Passion's Prey: The Shadow Shifters (2 page)

She had a trust fund that she’d come into the day she turned twenty-one. Ten million was hers to do with as she pleased. This meant she didn’t have to really do anything. But her parents had worked, both of them. Her father had been an architect, her mother a registered nurse. Her older brother, Nick, even though he’d come into his own trust fund when he turned twenty-one, also had a law degree and ran a very successful law firm with his partner and best friend, Roman Reynolds. Just because the Delgados had money didn’t mean they were pampered. And it hadn’t escaped her that an architect and a registered nurse were actually millionaires. Just one of those questions regarding her family she’d refused to scrutinize.

“Ten minutes, Cee.” Yandy Linch, the night floor manager, opened the door to the dressing room she shared with two other girls, said what she had to say, then closed the door again with a bang.

That’s how things went at Athena’s, hustle and flow, dance and make money. It wasn’t the best place in the world to work, but it gave her the chance to do something she’d always loved to do, dance. It had been one of those hidden indulgences, started when her mother had enrolled her in ballet at the age of seven. From there her love of the solitary art had grown, until now she was willing to put on this ridiculous costume and take it back off again, just for the release of dancing.

She’d auditioned for the Dance Institute of Washington when she’d finished college, and had been accepted. Then her parents had died, and her perspective had shifted. Just recently she’d gone back to the institute to see if there were any teaching or intern positions she could take—anything that would keep her in touch with what was once very important to her. In the meantime, she’d slake her need, her one true love, by doing this.

It wasn’t all bad, she’d told herself when she’d checked the mirror one last time and left the dressing room. Here at Athena’s they loved the Goddess—that was her stage name. Patrons began lining up at the club at nine just to see her eleven-thirty show. She only did one show four nights a week; that’s all she’d committed to once she’d come back to town. The owner of the club, Bam Milton, had known her for years. Actually, he’d been one of the only constants in her life so far. But Caprise wouldn’t call them friends—more like associates who bumped into each other a lot.

As she walked gracefully on the heels, clicking through the small hallway that led to the stage, she thought about her brother and what he’d think if he knew what she was doing. He’d flip the hell out without a doubt. Then again, Nick was famous for flipping out all the time anyway. Just recently he’d lost it over his female being kidnapped.

That had been wild—these last few weeks, that is. How Caprise had been drawn into the world of the Shadow Shifters once more she had no idea. She’d never owned up to being a shifter, never wanted to and didn’t want to now. Yet she was stuck with Seth, the cute and generally nice shifter guard who clung to her like glue and was right at this moment probably lurking around some corner in the club. She was living at Havenway, the new headquarters for Rome, the head of the Stateside Assembly, and his First Female, Kalina. Caprise was not only drawn into their world, she was smack in the middle of it.

Still, to be honest, she didn’t hate it all that much. She got to see Nick almost every day. And she was getting to know her sister-in-law, Ary, who would be giving birth to her niece or nephew in the next few months. So there was some benefit to that hulking goof of an FBI agent and Shadow Shifter, Xavier, keeping her locked in that room at Rome’s mansion all those weeks ago. He really irked her, X did. Each time she saw him, each time he opened his mouth to speak to her, something inside her moved. His voice slid through her entire body like something infecting her. She couldn’t quite put the feeling into words but hated it just the same. Some days she’d go so far as to say she hated Xavier Santos-Markland even if she didn’t have an explainable reason why.

Her music started and Caprise closed her eyes, stepped into the world of the Goddess, the persona that was her alter ego. The woman she really wasn’t, but secretly was.

As she danced, all thoughts cleared her mind; there was only the music. She always picked slow, sultry songs with piano or violin solos that pulled at the heart. Reached out and grabbed anyone listening, making them pay total attention to her and what she was giving them.

This gave her power. It made the Goddess exactly who she was. She commanded the attention of every male and female in this room; their eyes could not focus on anything or anyone but her. It was like a drug, and tonight Caprise was flying higher than a kite.

As she grasped the pole and pulled herself up, flipping effortlessly until she was upside down, she wondered fleetingly about the first man to throw money on the stage. It was too dark for her to see his face, but she knew he was there. She’d heard his panting as he’d made his way as close to the stage as he could get before tossing the bills.

Where did he work? What did he do? Was he married? Did he have children? A boy and a girl maybe? Did he fuck his wife while thoughts of her ran rampant through his mind?

That question stuck and Caprise slipped from the pole, moving her hips to the rhythm, easing her body down so that her legs were spread wide, her palms touching the floor. She leaned forward then, using her fingers to simulate a crawling motion as she stretched out on the stage. Rolling over to her back had the crowd roaring again. The music did things to her, rubbed along her like the fingers of a lover. A lover she didn’t have.

With the feeling of appreciation and a gentle tug of lust pushing her forward she stood, danced around the pole for a couple more notes, then stripped away her boy shorts, letting the strangers in the dark see what she’d been blessed with. Inside she laughed: They really couldn’t see her at all.

When her breasts were all but bared she could hear the crowd getting more excited. The sound of money moving through fingers grew louder. The scent of lust, need, sex, tinged her nose. Damn the senses of a shifter. In one minute she hated them. In the next they were second nature.

They loved her, the crowd out there. Even though not one of them knew her name, the day she was born, her favorite color, her most detested food. They loved her. The Goddess and the myth she created for them.

The song came to an end too soon, her body still humming with energy, with a need still unfulfilled. She picked up her cash, although she didn’t need it. On her way back to Havenway she’d have Zach stop her at the local House of Ruth to make her nightly contribution.

Stepping off the stage put her into a different atmosphere. The temperature changed, and she shivered. Where was Norm with her robe? Norm was the stagehand, a young boy with glasses as thick as a beer bottle, eyes so small she almost didn’t know they were there. His body looked like he suffered from malnutrition, his face the victim of a total acne attack. But his voice was soft and always layered over the Goddess like warm rain after her performance.

Tonight, he wasn’t there.

She was just lifting her arms to wrap them around herself and preparing to walk down the hallway to the dressing room when she was grabbed.

Warning alarms rang with persistence throughout her body. Every nerve standing on end as if she’d touched a live electrical wire.

“Don’t say a word.” His voice was deeper than she’d ever heard it before, deadlier. When she looked up at him his cat’s eyes pinned her for two seconds, totally stealing her breath and any smart retort she otherwise may have come up with.

“Not one fuckin’ word!”

He cut his eyes from her after that order, dragging her behind him down the hall until she almost tripped and fell.

This, Caprise thought with exasperation, was not going to end well.

Chapter 3

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Lips of a medium thickness spread into a smile, a leering and maniacal one. Cool blue eyes stared back at him in a way that said it knew who it was speaking to and didn’t give a damn. Sabar felt a tiny bit of pride at the shifter, but an even bigger part of him was pissed the fuck off that these creatures thought it was okay to roll up on him, on his turf, whenever they got the damn urge.

“Payback,” he said simply. “A concept I’m sure you’re familiar with, jaguar.”

Sabar moved forward in his chair, letting his arms rest on his desk. His body still hurt, damn that bastard Faction Leader. Shifters had the ability to heal thirty times faster than humans, but there were still some injuries that could be lethal. Especially to a shifter who was being treated by a human medical researcher instead of a doctor trained to deal with the shifter anatomy. But he was alive; that was a good thing.

“Spit it out, I don’t have all day.”

His guest’s response was to laugh, his upper and lower incisors clearly visible. He was a killer. Sabar could see it in his eyes. And he was on a mission. Game recognized game, he thought with an inner chuckle.

“When I get what I came for I’ll be gone.”

“And what did you come for?”

“It’s
who.
”

Sabar figured as much. “Then who?”

“She’s here. I followed her scent. Her name is Caprise.” He passed Sabar a picture.

Sabar took it, rubbing his fingers over the face of the female. She was a looker. Beside him, Darel stood. His second-in-command had healed from his own wounds, probably because his weren’t as extensive as Sabar’s. Or at least that’s what Sabar chose to believe.

“She works at the club,” Darel said.

“Get me inside and I’ll do what I need to do then get out of your hair.”

“Oh, yeah, you need to hurry up and get out of my hair,” Sabar said. “What’s she to you?”

His hands came up from his lap, fingers clenching together as he bent them back, cracked his human knuckles. “My business.”

“My fucking town!” Sabar yelled. “Now, you tell me what your plan is or we kill you right here, right now. Your choice.”

He sat back in his chair, rubbed a hand over thick waves of hair, cut short on the sides, left to curl on the top. “She is my
companheiro,
” he said simply.

“And who exactly are you?” Darel asked. “You’re not from around here—I’d know you if you were. Where are you from?”

“You people have many questions. My name is Rolando. I am from India. That is all you need to know.”

*   *   *

Athena’s was Darel’s territory. It was where he could be the boss without any interference. He’d thought, as he lay on that fucking table across from Sabar, bleeding like a stuck pig, that he’d never stand here in the glass-encased tower room that overlooked the stage and the entire first floor of the club again.

Yet here he was. In his rightful place doing what he was quickly coming to love.

Lifting a glass of vodka to his lips, he took a slow sip. He looked down into tonight’s crowd, feeling the energy in the room. He scented the lust and the greed and the slovenly nature of the humans who walked through the door paying their twenty-dollar cover charge to get in. Inside the pockets of the men were wads and wads of cash that they’d happily dump into the hands of each scantily clad female who graced that stage. Yandy, the female who had been in charge of the ladies when Darel took over, would collect 50 percent of whatever the strippers walked off stage with. Those were his terms, and they were non-negotiable. The fact that the majority of the dancers were also fucking his shifters gave them incentive not to balk about the money they were losing. The sex was a welcome substitute. Stupid humans.

Tonight, Darel wasn’t alone in the tower. It was normal to have Thunder and Black with him, his two newest backup shifters. They were both mean-ass, fresh-from-the-jungle jaguars with a penchant for Italian females and cocaine. The combination could prove dangerous sometimes, but always entertaining for Darel, who after his last brush with sex had taken to voyeurism. That doped-up chick Sabar had told him to watch had gone buck wild, trying to kill Darel as if he’d been the one to give her Sabar’s savior drug—which coincidentally was now making them a shitload of money. So no, Darel had decided to keep his dick in his pants or in his own palms for the moment. Besides, watching gave him a new buzz that he was just beginning to explore.

This dude said his name was Rolando. He definitely had the look of a man from India with his dark brown skin and ink-black hair. His accent was here and there, as if he’d taken great time to master the English language. And his eyes, Darel didn’t trust them. Not one bit.

The one he called his
companheiro
was a stripper here at Athena’s. She was new. Darel had seen her on a couple of occasions. He’d known she was a shifter and was waiting until the perfect moment to let her know that he knew. It seems that moment would be tonight as Rolando was intent on having her.

Sabar had given Darel precise commands in this area. Check them both out to see if the distinctive
companheiro calor
was there, then, if it was, bring them both to him. If it wasn’t, kill Rolando and bring Sabar the girl because there had to be a reason this foreign shifter was looking for her.

Darel wasn’t totally sure how he was going to handle the situation. As of late he’d decided to play things by ear. Sabar wasn’t handling his business the way Darel thought he should be. Especially not since Bianca’s mysterious arrival.

When the lights went down, Darel took his seat. He motioned with a nod for Rolando to do the same. Thunder and Black would remain standing, ready at the drop of a dime if some shit should jump off.

For the first few moments of the act all the men watched in silence. Probably all touching their elongated dicks as the Goddess worked her magic on the pole. As Darel inhaled deeply he scented that not only was Rolando excited by the show, he was enraged. Darel couldn’t help but smile, figuring he’d be jealous as hell if it were his mate on that pole shaking her ass for all these men to see and toss her some money.

Darel had seen her before, knew her routine, the swell of her breasts and the curve of her ass. She was attractive, there was no doubt, and alluring, he’d say, given the way his fellow Rogues seemed transfixed by her.