If he didn’t mate with her under the bayou moon by his thirtieth birthday, he would lose his ability to shift and his role as sovereign leader of his pod, and that would mean chaos for not only his pod but all of the pods in the Louisiana region. As tempting as her offer was, he needed her more than the casino.
“No…”
“But…”
“I don’t want the Tiki. I want you.” Jacques’s eyes connected with hers intently.
She looked a bit frightened, yet her voice didn’t waiver when she spoke.
“I don’t have the temperament for being a man’s whore. The Tiki is all I have to offer; take it or spend the rest of your life watching your back because if you kill my brother, I won’t rest until your lying beside him.”
Jacques studied his mate with pride welling up inside of him. She would make a good, strong queen one day. She’d need that kind of fortitude in his pod.
“I don’t want you to be my whore, Angel.”
Jacques’s cock flexed between them as if to negate his words. Damn traitor. Her eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“I'll let him live, but I need your…casino expertise for a project I have underway.”
At the mention of casino expertise, she relaxed a bit and appeared receptive to hearing more. Good, he’d found an opening.
“Meet me tonight and I’ll tell you all about it. For now, your brother’s our main concern, and I think he’ll have more questions if he sees you lying on the floor in a curtain. No matter how good it might look on you.”
“Let’s get one thing straight, this is business.”
Angel looked at him defiantly, but Jacques could smell her arousal. It was better to live to fight another day.
“We’ll discuss the terms this evening,
cher
.”
Jacques reluctantly released her. Rolling to his feet, he walked over to Michael, squatted down next to him, and applied pressure to the side of his neck. The semi-conscious man slumped over, unconscious once again.
“What’d you do to him?” Angel asked incredulously.
“I just bought us some more time. Go change and come back up. We’ll wake him together.”
Angel shook her head as Jacques moved Michael’s prone body from in front of the door placing him not too gently on the sofa in the sitting area of the office suit.
“Who are you?” Her voice was a whisper.
Jacques eyed her up and down. The gold curtain caressed her body lovingly, and her hair was loose and falling down her back in soft ebony curls. She looked as if she had just gotten out of her lover’s bed. He vowed then and there to one day wake up and see her looking just like that.
“Don’t worry,
cher
; you’ll have plenty of time to find out.”
Angel looked at the handsome man sitting across from her with amusement. It was a darn shame a man that hot was certifiably crazy.
“So, let me get this right, you’re a ‘gator shifter,’ meaning you can turn into an alligator. And so am I?”
“Yes, it sounds strange, but there are a lot of unexplainable things in the world. As you can tell from earlier, you’re…different.”
Angel looked around the crowded restaurant and wished for the first time that she’d picked a more secluded place to meet Mr. Bertrand than the busiest, most popular place on the Vegas strip. She hadn’t really known what to expect from dinner with the attractive man, but talk of gator shifters wasn’t it.
“I don’t really know what happened earlier to be exact.”
“Understandable, shifting can be disorienting, but you do remember what it was like.”
“I-I don’t know.”
She looked around nervously, unwilling to admit to anything in particular for fear it would cause another reaction.
“Whether you want to accept it or not,
cher
, you’re a shifter too.”
“Mr. Bertrand…”
“Jacques. Call me Jacques.”
Wow, his name seemed to fit him. He was tall, with deep-set green eyes. His jaw was square with a hint of stubble, which was a surprising turn on. He had wide shoulders, yet he wasn’t overly muscular. Everything about him screamed male. She was honest enough to admit she was attracted to him, a little too attracted to him. Everything within her wanted to jump his bones and that was rare. She wasn’t the one-nightstand type.
“Let’s say I believe your story. How do you know what I am? Who are you, Mr…Jacques?”
She liked the sound of it on her tongue.
He looked around for a moment before gazing at her deeply. She felt as if something was pushing into her thoughts. The sensation startled her.
“Easy,
cher
. Relax and let me in.”
“Are you doing that?”
“Yes, what I need to say cannot be openly shared, and since you chose a very public place to meet, I think it’s best if we have this conversation in private. You and I have a special connection. Because of this connection, we can communicate with each other.”
“Special connection?”
“Yes, you’re my mate.”
This was echoed in her mind, his lips didn’t move.
“How did you…”
“You can do it too. Just think about having a conversation and say the words in your mind. I’ll be able to hear them.”
Angel was a bit hesitant but was curious to try it out.
“Who are you Jacques, why are you here?”
she thought as the words floated into her mind.
“I am the sovereign of the Lafayette pod and I’m here for my mate.”
“First of all, what’s a pod and a sovereign?” she asked aloud, not willing to venture into his last statement.
Jacques smiled at her.
“Good,
cher
, you’ve got the hang of it. A group of gators is called a congregation and each congregation is a part of a pod. A pod is like a territory. There are currently six pods in Louisiana. Each pod is controlled by a sovereign, or leader, who generally keeps the peace, takes care of their congregation’s needs, and resolves disputes.”
“Like a monarchy.”
“Yes.”
“So you’re the king of your pod?”
Angel took a sip of her wine, allowing the cool drink to relax her.
“Yes, I became sovereign a few years ago after my father passed.”
Angel nodded. She was getting used to talking in her mind. It was as if they were in their own little world.
“So why are you here?”
“I have to be mated before the next bayou moon.”
“Oh?”
Angel felt her stomach dip at his admission, not really sure what “mated” meant.
“By mated you mean…”
“I have to find my mate and bond with her.”
Why do you even care Angel? You’re just here because he spared Michael’s life. Don’t start getting feelings for this Cajun.
Angel wanted to ask more questions but her conscience was right. The last thing she needed to do was fall for Jacques.
“So is that what you want from me? In exchange for sparing Michael’s life, you want me to help you find a mate? If that’s what you want, I’ve gotta say, you’ve come to the wrong person.”
She took another sip of her wine and crossed her arms in front of her.
“No, I don’t need your help finding her. I already know where she is.”
“Ahhh, you have someone in mind. Who is she; does she work at the Tiki?”
“No. She’s right in front of me.”
Angel was lost.
“I don’t understand, how can I be your mate?”
“Remember I told you there were six pods. Well your family rules the Baton Rouge pod. Their priestess gave me this to go by.”
He pulled out a folded piece of paper with a circle and what appeared to be flames coming out from all around it. It was the same mark she’d seen at the base of her own spine; her birthmark.
“I saw your markings. It’s exactly as your pod’s priestess said it would be…”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean my pod?”
Angel sat up straight in her chair and crossed her legs. Did he know her parents? She had to put her questions on hold as the waitress brought their dinner. Their waitress, who’d been friendly up until that point, was now a gnat hovering at the table. Angel just wanted her to go. The chipper server finally left them alone after filling up their glasses and placing more napkins on the table.
Angel was about to ask him again, but he held up his hand to stop her.
“I see you have a million questions, so I’m going to say this, but I need to you keep an open mind when I do.”
Angel would have agreed to anything at that point. She nodded.
“Okay, my mind is open, I’m an open book. Now tell me about my parents; my real parents.”
“I’m your soul mate and your parents are in Louisiana waiting on you.”
Speechless, that’s what she was, speechless. Her stomach flip-flopped. It was too much to take in, so she tried to focus on the fact that he knew her family and must know who she was. It was her dream come true. She’d loved the Palermos, they’d given her a wonderful life, but deep down she’d been like most adopted kids, always dreaming of one day meeting her real parents.
“Angel, finding you was no accident. I can’t go into a lot of detail right now because you’d be lost, but here’s what I can tell you. My family rules the Lafayette pod, which borders your family’s Baton Rouge pod. Our families are friends. Your parents are Thomas and Sofia LaFleur. They’re wonderful, well-respected gators, and they’ve missed you.”
Tears came to Angel’s eyes. Thomas and Sophia, those were her parents’ names. Her throat constricted as she fought to speak aloud.
“So, they regret giving me up?”
Her voice sounded tight, even to her own ears. She brushed away a tear before lifting her chin. She would not be cowed by the people who abandoned her.
“Gave you up? Angel, your parents never gave you up. You were abducted. Your abduction is a legend in Louisiana. They’ve spent decades looking for you. So has my family.”
“What, abducted!” Angel shook her head in disbelief.
“I was left at a hospital in Vegas when I was a few months old. There was a note with my birthdate and name on it, but that was all. If I was abducted, how’d I end up at a hospital in Las Vegas?”
“The people who took you were Louis and Annette Monreux. On the day that you were delivered, you should have been brought to your parents, but they ran away with you.”
“What do you mean, I should have been brought to my parents? Didn’t my mom have me?”
Jacques looked around the restaurant.
“In gator culture, we have what’s called an exchange. When a gator couple is having problems bearing children, they go to a gator priestess who will give an offering to the bayou god. If the offering is accepted, an exchange is made between our people and the humans. A human female in a similar situation will carry and give birth to the child. When the child is born, it could either be human or it can bear the mark of the gator. If the child is human, the gator parents can no longer try to conceive or do another exchange; if the human has a marked child, the priestess will bring the child to the gator parents. In your case, you were taken from the priestess.”
“You mean they didn’t abandon me?”
“No,
cher
your parents were devastated. Louis’s and Annette’s bodies were found in a hotel room in Texas, the papers said it was a murder-suicide, but you,
cher
, were nowhere to be found.”
Jacques reached out and took her hand in his. She accepted his comfort and took solace in the warmth their connection seemed to generate.
“Why would they take me and then kill themselves?”
“
Cher
, the bayou takes what belongs to it, and it punishes those who double-cross it. Louis and Annette were cursed from the time they left with you. I would hazard their death wasn’t entirely up to them, if you catch my drift.”
Angel nodded but she was numb on the inside. Her parents were waiting for her. They’d been trying to find her, and all along she was just a couple of states away.
“Do you want to get out of here?”
“Yeah, I think I need to be alone for a bit. Think things through.”
Jacques quickly had their dinner boxed and paid for, and they were out the door in no time. Angel was in a haze. She felt angry at the people who’d taken her, yet happy that she could finally meet her parents. She’d played out their meeting one thousand and one times in her mind. She thought she’d be angry at the person who’d given her up. In her mind she thought it would be a woman who’d gotten pregnant young and gave her up because she couldn’t take care of her. Now the circumstances were different. They’d all been victims. That was her new reality. She felt shy now. Would they like the person she’d become? Only time would tell, and from the looks of things, she wouldn’t have to wait too long.
Jacques sat in Angel’s office the next day. She’d needed time to process his revelation yesterday evening, so he hadn’t brought up one of the main reasons he’d been looking for her; her being his mate. He’d spoken with her parents, and they’d been overjoyed to hear she’d been found. His mother had been ready to celebrate as well. Finding Angel meant he would continue to be sovereign over his pod. Or at least he hoped that’s what it would mean.
“Jacques. Good morning. I hope you weren’t waiting long.”
Jacques stood as she entered the room. Angel was wearing a suit similar to the one she’d worn the day before. This one was black with a white shirt underneath. He grunted in displeasure. It was a shame a woman that beautiful hid behind drab colors and plain clothing. Her clothes should have been an accessory to her beauty.
“No, not too long.”
He sat down as she did.
“I know you had a lot thrown at you last night, but I wanted to discuss the other reason I’m here.”
“You mean me being your mate?”
Good, she wasn’t going to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Yes.”