Entangled With the Thief (3 page)

Mel didn’t know how to make her next move. She had no way to enter Luke’s property without being caught, and he had no reason to put her scry stone in a vulnerable enough position for her to be able to steal it. She stayed up the entire night trying to figure out a way to get into his fortress, but there was nothing she could do alone.

Sometime just before the sun crested the horizon she fell asleep.

Sometime later, a sound in her room woke her up. Mel remained perfectly still, not even opening her eyes. Any movement would alert her intruder. She breathed deeply and relaxed. The scent that permeated the room was one of comfort, of sexiness, and of home. Just like she remembered Luke.

Her eyes snapped open and she rolled to the side before he could pin her to the bed. In a fluid motion, she went backwards over the edge and landed on her feet, spry and ready to spring into action if he wanted a fight.

The alpha smiled, white teeth shining in the dark room. “Good morning, thief.”

Mel was on the balls of her feet, but she didn’t run. Instinct had kept her alive in dangerous situations for more than thirty years, and she wasn’t going to start ignoring it now. Even when logic told her it would be wise to run from the alpha that couldn’t want anything good from her. Not after all the shit she pulled.

Logic said that.

Instinct told her to smile. “Good morning, Alpha.” She didn’t let the fact that he was in her room, that she was in her pajamas, or that he’d tracked her down intimidate her. She didn’t have time to be intimidated. “You’ve come a long way for a house call.”

“I have your phone, didn’t have a way to call you.” He was waiting for her to run, she could see it in the minute shifting of his feet, the way he kept watching for the smallest twitch in her hips to see if she would move.

Of course, that explained how he found her so quickly. Mel hadn’t expected to give the phone up, and she hadn’t bothered to clear the search history on the GPS program. Hell, for that rookie mistake she deserved to be caught. “So, what do you want?” Mel reached over and turned on the bedside light. The small shaft of sunshine peeking through the blackout curtains wasn’t nearly enough to conduct business by.

Satisfied that she wasn’t going to immediately run, Luke leaned on the door, arms crossed. Mel didn’t know if he was purposefully showing off his muscular arms or not, but she appreciated the view nonetheless. With the light on, it didn’t look like he had gotten any sleep. Dark circles had formed under his eyes and there was a ragged hollowness to his cheeks. But Mel wouldn’t let herself feel compassion. Not now, not for him. He was surely about to screw her over.

“You knew about the hex,” he said. His voice didn’t betray his obvious fatigue. He must have had plenty of practice. “You knew about it within seconds of seeing it.”

Mel hoped he wasn’t going to be stupid enough to accuse her of practicing magic. It would be a pity to lose all respect for him so quickly. Not that she was starting to respect him or anything.

“So you must have seen something like that before,” he finished. “And judging by your reaction to it, I think you know it’s bad.”

Smart man. Dangerous, sexy, smart man. Mel didn’t want to reveal her entire sob story. Besides, he knew enough of it already. But if she wasn’t careful, he would cut to the heart of the matter just from her reactions. No wonder this man was an alpha at such a young age. “How old are you?” She didn’t mean to ask –  the research Krista had put together gave her an idea. But still, she was curious.

And for some reason Luke obliged. “Thirty-two. You?”

“The same.” There were a dozen reasons to lie, none of them good. And besides, he probably wouldn’t think she was telling the truth. Plenty of people in power believed anyone younger than seventy-five was an infant. “But I’m not living on borrowed time.”

Alphas didn’t last long in their positions. While some could rule for centuries, the average length was closer to a decade. Maybe a little less. And those were people with much more experience than Luke. He shrugged it off. “I’m not going to be overthrown just yet.” Something glinted in his hand, and suddenly Mel’s scry stone was dangling from its chain. “It’s a pretty bauble.”

“
My
pretty bauble.” She didn’t try to snatch it out of his hand. He would be too fast. “I see you’ve come to your senses and have chosen to surrender it to me. Your cooperation is appreciated.”

He threw his head back and laughed. The sound filled the room and wrapped around Mel. Her heart jumped, just a little. But she ignored it.

“I think I would like you if you didn’t keep stealing from me.” The exhaustion had drained from his face, and he now looked almost like the young man he must have been once upon a time. She wondered what he would look like when he was really happy, not just caught off guard.

“If you’re not giving me my necklace back, then what’s the deal?” He didn’t need to know how important it was to her. She wasn’t going to drive up the price.

He slipped the necklace back into his pocket. “Help me fix Cassie.”

She’d known it would come to that. From the moment he’d entered her room there was no other outcome. And a part of her was relieved. She had no reason to help Cassie out of the goodness of her heart, or out of the terror of what a hex could do. Still, she pretended to think about it. She let herself settle into the role of a femme fatale and swayed her hips as she walked across the room, clearing the distance between them.

She got up close to Luke, laying a hand on his chest. “Your sister’s life is only worth a silly necklace?” she asked.

Luke’s face was inches from hers, his lips dangerously close. And he was just as focused on his goal as she was. Mel needed him distracted. So she kissed him.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

But if her goal was distraction, she missed her target. Luke wasn’t a man to just let himself be kissed. Not when she wasn’t playing like she was a peppy little co-ed anymore. He took control, devouring her. He pulled her close, almost crushing her, and kissed her with the intensity of a man who hadn’t had a woman in centuries.

No, he kissed her like he knew her, and like he hadn’t been able to kiss
her
in centuries.

It rocked Mel to her core, and she couldn’t help but respond, seduced by his passion, his desperation. She met his fervor with her own, swiping her tongue against his, feeling the heat coil through her. There was almost nothing she could think about except feeling him for just a little longer, just a little more.

And then his hand closed around her wrist, crushingly hard. He pulled back and both of them panted. “Normally, I’d be happy to let a beautiful woman put her hands in my pants, but I can’t help but think you have ulterior motives.”

Mel let her head fall against his chest and she smiled. “You can’t fault a girl for trying.”

He let go of her wrist and she stepped back. Mel expected anger, or at least exasperation. What she saw stunned her, caught her off guard. She saw hunger. But with a blink it was gone, Luke flexed his hand and grinned. “Be careful, you might become predictable.”

“We wouldn’t want that.” For some reason she was glad he hadn’t let her lift the stone. How messed up was that? But if she couldn’t get her stone through conventional methods, she’d have to do something a bit unorthodox. She’d work for it. “What are your terms?”

She saw his shoulders relax. He must have been on pins and needles all night. “I need your expertise. I’ve got the car downstairs and we’ll go back to Eagle Creek. You will be my guest, and free to go with your payment once Cassie is better.”

Mel knew that he thought those terms were fair. It must have been nice to be an alpha. She held up a hand and ticked off her points. “One, I will go to Eagle Creek under my own power. Tomorrow. Two, I will bring with me a team who will also require guest status and safe passage out of town. And three…” the last point was both the most painful and most important. “…Three. I will receive my payment and not be punished or imprisoned if Cassie cannot be cured. I will be your consultant, I will try to the best of my ability to help you, but I offer no guarantee. This isn’t some easy theft. Witchcraft is dangerous and tricky.”

“I want you in town tonight.”

Mel put her hands on her hips, “I’ll be there tomorrow.”

Luke pointed towards the door, gesturing towards the parking lot. “Did you think I came alone? You can come with me freely or you can come with me under duress, I don’t care which way it is.”

Mel had to keep an even tone. Luke wasn’t thinking clearly, and with his sister on the line she couldn’t expect him to. “No one will believe me if I ask them to come when I’m already at your place. They’ll think it’s a trap. So I’ll be there tomorrow and you’ll just have to trust me.”

He had no reason to. Mel knew that. But she wasn’t going with him, not even to save an innocent life. Luke was the type of man to take every hint of surrender and expand until he took everything. As an alpha he had to be able to do that, but Mel wasn’t his subject, she wasn’t anything to him. And he didn’t get to walk all over her.

And to her shock, the alpha nodded his head. “But if you’re not there by noon, I’m dragging you back whether you like it or not.” He grabbed the cell phone that she’d thrown at him the night before out of his pocket and tossed it to her. “Thought you might need this.”

Mel wanted to toss it back to him. There was no telling what tracking software he’d put on it. But she wasn’t going to give him the heads up. “Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Maya was waiting for Luke when he got back. She typed furiously on a tablet and tapped her foot. Without looking at him when he entered the War Room, she said “We’ve got a problem.”

Of course they did. If he were a superstitious man he might think he was cursed. “What is it this time? And how’s Cassie?” He hadn’t even had enough time to check on his sister that morning. She’d still been asleep when he and two of his enforcers headed out to Denver to track down Mel. He’d left Antonio behind to track the thief by the GPS in her phone. Though Luke doubted anything would come of it, he needed to try.

“Cassie’s asleep,” Maya said carefully.

It caught Luke’s attention. “That’s nearly sixteen hours. Did something happen?” The other crisis could wait if Cassie needed him.

Maya held the tablet close while she spoke. “She woke briefly and had an uncharacteristic outburst. I had to call in Dr. Murphy to sedate her.”

Dr. Murphy wasn’t a shapeshifter, but he was the town’s only physician. And the story went that ten years before Luke came to town, a slew of shifter violence had made it impossible to shield the good doctor from the fact that something unnatural was happening. He’d been brought in on the secret of the shapeshifter clan and treated them when their wounds were too serious for even accelerated healing to fix.

“When was that?” He kept his tone even. He trusted Maya –  if she hadn’t called him at the time she had a good reason. He didn’t fear leaving her in charge, but that didn’t mean he wanted her making medical decisions for his sister.

Maya could clearly sense his frustration, “About three hours ago, just after you went radio silent to deal with the thief. The doctor said Cassie will probably sleep for a few hours, so she’ll be up soon.”

“And the other emergency?” There was nothing he could do for Cassie while she slept that he hadn’t already done.

“Peklo is getting restless.”

James Peklo was the least of Luke’s worries, and he would have told the man to go to hell if it wouldn’t have doomed the pack to war. “Restless how?” Peklo led the legion of vampires that Luke had put off meeting when Cassie disappeared. No group liked to be ignored, though, and rumor had it that Peklo was not a patient man when forced to wait.

“Threatening to cancel the meet if he doesn’t hear from you by the end of the day today.” Despite the severity of the situation, Maya smiled, a wicked glint in her eye. “I don’t think he liked being put off by a woman.”

“Nothing would shock me about him.” Luke didn’t want to deal with the vampire right now, but he couldn’t avoid his responsibilities. “I’ll call him tonight. He’ll probably be happy if I just let him vent.” It occurred to him that Peklo might have had something to do with Cassie’s disappearance. But if the vampiric leader was as smart as rumor suggested, he would never have been so obvious. And the guest they’d captured when Mel escaped claimed the man had nothing to do with him.