Avery and Winston continued dating. They had an understanding – they weren’t mating yet, but they would one day, they were kind of engaged to be engaged and for the time being, that suited them both fine.
Aimee’s application to the SEA was successful, and Avery decided to throw her a congratulations party, and Winston volunteered his store. Her mother had left them alone, as had their sisters – Avery’s nights were much quieter, and she was starting to enjoy not having to double check her window was locked every night. Not to mention checking that no one was hiding in her closet, waiting to pounce.
Tara and Seymour organized the party. Seymour was irritating as always, but Tara had turned into quite a decent manager for the store.
Avery beamed at Winston as he tried to mediate an argument between Howie and Seymour. Aimee didn’t really have any friends outside of the pride. Well, she didn’t really have any friends in the pride either, so Avery and Winston rustled up some guests for the party. Unfortunately, that included Howie. Avery was confident Aimee would soon start to blossom and meet people.
“What do you think of Winston?” she asked her friends.
Isis humphed. “He’s cute I suppose if you like that man-boy thing. But he is a little nerdy. I prefer strong, sexy men.” She winked at her mate. “He suits you though – no offense.”
“Thanks,” she said. Her lion preened – definitely no offense taken. He was wonderful.
“He seems very nice,” agreed Erin.
Gunner grunted and watched as his triplets tried to demolish one of Winston’s cardboard cutouts. Penny and Diaz were trying to round them up – apparently, they wanted a taste of what having kids would be like. If anyone survived the triplets, then yep, they were ready for their own.
Lucie beamed down at her baby – a chubby little girl with luminous brown skin, round cheeks and wisps of black curls all over her head.
Cutter hovered over them, glaring at everyone in case they did anything crazy like try to touch her or perhaps say she wasn’t the most perfect little girl in the world. Any hopes that the birth would calm him down a little were seriously shot to hell.
Winston’s mom had actually been pretty cool to Avery – maybe because she believed the tough lioness could take care of him. She stopped worrying so much and actually relaxed a little, even to the point where she was flirting with one of Winston’s older customers – a lifelong comic book fan who was crying out to be taken care of by a woman with a need to mother anyone in front of her.
Avery sauntered over to Winston to rescue him from Howie and Seymour. She tugged him away, and Seymour wandered over to his mate – no doubt to give her a lecture that she would probably actually enjoy. Howie looked for a female victim to flirt at – not with, definitely at.
“Not sure I approve of that,” he said, nodding at his mom who was currently flirting outrageously.
“I don’t know. If they get married, you’ll be allowed to move out.”
His eyes widened. “Dear lord, you’re right. Perhaps I should encourage them.”
Avery and her lioness growled as she caught sight of her little sister and who she was talking to. “Perhaps I should stop Howie from hitting on my sister – she’s not as used to assholes as I am. I don’t think any of the lions in the pride showed her any interest.”
Aimee didn’t fit the normal lioness mold, and male lions were so vain.
Winston followed her eye line and shrugged. “She’s probably going to have to get used to it.”
“I guess, I just worry about her. I should warn him to stay away from her.”
“Or you could figure that it wouldn’t do any good anyway and that Howie is generally harmless, and you could stay here with me instead.”
Avery looked at him and smiled. “Yeah, I prefer that option, too.”
“Love you, pretty kitty,” he murmured.
“Love you, too, my hero.”
Mine.
*
Wayne grunted along with Moose, Wes, and Lake. What was he doing here? He knew the guys were there because they’d go anywhere for free beer and frankly, they’d do anything for Avery – she’d saved their butts plenty of times over the years. But what was he thinking? It was bad enough having to live with Aimee. But now…
He spotted a guy hovering over her, talking at her - not to her, definitely at her - while Aimee smiled shyly. He didn’t like the way he was following her around. Didn’t like the way Aimee was smiling in return.
She needs saving rumbled his inner alligator.
He wasn’t usually the type of guy who did this kind of thing, His gator snorted – he was no knight in shining armor. But Avery was one of his best friends. It was definitely the only reason he was going to do what he was about to do.
He watched as Aimee made her way out the back of the store and the guy had the nerve to follow. She was obviously trying to shake him and the little guy wasn’t getting the message.
Wayne strode after them, catching up to them in the alley and towering over the guy. The small male didn’t even flinch. Huh, tough little cookie.
“Why don’t you take a hike?” he growled.
Hardly original, but he figured he’d go with a classic. Howie looked at him and shrugged before sauntering away.
“We’ll talk later, babe,” he threw out over his shoulder to Aimee.
The hell you will snarled his beast.
Aimee’s cheeks flamed bright red as soon as Howie was out of sight. “Why did you do that?”
Wayne’s alligator grumbled. “If you were enjoying his company, I can go get him back.”
She gave him an indignant look that was a bit much in his opinion. It wasn’t like she was enjoying talking to the leering little man – even Wayne could tell she was trying to plot her escape route.
“Why do you care who I speak to?”
“I don’t,” he scoffed. The young lioness could speak to anyone she damn well wanted.
He started stomping away. Yep, every step away from her was not hard in the least.
“Well then, maybe I’ll go back in there and flirt with all the single guys, maybe your friend, Moose!” she said heatedly.
He stopped and walked toward her, she backed up to the wall, and he leaned over her, trapping her.
“That would be a mistake.”
“Oh?”
She gave him a defiant look, and her tongue darted out, swiping over her plump bottom lip.
Shit.
His lips crashed against hers, tasting, teasing and devouring her in the way he had wanted to since he first met her. The nights and days he had dreamed of this, and nothing had prepared him for how wonderful it would be. To hold this beautiful, young, innocent…
Abruptly, he pulled away, and her lips tried to follow him.
Wordlessly he stomped away, ignoring his sneering beast.
Damnit, he could not do this. He was weak when it came to her, but he could not do this.
*
Bettina groaned impatiently. The tall, skinny vampire receptionist gave her a small lip curl but didn’t otherwise react. Bettina was the first to admit she was hardly blessed with an abundance of patience, but she had been waiting an hour for what would basically be just a five-minute interview.
She was a witch who worked for the SEA. Mainly she was attached to the team who investigated the misuse of magic, but often she was called in to consult about missing persons and sometimes murders. She was one of the more powerful witches in the SEA, not that any of her fellow witches would admit it. In Bettina’s experience, witches tended to be proud and frankly, bitchy. They would die before they would admit another witch was more powerful than them.
But, following the fallout of the fight club, given how many people were in attendance at the club, there was a huge amount of follow up interviews. She had offered her services to make up for the fact that one member of the team assigned to the case was taking a couple of weeks paternity leave. While she didn’t exactly get on with Cutter – hardly anyone did – she adored his mate, Lucie, and would gladly assist her in any way she could.
So, Bettina had been dispatched to interview Alexei Petrov – vampire and big cheese apparently. Bettina sniffed. He wasn’t big in the circles she moved in. But given the way he was making her wait, he clearly had an inflated sense of his own self-importance.
Bettina glared at his receptionist who was inspecting her nails. It wasn’t even like she had just dropped in – she actually called and made an appointment and was now being told he was far too ‘busy’ to see her but she was welcome to wait.
Well, stuff this; she was ‘busy’ too.
Bettina stormed into his office, ignoring the furious calls of ‘you can’t go in there’ from his receptionist. The moment she made it through the door, it slammed behind her. Bettina let out an ‘eep’ and then coughed to cover her embarrassment.
The office was dark – midnight dark.
“Uh, hello?”
She held out her hands in front of her as she tried to navigate her way through the darkness. Not very successfully as her foot hit something and she started to fall. But instead of hitting the floor, two strong arms caught her, and she was pulled back against a hard chest.
“Well, hello there,” crooned a velvety voice in her air.
Awareness shot through her.
Aww, crap.
To be continued