Wolf Tales 11 (2 page)

While here, on this plane, a man made love to a goddess.

Slowing his deep thrusts, finding a deliberate, measured rhythm he could sustain, Adam gazed at the woman whose neglect had almost ended him, yet whose uncompromising love had healed his heart. She opened her wide gray eyes and smiled up at him.

A smile that flashed straight to his heart like a bolt of lightning, taking his breath, branding him. It was time. Doubts and baseless concerns disappeared. She was his, the woman meant to stand by his side, to bear his children, to share his thoughts. He took a deep breath, aware of the pounding in his chest, the rush of blood in his veins. He wanted that most intimate of bonds, forever. Connected as only Chanku could be.

“Bond with me tonight, Liana. Be my mate, for now and forever.”

Her vaginal muscles rippled over his shaft in a subtle reaction to his soft request. Her fingers brushed the rough stubble covering his jaw. “Are you certain, Adam? Have
you truly forgiven me? Will you ever be able to forget my failures?”

He shook his head. “I can’t forget what happened. I don’t want to, because it’s led to this time, this moment. It’s led me to you, Liana. I loved Eve with all my heart, but I never realized my love wasn’t enough for her. She has what she needs, now.” He kissed Liana’s mouth, sliding his lips over the softness of hers. “And me? I have what I need, Liana. What I want. The question is, can I be enough for you? A woman who was once a goddess, who has been loved by men much better than I’ll ever be, for more centuries than I can imagine?”

She laughed against his mouth and teased his lips with her tongue while her body held him deep inside, clenching and pulsing around his erection. “Adam, you are such a rogue! You know there’s no lover better than you. More important, there’s no man who could possibly put up with me. I love you. I can imagine no other for my mate. I would be …”

Her body jerked and then went rigid in his arms. Her eyes flashed wide and bright.

“Liana? What’s wrong?” Adam shoved himself away from her. His cock slipped free of her warmth as he gathered her up in his arms, held her against his chest. He tried to link but her mind was closed to him. Blocked. “Liana? What’s happening?”

She blinked. Shook her head, frowning. Then she stared at him, frightened and wild-eyed. “No, Adam. No.” She clutched at his shoulders and her fingers dug into his flesh. “This is terrible.” The words rushed out on a whispered breath of fear.

“Absolutely terrible.”

Baylor Quinn checked to make certain the big SUV wasn’t overlapping a parking space on either end of the
one he’d just managed to squeeze into. Then he turned in his seat and grinned at the two women in the back. “Okay, ladies. We’re here—downtown Freeport, Maine, and all the shopping your hearts desire.”

His beloved Manda laughed and rolled her eyes. “It’s only taken us a year to convince you guys to bring us up here, so don’t act like it’s all your idea.”

Shannon Murphy jabbed her lightly in the ribs. “Careful. Jake’s still not certain he wants to be here at all. It’s taken me ages to drag that man out of the woods. Don’t blow it now. My credit cards are burning a hole in my handbag.”

Jacob Trent merely snorted.

“See?” Shannon shook her head as she reached for the door handle. “What did I say? He is such a Neanderthal.”

“Now that’s an interesting concept.” Jake climbed out and opened Manda’s door. “A shapeshifting Neanderthal. Wonder if he’d shift into a dire wolf? Those suckers were big.”

“You’re plenty big enough for me, sweetheart.” Shannon winked at him. Then she shut her door and met the others on the curb. Her eyes were twinkling when she kissed Jake. “Why don’t you and Bay grab a cup of coffee and pursue the concept of shapeshifting dire wolves. Manda and I have shopping to do and a whole town full of stores waiting just for us … and your money.”

Laughing, Manda and Shannon linked arms and headed toward the long row of shops along the main street. Baylor stood beside Jake, watching the smooth sway of Manda’s slim hips as she walked away from him. Then he sighed and turned to Jake—his lover and truest male friend. “We’ll be lucky if we hear from them for hours. Coffee or a cold beer?”

Jake laughed. “We’d better wait until later this afternoon for that beer. I think it’s going to be a long day. Coffee for me.”

Bay followed him into a small coffee shop not far from where they’d parked. Manda and Shannon had been arguing for a weekend away from home and a chance to shop in the little town of Freeport for months now, but it was still difficult for Bay to relax in unfamiliar territory.

“It’s okay, you know.” Jake set two coffees down on the small table Bay’d found near the front window and took the seat across from him. “We haven’t had any threats for a long time. The girls are both sharp and they’re well trained. They can take care of themselves.”

Bay shrugged. He picked up the cup and stared at the dark brew. “I wish I could relax, Jake. I can’t. I’ve been inside Manda’s memories and I know the nightmare she lived.”

Held captive by a man who was driven to learn her secrets, Manda had spent twenty-five years as his prisoner, subjected to horrendous experiments and vicious sexual attacks. She’d lost her childhood, and only now seemed to be recovering the sense of herself, her confidence as a free woman.

The image of her, crippled by her body’s inability to complete a shift one way or the other, trapped for years in a deformed shell that was half human and half wolf, would haunt Baylor until his dying day. With thoughts of Manda’s life before she’d discovered her true heritage much too clear in his mind, he gazed into Jake’s amber eyes. “Think how your life would be if you hadn’t gotten to Shannon in time when those bastards tried to snatch her. We’ve been damned lucky so far. Some day that luck’s gonna run out.”

Jake planted both hands on the tabletop and stood up. “We can’t live our lives in fear, bro. Think the way you do when you’re the wolf, about letting go and living for the moment.” He took a swallow of coffee. “It works for me. See? Right now, at this moment, I gotta take a leak.”

Bay chuckled, shaking his head as Jake sauntered across
the small shop. Curious eyes of interested women at nearby tables followed him as he headed to the back where the restrooms were located. Bay couldn’t blame them for looking. Jake had an aura of sexuality about him that couldn’t be denied, as well as a devil-may-care attitude that buried a much deeper persona. The combination of sensual aura, rugged good looks, personality, and intelligence was definitely seductive.

Still, Bay had to admit that Jake was right. Sometimes Bay spent so much time reliving the past and worrying about the future he forgot to relish the present.

Maybe he needed to work on that.

A shift in air currents caught his attention. A large man wearing a dark suit and tie slid into Jake’s empty chair. Bay’s head snapped up as recognition slammed into him. He hadn’t seen his old partner since he’d left government service. “Rolf? What the hell are you doing here?”

“I was gonna ask you the same thing.” The man glanced toward the door, then in the direction Jake had gone. “It’s been a while, Bay. We’ve missed you.”

Baylor shook his head. “It was time to get out. The last job left a bad taste in my mouth.”

“It also left a lot of good men missing and presumed dead. What happened?”

“Can’t talk about it. Still classified.” So classified that even his superiors in the service had no idea what had happened the day he’d been sent to kill Jacob Trent and kidnap the woman who was now Jake’s mate. “What brings you to Freeport, Rolf? You’re still with the service, right?”

Rolf nodded. “Officially? Recruiting.”

Bay sipped his coffee. “Unofficially?”

“Still looking for the missing agents. We’ve followed their trail as far as Bangor, but they seemed to just disappear off the face of the Earth at that point.”

Bay set his cup down and sent a questioning thought in
Jake’s direction. He wondered what was taking his buddy so long, wondered why he’d run into Rolf here and now. It was much too unsettling to be mere coincidence.

As far as Bay knew, Rolf had no idea he’d been assigned to work that final job with the missing agents. No idea Bay had been part of the team that had, as Rolf said and for all intents and purposes,
disappeared off the face of the Earth.

Bay’s addition to the team that was sent to kidnap Shannon Murphy had been a last-minute change ordered directly by Milton Bosworth, the late Secretary of Homeland Security—a change in personnel that never made it to the books.

Even Bosworth hadn’t known that the bodies of those agents would rest forever at the bottom of a flooded, abandoned quarry deep in the wilds of northwestern Maine. Even if he had, Bosworth was dead now, a fact that filled Bay with a quiet sense of satisfaction since the discovery that Bosworth had been the one responsible for Manda’s cruel treatment, for the horrible acts committed against an innocent child.

But, what if the service knew more than he realized? Bay frowned and stared at Rolf through the steam from his cup of coffee. “I want the truth. Are you following me?”

“No. Should we be?” Rolf shook his head as if answering his own question. Then he glanced about the room again and lowered his voice. “Bay, when I saw you, I knew I had to say something. We’ve got history, man. You kept me alive on more than one occasion. Listen up … you’re working for that hotshot California agency now, Pack Dynamics, right?”

When Bay nodded, he continued. “I overheard a conversation yesterday I probably should have missed, but when I saw you and that other guy walk in here … well, let’s just say it was too fucking weird. Coincidence like that doesn’t just happen, and I knew I had to say something.
Look, there’s talk that our people tried to get Pack Dynamics to pick up a job. PD refused. The guys at the top weren’t happy and they’re looking for leverage.”

Again, he glanced around as if he feared someone might be watching. His unease made Bay uncomfortable, but before he could comment or question Rolf, the man focused on him once again.

“They were talking about the fact that a couple of wives of PD agents are pregnant. About how vulnerable that made the agency. Word is, someone’s going to try and kidnap them, hold them until PD agrees to do the job. I don’t have any dates or any idea what the job entails, but whatever it is, our guys are willing to take some desperate and totally unethical measures.”

Before Bay could respond, Rolf glanced over his shoulder again. He must have seen Jake as soon as Bay did, because he practically lunged out of the chair. “Look, Bay … I don’t have any details, but you were someone I could trust when you were still with the service. There’s no one there like that. Not anymore. Be careful. Things have changed. Not in a good way.”

He was out the front door before Jake slipped into the vacant seat.

“Who was that?”

“Give me a minute.” Bay dialed Lucien Stone’s private line in San Francisco. Luc answered immediately.

“Luc, I just got a very strange warning that members of the agency I used to work for might be after Tala and Lisa. Keep them under guard until we can figure this out, okay?”

Luc’s terse answer chilled his blood. Bay listened a moment and ended the connection. He felt Jake in his mind and merely filled in the details. “It’s too late. Someone grabbed Tia, Tala, and Lisa less than an hour ago. Their mental connections disappeared at the same moment. No one can reach them.”

Jake stood up. “Let’s find our girls. I don’t like this a bit. We need to get to San Francisco.”

“You find the girls. I need to talk to Rolf.”

“The guy who was just here?”

Bay nodded. “Yeah. We worked together a few years back. He just showed up and told me about the threat against Pack Dynamics, that Tala and Lisa might be in danger.”

“He came all the way up here to tell you that? How the hell did he know you’d be in Freeport?”

Bay shook his head. “He claims he was surprised to see me but that he felt he owed it to me to tell what he’d heard. Says he’s up here on the trail of some missing agents.”

Jake’s head snapped around. “Our missing agents?”

Again Bay nodded. “Same. Go find the girls.”

Jake nodded and took off down the street. Bay cast his thoughts out for Manda as he scanned the busy street in search of the agent. Manda’s sweet presence slipped into his mind. He sent her a quick warning, told her to watch for Jake.

Something made him turn just as a man in a dark suit stepped off the curb onto the crosswalk at the corner. Baylor recognized Rolf immediately and started forward. A black SUV swerved off a side road and accelerated up the narrow street. Bay barely had time to cry out a warning before the heavy-duty grill connected with the lone pedestrian in the crosswalk.

Rolf’s body flipped over the hood, cracked the windshield, and spun across the top of the SUV. He caught for a moment on the luggage rack and then tumbled to the ground in a mangled heap of broken bones and torn flesh. There was no sign of movement, no sense of life. Bay glanced once at the retreating SUV and raced down the sidewalk, running for all he was worth in the direction of Manda’s horrified mental cry.

Mik Fuentes and AJ Temple stormed into Luc’s office as he hung up the phone. With all his heart, Luc wished he had something positive to tell the guys, but Baylor’s call had merely confirmed what he already knew, what he’d learned for certain only moments before.

He’d been uneasy all morning, but he hadn’t figured out why. Now he knew. Tinker McClintock muscled his way past Mik and AJ. “What the fuck’s happened?” He leaned over Luc’s desk, his chest heaving with each breath he took. “I can’t reach Lisa. Her thoughts are gone. Flat out gone.”

“Same with Tala.” AJ grasped Mik’s arm, holding on to him as if he needed the support. “Neither one of us had tried to contact her all morning. I mean, it’s just a fucking shopping trip, right? But when we tried, we couldn’t raise her. No mental signature …”

“No answer on her cell. Nothing.” Mik stared at Luc. “Not a damned thing.”

Shaking his head, Luc said, “They’ve got Tia, too. At least I think they do.” He ran his hand across his eyes and took a deep breath. “I can’t reach her, either.”