Flamingo Fugitive (Supernatural Bounty Hunters 5) (4 page)

Chapter Six

Stone strolled up to the desk and slapped on his most disarming grin.

“No,” said Mia, firmly.

He held out his hands in exaggerated effrontery.  “You don’t even know what I’m going to ask!”

“You were going to ask me to float you a skip who happened to be blonde, slinky and would be ever so grateful if you happened to let her get away.”

“Well…”

“Not happening.  That woman who got away from you last month made it all the way to Reno before we picked her up.” 

Stone tried for chastised, but Mia narrowed her eyes and he gave up.  “Look I know Marcus was pissed…”

“Never mind Marcus,” grumbled the bunny shifter.  “You should be more worried about me.  It was Logan who had to chase after her.  He was gone a week, and when he caught up to her, she thought she could repeat her luck and tried forcibly to give him a…”  She hesitated before mouthing the words ‘blowjob’. 

Stone bit his tongue to stop himself from laughing at the bunny shifter whose nose was twitching.  He considered telling her that she looked adorable, but she didn’t seem to be in the mood, plus Logan, her mate, happened to be a seven-foot bear shifter.  Stone could probably take him in a fight, but there was something to be said for living your life without having to look over your shoulder every five minutes.  The bear was not known for being reasonable when it came to his little mate’s feelings – just ask the mail carrier who laughed when she accidentally dyed her hair green.  Their mail was now left at the nail salon next door; the mail carrier valued his life too highly to come back into the bail bond agency.

He thought to correct her about the unfortunate skip but decided not to press his luck.  He hadn’t actually accepted a blowjob in return for letting her go.  She had seemed genuinely attracted to him.  Alcohol was consumed; she thought it would be fun to tie him up, and he was having far too good a time to disagree.  Turns out she can handle her liquor very well.  She had him tied up and was out the door before he realized it wasn’t some kind of sexy foreplay.  By the time he literally managed to break the bed, she must have been halfway to Reno.  A man in his position might have been pissed, but not Stone.  He had a very relaxed attitude to life.  Sometimes things didn’t go his way, but most of the time they did – so who was he to complain?  Course the loss of the bounty and paying to replace the bed he broke kind of put a dent in his finances.  So yes, some more work would be welcome.  The ferret shifter skip hadn’t exactly set his bank account on fire.  But he wasn’t worried about it.  He wouldn’t be turfed out of his home.  He had a
special
relationship with his landlady. 
No, not that!
  They just flirted and he fixed her toilet when it broke.

“What do you want?” asked Mia, grumpily as she rubbed her neck and winced.

Stone sidled around her desk and held out his hands.  “May I?”  She scrunched up her face.  “You look tense.”

“Fine,” she hissed before groaning as he started massaging her shoulders.  His after workout massages were legendary.

The moan she let out as he worked on a knot in her lower back was practically sinful.  “Okay, that does feel good, but if Logan asks, this never happened.”

“You got it.”  Even thought they weren’t doing anything wrong, discretion was the key where mated women were concerned.

“A skip, babe.  Any skip.”  He gave her a sincere look that he immediately ruined by adding, “Although if they happened to be blonde and gorgeous, I wouldn’t mind.”

Mia shrugged away from his hands.  “You’re unbelievable.”

“Yeah, I get that a…”

“Why must you make sex jokes?!” she hissed, waspishly.

“Oh, did I miss all the sex jokes?  I’m sure some more will come along in the few moments.”  Zara, a fellow bounty hunter and a witch who could do unspeakable things with voodoo dolls, sauntered into the office.  “It’s one of the more reassuring aspects of Stone’s personality, that he can be relied upon to be smutty
and
the biggest manwhore in town.”

Stone placed a hand on his heart in mock horror.  “Hey, I take offence at that.  I am flirty at best, but never smutty.  But yes, I am the
biggest
in town.”  He waggled his eyebrows.

Zara rolled her eyes.  “Yeah, can’t imagine why I mistook that for smut.”  She looked at Mia.  “You got any skips for me?”

“Sure, we’re actually pretty busy.”

“And yet you’re making me beg for a skip!” he complained in an exaggerated hurt voice.

Zara arched an eyebrow.  “If you’re hard up for cash, have you considered selling your body?”

Stone smirked in response.  “Yes, they said it was so beautiful that they couldn’t put a price on it.”  His rhino was practically laughing at that one.

On the other hand, Mia was practically gagging.  “If you promise to go away right now, I will give you a skip.  Okay?”

“Yeah, do I get to choose…”

“No.”  She sighed but then smiled sweetly.  “Zara can you pass me that file from over there?  The one on top that has the name Leslie on it.”

Zara cocked her head to one side in curiosity.  She glanced at the file and then bit her lip before passing it to Mia.

“It’s your lucky day,” declared Mia.  And if Stone had thought about it at the time, he would have questioned her declaration.  But as it was he was happy just to go with the flow.  “Leslie is blonde and also a stripper.”

Stone’s eyes gleamed with interest.  “Really?”

“Really.”

“Awesome.”  He started opening the file when Mia interrupted. 

“And according to Leslie’s employment agency, Leslie is due to perform at a private party tonight.  Here’s the address.”

She passed him a piece of paper.  “Wow, you already did half the work for me.”

“I was planning on giving it to Logan, but I think we’ll just have a quiet night in instead.”

“Thanks, I owe you.”  He almost clicked his heels together as his rhino excitedly thought about chasing a skip. 
The beast sure did like to charge at people
.

Zara’s shoulders seemed to be shaking for some reason, and a tear even escaped her eye.  He asked her what was wrong, but she just waved him away.

He shrugged and said goodbye to the two women.  When he stepped outside, it was the darnedest thing.  Both of them started hooting with laughter.

*

“Oh no, Brick, we must do this.  Don’t you see that?”

“But Ruby, I’m a married man.”

“I don’t care about that, Brick.  I need you, Brick.  I need to feel you inside me.  I won’t be complete until you fill me up with…”

“Francine,” sighed Michael.

“Hmmm?  Was that not good?” 
She knew it wasn’t good
.  Her heart really wasn’t in it.  It wasn’t a problem she usually had.  She could say anything and make it believable, but she couldn’t seem to get to grips with this.  It didn’t help that her usually sweet and supportive flamingo sneered at every word.  The words had sounded bad echoing through her tiny apartment.  Here, in this beautiful house, they sounded downright seedy.

Michael blew out a breath.  “It was fine, but I don’t think that we’ll be able to generate the kind of heat and passion that this scene requires with you all the way over there.”

Francine cocked her head on one side and affected an expression of innocence.  It wasn’t hard, she was a damn fine actress, even if she said so herself. 
Except when it came to this damn script
. He was sprawling on the couch.  The fact that she had chosen to sit on the seat of the grand piano, a good fifteen feet away from him – thus putting an enormous piano between her and any supposed threat to her virtue – didn’t mean a thing.

When he sent her a copy of the tawdry scene he wanted her to learn, she sort of thought that he would just read the lines to her unemotionally.  Or there would be someone else there, a producer or an assistant, to ensure that any burgeoning sexual tension was popped quicker than a balloon. 
Yeah, she was an idiot
.  So now she was in his house, at night, with half a glass of wine queasily sloshing around in her stomach and wondering whether Michael St. Fontaine was some kind of breed of pervert.  Her flamingo answered in the affirmative to that –
he was a breed in his own right.

Her flamingo fluttered her feathers, perhaps preparing to run away.  Flamingos were lovers, not fighters.  And she didn’t fancy being a lover that night.

The leers he had hurled at her the first time they met clearly hadn’t been a throwaway reaction to a generous bosom.  Unless… she could just be overreacting.  The part of her that wanted him to be genuine and that believed he wanted her for her artistic talents was very great, nearly eclipsing her uneasiness at being alone with him.  And not even her temperamental flamingo could ignore that part of her.  Perhaps she was just reading something into nothing.

Michael gave her a patient smile.  “Come on, Francine.  Come and sit closer.”

“Well, okay, if you think it’s necessary…”

Chapter Seven

Stone forced himself not to close his eyes.  His beast grunted in frustration.  As far as satisfying chases went, this rated very low – even lower than the time he had to capture the octogenarian who needed to lug around an oxygen tank.  The old man, amid a lot of encouragement from Stone, gave it his best shot at running, but he gave up and let Stone catch him.  He was actually thankful that Stone was after him – he carried the old guy all the way back to the cops.

But, he was going to kill Zara and Mia for this.  No, not kill them, he didn’t hold with violence against women.  But he had to think of a way to get back at them.  Except that never ended well, did it? He wasn’t exactly great at thinking up plans, and Zara could be downright devious when she wanted to be. 
It was all those witchy powers
.

Leslie, the blonde stripper, who Stone had to admit was very limber, slipped out of his grasp.  His rhino reared up at the disturbing eyeful he got.  Leslie was covered in what appeared to be an entire bottle of baby oil and was only wearing a g-string.  And oh yeah, the stripper was a dude. 
Fucking baby oil
.

By the time Stone caught up with him, Leslie was already entertaining at a bachelorette party.  He was already virtually nude, lubed up with a hell of a lot of oil and no, he didn’t want to come quietly.

This was probably his own fault, Stone thought, as Leslie wriggled against him to no avail.  The young man was ripped and a strong cougar shifter, but he was no match for Stone.

Usually, Stone would have subdued him by now, except it was kind of distracting trying to wrestle a slippery young man while his thinly covered junk kept flashing in his face.  Not to mention the ring of horny, drunk women who were immensely enjoying the display.

He and his rhino roared as the young cougar elbowed him in the face.  Fuck, this guy’s more slippery than an eel.  Stone gritted his teeth and put his hand somewhere it should never go.  But on the plus side, the cougar yelped and calmed down.

Stone changed his mind. 
He was actually going to kill Mia and Zara for this.

*

They were now on the same couch with just a cushion between them, and Francine was more than a little concerned.  Her bird was outright chirruping ‘danger’.

Michael had lured her to the couch; she didn’t remember the words he used – they may have been ‘starring role’.

Of course, to start with they were a decent length apart.  But somehow Michael had edged his way towards her and the cloying scent of his man perfume –
gross
– was making it hard for her to breathe.

It was supposed to be a scene where the female character – by some unexplained and totally indecipherable reason – was completely hot for this asshat of a married man.  If Francine were building a background for her, she’d say brainwashing or Stockholm syndrome played a part in the obsession.  And for some reason she wanted nothing more than to get him into bed and for him to fill her with his, ugh,
love juices
.  Yeah, she almost barfed in her mouth the first time she read that, and even her flamingo had trouble calling it artistic license.  But this scene had obviously been written by Michael – this was his kind of rubbish language, and his kind of underwritten scene that masqueraded as character development.

Except, even though she was supposed to be seducing him, instinctively she found herself edging away from his advances while her bird paced nervously.  He scowled every time she nudged out of reach, but that didn’t stop him coming for her.

The stage direction in the script said that she was supposed to be straddling him at this point in the dialogue, and rubbing her breasts in his face.  Well, he’d just have to settle for her shuffling in the opposite direction and trying, without success, to raise the neckline of her dress.  She took one shuffle too many and slipped off the couch, landing on the floor with a dull thump.

“Shit!” she muttered, but then yelped as Michael landed on top of her.  “Get off me!” she squawked as her flamingo flew into an agitated frenzy.

Michael pressed his, not exactly impressive, erection against her and she almost gagged.  She wriggled against him, but if anything he only enjoyed that more.  She was no match physically for a hyena shifter, and he seemed to be the sort of deviant who went around saying ‘I like a woman with spirit’.

When she finally gave in and sagged in an annoyed heap on the ground, he sighed.  Her flamingo was still panicking, but Francine was calmly trying to assess her next move.

“Francine,” he said, wearily.  “We both know why you’re here, so let’s not play games.  Getting a part this way is virtually a tradition.”

“I never…” she objected in fluttering outrage.

He sniggered a dirty, hyena snigger.  “Come now.  Why else would I invite you to my house?  What did you think
this
was about?”

“I thought because of my talent…” she started, weakly.

He howled with laughter as his eyes morphed to the deep dark brown of his beast.  He gave her a hungry look that had they been animals out in the wild, would have said, ‘I’m going to eat you up’. 
Ugh, he was enjoying this far too much
.  “Oh yes, your talent.  I’m looking at both of your talents right now.”  He ogled her breasts and Francine let out a disgruntled warble that came straight from her bird.

“Settle down.  If you relax, you might actually enjoy this.  Either way, I don’t care.  But I will get what I want…”

The dirty bastard moved in for a kiss and Francine screeched in rage…