Kaleb (Samuel's Pride Series) (6 page)

“When I enter you, I’m going to mark you in a way that will bond us forever.” She nodded.
“You’ll be my mate in all ways. We’ll never be parted. We’ll belong only to each other.”

“If you don’t
do something soon, forever won’t be as long as you think it should.” Laughing, he moved over her and lifted her legs up so that they rested over his shoulder. Her pussy was right where he wanted her, and he leaned over her and slowly entered her.

There was no pain this time, he knew.
But he still went slowly, moving in and out of her until he was sure she could take him. Sliding her legs to his hips, Kaleb settled between her legs and took her mouth. He was so close to coming that he knew that when he did, she wasn’t going to get anything from this.

Cupping her ass
, he brought her up tighter against him and brushed against her tight hole. When she moaned, Kaleb slid his finger into her and watched her shatter beneath him.

“Again. Come for me again, love.”
She bowed up off the ground and screamed out her release. Kaleb buried his face into her shoulder and bit her as his own release took him. The connection between them was profound. When her body began to ramp up for another powerful climax, Kaleb felt it, and his body responded accordingly. As soon as she came again, screaming out his name, Kaleb threw back his head and roared out his climax.
Christ
, he thought,
I’m in love with her.

~~~

“I’ve not heard from Camp, have you?” His assistant shook his head and pulled out a file. Lyod took it from him but didn’t open it. “Where was he going?”

“
He and Archer found out about this clinic on Tenth. They took Sams and were headed over there about two hours ago. He’s not supposed to check in for another hour.” Lyod nodded and headed to his office, telling him to let him know when he heard anything.

He dropped the file at his desk as he sat down
. And still no word about the fucking cunt. He had no idea where she was and worse yet, he didn’t have a clue where else to look for her. It was as if she’d dropped off the earth. His phone ringing had him look at the caller ID before he picked it up. Pausing just long enough, he was glad when it finally stopped ringing. He didn’t want to have to deal with anyone right now, especially Ansell. Leaning back in his chair, he thought of the last meeting he’d had with him.

~~~

“Did you find her?” Sadly, he told him no. “Well, you have five days to find her or I do something to make sure that my name is not connected with your department and the girl. I’ll make sure that no one knows a fucking thing.”

Lyod still wondered how he was going to
perform that miracle but didn’t ask. He was sort of afraid of the answer. All sorts of things came to mind and none of them had him living for very long.

“I have my best men on it. The mayor has an entire team set up to take calls and go out on leads. Which I might add is very little.
But we’re looking, and I’m looking. I’ve gone to her house and no one has been there in—”

“I don’t give a fuck where you’ve looked. It’s not in the right places
, so shut up about them.” Ansell started pacing. “Someone is looking into my business. I don’t know who yet but whoever it is, they’ve got more than they should have. I’m thinking this person works for someone very powerful and they know where she is.”

He started to ask him if he had an IP address but didn’t want to have to explain to him again what the
Internet protocol was. No matter how many times he’d explained it to him over the years, the man simply never got it.

“I’ll talk to your IT guys and see if we can set up something that might backfire on them.”
Ansell nodded but didn’t say much more. Instead of waiting for the silence to end, Lyod told him what he’d been able to find out about the girl. Most of it was things he felt he should have been told before he had to hire her.

“Did you know that at one time she worked as a Secret Service guard for the president?
She’d been in the service, too. Probably some dyke that had to get out when she made a pass at some broad.” He laughed a little at his own joke and looked up when Ansell sat down.

“She retired from the SS about five years ago. About the time she came to work for you.
And as for her being a dyke, she’s not. At least not that anyone knows. As far as anyone can tell, she’s simply not interested in anything but advancing her career. And she’s done a fucking good job at that, too.” Ansell pointed to a file. “You should read some of the shit she’s done. Fucking honor student in school. Graduated top of her class at Brown, and she’s been nominated, by your own men, for the Mayoral Award he gives out for distinguished service every year. She’s won three times out of five. You should take better care to find out about those who work for you.”

~~~

After that, the meeting had centered on how incompetent he was. How he’d let this woman, his own employee, get the better of both of them. And worse yet, how even with all his men, all the equipment in the world at his fingertips, he’d still managed not to find one fucking female. And to a point it was true.

But Lyod could hardly go out to the bullpen, what the men called their meeting place
, and tell them that he thought maybe Thornton had witnessed him dallying with a known criminal and she’d gotten herself hurt pretty bad. And now he and this criminal element couldn’t find her. Then he would order them to hit the streets, find her for them, and kill her dead. Yeah, he thought, that’d go over really well.

“Sir, you might want to turn on the news.
I think there’s been an accident.” Dreading this more than the phone call, he picked up the remote and turned on the television like his assistant suggested. And there on the screen were pictures of two of his men, Sams and Archer. Turning up the volume, he listened to what had happened to them.

“About two hours ago
, the police pulled this man’s body from the river and in the truck they discovered the grisly remains of a third man who has yet to be identified. This man, John Archer, was driving the car when it entered the river. A third man, Paul Sams, was apparently ejected from the car and his body was found deeper in the river by divers. It is unknown if the third man knew the other two but for now, we have three dead men.” He looked at Kolby when his phone rang. Neither of them went to answer it.

“Do you suppose the last man is Camp?”
Lyod nodded and turned off the television. “Who do you suppose would have done that to them? You don’t think that they simply killed each other and stuffed Camp in the trunk, do you?”

“How the fuck should I know.”
Lyod sat down hard. “Mother fuck, this woman is driving me crazy. Go down there and see what you can find out. And for Christ’s sake, put the phones on service. I don’t want to have to try and explain this to Ansell.”

When he was gone
, Lyod gathered up his things and decided to go home. This wasn’t a place to be if he didn’t want to talk to Ansell. By the time he was pulling out of the long parking lot of his private offices, he saw a limo pulling in. Smiling for the first time in days, he made his way home to hide and plan. Things were going south in a big fat hurry.

Chapter
6

After rolling out of the unfamiliar bed, Thor stood there looking around for several seconds before someone made a soft noise beside her. She looked down at the man who lay there sleeping. Christ, he was fucking huge. Blushing furiously, she made her way to the bathroom.

Turning on the shower after using the toilet
, she looked at herself in the mirror as the steam filled the room. She’d had sex with a man who claimed he was a bear. And her best friend was a lion. Wiping the steam away as it blurred her appearance, she decided to stop thinking about them and focus on what she was up to.

“Nothing.”
Her voice didn’t echo in this bathroom like it did in her own. There was tile in here, earth tones that set the style for the bedroom, too. Wondering how she got off track again, she stepped into the spray and moaned. This was what a lot of water pressure felt like.

Thor thought of Sweeney and knew that somehow he was in on what had gone down at Lipscomb’s house.
She wasn’t sure how yet, but she’d get there. Washing her hair with Kaleb’s shampoo, she felt her body react strongly to his scent. “Damn it. Focus.”

“Do you always talk to yourself in the shower?
If so, you might want to try a little positive talk. Cursing at yourself isn’t a good way to start your day.” Thor watched as the door to the stall opened slowly and he was there. “Good morning. Would you mind very much if I joined you?”

She was shaking her head before she could think of several hundred reasons why she should shower alone.
When he stepped from around the door and into the hot water with her, all thoughts of him not joining her fled. And when he reached for her, she went to him willingly.

The kiss was gentle. For a man his size
, she’d been surprised by how gentle he could be with everything he did to her. Blushing again, she tried to pull away, but he held her tightly. Thor felt his cock thicken at her belly.

“You’re not very talkative to other people in the morning, are you? That’s okay. I can do it for you until you get your feet under you.
What would you like to do today? I was thinking we’d mess up the bed more before going down and eating a hearty breakfast. That way I’d have more energy for when I bring you back up here and eat you.”

When she pulled back this time
, he let her. “Is having sex all we’re going to ever do? Don’t answer that. I have to get to my things. I’m pretty sure that my house is being watched now that I’ve figured out that Sweeney is in on this, whatever
this
is.”

“I can get your things for you without anyone knowing.
Stephan owes me and…why are you shaking your head?” Thor grabbed the large sea sponge and raked it over her body while she tried to think how to answer him.

“He says
he’s a vampire. While I don’t really know if he is or not, I’m not really into owing him. Will his payment be a gallon of my blood? Will he make me have sex with him?” She looked at him when he growled. “Oh, so you get all possessive now? Grow up. I’m talking out loud. It’s the way I work. Where was I?”

“Sex with Stephan. Which
isn’t going to happen, and he won’t bite you without permission. By the way, you have some of his blood, so he can hear you when you speak to him.” Kaleb took the sponge from her and filled it with his soap. “Turn around and I’ll wash your back while you think.”

She didn’t have a clue how that was supposed to work. Whenever he touched her
, she melted. While she loved him touching her and the whole melting thing, she wasn’t in the mood to get distracted again.

“He somehow knew that I was there. I’m not sure if he
was actually there or not, but I’m willing to bet he was somewhere close. Why would he tell me to look into the drugs and where they were coming from if he was in on it? Unless he didn’t know that Lipscomb had anything to do with this.” She moaned when Kaleb had her brace her hands on the tiled wall while he massaged her shoulders. “Christ, I could get used to this.”

“If you think Sweeney is part of this Lipscomb thing, how many do you suppose work with you and for him?”
Good question, and she told him so. “I used to be a cop in one of my lives.”

“
One of your lives?” She moaned again when he pressed his body to hers. “You’ve said you’re older than you look. How old are you...I mean, exactly how old are you?”

“Old.
I want to taste you.” Without waiting for her to answer him, assuming she could at this point, he turned her around and dropped to his knees in front of her. “I’m nearly as old as Stephan. We knew each other before he changed. I’m going to enjoy this.”

Kaleb pulled her toward him and buried his face in her pussy. When he nipped at her clit as he slid his fingers
inside of her, Thor held onto the wall. Right now she didn’t care if he was a thousand years old. The things he did to her made her scream.

Her climax was quick and when he lifted his head from her
, she thought he was satisfied. Christ, was she ever wrong. Lifting her leg so that it rested on his shoulder, he lifted her up by her ass and suckled her pussy into his mouth. When he entered her with his tongue, she cried out and wrapped her fingers into his hair to hold on.

He ate her. She’d never been so close to paradise so many times only to be held off from going over the edge into it. And begging him didn’t work.
When she was ready to kill him or slide her fingers into herself and get the satisfaction he was denying her, he stopped.

“I need you.” She nodded.
When he stood up and pulled her to his body, she felt his muscles. His chest hair brushed against her nipples, making them painfully aware of him. The shower was suddenly off, and she stood holding onto him, trembling.

“If I take you now, I’ll harm you. I should have…I need to mate with you.
Do you know what that means?” Thor told him she didn’t, not really. “It means that we have to exchange blood with a bite. I need to mark you in a way of my kind. I need to hurt you.”

“Hurt me?”
He nodded, and that’s when she noticed how terrified he looked. “You want to hurt me to mark me as what? Is this how…is this what is meant by us becoming a couple?”

“Yes.
No.” After opening the door to the shower, he picked her up and sat her on the counter. “I’m going to dry you off. Then we’ll dress. I need to explain this to you.”

His cock was so hard that it looked painful. When she reached down and wrapped her fingers around him,
she marveled that her fingers didn’t touch. Moaning, he rocked into her hand and then pulled back. But Thor simply reached for him again, stepping off the counter and kneeling before him.

“I want to taste you now.”
He moaned, a growl really, but he didn’t tell her no. “I’ve never done this before, so if I don’t do it right, will you tell me?”

“If you
don’t want me to come in your mouth, now would be the time to tell me. Because as much as I’d like to do that, I’m not going to be able to stop once I start.” The thought of him coming in her mouth made her moan. She looked up at him as she licked him from root to crown. “Christ love, you’re going to kill me.”

His cock was thick and long. She loved the way he felt both silky and hard, the way the skin on his cock moved with her tongue.
And his taste was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. Lost in what she was doing, when Kaleb growled low and pulled her away from him, she whimpered.

“Finish me.”
His voice was hard, commanding, but it didn’t frighten her. It made her wet that she’d made him so out of control. “Finish me now, Thor, before I turn.”

She saw it then, the bear.
He was rushing along Kaleb’s skin until she had a hard time finding him from the bear. Taking him into her mouth again, he rocked hard, fucking her mouth as he’d done her pussy the night before. With the first taste of him, his essence, she slid her fingers into her and pinched her clit to try to find some relief. When he roared out his release, Thor had to work fast to swallow all of him. There was no way she was missing any of him.

Her body hurt.
Not from what he’d done to her but because she’d been denied for so long. And when he jerked her up from the floor, pulling her along behind him to the bedroom, she had a moment of fear. Before she could tell him to stop, to take a breath, she was tossed onto the bed. Bouncing twice, she was pulled to the edge by him, and he entered her. A hard, quick punch of him entering her had her breath swoosh out of her.

“Christ, you’re going to pay for that.” His cock filled her to where she knew he was in the back of her throat.
“You’re going to be mine now. All mine.”

“Yes.”
She wrapped her legs around him, her ankles locking of their own accord. Nuzzling his neck, she could smell him, his scent taking her so close to the pinnacle that she was begging him to give her what she needed. And when he bit her, sank sharp, sharper than human teeth into her throat, she screamed out her release, screamed out even as she sank her own teeth into him.

Blood filled her mouth, strong, spicy
, and hot. Dizziness swamped her as she swallowed him down. He pounded into her body even as his blood poured down her throat. When she came again, darkness descended upon her and stars danced over her open eyes. She had to close them as something filled her mind.

Memories of him, small snippets of his life.
The day he’d met Samuel. Then later when he’d met Stephan and a man named Hawk. The woman who’d given him life…not his mother, but she’d bet the witch, on the day she’d told him he’d find a mate and that she’d be his world. Thor had a moment of fear that he’d meet her someday and she’d be alone, but more days, weeks of his life filled her. When she cried out again, the pain of his changing to a bear filling her, Thor let the darkness take her under.

~~~

Samuel felt the connection. It was profound and had him stagger to his seat. It took him several moments of breathing deeply before he realized that it was a mating bond between Thor and Kaleb. And yet it was so much more.

He’d had a feeling for years now that Kaleb was more than he’d said. A werebear wasn’t a species that Samuel had had a great deal of contact with
, but he knew that while Kaleb had never said he was more than simply a shifter, he had hinted that he had powers that were great. And Samuel was pretty sure that Stephan knew it as well.

“Did you feel that?” Kennedy sat down as she waddled into the room.
“I thought me to be in labor, but then I realized it wasn’t coming from me. Did ye feel it?”

“Yes.
It was Thor and Kaleb. I believe they’ve mated and bonded.” He was feeling a good deal better and stood up to go to his wife. “How are you feeling, love? You’re doing okay?”

Kennedy was due
the previous day, but the doctor had told them that everything was fine. Samuel didn’t want to alarm anyone, but he didn’t think his wife was okay at all. She looked about ready to burst.

“Fine. I’m tired is all. This morning I went for a walk in the forest for a bit of air. Did you know there are several
póilíneachta
running around?” It took him a second to translate she’d meant police, but before he could tell her they were his men and were necessary, she continued. “Every time I moved, one of them was there to help me over a log or to offer to go and get ye’re car for me. I can walk and be alone, you know.”

“I’m sure they do as well
, but I think they simply want to make sure you don’t have this baby in the forest.” He was terrified she’d have it somewhere there were no drugs...not for her, but for him. He wasn’t going to make it. “Besides, I’m reasonably sure you told them you were fine.”

“Aye
, I did. Several times as a matter of fact.” She stretched out her legs, and he got up to put them on his lap. “I’ve a question for you. Do you remember that man Vinnie told us about? The one who does the work on old furniture?”

“Yes.
Russel Hawkmen. I think he goes by Hawk. Why? Do you have some old antiques that you didn’t tell me about?” She smiled and nodded her head. “You thinking of having an affair with him?”

“Nay, I’m thinking
we need to have some of the things from Ireland brought over for our daughter.
Seanmháthair
is coming here, and when she does, I’d like for her to make us a list.” Samuel nodded, liking the idea. Kennedy’s grandmother was a wonderful woman, and he loved her as much as his own mom. He thought about getting the five of them together. He’d like—

“Girl? I though
t you said a son?” She grinned at him, and he tweaked her toe. “Not nice. I was afraid there for a minute. Especially when I think of how long it took us to decide on a paint color for his room.”

“I didn’t take that long. I said blue. You’re the one who went to the store nineteen hundred times trying to find the perfect color.” She rubbed her hand over her extended belly. “I’ve a mind to have Thor and Kaleb over for dinner tonight. Do ye think you can persuade Jimmy and Gab to come too?”

“Yes. And I’ll invite Stephan, too, along with Vinnie if you don’t mind. And if I can find him, Hawk. We’ll make a night of it.” She nodded and put her feet on the floor. “When are we going to the doctor?”