Close Protection (2 page)

Turning the last corner, he paused for a moment. Bishop’s was across from him, the windows dark and the blinds drawn. Back in the day they’d been red and faded, the whole aura of the place slightly dilapidated and seedy. Now the blinds were new, all dark green and crisp. The paint on the windows had been touched up as well, and the sign above the window had been re-painted. All in all, it looked smarter. Up and coming—

Zane frowned as a scent wafted past him. Lifting his head, he took a deep breath, rolling the air over his tongue and into the back of his mouth like some kind of upper-class wine taster.

Fear. No, terror. And blood. A woman’s blood.

A growl rumbled in the back of his throat, the wolf within fighting to be free. Shoving the piece of paper back into his pocket, he set off across the road at a run and followed the scent down the alley by the building.

Somewhere a woman was being terrified. Being hurt.

And that just wasn’t happening. Not on his watch.

Chapter Two

“Mr. Roth said this might help you make up your mind.”

Ashlee screamed in rage, frustration and yes, maybe a little fear, as one of Roth’s goons swung a hammer back. Held between two others, she couldn’t do anything but watch as the hammer swung down, slamming into and then through one of the bar tables. The old wood, lovingly polished over the years, gave under the brutal treatment. The loud crack as the top spilt and the legs collapsed inward felt like a cry of agony to her heart.

The goon grinned as he turned to the next one and lifted the hammer. Tears flowed down Ashlee’s cheeks, mingling with the blood from her cut lip as she watched him. He was going to trash them all. Her father’s tables. The ones that had been in the bar since she was a child. When she’d renovated they were the only thing she’d kept, loving their scarred surfaces. Surfaces that told stories, surfaces full of history.

Now this bastard was killing them, destroying history.
Her
history.

“Mr. Roth can go to fucking
hell!
”

She winced as the hammer slammed down again. Fighting like a wildcat, she tried to get free but the other two had her in a hard grip. Since she’d dropped two of them before they got control of her—one with a baseball bat to the ass and the second with a knee to the groin—she didn’t blame them for not taking any chances.

If she got free and got to the knife they’d ripped from her hand and thrown under one of the busted tables, she was going to freaking gut them. Hell, she might not even bother with the knife and just go postal with a damn table leg.

“Let me
go!
”

At first she thought the growl was from her own throat. A sound of pure rage and frustration as she bucked and twisted, her guards hard pressed to keep a hold of her. Her shirt bunched and rose, exposing her stomach as she tried to wrench herself free. But the sound didn’t stop when she did.

Instead, it got louder and turned into a snarl.

Then all hell broke loose.

Something barrelled into the bar from the kitchens. Something big and furry. The bar erupted into shouts and gunfire, Roth’s goons pulling weapons as they were attacked. Ashlee didn’t bother to waste time screaming as the men either side of her dropped their hold. Instead she twisted and slammed a knee hard to the stomach of the guy to her right as he levelled a pistol at whatever it was.

The goon dropped to the floor with an
‘oomph’
and she stomped all over his back as she went for her knife. A scream and another of Roth’s men flew through the air to land on the remains of the table before she got to it. The wood shattered, leaving the guy lying there groaning softly as he bled. All over her nice clean floor.

“Son of a bitch, go bleed someplace else,” she grumbled, giving up on recovering her knife from under him and just grabbing a chair leg instead. Her ballet flats slipped and slid, not giving her quite the traction she needed as she scrambled to her feet.

Holding the leg like a club she turned around, and her eyes widened. It was pandemonium. In the centre of the room, Roth’s men were fighting with…her heart dropped a beat. Oh fuck, as if her day couldn’t get any worse. Now she had a frigging werewolf in her bar.

One of Roth’s men lunged for her, anger and determination in his eyes, as though he hadn’t gotten the memo that his mates were being tossed about like toys behind him.

“Not a chance, sunshine.”

Stepping to the side, she swung and clocked him right in the middle of the forehead. He dropped like a stone. Bright blue roots assured her that he was a pixie in disguise and wouldn’t take any permanent damage from her blow. Her dad had said that those guys could get hit by a freight train and still walk away.

Still, she had to spare a glance to make sure he was breathing and took her eye off the fight in the middle of the room for a second. Bad idea, as she found out when she turned around to find another man flying toward her. Sideways.

Time slowed. Her blink felt like an eternity as she watched the unconscious man sail through the air. Her muscles bunched as she tried to dive to the side, her heart punching adrenalin through her system, but she knew she was too late.

A short cry left her lips, cut off as the man crashed into her and they both went down in a tangle of limbs. Pain flared all over her body as her breath was knocked from her in a hard rush. Her head hit the floor hard and blackness rushed up, but she fought it back. No way was she passing out, not at a time like this.

Now she just had to convince her body of that.

*

“NO!”

Zane bellowed as he flung the last asshole and realised a second too late that the girl was right in the way. Instinct kicked in and he dove across the short space, using the heavy claws of his half form to dig into the wooden floor and propel him along faster. Dropping to his knees, he slid the last couple of feet and ripped the guy off her, flinging him to the side.

“Fuck fuck fuck
fuck!
” His voice emerged as a growly rasp, his vocal chords not entirely human in this form. He leaned over her, trying to check that she was breathing. “Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. Eloise will so kill me if you’re dead.”

His heart stuttered with relief as her lids opened and she looked at him with clear, deep brown eyes.

“Oh, thank God for tha—Owww! What the fuck?”

Pain exploded over the side of his head, just below one pointed ear, as she clobbered him with the chair leg still firmly gripped in one hand.

“Come into
my
bar, would you?”

She didn’t give up with just one hit, dinging him around the ear again and again as she scrambled to her feet, shouting all the way.

“Start ripping up my floors, break mirrors by throwing people at them? Throwing people
at
people? How about me? Huh? I suppose you wanna throw me at something as well?”

Zane backed up, trying to shield his head and abused ear from the mad-woman. In all his years he’d never had a human actually attack him. Most either passed out, or ran off screaming. They didn’t follow him as he tried to escape, hitting him with the damn furniture.

A snarl of frustration escaped his lips as she lifted the wooden club again. As she brought it down, he moved, grabbing it and her wrist in one massive paw.

“Stop it,” he snarled, muzzle inches from her face.

She stopped, her eyes rolling from his grasp on her wrist, fingers topped with lethal, razor sharp claws, to the equally razor sharp teeth revealed by his curled back lips. The blood drained from her face and fear poured off her skin as she obviously realised the dangerous situation she’d gotten herself in. There were no reports of humans attacking wolves for one very good reason. Those that tried didn’t tend to survive.

Her legs started to shake, her eyes lost focus. Zane swore again.

“Oh no, don’t you—”

His words were too late. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she sagged, hanging like a broken marionette from his grip on her wrist.

“—pass out on me.”

He gathered her into his arms as gently as he could, tramping through the ruined bar into the corridor, ducking his head automatically as he did so. His half-form was nearly seven foot of lean, mean fury killing machine. He’d learnt to duck early. It was that or a permanent migraine from clouting himself across the head.

There was an office around here. He’d seen it as he charged through to rescue her. He grumbled deep in his throat as he was forced to squeeze through a narrow door to find himself in a room no bigger than a damn coffin. If that beating was the thanks he got for rescuing a woman, he was done being a knight in shining armour. She could rescue her damn self in future. Ungrateful cow.

Resisting the urge to just dump her on the little sofa in the corner of the room, he laid her down as gently as he could and stood back. She had a cut lip, but he didn’t think she’d banged her head. Just passed out when she realised she was in a world of crap. He didn’t blame her. If he’d just clobbered a werewolf around the head multiple times, he’d pass out as well. Or run like fuck. Yeah, running like fuck seemed like a way better option.

She should come around soon, he reassured himself, hunkering down on powerful hind legs to lay a big hand over her chest. She was breathing…just looked like she was asleep, her lashes fluttering against pale cheeks. And just like that he was caught, unable to look away.

She was beautiful. Tiny,
really
tiny, and packed with luscious curves he wanted to explore with his hands and lips. Dark hair curled riotously around her face and flowed down her back, strands escaping to frame delicate features that had sparked with intelligence and stubbornness when she was awake. Large dark eyes over a button nose, with a full, plump pair of lips underneath. Lips that even now called to the man in him, begged to be kissed…plundered…ravished.

He leaned forward to do just that before he remembered he was still in his half form and not able to kiss her. But before he got there her eyes snapped open and fixed on him. She gasped, lifting her arm… Fucking hell, she still had the damn chair leg. Zane scuttled back, lifting his arm to ward off the blow he knew was coming when the strangest thing happened.

His wolf receded. He yelped as bones popped and cracked, muscles twisted and skin swallowed fur. The creature gave up its claim on his flesh and bones, disappearing back within faster and easier than it had ever done before.

Leaving him stark-bollock naked in the middle of the floor.

Great. Just fucking great.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded, jumping off the couch in a heartbeat and backing up. The chair leg was still raised as Zane stared at her in dumb shock.

“How did you do that?”

She’d called his wolf, sending the creature packing right out from under him. Something she shouldn’t be able to do. Something no one should be able to do…he was a damn alpha.
No-one
should be able to do that to him.

Chapter Three

The end of the chair leg wavered as Ashlee frowned. “Do what?”

There was a naked man in the middle of her office. Correction, there was a werewolf in the middle of her office, one currently wearing his human form. Without any clothes on, it amounted to pretty much the same thing.

She lowered the chair leg since he didn’t appear to be in imminent danger of attacking her again. Not that he’d actually attacked her in the first place. Just thrown a pixie and she’d gotten in the way. Then she’d hit him with her chair leg.

Ignoring his general level of nakedness, she studied his face and gasped at the blood trickling from a cut on the side of his head.

“Oh my God, did I do that?”

Dropping the make-shift club, she rushed to his side and grabbed his chin to tilt his head up. The cut was messy, but to her relief not too deep.

“Errmmm, yeah, I guess.”

His voice was a deep rumble that reached all the way down to her toes. She ignored it as she turned his head this way and that to get a better look at the wound. Damn, she shouldn’t have hit him so hard.

“It should have healed when I shifted.” He lifted a hand to touch his head then looked at his blood-covered fingers in confusion. “It usually does.”

“Don’t touch it!” she ordered, slapping his hand away when he went to probe the wound again. “God knows what germs you have on your fingers. Sit on the couch, and for heaven’s sake, cover yourself up.”

Bustling away, she ignored the sleek, smooth skin and heavy muscles in favour of heading out into the kitchen to find the first aid kit. The room was darkened, just the dim night lights on. Shivering at the chill gust of wind from the open back door, she hurried to close it and on the way back almost tripped over a pile of clothes in the middle of the floor. They had to be his.

Gathering them up, she grabbed the first aid kit from the wall beside the door and headed back into the office. He was seated on the couch now, using a cushion to conceal his modesty, so she risked a quick glance over him as she set the first aid kit down.

God, the guy was sex on a stick. Tall and broad-shouldered with defined and heavily toned muscles she wanted to stroke, tracing their lines and patterns with her fingertips and tongue. Then she got to his face and her heart stuttered.

Shoulder-length sandy hair flowed over his shoulders, framing a face that could have belonged to an angel. With cut cheekbones, a straight nose and hard jaw, he had deep, aquamarine eyes that sparked with intelligence as he watched her rifle in the medical case and hold up an…eye patch.

One eyebrow arched and she swore, dropping the patch like she’d been burnt, and grabbed a pair of gloves. Last thing she needed was a Lycan infection. Turning furry once a month would really put a crimp in her plans and that was before they took her food hygiene certificates off her for being infected. Not happening.

“Hold still, let me clean this. Then you can get dressed. I found your clothes in the kitchen. Then you can tell me what the hell you were doing in my bar.”