Aaron's Kiss Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 7) (85 page)

~CHAPTER TWELVE~

“Are you all right?” It had taken Tristan a few minutes to learn to breathe and then to get his heart moving at a normal pace. He was still pressed inside of her with her against the wall. He knew that she was alive. He could hear her heart pounding along with his.

“Yes. I…you made me come four times. It was incredible!”

“We could try for five, but I know that it’d kill me.” He heard her giggle. He pulled back a little and looked down at her face. Reaching up, he gently traced a bead of sweat trickling down her brow. “I never meant to hurt you, but I find that once I’m near you, I can’t seem to get enough of you.”

“I usually have the opposite effect on people.”

A laugh burst from his lips, something that had only happened when she was around. “I wanted to bring you over here to talk to you, to feed maybe. I…making love to you wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“I didn’t start this, Tristan, you did.” She pulled away from him and reached down for what was left of her clothes. Her bra was trash, as were her panties. She sat down and began pulling on her pants.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant…what the hell happened to your leg?” He was pulling her pant leg back down to get a closer look at the wound. It was about ten inches long and had cut deep into the muscle along the outside of her leg from just above the knee to the ankle. He was surprised he hadn’t seen it when he ripped her pants off, but he had been a little distracted at the time. It looked as if someone had tried to stitch it closed, but they were now pulled loose and the gash open again.

“It’s nothing. Leave it alone. I’ll just have to close it again—” He opened it up with his fingers. “Ouch! Damn it, be careful.”

When she had jerked away from his touch to her back, he flipped her over onto her stomach to look at the burn there. It was deep and angry-looking, spreading from just under her shoulder to above her left hip and about a foot across at the widest point. The blisters had burst, more than likely from being rubbed against the wall. Looking up where he had taken her, he saw blood smears.

“Why the fuck didn’t you say something? Christ, I’m not an animal. I would have waited.” His fangs had dropped and his eyes turned in his anger. Not at her, though she deserved it, he thought, but at himself.

He started to pick her up and she fought him, slapping and kicking at him until he had to back away or hurt her more. He looked down at her and her tear-streaked face.

“Stay away from me, you stupid jerk. You got your food and fuck, just like you wanted, now stay away. If you want another one sometime, contact Griff. He’ll know how to get in touch with me.” Moaning, she pulled her pants up, grabbed her tattered shirt, shifted into her falcon, and flew away.

He was still sitting there on the ground, half-dressed, looking toward where she had flown when Aaron found him.

“Tristan?” Aaron began.

“She’s hurt, again. How do I keep her safe if she is in constant danger? And how do I stay with her when she only needs to shift into something and fly away from me?” He looked back at the master and realized that he was laughing. “I don’t find any of this the least bit funny. What is it?”

“You. And her, but mostly you. Look at you, all rumpled and messed up. There are no buttons on that shirt and your tie is hanging around your neck backwards, and I believe your zipper and button to your pants are over there in the tulips. What I wouldn’t give for a camera right now. O
h wait!
My cell phone!” He began digging it out of his pants pocket with full intentions of taking a picture.

Tristan growled and leapt at the man, knocking the phone free of his hand and Aaron to the ground. The fight might have been a little more evenly matched, but Aaron couldn’t seem to stop laughing long enough to take it serious, so he ended up with a bruised jaw and a busted lip. Tristan had a black eye and a limp. Both men were healed within an hour, but better friends because of it. The tension had been fought out of Tristan for the moment and Aaron got to see him as more of a human being, well, as human as a vampire could be.

That’s how Mel found them twenty minutes later. Sitting at her little patio table near the pool, halfway to being drunk as skunks drinking her wine and singing at the top of their lungs. The song was about a Celtic battle and something to do with fair maidens, long boats, and dark nights. At least that’s what she thought she’d heard.

“Well, where’s your fair maiden, Tristan? I thought we were going to talk to her.” She sat down and put her little basket of fruit on the table. Plucking out a pear, she began eating it, just as another pear appeared in its place in the basket.

“She flew away, she flew away. My fair maiden Bailey, she flew away.” He was singing, he realized, and he wasn’t even making sense to himself. He giggled again. Damn, what was in that wine?

“I think Tristan here is drunk. And he’s floppy, err sloppy too. Hello, Mel, have you seen my mate? Tristan here smells like sex and I need to find Sara.” He started to stand up, but sat back down.

Tristan looked to the sky again. He had screwed up again. Would he ever learn to not piss her off long enough to talk to her? “She’s wounded again, Mel. She wouldn’t let me see to them, just gave me a good fuck and fed me then left. She said that if I needed another one, I was to make arrangements with Griff.” He turned to look at her. “I’m in love with her and she thinks all I want from her is sex and food.”

“Yes, she does. And what are you going to do about that, Tristan?” Mel asked him softly.

He grinned then, not a pleasant grin, but one that looked full of malice and revenge. “Why, I’m going to kidnap her and tie her to the bed and have my wicked, wicked way with her. What do you think I’m going to do to her?”

~~~

Bailey went to their print shop with Griff the next morning. She had gone to Griff after leaving Tristan lying in the lawn in the magical realm. She had the ability to heal now that she had Tristan’s blood in her, but it wasn’t quick, nor was it without pain. Now her wounds took mere hours rather than days. The laceration on her leg was still seeping a small amount of blood, but it no longer pooled in her shoe. The burn was taking longer. It was still sore to the touch and movements of any kind made tears gather in her eyes. Griff had suggested that she take a few days off and get some rest. She agreed, and turned off her cell phone.

“They didn’t take anything this time either, mistress. Just touched things and moved things about. The first one in the door will bear a mark that only you and I will be able to see. It will be a mark upon his forehead, a keyboard letter ‘t’ for thief. I thought it would be appropriate. They will also have a marked need for the facilities. Their bowels will not hold anything for the next several days. I thought they should be easy enough to find that way. We shall just hide outside a restroom and wait.”

She laughed, then thinking about her and Griff lurking around bathrooms waiting for them to come out again made her laugh harder.

Griff was a huge being. His head was an eagle, feathers of the darkest red and gold. His beak was long and sharp, pointing downward into a knifelike blade. His body was that of a very large, powerful wolf, the coat a hue so black it looked blue in the sunlight, and so soft, it felt like silk flowing through your fingers when you petted him. His tail was long, nearly the entire length of his body, and as strong as his legs and paws. There were wings along his back. Because of his weight, he was unable to use them to fly, but in a fight, they were deadly. Beautiful, as well, they were feathered in the same colors as his head, the colors blending into his furred coat to create the illusion that he wasn’t winged, but coated in many colors and his fur rough. At the moment, he was wearing a headset, especially made to fit his small head.

“I think we’ll wait a bit on the bathroom. I think it will be easier to track them if someone mentions a flu bug going around.” She moved to the back room again and stopped.

Something was…well, not wrong, but off. She didn’t spend a lot of time in this office to remember if things were missing or out of place, but in here, there was a difference. She moved out of the room physically, but mentally scanned it deeper. She was very patient and her skills honed to a perfect art. Moving along each inch of the room, she was able to find what she felt.

“Griff, there’s a device in this room behind me. I don’t know what it is, but it’s in the upper left side of the ceiling. It’s small, very, very small, so small I almost missed it. How do I get it without alerting them that we know about it?”

“There is the floor above us. We could go there. It may be where they inserted it from in the first place. I can feel it now. They did not enter that room when they were here either time. Mistress, that is why I didn’t find it. I’m truly sorry.”
He looked at her as if he were to blame for them entering at all. She loved this man very much.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Griff, why would you search a room that hadn’t been touched? I could just feel the hum of electricity, that’s all. My senses are stronger than yours when it comes to that. I couldn’t feel the magic hiding the magic. That’s why we make a good team. Now, how do I get it out, or figure out how it got there?”

Griff could move through floors and walls and did so now, shifting himself to the room above them without being visible to anyone who may be there. He called for her to come up after about five minutes.

“They are not up there, but the rooms below are wired for this one. Whenever we enter the shop, there are cameras watching us. They are set up all along the floors into each of the rooms down here. All of them.”

“The bathrooms too.” It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t answer.

“Our computers seem to be wired to these, see this? As are all of our security cameras, which is another way they were able to get in and out.” Griff nodded to the wall where a bank of computers were set up. On several were the views of the cameras at their doors and windows.

“I wonder how long, Griff. How long do you suppose they’ve been monitoring us and why?”

She looked at the expensive equipment and wondered who would have the monies it would require to set this up. She didn’t think that this was their normal everyday criminal. She pulled out her cell phone and after turning it on, took several pictures of the set up. She immediately turned it off again before it rang.

“They know everything we do, mistress. Everything.”

She moved about the room, slowly this time, and planned. Griff stood still; he knew not to disturb her. She sniffed and touched, then tasted at different points in the rooms, never saying anything.

“There’s a wolf and vampire among the two humans. The humans haven’t been here in a very long time, their scent old and faded. There have been as many as three male wolves, and only one vampire. Female. I’ve not scented them before, have you?” She turned to him now. The room was now cataloged as well as any librarian’s books.

“No, none of the scents are familiar to me. The computers, they are expensive, as are the wires. I can see where they come from, but I don’t see that as much help.”

“I’ve got pictures and I think I might know someone who can help us to identify the way it’s set up. I think that, like murders, hackers have their own set of ways of doing things. The building will need to be destroyed, any ideas?” She grinned at him, knowing that for as many ideas she could come up with to demolish the building, he had already discarded twice that many.

“Oh, I have a plan or two. When shall it happen?” He looked about the room again. “We will need to do it soon if we want to make sure that things are not found to be disturbed. I have all the necessary compounds to make it work.”

“Tonight, if possible. Two days at the very latest. Do what you need to do to make sure no one is hurt, please.” They moved back to the room below and acted as though nothing had happened. A small glitch, a loss of power, would explain the few minutes that she had erased from their tapes.

~CHAPTER THIRTEEN~

The building blew the next afternoon. It was all over the news how a prominent printing firm had gone up in flames. Seven fire engines were called in to battle the blaze, yet it was considered a total loss. The new crew on site had been rerunning the same sound bite for over six hours.

A cleaning crew had come in to clean carpets on the second floor, readying it for new tenants, when the carpet cleaner had sparked and threw a flame up the curtain in one of the back rooms. The older building didn’t stand a chance. Thankfully, everyone got out alive and no one was injured, thanks to the fast thinking of one of the cleaning crew women. The building, however, was a total loss. The owner of the building, out of the country at this time, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Bailey was in Europe on a job. She had been hired by the alpha to take out six wolves that had killed two male American tourists. She was also supposed to help them find the missing two females that had been with them. One of the women was a famous artisan, one who worked in clay and was quite wealthy.

She had stopped to make a purchase in a drug store when she heard a couple of Americans talking on their cell phone about the horrible fire and the explosion. She reached out to Griff immediately.

“Nice blaze, buddy. I like that you did it during the day. As one the owners of the building, could you see that the cleaning crew is not held accountable for the damages? And see that the woman is rewarded, please.”

“It was my pleasure, I assure you.”
He laughed at her complement
. “I did find out about the rooms above us. The lease was in place when we purchased the building. I had forgotten that it was there. It was a ninety-nine year rent controlled, and it was held for another fifty-two years. The name on the lease is Charles Wolff, and was to be used as a storage area for files. The filing cabinets were moved out sometime ago and into a storage facility that was built on pack property.”

“I take it he hasn’t been mentioned in any of the reports the news has been running. Where is our esteemed Charles Wolff now?” 

Bailey had heard of Charlie, but had never had any direct contact with him. He was well respected and when he had stepped down several years ago, it was because he wanted to spend time with his mate, not because of any scandal. She had a feeling that he was not involved, but stranger things had happened.

“He is no longer on his vacation, but staying at the pack house proper. He and his mate have had a house built on the back of the compound and have lived there for two years. It is said that his grandson, Bradley Wolf,f has lost his bitch and that the grandfather is there to keep him company.”

“I’ll go and see what I can find out when I return in a few days. In the meantime, we’ll need another building. Take out an ad in the paper and tell folks we are still open for business. Make sure that it says that we aren’t closed. We can’t afford to lose momentum now on what’s going on.”

Bailey wanted to ask if Tristan had contacted him, but didn’t want to be disappointed when he answered no. She wanted Tristan in the worst kind of way, but a permanent relationship wasn’t something she could consider. She decided that from now on, he would get only what he needed, then maybe he’d get the hint and go to the queen to have this taken care of.

After catching up on a few other matters, they closed the connection. Bailey had to move on. Her targets were on the go and she needed to keep up with them. One was to lead her to another three on her list. Six targets at once were getting to be the norm, and she wasn’t all that happy about it. It was difficult and stressful, not to mention dangerous.

She was perched on a roof top watching the scene play out below her when Tristan reached out to her.

“Bailey, I need you. Where can I meet you?”
His voice sounded hard and cold.

“I’m going to be in Rome for a few more days, and then I don’t know where this one will lead me. If all you need is one or the other, I can meet you in an alley somewhere close. But both would take a little more time than I can spare while hunting.” S
he knew it was cold and heartless, but she needed to move on with her life so that he could.

“I would like both, but a feeding will be fine. Are you free now?”
Her heart hurt with his tone, and she didn’t understand why. She knew that this was what she wanted.

“I have a target now, and it will be at least another hour before this is completed. I can meet you at the corner of Alley and James Streets at six-thirty Rome time. There’s a dark alley there and no one will disturb you.” S
he clamped her mind down and forgot about watching the street, but flew out over the city to get away from them all even for only a few minutes.

~~~

He was standing there waiting when she came around the corner. She was late, but only by three minutes. It might not have seemed so long had he not of been there since five-forty-five waiting for her, searching each face as it went by him.

“Tristan. There are two areas you can go, either is fine by me. I can pull shadows around us if you’d rather just eat here.”

He noticed that she didn’t look at him, but over his shoulder or the ground. How had they gotten to this point? It had been six days, and he was hungry, not just for her blood, though that was enough, but he wanted her body too.

“Bailey, please look at me.”

When she didn’t, he touched her chin and brought her face up to his. She had lost weight, he could see that immediately, and she had dark circles beneath her eyes. He wondered if she was still injured and though he couldn’t smell any blood on her, he just didn’t know.

“Just get it over with, please. I have to be in France in an hour. And I still have things I need to get done before I leave.”

She pulled away from his hand and leaned back against the building, exposing her neck to him. His hunger for her nearly overwhelmed him. He leaned into her quickly and licked the pulse beating there, her life blood tickling his tongue, her pulse beating hard against his mouth. Pulling them deep into the shadows so as no one would see them, he bit, deep and hard.

His first pull on her throat hardened his cock to the point of pain; the second swallow had him pressing her against the building, seeking relief that only she could give him. Tristan cupped her breast in one hand and cupping her ass in the other, pulled her tight against him. Still, he drank. He felt her graze her teeth across his neck, then lick the area with her hot, wet tongue. He was close, so close to stripping her down and taking her right there. If she bit him now, he knew that he would. But she didn’t. She pulled her face away from his neck and let him drink his fill.

When he sealed the wounds and stepped back, he looked at her again. She had her face turned away from him again. He wanted to talk to her, to tell her how sorry he was, how much he needed her, but she stepped away from him in more ways than physically.

“Bailey, we can’t go on like this. You have to realize that.” He reached to touch her, to pull her into his arms. But she moved beyond him.

“I have to go to France. Please contact Griff when you need another meal.” She shifted so suddenly that he was startled by the abrupt change. She was suddenly a large grey tabby running along the sidewalk close to the buildings.