Jules (Golden Streak Series Book 5) (6 page)

“Why is that?” She didn’t understand the question so didn’t answer. He was suddenly too close to her and she didn’t like it.
Moving as far from him as she could, she looked at him when he laughed slightly. There was something very…appealing about him that she didn’t want to pursue.

“Why is it you think we’re not going to do all that and more?
You have something against tigers, or is it men in general you don’t care for? Or me?” She bit her inner lip so she couldn’t tell him that there wasn’t a damned thing wrong with him. “I know, you’d rather I simply walk away because you said so.”

He stood up and she tried not to look disappointed.
When he reached for his jacket that had been on the back of the chair he’d been sitting in, he turned to smile at her as he pulled it on. She watched as he moved to the door.

“You’re going to be much better off this way.” She didn’t sound all that convinced
to herself, but he nodded. “I wasn’t much to look at before that vampire tried to slice and dice me, and I sure you wouldn’t want to share my bed with me now.”

He moved so suddenly that she didn’t have time to put her hand up to stop him.
He was leaning over her and had her pressed, gently yes, but firmly against the mattress before she could say another word.

“Do you want me to show you how much I want you in my bed?
Would you like to see how much I don’t care what you look like so long as I can make you mine?” She swallowed hard and felt him move closer to her. “I need to kiss you, Lenore. Take your mouth with mine and taste you on my tongue.”

“Please don—
” He cut her off. His mouth didn’t just kiss her but devastated her, conquered her, and claimed her. His tongue was warm and toyed with her, making her want more than a kiss. His lips were soft, but they were demanding against hers. When he lifted his head, she could see the need in his eyes and thought her own was no less than his reflected back at her. He suckled her lower lip into his mouth and held it there as he looked deep into her eyes. She moaned when he let it go.

“Do you have any idea how
delicious you taste?” She shook her head. “Like hot, wet sex on silk sheets. Like warmed honey.” He smiled at her but didn’t move.

“Why did you kiss me
?” He leaned close to her again and licked along her lips to her chin and down to her throat. When he nipped gently at her skin, she moaned and tilted her head. He bit harder and she shifted on the bed, suddenly feeling warm all over. She moaned when he bit her a third time.

“Why not
?” He whispered against her throat. She wanted him to stop but couldn’t for the life of her remember why. She’d had a good reason, but now all she could think about was what he was doing and how good it was feeling.

When he lifted his head this time
, she saw a drop of blood on his lip and pulled him down to lick it off. As soon as her mouth touched his, he moaned and speared his tongue into her mouth, and danced it along hers. She was curling her hand into his hair to bring him as close as she could when he stiffened.

“What is it?” He lifted his head
. Then after a brief but no less thorough kiss, he pulled from her body, stood next to the bed, and she could see his erection. She nearly reached out to cup him in her hand when the door opened behind him.

“Hello.” The man standing there didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see to see Jules near the bed.
In fact, he was laughing and not trying very hard to hide it. “I’m his big brother, Ryland. You must be Lenore.”

“I’m Lenny.
Lenny MacFinley. You’re that woman’s husband or mate or whatever, Bronwyn. You’re going to be just as annoying as she is, aren’t you?” He nodded. “She’s a pain in the ass, too.”

“Not that I’m agreeing with you
, but she can be a little on the stern side. How are you feeling today? Ready to come home with us?” She glanced at Jules, then back at Ryland when nothing was forthcoming. “He didn’t tell you?”

“No. He was busy doing other things.”
She flushed a little when she realized what she’d said, and glared at Ryland when he laughed. “I’m not going anywhere with either of you. I have a perfectly good home, with all of it set up for me until I can get back to my apartment. And then once there, I plan to live my life to the fullest.”

Jules growled and the hair on the back of her neck stood up and danced. She looked at him and then at his brother.
She knew that neither of them was human and she knew what they were. Something tugged at her memory, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. All she knew was she wanted these men gone.

Bits and pieces about the night she’d been hurt came to her at odd times. There was Mason standing at the top of the stairs with a man sucking on his neck. That
frightened her a great deal, but she knew that it wasn’t the worst. Whatever she’d hidden away from, according to the doctors she’d seen back home, was going to surface when she would least expect it. They’d also told her that when she remembered anything, she was to call them immediately. She hadn’t called anyone as yet and had no intentions of doing so either.

She also remembered the man who had stood over her,
cutting into her body with nothing more than his finger. He had spoken to her, but she couldn’t remember what he’d said until Jules had growled just now.

“
He said that he was there only to kill me. But to have me for all time would be more than the payment they were getting to kill me. He said
she
wanted me dead. Then he growled.” Lenny looked at both men, who seemed to be frozen in place. Fear of the unknown scared her, but their look, the one that they were giving her now, made her think that they knew a great deal more about what had happened than she remembered or even wanted to. She shifted on the bed and pulled the cord that was wrapped on the railing around her.

“Yes.” The disembodied voice sounded
loud in the big room. “Jules, did you need something else?”

She looked at Jules and tried to tamp down the feelings of jealously that ran
though her. “I’d like to leave now. Can you find my doctor so that I can get the hell out of here?”

“You’ve already been released
, Mrs. Golden. I have all your meds and paperwork here. I was just bringing it in for the male.” She looked at Ryland, who shrugged.

“I’m the male of our family.”
She didn’t really need him to explain, but he seemed to need to tell her. “The leader of a group of tigers is called a male. A group of us is called an ambush or streak, which is what we prefer. And I thought that Jules had told you while your home is being outfitted for a security system, you’re staying with us. So is he.”

“I
can’t afford a security system put in even if it’s a free mutt from the pound, and I know damn good and well I didn’t approve of one.” Ryland looked at Jules. Then she did as well. “You did this?”

“You’re not safe there.”
She wanted to scream at him that she hadn’t been safe anywhere even when she had a gun, but he continued before she could. “It’s not a mutt but a good system being put in. I have the same one at my studio. There is no reason for you to worry about money any longer. As for you returning to Washington, that’s not going to happen either, unless we go there together, and I can’t do that right now. I’ve taken care of your things in that tiny little place you lived in, too. If I have to have you as a mate, you’ll have to adjust to my way of life since yours seems to be finished there.”

Lenny didn’t move
, but she saw Ryland backing up.
Smart man
. As soon as he stepped out the door, she moved to the side of the bed to get up. Jules moved to stand in front of her.

“Get away from me.”
He took a step back and frowned at her. “You touch me again and I will kill you.”

“You
can’t be pissed off because I’ve taken care of you.” She stood up and didn’t know if it was being pissed that made her move better, but she was getting out of there before it was too late and she really did kill the man.

When he stepped to her again
, she drew back her fist and hit him right in the face. She watched as he fell back, his nose and mouth already pouring blood. When he hit the floor and took a bounce, she went to the little closet she’d noticed earlier and pulled on her clothes. They were blood covered, but at that point she didn’t give a fuck. Changing in the bathroom as quickly as she could without hurting herself more, she was out and standing in the hall within five minutes. Ryland was leaning against the desk.

“Do you need a ride back to your house?” She nodded. “
Come on then. Jules will be pissed when he gets up, but he deserves whatever you did to him for being a dick.”

She didn’t say a single word until he dropped her off other than to thank him.
She told the three men there, all of them Goldens, she had no doubt that their services were no longer needed. She told them that she’d shoot the first one she saw if they weren’t gone by the time she got her gun. Ryland nodded at them, and she went inside.
Fucking idiot men
was all she could think about before she burst into tears.

Chapter 6

Lamb
moved along the property of the woman. There was a great deal of scent around and he had to be extra careful not to remark some of the wolf ones. Damn, but there had been a lot of different animals where he was currently standing. Taking another deep breath and trying to separate their scents from the woman’s, he couldn’t find her. But it mattered little to him.

He was going
inside tonight to kill her, and anyone else that got in his way. He had a job to do and he’d be damned if he ended up like his predecessor. Dead was not what he wanted to wear today. Laughing to himself, he moved closer to the house and stopped when he saw the panther. Fuck.

He watched the sleek animal and had to calm his wolf into waiting.
He had no idea if there was a second one, and he wasn’t sure who the big cat was. When a tiger and a large black bear moved to stand beside the panther, Lamb lay down and slowed his breathing to almost a stop. This was no fucking good.

He could beat one of the animals
, sure. Maybe even hurt another, but not with the three of them working together. And he had a feeling that they were, too. He watched them for several minutes, wondering if they’d move out to do another check, but when the big bear moved up to the porch and sat down, he knew they were settling in for the night. He moved back slowly and left the property, glad for the other scents because they more than likely hid him as well.

He was pulling on his shirt when his cell phone rang.
He almost ignored it because it would only be one of three people. His mom, who he loved dearly but didn’t feel like lying to right now, his brother wanting to borrow money again, or the fucking vampire. He glanced at the ID and saw the vamp’s name flash every time it vibrated.

“Yeah.”
He hated this man more than he could say, and he was pretty sure there was no love lost between the two of them. When there was no immediate answer, he hung up. He didn’t have time for mind games, and he certainly didn’t want to play them with a fucking prick.

The next time it rang he was driving. One thing he’d learned over the years
was don’t text and drive and don’t drive pissed. And he was reasonably sure he was going to be pissed when he spoke to him. Pulling over when it went to voicemail, he pulled up the message. Laughing, he replayed it.

You mother fucking son of a bitch fucktard. When I call you you’d better never hang up on
me again or so help me I will hunt you down and drain you just because I can. Now call me back within the next five minutes, or so help me you will not live long enough to draw your next breath.

Lamb
tossed the phone on the seat next to him and pulled into traffic again. This was the reason he never had personal contact with the people who hired him. Especially with a vampire who had a reputation of killing off those who didn’t serve him well. Lamb had never trusted vampires in the first place, and this one less so. He moved toward one of his many hidey holes and went inside. He was lying back on his lumpy mattress when his phone rang again.

Closing his eyes
, he wasn’t surprised to hear it ring almost as soon as it stopped ringing. He’d told the vampire that he’d get back with him when he had some information. He didn’t say he’d give him updates every ten minutes, and he wouldn’t even if the guy had demanded it. He had more important things to do with his time. Like not giving updates every ten. Laughing, he rolled to his side.

The woman had to be something special to have someone call him in.
Lamb wasn’t known for his tactics, nor was he all that gentle when he was ordered to kill. He had in the recent past gone into a large shopping market, walked up behind a target, and snapped their neck as they were reaching for the milk. But he did get the job done.

Long ago
, he’d not had such a great reputation. He’d been known as a sloppy agent, as well as somewhat of a hot head. He was still a hot head, but he tried to find humor in what was going on around him instead of the bullshit silver lining his mom had told him to look for. What the fuck was silver going to do to help a fucking wolf, anyway?

And he now realized that he had been
lucky that he’d never been killed, either by the target or the people he’d worked for. He’d been lazy. He’d finish a job when it suited him, killed without much care for what was happening around him, and didn’t give two shits if he was drunk when he did the hits. Which by his estimations he was most of the time. Yeah, he had been lucky that no one had killed him or he’d killed himself.

But things had changed when he’d killed a guy about ten years ago in front of the man’s kid.
The little boy couldn’t have been more than three or four, but he’d watched him do it. And for as long as he lived he’d never forget the kid’s face when the man he’d known as his daddy for his entire life just dropped to the ground in front of him. To this day at odd moments he’d see the kid’s haunted look. He wondered what the boy was doing now or if he was seeing a head doctor.

The phone stopped ringing around sunrise. It had taken
the vampire longer than he’d thought to give up, and San wondered if he had only stopped because of the sun or he realized that pissing him off wasn’t a way to get the job done. Either way he was glad for the quiet. He supposed he could have gotten up and turned the ringer off, but what fun would that have been? Closing his eyes, Sam went to sleep. He had a big night ahead of him and he wanted to be on his best when he murdered the girl and whatever animal was around.

~~~

She felt like shit. Lenny looked in the mirror over the sink and thought she looked it as well. There were dark circles under her eyes, as well as them being bloodshot and puffy. Taking a wet cloth, she pressed it over her face and tried to reason with herself that she could go back to Washington and get around without much in the way of pain. It wasn’t working, but she did have a nice argument going with herself when her grandma knocked on the door.

“
There’s a couple here to see you. They said they want to talk to you about what happened in Washington. They said that they have some information that might help you.” She didn’t answer her because frankly, she was trying her best not to tell her to go away and leave her to her pain. “Lenny?”

“Tell them I’ll be right out
, but tell them I don’t remember what happened with me and nothing on Mason either.” She said she would and asked if she wanted anything to eat. “No thanks. Just some tea if you don’t mind.”

By the time she’d pulled on her pants and a clean shirt
, she was hurting again. But she wasn’t going to take any more of the drugs unless the pain was just too bad to breathe through. She hated feeling all doped up, and didn’t want to become dependent on them either. She had enough shit going on. And today she was going to take a shower and have a good look at herself. She’d never seen much more than the wounds on her left leg, and those were bad enough.

The couple sitting in her grandma’s living room looked like they
had stepped off the Rich and Famous program her grandma watched. Not to mention they looked like they had been sculpted from some kind of god and goddess. She pulled her sweatshirt away from her body to hide what she was sure would terrify them.

“Hello
, Lenny. I’m Brock and this is my wife Em. We’re here to get some information from you on what happened in Washington when you were hurt. We also have a little bit to share with you, too.” He glanced at his wife, who winked at him. “Em and I work for a very top agency that deals in paranormal bad guys. We hoped that you could help us get them off the streets.”

“I’m neither stupid nor one of your idiot brothers
, Mr. Golden, so I would appreciate it if you didn’t treat me like it. If you looked any more like the older one, I’d think you were cloned. What do you want?” He leaned back on the couch and smiled at her. “You might be thought of as charming, but I’ve never been accused of that in my life. Spill it, then go.”

“Okay. Em and I work for the Holders of the Realm
, a large network of supernaturals that hunt down rogues and kill them so that the world, this one and others, are safe from them. We’ve been notified that you might have had an encounter with one, and we’d like to see if you can help us catch them.”

She took several low
, long breaths. She’d never heard of this group, but didn’t doubt that there really was one. This man looked like he would kick some major ass with a vamp and, for that matter, so did the woman. But she had nothing to give them.

“I don’t remember what happened.
Some bits and pieces come to me at odd times, but I don’t know what happened. They said I had a heart attack and that what little I do remember is part of the drugs they gave me when I fell down the stairs.” She looked away from them before they could see how much it bothered her that someone was lying to her about what had happened. “You’ll just have to trust me when I tell you I have nothing to tell.”

“But you do, don’t you?” Lenny looked at Em as she smiled.
“You know a great deal about what happened, but for whatever reason you’re not sharing. You don’t trust us, which I can understand. You’ve just met us. You especially don’t trust those people in the hospital. I doubt you’ve even told the ones in Washington that you’re even remembering a little of what happened, have you? Did they tell you to call them when you had a memory come back to you? Why is it you suppose they want to know? Or do you believe you are only alive because of the fact that you can’t remember?”

Lenny stood up and glared at the two of them.
“Did you hear me? I don’t remember anything to help you. I’ve been ill, and I just want to get well enough to go back to my other life. Try to pick up the pieces and move on.”

“How bad did he hurt you?”
She looked at Brock, thinking he was talking about his brother and yesterday. “The vampire that you killed, how badly did he cut you up?”

“I fell.”
He shook his head and stood up. She took a step back from him and reached for the gun that was no longer a part of her clothing. “You need to leave.”

Moving slowly
, he reached into his back and pulled out a gun. He didn’t take his eyes off hers, but she heard him take out the clip and pull the slide back. He touched her hand gently and put her hand around the butt. When she looked down, he put the clip into her other hand and still held the gun in her first one.

“It’s loaded with silver. And before we leave here
, I’ll make sure you have enough to reload it when you need to.” She looked up at him. “I’m not going to hurt you, Lenny. We’re only here to help you.”

“He said he was supposed to kill me.”
He nodded and sat back down beside his wife. “I don’t remember…there are so many gaps in my memory that I’m not sure what’s true or not.”

“They said you’d gone there on your own. You said when they brought you in that you’d gotten a call and had gone there with
Joseph Mason. Can you tell me where you were when the call came to you?” She shook her head and Em smiled as she continued. “It’s okay if you don’t. We’ll get to it.”

“No, I mean the call didn’t come to me.
Mason…Mason came to me. He was…someone else was supposed to go with me. I don’t remember who, but….” Her head began to pound again, but she wanted to remember. “Mason told me that dispatch had told him, and that whoever I was supposed to go with—Rice.... His name was Rice, and he was my partner. But something happened to him and he didn’t go. Mason and I went to the house. He said that he had the address of a murder. A murder like the one—”

Her head exploded in pain
, and she felt someone push her head back and put a cold cloth over her face. Blood entered her mouth, and she knew that her nose had started to bleed again. She tried hard to not beg someone to give her something for the pain. Instead, she felt ice run over her wrist, and the pain receded almost immediately.

“It’s a trick that Brock’s mom showed me.
She said it’s a cure for everything. I believe her, and have taken to carrying around icepacks that you break to make work just to try it on whatever happens. So far, so good.” Em smiled at her. “You’ll love her, too. She’s an amazing woman. Scary, too, but really nice. What do you think of Jules?”

The quick subject change threw her off or she was sure she would have answered a lot differently.
“He’s a bossy know-it-all bastard that needs to tone it down a bit or someone, namely me, will take him down a notch or two.”

She looked at Brock when he laughed.
He was nodding at her when her grandma came in bearing a large pizza pan with cups and other things on it. Lenny grinned when she saw the lacy doilies on it to probably hide the fact that it wasn’t a serving tray, but neither Brock nor Em seemed to care. They dove into the cookies and cheese and crackers like they’d not eaten for a month.

“Man
, I love sugar cookies.” Brock was shoving two more in his mouth as he gulped down the iced tea Grandma had handed him. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had one? My mom hates them, and Em and I have barely enough time to sleep, much less bake. These are amazing.”

Her grandma brought out the large container that she’d filled with the cookies she’d baked yesterday and told Brock that she’d make sure he had some to take home. He told her that he’d be forever in her debt
, and ate a dozen more before he sat back and smiled contently. Em had eaten just as much as her husband, while Lenny had sipped her tea.