Seduction's Shift (31 page)

She inhaled and sighed shakily. Nick wasn’t going to like what she was getting ready to say. “I got a call on my cell phone.”

“The one I just gave you that nobody besides us should have the number to?” Nick questioned.

She shook her head. “I don’t know how he got the number. All I know is the call came through. I answered and he asked me to meet him. I couldn’t believe it at first because I thought Davi was dead. But I’d know his voice anywhere. So I had to go and see for myself. Leo was with me the entire time.”

“It’s a good thing,” X said. “I think they had Davi call you because they knew we’d all come to rescue you again. They were diverting our attention.”

“Sonofabitch,” Nick murmured, standing to pace the floor.

It was starting again, Ary noted. He was keeping a tight rein on his temper, and for Nick, she knew that was an effort. For that she was proud. For the fact that he was going through this at all—she hated that it was because of her.

“That’s not all,” X continued. “There was a witness at the bank. In her car parked out front. She told the police about two black Hummers that pulled up. Four got out of the first one and went into the bank. Minutes later they were out again.”

“Okay, at least that’s something to go on, right?” Ary asked.

“That’s not all she said. She told them they didn’t look like men. She thought maybe they were wearing Halloween masks on their face and gloves with claws on their hands.”

“Can this get any worse?” Ary asked.

“Shit yeah! If we don’t get a handle on these Rogues, it’s going to get much worse” was Nick’s retort.

X didn’t look happy about the assessment, but he couldn’t argue it, either. “I think this time you might be right. Rome’s talking with the Assembly tonight. Get some rest, we’re meeting with him at the club first thing in the morning.”

Nick nodded as X left the room. Closing the door, he let his forehead tap against the door. Thoughts of Ary being captured, tortured, killed, of all those innocent people in the bank, of the shifter he’d killed and the shaman he had locked away on this property, all bounced around in his head. He wanted to scream with rage, to rake his nails down the door, splintering the wood until he felt some sort of relief. Instead he could only remain still.

Her touch was like a salve, small hands moving up his back, spreading warmth that wasn’t so much arousing as it was comforting. When she wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her front against his back, Nick wanted to sigh with relief, he wanted to lose himself in the simple feeling of her holding him. But he couldn’t.

There was too much going on, too much at stake. And for all the years he’d lived with the rage against his parents and the anger against the shifters who refused to accept that they were different, Nick felt fury that made him shake. He wanted to kill again. Pure and simple he wanted to kill the next person who walked up to him, or who looked at Ary wrong. It didn’t really matter who it was. And that was what scared him most.

“We’ll come up with a way to fight them,” Ary said from behind him. “We won’t let them win.”

He heard her words, wanted to swallow them up like two Tylenols and a glass of water, in hopes they’d cure this fury rippling through him. But he didn’t think that was going to happen.

“I want him dead.” He spoke slowly, quietly. “I want the shaman as dead as your father. Is that normal?”

He asked the question and turned, pressing his back against the door and watching her take a half step away from him. “Is it normal to believe that killing is the answer?”

She hesitated a moment, then licked her lips nervously. “If you’re asking me if you’re normal, Nick, the answer is yes. You are what you have been bred to be, a man and a cat. Reactions of both will come to you all your life, and that’s normal.”

“How could I kill your father? How can I hurt you like that?” Even though he knew he’d do it again in a heartbeat, a small part of him wondered what kind of man that made him.

Ary touched her palms to his cheeks. “How could he hurt me the way he did? I don’t have that deep desire to kill, Nick, but I don’t have any love lost for him, either.”

He closed his eyes, tried like hell to rein in what he was feeling because at this moment Nick didn’t really know what it was. Anger and rage he recognized and embraced eagerly. This foreign entity was new, surfacing only with the sound of Ary’s voice, the touch of her hands.

There was something swirling around inside him, something that almost—but not quite—conquered all the dark and evil. It was soft and light and just hovered over the surface of his being. With a lift of his arms he was touching her, squeezing her shoulders, and whispering her name.

“I need you, Ary. I need you so bad.”

She touched a finger to his lips to quiet him. “Let me take care of you,” she said, her hands slipping down his torso, pushing the T-shirt he wore up and over his head.

Light kisses peppered his chest and Nick let his head fall back, rapping against the door. Her touch was so soft and yet so damn hot. When her tongue circled one of his nipples, Nick’s fingers clenched at his sides. Teeth raked over the skin she’d just kissed as she bit down on the nipple lightly at first, then hard enough that he sucked in a deep breath. Her tongue licked the area once more and his cock strained against the zipper of his pants.

As if she’d read his mind, her nimble fingers moved over the button of his jeans and slid the zipper down. Pressing her breasts close to his chest, she breathed heavily as she used both her hands to push his boxers and his jeans down at once. They were at his ankles and Nick wanted to curse because his boots wouldn’t let him simply kick them off. He felt trapped here, but the moment Ary’s warm hand wrapped around his turgid length, he thought here wasn’t such a bad place to be.

Every touch was soft, with the gentlest of care, as if she were worshiping him even as he basked in the feel of her. He couldn’t resist touching a hand to the top of her head, smoothing down her silky hair. She sighed with his action and he continued, moving so that both his hands were in her hair, his fingers wrapping the long strands around and around. She’d lowered herself to her knees, her hand still wrapped around his erection as she rubbed her cheek along his length, touching the tip to her skin then whispering her warm breath over it.

“Dammit! Dammit! I need you,” he heard himself say and felt empty. He knew there was more he wanted to say, probably needed to say, but he didn’t.

“You’ve got me” was her reply, and everything inside him tightened. “I’m right here with you, Nick. I won’t leave you,” she stated clearly.

Nick opened his eyes and looked down at her to find she was staring right back up at him. “I won’t leave you, Ary. Ever again,” he told her with everything he had inside. He would not leave her and he would not let anything happen to her.

“You’re my
companheiro,
” she told him just before opening her mouth over his dick and taking the bulbous head between her lips.

It was hot there, moist, and so fucking fantastic he almost came instantly. “Ary, you are my
companheiro
. You are fucking mine!”

She took his entire length into her mouth then, letting his tip sit at the back of her throat and holding him there. Nick tensed all over, his fingers pulling at her hair as he struggled not to pull back and pump full force into her mouth. She was so his, so definitely his. No other female, even the most promiscuous of the lot he’d been with, had ever turned him on the way Ary did, had ever done things to him the way Ary did. So yes, she was definitely his until either or both of them drew their dying breath.

Nick couldn’t stand it a second longer. He pulled her up to him, loving the way his length slid so slippery from her pouting lips. “I need you now!” he told her.

She grabbed his cheeks and rose to her tiptoes. “Take me, then,” she told him before running her tongue over his lower lip then dipping it inside his mouth.

In no time Nick was ripping her clothes off, popping buttons, tearing fabric. He didn’t give a shit. All he could think about was her, all he could smell, see, feel was Ary. When she was naked he pushed her down on the bed, had her palms flat on the mattress, her arms fully extended but her back bent over.

Nick kissed down the line of her spine, spreading her cheeks as he neared them, licking over the pretty globes before pressing a finger inside her anus.

“Take me!” she yelled.

“I will!” he told her, inserting yet another finger, stretching the pretty entrance.

“Now!”

“So bossy,” he told her before pulling his fingers out and positioning his tip at the opening. “I’m going to take you.”

“Yes!” she moaned, wiggling her ass at him as if an invitation were really needed.

He pressed forward slightly. She wiggled again. He slapped a hand to one cheek, watched it blush, and slapped the other one.

“Nick!”

“Oh yeah, baby, that’s my name. Say it again.” He pressed in deeper. She wiggled again, gasping his name over and over.

Through with the theatrics, Nick sank his entire length inside her, palmed her ass cheeks, and pulled out. When he pushed back inside she came, thighs shaking, his name rolling off her lips like a litany. Nick pumped until he felt like his legs would falter or his back would break. Instead his essence poured from him in thick streams, shooting inside of her, taking all that he had, all that he was. He closed his eyes and saw her face. He inhaled and smelled her scent, their combined
calor
. In his ears was her voice saying his name, saying he was her
companheiro,
saying she loved him.

Chapter 30

“Felipe Hernandez, one of the Cortez Cartel’s lieutenants, was captured in New Mexico last night. I made a few calls and had him transferred to Bas’s resort for safekeeping,” X said.

“That’s great. Commit a couple hundred murders, ship millions in drugs to American soil, killing thousands of humans, and get rewarded with a night’s stay at a four-star resort in beautifully scenic Sedona,” Nick quipped.

Rome shook his head at Nick. “You sound like a commercial for a fun-filled vacation.”

“Well, that’s what this crook is on, a vacation.”

“He’s locked down tight in one of the wine cellars. Bas isn’t giving him any VIP treatment, I can guarantee you that.” X motioned for the bartender to bring him another drink. “I want to head down there sometime this week to talk to him.”

“That’s a good idea,” Rome said.

They’d left Rome’s mansion right after breakfast, making sure the females were in the house and safely guarded—especially after yesterday’s events. Now they were at the country club where Rome was an upstanding member, even after he’d married a local police officer instead of some high-powered female on the political scene, having drinks.

After the botched attack at the museum and the bank robbery, messages had gone out to all the shifters in X’s database to be on alert for the Rogue scent and suspicious shifter activity. Every trained guard they had was at Rome’s mansion ready to roll out at a moment’s notice.

“I also found out that Julio Cortez is living in a luxurious nursing home in Colombia. Word is dementia keeps him pretty busy these days.”

Rome drummed his fingers on the table. “There goes any information we could expect to get out of him. My father’s notes said he talked with Julio on a regular basis. That would have been more than twenty-five years ago.”

Nick nodded. “Julio would have been in control of the cartel at that time when running cocaine was the biggest part of their business. Under Raul’s auspicious leadership, they’ve moved into ecstasy and human trafficking. I hear he specializes in teenage girls.”

“Bastards,” X said with a growl.

Both Rome and Nick looked at him.

“You okay, man?” Nick asked. “You’ve been a little tense.”

X cut his eye at Nick then looked back down to his drink. “This is a tense situation. We’ve got a few things going on at one time and all of them are damn volatile. It’s going to be hell trying to keep control of each situation.”

“Then we don’t control them, we just counteract,” Rome replied. “I want to know what our parents’ connection was to Cortez and that symbol that’s now displayed on drug packages being sold on the streets. But our safety comes first. Sabar remains the priority.”

Nick nodded his head. “Any more news on the bags?”

“They’re being sold out of a club called Athena’s. I’ve got a couple of shadows down there keeping watch.”

“People are dying because of what he’s putting in those bags.” Nick took a deep breath and decided it was time to spill. “Ary thinks he’s mixing the cocaine with damiana and another jungle root called ayahuasca. She says that’s probably what’s adding the crazy factor in all the overdoses. That woman I saw was freakin’ out of her mind.”

“So who’s manufacturing it? The shaman we caught last night?” X asked

“I’m betting he has someone here, too. A human, probably,” Rome added.

“Yeah, you might be right. The shaman’s costing him some money. Once he figures out how to duplicate whatever he’s giving him, Sabar will probably kill him. The human, however, he can intimidate to accept the fact that he’s letting him live as payment.” Nick dragged his hands down his face, sitting back in his chair. “What a mess. I don’t think even our parents could have predicted this.”

“But they knew something would happen. You’ve got to wonder how they knew,” Rome said quietly.

“Probably because they were orchestrating the beginnings of the war before we even knew what we were,” Nick added glibly.

“So what are we going to do about it?” X asked.

All eyes rested on Rome, who looked almost as evil and animalistic as Sabar at this moment.

“We’re going to bring the war to their backyard. Make that shaman tell you where Sabar is,” Rome told Nick.

“We finally get to kick some Rogue ass?” Nick asked.

Rome nodded. “And then some.”

*   *   *

Rome’s guest house had probably been lavish at one point; now it was simply a neat dwelling that nobody bothered to use. Well, it was currently being put to good use. Nick had suggested facilities be built at Havenway for captives such as Yuri, and Rome readily agreed.