Alphas on the Prowl (25 page)

He managed to quiet himself. Every cell of his body was joyful.

“Ava—” he began.

“Hush,” she murmured. “You were perfect - so talented. Sleep now.”

He had wanted to get up and take care of something, but now he couldn’t even remember what. The mating had taken something out of him. And her tickling fingers brushing against the bare skin of his back were the perfect counterpoint to the violent consummation of days of desperate need.

Mac sighed in bliss and rolled onto his side, to cradle his beautiful girl in his arms.

Ava smiled into his chest and continued to trail her fingers up and down his back.

The last thing Mac remembered before falling asleep was the cinnamon scent of Ava’s soft hair, spread on the pillow beside him.

13

Mac awoke disoriented.

He sat up quickly and then he remembered.

Ava.

Ava Gray.

Smiling to himself, he stretched, realizing that the reason he was disoriented was not because he was waking up in a strange place, but because his body wasn’t aching and throbbing with insistent desire. He was sated. She had satisfied him completely.

Images of Ava flashed through his head: her dark hair spread across the pillow, the way she caught her lower lip in her teeth when he was inside her.

The spicy scent of her was still all over his face and hands.

His body began to pound again, but pleasantly.

Mac couldn’t believe he had drifted off. But her hands on his skin had been heavenly.

He wondered briefly where she was. And what time it was.

It would be awkward if he had missed too much of the party. Most likely she had gone to clean herself up.

The bed groaned with him as he hopped to the ground and headed to the small adjoining bathroom.

It was empty.

Maybe she had gotten dressed and slipped back down to the party, so as not to raise suspicion.

Mac winced at the idea that he had begun an affair with the daughter of his champion at the college. Without Helen Thayer’s help, he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to adjunct.

He would have to tell her eventually, of course. But tonight was awful timing.

He took a few minutes to attend to his needs in the bathroom, then came back out to get dressed.

It was only then that he noticed that his clothes were missing.

He checked under the bed, vaguely remembering Ava sliding his pants in that direction.

They weren’t there. She hadn’t folded them and placed them on the dresser either. And they weren’t in the dresser or the bathroom or anywhere else.

Oh god, had she found the keys?

Had she gone to alert Helen that Mac had stolen them?

Cold panic coursed through his veins.

He opened the drawers to find something to put on. He would have to find her and explain.

It was probably too late.

Or was it? If they hadn’t come to confront him yet, then maybe she hadn’t spoken up. Maybe she was trying to decide how to tell Helen.

The drawers were empty. There wasn’t even a towel in the bathroom. Just a toothbrush, a tube of lip gloss, and a brush with a few strands of long blond hair. Funny, maybe the Lloyd-Thayers had another young woman stay in the room once in a while.

In desperation, he grabbed the sheepskin off the floor and wrapped it around his hips, then strode over to the door and turned the knob.

But the door wouldn’t open.

He twisted and pulled several times in quick succession. It was locked fast.

Mac backed away from the door, breathing deeply to keep his furious wolf in check. Shifting now would only make things worse. But his wolf was already snarling and throwing itself against the bars of his conscience. He needed to find a way out.

Mac scanned the room.

Three doors.

The locked one to the hallway, the door to the bath, and one more.

He tried it and was unsurprised to find that it opened to reveal an empty closet.

His wolf gnashed its teeth and began to pace in his head.

Mac turned in desperation to the bank of windows overlooking the garden.

He knelt on the window seat and looked, down, down the steep pitch of the slate roof to the glass dome ceiling of the  solarium all the way on the first floor.

There was no way he could make it. He would fall and splatter on the marble terrace three stories below.

Mac got up again, and began to pace.

He thought about what might be happening downstairs while he was up here, helpless, and the alpha nearly split his chest open with fury.

Mac threw himself against the door to the hallway. He nearly wrenched his shoulder out. It was solid chestnut with an iron lock. He might eventually manage to knock it down, but by then it would be too late.

Besides, he’d likely injure himself and the pain and anger would force his change. He could hardly arrive downstairs as an angry wolf.

He began to pace again. But something occurred to him and he froze in the middle of a stride.

He flew back to the windows and looked down again.

It was a long shot, but he was pretty sure he could make it. And no one seemed to be in the solarium.

Besides, anything was better than being trapped in this room. His wolf would get the best of him sooner or later. Then it would only be a matter of time before something even worse happened.

He removed the sheepskin from his hips and laid it next to him on the window seat. Then he cranked open one of the windows. By some miracle, it hadn’t been painted over and it opened easily.

Cold air swept into the room immediately. Mac felt the hair lift up on his arms.

He grabbed the sheepskin and threw it to the solarium roof.

It hit the marble terrace instead.

He tried not to overthink the implications of that.

Closing his eyes, he prepared to call his wolf.

It bounded forward before he had called.

His vision narrowed.

Then the smells of the party assaulted him. Suddenly Mac could smell the pies cooling on the butcher block in the kitchen below. He could smell the anxiety of the guests, and the animals in the college woods a quarter mile away.

The window sill was cool beneath his massive paws, but the rest of his body was now warm under his shaggy gray pelt.

Mac couldn’t resist basking in the moonlight. He lifted his muzzle to salute the nearly full moon, and drink in the cold night air.

Joyfully, he searched the breeze for the scent of his new mate. But he couldn’t separate it from the older trail of her in the room.

Intent on finding her quickly, he leapt out the window and onto the roof.

The slates were frigid under his paws, and unexpectedly slippery. Mac found himself sliding toward the edge of the roof and its metal snowbirds. The wickedly sharp snowbirds were intended to stop large sheets of ice from flying off the roof whole. But they would be less effective at stopping a wolf the size of a pony. They would only ensure that his paws were bleeding on his way down.

He splayed his toes, and curled in his claws to find purchase. Then he bunched his muscles and leapt with all his strength toward the glassy surface of the solarium so far below.

The wind whipped his fur and he nearly had to close his eyes against the smoke coming from the kitchen vent.

He landed hard on the glass, which quivered threateningly, but miraculously didn’t break.

Looking around, he saw a ladder leading down from the solarium. It must be for the gardeners to access the skylights.

Now Mac had a problem.

He had to get down.

His wolf could make the jump onto the terrace, but it might be spotted by a guest.

He could shift and climb down the ladder, but he might be spotted by a guest. Naked.

It wasn’t a hard call. Mac lowered himself on all four paws and leapt again, landing neatly on the marble. He grabbed the sheepskin in his mouth and trotted off to the rhododendrons that lined the terrace.

He heard a gasp from inside but he kept going at a measured pace until the waxy leaves of the rhodies tickled his spine.

He lay down on the loamy ground and called to his human.

The damp soil chilled Mac to his bones.

He wrapped the sheepskin around his waist again, and slipped out on the other side of the bushes. He crawled against the foundation of the house, below the level of the windows.

When he reached the front door, he paused for a moment.

Then he pushed aside his misgivings. The truth had to come out. And he couldn’t risk his budding relationship with Ava, or his adjunct position at the college just because he was embarrassed to be wearing a sheepskin rug. Maybe he could sneak in the front door and make it to the coat room to find more clothing quickly, and then worry about tracking down Ava.

He turned the knob gently and was relieved to feel a click. He pushed against the door as softly as he could. It swung open slowly, without a single creak.

Mac slipped inside and shut the door behind him.

When he turned to face the front hall, he was horrified to see the entire party, gaping at him with open mouths.

Dr. Thayer was staring at him in abject horror.

Sybil Cresson ogled his body with an expression of undisguised admiration.

Clive Warren scowled.

Carol Lotus hid a smile behind her hand.

Mac didn’t care about any of them. He scanned the crowd for Ava. But she wasn’t in the hall.

“What in the world is the meaning of this?” Dr. Thayer demanded, marching toward him.

“I know what you’re thinking—” Mac began.

“As a matter of fact, I have
no idea
what you’re thinking,” Helen interrupted.

“—But I did
not
take the keys. It was Parker. I don’t know why she did it. She left before I could find out. And I didn’t want to embarrass her by calling her out,” Mac finished.

“Once again, Mac, I did
not
take the keys. And I don’t know why you think I did!” Parker’s voice sliced through the crowd.

Mac turned toward her voice, then caught sight of her. She was standing in front of the marble staircase, her red dress clinging to her erect frame.

“I went to Dr. Thayer immediately, Mac, and I told her what you’d said. I asked her to check my purse, my clothes, everything. Because I knew you were convinced,” she finished.

She was telling the truth. He could tell by her heartbeat.

“But who else could have put them in my pants?” he asked, in utter confusion. “You were the only one around when…”

Mac thought back to their encounter earlier in the evening. The door had swung open, but no one had entered.

What if someone had exited?

Oh, god, no…

Scenes flashed through his mind: the open door, the retreating footsteps, the swirl of the pattern on the smallest key, the swirl of a pattern on a box on Dr. Thayer’s desk, the swirling tongue of a buxom young woman who had shown no interest in him until tonight, the swirl of a long blond hair in a brush.

His own instincts, and dammit, his sense of propriety had been shattered by the alpha’s lust.

“Where’s Ava?” he snapped at Helen.

She blinked back at him.

“Where
is
she?” he repeated, allowing the alpha just a single note in his voice.

“I don’t know,” she replied quickly. “I haven’t seen her since the beginning of the party.”

Mac shut his eyes and inhaled deeply, calling on his wolf to help him.

Inwardly, he followed the gentle scent of peaches as it trailed down the hall, into the solarium, and slipped out into the night. The peachy shadow led through the college campus, and into Dr. Thayer’s office.

And now it was slipping back through the woods, and between the trees of Sycamore Avenue toward the Thayer mansion.

“Listen, sir,” Clive Warren’s deep voice interrupted Mac’s reverie. “You’re behaving irrationally and your… your
skirt
, is indecent exposure. I’m going to need to ask you to stand down.”

Mac’s alpha was incensed by the beta sheriff’s impudence. With all his strength, Mac held back the beast within him.

“Clive, I appreciate your patience. But we are on the verge of solving the mystery of the missing keys. If you will just follow me to the solarium, I think we’ll find your perp.”

The guests gasped.

Clive tilted his head to the side, thinking.

Mac allowed the wolf to flash in his eyes as he stared down the young beta.

Instantly, Clive stepped back and gestured toward the solarium.

As one, the entire party scurried after Mac as he strode toward the glass turret.

When they reached the door, he placed a finger to his lips.

Even their footsteps quieted at his command.

Mac pushed the door open silently and stepped between the potted plants, gesturing to the others to stay where they were, in the back hall. He couldn’t risk them being seen from outside. And with the light pouring in from the great hall, a large group of people could be easily visible.

Borrowing his wolf’s graceful stealth, Mac crept into a grove of potted fig trees and dropped to his knees to wait.

Soon enough, he heard a scraping sound against the glass, and smelled an abundance of peaches.

Ava had returned.

He could see her from his place in the shadows. She was removing a glass panel and squeezing through it to enter.