CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Tamatsu eyed Blue with all the skepticism the cocky ass deserved. From the moment Noelle had stepped into the airport terminal, the Coyote had been far too solicitous for Tamatsu’s liking. Many Coyotes were, in Tamatsu’s experience. They were far better at wooing people when they had their complete faculties about them. The Maria pack had been disordered for so long that probably no one in the town knew just how unusual they were. If the Coyotes hadn’t been saddled with a weak alpha for so long—and then no alpha at all—they may actually have been a force to be reckoned with.

The only force Tamatsu was worried about at the moment, though, was Blue. That was why he was sitting in a parked plane instead staring down deities like Perkūnas, Tohil, or Yu Shi. Unfortunately, he lacked some angels’ ability to be in two places at once, and the dog smiling at Tamatsu’s elf needed minding.

Blue sat low in his seat across the aisle from them, swirling the ice cubes in his whiskey glass. “You sure I can’t get you anything? A drink? A snack?”

If Blue had been anyone else, Tamatsu might have said yes to the snack, but he wasn’t going to give the man the satisfaction of doing him the favor.

“I’m sure.” Noelle crossed her legs and bobbed the top knee. She’d had on pants at first, but she’d changed because he liked her calves.

He regretted having her change because, evidently, Blue liked her calves very much, too. Being what he was, he didn’t even bother trying to disguise his admiration. He stared and smiled while doing it.

Tamatsu decided he wouldn’t use his katana on him. He’d want to leave a mess behind. Messes were satisfying.

“Thank you for the offer,” she said flatly. “But I’d like to get down to business.”

“Business.” Blue scoffed. “Why so formal? This is a friendly discussion, right?”

“Perhaps so, but let’s not diminish what the stakes of the situation are. We’re talking about a Coyote pack that’s in desperate need of leadership, and one that’s in a town where other sorts of shifters live. There needs to be some diplomacy in play. We can’t have someone swooping into town and setting off new feuds. The newcomer needs to maintain and increase order, not create chaos.”

“Some people would say that chaos is in a Coyote’s nature.”

Noelle nodded slowly. “Yes, I’ve heard similar quips. I also know that the burden falls on the Coyotes’ alpha to keep the pack calm and rational. He needs to lead by example.”

“And you don’t think I’m capable?” He showed more teeth when he smiled than a shark opening wide to swallow a turtle.

Tamatsu rolled his eyes and gave Noelle’s knee a squeeze. “I didn’t realize he was personally interested in the job.”

She cleared her throat and put her hand atop his as if in warning.

Blue’s gaze fell to their hands, and the smirk he’d been wearing nonstop lost a bit of steam.

“I didn’t know you were interested, Mr. Shapely,” she said.

Pulling his stare up to her eyes, he shrugged and swirled his ice some more. “Well, why not?”

“I figured you’d already have enough responsibilities of your own. Don’t you already have a pack to run?”

“My pack isn’t technically a pack,” Blue said. “It’s part of my entourage that splintered off from my father’s pack. When I moved, some of the guys went with me. That’s all.”

“So, you’d take those guys with you?”

“If they wanted to go. I like to give folks choice. I’m not an autocrat.”

“I see. And do you think you’d be happy living in a small town?”

“Honey, most shifter groups are anchored in small towns. That’s practical for the way we need to run around furry sometimes, but how small are you talking?”

“A town with one high school and no SuperTarget.”

Mr. Shapely drummed his fingers against the tops of his thighs. “Got an airport?”

She looked to Tamatsu.

He nodded. “A very small one.”

“You’d be able to land your plane, Mr. Shapely,” she said, “but the airport is small.”

“Small won’t be a problem. As long as I can get around easily, it doesn’t really matter where my house is. I’m on the road most days of the year.”

“What does this ass do for a living, anyway?”

Noelle cleared her throat and bobbed her knee beneath his hand. “The town the Coyotes are based in has a huge population of young families. I know clean living is hard for some people, so excuse me if I have to be pointed.”

Blue put on that smarmy smile again.

Tamatsu’s knuckles itched to meet his face.

“Can you tell me if any of the occupations of you or your pack members would be disruptive to the local population?” she asked.

“My money’s clean.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“What are you so worried about?”

“The same things any rational woman would think in regards to a town that has a lot of kids in it, many of which don’t know that people like you exist.”

“And like you?”

“What I am isn’t pertinent to the discussion. My magic isn’t disruptive.”

“Noelle …” Tamatsu knew firsthand how dangerous she was.

She cleared her throat once more, and continued. “No one would know anything was off about me unless they paid too much attention to the fact that I don’t look much older from one year to the next. I can’t shapeshift anymore, and I don’t …” She made a dismissive flick of her hand. “Howl, for goodness’ sake.”

“Folks have been shapeshifting out in the open?” Blue’s expression had suddenly gone very serious. Apparently, that idea crossed a line for him.

She looked to Tamatsu again for an answer.

“Mostly, they’re loitering in town when they should be in other places. The locals don’t know what to make of them.”

She turned to Blue and repeated what Tamatsu said.

He added, “There have been a few running around in their canine forms, however the non-paranormal locals as of right now assume they’re natural coyotes.”

“The local humans haven’t yet discerned the difference between natural coyotes and shapeshifters in their animal forms,” she said to Blue. “There have been a few coyote shifters padding through town recently.”

“So, this is a place where wild coyotes would naturally roam?”

“Yes.”

Blue leaned back and rubbed the salt-and-pepper scruff on his chin.

Tamatsu had expected the man to be younger—late twenties or early thirties. An upstart. Either Coyote life and hard living had caused aggressive aging, or the guy was staring at his fortieth birthday on the horizon.

Tamatsu couldn’t think of a single alpha-level shifter who hadn’t taken a mate by the time they’d reached Blue’s age. There had to have been something wrong with him.

“Do you see some potential in that, Mr. Shapely?” Noelle asked.

He grunted. “You gotta admit that being able to blend in with the local wildlife populace makes some things easier. Even so, Coyotes—and most shifters, I imagine—learn from early on that we don’t show what we are in public. We don’t give folks any reason to be suspicious that we’re anything but aboveboard.”

Leaning forward, he rested his forearms on his knees and gave Tamatsu a hard stare—as if he were waiting for him to rebut.

Tamatsu held his gaze. If the dog thought he was going to make him uncomfortable, he needed to try a lot harder and come at him with more weapons than just teeth and claws. If Tamatsu had had his voice, he could have turned the man into stone in a breath.

Maybe it was a good thing that he didn’t. Retaliating without his voice was harder, but it was supposed to be.

Grinding his teeth, he slid his hand up the back of Noelle’s blouse. Skin-to-skin touching helped to stave off the flare-ups.

Blue pulled his gaze back to Noelle then. “I’d like to see the place, if you think whoever’s in charge right now might be amenable. Or can I talk to whoever they are? I assumed they’d be in on this conference.”

“She was supposed to be.”

“Well, let me talk to her.”

Noelle pulled her phone from her tote, and passed the device from one hand to the other for a few beats. “Let me feel her out first. She’s not especially social.”

Tamatsu watched her fast fingers glide across the screen, formulating a perfectly cogent text message on the first try.

While she waited for the response, Tamatsu looked up. Another Coyote had joined them in the fuselage. Younger than Blue. Wore glasses and tidy clothes, though not necessarily fashionable ones. Put-together, though, which meant he’d made an effort.

He bent and whispered something into the elder dog’s ear.

Blue’s brow furrowed. “Right now?” he asked the man.

“Tomorrow at the latest. He expects you to be there.”

“I’m not making him any promises.”

“Do you want me to tell him that? Because—”

Blue waved a dismissive hand at him. “No. Don’t get mired in that mess. If he’s gonna snap at anyone, let me be the scapegoat. I’ll call and let him know whether or not I’ll be there.”

The man nodded.

“She’s available, Mr. Shapely,” Noelle said.

“Great.” He stood and strode to the door, still open to the tarmac. “Hey, Kenny? I wanna get off the ground as soon as possible. Need to file a flight plan. I’ll let you know where we’re going.” He looked back to Noelle. “Where are we going?”

“No. Wait.” She flashed her phone at him. “We were going to call?”

“Phone call’s not gonna be enough, if she doesn’t want me to go there and take a look.” He shrugged gallantly. “Hey, that’s fine. But I’m not gonna give serious consideration to moving into anyone’s damn pack without seeing what kind of mess they’ve made first. If she’s not amenable to that, maybe I can do some rooting around to find someone willing to take the chance. I guarantee you, whoever that person is isn’t gonna be as good as me.”

“You talk a big game.”

“That’s not big talk, princess. That’s truth.”

“Blue?” Kenny called from the tarmac through a suspiciously strained voice.

Realizing why, Tamatsu emitted a silent groan. He didn’t need to see the disturbance to sense what was outside, and he would have bet his katana that the thing had flat, glassy eyes and a fish mouth.

“Yeah?” Blue called out.

There was grunting, swearing, and all three people in the plane filed toward the door.

Spotting the cause of the disturbance, Tamatsu rolled his eyes and reached for his katana.

Always ready for a fight, Noelle found a knife from some hidden place on her person, but before she could throw the thing, Blue, in an impressive leap, swatted the thing from the air. He was on the spirit as soon as it hit the ground, one booted foot atop the creature’s head, and his face set into a grimace.

“What. In. The. Hell?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“Um …” Noelle tucked her knife beneath her shirt and cleared her throat. “I believe that’s a—”

“Oh, no, honey, I know what that is.” He pushed harder, approximately where the thing’s neck would be if it’d had a true one. It would have needed shoulders to have a neck. “I know all sorts of arcane shit, and I know that these things don’t come out unless they’re attached to someone. Whose are they?”

He may have asked “who,” but his gaze was on Tamatsu.

Tamatsu folded his arms over his chest.

“He didn’t call them,” Noelle said, “if that’s what you’re trying to imply.”

“Oh, yeah? Because that’d be a pretty slick way to end a meeting.” Blue narrowed his eyes. “Or to set a guy up.”

Noelle squeezed between the two advancing men, but put her back to Tamatsu, physically impeding his forward movement.

He could have moved her—and easily—but just by touching him, she’d distracted him enough to put a pause in his step.

“Time out,” Noelle said. Whipping around to Tamatsu, she wagged a finger at him. “If you have it in your mind to kill anyone today, find someone else.”

“Pardon me?” Blue retorted.

Noelle turned to him. “There are circumstances in play that you don’t understand, but I can assure you that those things being here aren’t by his accord or mine.”

“Explain.”

“That is really none of his business.”

“That is really none of your business, Mr. Shapely. I apologize for the disruption. I can’t promise this won’t happen again, but I can swear an oath that he doesn’t choose for them to show up. Elves are serious about oaths.”

Without taking his gaze off Tamatsu, Blue ground his heel harder against the thing. Harder and harder until it exploded.

“Ugh.” Noelle took a step away from Tamatsu and looked down at her ruined pantyhose. “Gods. Again? Do you have any idea how much these things cost?”

Blue cringed. “Sorry. Can never tell where the splatter’s gonna go. You can clean up on the plane, if you’d like. There’s bound to be some towels or something in the lavatory.”

Noelle closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then rolled her gaze up to Tamatsu.

He raised an eyebrow.

Blue sidled over with his assistant at his heels, and looked from one to the other. “So … any other surprises I should know about? ’Cause I gotta tell you, to be a Were-coyote, I find the supernatural shit a mite bit frustrating at times. The place I come from is kind of where all the silliness clumps together. You can’t walk a block down the street without some shit happening. Tell me the place you’re trying to sell me on isn’t like that.”

“It isn’t,” Noelle said.

Tamatsu grimaced. Maria definitely was.

“At least, I don’t think it is.”

He put her hand to her neck. “The chaos is there for people who know what they’re looking for.”

Noelle cleared her throat and flicked a bit of goop off her belt buckle. “Maybe I’d be most accurate if I said there’s trouble there if you know where to look.”

Blue seemed to be considering that as he nodded. “Well. I guess I could live with that.”

Tamatsu untucked the shirt Noelle had just retucked and pressed his hand against her back. He hated that feeling that he was spiraling to a dark, needy place and that his self-control would be so low. He hated that hungry place and the unfounded fear of annihilation that came with it if he didn’t do enough to sate his urges.

“Noelle …”

She glanced back at him and immediately whispered, “Oh,” and pulled his hand.

She squeezed his fingers tight, and turned back to Blue. “So, you’d like to go?” she asked him.

“If your lady there says I’m welcome, I’d like to take a look.”

“Fuel up your plane or file your flight plan or whatever. I need five minutes.”

Tamatsu squeezed her hand harder. Five minutes wasn’t going to be enough.

“Uh—ten. Ten minutes, maybe. Alone.”

If Blue thought her emphasis on the word was suspicious, he didn’t say so. “All right. Fine with me. I’m gonna head into that building and see if they’re holding a package for me. Holler if you need anything.”

Noelle gave him a tight grin and nodded.

He strode toward the airport building with his bespectacled aide on his heels. He issued commands at rapid-fire pace, and Tamatsu herded Noelle up the plane steps.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He kept her moving all the way to the back where, behind a varnished door, lived a small, but well-equipped lavatory. They weren’t going to both fit in there, but that didn’t matter.

He nudged her inside. His frame blocked the doorway. No one would see past, if they were foolish enough to get close.

He tugged at his belt buckle, unbuttoned his pants, and let down the fly.

Noelle didn’t need guidance. She delved her hand down the front. Warm, soft, strong fingers found his screaming appendage. She gripped him at the base and, encircling him, started slow, cautious tugs.

He closed his eyes, widened his stance, and turned his face heavenward.

He hated the thing he was. Hated how desperate his penance made him and how limited his control was. He was supposed to be strong and majestic. Instead, he was standing in the doorway of a fucking airplane bathroom needing to be tugged off because some Coyote had gotten under his skin. He was a joke.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “In for a penny, in for a pound. We’ll figure this out like everything else.”

Threading his fingers through his hair, he scoffed silently. He loved her for her hope that there was anything new to figure out. She’d always thought that every problem had a solution, but he’d been on Earth for long enough that he knew that wasn’t necessarily true.

There was lotion on the counter—likely there to counteract the hostile effects of dry airplane air on sensitive skin. She squeezed a pump of the cream onto her palm and then transferred the cool liquid to him, lubricating him. She could move her fist faster without the friction—she could draw out the mania that much sooner.

That wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted her, not prescribed hand jobs.

“Noelle—”

“Don’t get maudlin on me right now.” She slipped her other hand into his pants and found his sac. “Don’t you dare. I didn’t invite that when I let you touch me.”

Gritting his teeth, he nodded, and thrust his hips forward, helping her drive him to that place. Helping him empty out, because that was all she was doing—a practical emptying.

“What did you do to deserve this?” she whispered. “What kind of angel were you that you would be so severely punished for leaving the fold?”

“Just one who was too curious. Too … hungry.”

He shouldn’t have wanted the things humans had, but he’d been weak and he’d bowed to temptation. Food. Flesh. Music. Art.

Pain.

He put his head back and tried to steady his breaths as heat pooled in his gut. “I … I had power, but I wanted exhilaration.”

She squeezed her fist around his crown and added her other hand to his shaft, milking him as he thrust desperately into the sheath she made for him.

“I wanted more.”

“And you got it.”

“More and much less.”

“More with restrictions.”

“More with a reminder that every time I consumed …” He gripped the doorway and forced air through his clenched teeth. His lower core tightened and the heat in him surged in a way that both hurt and thrilled. “That every time I consumed, I’d be feeding an addiction there’d never be a cure for. That because I wanted it so badly …”

The electricity coalesced and burst through him. It stole his breath as he shot his seed into her hands, still thrusting because he couldn’t stop yet. Not until he was empty, or he’d need her again too soon.

“Fuck.”

He stilled, scoffing at himself. He came in her hand like she was just some concubine who’d taken pity on him in a dark hallway, and she turned her gaze up to him, appalled, but he had to finish.

“That because I wanted it so badly, I’d be humiliated every time I allowed myself to get it.”

Noelle withdrew her hands from him. The crease between her brows deepened.

“Now you know.”

“Tamtasu.”

“I understand if that disgusts you.”

“Tamatsu,” she said tightly, shaking her head. “You just spoke.”

Of course he hadn’t.

“Tamatsu, you said ‘fuck’.”

“No. I couldn’t have.” He put a hand to his throat.

She put a hand against his bare belly. “Try. Say something again.”

“I don’t see the point of—”

She yanked her hand away, gasping, and stepped back, too, confused. “There it is.”

He tried to push some sound out again, but he couldn’t—not with her hand gone. Hurriedly, he grabbed several paper towels out of the dispenser and cleaned the sticky spend off her hands.

“There’s your voice. That’s not the way the magic is supposed to work.”

Jaw flapping, she washed her hands, staring over her shoulder at him.

“Hurry up. Hurry up.”

He didn’t understand what she’d meant. She needed to explain.

He didn’t wait for her to dry her hands. He put his hand to her bare neck. “What …” He cleared his throat. His voice sounded like his throat had been seared with hellfire—the words sounded as though they’d been blared from the bellows of Satan’s pipe organ. “What’s happening?”

“Your voice. I thought I’d sent it away, but I didn’t. I couldn’t draw your voice back because it never went anywhere.”

“But I’m talking. I don’t—”

Putting a hand over his mouth, she shook her head, stricken. “We can’t talk at the same time. I have your voice. I’ve always had it, and I can’t give it back. It merged with mine.”

Removing his hand from her neck, she ducked away from him, cheeks pink and eyes wide. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know this could happen.”