~*~
Harry jumped into the air like a cat had landed on his back. Even when the cat in question was a she-cat in heat, that was not a pleasant experience.
“What the hell?” He landed on all fours, ready to transform and attack. Or run. He was not above running if the situation warranted.
Miranda Mellons sat halfway up in bed and screeched some more. “Fire! Rape! Help, help, help!”
His sensitive ears couldn’t take the noise. Harry threw back his head and howled.
After a long, torturous moment, she drew in another breath to scream more.
“Please,” he said. “No more. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She apparently didn’t believe him. Who could blame her? She started in again, this time going with “Fiiiiiiire!” instead of the insulting “Rape!” she’d tried before.
Like he’d ever rape somebody. Jesus, he wasn’t a satyr, he was a shifter.
Harry crawled across the room, the horrible sound threatening to burst his eardrums. Throwing himself across the bed, he clapped a hand over her mouth.
“I am begging you,” he said, his voice a half-growl. “Don’t. Scream. Any. More. These rooms are soundproof. Nobody can hear you anyway.”
She stopped. Her eyes, a mossy brown color, shot daggers at him like the most expert of knife throwers.
“Mmmfer fmmfer,” she said. He had the feeling it hadn’t been a nice phrase.
Then she bit him.
He snatched his hand back. She yelled. He cursed and put his hand over her mouth again. She bit.
“Dammit, stop! I’ve been sent to talk to you about the technology you’ve invented. I have not been sent to put up with you biting me and screaming my head off!”
She quit biting. “Are you part of the Dream Team?”
The movement of her lips tickled his palm. He removed it because the sensation was getting him kind of excited.
“No,” he said. “I’m a freelance technology expert.”
“Did the Dream Team hire you?”
“Mr. Fritz hired me. Are you going to be calm now?”
In response, she twisted her lower half into a semicircle. Her knee pounded him hard in the side of the head. He jerked away, his ear smarting, but unfortunately that put his neck in the vicinity of her thighs. She promptly wrapped them around his head, arched her body like a bow, and tried to strangle him.
With her thighs.
He’d had his face buried in a woman’s crotch many times in his life, but never when the woman intended to kill him. Well, maybe a few who’d been sort of pissed, but they got over it. Wolf shifters weren’t referred to as golden tongued because of the color of their mouths.
Her scent blossomed around him as he pawed at her legs, trying to separate them. There wasn’t much danger she could do permanent damage since he was pretty hardy, but that didn’t mean he felt no pain. Although he was beginning to feel something else in his lower half, something responding to the presence of a female who smelled way too good to be so homicidal.
Finally he wrenched her thighs apart and pinned her in place with his body. He was larger than her and now all she could do was glare.
Until her head shot forward and her skull caught him on the bottom lip.
“That hurt!” He licked his lip and noticed her glare softened as she watched. For a second. He put his hands on either side of her head and anchored it in place before she could nail him again. “Miranda, would you listen to me?”
“Get off.” She tried to arc her body to toss him aside. All it did was rub their privates together.
And of course the little wolf responded, well, wolfishly.
“Oh, God,” she said. “This turns you on? You’re sick.”
“No,” he lied. Her hostility didn’t turn him on, but the rest of her did. “You just shoved my face in your crotch and now you’re rubbing my dick like you’re in heat. I’m a man. These things happen. What do you expect my dick to do?”
“Mind its own business,” she snapped. “Get off me.”
“Not until you promise to listen.” This was getting more and more uncomfortable by the second. Untrue. It was getting more and more comfortable by the second, the warmth from her plush little body creeping through his shirt and jeans. She panted, her breasts rising and falling. Her robe had opened again, and manfully he didn’t look.
But he did sniff. Hot damn! She wasn’t as furious as she’d been when this whole thing started.
Angry sex could be fun. For a moment he considered a little Elvis style hip swivel to see how she responded but mentally smacked himself. Bad dog.
“Miranda, I need to know about your scanner,” he said. “How it works and what you’ve found out so far. Most of all, I need to know if anyone else knows about it or how to make it.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” she said. Her pulse quickened. “Why do you want to know?”
“If the scanner falls into the wrong hands, it can hurt a lot of people. My people.”
“Your people, huh?” She relaxed beneath him, softened like her lovely breasts which he hadn’t gotten to touch. Yet.
Since she seemed to be listening, he dropped the next carrot. “I’ve been authorized to give you fifty thousand dollars if you cooperate.”
“Fifty thousand...” Her eyes widened and her lips parted. It almost looked like she wanted to be kissed. “Are you kidding?”
“Nope.” She’d probably try to strangle him again if he kissed her. The question was, would it be worth it?
“I have a question,” she said. “How long have you lived on planet Earth?”
“Uh.” That wasn’t the question he’d been considering. “Since I was born?”
“Are you of extraterrestrial origin?”
Oh, right, right. The file. She was one of those humans. “No, sorry.”
“Do you know any aliens?”
“Aliens,” he said, drawing out the word, “don’t exist.”
“Your gamma waves are off the chart. The human chart. The hotel is full of gamma waves that are off the chart, and I hardly believe everyone’s in deep sleep.”
“Maybe it’s a faulty design,” he suggested.
Her protesting shriek made him recoil. “It’s not a faulty design! There’s no reason in this world why the gamma indicators skew. You think I haven’t tested it? I know my baseline. This is the biggest crowd I’ve scanned, but there’s no reason it would give readings like that. Unless you’re all aliens or you broke my machine when you kicked it in the lobby. I will sue your ass if you did.”
“I can explain the gamma readings.” As she was bound to figure it out soon enough, he’d been authorized to bring her into the loop about the paranormal world that existed under the nose of the human race. Unlike aliens, which did not exist. “I don’t think it’s broken.”
“You took my baby apart. You’re going to break it if you haven’t already.” She shifted beneath him, her body language exuding belligerence. And hotness.
“I haven’t undone anything that can’t be fixed.” Her wriggling distracted him, and his little wolf surged. They both pretended it hadn’t. “I know what I’m doing.”
“I saw no evidence of that.” Her gaze cut to the scanner on the table, but her leg curled around his calf. “Do you know how much those vacuum tubes cost? You tossed one aside like it was a free AOL disk.”
“I understand from your file you’re good with tech, but I’m not an idiot. I have a degree from MIT,” he argued, a little stung. “Think of the vacuum tubes you could buy with fifty thousand dollars.”
“I’m thinking, I’m thinking.” She sighed, her breath warm on his face, her crotch warm against his crotch. Damn, he had to put a stop to this, but she felt so good. And she wasn’t fighting him anymore. And she smelled willing.
“You should get up,” she said, her hands gripping her restraints. Muscles bunched in her arms as she tugged lightly.
“Are you going to be good?”
??
?Are you?” she asked, licking her lips.
Oh, she wanted him to make a move. He could tell, and he was too much a wolf to pass up the chance. He dipped his head and their eyes met. He gave her a minute to anticipate the kiss before he pressed his lips to hers.
Ah, sweetness! She opened for him almost immediately. Their tongues met and tangled. He nipped, tasted, and his hands went from holding her head down to caressing her skin. Before long, they were both panting, and her thighs gripped his body in an entirely different way than before. The scent of her desire made his hips twitch, and when his pelvis rubbed against hers, she moaned.
His clothes started to itch and bind. Not because he was shifting but because he was crazy to be naked and pressed against her. Pressed into her. Steam only a shifter could sense flowed from her pores, so thick he could swim in it.
She was willing. He was able. He reached for her breast and...
She turned her face aside. “No,” she said. “That’s enough.”
“That’s all you wanted?” he asked. He knew better. She wanted him. Her body pulsed against his; her feet rubbed up and down his legs.
“That’s all you’re getting,” she corrected. “I realize I’m at your mercy and I let you kiss me, which might seem like a yes, but I’m saying no. No, no and no. Now let me up so I can put my scanner back together.”
With a hiss of pain, he rolled off her and closed her robe.
“Thanks.” She snapped her legs closed like a wolf trap and blushed.
“Welcome.” He stood and adjusted his jeans, hoping his erection subsided soon. He was never at his most intelligent when his boner was doing his thinking for him, which was obvious, considering he’d nearly screwed Miranda Mellons—and his assignment.
She watched him, her eyes round. He hoped she liked the view. He’d be willing to give her the panorama if she asked.
“You’ll have to untie me,” she said, licking her lips nervously.
“Just a sec.” Sniffing his way around the room, he located the taser and locked it inside her hard suitcase, along with her cell. Then he unplugged the phone. He didn’t smell a gun.
“What are you doing?”
“Saving myself some pain,” he answered. “If you run, I’ll be forced to tie you up again and play with your...machine.” Then he leaned across the bed and unfastened her hands.
She shot up like a spring. For a minute he thought she was going to attack him. Instead, she hastened to her gamma wave scanner and started muttering to herself, wiggling wires and stroking it like a metal pet.
Might be nice to have her stroke him that way. Maybe now that her hands were untied, they could...
But she was lost in the tech. He recognized the zone; he entered it himself on occasion. It was fascinating to watch her, her robe hiked up her strong, pale thighs, her fingers slim and nimble and seemingly possessed by magical powers. Usually magic fingers only existed after the hand had been severed from the person.
Suddenly her concentration, and his concentration on her, was broken by a rumble in her tummy. “Did you actually bring me a ham sandwich?” she asked.
“And free booze.” He handed the sandwich to her along with champagne in a plastic hotel cup. She ate as she worked, careful to keep all crumbs out of the vicinity of the scanner. In ten more minutes, she had reassembled the machine and plugged it in.
“All right.” She dusted her hands and sipped her second glass of champagne. She was so businesslike, their make-out session might as well never have occurred. “I want to see the money first.”
He pulled a wad of bills out of the side of the champagne bucket. “Here’s some of it.”
She thumbed through the money, silently counting.
He waited until she was finished before adding, “I need you to sign a nondisclosure agreement.” It was in a folder taped to the bottom of the serving tray.
She put the money in one of her many satchels. “Nondisclosure about what?”
“About your technology and about what I’m going to tell you after you show me how the scanner works.”
“I think you’re the one who needs to sign a nondisclosure.” She tossed the pickle from her sandwich into the trash with an angry flick. “How do I know you and Mr. Fritz—if that’s who you really work for—aren’t going to steal my ideas?”
“Oh, we are,” he said, “but we hope we get you along with them.”
Boy, did he ever hope he got her along with them.