Page 13

“ Y ou’re quiet tonight,” Tak remarked at the dinner table.

Lucian looked up when Montana nudged him. “I’m always quiet.”

Tak finished his water and handed the empty glass to Archer, who was busy clearing the table.

“True. But usually it’s because you’re on your phone, and I haven’t seen you pull it out once.

What happened today? You were gone a long time for returning a pair of shoes.

Did you get lost and accidentally find your way to that new strip club? ”

Lucian could feel the heat of the alpha’s gaze and didn’t want Tak prying with invasive questions. “The Councilwoman wants to set up a security system on her property. She asked me to draw up a few plans, so I’m just thinking them over.”

Lies.

All Lucian could think about at the table was the taste of her skin on his tongue. He had fantasized about lifting her onto the sink, listening to her moan his name while he ran his tongue between her legs.

Tak grinned and then raised his voice. “That’s good! Did you hear that, Hope? Councilwoman Eden wants to hire Lucian.”

Hope waddled into the room with a plate of strawberry shortcake. “That’s great news.”

Tak studiously watched her sit and devour her second helping of cake.

He was very attentive to his mate, always making sure she ate all she wanted.

Finally he turned his attention back to Lucian.

“I spent three days working with a local Packmaster who needed my expertise. He wants to do business with a distributor in Canada who only speaks French and asked me to interpret. I speak many languages, but this is obviously his weakness. If he wants to do business with another culture, he should learn their language so there’s never a misunderstanding.

Three days I helped them negotiate a deal.

” Tak laughed quietly and shook his head.

“Only under the condition that he work with a teacher to learn French, because I won’t do that for him again.

You can’t help a man who won’t help himself. ”

“I don’t see why that was your problem,” Lucian remarked.

Tak shrugged. “I could have told him to piss off, but this is how you forge alliances. The most important jobs are the ones you do for leaders in the community. If they like your work, they’ll recommend you.

People look up to them, and if your services are good enough for a Councilwoman”—he slapped the table—“that’ll bring more jobs your way. ”

Lucian slumped in his chair. “Yeah.”

Tak jerked his head back. “What crawled up your trousers? This is good news. Are you worried you’ll disappoint her?”

The understatement of the year.

“I don’t provide inferior work. I’m just not sure how I feel about being in an official’s house… alone.”

Tak ate a strawberry that Hope fed him. “Don’t steal, don’t snoop, and don’t leave her doors unlocked.

If I find out you’ve broken any of those rules, I’ll tie you to the tree outside when it’s mosquito season.

The Council is more important than anything else.

They’re the law. Do your job and do it well. ”

Montana rapped his knuckles on the table. “Lucian can handle it. You should see what he did to Old Man Forney’s house.”

“He wanted a moat.” Lucian laughed quietly, remembering the absurd request. “I talked him into an electric fence since he didn’t have a clue how much equipment it would take.”

“And water,” Montana added. “Holy shit. Can you imagine?”

Lucian wadded up his napkin. “This is why people shouldn’t be left in charge of their own security. They’ll be digging holes with bear traps and walking into them.”

“It’s kicking again,” Hope said with undisguised love.

Tak slid out of his chair and knelt beside her.

While his mate continued eating her dessert, Tak stroked her belly and placed his ear against it.

Everyone else had cleared out of the room except for Lucian and Montana, who were sitting at the opposite end of the table from the Packmaster, giving them privacy.

Montana leaned in close and lowered his voice. “You okay?”

“That remains to be seen.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I piss people off,” Lucian said quietly. “She’s a Councilwoman. If I say or do the wrong thing, he’ll kick me out of the pack.”

Montana peered over at the alpha, who was having a one-sided conversation with a fetus, before looking back at Lucian.

“You can be blunt. Just watch what you say on a personal level. Keep it strictly business. Don’t give your opinion on her furniture, her outfit, or how she doesn’t clean.

If she says something that you know isn’t right, don’t correct her. ”

“In other words, don’t be conversational?”

“She doesn’t know you like we do.”

Lucian glanced up when Robyn’s black wolf trotted jauntily into the room, her tail swishing back and forth. She sniffed the air, spotted her favorite person, and walked around the table to greet him.

After kissing her head, Montana scooted back his chair and faced Lucian while stroking her ebony fur. “Tak’s right. Doing a job for the Council is a big deal, so don’t screw it up. If you run into any trouble or need advice, let me know.” He patted Lucian’s shoulder. “I need to run with my lady.”

Robyn barked and twirled excitedly in a circle before racing out of the room.

She howled from the back hall until Montana joined her.

Lucian stared out the side windows as the security lights popped on when the two emerged from the back door.

After taking off his shoes, Montana shifted, and the two greeted each other before rushing down the steps.

With Robyn and Montana out for the night, that would give Lucian privacy. Their bedrooms were next to each other and shared the same hall as Tak and Hope, and those two had been staying up lately to watch TV and talk.

Lucian headed down the back hall and turned right.

His bedroom was the second door on the left, past the bathroom.

The multicolored LED lights around his desks stayed on at all times, making it easy for him to see without switching on the overhead light.

The custom-built L-shaped desk ran along the entire left wall and the one straight ahead.

Since the wall opposite the door had a window, his monitors were mounted on the left-hand wall so he could watch the surveillance cameras.

The desktop monitors, computers, laptops, and other equipment were mainly on the desk straight ahead.

Lucian kept his workstation organized, the cords secured under his desk and out of the way, a printer in the corner, a docking station to the left, and other technical equipment, some of which he stored beneath the desk.

He didn’t require a lot of personal space.

All he needed was a single floor mattress against the right wall and a low bookshelf.

Because the shelf jutted out from the wall by the door, it hid the mattress and gave him a private nook where he could lie down at night and read.

It also concealed his bed from anyone barging in; Tak wasn’t a fan of putting locks on the doors.

Stripping out of his clothes, he scanned the surveillance monitors.

Movement automatically set off his alarms and initiated recording.

In the early days, owls had constantly tripped his alarms and woken him up.

It drove him nuts, so he’d built a smart system that identified specific animals and eliminated them from triggering an alert.

Once he was down to his trunks, he walked around the bookshelf to his floor mattress and crawled into bed.

He liked the bookshelf facing him so he could view his collection.

Most of the books were on subjects that interested him, such as programming, quantum physics, and psychology.

Those were topics he wanted to understand.

But he also had fantasy novels to escape in.

Since the LED color-changing lights around the desk were on, he didn’t bother switching on the lamp on his makeshift nightstand beside him. He stared at the blue and pink colors that merged on his ceiling to form an interesting mosaic.

After tucking his legs beneath the sheets, he closed his eyes. The first thing that popped into his head was Eden’s smile. During every encounter they’d had, she always acknowledged him with a word or a touch.

His thoughts drifted to the moment she carried her shoes to the door and bent over to put them down.

Bent right over in front of him with those tiny shorts.

As he watched her round bottom, his cock had twitched awake as if summoned like a genie from a bottle.

Before the Councilwoman really got an eyeful, Lucian had averted his gaze and started thinking about dirty diapers, cleaning hair out of the bathtub drain, and anything that would save him from the humiliation of getting a boner in front of a community leader.

Eden always wore slacks and skirts, so that was the most leg he’d ever seen from her.

Now, in his bedroom, he was in a safe space.

Alone.

Lucian licked his lips when he remembered dropping to his knees and running his tongue up her thigh. Hands down the most irresponsible thing he’d ever done. Eden wasn’t a Chitah—she didn’t understand his ways.

And what he didn’t understand was his reaction to her sweet taste.

Had she gasped? Lucian had been so startled by her provocative gaze that he’d completely ignored her emotional scent. He put immediate distance between them, afraid he might have offended her.

It wasn’t until moments later that the scent of her arousal had hit him like a sledgehammer.

Eden’s warm skin glowed like desert mountains at dusk, her eyes as soulful as a harvest moon.

His thoughts lingered on that moment again: his tongue on her silky thigh, her slender fingers tunneling through his hair.

He fantasized about pulling down her cotton shorts and going higher until she moaned and gasped his name.

Lucian… Lucian . Her whispers filled his head the way blood rushed to his shaft. This time he didn’t suppress it.

His cock was throbbing, so he pulled it out of his trunks and softly teased the head.

He ached for that female. An intelligent, beautiful Shifter like her would never give him the time of day, and her unattainability made her all the more desirable.

All he knew was the way his body reacted in her presence—the way he couldn’t stop thinking about her. And this wasn’t a recent phenomenon.

Lucian had arrived in Storybook with a shaved head, and he’d gotten used to not having any hair.

It wasn’t until Atticus and Joy were mated last year that he started growing it out.

Why? Because of an offhand remark Eden made.

She’d suggested that she’d like to see him with short hair, but that wasn’t the whole story.

During the mating ceremony, she had given a heartwarming speech.

Despite the swell of emotions in the room, he caught despair in her scent.

He hadn’t stopped thinking about it since.

She yearned for love.

He stroked himself, remembering the feel of her fingers in his black hair.

She approved.

If only Deacon hadn’t shown up. Last year Deacon had knocked him out, shaved part of his head, and made sure the bus left without him, all because he didn’t want a Chitah in the pack.

It didn’t come as a surprise to Lucian that people felt that way about him, but it pissed him off enough that he’d hitchhiked the rest of the way to Storybook to prove to that asshole he wasn’t going to win.

When Lucian scented Eden’s arousal after Deacon’s visit, it left him uncertain. Was that scent left over from when he healed her, or was she turned on by that dunderhead? When she suddenly began calling him Mr. Cross, he knew he’d fucked up.

You don’t go around seducing the gods .

It didn’t get any higher than the Council or other law enforcement.

“Fuck.”

He imagined taking Eden, pleasuring her with his tongue until she begged him for more. His whole fantasy disintegrated when he remembered Deacon’s smug face peering through the glass door.

Lucian tucked himself back into his trunks and turned on his side. Intrusive feelings of rejection were creeping in.

“Just forget her,” he mumbled.

His mind blanked out like a clean chalkboard.

Lucian had always struggled with insomnia, so he slept whenever possible.

Usually a few hours here and there, often before everyone went to bed.

Everything filled his head at night. Thoughts about the past, the future, and little things that happened during the day.

This was the crux of his problem—not being able to shut it all off.

Then his mind blinked awake, remembering the worried look in Eden’s eyes when she mentioned someone showed up at her door and harassed her father.

Lucian’s canines punched out—all four of them. She was unprotected out there. Did she have a strong wolf?

He opened his eyes and rolled onto his other side.

Is she even a wolf?

Lucian didn’t have a clue. Animal types didn’t matter on a Shifter Council, but usually it reflected the territory they worked in.

If there were more bears, the Councils had bear officials.

He thought about her movements and traits.

Even Shifters couldn’t always spot their own kind, but sometimes subtle characteristics were present.

He recalled the way her sultry eyes flashed down at him when he was on his knees.

Fuck. That look undid him.

It wasn’t a helpless, fearful reaction. Her feline gaze was alarmingly familiar, and it had shaken his inner animal awake.

While Chitahs didn’t shift into animals, their primal side was fused to their human one.

Because their physical traits and behaviors mirrored the wild cat, they’d begun using the Chitah name long ago, only they spelled it C-H-I-T-A-H to make the distinction.

When their switch flipped, a dark force took control.

It usually happened when protecting a loved one or fighting, but occasionally it occurred during sex.

Lucian didn’t trust his inner animal. He didn’t understand that raw emotion, so he feared it.

What if those repressed emotions exploded into something uncontrollable and deadly?

Lucian needed control, and that was something Chitahs relinquished when going primal.

It was akin to sitting in the passenger seat and watching the most primitive side of your brain take over—the part that couldn’t speak or understand language. It only knew how to react.

His fangs receded when he remembered Eden’s touch, the way she petted him and the unexpected purr that had resonated in his chest.

And that fantasy was the one he fell asleep thinking about.