Hunting Her (The Keeping Her #6)
Read Hunting Her (The Keeping Her #6) Online
Authors: Kelly Lucille
Hunting Her
By
Kelly Lucille
Text Copyright Kelly Lucille 2016
All Rights Reserved
Xena was
tired of this bullshit already. The myriad scents of sweet, rich foods, and
designer perfume were clogging her sensitive nose enough to make her feel head
blind in the party crowd that surrounded her. Add to that the arrogant
self-assurance inherent in the rich European men that approached her, and she
already had a headache coming on.
"Tell
me again why I'm crashing this party when you have an invitation." She
was careful to be facing away from the cameras when she spoke to what would
appear to be thin air.
"Because
it's the perfect time to nose around upstairs while the party is going on
downstairs, and when they discover the break in, which they will, all the
guests who attended will be suspects. And
you
are there to distract
Sven, Georgie boys’ head of security, who has a thing for ladies of color, and
who indubitably clocked you as a crasher before the first rich asshole
propositioned you."
"Well,
he's taking his sweet time with his approach," she muttered, as she caught
the eye of a man in a tuxedo watching her from the open bar. "Maybe he
prefers a darker shade of color than mine." The man at the bar raised his
glass of champagne and an eyebrow in debonair invitation. Xena fought against
the need to roll her eyes. Instead, she turned and gave him her back while her
partner for this particular assignment chuckled in her ear.
"Trust
me my dear, the swede likes a little cream with his coffee, and even if he
didn’t, that red dress would convince him."
Xena did
roll her eyes at that statement and the lascivious tone coating it. Jeff was
tall, trim, dark haired, dark eyed, extremely good-looking, and nearly as good
at infiltration as she was. It had taken exactly one job that they worked on
together before he realized she was not his type. Jeff would never sleep with
any woman who could take him in a fight. Xena might look like his usual
flavor, all small and fragile, but in her case, the packaging was deceiving.
Jeff discovered that the first and last time he grabbed her ass. Since then
the flirting was knee jerk on his part, and all for show.
Though,
he was not wrong. The dress she wore was smoking hot, even if it was one of
the few in the room that didn’t bare a lot of skin. High at the neck and back,
it had an asymmetrical neckline that flowed from high on her right shoulder to
under her left arm. A wide ribbon of the same stretchy fabric as the dress wrapped
from the base of her neck on the right to the lower neckline at the left, forming
a narrow slash of smooth skin in between. Then it wrapped over her left
shoulder and had more wide ribbons of fabric at the top of both arms draping in
such a way as to fall off her shoulders. The rest of the dress was clingy and
smooth all the way down to where it wrapped just a little tight at her knees.
It showed off every curve of her body and gave the subtle suggestion of bondage
at the same time. To cap that off she was wearing four-inch stiletto Louboutin
strappy black heels with peekaboo toes.
Yeah,
she was rocking that dress.
"Just
so you know, I'm keeping this dress," she said, smiling at the sight of
her carnal red toes in those shoes. "And the heels."
Jeff
chuckled but gave her no argument. Which was a good thing because just then a six
foot six full human of clear Scandinavian descent entered the party. His ice
blue eyes honed in on Xena as if the red dress was a beacon to lead him home. Though,
if he liked what he saw, it didn’t show on the cold planes of his face.
He
looked out of place moving through the crowd of tuxedos and flashy skin
revealing couture. Precise buzz cut, bulky muscles and obvious weapons barely
hidden by his custom suit, he was the epitome of muscle for hire. The pretty
people moved out of his way like a flock of colorful birds before a bull moose.
"Go
time," Xena murmured before she turned her body so that the man was coming
at her head on, only the wall at her back.
Just as
Sven 'the swede' was within a foot of her a motion at her side had her turning
her head to see someone else had managed to move much closer without her
sensing it. The scent of Alpha wolf and pine hit her nose right before she
looked up into familiar heated hazel eyes. Even as he came towards her, they
flashed to the gold of his wolf.
Holy
shit.
Her
mate. An Alpha wolf shifter that she had run from nearly two months ago. The
day her last job went south and they came face to face for the first time over
unconscious bad guys on a private island off the coast of Rio. She had known
he would look for her when she ran, but she had no clue he was in Prague, let
alone in the building.
How
the hell did he get this close, this fast?
The question did not have a chance to escape her lips
before he grabbed her, pulled her tight against his hard body and kissed her,
full out and without a thought for the large human coming at them from her
other side.
Xena
should have done a lot of things when he kissed her, but at the taste and scent
of him, the feel of his hard chest when he wrapped a claiming arm around her
waist and lifted her off her feet, the feel of suddenly being pressed tight
against all that hard body she had admired in person exactly once, she lost the
sense God had seen fit to bless her with and kissed him back full out.
Without
a single thought to the job, the armed swede, or the party crowd, her arms
wrapped around his neck. Her fingers dug into his slightly too long at the
nape hair, her mouth opened and she growled her pleasure at finally tasting
Logan McCord.
When he
pulled back the party people were twittering, the Swede was standing entirely
too close watching them, and he had been joined by two men only slightly
smaller than himself. And in a minute Xena would stop tingling all over and
give a shit. Still pressed along her mate, his wolf gold eyes flashing heat
and promise down at her, that might take a while.
"Waited
a long time for that darlin’, not saying it wasn't worth it," Logan
whispered. His breath hot on her lips and the words barely there. "You
in that dress, those shoes, the way you kiss...but I'm still fixin' to paddle
that luscious ass at the first opportunity."
That
took care of the tingles. Xena pulled back out of his arms, which she should
have done immediately. Flashing Logan a warning glare, she bared her teeth.
Before she could speak, the swede lost his own patience.
"You
have an invitation?" The English was accented and made Xena wonder what
it was about them that made him ask them in English rather than the Czech that
was more common in Prague. From his accent, it was certainly not Sven the
Swedes first language. Had to be Logan and the cowboy boots he was wearing
with his suit that gave away the American. Of course, once he spoke the drawl
gave Logan away but she doubted very much the swede had heard what he said to
her.
When
Xena looked over her shoulder at the muscle bound goon at her back she found
the swede's cold blue eyes moving from Logan to her, and then halting for a
long pointed moment on her ass. Logan's reaction to that was to take a hold of
her arm and pull her around and into his side. Locking her down with a heavy
claiming arm around her shoulders. He grinned at the other man, and it looked
almost friendly, if you didn’t look into the hot gold of his wolf eyes.
"Not
since I gave it to the man at the gate," Logan said mildly enough. He
started sweeping his thumb up and down the bare skin of her arm. Since she had
no idea what game he was playing, she kept her mouth shut, and refrained from
breaking the finger or the arm that bound her so tightly. But she thought
about it. Now that he wasn't clouding her brain with his phenomenal oral skills,
Xena could think about him showing up here to stake his claim.
While she
was working.
It was
then she remembered Jeff had a ringside seat for the whole show. He was being
uncharacteristically silent in her ear.
Well.
Shit
.
"And
this lady who did not arrive with you? She is...?"
Logan
stared at the man, slowly losing the good old boy grin on his face. His eyes
never shifted from the bigger man. His voice was still that smooth drawl, but
now there was a bite to it that no one could mistake for anything but
displeasure. "I'm not in the habit of answering to flunkies. If Mr. Kral
has a question, let him ask it."
Mistake.
Xena thought it even
as the tingles came back. The swede, with a different reaction to Logan's
Alpha hotness, bared his teeth and spoke on a growl. His accent thickening with
his anger. "Then you will follow me, and I will take you to him."
"Please,"
Logan said smoothly, sweeping an arm out. "Lead the way. If I know Jiri,
he will be in his office."
That
made the swede hitch a step and glance back at Logan uneasily. But he turned
and led the way just the same. The Swede’s two bookends, taking their place
behind Logan and Xena, kept their eyes sharp on the guests as they followed
with enough space between them to look like escorts and not guards.
At least
Jeff was getting the distraction he wanted out of this. Xena was going over in
her mind exit strategies.
"What
the hell are you planning to do when Jiri doesn't know you?" she whispered
low enough that only another shifter could possibly hear.
Logan
answered in the same quiet tone. "What makes you think he doesn't know
me?" he asked, squeezing her shoulder under his arm at the same time in
reassurance. Not reassuring her in the least. At the idea that her mate knew
a gunrunning Czech asshole with possible ties to a group of humans that not
only knew about shifters but thought it was a fun game to kidnap and hunt them
in a secret game preserve like animals her step stuttered. Logan,
the
bastard,
chuckled at her reaction, nuzzling her ear for the benefit of
their guards no doubt. "You are not the only one who takes odd jobs on
occasion."
What
the hell did that mean?
Then as
if they were on a date, his eyes moved to peer down the length of her curves in
that red dress.
"How
did you hide so much in that little maid uniform?" he asked her breasts,
his tone teasing.
Xena
snorted, drawing the eye of the swede with the sound. She smiled vacuously at
the man until he turned back around and then spoke dryly and under the ability
of the humans around them to hear. "Don't get too excited, cowboy. The
face and hair are mine this time, the boobs... not so much."
This was
very true, when she had met him dressed as a maid in the employ of that asshole
Gerent she had sported her usual barely B cup, along with cosmetic enhancements
to her cheeks, chin and colored contacts to muddy her unusual eyes. Now she
was wearing more than a little padding to create the healthy C he was examining
so appreciatively, but everything else was her. The fact that he would mention
it in these circumstances meant he was not taking their situation seriously
enough for Xena.
Typical male.
Logan's
eyes moved to her face with no sign he was disappointed, or that he had heard
her admonishment.
"The
lips are the same," he grinned slow and wide. "Considering how often
I fantasized about them, have to say that's a fuckin' relief."
For a
moment Xena was caught in those hazel eyes, the words and tone of his warm
voice making her forget for a moment where they were and what she was supposed
to be doing. She shook it off with an effort and looked away, ignoring the
renewed tingles and the goosebumps that she hoped he wouldn’t notice traveling
over her body.
This,
right here, was why she had run from him the second she saw him. He was a
distraction she did not need. The job she was working, and had been working
for nearly a year was too important to blow. The human hunters had to be
stopped, and the shifters who would turn on their own kind for profit identified
for the Council to deal with. That was her job, it was an important one, and
she would be damned if some hot cowboy Alpha wolf would derail her.
The
information she found on Gerent's hard drive had verified that he was involved
and led her to one name, Jiri Kral, before the whole thing went to shit, and
left a lot more questions than answers.
She did
not blame anyone in the Lionsgate pack for the actions that ended that line of
information. She could hardly point fingers at them when Gerent was the
entitled asshole who kidnapped, not just one of their females, but Cleo Gibbs,
the Alpha's daughter, with the idea that he would force a mating between them.
Proving, once and for all, that he was the dumbest motherfucker alive. There
was a saying known throughout the shifter world that, if he had a brain in that
arrogant silver spoon sucking big haired Lion head of his, he would have
remembered.
You do not fuck with Lionsgate.
A rare
pack of mixed shifter animals, Lionsgate was comprised of Ex- Navy SEALS that
had formed a unit, first in the military, and then when they moved onto other
dangerous employment after their discharges. Led by Lucas Gibbs, A lion shifter,
they had everything from wolves, like Logan to the slightly more exotic
wolverine shifter, jaguars, hawk, and even a human mate or two thrown in, which
told you everything you needed to know right there. These were not men that
followed any rule but their own. Fiercely loyal to each other with a training
that few could boast, if crossed, they had the wherewithal and the desire to
take payback to a level of carnage rarely seen, even among shifters.