Her Lycan Lover (5 page)

He lacked the temperament for that tonight. He hungered for a sure thing. No games. No conversation. At the bar an
arched blond brow beckoned him without a word. No need to resist when he inhaled and found her aroused. He was only surprised she was human and not a common occurrence upstairs. Was she trying her hand at shifter sex? She didn’t seem like one to take orders. With a provocative stance, her bold stare told him she enjoyed calling the shots. He bet she wasn’t tied down to one man and probably never would, preferring to play the field.

“Good evening,” he said coming up to her. “I couldn’t help noticing you. I’m Quinn Rothschild.”

“I’m well aware of you, Mr. Rothschild. I’ve been waiting to make your proper acquaintance for many moons.”

“It seems as though we’ve met before,” Quinn said.

She smiled, flashing small teeth, and her long, pink tongue languidly swiped across her lips. “Not the pickup line I expected from a man like you.” She extracted a cigarette and waved him off when he picked up a box of matches at the bar. The woman flicked the cap of a gold lighter. She inhaled, peering at him as the flame burned the end of her cigarette bright red in the dim light. Exhaling, she lowered her cigarette. “Maybe we have and maybe we haven’t. Let’s just go with, I’m Nina Brown-Miles. At least for tonight.”

Mystery solved. Sort of. He didn’t care if they had met before or not. A name would do. Any name. And what did that take? All of three minutes. So little kept him entertained these days.

“Ah, Ms. Miles.” He extended his hand, grasping hers, and bringing it to his lips. “A pleasure.”

She shivered at the touch of his mouth. “Actually, I need to speak with you.”

Ding. Ding. Nina piqued his curiosity. “You have my undivided attention.” He held onto the dainty hand.

“Thank you.” She broke eye contact and glanced around the room, pulling a long drag on her cigarette.

What in the world would someone like Nina want with him? It wasn’t to shoot darts. Perhaps she had a legal concern.

“Can we
speak
in private? To discuss a possible donation. After you’ve ordered your drink.” Her eyes held his, but then lowered as she ran her fingers through her hair and down her neck.

No more guesswork. The only donation this lady wanted was carnal. “Sweets, I’d rather just fuck your brains out. If you’ve no objections?”

For a second she stared back at him, speechless. “I see there’s no need for games with you. How refreshing. Yes. But I would rather it be me that fucks you. If at all possible.”

“I’m not a sub. Never have been.”

“Lucky night, Mr. Rothschild. I’m a switch, so I can take it any way you please. Do
you
have any objections?” She blew a ring of smoke above his head.

“None that come to mind.” This brazen woman had what he needed. She might be capable of keeping him occupied for hours and that’s all he sought. A way to forestall the world of sleep. “Perhaps this is
your lucky night
. I might consider something new. How does flying by the seat of your pants sound?” Suddenly, his stomach clenched. A nauseating repugnance swam in his gut. He broke out in a cold sweat. The woman’s miles of curves probably had most guys hot on the hunt. Yet there was something irksome about her. What it was, he couldn’t exactly pinpoint.

She allowed her gaze to travel down the front of his body, stopping at his crotch. “Impressive. I’ve got all night.” She laughed, picking up her martini glass. “Cheers.”

“Bottoms up, Ms. Miles.”

Quinn awoke, his heart thudding beneath his ribcage. The bizarre images faded, but not quick enough to convince him he’d been asleep. Razor-edged and cutting him deep. He scrubbed his hand down his face, wiping away a sheen of sweat. He must have dozed off. Cold droplets smeared across the skin of his cheeks, sandpaper scruff under his fingers.

He paced himself in transitioning between waking and dreaming. A shrink would check off night terrors and meds. Had he gone that route he would have been addicted to sleeping pills for a lack of sleep. Self-imposed insomnia to avoid his nighttime travels. Dreams or not, he journeyed into other worlds while he slept. Regardless of where he’d visited at night, in the daylight, his memory of the dream dissolved after waking. Right now, he fully recalled the dream and his past dreams with equal clarity. Night after night. For an eternity. As a Lycan protector he was relegated to immortality until he found his mate and kept her from harm. In his dream, he searched for his elusive mate. It was a search that kept him in a constant vigil should he actually meet her one day.

The dream, or whatever it was, usually receded from his consciousness, leaving a black void with shreds to his memory. Fleeting images. So the same bittersweet dream came to him every night, pulling him back as the moon made its way across the sky, and then during the day, it faded into the farthest reach of his memory. Yet this morning, the dream was vividly entrenched in his consciousness.

He glanced down at his hands. No blood stained his skin. Again, he’d lost her. For seconds, he fought to let go the memory of silky strands of hair. So dark they appeared blue black against his lover’s porcelain skin. Lips that chided him, sucking his tongue, stealing his breath under a blood red moon.

The breeze sliced through the forest, wafting her scent of amber and patchouli.

“Quinnlan,” she’d called out to him. His nighttime fantasy. She wasn’t a succubus as he had once believed. In his dream as he thrust into her, she wrapped him in her warm, inviting arms. He dove into her lush body each night. How could that be part of a nightmare where she ended up calling to him to save her? Then he recalled the scent that changed from heavenly to that of iron. Cloying. Blood.

Her fragrance had wafted in and around the mountainside he’d covered half-crazed in search of her. Quinn inhaled as though he might absorb it one last time. Last night there had been baying wolves, shifters from other clans, and he’d stopped dead in his tracks. A bone chilling jolt had shot through his body. That had been new. He sat up in bed.

“Shit,” he said sharply. Novelty in his dreams was not common. It was a sign of changes to come. He wrestled with the events before his memory decided to swallow up the surreal images.

Last night, he’d fallen back on his hunches in the shadows. There was a wolf near him. Another difference in his dream. His hackles bristled recalling the warning sounded by the wolf pack sentinels. Not his pack. He traveled alone. Yips and barks could be heard off in the distance and then a collective pack howl became a unified, muffled cry. The hairs all over his body spiked at the memory. He exhaled rapidly, burning the oxygen from his lungs. This was getting downright absurd. The warning had been for him. Not his mate.

He closed his eyes, unable to make sense of what this meant. Her voice followed him into sleep each night. Night after night, disturbing him, pleading and struggling, and then silence. Darkness. Cold. And he crashed into the morning.

Today, his body felt stiff and he pulled back the sheet. Dried blood was on his upper thigh. An ugly scrap ran a couple inches down the side of his leg. He must have gotten literally falling down drunk last night. No, he remembered pushing a blonde off him and nearly getting stabbed. Fuck. That was insane.

Grogginess didn’t normally lift until his third cup of coffee and shit, today he’d promised Shawn that the pleadings drafted for the conveyance of the Den would be ready to file. Shawn, a proud soon-to-be father of twins, wanted to step down from running the Den. Of course he’d needed more time for his family. The Den required a huge chunk of time to manage. A stud club for shifters was quickly becoming Quinn’s own personal hangout. His partner had been married for less than a year and already his best friend was turning into a man with strollers and car seats, and diapers to change. It seemed most of his close buddies were settling down. Mating and making a life that did not include group sex, alcohol, and avoiding sleep.

Jesus Christ. His life was on a downward spiral. Forget finding a mate—not with what he encountered each night. The dreams had gotten worse. Much worse, leaving him with few options except to drink and fuck them into submission so that he could fall asleep and stay asleep for a couple of hours without walking around like a zombie the next morning.

He’d put aside what most people his age were into. Family, tradition, finding their place in a pack. At least, his family had learned to accept his decision and were probably better off not being privy to how their youngest son spent a portion of his trust and his time during the evening. Sex clubs, parties, and any little hot number that happened to breach the city border, particularly within the LoDo section of town was fair game in his book. Throughout it all he’d had the dreams. Hazy at first and now more and more prominent in details and the lingering effects.

He inhaled, shaking loose from the weight of the dream, and glanced around the room. The sight kicked up his headache. He needed a shower and a gallon of coffee.

He bounded from the bed just in time to hear an ear piercing, “
What the heck?”
coming from the hall.
In about five seconds, Sherry would be blazing a path into this
disaster.

He exhaled a silent
holy shit
, peering around the private room where he’d crashed last night. Lingerie was draped over the door knob. The scent of sex and shifters soured his stomach. Simon and Jeremy’s naked bodies sandwiched a brunette. Quite well from what he remembered. Thank god it was someone else’s party for a change, but hell, it was a sea of naked arse cheeks… both male and female. Empty bottles, cups, and shot glasses littered the floor. The fan moved in a lazy circle, stirring the hair of some of the women.

Standing by the bed, naked and sporting a hard-on fell outside any rational plan of how to greet Sherry as the Den’s manager. With zero chance of finding his trousers anytime soon, he casually reached down and lifted a pillow and placed it in front of himself at the same time she opened the door. Standing arms akimbo on the threshold, she shook her head. All the while her eyes moved about the contents of the room.

“I did not get the weather report that a tornado had torn a path through Denver and stopped in this room. Really, Quinn.”

“I was just getting dressed. Give me a sec, love,” he said.

“Too late. The damage has been done.” She marched nonplussed, right up to him, color high on her incredible cheekbones, stared him straight in the eye and whispered, “A moment of your incredibly valuable time.”

She turned and walked out the doorway. Quinn watched her exit, then rolled his eyes. Shite. He was about to have his arse handed to him. He followed to the doorway.

Sherry held up her hand. “That’s good enough.” She spoke evenly between perfect white teeth. “Have you lost your bloody mind, Quinn? Since when is hitting on a client and then asking her to leave commonplace? I have a complaint on my desk and a threat to go to the press, and you being the owner only makes this all the juicier. Not acceptable. Ten minutes and I want to discuss our damage control plan. In my office. Owner or not, you hired me to do a job. Something’s got to give.”

“Sherry, doll. Anywhere you’d like me, I’m more than amendable. All I’ve ever asked was a time and place,” he murmured, inhaling her strange fragrance.

“Don’t.” She raised one finger. Index.

He deserved another—one over.

“I’m simply being agreeable.” Chuckling, he struggled to put aside the unsettling sensation. Was it embarrassment? The feeling so novel, he couldn’t place it. Preferring to laugh out loud as a cover, he refocused on lovely Sherry’s face. Her smooth skin turned a deeper shade of haughty rose that stole the breath from his body.

“Last thing. Mr. Rothschild, since when did the Den become a hotel?”

“Party ran over,” he muttered. She bent down and picked up a champagne flute from the carpet. When the hell had she grown so intoxicatingly beautiful? For the first time in his life, he regretted being naked in full regalia in front of a woman. Sherry provoked him to… he couldn’t put his finger on the word. Protect came to mind. Impossible. He must still be drunk. Sherry kicked-ass—everyone’s at the Den—and needed a protector like a hole in her incredibly lovely head. She set the glass on a table, arched a brow in his direction. “You’re early,” he said defensively.

“That’s hardly a plausible reason
why we’ve a roomful of sleeping clients.”

Apparently he’d fallen asleep for a couple of hours and it had to be no later than seven. “What the devil are you doing here anyway?” He
should have already texted one of the room attendants to come and help clean up this mess and wake the others.

“I heard an earful about your evening,” Sherry snapped, hands bracketing her tiny waist.

“Helluva night,” he said, peeling his attention from her shapely legs. He glanced over his shoulder, catching the scene on display within the mirror hanging on the wall of the room. A couple of ball players from Denver’s team were fully unclothed and in plain sight. He pulled the door closed behind him. “You should leave. We can talk downstairs.”