Cracked (5 page)

Chapter Five

A
ngelo’s cell phone ringing interrupted his early morning dreams. Sarita snuggled closer to his chest, growling under her breath. With a tender smile, Angelo pressed a kiss to her forehead and reached across her for the phone. He frowned when he noted the phone number. Part of his consulting business had grown to include serving as a wolf-human liaison once the wolves had revealed themselves to their human brethren. The displayed number was his human counterpart, Special Agent Geoff Neubacher, FBI Lupine Relations Specialist. The man was half lawman, half politician, and all asshole. He was also Angelo’s best non-wolf friend.

“The fuck, dude.” He scowled at the phone.

“Zalez. Am I interrupting your sun salutations or something?” The other man answered calmly.

“I got married last night.” Angelo smiled as he remembered the feeling of his teeth sinking into Sarita’s shoulder. A wave of purpose and brightness had washed through him, and it still pulsed in him, and would for the rest of his life, Goddess willing.

“Oh man, I hate that I am making this call then. We have a wolf in custody. I kinda need you to come south. Any chance you were planning on seeing the nation’s capital during your honeymoon?”

“Damn, Geoff. All I want to see for the next seventy-two hours is my mate’s gorgeous body,” Angelo snarled into the phone. “Wait. You said ‘in custody.’ What does that mean? Your police arrested one of ours for something?”

“It’s a protective custody. We think she was poisoned.”

“Poisoned? A Were? Our metabolisms are too strong for that—unless it was silver, the wolf would have taken over and cleaned it out of the system before any damage could be done.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it, Zalez. Nine-one-one was called in for what appeared to be a drug overdose in a hotel room. As the paramedics were preparing to go to work, the woman shifted into a wolf. Not much of one either—just a little bit of a thing. I don’t get it, I thought you all were the Big Bad?”

“Well, some are. I’m sorta small for a wolf too, you know.”

“Sorry, man, I didn’t mean it like that. At six feet tall and ripped, you’re hardly a little guy. This wolf is seriously tiny, even for a human. And she was very close to OD’ing on whatever she was injected with, then the wolf took over and saved her ass. She seems okay now, just ornery and not very talkative. She growls at anyone who comes close. We wonder if she was some kind of experimentation subject. You know we do our best to make sure wolves don’t get kidnapped, but, man, she’s so freakin’ little.”

“Dammit. I’ll take a shuttle in. I’m in New England. I can make it to New York in a couple hours, then I’ll be on the next shuttle to DC.”

“I’m sorry about interrupting your honeymoon, Zalez.”

“Duty calls and doesn’t give a fuck if it’s convenient.” Angelo sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. He could feel his mate stirring next to him. “I’ll call you when I reach the District. Where is she being held?”

“They have her at the Academy in Quantico. I’ll make sure you have all the clearance you need whenever you get here. “

“See you soon, G.”

Angelo hung up the phone and looked down at the little wolf curled against his side. Indigo eyes glared up at him: hurt, yet resigned.

“The Wolf of Wall Street to the rescue?”

“I’m so sorry,
querida.
Would you like to come with me?”

She looked startled that he had asked, then a blush spread over her cheeks.
Of course he asked—they were mated.
“No, love. I can’t. I’m under deadline on a children’s book. I wish I could; what you’re doing sounds really interesting.”

“How much did you hear?” he asked, searching her eyes.

“Enough to know I’m not the only one with a busy day ahead of me. Go. I’ll be here when you get back.”

Angelo leaned over and kissed Sarita’s sweet lips. He felt a rush of desire coiling low in his belly, hardening his cock. For a moment, he rolled her partway underneath him, pressing himself to her as he deepened the kiss, his hands finding their way into her hair. He felt her nipples harden against his chest, and his teeth shifted, a sweet, aching pleasure.

Goddess
, he’d forgotten how good this felt, making love with a mate. He hadn’t been celibate over the years, but none of his liaisons had filled him with this sharp pleasure. It scalded his balls, made him want to bury himself, cock and teeth and heart and soul within another, not any other…
her.
He shivered in delight and started to slide a hand down her body. She shook her head, murmuring against his lips.

“No, lover, if we start this now, you’ll be late. Get out of here.” As she pulled away from him, he saw her cheeks were flushed with desire and her eyes had darkened, black pupils swallowing up the indigo irises.

“You’re right.” He looked around for his pants, stopping abruptly when he saw them on the floor. He shook his head in wonder—he wasn’t the kind of guy who got so carried away he threw his clothes on the floor. Usually he was more collected. His little mate apparently made him lose a bit of his tightly imposed self-control. A hint of a smile turned up the corners of his mouth. This could get fun.

He turned back to her, smiling. “I can be quick.”

“Where’s the fun in that for me?” she teased, a challenging arch to her eyebrows. Through their connection, he could feel her nerves and her bravado like they were his own. He could also feel how much she wanted him.

With a growl he threw her down on the bed. He tried to remember she was an innocent, mated for less than twenty-four hours. There was so much she didn’t know, so much to show her about her own sensual capacity. With a hard, quick kiss to her lips, he pinned her hands above her head, then took a moment to stare at her.

Sarita swallowed hard under Angelo’s frank perusal of her body. She was an artist, not as fit as some of the other wolves with more active careers. A flicker of nervousness worked through her.

“Don’t.” His voice was hoarse. “Don’t ever think you aren’t enough for me. You are everything,
querida
.” She felt a wave of sharp lust run through her and realized it was coming from him—felt her lips fall open in a round “oh” of surprise at his feral smile, felt his teeth skim along the side of her neck as her own shifted fast and hard, a tight tingling ache.

“Oh…” She breathed the word as her body seemed to warm from the inside out, a sharp, tense feeling, reminding her of her first time blowing glass in art school: heat, swollen and liquid. As he used his teeth to sensitize the skin along her collarbones, she arched upward and let him into her mind fully.

S
í
, querida.
The touch of his mind to hers was somehow lush and soft and hard-edged all at once. Before she could remark on the contrast, he took her nipple between his teeth and suddenly she felt her wolf instincts take over. She was still getting to know the wild creature inside her, but in that moment she loved the wolf that let her bare her teeth at the lover who still held her pinned, loved how his wolf recognized it.

He let go with one hand, and with the other still holding her wrists above her head, he turned her over.

She loved the wild instinct that told her exactly how to fit her body to his, and the feral joy that chased her beating heart as he filled her and—
No, no, no!
she snarled as he stopped.

Shhh, querida, wait for it.
He urged her as he began moving in a slow rhythm that made her ache. Both her hands were free suddenly, and his hands had moved to her hips. The wet heat of his tongue licking up her spine nearly threw her over the edge, but then his hand had slipped between her legs and a sweet throb of pressure right—

Oh.

Right.

His teeth found her shoulder, and her head went back.

Sweet—

Sharp—

The rush of excitement and pleasure as his teeth sank into her shoulder and the heat exploded as she took a great shuddering breath, trying to hold off the inevitable rush, but then the hand on her hip disappeared, and—

Slap.
A sharp sting on her ass married the heat pulsing from his bite, and she fell, waves of heat and color and sensation, shattered, feeling the edges of his mind pulsing against her in satisfaction and praise, and then his bliss washed over her as he shouted her name, and she shuddered again, a smaller wave of joy but no less sweet or hot.

She was turning in his arms, she knew he was rolling her over, but she couldn’t make thoughts or words take shape to make sense of it.

A fierce smile on his face, he kissed her, sending more aftershocks of her orgasm through her. And then the heat of his body left hers. She sat up, watching him start to get dressed. She could feel a splinter of regret coming from him, and for a moment, it stung before she realized he wanted to stay. The regret wasn’t aimed at her, but rather at his duties taking him away from her.

“You’ll be back tonight, love,” she reassured him.

“Will you run with me tonight? Complete the bond?” He brushed a kiss along her cheekbone as he picked up his shredded shirt.

She nodded shyly, wrapping her arms around his neck and breathing in the scent of him. She took the shirt from his hands. “I’ll be keeping this.”

“You do that.” He nipped her lower lip with a grin.

“Hurry back to me,” she whispered, suddenly hating that he was leaving.

“Siempre, querida.”

Angelo walked into the holding cell where the FBI was detaining the wolf. He took note of the gray hair and diminutive size. He sighed as he realized he knew her. She didn’t look up, though he knew she knew he was there. It was so quiet in the room that he could hear her heart beating. He didn’t need to wonder how she had come to this. He knew the story, seethed like everyone else when he thought how close she’d come to destroying everything.

“Kathy Kirk.”

Finally, she looked up, met his eyes. A look of wary resignation filled hers.

“You look like shit,” he remarked. She had always seemed like little more than a pup. Playful and cute. The last two decades had been hard on her, living without pack. Wolves weren’t meant to live that way. Even Angelo, technically a rogue, was connected to the national meta-pack. Kathy wasn’t, not really, and it was destroying her. She’d aged a hundred wolf years in less than a quarter of that. She wasn’t aging gracefully; her wolf was doing the bare minimum to keep her alive.

“You look…happy,” she remarked, staring at him. “It looks good on you.”

“Thank you. I mated last night.”

“Really?” One pale eyebrow arched. “Sorry if I’ve spoiled your celebration.”

“Who did this to you, Kathy?”

“Who mated you, Angelo?” she volleyed.

“Sarita Murphy.”

A low, whistling growl emerged from Kathy’s throat.

“So did you come here to kill me? Take more of my fingers?” She held up the hand that Bianca had stripped of its two outermost fingers twenty-five years ago. “One more person to take a bite out of the Judas of the wolves?”

“Hush.” He scowled. “I hate what you did. If someone is poisoning wolves, I’m not sad that they started with you.”

She flinched.

“But what happened to you is very much my concern. Who did this to you?” He crouched beside her now, looking into bloodshot eyes that were filled with hatred and remorse…he could see her wolf, skulking behind her eyes, so filled with self-loathing that it made his own wolf want to whine.

“No one did this to me, Angelo. I did it to myself. So you can tell your human friends to let me go, and I’ll be on my way.”

His face filled with disgust.

“So that’s it? The great mystery? Kathy Kirk has turned into a junkie? And this is what I interrupted my honeymoon for?”

“I’m no junkie,” she whispered, eyes falling to the floor again.

“Then what the hell is going on, Kathy?” He was furious now. His wolf was straining to burst free, but he kept it under tight control.

“Do you know how hard it is to kill yourself?” She asked him quietly, not meeting his eyes. “Especially when your wolf is onto you? Her survival instincts kick in and she just takes over, healing, flushing the system. Really, it’s better than a juice fast for cleaning toxins. But in the end, you’ve just suffered through hell and gotten nowhere for it. You can’t even shoot yourself
’
cause she shifts your hands so you can’t pull the trigger.”

“You tried to kill yourself?” Angelo scowled in disgust.

“The first time, I jumped off a cliff.” She smirked. “That one hurt like hell. But after my wolf took over and repaired all the bones, I was fine.”

“The second time, I tried melting down silver flechettes—you know my Uncle Gordon had thousands of them lying around—and drinking the silver. I puked it back up before it could harden and start infecting me.”

“The third time, I tried just OD’ing on heroin, figured at least I could get high while I waited to die.” She shook her head. “No dice. Wolf kept it from having any effect.”

“So, for the past ten years, I’ve been doing research on how different drugs affect the lupine brain. After a few botched tries, I was able to find something that would subdue the wolf part of me, and mixed it with enough narcotics to overdose. I made it, Angelo.”

Her face softened with a look of wonder. It reminded him of the old Kathy, the one who had been his friend.

“I was there. The Raven came to greet me. I made it.”

“So, if you died, why are you here, still being a pain in my ass?” Angelo demanded.

“She sent me back. She said I have work to do.” Kathy rubbed at her face with both hands. “So I guess this sorry excuse for an existence is going to be my lot for a little longer.”

“What did she say your task was?” Angelo asked quietly. Twenty-five years earlier, Kathy had been ordered by her uncle to kill Bianca while she was pregnant with Sarita. If she threatened either of them ever again, he’d do everything to her that her drugs hadn’t managed to do.