Things That Go Hump In The Night (13 page)

Nicole took a deep breath, fighting for control, and a sob tore out of her.

Secure in his arms, surrounded by his strong, comforting presence, she cried and cried, shaking with tearing, ugly sobs, hiding her face against him as she tried and failed to regain control.

She hadn't cried in years. Erik hadn't been able to break her, no matter how hard he tried. And afterwards...she was afraid that her wolf might gain the upper hand in a moment of weakness, so she had made sure to never lose control.

But Gabriel was warmth, and safety, and understanding...all the things she had denied herself these past six years.

And so she could let go at last.

When she finally wound down, she felt calm in an utterly drained way.

Gabriel handed her a handkerchief—a
cotton
one, not Kleenex—and she wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

His arms still around her, Gabriel said, in the voice of a man making a solemn vow. "He'll
never
get close to you again, Nicole. He won't ever hurt you again."

How can you promise that? You don't know what he is!

Nicole shook her head. "I don't want to talk about it," she said, hoping he wouldn't try to hammer her with questions, not now, when her defenses were down.

"All right," he said, in that same calm tone. "But I want you to know that you're safe now. I'll protect you."

"He's still in my head," Nicole said with loathing. "Every day, I see something, smell something, taste something that reminds me of him, and it all comes rushing back. I'll
never
get away from him."

She took a deep breath and looked up at him. "Gabriel, I'm so sorry about tonight. I swear I'm not a tease, and I'm not playing games. I really want to have sex with you, but it might take a little time."

"Don't feel bad, and don't apologize," Gabriel said gently. "I can see that you've been hurt badly. Take all the time you need, Nicole, because you are most definitely worth waiting for."

Chapter 7 – Interview with the Werewolf

Mark Aquila sighed and rolled his gray eyes.

"So tell me again," he said to Gabriel in his gravelly voice, "what she knows, what you know but don't want to let her know you know, and what I'm supposed not to know." His lips quirked slightly in amusement.

Rafe laughed, damn him. "Yeah, it all sounds like a fucking soap opera, doesn't it?"

It was 8:15 a.m. on Monday morning. The three of them were sitting in Gabriel's office, drinking some of Gabriel's excellent Ethiopian dark roast, while Mark reviewed what they had been able to find out about Nicole Evelyn Chasseur and her alias, Nicole Jaeger.

"I know it sounds silly," said Gabriel. "But there are good reasons. She's in trouble, and I don't want to spook her. Not when she's
this
close to accepting the job offer."

"Can I remind you that we're a security company, not a counseling service for the fragile flowers you're either fucking or want to fuck?" Mark growled.

"And I suppose
you've
never bent the rules for someone you thought might be an asset to the company?" Gabriel countered coolly, knowing full well that Mark did it all the time.

Mark scowled but didn't reply.

Touché,
thought Gabriel. Their security chief might talk a tough game, but all of the Amestra brothers knew he was a soft touch for someone in genuine trouble.

"Look," said Gabriel, leaning back in his chair, his mug cradled in his hands. "I'm hoping she'll confide to me about being a shape-shifter really soon, and then I'll confide to her about being a Child of Lilith, and then this whole situation comedy can end with a happily-ever-after where she agrees to become my
philtata
and catapults this company to success as our system architect."

"Hey!" protested Rafe with a mock pout. "This company is
already
a success, thanks to my brilliant designs."

"And then there's this alleged stalker of hers," grumbled Mark, ignoring the by-play as he rapidly swiped through the contents of Nicole's file on his tablet. "Your Nicole is a fucking shape-shifter. A wolf, according to what you told me. Why didn't she just take care of him in a permanent kind of way?"

"You know, I'd be really interested to hear the answer to that," Gabriel said. "I wanted to ask her, but since she doesn't know that I know—"

Mark looked up from his tablet. "I'll bet you $100 that she's a paranoid nutcase and that there is no stalker and there never
was
a stalker."

"Done," said Gabriel, promptly. "Mark, she wasn't lying. She's got all the signs of someone who's survived something horrible but hasn't completely healed from it yet."

"So, the lovely Nicole is keeping a secret from us—a secret which we have all guessed but we have to wait for her to confess,
and
she's being pursued by a mysterious yet terrifying stalker." Rafe counted off on his fingers as he spoke. "If Archangel doesn't make it as a security company, maybe we should move into writing and producing
telenovelas
for the Latin American TV market," he finished brightly, crossing his long legs in their faded jeans. "My Spanish is still pretty fluent, and Mark here was born speaking the mother tongue."

Gabriel glared at him, trying not to laugh, and Rafe smiled angelically in return.

Then Rafe turned to their visitor. "Hey, Mark, where's Korinna? Wasn't she supposed to be here?"

Mark checked his watch. "Landing in Lagos just about now. We got a call day before yesterday that rebel forces stormed a Sigil Oil drilling platform and took the employees and contractors hostage." He paused and added dryly, "If you ever bothered to read your email on the weekends, you would have already known that."

"And Korinna decided to go with the response team?" Rafe clucked his tongue and shook his head, pityingly. "Man, I feel sorry for those rebels."

* * *

Nicole had spent most of Sunday in a state of simmering anxiety as her mind replayed every instant of her visit to Gabriel's loft in an endless loop.

He had been so incredibly sweet and understanding after her freak-out, but now he knew how damaged she was. And she wanted to cringe at the thought of facing him.

Did he want to date her again? What if she could never have sex with a man that she was really attracted to? Was the job offer still on the table, or had he decided to recruit someone a bit more...stable?

And even if he did still want to hire her, could she really accept his offer?

Gabriel said he would protect her, and he had the resources of Archangel Security Networks to draw upon. But would that be enough if Erik tracked her down?

She had to find some way of warning Gabriel about Erik in a way that he would not just dismiss as crazy talk.

Now it was a cold, gray Monday morning, and she had to go into the office and face the music.

Nicole pulled into her parking space in the office building's garage, turned off her car's engine...and sat there, clutching the steering wheel until it creaked under her hands, trying to work up the courage to leave her car and head for the elevator.

Finally, another car pulled into the garage, and Nicole forced herself to leave the safe cocoon of her Honda. She had already humiliated herself enough this past weekend. She didn't to do it some more.

She arrived at her cube and stopped in surprise.

Someone had laid a single red rose across her keyboard. There was no note, but her gut told her it was from Gabriel, which made her feel happy and guilty at the same time.

The gesture made the churning anxiety in her gut ease a bit...until she logged onto her system, and saw an Outlook meeting invitation from Mark Aquila for 10:30 a.m. in the Yellowstone conference room.

All of the conference rooms at Archangel were named after US National Parks, which had caused some consternation when a group of bigwigs from
Électricité de France
were invited to a meeting in the Grand Tetons conference room.

"Seriously, who'd have thought that there was a National Park named
Big Tits
?" Rafe had asked innocently later on, when he told the story at a department luncheon. "I think they were just looking for an excuse to be offended."

Remembering Gabriel's stories about the practical jokes they had pulled on Michael in the early days of the company, Nicole suspected that Gabriel and Rafe had probably known full well what they were doing when they scheduled the meeting for their EDF visitors in
that
particular conference room.

The memory made her smile a little as she wove her way through the maze of the cube-farm to where the QA Lead, Betty Chang, sat.

Betty was one of the nine original Archangel employees and had once told Nicole that she was just waiting for the company to go public so that she could cash in her options and then retire to Hawaii with her husband.

"I promised him that I'd make him a kept man someday, to make up for all those eighty-hour weeks in the beginning," she had told Nicole when they first met. "So my stock options had
better
be worth something when Archangel goes public, or there will be hell to pay."

Nicole ducked her head into Betty's cube and waited until the other woman had finished typing.

"Hey, how was your weekend?" she greeted Betty, who was a tall, athletic-looking Chinese-American woman with a heart-shaped face and burgundy-highlighted hair.

"Pretty quiet. My nephew Ethan is in the middle of applying to colleges, so I was doing a lot of proofreading for him. Some of those admission essay questions are killer." Betty reached for her mug of coffee and took a swig. "How about you? Do anything fun?"

"Uh..."
Crap
. This was why it was a bad idea to date people you worked with.
Worked
for
. "Had dinner with a friend on Saturday night, then just hung out at home yesterday. I've been power-watching my way through the complete
X-Files
series."

Betty laughed. "I loved that show when it was still airing. Mulder and Scully were so cool." She smiled at Nicole. "So, what's up?"

"I need to cancel my daily touchpoint meeting with you today. Sorry about the short notice, but I just got invited to a meeting with Mark Aquila."

Betty's eyes widened. "
Mark Aquila
? Are you in trouble, Nicole?" She sounded genuinely worried.

Nicole shook her head, feeling sudden apprehension. "I don't think so. Gabriel wants to transition me from contractor to full-time, and he said something about Mark doing a background check."

"Congrats! I was really hoping they'd ask you to stay on!" Betty said, "But they brought in
Mark Aquila
to do a routine background check on you?"

"Okay," said Nicole. "What's the deal with Mark? Everybody around here uses that same tone of voice when they say his name. Is he, like, super-scary, or something?"

Betty looked around nervously and dropped her voice to a whisper. "He's the scariest person I've ever met."

Betty pursed her lips, thinking. Nicole waited patiently, hoping for details.

"He's not very tall, and he doesn't yell or throw his weight around. He's just...really scary." She shrugged. "I can't really explain it much better than that. You'll see."

Nicole frowned.

Betty continued speaking. "Ramesh once told me that Mark used to be a CIA assassin before he retired to head up Archangel's Physical Site Security division."

"I'm pretty sure they don’t let CIA assassins retire," Nicole replied automatically, as her stomach tied itself in knots. "Aren't there like a bunch of action movies with plots that involve secret government assassins who try to retire, are double-crossed by the government, and have to go on the run?"

Betty laughed. "Well, Ramesh likes to tell wild stories, but Mark definitely has that 'I'm a trained killer' vibe."

"Huh. I'll let you know how it goes. I'm supposed to see him at 10:30." Nicole smiled, determined to play it cool with Betty. "Hey, maybe
I
was a CIA assassin in my past life, and Mark found out and wants to recruit me to go rescue people from oil rigs and stuff."

The office email had been abuzz with the news about the weekend attack on the drilling platform in the Gulf of Guinea.

Nicole added, "I could tell you more, but then I'd have to kill you,"

That made Betty laugh.

* * *

When Nicole entered the Yellowstone conference room promptly at 10:30 a.m., she saw a man standing by the floor-to-ceiling window at the back of the room, looking out over the city skyline.

A dark blue suit jacket stretched across his broad shoulders. He turned to face her, and she saw a stocky, powerfully built man with piercing gray eyes, regular features, and graying blond hair in a buzz cut.

She caught his scent: a hint of aftershave, laundry detergent...and something else. Something wild and a bit musky.

Danger! Run! Run now,
growled the beast that lived inside her.

But Gabriel said we would be safe!

Her heart pounding, positive she had made a mistake, Nicole took a step backwards, intending to bolt for the door.

"
Sit
down
, Ms. Chasseur," ordered the man, in a deep, raspy voice.

She obeyed before conscious thought caught up with her. As she dropped into one of the soft leather chairs that stood around the conference table, she caught a glimpse of gold hazing his gray eyes.

Unable to hold his gaze for more than an instant, Nicole dropped her eyes to the thick white scar that crossed his throat.

He's like me!

And shock poured over her like icy water. She had thought herself a freakish singularity, warped somehow by Erik for his sick amusement.

But now here was another werewolf.

How many of us are there? Did Erik catch other people and turn them into monsters?

"I’m Mark Aquila," the man said in a raspy voice.

Nicole dared a swift glance at him, and her automatic
Nice to meet you
stuck in her throat.

She finally managed, "Good morning, Mr. Aquila," and was surprised when her voice came out sounding perfectly normal. "Did Gabriel tell you that I go by Nicole Jaeger these days?"

"Gabriel told me a lot of things," Aquila said. He took a seat across the table from her. "Does he know that you're a shape-shifter?"

Nicole shook her head.

Aquila sighed. "Well, I'm not gonna out you, but I gotta tell you, it complicates things."

He put his elbows on the gleaming, polished wood tabletop and steepled his fingers.

"Okay, I'm here to do two things," he continued in his hoarse voice. "The first is your background check. I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions, and you're gonna answer them truthfully. I'll know if you're lying to me." He tapped his nose. "So don't bother trying. The minute I catch you in a lie, this interview is over, and I'll tell Michael, Gabriel, and Rafael that you're a security risk and that they need to fire your ass, pronto. Understand?"