of an immediate reply and she questioned, “You don’t love me?”

  “I do,” he blurted. “I know I do.”

  But he still hadn’t said it back.

  “Do you remember the day you came home and found your parents dead, Lucy?” he asked. He had to ask her. He hated that he had to, but Pamela’s conviction had been nagging at him like a son-of-a-bitch, and Dante had turned her for a reason. He had to ask and he had to know, even if Lucy had somehow blocked it all out of her memory. “Can you remember where you were before you got home?”

  “Kaleb, what are you talking about? Why are you asking me about this right now?” she said, as her twinkling blue eyes misted over with thinly veiled tears.

  It was as though her body knew what her mind had refused to accept all these years.

  “This is important, Lucy.”

  “I tell you I love you, and in response you ask me about the worst day of my life?” she confronted. The tears were sliding down the sides of her temples now so he wiped them away.

  “I love you,” he promised, but the words didn’t seem to reach her.

  He didn’t want her to fly into an Astral Goddess rage. Lord knew she could probably send him sailing across the room if she got furious enough. So he addressed her as tenderly as he could.

  “I need you to tell me what you remember,” he maintained.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s important,” he asserted.

  “I found them after I came home from school.”

  “But is that what you remember?” he questioned, and she furrowed her brow at him, incredulous, glaring.