Her Rogue Alpha (X-Ops Book 5) (26 page)

“You’re not hungry anymore?” she asked as he put it back in the fridge.

She couldn’t believe he’d be satisfied with a handful of crackers and a couple bites of cheese.

“Oh, I’m hungry.” Grinning, he took her hand and urged her to her feet. “But not for food.”

Layla smiled as he led the way to her bedroom. She liked the sound of that.

Jayson skipped the overhead light, going for the lamp on her bedside table instead. Good choice. The soft glow provided the perfect mood lighting.

Without a word, he took her into his arms and kissed her gently, his tongue delving into her mouth to caress hers. She moaned against his lips, the desire she felt for him completely washing away her previous exhaustion.

As one, they slowly took off each other’s clothes, undoing buttons and belt buckles. Somehow she ended up naked before she’d even gotten Jayson’s jeans down. Figuring he needed to catch up, she dropped to her knees in front of him and tugged them down, then did the same with his underwear.

That put her eye level with his erection. Since she was already down there, she might as well help him with that too.

He let out a good imitation of a growl as she closed her mouth over the head of his cock and took him deep. Who said he didn’t have any animal DNA in him? He definitely seemed like an animal in the bedroom.

She wrapped her hand around base of his shaft and made a few animalistic sounds of her own as she reveled in the taste of him on her tongue. He was so delicious that she naturally sped up, taking him deeper with each bob of her head. Jayson threaded his fingers in her hair, guiding her movements and making sure she took it nice and slow. That was obviously his way of saying he wanted to make this last. Maybe she should remind him that John had given them the next two days off. No need to rush.

Jayson’s hand tightened in her hair then, gently pulling her away so he could tug her to her feet.

“Hey,” she protested. “I was busy down there.”

Jayson grinned and nudged her backward onto the mattress. “Trust me, I noticed.” He scooted her back a little, then climbed between her legs. “That’s why I stopped you. This is our first time together in our place. I want it to be memorable.”

Layla laughed, appreciating the thought. Of course, if she’d been able to finish what she’d been doing, it would have been memorable as well. That said, she was eager to see what he had in mind.

She found out a moment later when Jayson slid down until his face was even with her pussy. Lowering his head, he closed his mouth over her clit and began to lick with firm, steady swipes of his tongue.

Sighing, Layla buried her fingers in his hair to control his movements just as he’d done, but it didn’t matter. He seemed to know exactly where to focus his efforts to make her go crazy without guidance. She clutched the sheet with her free hand, rolling her hips in time with his tongue as the sensations in her clit got stronger and more intense. Jayson cupped her ass in both hands, got a good grip, and held on tight, refusing to let her go anywhere.

Layla threw her head back and went with it, loving the way he took control. As her orgasm approached, her claws and fangs slipped out of their own accord. It was so beautiful being with a man she could let herself go with. It made everything he was doing feel even better.

She was so caught up in the moment that when her climax hit, she let out a feline yowl. It was a relief not to have hold it in like she had in the library in Donetsk. This time she could be as loud as she wanted and she didn’t have to care if anyone heard.

Layla wasn’t sure how long her orgasm lasted, but when she opened her eyes, she found Jayson lying with his cheek resting comfortably on the inside of her right thigh, his mouth turned up in a smile, his blue eyes twinkling.

“I’m going to enjoy watching you come like that for the rest of our lives,” he said softly.

She smiled. “I’m completely good with that.”

He pressed a tender kiss to her thigh. “Any chance you have condoms, or are we thinking of going the unprotected route again?”

The idea of feeling him come inside her again and the possibility of the pregnancy that might come with it wasn’t an issue for her, but the reality was that they had things they wanted to do as a couple before starting a family, so that called for birth control.

“Top drawer of the nightstand,” she said. “I’ve been saving them for this moment.”

Jayson rummaged around until he found what he was looking for. Layla spread her legs wide, purring when he slid in deep a few moments later.

“You feel so good,” she whispered as she brought her arms and legs up and locked them around him.

Jayson placed his arms on either side of her, gazing into her eyes as he slowly began to move in and out. She reached up and pulled his head down, capturing his mouth with hers at the same time she squeezed tighter with her legs, urging him to go harder and faster. He refused, driving into her with those perfect, careful thrusts that seemed designed to drive her insane.

His mouth trailed from her lips, down to her neck, then over to her left shoulder, nibbling and nipping as he went. She let him play, entertaining herself by tracing her claws slowly up and down his triceps, which were bulging and flexing nicely as he kept himself poised above her. She liked the way his body trembled when she did that. It made her hot knowing her touch turned him on like this.

She had to be the luckiest woman in the world. It took her breath away when she thought how close she had come to giving up on Jayson and how close he had come to giving up on himself. That welling of emotion was what drove her to finally yank him down harder into her with her heels. He didn’t try to resist this time, but instead thrust deeper and more forcefully at her urging.

After the slow buildup, it didn’t take long for either of them to peak. She came hard in a long, drawn-out climax that brought tears to her eyes, and she wrapped her legs tightly around him, never wanting to let him go.

“I love you, Jayson Harmon,” she whispered in his ear as she pulled him close and shuddered against him.

“Almost as much as I love you, Layla Halliwell,” he said softly.

Burying his face in her neck, he plunged as deep as he could go and held himself there as he groaned his own release.

She and Jayson didn’t have to say anything else after that because everything had already been said. They simply held each other and enjoyed the feeling of being with that one perfect person each was meant to be with. Layla smiled as she fell asleep in his arms, content, happy, and in love.

She woke up some time later to realize that Jayson had turned off the bedside lamp and gotten them both under the covers. She turned in his arms to look at his face. He was so incredibly gorgeous that it was all she could do not to lean over and kiss him. But he was exhausted and she didn’t want to wake him, so instead she lay there and watched him sleep.

She probably would have stayed like that the rest of the night, but unfortunately, nature called. Even though it meant getting out of the warm bed and Jayson’s arms, she slipped from under the covers and tiptoed into the adjoining bathroom. He was so wiped out that he didn’t even move. Then again, she was a cat shifter. She knew how to move quietly.

When she came back out, she took a quick detour into the kitchen to turn off the light and caught sight of the yellow envelope sticking out of her purse. Before she realized what she was doing, she pulled it out and ripped it open.

Zarina had been nice enough to put everything in simple English, even the technical stuff. The final bottom line results of all the blood work were right there, circled in red ink.

Layla stared at it for a while, then turned and went into the guest bedroom that doubled as her home office. Closing the door, she walked across the room, flipped on her, thankfully, quiet shredder, and slowly fed the report into the machine. Once it was gone, she walked out and turned off all the lights, then tiptoed back into the bedroom to join her partner-slash-lover in bed. She climbed in, almost moaning at how warm it still was under the blankets. She was so going to love sleeping beside this man for the rest of their lives.

Jayson’s arm instinctively wrapped around her, pulling her close. Layla wiggled around until she was pressed up against his hard body, nice and tight; then she closed her eyes, happier than she had ever believed possible. She and Jayson were going to be incredible together…in every possible way.

Frasier walked into Thorn’s office to find his boss sitting at his desk, his fingers steepled before him, his gaze fixed on the crushed black box there. Of the two things the thief had stolen from the former senator, the hard drive had been by far the most valuable.

Frasier had taken to calling the digital storage drive Thorn’s “little black box” because it reminded him of those little black books that people used to carry around back in the day, the ones in which they wrote down the names of all their lovers and former lovers. Thorn’s box did much the same thing, only on a much larger scale. That hard drive had contained secrets on many of the richest and most powerful people in the world, including Thorn. Frasier liked to think there was even a whole section in there somewhere dedicated just to his own misdeeds. He knew he certainly had more than a few.

Beyond the trove of personal data, the drive had also held an uncensored log of every single action the DCO had ever taken part in or instigated, official or otherwise.

Frasier had never understood why Thorn would keep something like that around. Frasier didn’t doubt there had been enough in it to put the former senator and hundreds of other people in prison for a million years. But collecting and keeping secrets was Thorn’s thing. He’d been doing it for a very long time. Now that the box had been destroyed, all those secrets were gone.

Maybe.

“Did the techs from the company confirm it was your little black box?” Frasier asked.

Thorn didn’t answer right away, and Frasier didn’t push. He had learned long ago that his boss always thought before speaking.

“They can’t be one hundred percent sure because the damage from the blast and the fire destroyed all of the internal markings,” Thorn finally said. “But they feel relatively certain it’s my storage drive. It’s the only one in existence, and they doubt that anyone could make a copy in anything less than week.”

The doubt that crept into the former senator’s words immediately put Frasier on guard. Thorn had an uncanny instinct when it came to situations like this. If his gut was saying something was wrong, Frasier needed to look into it.

“Do you think Donovan and Halliwell took the real one and somehow slipped you a fake?” he asked.

Letting the DCO agents get so close to Thorn and his contracting company was something else Frasier had never understood. He personally didn’t trust the shifter and her partner.

“Perhaps.” Thorn met his gaze. “But if so, they didn’t do it on their own.”

Frasier snorted. “John Loughlin.”

“Possibly.” Thorn picked up the black box, tilting it so that a silvery chunk of crushed silicon fell onto the desk. Frasier supposed he could see how someone might consider the material to be uncut jewel stones of some kind.

“What would you like me to do about it?” Frasier asked.

He knew what he thought should be done, but it would be up to Thorn.

Thorn continued to study the box. “Right now? Put a few more people on Loughlin, see if you can get someone close to him. It might be nice to finally get somebody in that damn penthouse apartment of his. As for you, find out if he actually has the box and whether there’s any chance he can get into it.”

“And if I find out that he does?”

Thorn didn’t look up from the box. “Then the current director of the DCO will have to be eliminated.”

Frasier was glad Thorn was focused on the box instead of him so the other man didn’t see the smile on his face. When the time came to kill Loughlin, he was going to enjoy every moment of it.

For more Paige Tyler
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Keep reading for an excerpt for the next book in the SWAT series

Dallas, Texas, Present Day

“If we don’t get anything in the next fifteen minutes, I’m calling it a night,” Sergeant Rodriguez said, his voice rough as sandpaper in Alex’s earpiece. “We knew it was a long shot that our dealers would come back to this same location anyway.”

Thank God
, Alex thought. He and his spotter, fellow werewolf and SWAT officer Remy Boudreaux, had been lying motionless on this rooftop for most of the night, and he for one was more than ready to be done with this op. It was a bust—again. If they wrapped this up quickly, he might be able to grab a few hours of sleep on one of the cots at the SWAT compound before taking Tuffie to her appointment at the vet in the morning.

Of course, not catching the bad guys tonight meant they’d be back on some other roof tomorrow night providing oversight for this snipe hunt.

“I don’t know how narcotics puts up with this crap,” Remy said from his position a couple of feet farther along the roofline. He sounded just as frustrated as Alex felt. “Another night, another frigging waste of time.”

Alex silently agreed. He and Remy, along with Max Lowry and Jayden Brooks, had been working with Sergeant José Rodriguez of the Dallas Police narcotics division on this task force gig every night for nearly three weeks now. The duty schedule wasn’t Rodriguez’s fault. If you wanted to catch people selling designer drugs, you had to do it on their schedule—which seemed to be directly associated with those hours when the rest of the world was tucked in bed all happy and oblivious.

“How the hell can it be so hard to find the dirtbags selling this new drug?” Remy asked in his distinctive Cajun drawl. “This stuff is killing people who use it. You’d think there’d be a line a mile long willing to give up these dealers.”

“No kidding,” Alex said. “But something tells me the people who use this crap are more afraid of losing access to their supply than they are of dying from an overdose.”

That was why they were out here trying to catch the guys selling the drug that had killed eight people in the last month and put more than twenty others in the hospital. Because no one would talk.

Alex leaned over the edge of the roof to scan the group of people gathered down on the corner. There was a good chance that some of them were simply hanging out, but at this time of the night—in an area well known as one of the city’s go-to locations for drug deals—there was an equally good chance that a few of them were looking to buy some of those drugs. That was why the narcotics division had one of their undercover officers buried in the middle of the group, risking his life to get any information he could on the people responsible for putting fireball on the street.

Users supposedly called the stuff fireball because it burned through you like fire, making you feel an incredible rush of heat and energy, only to leave you drained and wrung out when you came down from the high. No one in the Dallas PD had even known there was a new drug on the streets until the bodies started showing up at the hospital—and the morgue. At first, everyone thought it was simply a strong batch of heroin or some of that nasty krokodil crap coming out of Eastern Europe. But they’d quickly figured out it wasn’t either of those things when a derivative of fentanyl, a type of synthetic opiate, showed up in the toxicology reports. Fentanyl was one hundred times more powerful than heroin and would have been bad enough by itself, but whoever was making fireball was cutting in other drugs like codeine, caffeine, and ecstasy, along with a whole bunch of crud that had chemical names Alex couldn’t even pronounce. In addition to creating an intense and long-lasting high, fireball was so addictive that people were out looking for more mere hours after almost dying from an overdose.

Alex couldn’t understand why someone would put crap like that into their bodies, but within weeks, fireball had spread to the club scene and college campuses. If the cops didn’t get it off the street ASAP, it would only be a matter of time before the stuff started showing up in the local high schools.

Luckily, SWAT had a good working relationship with the DPD narcotics division. Mostly because Mike Taylor, one of their squad leaders, had spent a good portion of his career working undercover for them. So when Rodriguez had come looking for help, Gage Dixon, the SWAT commander and alpha of their pack of werewolves, had quickly agreed. Mike’s relationship with the narcotics division wasn’t the only reason Gage had been so willing to loan out Alex and teammates. The way Gage saw it, SWAT was partially responsible for this latest drug epidemic.

Over the past year, the Dallas SWAT team had taken out some major crime figures. Gage had killed Walter Hardy, destroying a syndicate that controlled most of the crime in the southwestern United States; Alex’s squad leader, Xander Riggs, had taken down a major bank robbery ring; Eric Becker had single-handedly wiped out the Albanian mobsters who’d moved in to take over; and Landry Cooper had ended up putting a family full of arms dealers in prison.

All of that was great, but by taking out all those big fish, the local ocean had become swarmed with dozens of little fish all trying to get their piece of the pie. With so many small fish running around doing business on their own, it was damn near impossible to keep an eye on them all. That was why the task force hadn’t been able to find the people distributing this new drug yet. There were just too many new players in town.

“Five minutes and we’re finally out of here,” Remy muttered, glancing at his watch.

Alex lifted a brow. “What? You have a date or something?”

Remy flashed him a grin, his hazel eyes twinkling. “I wouldn’t call it a date. More like a booty call.”

“At three o’clock in the morning? Who the hell would be awake now and looking to hook up?”

“That would be Vivian.” Remy’s smile broadened. “She’s
always
ready for a hookup.”

Alex dug through his memory, trying to figure out if he’d ever met Vivian. After mentally scrolling through the Rolodex of Remy’s girlfriends, he gave up. The man had a lot of women in his life. Alex didn’t know if it was Remy’s accent or what, but it seemed like every time he turned around, women were throwing their panties at the guy left and right.

It wasn’t that Alex was a monk or anything—not by a long shot. He enjoyed the company of a beautiful woman as much as the next man, but he needed something beyond the physical to hold his attention.

“Is she the tall one with long, dark hair?” he finally asked.

“Nah. That’s Leslie.” Remy shook his head. “Vivian’s the fiery redhead who drives the Ferrari.”

Alex opened his mouth to ask why the hell a woman who could afford a Ferrari would hang out with a SWAT cop whose paycheck probably couldn’t even cover the detailing on a ride like that when a dark blue Toyota came down the street. It slowed to a crawl as it passed the small group gathered at the corner, then pulled into a parking lot a few hundred feet away. Not much chance they were stopping for gas or munchies, since the old Gas-n-Go that used to be there had gone out of business a long time ago.

The people on the corner stood up a little straighter, practically bouncing on their toes as three men climbed out of the Toyota and surveyed the area. Well, if that didn’t scream they were up to something shady, Alex didn’t know what did.

He leaned over his rifle, using the low-light scope to see details that even his werewolf enhanced vision couldn’t pick up from this distance. Apparently, the men must have thought the coast was clear, because one of them ducked into the back of the car and came out with a handful of small plastic bags that he casually shoved into the pocket of his jacket.

“We’re hot,” Alex said into his mic. “The big guy with the mountain-man beard just tucked several baggies inside his right pocket.”

The other cops listening in immediately started talking among themselves, their voices a jumble over the radio.

“Relax and maintain position,” Rodriguez said softly, as if he were worried the dealers would hear his rough voice. “The guys are going to take a little time to feel out their customers first and make sure there’s nothing fishy going on. We wait until my undercover guy confirms they’re dealing fireball, then move in when he gives the signal. And remember, don’t blow his cover. We arrest him along with the rest of them and make sure he spends a night or two in lockup like everyone else.”

“Talk about a crappy job,” Remy muttered. “I wonder if he gets overtime for that.”

Alex turned off his mic. “I doubt it. Mike said that having narcotic cops spend time in jail is good for their street cred—or at least the street cred of their undercover identity.”

Remy made a face. “That’s a pretty harsh price to pay for a little street cred. Remind me never to request a transfer into narcotics.”

Alex didn’t argue with that as he peered down his scope so he could keep an eye on the three dealers—and Rodriguez’s UC officer. Everyone in the group down on the corner was talking like they were all old friends. Unfortunately, no one seemed to want to bring up the reason they were standing on a dark street corner at oh dark thirty in the morning—drugs.

Coming December 2016