The Werewolf Ranger (Moonbound Book 3) (5 page)

R
ain waited
with a tapping toe as Nora passed out hotel keys. The team mumbled about the orders they’d just been given, but Rain was past the point of round-robin-discussion. He was at the minimize-horrific-outcome phase.

They had actually seen him fucking Nora. This was out of control. So it was time to exert some control.

“You really think this grid thing is gonna work?” Maggie asked, sidling up to him.

Tomás hadn’t stopped giving him the evil eye since they’d all returned from the church, but Maggie seemed unfazed.

“It worked last time.” Rain crossed his arms.

“Kinda.” Maggie shrugged and pulled out her big tablet again. “Plus, I don’t know why we’re searching for a yellow dog. Mary was here like thirty years ago. What makes you think the dog is still going to be there?”

“We also have the description of the front of the building she was being held in,” Nora pointed out. “At least, if we can’t find a dead dog, we can look for the big letters on the side of an old adobe building in an alley.”

“Because that’s not also an exercise in futility,” the black girl from California said.

Rain really needed to get on this whole remembering-names thing. The Army was so much easier.

Davis. That was her last name.

“Look, Davis, I think that if we have mission parameters, we need to follow them.”

“Do those
mission parameters
also include not-fucking-the-boss?” She stuck out her chin. and the white guy behind her smirked at the joke.

Rain was not impressed. “We need to see if there’s anything viable out there.” He ignored her smart-ass comment. “Once you finish patrolling the quadrant to which you’ve been assigned, return here. We’ll all meet and report on what we found.”

“The two of you had better split up, though.” Davis mirrored his crossed arms. “For all our safety and sanity.”

“Yes, we’ve changed up the teams.” Rain pointed to Miami guy and L.A. girl. “You two, take this.” He handed over the map.

“Fine. Back when we’re done,” Davis said, and pulled at Miami’s shirt like he was on a leash.

Good. Rough that bastard up, while you’re at it, girl.

“Tomás, you take Nora.” Rain handed out another map. “VonBrandt, you’re with the mobster. Professor, you take Seattle, and that leaves me with Gallagher.”

The guy from Kentucky wrinkled his nose at the
Professor
jab, but the douche had a stick up his ass a mile wide. He’d conducted a Mexican history lesson in the car.

Plus, Rain had heard him mention something about an Ivy League education. Asswipe. Rain had an Ivy League education in combat tactics. Douchenozzle would keep the nickname and like it.

The groups left with their maps, but Rain and Maggie stayed. He waited until the last team member was out of earshot.

“Look, I don’t know what happened back there, but it was not—”

“Oh, it was exactly what it looked like.” Maggie smirked, one pixie eyebrow going up like a shot. “I’ve never seen two people who had it worse.”

“Wait.” Rain flexed his shoulders back. “Had what worse?”

“Fate.” She shook her head and grabbed the map. “You’re mates, dufus. Don’t tell me you can’t see it.”

“We are not.”

“Oh, you are.”

“Not.” Rain pronounced the
t
with gusto, but it didn’t keep the little voice from creeping up in the back of his head.
I knew it
.

“It’s rare for it to be this uncontrollable, but what did you think it was?”

He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

“You didn’t know, I get it.” Maggie made for the door and gestured for him to follow. “Come on. We’ve got to get going.”

Rain’s feet barely obeyed to follow her. He was still so floored by the fact that he hadn’t even considered Fate might be involved. How could he be such an idiot?

They walked down the steps and Maggie pointed. “We go this way.”

All he could do was follow.

She led him through a crush of people, then into an alley. Maggie had out her phone-flashlight before Rain even realized how dark it was.

He was in a bad state.

With the hum of the city behind them, he cleared his throat. “Are you bonded? I don’t see your tattoos.”

Maggie shook her head and aimed the flashlight across their path as a black dog scurried past them. “I’ve felt Fate before, though. It uses magick to guide you.”

“Wait. You felt Fate push you toward someone, but you didn’t bond with them?”

Her slight shoulders went up and down in the shadow of her flashlight. “Fate speaks to us on different levels, nudging us in one direction or another. It doesn’t always have to do with a Fated match that you can’t escape.”

They passed a raised porch and Maggie shone her light on the rise. Was she actually looking for a real yellow dog?

“Not everyone gets a Fated match, but that doesn’t make other relationships outside of magickal influence. Plenty of people have good mates that they choose for themselves.” She dropped her light to the map when they reached the end of the street.

“Where are we?” Rain asked, coming over her shoulder.

“We’re almost directly behind the hotel.” She pointed behind them. “That’s the roof garden.”

“Our hotel has a roof garden?” Rain wanted to roll his eyes. What a waste of money when they would only be using the beds.

“A roof garden and a piano bar.” A hint of laughter came to her voice. “Just when we thought we were done with the glitz of Vegas.”

They crossed the street and kept walking, still in an alley that required Maggie’s light. High above them, Rain heard someone arguing and the crash of a dish. Were they in residential neighborhoods now?

“Haven’t you ever felt Fate guide you to someone before?” Maggie ventured. She sounded barely interested—like she’d just as soon talk about fish or the Middle East, but she had to have a reason. If he’d learned anything about women, he’d learned that they always asked questions for a reason.

“I haven’t.”

“But you’ve had sex before?”

He chuckled. “Yes.”

“And you’re not gay?”

“Nope.”

“But you’ve never been guided? Like… never?” Her hair bounced as though she shook her head. “How old are you?”

“Old enough.” Rain laughed. “I’m thirty.”

“I’ve had like half a dozen relationships that magick had a hand in.” She moved the light to their feet when Rain heard a splash.

Maggie must’ve stepped in something, but he still couldn’t see it. He looked up. The buildings here were shorter, and the sky closer.

“But you never actually bonded with any of them?” he asked.

“That’s not why we were matched.”

“Why else would you be matched?”

Maggie stopped in the middle of the alley and turned on him. Instead of being angry, she gave the biggest belly laugh, and it echoed through the whole enclosed area where they stood. “Rain, there are all kinds of reasons you might be matched with someone.” She turned her arm around. “I had these made for each man that Fate brought me to.”

On the soft inner flesh of her arm was a cluster of hearts, running down toward her wrist. Or up from her wrist, along her arm, he couldn’t tell. Each one was a slightly different shade of red—either from wear, or intention. No names, no initials, no years. Just hearts.

“I will always have a piece of their hearts, and they will have a piece of mine. But we were not Fated for eternity. None of us.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “I know you haven’t felt it before, so you don’t understand. But just listen to your heart. If it’s this intense, that you can’t stop having sex in public places and at…let’s say…inappropriate times, then embrace it.”

She turned back to the dark alley and kept shining her flashlight out in front of them. Rain stood for a moment.

Fated?

He had to admit, for the briefest of moments when Maggie had said
Fated
, he went to the white-picket-fence place. He’d seen Nora sitting in his lap in Walker’s backyard, with the rest of the company wives and mates, laughing under the hot summer North Carolina sun.

It was a fantasy he didn’t even know had been lurking in the back of his mind, but it wouldn’t go away. He couldn’t shake his head enough to get it to leave him be.

And as much as he felt like his dick was always getting hard whenever Nora’s scent was in the air, he now had the additional responsibility of guarding his thoughts.

She had made it crystal clear that she intended to ignore the magick, and not even speak of it. The fact that he had to talk about it with Maggie…it pissed him off. He should’ve been talking about it with Nora. But she only seemed to want to fuck him.

No. No more.

Rain was done fucking her. They had to address this thing growing between them, because he could already feel himself going over the edge for her, and this was one jump he wasn’t prepared to make.

N
ora glanced at Tomás’ ass
. He’d kept two paces ahead the entire two hours they’d been searching and had done his best not to speak to her at all. His ass was nice enough, but she couldn’t shake the image of Rain from her mind. Every time she looked at Tomás she saw Rain…even though the Hispanic man looked nothing like her New Orleans army ranger.

Damn. When had Rain become hers?

She knew exactly what was happening between them and it only ended one way —her leaving and going back home without Rain. Fate could whine and complain all it wanted, but she wasn’t going to subject herself to another life-shattering loss.

Fuck Fate.

It’d given her the love, branded her, and then everything had been stolen away. Now she had a second chance within her grasp with a man she couldn’t stop dreaming about, but the only thing she could accept from Rain was another amazing lay. More would be too hard to walk away from. She couldn’t let herself get too attached, and she was already being possessive.

He was a delicacy to be enjoyed in Mexico and forgotten afterward. Not that she expected the forgetting part to be easy, but it was doable. As long as they didn’t say the spell to bond their souls, they could survive away from each other without dying of loneliness.

She glanced across the street and her breath caught in her throat.
Toca un lobo
was printed in faded ink vertically on the front doorway of a large building.
Lobo
was wolf in Spanish, she knew that much at least.

“Rivera!”

“What?” He growled and turned to face her, a look of annoyance painted across his features. He hated being stuck with her as much as she hated not being with Rain.

Her wolf bristled and Nora stomped forward. She kept coming until they were breathing the same air, almost nose to nose. Her heels gave her enough height to be at eye level with the male. “Just because I’m fucking Rain doesn’t mean you get to ignore me or be rude. You don’t know a damn thing about me or what I live with or without every day of my life. So just keep your attitude to yourself.” Without turning her head, she pointed to the worn down building across the street. “Read the words on that fucking door.”

He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t respond to her tirade. Instead, he took a step backward and turned to face the building. “
Toca un lobo.
Shit! Touch a wolf.”

“The bastard was advertising it to anyone who walked by. What kind of idiot does that?”

“A soon to be dead one.” Tomás pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed.

Nora crossed the street toward the gray building. Even weather-beaten and old, it still seemed cared for. No graffiti, no trash on the sidewalks. Even the bars on the windows had a fresh coat of paint and none of the glass was broken either. Still, the building looked deserted. She couldn’t hear any heartbeats inside. She ran her hand along the solid door and jangled the padlock connected to a heavy-duty latch on the front.

“Cavanaugh, Rain says not to go in until everyone gets here,” he shouted.

She yanked her hand away from the lock and crossed her arms over her chest.
Good.
At least Rain would be close by again. Today, it’d been torture being away from him. Her panties were wet with longing and she was cranky from not being able to touch him since they’d split up this morning.

One thing was for sure, she was sick of being stuck with this wolf from Vegas. Rain had split the groups to separate himself from her, and she was more than a little peeved.

Sure, they’d gotten a little distracted earlier, but everything had worked out just fine. They’d found the marker, and now she and Tomás had found the place where Mary had been kept all those years ago.

Gooseflesh pimpled her skin —thinking about what Mary and those other women had gone through. It made her stomach turn. The man running this organization would give her father a run for the title of heartless bastard.

Right now, pretty much any man was a asshole. Tomás was being a jerk because he was stuck with her. She wanted to be with Rain and he was pushing her away, choosing instead to spend time with that snarky-flirty-know-it-all she-wolf from Colorado.

Nora rolled her neck from side to side, and sighed. Jealousy wasn’t part of her typical emotional rainbow. In the past, she’d moved from one man to another to
avoid
feeling attachment to any. Now she was attached to Rain whether she wanted to be or not. Fate didn’t really take requests or listen to complaints.

She and Rain were stuck in Mexico for a while, safe from her father’s prying eyes and he was wasting it. Wasting precious memories she would carry in her heart forever, because they could never be realized. Her bastard of a father would make sure of that. She and her sisters were all doomed to be married off to whomever he deemed appropriate and beneficial to the family.

The moment when the thing between her and Rain morphed into something more had snuck past her and wrapped itself around her heart. Leaving him after this mission was over would be like tearing out her heart with her bare hands.

“Are you okay?” Tomás joined her on the front stoop of the locked up building.

“Fine,” Nora snapped.

“He’s your mate isn’t he? You feel the pull?”