Emerald: Rare Gems Series - Billionaire Wolf Shapeshifter Romance (7 page)

He had no idea what they might have done had the clerk that had been hovering around them not cleared her throat. Em had told him she was a wolf too, and a part of Ruby and Josh’s new pack. Her smile told him that she knew just what they were thinking.

“I can have it put with the rest of your things unless you want to wear it home.” Jul nodded. “Good choice. I’ve always thought that Emerald looked good in that color blue. It matches your eyes, too.”

When she walked away, he pulled Em into his arms and kissed her. It would have to do for now as they had to get moving. But when she moaned, he cupped her ass and rocked into her. Stepping back from her was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

“We have an appointment.” She looked dazed and he laughed. “That is a good look on my Miss Erickson. It makes you look sexy and wanton. A look that I could get used to very quickly.”

“You do know that I’m paying you back for all this. Every bit of it.” She looked at the price tag on the dress and then back at him. “Okay, it’ll take me about ninety years, but I’ll get it paid.”

“You really want to pay me back?” She nodded and he grinned. “Then come with me and enjoy what we’re doing. And don’t say no until you hear me out.”

“I’m not going to like this, am I?” He told her probably not. “Then why are we doing it? If you know that I’m going to be upset, why are you doing it?”

“I need to keep you safe.” She didn’t say anything as he settled the bill. Tayler helped carry their purchases out to the waiting limo and then winked at him when he handed Em into the car. He didn’t think he’d ever seen him do that before. And he paused to ask him what he thought of his Em.

“She’s a keeper. But I think you already figured that out, didn’t you?” Jul nodded. “You know what she is? Besides the best thing that will ever happen to you?”

“My mate. A wolf. A school teacher.” Tayler smiled and nodded as he went to the other side of the car to open the door for him. “What are you?”

“Tiger.” Jul nodded. “Mr. Whitney? This woman, she’s in trouble? You called me here because she’s in trouble, didn’t you?”

“Yes. A man is stalking her, and I fear for her life. I know that she’s a wolf, a very capable one at that, but he’s dangerous and scary. I need you to help me keep her safe.” Tayler nodded and told him he would. “I thank you. And Tayler, I’m going to move here. Do you have a problem with that? Can you see yourself moving here?”

“To work for you, Mr. Whitney, I’d live about anywhere. And the missus there, she’s about the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.” Then he laughed. “And she’s got you all twisted up. It looks good on you.”

Jul got into the limo and pulled her into his arms. Yeah, he wanted to tell Tayler, it felt pretty good too. As she talked about the clothing they’d gotten, he thought about living with her for the rest of his life, and for some reason, it didn’t scare him like it normally did when a woman got too close.

The gates to the house were opened. As they drove through them, she looked at him but said nothing. He’d reminded her again that she had to listen to him first before getting upset. The moment the house came into view, however, he knew that not only did she love it, but he felt as if he were home.

“The owners have gone out for the evening,” Mrs. Donald told him in way of greeting. “They have said if you have any questions, we can call them, but they wanted you to see it as if it were yours. The staff, if you would like, have said that they would stay on if you want them to.”

“Staff?” He winked at Em when she sounded panicky. “I know that I’m not supposed to say anything, but this house is monstrous. You can see that, right?”

“Yes.” He kissed her mouth. “Keep an open mind and we’ll look the house over. Then at the end you can tell me what you don’t like about it.”

She looked like she might hit him, but she turned and walked up the steps. Jul stood watching her until the realtor cleared her throat. Then Jul moved up the stairs as well and entered what he knew was going to be his first home.

The house was perfect. The furniture matched each room as if it had been designed with the room in mind, which Jul thought it had. The kitchen was as he had imagined it being, large and open, white tile, with every kind of equipment needed to serve a houseful. He did have a thought about the vampires living there, but was told without asking that they entertained a great deal. The cook in the kitchen told him that she’d be available to stay if he should want her to.

The dining room was massive but could be made into something for a smaller group with the closing of a few doors, the butler told him. There was china in all the wall units that looked like it was seasonal, and Jul watched as Em walked around to each of them with her hands behind her back. Jul thought about having his mom and Em’s family over at Christmas time and smiled.

As they were led up to the third and fourth floors, he watched Em as she touched things here and there, straightened a pillow that had looked good to him, and smiled a great deal. They were in the master bedroom, a place he could have put his entire winery in, when he finally asked her what she thought.

“You know what I think. I love this place.” She turned from looking out over the pool at him. “Why are we looking at this? You’re not thinking of buying it, are you?”

“I am going to buy it.” She turned and looked out the window. “I won’t if you don’t want me to. But I can tell that you love this place. So do I. And I can see us having our families here for holidays, the pool in the back filled with everyone while we have a big dinner out of doors. And there is enough land for you to run on as well. Lots of it.”

“I’m not used to the kind of wealth you have.” He understood that. Jul had grown up with lots of money and the things it brought to his life. But he could also see what a person on the outside might think of his kind of rich. “You are very rich, aren’t you?”

“Very.” He didn’t know what to say to her when she was quiet like this. “Em, I’m not sure if you believe me right now, but I want to share this with you. I would love to live here with you, and have babies, our babies, grow up here. I know you like this place. I can see it in your face, but if it’s too much, we can look more.”

“I love this place, like you said, but….” She turned again, this time wrapping her arms around his neck. “This is so fast. How long have we known each other? A week? Ten days? Don’t you think this is sort of scary fast?”

He loved her. Just in that moment, Jul knew that he was in love with her, and the amount of time they’d known each other mattered little. Christ, he was in love with Emerald Erickson. Going down on one knee, he held her hand. When she struggled just a little, he kissed the back of her wrist and looked up at her.

“I have no ring to give you. But I do have my heart. And I give it to you freely. I’ve never been in love before, never thought it even possible that I’d find someone, anyone, that would make me feel like you do. I love you. A declaration that I have never said to a woman in my life, but to you I say it over and over. I love you, Em. With all my heart, I love you. And if you would do me the honor of being my wife, I’ll show you every day how much I love you.” He kissed her hand again and looked up at her face. She was crying and nodding. Jul stood up and pulled her into his arms and kissed her again, this time with all the love he could give her. When he lifted his head from hers, she smiled at him.

“Can I buy you this house?” She nodded again. “Good. And will you help me fill the rooms, all of them, with family? Children of our own, others if you want?”

“Yes.” He kissed her again. “But we have to take care of Nolan first. He’s not going to ruin this for us.”

“He won’t.” As they went to find Mrs. Donald, Jul thought of all the things he was working on to insure that Bruce didn’t ruin anyone’s lives again, especially those of his new family.

Chapter 7

Nolan pulled his book out again. He was still trying to finish off the bitch, Winter, but she had more guards around her room than he’d seen anywhere else. And the man? He had no fucking clue where they’d taken him, but he was gone. Maybe he was dead, but Nolan scoured the paper every day and had not read a single thing about him. As he put this notebook away, he pulled out the cash and jewelry he’d collected today. It had been a terrible day for him, and just looking at the things he did manage to get didn’t make it any better.

The cable company he was working for had no fucking clue what went on when they assigned them a job. He didn’t really work for the cable company itself, but was a contractor for them. He did the installs. And he also, when the mood was on him, did a few pick-ups as well. Like the pretty little bracelet he’d gotten today on his first run.

The first place he’d had a woman that was so fucking ugly that he’d nearly told her that he had another call. But she was wearing this diamond on her finger that looked like it would choke a horse. So he went in and wired her house up. He’d also managed to get over three hundred bucks in cash that was laying on the bedside table, a watch that had three faces on it, as well as a nice little bottle of muscle relaxers for his trouble. But the next house he went to nearly got him caught at his fucking around.

He knew the moment that she opened the door that she wanted him. Her body screamed at him to take her, and the short little skirt she had on…well damn, it was fine. As she told him where she wanted each cable unit installed, he walked behind her, watching her ass swing back and forth. She’d nearly caught him twice, but he’d been at this game a lot longer than she had, and he managed to pretend to look at anything else when she turned in his direction. As soon as she led him to the bedroom, Nolan made his move.

“You wanna fuck?” She eyed him carefully and told him to show her his cock. It wasn’t really what she’d said, but he could see it in her eyes. Freeing his cock, he fisted himself as she stood there. Christ, she was going to be a screamer, Nolan knew it. He popped her in the head when she turned her back to him, as if she was begging him to do it, and he knew that she was going to be so much fun.

Throwing her to the bed, like he knew she’d love, he held her down while he used his tape on her. Nolan took her picture with his cell phone and emailed it to himself. Then he deleted it from his phone as he looked down at her. She’d been begging him with her eyes, and he was hard as stone watching her. When he had her taped to the bed at all four corners, he cut away her clothing with his box knife.

“Yeah, you want this.” He stroked his cock again as he watched her. “And I’m going to give it to you as soon as I get you ready.”

As he cut into her leg, the blood poured from the wound. He ran his hands all through it as he got harder and harder, his cock aching to come. As soon as he was covered in it, he fisted his cock again and felt his balls tighten up. Before he came, however, he reached into his pocket and pulled on a condom.

“We don’t want any little surprises now, do we?” As soon as he had it fitted over him, he fisted his cock again. This time he held his balls tightly as he watched the blood pour from her.

Nolan came twice while she was tied up. He knew that she’d want some sort of relief too, but he was making her wait for a bit. Women liked that kind of shit with him, and he kind of enjoyed it himself. After disposing of the used condom by flushing the commode three times, he turned on the shower and stepped in.

After he cleaned with a hot shower, he opened the bathroom medicine cabinet to have a looksee while he dried off. He’d found the prescription almost as soon as he opened it. The clear bottle and the syringes were laying on the bottom shelf.

“Anticoagulant. U F Heparin,” he read aloud. “Take three times daily.” He looked at the back of the bottle, and it had all kinds of warnings on it. Test. If bleeding is profuse, call nine-one-one. Nolan walked back into the bedroom to see what profuse might mean to her, and was surprised to see that she wasn’t breathing. Nolan went into panic mode.

It wasn’t as if he wasn’t going to kill her anyway. That was his plan all along. But the fact that she’d died before he’d had his fun and that she’d bled out without him having any say in it had given him a scare. Not a big one, but enough to throw him off his game. He’d panicked, and that was what nearly got him fucked up.

Calling the police was out of the question. They’d be there before he got a chance to clean up, and there was no fucking way he could do this quickly. As he began gathering his things—tape, box knife, and a couple of other things he’d used on her—he congratulated himself on parking on the street over from this one. It was a habit he’d been doing for years. He was pulling the tape off when he thought of the residue it might leave.

“Think.” He sat down and took several deep breaths. He had to be calm or like the people who got caught, he’d be in jail in a matter of minutes. Nolan reached for his bag of tools and counted them. Realizing that he was missing one, he searched everywhere. He found it still in the bed with the woman. She’d been playing with it the entire time, he knew it.

Then he went to the bathroom. He’d been wearing gloves, of course, but he still wiped things down. Putting the bottle back on the shelf, he flushed the toilet three more times to make sure that the condom was gone as well. He had heard about things being taken from the toilet and getting some of his fellow cohorts caught. This was not going to be his downfall.

The bedroom was a little trickier. Nolan went to the door twice and walked in the way they had to see what he might have touched. Nothing but her. And that had only been to help her on the bed, then tie her down. Taking out the alcohol pads he used to wipe over surfaces before sticking anything to it, he wiped her arms down, and her ankles. As he finished with each pad, he made sure he put it into the zip bag he’d brought. Calming now, he left the bedroom and went down the hall to the front door, counting his tools again as he went. Everything was there. But things were not as they had been left by him and the woman.

The front door had not been touched by him, not even to open the door. Another habit he’d gotten into. He never wanted any of the bitches to come back on him saying that he’d forced his way in. As he moved to the door, he noticed almost immediately that he was in deeper shit than he’d thought. The door was open just a little.

Then he had heard a sound in the kitchen…a man humming. Nolan nearly screamed when the little dog that he’d seen when he came in came walking toward him. The low growl from the little dog made his heart rate leap up, and he had nearly gone into a panic again. Nolan ran to the door, pushed it open with the screwdriver he had in his hand, and went out. Just as the door started to latch shut, he saw the man going up the stairs. Nolan had left by rounding the house and going to his truck.

And now here he was, at home and still a little freaked out about what had happened. Not killing the woman, hell no. Had she not wanted him to fuck her and then kill her, she shouldn’t have been there where he could. It wasn’t crazy talking, but the truth. Women set themselves up to be hurt by him. Begged him to, he thought with a grin.

Opening his book to the first blank page, he took it to his computer. Printing out the picture on his email, he deleted it from his email, then his trashcan. No one would be able to take his computer and frame him for shit that wasn’t there. After securing the photo in his notebook, he got out his paperwork and copies of the paperwork, and wrote down her name. “Margaret Hansel, thank you very much.” She only got two stars because she’d let herself be dead too soon, as far as he was concerned. Still, it was a good release for him. Nolan closed his eyes and let himself rest for a while.

When he woke it was dark. Stretching, he sat there and thought about how amazing he felt. Turning on the news, he went into his kitchen and got out four of the many frozen dinners he had, and popped them in the microwave. The part where Mrs. Hansel had been found by her husband today was just coming on.

“Mr. Hansel, a well-respected and dedicated husband, came home today to find his wife brutally murdered.” Nolan took offense to that. He didn’t do nothing more than tie her up and cut her one time. Brutal was what he did to bitches that fucked him over. Like that Winter bitch and Erickson. He was really going to be brutal to them as soon as he found them.

He barely listened as they went on and on about how she was a lovely woman. How she had volunteered at the homeless shelter twice a week. And that she’d been on the way to have her heart transplant in a couple of days. Instead, he tried to think how to get to that fucking Erickson bitch. She had been on his list for far too long.

He had gone back to the school over the weekend to tell her that she was going to finish what they’d started, completely forgetting it was Saturday. Then on Monday, today, he’d gone by on his way to work, and was blocked entrance to the area. The mall cop, or whatever the hell he was, had said that unless he had a good reason for being there, he wasn’t to come on the property. As much as he wanted to point out that his taxes being paid to have that place even open was enough to let him go where the fuck he wanted, he didn’t want the cop to remember him. So instead he asked him about an address, saying that’s all he wanted anyway. Nolan turned off the television just as a blurry video came on.

Going through his notebook, he found Erickson’s address again. He was headed out the door when he remembered that he had to put things back. Shoving the notebook back under the floor, he smiled to himself. He was the perfect killer. Nolan thought that they might even do a movie of the week about him someday. But they’d have to leave things open. There was no way they were ever going to catch him. And the ending would just have to be open.

Driving to her little place, he thought of her. Emerald Erickson was prime. Her tits were a nice handful, and her body fit against his like they’d been made to go together. Fucking her, if he ever wanted to, would be epic. He could almost feel himself coming with her several times as he took her. Damn, but she’d make his cock so hard, like it was right now he realized, that he’d have to fuck her seven or eight times a day just to get his rocks off. Nolan could not wait to find the bitch and have her take up where they’d left off.

~~~

“I’ve been by your place.” Emerald looked up at the only other teacher that had come to work today. Out of the four of them that she’d been told would be working with her, one had never shown up and her class had to be divided into the rest of their classes, and the woman who’d not come in today hadn’t even called to say she wasn’t going to be in.

“What place is that?” She’d not told anyone about her and Jul buying a house. Hell, she’d not even told her family just where it was yet. Just that she and Jul had decided to try this thing out, and that they’d purchased a home.

“That place where your family lives. Some major goings on there. What are you doing? Having the place renovated?” To be honest, Emerald had no idea what was going on at her sister’s house. She was there over the weekend, but hadn’t noticed anything going on. “Last year you had all the trees brought in, and now you’re having something big done. What is it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t live there, my sister and her husband do.” Emerald sipped her water. “Why were you out that way? I didn’t think anything was out near their place.”

“I was out with my boyfriend and I knew where you lived.”
That’s creepy
, Emerald thought, but said nothing. “There was all these signs about no trespassing, but we didn’t think anyone would care if we just peeked.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s what no trespassing means, no peeking.” The teacher huffed at her. Emerald knew her last name was Fletcher, and that only because she had a sign outside her door that proclaimed all that came through her doors were Fletcher children. Whatever that meant.

“It’s not like anyone really cares about that. I bet your sister and her family enjoy having people come up and look at their home.” Emerald told her no, they didn’t. “Oh come on. Someone with that kind of money to spend only does that to show off. And if things get out of hand sometimes, they can say that the signs were posted when the cops come by to take away someone who’s gotten out of hand. We didn’t, but there are some who might.”

“I’m pretty sure that my family likes their privacy. So if I were you, I’d stay out the next time. She won’t like to have to call the police on you. And believe me, she will.” Fletcher huffed again and left her at the table. The kids were due in at nine and it was ten minutes till. As she made her way to the classroom, she wondered who was caring for the other class. But the room was empty of anyone, so Emerald went to her own room.

Two more weeks and she’d be done with this. And after that she had a month before the pack school reopened. According to Blair, there was going to be a whole new set of students to come to them this year as well. After thinking about it for about ten seconds, she decided that she was not going to sub in this district again. Not for the summer or even when she was off. There was just too much stress in this place.

As the kids started to come into the room, Emerald noticed that most of them were quiet. The day before she’d told them about Connor and that he’d been hurt very badly. She wouldn’t tell a bunch of eight and nine year olds that he’d been killed no matter what they heard at home. Connor’s sister, Katie, was still in the hospital, but doing well now. She had talked to Jul about her, but never asked him about taking her in. She still wasn’t sure about that.