Hot Pursuit (35 page)

“Yes, shame on you.” She giggled and kissed her friend on the cheek. “The two of you can come in for coffee before you drive home,” she offered.

Maggie hummed softly against the side of Angel’s face before releasing her and smiling at her in the dark. “Not tonight. I wouldn’t want to hear Wolf, umm, yell at you,” she said, her smile revealing her thoughts.

Which were the same thoughts Angel was having. She grinned back. “I’ll let him yell for a few.”

“Got to stroke that male ego.”

“You know it.”

Angel stood in the alley and watched Maggie accelerate down the alley, before turning and disappearing down the narrow side street that ran behind the shops. She turned and walked to the back of her store. As she pictured, Wolf stood with his back to the building. His arms weren’t crossed, but he looked sexy as hell nonetheless.

“Where in the hell have you been?” he barked the moment his face came into focus in the dark. With the streetlight glowing behind him, his muscular body was almost silhouetted and his facial features completely shadowed. The rumble of his deep voice was the final touch to the dangerous air about him.

Angel wasn’t the least bit intimidated. “I was out with girlfriends.” She walked around him to the back door to her store. “What have you been doing?” she asked, turning the conversation on him as she pulled her keys out of her pocket and searched for the keyhole in the dark.

“Sitting outside this store waiting on you,” he said, sounding pissed.

“That is so sweet.” She poked the key at the lock in the dark but couldn’t find the keyhole. “Will you hold your phone up to the lock so I can see?” she asked sweetly.

Wolf’s hands were rough when he took her keys from her and unlocked the door. Then holding the door, he waited as she punched her security code into her alarm system.

“This really is a lot of work to get into my store.” Angel walked through the dark store straight to the stairs. “And this is a lot of work just to get to my apartment,” she added, feeling the giggles come back on when she began climbing the steps.

Her world teetered halfway up the staircase, and she slapped her hands on the walls on either side of her. “Whoa, Nelly,” she ordered, closing her eyes as her world spun around her. “Have you ever wondered exactly who Nelly is?”

Wolf finished locking the door downstairs and resetting her security system before coming up the stairs behind her.

“You’re drunk,” he accused. “I suppose that is why you couldn’t be bothered to answer your phone?”

“I am,” she agreed. “And my phone?”

Wolf’s strong hands gripped either side of her waist and almost lifted her up the remaining steps. He let go of her and turned on the nearest lamp. Angel looked down at her purse, then realized she didn’t have it.

“Now I can’t exactly answer my phone if it’s not on me.” Angel collapsed on her couch and once again closed her eyes. This world-spinning thing wasn’t so bad after all. It might do nicely to lull her off to sleep.

“Where is your phone?” Wolf demanded.

She opened one eye and stared up at him. “More than likely in my purse.”

“Where is your purse?”

Angel gave that some thought. It wasn’t on her. That wasn’t good. Damn, so much for lulling off to sleep. “Well, I remember leaving the tip. Zoey and I insisted when Maggie wouldn’t let us pay the bill.”

“Where were you?”

“Fisherman’s Cove,” Angel said, and tried pushing herself to a sitting position. Her arms suddenly seemed about as affective as two wet noodles. “It’s the best little seafood restaurant in the entire state. I swear. You must try their lobster.” She did her best to bring her fingers to her mouth and blow a kiss into them. “Best there is,” she told him, and fell sideways as she kissed her fingers.

“Did you leave your purse at the restaurant?”

That’s right. She didn’t have her purse. “No,” she said slowly. She was pretty sure she had walked out of the restaurant with her purse. “You’re right.” It proved easier to point at Wolf than it had been to kiss her fingers. “I bet I left it in Maggie’s car.”

“What was she driving?”

Angel blinked, then closed one eye to bring Wolf into focus. “Her car,” she said, and the giggles returned.

Wolf scooped her off the couch with one fluid movement. Instead of rough fabric, hard-packed muscles were pressing against her body everywhere.

“Use my phone and call Maggie to find out if she has your purse.” Wolf dropped Angel on her bed, which immediately began moving in slow circles.

Angel braced herself in the middle of it, mouthing the word,
Whoa,
as Wolf pulled his phone out and handed it to her.

“Can’t,” she told him, and kicked off her shoes.

Wolf sat next to her and Angel fell into him.

“Yes, you can. What’s her number?” he asked, his voice gentler as one arm went around Angel while he held his phone in his palm in front of her.

“That’s why I can’t,” Angel said, shaking her head. She immediately stopped when it quickly became apparent that she was too drunk for such a simple movement. “I don’t know her number.”

“Then what is Zoey’s number?” he growled.

“Don’t growl at me,” Angel snapped, and pushed herself free from his wonderful hard-packed body. “Zoey got a new phone, remember? I entered it into my phone, but I didn’t memorize it. And I’ve never had Maggie’s number. She talks to me in the store.”

Angel wondered at that as she dropped her head in her hands and forced her brain to work through all of the alcohol. “I shouldn’t have drunk that entire margarita,” she complained.

“I think you’ll live.” Wolf’s tone was tender when he reached for her sweater and pulled it over her head. “Tomorrow we’ll have Ben reach Zoey. If your purse isn’t in Maggie’s car, we’ll go to the restaurant. If it is in her car, we can drive out to her place and get it.”

“Okay,” Angel agreed and let him undress her. “Wait a minute,” she demanded when Wolf began removing her bra. She slapped him away and scooted to the middle of the bed. “Ben is a bounty hunter,” she accused, and found it easier to focus on Wolf when she glared at him. “Which of course you know already since the two of you came up here together to search for someone.”

“Yes,” Wolf said, and sat on the edge of the bed watching her.

Angel was sure his wary expression appeared guarded. Well, that guard was about to drop.

“I’ve been completely honest with you. You know everything about my life. But you’re holding back from me and it stops right now or this—” She waved her hand in the air between them. “This isn’t going to happen. I won’t have a relationship of any kind with you if we aren’t completely open with each other about everything.”

“That really does sound like a relationship.”

“What?” she whispered, curling up on her bed in her bra and underpants, less aware of how naked she was than what Wolf had just said. Suddenly the drunken vapors in her brain cleared and she felt depressingly sober. “What does that mean?” she asked, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

Wolf stared at her, not moving or saying anything. Streetlights from her window accentuated his features in her otherwise dark room. The lamp in the other room barely offered shadows. But Angel saw his face. She saw several different emotions slide over his face as she stared back at him.

“I’m not sure,” he finally said.

“Well, I suggest you decide pretty damn quick what it means, mister,” she snapped. “I’m done serving as a piece of ass while you’re searching for whoever the hell it is you are searching for, because it’s definitely not Cortez.”

“At first, that was what was going on here.”

Angel stiffened. Suddenly she was very sober. Watching him in the dark, she didn’t dare speak. Instead she found herself searching her own mind, what emotions she was experiencing. And with outstanding clarity it dawned on her that at first a casual relationship, mutual pieces of ass, was what she had thought was going on here, too.

“And now?” she asked.

“And now,” he repeated, then peeled off his T-shirt.

He wasn’t playing fair. Angel hugged her legs against her chest. She stared at all that roped muscle flexing under his skin as his arms rose over his head and the T-shirt came off his body and fell to the floor. Wolf was easily the sexiest man she’d ever laid eyes on.

His gaze was haunted as he studied her once he was half-undressed. Maybe he drove her nuts with need, but Angel guessed those feelings were mutual. She wasn’t concerned about their lust for each other. Those emotions she understood. After about a week, though, something else was tugging at her. Wolf had too many secrets for her tastes. He had to come clean, or she would have to end this.

Angel dealt with the tension that grew inside when she pushed the matter. “I don’t want to end whatever is building between you and me.”

“Good,” he rumbled, and sat on the edge of her bed to take off his shoes.

“But I will,” she pressed, feeling that tension tighten in her gut as she watched him pull one shoe off, then the other. “I can’t keep doing this with secrets and lies. Wolf, who are you looking for? Why are you here?”

Wolf stood and undid his jeans. He shoved them down muscular thighs. The boxers came off, too. Then he was facing her, naked and hard. He crawled onto the bed, moving in on her so she had no choice to submit or retreat.

Angel’s body sizzled with desire. When she darted to the side, her motor skills weren’t as functional as she’d guessed. Maybe she wouldn’t have slipped off the bed, but she wasn’t going to find out.

Wolf grabbed her, sliding her back to the middle of the bed and pinning her underneath him. “You’re not going anywhere.”

There was no point in struggling when they both knew he was a hell of a lot stronger than she was. That didn’t mean Angel needed to admit defeat.

“I am if I don’t get some answers right now,” she whispered.

Their faces were close enough in the dark for her to see his inward battles. She had a right to know what they were.

“A week ago I might not have cared about your life,” she told him, and when she breathed in deeply the tightly coiled hairs on his chest tortured her nipples to distraction through her lace bra.

Wolf took a harsh breath, and his body stiffened over hers. Good. Misery loved company. He could just suffer through this, too.

“And I will be the first to admit I want to fuck you hard and fast, right now,” she murmured.

Wolf growled, his eyes widening as he locked gazes with her. “You’re going to get fucked. Hard and fast, or any other way you want it, sweetheart. I promise you that much.”

“Not with secrets and lies hanging between us.”

Wolf grabbed her wrists. He moved like an animal, fierce and aggressive. Angel barely had time to think, let alone react, when suddenly he’d spread her legs, positioning himself between them as he pinned her wrists over her head.

“Let’s put it like this,” he rumbled, the growl in his throat making his words raspy. They scraped over her flesh as his eyes flared with something that bordered on anger. “I’ve never shared anything about my business with anyone. I’m not looking for a relationship, but I want you.”

“I will not tolerate hearing anything about you from anyone else that I don’t already know firsthand from you,” she snarled at him, her teeth clenched as anger rose inside her. “Your terms, Wolf Marley, are not acceptable.”

Wolf leapt off the bed, roaring as he did until he was in the middle of her bedroom. Then letting out another roar, he turned and hit her wall with his fist.

If losing her store had taught her anything, it was that she would never be bullied. No man, or any person for that matter, would ever coerce her into terms that didn’t meet her full satisfaction. Angel leapt off the bed, too. Once again she was reminded of how much alcohol she’d had earlier when she almost spun around before managing to hold her bearings and prevent herself from falling to the floor.

As aggressive as his release had been a moment before, Wolf spun around, reaching for her with a touch gentle enough it singed her flesh clear through her body. The swelling between her legs exploded with so much energy, cream pooled between her legs. She steadied herself and didn’t notice at first that she held on to both his arms while fighting to cool her desire and not succumb to it before seeing her terms out.

“There is a man known as the Mulligan Stew assassin,” Wolf spoke in such a low whisper as he helped her straighten, then held her as they stood in the middle of her bedroom facing each other. “He has allegedly assassinated over fifty people. The assassin worked mostly in the U.S., accepting jobs and killing people already wanted for heinous crimes. His last known hit was a dirty CIA agent. Then just over a year ago, in Los Angeles, a man wanted for bouncing checks was shot with the same gun used to kill the CIA agent.”

Angel stared at Wolf. His expression was intense. He was giving her exactly what she wanted. Her heart pounded so hard in her chest she could barely breathe. Even as they looked at each other and he shared the complete truth with her, she was hearing so much more than news about one of the most notorious criminals in American history. She and Wolf had just crossed over from casual sex. Whatever it was between them was evolving, and her heart hurt from the knowledge of it, as well as the weight of what it meant.

She blinked, forcing herself to focus on his words. Later she would dwell on the consequences of what his sharing them with her truly meant.

“The Mulligan Stew assassin?” she murmured. “The one they talked about on CNN for a good month, at least?”

“The one and only.”

“And you think he is in Zounds?” Angel began shaking her head.

“Darling, I know he is in Zounds.”

“You’ve been in my store during business hours. Everyone in town comes in and shares their business with me. I was born here, Wolf. My parents ran this store before me. This town trusts my actions, and they trust my decisions. If there is a problem, everyone who lives in Zounds knows I will do whatever it takes to fix it. I would know if anyone in Zounds was harboring a criminal.” She let out a laugh, but it wasn’t to mock Wolf. Angel simply couldn’t accept that someone that well known, a man who had killed so many people and was wanted by the federal government, would be in her town.