Pierce

Three days later, everything changed.

Although Mila had kissed him back that day in the parking lot, it hadn’t led to anything further. Not physically at least. She would kiss him here and there, and they were quite comfortable being in close contact with each other. But not once since that event had either of them made a move on the other.

Pierce regretted kissing her while she was trying to assert herself. He knew he should have waited, should have gotten permission first, and he’d apologized profusely after, despite Mila’s decision to kiss him again. She’d told him it was fine, and he had done his best to let it go, but it still sort of ate at him.

Mila hadn’t initiated anything, and he wasn’t sure why beyond a simple “she didn’t know him well enough.”

But that had begun to change as she accepted the fact that they clearly hadn’t come into contact with each other by chance. The connection between them was too strong, and it only grew stronger as the days passed. Much of their time was spent at home with each other, learning all they could.

Pierce told her stories of growing up, of some of the things he and his brothers did together. He deliberately left out the later years, and how things had changed, but he had no problems recanting tales of teenage embarrassment and awkwardness as he learned to harness his shifter side.

He also spoke warmly of his sister and his mother, while telling her how his father hadn’t been a good person, and how eventually when they were old enough the five siblings had driven him out after they’d caught him berating their sister. The Koche brothers were trouble to anyone who would listen, and they often fought amongst themselves as well.

But if anyone tried to hurt Sasha, Pierce would personally not hesitate to rip their throat out. Just as he planned to do whenever he caught up with whoever had taken his brothers. Thoughts of revenge, and just how he was going to kill them had become a favorite pastime of his, as he imagined catching up to the person, and making them realize just who it was right before he tore their throat out.

A surge of anger flushed through him at the idea, and he smiled grimly.

Mila had reciprocated to a degree. She was, he’d begun to notice, very vague on the concept of her job, and just what it entailed. It was something he intended to get out of her soon, including how she’d managed to avoid going into work for four straight days now. If she didn’t go in the next day, that would make a full week of avoiding work. For someone who seemed to be rather high up on the chain and in charge of acquisitions nationwide, that seemed remarkably odd.

But she’d been a gracious host, keeping him and his voracious appetite in check, so he didn’t push too hard. Or he hadn’t.

“When are we going to do something about my brothers?” he asked as she came downstairs, wearing a nice black buttoned shirt with a deep neck and long flowy sleeves.

His eyes lingered somewhat longingly on the curve of her breasts, but he eventually looked away, not wanting to cause too much trouble. She knew he desired her, and that he did his best to be proper.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been here for closing in on a week now. Yet all we’ve done is scour the newspapers to see if anyone’s reported any missing people turning up.”

Mila crossed her arms and looked at him. “Okay. Let’s look for them.”

“Excellent,” he said, clapping his hands together and standing up.

“What’s the plan?” she asked.

Pierce slowed his march toward the stairs to head up to the main level. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “You want to find them. I get that, I understand. But how do you intend to do that? We have no idea if they’re here or not. And even if they are, then what?”

“What are you saying?” he said slowly.

“I’m saying, Pierce, that you don’t want to go to the police. You don’t want to do this the proper way. So if you want to go looking for them, we have to do it another way. Okay, fine, I’ll play ball. But I don’t know what that way is. Do you just want to start walking down the streets looking for them, calling out their names?”

His face heated slightly in embarrassment as he realized that Mila had put a lot more thought into it than he’d thought she had. Pierce had just sort of assumed she didn’t have any real interest in helping him look, and so would perhaps tag along with him at best. Now she was making him look like an idiot, because he hadn’t actually thought about it.

“Exactly,” she said. “There is no way to do it.”

That wasn’t exactly true, he knew. If his brothers were here in the city, and they weren’t captured, if they’d perhaps managed to escape like him, Pierce knew where to find them.

Casinos. Bars. Strip clubs. Dirty, slovenly joints with few rules and fewer people who would talk. The slums. The projects, the ghettos. Whatever term someone wanted to apply to them, it was in those seedy joints that he would either find his brothers, or find someone who knew of them.

But the problem with going there to look for them was twofold. Pierce had nothing to fear. He could waltz into any one of those places and not give a shit what the regulars, owners, security, or anyone else might have to say about it. What he couldn’t do, however, was take Mila with him. She didn’t have the skills, the experience, or the shifter blood to be able to stay safe.

His second issue was perhaps the more prominent one.

Pierce simply hadn’t told Mila the real truth about him and his brothers. She’d known that perhaps they were more rough and tumble than most. That he’d been unable to hide. She’d seen his tattoos, though she hadn’t asked him about them, much to his relief. If he were to tell her where he thought to go to look for them, then he’d have to explain to Mila why they would be there.

And how he felt so comfortable in such places.

It wasn’t something he looked forward to doing, but he knew it was inevitable. At some point, she would have to know. But he didn’t want to deal with that just yet. Mila made him feel better than the man he’d been before. She inspired him to be stronger, to want to just be…good. It was a strange, nearly alien feeling, but not one he could deny. The longer he was around her, the less of a pull he felt to the game. The pull was still there, but it led somewhere else when she was around.

“I understand,” he said, choosing cowardice yet again and not telling her.

I’ll figure out a way, brothers. A way to make this work. In the meantime, stay strong, and stay feisty. I’m coming for you. Wherever you are.

“Sorry,” Mila said. “I don’t want to sound like a bitch by rubbing it in your face. But the area outside of Cadia is just so much bigger than anything you’re used to. You need to come up with some thoughts, some ways on how to track them, on perhaps who might have taken them. Anything that we could use.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I’ll come up with a list of places to check, and try once again to think of any enemies outside of Cadia who might want us.”

“Good.” Mila eyed him. “In the meantime though, come on, put on that nice dress shirt and those khaki pants we bought you.”

He eyed her suspiciously, wary about the sudden change of topic. “Why?”

She smiled, the beaming look that made her heart-shaped face just light up and worm its way deeper into his being. The dimples in her cheeks that formed when she smiled so broadly were just gorgeous, and her entire face lit up.

Pierce knew he couldn’t say no to whatever was coming.

“You’re taking me to the movies, that’s why,” she announced.

“The movies,” he echoed.

That was where they were going, instead of looking for his brothers? Pierce opened his mouth to raise it in protest. To tell her that he was going out to look for his brothers, that he had a few ideas on where to look, but that he would have to do it on his own.

That’ll never work. She’ll never let you go alone. Besides, you have no idea how long you’ll be able to stand it out there. Just because you’re getting better at it doesn’t mean you can move about freely yet.

Which meant that until he could, he was stuck following along after Mila like a lame duckling. There were worse people to be with, of course, but he wanted to be looking for his family as well as doing things with her.

“Yes, the movies,” she said.

“I’m taking you?”

She shrugged. “It’s a phrase. You will be my escort.”

He eyed her. “That sounds suspiciously like a date.”

Mila rolled her eyes and stepped close enough to push him back toward where his clothes were stashed in a suitcase she’d provided him.

“Change, now,” she ordered.

Knowing a lost battle when he saw one, Pierce shrugged out of his clothes and reached for the ones he’d been told to wear.

“You’re not even going to wait for me to go back upstairs?” Mila asked.

He glanced over his shoulder to see her facing away from him, as if embarrassed.

“I’m wearing underwear,” he sighed. Besides, it’s not like it’s not anything you haven’t already seen.

But Pierce was much too smart to say that last sentence out loud. Not if he wanted to ever see Mila in her underwear again. She’d been very careful not to bring up that night, or anything to do with it. He couldn’t yet figure out why. The sense of attraction between the two of them burned so bright it was nearly visible. He could feel her arousal at times, let alone scent it if he tried.

But what he couldn’t figure out was her absolute reluctance to talk about it. Pierce knew that shifters had a much more liberal attitude toward sex than a lot of humans did. But they’d already fooled around once. It would be so much easier if they just brought it out into the open and discussed it, as opposed to tiptoeing around, pretending that they hadn’t rocked each other’s worlds.

He stopped cold as he dressed, another thought slithering through his mind.

What if he hadn’t been able to please her? What if the arousal he could sense was simply because of the idea of him, of his looks, and the reason she hadn’t acted was because in reality she didn’t enjoy him?

The thought hit him in the gut like a steel bar. Was he not good enough for Mila? She’d seemed to enjoy herself, but then again, it could mostly have been an act, he supposed.

“Ready yet?” she asked, interrupting his depressing line of thoughts.

“Umm, just about,” he replied, doing up the last few buttons on the shirt.

Mila turned, eyeing him up and down. “Yep, that’ll do. Let’s go.”

Still confused as to everything in his life situation at that point, Pierce did the only thing he could think of. He followed Mila’s orders and took her to the movies.