Polar Bears are Forever: Book One Supernatural Enforcers Agency (11 page)

Hmmm, babies…
  Erin gasped and slapped a hand over her mouth.

“What?”  He looked up in concern and immediately his body tensed.

“When we had sex we didn’t use protection!”  Why was it only occurring to her now? 
She could already be baking a polar bear cub in her oven!

He chuckled and relaxed.  “It’s fine; you’re not fertile right now.”

What the heigh-ho did that mean?
  “I’m… I’m not?  How can you tell?”

Gunner shrugged his massive shoulders.  “I can scent it.”

She wrinkled her nose in distaste.  “You mean, you can, like, scent when a woman’s on her period?”

“Sure, and ovulating.”

Eeuw
.  She didn’t have to say the word out loud, but he could obviously tell what she was thinking. 

“Shifters are part animal; we’re driven to mate and produce young.  We need to be able to tell when females are fertile.”

That was kind of creepy
.  “So when you first met me, did you automatically check to see if I was fertile?”

He looked at her oddly.  “No.”

Oh, no.
  She couldn’t help the questions that came out next.  She didn’t want to ask them, but they came out anyway.  “So, as a shifter, having kids is important to you?  It’s something you’ll want one day?”

Gunner stared at her for a few beats, and she wanted to shrink into his oversized couch.  “Look, this is getting a little heavy, why don’t we just chose a movie and store this conversation away for the future?”

Erin almost collapsed in relief.  Babies were not something she wanted to think about.  She’d only known Gunner for a couple of weeks.  “Okay.”

“What are you in the mood for?”  He flicked through the numerous titles, awkwardness forgotten.  “I have action movies, action comedies, and some more action movies.”

She smiled impishly and folded her legs under her.  “Well, gee, on that basis I guess I’ll have to go for an action movie.”

“Oh, babe, teasing me is not a good idea.”

“Hmmm, I’m willing to risk it,” she cooed.

He grinned at her.  “So, we have Die Hard, True Lies, The Bourne Identity, The Expendables…”  She scrunched her nose at the suggestions, and he kept looking.  “Hey, hang on a second, I think I have some still in their plastic wrap my sister-in-law bought me for Christmas.”  He reached to the back of the shelf and pulled out two titles.  “Okay, yeah, I have Ghostbusters and Jurassic Park.  What do you think?”

Erin tapped her lips pretending to think, before, deadly serious, she said, “Who ya gonna call?”

He shook his head and chuckled.  “Ghostbusters it is.”  He set the DVD going.  “I’m going to order that pizza, what would you like on it?”

“I’m not really that hungry.”

His expression darkened for a few seconds before he cocked an eyebrow at her.  “You’ve barely eaten anything all day.  You’ll need your strength for tonight.”

“Oh, do I have plans tonight?  I’m so tired I might just fall asleep watching the movie.”

The disappointed look on his face was absolutely priceless, and Erin just couldn’t hold onto her mirth.  She let out a chirp of laughter before burying her face in a cushion.

Gunner let out a playful roar and diving across the room he flipped Erin onto her back and proceeded to tickle her, eliciting hysterical shrieks.

“I warned you about teasing me,” he purred as he easily controlled her flailing limbs.

“I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!” she choked out between squeals.

He suddenly stopped, and gave her a stern glare.  “Do you promise never to tease me again?”

Erin pouted at him.  “Oh, I don’t think I could I manage that.  How about I promise not to tease you for the next twenty minutes?”

Gunner appeared to think about it for a few moments before growling ‘no deal’ and resuming his tickling torture.

She endured as much as she could before she had to admit defeat.  She was only human, after all!  “Alright, I submit!  I submit!  I promise never to tease you again.”

His hands slowed down until he was just rubbing her stomach and hips.  As her mischievous side calmed, her lustful side sat up and stretched, more than ready for a little action.  She smoothed her hands up his arms, wondering how to phrase what she wanted him to do to her.

She’d never actually asked for sex before.  The closest she’d ever come was admitting she wanted to be with Gunner the previous night.  In her experience, men asked her repeatedly to have sex with them until she gave in and, somewhat, grudgingly let them.

It wasn’t the same with Gunner.  It didn’t feel like just sex between them, it felt like a joining of hearts, minds, and bodies.  Just coming out and saying ‘please do me’ seemed a bit crass.  It needed to be more tender, more romantic, more…
where the heck was he going?

Gunner released her and sat back up on the couch.  She mewled at the loss of his hard body over hers.

“Something wrong, babe?” he asked innocently.

Her brow creased in bewilderment. 
Didn’t he want to have sex with her?
  Hadn’t he been the one disappointed when she intimated that she was too tired?  “I thought…”

“First we eat our pizza and then we’ll get to the fun portion of our evening.”

Erin gaped at him.  Was he kidding?  Was he really policing her eating by threatening to not have sex with her? 
Oh no, if he was she was doomed!

Gunner chortled at her stricken face and pulled her up on the couch until she was tucked under his arm.  “I wasn’t kidding, babe, you’re going to need all the energy you can get.  But, if you eat your pizza like a good girl, I promise to put you to bed.  Now, what topping do you want?”

Chapter Ten

Gunner groaned, and his sleepy polar bear yowled as he slipped out of bed and grabbed his phone, keen to stop the incessant ringing before it woke Erin.

He pushed answer and whispered hello into the phone.

“Gunner,” intoned the Director’s cold voice.

The bear shifter cast one last longing look at Erin’s sleeping, curvy form and reluctantly dragged his feet out into the living room.

“Problem?” barked Gunner.

“I need you at a crime scene.  I’ll text you the location.”

Gunner hesitated.  “I uh… I’m not alone…”

The Director clucked his tongue.  “Whoever she is, she’ll wait.  Get here now.”

“The rest of the team?”

“Just you, for now.”

The Director hung up, and his bear huffed in irritation.  Not at the snake shifter - his boss could be as terse as he wanted, and Gunner could give a shit.  No, he wanted to crawl back into bed with Erin, he wanted to feel her smooth skin pressed against his, he wanted to hear her soft breaths lulling him to sleep. 

He scowled as he received the text.  No way did he want to drive across town in the middle of the night to stare at a corpse. 
Still, he had to be responsible
.  Not that the thought of waking Erin up for a quickie didn’t cross his mind, his bear was all for that, but he quelled the urge because he wanted Erin to get her rest.

Gunner pulled on a fresh pair of jeans and a shirt.  He gave himself a sniff and slapped on some truly dire aftershave.  It was awful, but it served its purpose of covering up any lingering scent of Erin on his skin.  He might cause a few crime scene technicians to pass out from the fumes, but at least Erin’s modesty would be saved.

His beast chuffed at him.  He wanted to revel in her scent, and he wanted his skin drowning in her sweet vanilla smell.  He wanted every other damn male to know she was his and belonged to him.  But no, Gunner couldn’t risk it. 
Not yet
.  He needed to talk to Erin before he started spreading it around that he and Erin were intimate.  Turning up at a crime scene covered in her smell was akin to flashing a neon light that said 'I had sex with Erin Jameson.'  At least Cutter wouldn’t be there. 
That damn Lupine bastard was better than a freaking bloodhound.

He squatted next to the bed and brushed a strand of hair out of her face before running a thumb down her pink cheek.  She always looked flushed; always flustered and embarrassed or perhaps warmed from their lovemaking. 
He wouldn’t mind just watching her sleep…

His bear growled as his phone beeped again.  Undoubtedly the Director was asking what was taking so long.  It must be bad if the cold-blooded snake shifter was riled.

Gunner sighed and kissed her temple, whispering that he would be back soon.  With one last look, he left her resting peacefully.

*

“Hey, Gunner, oh, yeuch, can you smell that?”

The rabbit shifter medical examiner, Rory twitched his nose as, reluctantly, Gunner lifted the crime scene tape for him.

Gunner shrugged and rolled his eyes.  He didn’t have time for the creepy little shifter any day of the week, but in the middle of the night when his body and his bear were screaming at him to haul ass back to his luscious, little human, he was understandably short.  “Can’t smell anything.”

Rory shook his head in disbelief as he struggled to keep up with the polar bear’s strides.  “You’re joking, right?  I hang around dead bodies all day, and I’ve never smelt anything that bad.  Whatever cheap perfume your latest
woman
has been using, I suggest you pour it down the toilet – stat.”

The polar bear curled his lips at the scorn poured onto the word woman. 
The stupid rabbit was just jealous; he could never get a woman like Erin. 

“No wonder you’re still single,” hissed Gunner.

Rory frowned.  “Because I can scent how bad you smell?”

“No because you hang around dead bodies all day.”

Ordinarily, Gunner might be polite, but he was not in the mood. 
Asshole rabbit
.

“At least I’m not trying to pretend I don’t smell like fermented sewer water,” muttered Rory before making a beeline toward the Director.

Gunner sneered and followed.  The Director nodded at him but didn’t react to the smell.  Thankfully, he was too preoccupied to notice.  Although whatever he was thinking about couldn’t have been good.

“What do we have?” demanded Gunner irritably.

The Director looked at him wearily, worry lines marring his usually clear face.  “Dead hippopotamus shifter.”

Not to seem heartless…
  “What else?  You wouldn’t have come out here if there weren't something more to this.”

The snake shifter took a deep breath.  “He’s missing his heart.”

Gunner exhaled and for a change, his beast was quiet.  “Fuck, not good.  Do you think…?”

“I hope not.  Take a look at him.”

The Director turned away to talk to some local police officers, and Gunner stepped closer.  Rory twitched his nose in annoyance but didn’t say anything.  It was a body of a naked young man, aged about 30, and sure enough, he was missing his heart.

Gunner cocked his head at Rory.  “How long’s he been dead?”

“Can’t you smell it?” asked Rory maliciously.

The rabbit shifter’s eyes widened as the polar bear let out a low growl; Rory cleared his throat.  “About two weeks, I would guess.”

Wordlessly, he left the rabbit to it and found the Director.

Gunner folded his arms over his chest.  “What happened?”

“We’re standing on the property of the Cinderella Waste Disposal Company.  It’s a company that handles some private contracts, but also contracts that include hospitals and even the SEA.  They dispose of waste; or rather, they incinerate it in an environmentally friendly fashion.”

“Spare me the company spiel,” muttered Gunner.

“Anyway, one of their machines has been out of use for the last few weeks, so they’ve been backed up and all those containers,” the Director pointed to what looked that shipping containers, “are what are waiting to go in.  They’ve been working overtime to try and get through all this.  Earlier this evening, they had a rookie operating the crane that lifts them.  He dropped one of the containers, it opened and out came our victim.”

Gunner looked over to a pile of trash that numerous crime scene techs were wading through.  “That the rest of the container?”

“Yep.  The guys who work here pulled the body out of the trash and covered him with a blanket, out of respect.”

“Sure.  Has anything else been found in the rest of the trash?”

“A wallet, a shoe that would fit the victim and a shirt.  Hopefully, we’ll find the rest of his stuff.”

Gunner swung his gaze back to the body.  A couple of years back, when he first took over the Alpha team, they had a case where a witch was kidnapping shifters, dissecting and using their organs to create potions.  He was caught and currently resided in a high-security mental institute upstate.  But he’d killed a lot of people before he was caught, and there was always the fear that someone else might try it too.

Hundreds of years ago, when shifter and witches truly hated each other, it was common practice to create potions out of the bodies of shifters. 
Just like it was common practice for shifters to snack on a witch if they got hungry
.  Times had changed, at least for most people they had, but there would always be a few people who would cling to their hate.

“What does Cinderella have to say to all this?”

The Director quirked an eyebrow.  “Not much, mostly because the guy I talked to is in shock.  I imagine, they’ll rally their lawyers pretty quickly though; I doubt we’ll get much more than basic information from them.”

“I guess it’s possible that someone at the company decided to kill the guy and then get rid of his body this way.”

“Or possible that anyone, who knew about their pickup schedule from the many companies they service, knew to put the body in with their regular trash.”

His polar bear stirred unhappily.  “Do you think we have another rogue witch on our hands?”

The snake shifter eyed him coldly and calculatingly.  “My gut says no.  I would expect that if someone went to the trouble of killing this guy for his organs, they wouldn’t have stopped at the heart.”

“Unless they were interrupted…”

“In which case I wouldn’t have expected his body to have been disposed of so well.  This machine breaking down is a fluke; the crane operator dropping it and it spilling everything are both flukes.  If those things hadn’t happened, then the body would already be incinerated.”

“Hmmm, why didn’t you want the rest of the team here?”

“I wanted to speak to you alone, to make sure we’re on the right track.  The last time bodies turned up missing organs it was a nightmare.  The press went wild, accusing witches – it turned into a literal witch hunt!  The number of witches, who were hurt by angry shifters, was phenomenal.  And while Los Lobos was panicking like fuckwits, that bastard killed seven people.  I don’t want that happening again.  No panic; as far as we are concerned, this is a straightforward murder for the time being.  Got it?”

Gunner exhaled loudly.  “Got it.”

He didn’t exactly agree with that, but he wasn’t about to argue over it.  Hah, maybe he was going soft in his old age.  The thought tickled him for a second, until he was warmed by thoughts of Erin.  Or maybe having met his mate had calmed him.

No, in his opinion, this guy was targeted for his heart.  The cut marks in his chest just seemed too clinical for it to be a crime of passion.  He’d had a case where an emu shifter actually had performed a little amateur surgery and had cut her ex-lover’s heart out of his chest. 
She said it was fitting that he literally was heartless after she was done with him…
  This was nothing like that.  Although, whoever had done it hadn’t bothered to sew him back up, so clearly once they had the heart out, they considered the job done.

“We’ll brief the team tomorrow,” declared the Director, “for now, we’ll both interview witnesses, stressing the importance of keeping quiet about this whole matter.

“Let’s do it.”

All thoughts of crawling back into his warm, occupied bed were sunk.  He put on his most professional face and decided to tackle the men who found the body.