CHAPTER TWENTY

Marcella had fallen asleep and, for the first time in longer than she could remember, her dreams weren’t of disasters and death. She’d grown so used to her brain working through her various demons in her sleep that she’d forgotten that such things weren’t typical.

For once, her dreams were dull. They were of tidy little apartments with balconies for her to linger on at dusk with a beer and a plate of takeout.

And she was with a Bear who’d probably never let her out of his sight. The thought was a comforting one, belonging to someone who understood her.

That revelation made her eyelids snap upward, and her lungs reflexively pull in a breath.

The room was dark, and she was hot, but she liked hot to the alternative. She was wedged half-beneath a large male body whose snores were steady and percussive.

As she walked her fingers down his broad back, marveling that she could do such a thing without fearing for the first time that her body was going to come apart made her smile. The fact that she couldn’t compel him to do anything he didn’t already have set in his mind to do made her expel a little laugh.

“Go back to sleep,” he muttered. “I sleep better when you’re asleep.”

“Why’s that?”

“Dunno. Bear thing, I guess. You can’t get into much trouble if you’re pinned beneath me. Bear in me wants to make sure you’re safe.”

She checked inward, pondering if she could grab a few more hours of sleep. But then she realized she actually didn’t know how long she’d been asleep. She craned her neck to see the clock radio.

“It’s only eleven. When’s the last time you went to sleep so early?”

He snorted and rolled off her onto his side, rubbing his eyes. “Probably the last time I was on a job where I had to watch someone for two days. As soon as I got to my apartment, I fell into the bed and didn’t get up until one the next afternoon. Your phone is flashing, by the way.”

“Hmm?” She sat up, scanning the room, having no idea where she’d left the damned thing.

“On the dresser,” he said, not actually reading her mind. “Half beneath your coat.”

“Oh.” She got on her knees to crawl toward the foot of her bed.

Why she didn’t predict the smack to her jiggling rear end that made her heave a sigh, she’d never guess.

“Fantastic ass,” he muttered.

“Yes, you are,” she returned, continuing her awkward trek.

He chuckled. “Aw, don’t be like that. The quibbling will only get me hard again, and I don’t think you’re ready for Round Two.”

He was right about that. Marcella’s hips felt as though she’d been on a bike with too wide a seat and had dared to cycle fifty miles on it. She’d be waiting a long while before risking putting her legs around him again.

“How does one prepare for such things, anyway?” she murmured to herself as she put her feet on the floor. “Squats? Lunges?”

“What are you going on about, draga mea?”

“Never mind me. I’m thinking aloud.”

She grabbed her phone from the dresser along with the charger cord and plugged it in next to the bed. “Text message from Dana,” she said. “That must be what woke me up. Just came in.”

“What did she send?”

“Looks like a doc link.” Marcella tapped the message and was taken to a PDF that she realized after about three seconds of staring was phone records. “Huh.”

She put the phone on the nightstand and fetched her laptop. “I wonder what she’s doing working so late. She sent the phone records already.”

“Ask her.”

“I will, as soon as I get my computer booted up.” She typed in her password, then opened the file in the Shrew cloud drive. He immediately lifted the device from her lap.

“Here, let me do that. I’ve developed a knack for knowing what to look for in these things.”

She didn’t bother arguing with him. She had to pee, and she was reasonably certain he’d be giving her a lesson in phone record forensics soon enough.

She yanked her phone from the cord and carried the cell with her into the bathroom. Bad habit, scrolling while she was on the toilet, but she was descended from a long line of multitasking women, and couldn’t shake the compulsion.

Most of the messages in her personal email account were benign and didn’t require immediate action. Her mother asking her to pick up some specific herbs from a shop in Carrboro and ship them to her. A couple of clients inquiring about blessed candles and such. One of Maria’s typically meandering messages that made Marcella snort with good humor. A sister, trying to be a good friend, which Marcella needed so badly. Maria thought Dana was pregnant and that was why she was working nights. The lady couldn’t sleep. If she were right, Dana wouldn’t say anything until she had no choice but to come clean. She and Patrick had been quite open about their fertility struggles.

Marcella said a prayer for them, willing that if they had been successful after trying so long, that there would be a healthy birth at the end. And if they weren’t successful, she wanted them to know peace anyway.

The last new message made her heart seize. The “From” line indicated the correspondence had come from Joseph Ursu. The subject line was “Local Wildlife.”

“Oh God, what is that?” she whispered, tapping the message open. She already knew, though, what he wanted. She’d spoken to him at the restaurant, and she’d listened to him only because she’d already told Soren she’d help him with his problem. But Soren didn’t want her to.

She wiped, flushed, and washed her hands while peering down at the screen. At the address listed on it and at the surveillance details.

The subject was probably at home, though he made a habit of leaving each morning at ten. He was alone most nights. She could be in and out.

Soren was right to refuse, Joseph had typed. He can’t get close. Local cops are dirty. They’d grab him on sight, and Dana wouldn’t be able to talk him out of this one. They’d get rid of him before she had a chance to fly down.

That was all he’d typed, but he’d attached some criminal records and surveillance footage, clearly marked with the sources in case she didn’t believe him and needed to verify.

She believed him.

She believed that Bear could make a lot of trouble for the shifters he’d fucked over and that he was an enemy to the Ursus, the Ridges, and other Bears.

He’d been dismissed, and so he’d make their lives hell in revenge. He knew too much. He ensured that Peter and Soren could never show their faces in public again to anyone but the SWAT teams assigned to collect them.

That wasn’t fair.

Soren tapped gently on the door. “Are you well, pet?”

“Fine.” She typed, Okay, in response to Joseph’s message, put her phone to sleep, and opened the door. She managed to put on a smile, phony though it felt. “Twitter. So distracting.”

“Ah.”

She squeezed past him and made a beeline for the bed, trying to muster up at least a superficial interest in the phone records, even though her mind was a chaotic blur.

He pressed his palms to the bed and started talking, and then scrolling and pointing, and she nodded by rote at all the right times. Listened for the pauses in his speech, or the lifts of pitch indicative of questions being asked.

“I…trust you,” she said finally, pressing down the lid of the computer.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ll forward the access link to you if you want to take a look. I’m going to dart over to my room now.”

“Why?”

He leaned against the wall near the bed and crossed his arms over his chest, smiling like the beautiful brute he was and making her belly quiver with possibilities.

She could be spending the night in his bed, and liking the circumstances.

Or she could handle business to ensure that their future nights together were safe and uninterrupted. She’d always known that Soren was a dangerous man, but she hadn’t really conceptualized how hazardous his life was. She could make life a little safer for him in a few mere hours.

“Because no one will see me if I go now.” She pushed up onto her tiptoes and bussed his stubbly chin.

Texture.

She’d never considered texture on a man to be so appealing before. She’d never had a good reason to dwell on the details. Now, she wanted to know every single one of his, including why the left side of his bottom lip didn’t curve all the way up when he smiled.

She put an index finger against the edge and nudged it up.

He kissed her hand. “Don’t pick on me.”

“I’m not. I just noticed the side doesn’t always move. What happened? Nerve damage from a bad fight?”

“No. Born like that. Bell’s Palsy. One of my grandfathers had the condition, too, not that he was much for smiling. I didn’t know he had it until I was twenty-three and going through some old pictures.”

“Oh.” She let him kiss her hand again, and then reluctantly pulled away to search for her clothes. “Less chance of me getting spotted looking like I’ve been ravished this way.”

“Who cares?”

“I care.”

“You’ll never see any of these people again.”

“I know, but…” She slid her pants up and used more attention than was necessary to fit the button through the hole. “You’ve got to give me time to get used to this new way of being. A girl can’t turn over a new leaf overnight.”

“No, I suppose she can’t.”

She bent to scoop up her shirt, and when she was erect once more, his lips found the top of her spine and his hands found her hipbones.

She sighed. “Soren…”

He was going to make her not want to leave, and she had to. She’d never let herself get distracted before. She’d never wanted to be distracted by anyone.

“We’ll never get anything done at this rate.” She took a couple of steps forward and tugged her shirt over her head. “One of us needs to be responsible. The sooner we finish this job, the sooner we can go home.”

“We.” That crooked grin again.

“Maybe I’m tired of arguing with you.”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s all it is.”

He watched her put all of her junk into her bag and push her feet into her shoes. Then he followed her to the door, shamelessly nude.

She put her hand on the knob, feeling too much like she was saying goodbye when they’d barely gotten started with hello.

You’re paranoid.

Everything was new to her. That was all. Of course she was anxious. She didn’t know what was supposed to happen next.

She turned around and pressed a quick kiss onto his chest before opening the door and fleeing.

Looking back would have been foolish, so she didn’t, even if she could sense his gaze on her back as she retreated.

If she looked over her shoulder, she’d be back in his bed, her plans would be screwed, and Joseph would have to find some other way to handle his problem.

Marcella didn’t like messy things, and she was going to clean up the mess—even if the mess wasn’t hers.

Then, maybe, she could be still.