Things That Go Hump In The Night (7 page)

Instead, tonight, he would stand guard as her beast was the one who wrenched her control away.

Gabriel heard a groan from deep inside the house.

It was inaudible to ordinary human ears, but a Child of Lilith had very sensitive hearing, especially when they were listening.

And Gabriel was listening with all his soul, afraid of what he might hear.

If Nicole went rogue, he might be the only one who could stop her, but it would be extremely dangerous for both of them.

Another groan, and with a shock, he heard the distinctive sound of a heavy metal gate closing, then the clicking sound of a lock's tumblers falling into place.

A moment later, and the anguished howl of a trapped beast rose faintly from the bowels of the house. It sounded oddly muffled.

She had caged herself.

Without a Child of Lilith or shape-shifter alpha to aid her, Nicole had found a way to keep her beast from hurting anyone, but at great cost to herself.

Gabriel wouldn't have to slay her to protect innocent lives.

His knees went weak with relief at the realization.
Thank all the gods.

He sank down to sit on the floorboards of Nicole's porch, his back braced against the wall of her house.

There, he prepared to stand vigil until the beast departed and Nicole returned to herself.

As he waited, the pain and anguish he heard seeping from her house tore at him. He longed to rush inside and lift the burden of her magic from her—but he didn't dare. Not yet. Their acquaintance was still too new and too fragile.

Forcing her to reveal her true nature to him—and revealing his to her—might irreparably damage the tentative acquaintance they had only just established.

He wanted her. Oh gods, how he wanted her! But he had to be patient until she was ready.

For now, it was so difficult to simply wait and to listen to the dull impact of living flesh against unyielding steel bars. Nicole's beast was forcing her to batter herself bloody as it tried futilely to escape the cage.

So damned unnecessary
, he thought, when she could be spending the night in his arms, her magic safely drained by his hunger, leaving both of them naked and satisfied in the dawn.

Next month
, he promised himself.

By next month, Nicole would be free of the need to imprison her beast in a cage.

By next month, Gabriel would finally have a
philtata
of his own.

Chapter 3 – Morning After

"Honey, you look like you've been rode hard and put away wet," Nicole whispered hoarsely at her reflection in the bathroom mirror.

A twenty-ounce travel mug with four shots of espresso, a glug of steamed milk, and a shot of sugar-free Belgian Cookie syrup sat within easy reach on the counter.

Cage Nights were always exhausting, making quad-shot
caffè
lattes a must-have for the
mornings after.

She looked like shit, her face bleached with fatigue, big dark circles under her hazel eyes, and her curly, light-brown hair completely out of control this morning.

Despite being sore and bruised from her wolf's attempts to break out of the cage, Nicole actually felt pretty good, since she was temporarily free of her curse.

She'd almost forgotten what it felt like to be
normal
for a change, with no need to rein in the need to run on four legs and taste the hot blood of her prey spurting beneath sharp fangs.

Nicole took a sip of her hot, strong coffee. What she really wanted to do right now was go to bed and sleep for ten hours, but she had deadlines at work.

So what if everyone who saw her today was going to think that she'd had a night of hard drinking and harder sex?

If only...being banged by Gabriel would sure as hell beat a night spent banging my head against the bars of a cage...

She nearly choked on her coffee. Where the hell had
that
thought come from?

Nicole hadn't been with a guy since Erik. Hadn't wanted to have sex...until last night, when Mr. Too Sexy for his Suit stopped by and talked slasher films like a true fan.

Thoughts of Gabriel reminded her that today was Project Team Meeting Day.

She groaned. Rafe would probably yank her chain when he saw her, but she could handle him.

Gabriel was another matter. She hoped she could avoid him today.

Nicole didn't care if everyone else in the office got the wrong idea about what had happened last night, but Gabriel's opinion...
mattered
.

And like it or not, she'd be seeing him at 2:00 p.m. sharp.

* * *

Nicole didn't see either Rafe or Gabriel when she got into the office, much to her relief.

With any luck, they'd be swallowed up in one of those all-day business meetings that consumed them on a regular basis, and neither of them would be able to attend the Archangel 2.0 project team meeting.

With a silent sigh of relief, she plunked her half-full travel mug on her desk, shoved her purse in a drawer, and unlocked her computer. Then she settled down in her chair and began hammering away at the bugs she had left unfixed.

Despite her fatigue from her sleepless night, she managed to fix the bugs in time for her updated code to make it into the noon build. She even had time to leave the building and walk over to Shalimar, where she wolfed down an order of spiced lamb chops, a bowl of curried veggies, and a basket of chewy naan hot from the tandoor oven and dripping with melted butter.

She was always ravenous on the mornings after Cage Night.

Nicole was feeling positively cheerful by the time she strolled into the two o'clock project team meeting. It was held in Grand Canyon, which was the big boardroom, so that the entire team could participate.

She entered the mahogany-paneled room and met Rafe's intense brown-eyed stare. After a moment, he waggled his dark brows at her, and she sighed silently.
Busted
.

Rafael Amestra, her boss and the VP of Product Development, looked to be somewhere in his late twenties, lean and very handsome in a carelessly dressed way. Today, he was wearing a Captain America t-shirt that stretched across his broad shoulders and faded jeans molded to a nice ass and long muscular legs.

Rafe wore his black hair shoulder-length, the wavy locks pulled back into a thick ponytail. He and Gabriel both shared a strong family resemblance with their sculpted faces, generous mouths, high cheekbones, and aristocratic noses. 

Nicole occasionally speculated what ethnic background had produced two such gorgeous men. They might be part Native American. Or maybe Persian or Afghani. Turkish, perhaps? She hadn't yet met Michael, their oldest brother and CEO of Archangel Security Networks, and she wondered if he shared the family good looks.

"Looks like
someone
had a fun night out," Rafe drawled as Nicole approached where he sat at the huge, polished wood conference table.

Shit, I'm in for it now.

She hated to lie to her boss, but she couldn't possibly tell him the truth.

Hey, Rafe, I'm a werewolf and I spent last night locked in my basement and howling at the moon.

Yeah, no.

She plopped herself down into the über-comfy black leather chair next to his. Accustomed to his sardonic sense of humor by now, she lifted a brow and stared back.

"Maybe," she drawled back. "But a lady never tells."

Rafe's mobile features creased into a wide grin.

She did not miss the thumbs-up he gave his brother when Gabriel entered the conference room, impeccable in a tailored suit and tie and looking good enough to eat.

Rafe thinks I was out with Gabriel last night? Shit, shit, shit.

She didn't want her boss to lose respect for her because he thought she was sleeping with his brother.

Gabriel frowned slightly in reply. Then he saw her.

Nicole wanted to shrink down under his intense, assessing gaze, knowing he was probably getting the wrong impression of where she'd been last night and what she'd been doing.

Not that it was any of his business. She forced herself to sit upright in her chair, shoulders squared, and returned his stare.

He held her eyes for a long moment, his expression unreadable, then began hooking up his laptop to the boardroom's overhead projector.

All traces of last night's horror-movie-loving guy with the silly French accent were gone, and Mr. Serious Business was back.

As the rest of the Archangel 2.0 project team straggled in, clutching bottles of water or mugs of coffee, Gabriel cleared his throat.

"I know you're all busy, so I'm going to keep the team meeting short today. Good job meeting our beta build milestone. I'm happy to report we're currently back on schedule for a year-end production release. Rafe, why don't you start by reporting on the progress of Build 2.0.27b?"

Gabriel did not look at her again for the rest of the meeting.

Nicole tried not to care, but it didn't work.

* * *

"What the fuck did you do to Nicole, Gabriel?"

Gabriel looked up as Rafe entered his office, slamming the door behind him.

Gabriel had been expecting his brother to drop by at some point today, and he hadn't been looking forward to the conversation.

Scowling, Rafe threw himself into one of the chairs that stood in front of Gabriel's desk.

"Let her off her leash and watch while she frolicked in the park last night?" he continued, sarcastically. "Because I'm not seeing any evidence that you actually
helped
her take care of her little problem, like you said you would."

"Everything's under control," Gabriel said coldly. It wasn't, not really, but he wasn't ready to admit that to his younger brother, of all people.

"I like her, you know I do," Rafe said, passionately, "but a lone shape-shifter is a fucking menace. You don't want Korinna and Mark showing up here to take care of things, do you?"

Gabriel felt a cold prickling down his spine at the mention of those two names.

Korinna
Vélos and her
philtatos
Mark Aquila headed up the Physical Site Security division of Archangel Security Networks. They were also Hunters, employed by the Council of Oligarchs to hunt down rogue Children of Lilith and out-of-control shape-shifters.

And they were both
very
good at their jobs.

Gabriel sighed and looked at his brother. "I couldn't get Nicole to agree to a date last night—"

Rafe interrupted with an incredulous howl of laughter. "You? She turned
you
down? My God, she's got the biggest fucking crush on you I've ever seen. You should see the way she
looks
at you when she thinks you're not paying attention."

This news warmed Gabriel. His instincts hadn't been wrong. He would definitely have to ask her out again...and soon.

Rafe was still talking. "—then what happened? You just let her
go?
I didn't hear any reports of any attacks on the morning news—"

"Rafe." Gabriel's didn't raise his voice, but something in his tone made his younger brother stop talking. "You were right about Nicole not being able to control her transformations, but I discovered last night that she's taken measures to keep anyone from getting hurt."

"What kind of measures?" Rafe asked, suspiciously. "Looking at her aura, it's probably been a long time since she got properly lai—"

"
Rafael, shut up
." This time, Gabriel did raise his voice.

The thought of Nicole having sex with anyone other than him gave him an unpleasant jolt of...could it really be
jealousy
? It was an unfamiliar emotion, alien to the Children of Lilith, and he didn't like it.

Rafe stopped speaking, more from shock than anything else, thought Gabriel.

Gabriel sighed, remembering last night's vigil and his feelings of frustration and helplessness as he listened to the whines and howls of a trapped wolf growing more and more frantic as the hours passed.

"I followed her home last night, to make sure nothing...bad...happened. She's got some kind of cage inside her house. Soundproofing, too."

"A cage," Rafe said blankly. "Our sweet genius engineer locks herself inside a fucking
cage?
" He sighed. "It's like she doesn't know
anything
about being a shape-shifter."

"I don't think she knows about the Children of Lilith, either," said Gabriel. He'd had a lot of time to think about things last night. "She hasn't said anything, but this whole situation feels like someone turned her and then either died before they could teach her...or just walked away and left her to fend for herself."

"Shit," said Rafe.

Gabriel nodded in agreement. Both possibilities should have doomed Nicole, but against all odds, she had survived.

"So her contract ends next month. What are you going to do?" asked Rafe, leaning back in his chair and crossing his long legs at the ankle. "She's been on the phone with at least one recruiter. For a job in Seattle, I think. She sounded pretty interested."

Another unpleasant jolt lanced through Gabriel's gut. She was thinking of
leaving?

He had assumed that she would happily accept the contract extension they were about to offer her. Nicole's initial contract had been for the period of Prakash's wedding and honeymoon, with a couple of weeks of overlap for knowledge transfer on both ends.

But she had fit in so well with the rest of the team, and she seemed to be enjoying the work...

Time to raise the stakes
, Gabriel thought grimly. He couldn't let her leave, not now.

"What do you think of her?" he asked his brother.

Rafe looked uncomfortable. "Look, Prakash is a really nice guy and a hard worker, we both know that. And he's a good programmer, if he has decent design docs. But Nicole...she's a fucking genius. I don't know why she hasn't been snatched up as a system architect by another company and given golden handcuffs. She's already tweaked Prakash's code to improve the anti-virus scanning performance by 40%, and she's ahead of schedule on implementing the new user interface features. And her algorithms for the design spec I asked her to work on..." He sighed melodramatically. "They're a thing of beauty."

"She's really that good?" Gabriel asked. He had known Nicole was smart, but for Rafe to praise her? "I know you've been really happy with her work, but—"

"—she's as good as I am. Maybe better," Rafe interrupted.

Gabriel stared at his brother.

Rafe was proud of his software engineering skills, and he didn't give compliments lightly. His designs had been the driving factor behind the company's success in launching the first version of its software security suite. For Rafe to admit that Nicole might be his superior—

"Then I say, fuck the contract extension," Gabriel said firmly. "Let's hire her on full-time and offer her the system architect position. Make her Director of Engineering if she plays hard-to-get...Hell, offer her VP of Product Development, if that's what it takes."

"But
I'm
the VP of Product Development," Rafe said mournfully. "You're planning to pink-slip your own brother in favor of a hot chick with massive...
brains?
"