chapter TWENTY-FOUR
With her head buried in the mattress, blocking the scream she couldn’t stop, the orgasm shot through Charlie’s body. She couldn’t really move, though. Berg had his hand on her back, keeping her pinned to the mattress, her ass in the air so he could fuck her from behind. His free hand teasing her clit. Managing to get yet another orgasm out of her.
She felt him stiffen above her and then he was coming, roaring. The goddamn windows shook a bit.
When he was wrung dry, he collapsed next to her, but he didn’t relax until he’d pulled her into his body, holding her against his chest.
“Okay,” she admitted, “maybe it’s more than just a first-time sex haze.”
“Yeah,” he said, chuckling. “Maybe.”
No longer wearing her watch because all her clothes were in the other room, Charlie asked, “What time is it?”
“No idea.” He blindly grabbed the remote control by the bed and hit a button. The dark drapes flew back and they both screamed at the bright morning sun flooding their room.
“Close it!” she yelled at him. “Close it!”
The drapes quickly closed and they again collapsed onto the mattress.
“We’ve been fucking all night,” she admitted out loud.
“Yes. We have been fucking all night.”
“Awesome,” she sighed, enjoying Berg’s laugh as he hugged her tight.
* * *
They ordered breakfast from room service and nothing was more enjoyable than watching Charlie’s reaction to the amount of waffles, bacon, and honey that was brought.
“Who is going to eat all this?” she demanded, staring at the platters of food.
Like Berg, she wore one of the hotel terrycloth robes, but this was a bear suite so it was a robe for someone Britta’s size and Charlie was swimming in it. The back dragged behind her like some medieval train, and she looked like a queen to Berg.
“Is your brother coming?” she asked while Berg walked around the large table on the terrace.
“He is not coming and stop making me feel bad about how much food I eat. I’m a bear! I have an appetite.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, eyeing him when he ended up behind her and pulled out her chair. She jumped a bit. “What are you doing?”
“Being a gentleman. Enjoy it, this won’t last.”
She laughed. “That’s probably a good thing. I’m not used to gentlemen.”
Berg sat down in the chair next to her but leaned over to kiss her before he started to eat. She kissed him back, her mouth smiling against his; the palms of her hands pressed against the sides of his neck.
When he pulled back, his gaze focused on her lips, she pointed at him. “My stomach is growling. We’re eating.”
He grinned. Knowing she still wanted him, even after their long night, meant he could wait to get her back to bed.
They ate and talked, enjoying being on the terrace without anyone attempting to kill Charlie at that very moment. It was windy, but the walls on either side that separated them from the other terraces cut down on that problem considerably.
“Tell me about your mom,” he said after a little time.
“My mom?”
“You talk about your father all the time. What about your mom?”
“She was amazing. And I’m not saying that simply because I lost her early.” Her smile was so warm, so loving that Berg felt it in his chest. “She was the hardcore artist type, although she had no artistic skill whatsoever. She called herself a muse. She was there to inspire others to feats of greatness,” she said while stretching her arms in the air, and Berg had the feeling that was a move her mother used to make. “Stevie’s mom, although I never forgave her for just deserting her child, knew that there was no one better for Stevie than my mom. She knew how to get brilliance out of people without pressuring. Without pushing. You never want to push Stevie.”
“How long has Stevie been . . .” He searched for the least insulting word.
“Nervous, high strung, and panicky?”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
“Always. When you have an IQ as high as . . . possibly anyone. . . ever, it’s hard not to also be kind of a mess. We’re lucky she only has a panic disorder. She could have just as easily turned into the Unabomber.” Charlie lowered her voice. “And that nearly happened. But we managed it.”
“And Max?”
She went back to her normal voice. “Max was the first to move in with us. Her mother called mine, asked her to babysit while she took on a job. Turned out the job was a jewelry heist that my father arranged. When things went bad . . . he ran, leaving her and the others behind. After that, Max just never left us.”
“And what about your mother?” she asked, bringing the mug of coffee to her lips.
“My mother smokes pot.”
He wasn’t really surprised when her sip of coffee spewed across the table.
* * *
“Pardon?” Charlie asked, unable to stop her giggling.
“My mother has, as long as I’ve known her, been an aficionado of the leaf.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. She’s a very laid-back bear. Of course, now she’s got the business.”
“The business?”
“She used to make THC-infused honey for her and her friends, but now . . . she makes it for anyone willing to pay for it. Her business is getting huge . . . much to my sister’s shame.”
“Britta’s not a fan?”
“My mother has always embarrassed her. She’d come to parent-teacher conferences in her tie-dye dresses with Bob Marley silk-screened on the front. She never smoked, though, when she was pregnant with us, which I appreciate.”
“I thought she bred dogs.”
“She did that, you know, legally.”
“I am loving this story.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“No. Not at all. My mother wasn’t exactly a saint, you know. She was just . . . awesome. And that sounds like your mom, too. I love awesome moms. And your dad?”
“Just a regular grizzly. If he could hibernate part of his life away in a cave . . . he would. Instead he just sleeps in his recliner, watches a lot of TV, and manages the hives my mother uses for her honey business. They’re a good couple. At some point, I’m assuming, you’ll meet her.”
She swallowed her bacon, noticing that Berg was staring at her.
“Am I supposed to be freaked out because you mentioned meeting your parents?” Charlie asked, snorting when he gave a small, adorably embarrassed shrug. “I guess you forgot I’m half wolf. And we attach. I just spent all night fucking you. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere anytime soon. And since you seem to have poor decision-making skills when it comes to choosing a woman, I’m going to assume that’s not a problem for you.”
“It’s not,” he said quickly, smiling.
“This doesn’t mean we’re married,” she felt the need to amend. “It just means I’m not a one-night stand kind of girl. We just do what normal people do.”
Berg looked off, thinking. And she knew he was trying to figure out what “normal people do.”
“Date, dumb ass,” she explained. “Get to know each other better. Keep having sex.”
“Oh!” His smile returned. “Yeah, I can do that.”
Charlie grabbed another strip of bacon and sighed out, “Bears.”
* * *
Berg was having such a good time hanging out with Charlie—alone for once—that he was definitely annoyed when he heard a doorbell.
Frowning, they both stared at each other.
“Was that a doorbell?” Charlie finally asked.
“Yeah.”
“This room has a doorbell? Like a house?”
“Apparently.” He pushed back from the table, went inside, and across the room. He pulled open the door and blinked in surprise.
“Hi, Hannah.”
Hannah Jameson was a bear hybrid and a close friend of Britta’s. They’d played in the hockey minors together a few years back. Hannah went on to become Hannah “The Destroyer of Worlds” Jameson on the Carnivores team. A “power forward” that his bear friends who loved hockey worshipped. She was a high scorer or whatever and almost every time she was on the ice, she had two grinder foxes who protected her. The Gallo twins. At least one of his younger cousins had a poster of the three women on his bedroom ceiling. They were in full hockey gear except for their helmets and looked absolutely terrifying, but the kid loved them.
But Hannah also did investigative work for the Group. They’d rescued her years ago from a pit fighting operation somewhere up north and had paid for her room and board and education. She never did the “wet work” as guys in the Marines used to call that sort of thing.
At the same time, Hannah wasn’t above taking on a challenge. Especially when she and Britta went to a bar and received less than respectful come-ons from drunk full-humans who thought it would be funny to “get a ride on the big girl!”
At six-three, Hannah never took that particular insult very well. Neither did Britta. They’d bonded early on from their barroom brawls and the Group had always been nice enough to use its connections in the NYPD to get both out of jail in a timely manner and without any black marks on their records.
Still, he had no idea why Hannah was here now.
“Hi, uh . . . Daaaaa”—he frowned and she quickly changed it to—“aaaaBerg?”
“Da-Berg? Really?”
“I knew it was one of you.”
He liked Hannah so he wouldn’t hold it against her that after all these years she still couldn’t tell him and Dag apart. Britta said she couldn’t tell the Gallo twin foxes apart either. She just called each of them “Twin” and pointed.
“So what’s up?” he asked.
“Is there a Charlie here?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I found out some information about her recent problems. I usually just hand my research off to the agent in charge of the case, but I was told that would not happen because apparently she kicked that agent’s ass.” She smirked. “Brava, by the way.”
Laughing, Berg stepped back. “Come on in.”
* * *
Charlie stared at the remains of the bacon. The hotel had provided a platter full of two kinds of bacon. Crispy and chewy, each in its own separate pile. Berg liked crispy and Charlie had dug into the chewy. Perfect.
The problem was that when it came to bacon, Charlie didn’t have an “off” switch like she did when she ate almost anything else. If there was a pound of bacon in front of her, she would eat that entire pound without even blinking an eye. So she only allowed herself to get bacon on holidays like Christmas or Thanksgiving morning. She was afraid if she ate it every day, her heart would explode from all the grease.
At the moment, there was a lot of bacon left and Charlie didn’t want to finish it. Well . . . she did want to finish it, but she knew she shouldn’t. Cholesterol could still be an issue with shifters. They weren’t immune!
But her resistance was fading. Sitting on the terrace of a luxury hotel, with the hottest—and nicest!—guy she’d ever been with, wearing a fancy hotel robe, and feeling immensely relaxed from all that great sex . . . it seemed a perfect day for more bacon.
Her hand was over the platter when she heard Berg say, “Charlie, this is Hannah.”
Charlie snatched her hand back and looked toward the open glass doors. Berg stood beside a tall, powerfully built, dark-haired woman with dark brown eyes and a pretty face. But there were scars on her neck and her bare arms. A lot of scars. Scars on top of scars.
“And Hannah, this is Charlie.”
Hannah stepped closer and held her hand out. Charlie shook it and gestured to the table. “Hungry? We have a ton of food left.”
“I haven’t finished eating yet,” Berg said, sitting down. “And you have to finish your bacon.”
“I’m fine,” Hannah said, pulling out one of the other chairs and sitting down. “Ric Van Holtz sent me over. I did research on the people who’ve been trying to take your sister Stevie? Plus, the, uh, stolen one hundred million from your Uncle Will?”
“Yes. Did you find out anything?” Charlie sighed. “It’s a Peruvian drug lord again, isn’t it? My father and his Peruvian drug lords.”
“Um, actually . . . no.” She opened her backpack. There was a laptop in there but that wasn’t what Hannah pulled out. Instead, she dug around until she grabbed a magazine. She placed it next to Charlie’s plate.
“Vanity Fair?” Charlie asked. “You found the ones trying to kill me in Vanity Fair magazine?”
“I did. The pages are marked.”
There was a pink Post-it in the middle of the magazine and Charlie quickly flipped to that page. Berg got up and crouched next to her.
Spread across the first two pages was a pictorial feature on what Charlie had to call the hottest women she’d ever seen. Dark-haired Italian beauties wearing gold bikinis that looked stunning against their golden brown skin, thin gold belly chains around their tight abs. On their feet they had Louboutins and on their wrists and necks, they had diamonds. Lots of diamonds.
Still, despite their obvious wealth, the whole thing looked a little lowbrow for Vanity Fair until Charlie read out loud, “The Twin Italian Invasion of Silicon Valley.” She shrugged and looked at Hannah. “Who are they?”
“Caterina and Celestina Guerra. CEOs of a major software company out of the Lombardo region of Italy. Their mother was an aristocrat of Italian and Greek birth. Very wealthy. Very independent. And she needed that independence because she was disowned by her family when she had the twins.”
“That’s harsh.”
“Well, she met a much older man. She was in her late twenties and he was in his late sixties—”
“Ew.”
“—but she ignored her parents’ concerns over the relationship. What she didn’t know, unfortunately, was that her much-older lover was still married and that she was not the only mistress. When she found out, she didn’t take it well. I think there were some rage issues. Anyway, her parents cut her off. Her lover wouldn’t help and cut off all contact. She was on her own with twin girls, but she was smart, vicious, and not afraid to get her hands bloody. She built a successful business and trained her daughters to take over, which they did when she got sick and died about a decade ago. From what I understand, the twins blame their biological father’s absence for their mother’s death. And they blame the father’s family for his absence.”
“That’s surprisingly fascinating,” Charlie said, “but I still don’t know what this has to do with me and my sisters.”
“Well”—she cleared her throat—“their father is . . . Colin MacKilligan. I believe your grandfather, which would make Caterina and Celestina . . . your . . . uh . . . aunts.”
Charlie gazed at the woman called Hannah, then back at the magazine, where the women’s matching smiles almost seemed to mock her. Unable to look anymore, she tossed the magazine onto the table and pushed her chair back, standing. She walked around the table and over to the railing. She stood there, her hands on the black metal, staring out over the city.
After a full minute of silence, Charlie suddenly screamed, “I hate my familyyyyyyyyyyy!”
* * *
Sitting outside on the front porch enjoying her breakfast of a couple of bananas, Max abruptly looked away from her morning paper and over the Queens street outside their rental home.
She glanced at Stevie sitting in the swing with the Dunns’ dog, his giant head resting in her lap. The sisters locked eyes and Max began to ask, “Did we just hear . . .”
Her question died away and they gazed at each other for a long moment before they said simultaneously, “Nahhhhhhh.”
* * *
Berg cringed as Charlie’s scream echoed out over the city, and he watched her begin to pace.
“What is wrong with these people?” Charlie demanded . . . of the air. “If I looked back into the MacKilligan lineage, would I only find assholes and scumbags? Are there any other kinds of MacKilligans? Am I a scumbag or asshole?”
“Of course not.”
“Don’t lie to me, Berg.”
“I’m not lying. You can’t be responsible for your asshole father, uncles, and grandfather.”
“And aunts. I have asshole aunts, too.”
“There is something else,” Hannah said.
Charlie threw up her hands. “Oh, come on!”
“What is it, Hannah?” Berg pushed, hoping to get Charlie to focus and prevent Hannah from making a desperate run for it.
“From what I can tell . . . I don’t think the twins know that shifters exist. I don’t think they know they’re not completely human.”
Charlie stopped pacing, stared at the hybrid. “Is that even possible?”
“It’s rare,” Berg replied, “but it’s been known to happen.”
“How did they get through puberty and not know?” Charlie pushed. “Even though I can’t shift, puberty was still hell on wheels.”
Surprised, Berg asked, “You can’t shift?”
“Nope. My father’s fucked-up genes win again. I can just unleash claws and fangs, and it’s really hard to kill me . . . which definitely is a plus.”
“But think about it,” Hannah said, pulling out her laptop and moving plates and platters so she could lay it on the table. “Instead of reveling in the success of their lives, they’re busy trying to fuck over the people who they feel destroyed their mother. It’s all that . . .”
“Honey badger rage?” Charlie asked.
“Without shifting, without even knowing what they are, they have no place for all that rage to go.” Hannah began tapping away at the laptop keys.
“So what if they find out what they are? What if they learn to shift?”
Berg shook his head. “Being a shifter is kind of like being a hardcore drinker. It doesn’t make you an asshole, it just enhances the asshole already within. These two females are not going to become lovely young ladies because they can let their honey badger out. I mean, do you think Max would be, deep in her soul, any different if she weren’t a—”
“Okay. Okay,” Charlie cut in. “I get your point.”
Hannah turned the laptop around.
Charlie smirked. “You hacked into their private pictures?”
“Yeah. I’d strongly suggest you not look at the videos.” Hannah scrunched up her face, gave a short shake of her head. “Trust me.”
“Oh, look . . . they hunt big game in Africa with rifles and crossbows. Nothing like standing over a dead elephant to make you feel one with nature.” She flicked through a few more pics but then she ended up seeing her aunts naked.
Berg heard her squeak and watched her click away from those images as fast as her fingers would let her.
The real problem was when Charlie started to go through the twins’ email.
Charlie seemed to be a speed-reader, zipping through the information quickly until she abruptly stopped and shoved her chair back again. She stood and stalked off, back into the hotel suite.
Shocked, Berg leaned in to read the email that had upset Charlie. He saw the problem immediately.
His head dropped and he said to Hannah, “Charlie’s father has been talking to the twins?”
“From what I can tell,” Hannah admitted, “he stole his brother’s money at their urging . . . and then the twins stole it from him. Not because they needed to, but more a ‘why the fuck not’ kind of thing. I’m guessing they think it’s funny.”
“And I’m guessing Charlie’s father walked right into that shit.”