Jace (River Pack Wolves 2) (Paranormal Romance) (2 page)

This was no kid.

A naked girl—no, she was very much a
woman
—was suddenly in his arms, struggling against his hold. He huffed out surprise, but before he could let her loose, she squirmed around so her very ample breasts were now pressed against his bare chest. Then she grabbed the back of his head in both hands…
and kissed him.

The man in him froze in shock, but his beast nearly burst out of his skin. While Jace struggled to hold back his wolf, his very human mouth responded automatically to the hot demands of her tongue. Her legs wrapped around his waist, and his cock sprang to life, pressing hard against the naked heat of her body. It took him a full two seconds to make sure his wolf was under control—then he regained control over his human body as well, wrenching his mouth away from hers and grabbing hold of her shoulders to shove her away.

With her legs locked around him, she didn’t go far.

“What the fuck?” Jace gasped out the words, breathing hard. The woman in his arms was gorgeous—twenty-five-ish, creamy white skin, black hair spilling down to her heaving breasts, which were large and perfectly round with nipples puckered so tight they made his mouth water. She didn’t say anything, just stared at him with wide eyes, dark as midnight—her lips were slightly swollen and red from their wild kiss.

If you could even call it a kiss. More like an assault. Who
was
this girl?

She blinked, as if she was stunned too—then she shoved away from him.

“Oh no, you don’t!” Jace scrambled after her. He caught her by the ankle before she could get to her feet, then he tugged her off-balance. He cushioned her fall but then twisted to pin her, hands above her head, flat on the cool stone tiling of his mom’s kitchen floor. He’d somehow managed to straddle her in the process.

She locked gazes with him for an intense moment, then her eyes raked down his chest and landed on his rock-hard erection, which was tenting out his sleep pajamas

She flicked her gaze back up and gave him a crooked smile. “I guess you’re the kind who likes it rough.”

What in the actual fuck? “I’m the kind who doesn’t like people breaking into his house.” His voice was still breathy from the fight.

“Your
house?” Her voice was amazingly calm for being naked under a stranger. “Are you one of the River brothers, then?”

He squinted at her. “Who the hell are you?”

She glanced up at his hands pinning her wrists to the floor, then smirked at him again. “Are we going to do this interrogation naked? If so, might be more fun if you lose those adorable sleep pants.”

His mouth fell open. This girl had more brass than most generals he knew. “If I let you up, are you going to run? Because I have an entire house full of shifters who would be happy to hunt you down.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “I let you catch me, didn’t I?”

“Let
me—” The wolf in him growled, and he didn’t like how she was getting a rise out of more than just his cock, which was embarrassing enough. He released her wrists and shoved off her. As she slowly got up from the floor, he ground out, “You left your clothes by the front door. But if you run for it, I’m not going to be so nice next time.”

She threw a flirtatious smile over her shoulder. “Promises, promises.”

Her hips swayed as she took her time strolling from the kitchen toward the front. He followed close behind, in case she decided to bolt after all. He was
pissed—
full-on angry at this girl and her attitude and the fact that she had broken into the safehouse with zero obvious remorse or concern—but
damn,
that walk was doing things to his cock.

The moonlight kissed her pale skin as she stepped across the great room, no big hurry, and when she bent over to pick up her clothes—
holy fuck.
He knew she was putting herself on display on purpose, trying to manipulate her way out of this with promises of sex… but the wolf inside him was stirring, and that made Jace’s heart pound with fear more than lust. 

This girl was
dangerous
to him—in a way human girls never were. Which was precisely why his preferred mode of sexual release was a quick hookup with a human female in a smoke-filled bar in the city. Or more often, his own hand and a hot fantasy about claiming a mate… something that would never happen in reality. But he never tangled with female shifters, even if they were just looking for fun and not actually shopping for a mate. He couldn’t take the chance. But he also couldn’t look away from the show this shifter girl was putting on—every movement was a sensuous tease. She made slipping on jeans hotter than ripping them off. Which was exactly what his cock was twitching for, in spite of the rock-solid knowledge that it wasn't going to happen.

However, he was definitely going to fantasize about this later.

When she was finally dressed, her smile shone in the moonlight. “You better wipe up the drool, River boy.”

He ignored that—it was a show she obviously wanted him to watch, and he needed her to know it wasn’t going to work. Plus he needed to cool this whole thing down, including his raging hard-on, and find out exactly what she was doing here.

Jace strode across the great room until he was face to face with her. “Are you going to tell me who you are now? Or do I have to haul out the torture sticks?”

She frowned at his cold look, then matched it with a defiant one of her own. “Are you going to tell me why you didn’t shift?”

He mouth dropped open, just for a second, then he snapped it shut and scowled. “Let me be clear about this: you’re going to explain why you’re breaking into my house, and you’re going to do it
right now.”

She leaned back and threw a pitying look in his direction. “Oh… I see… you
can’t.”

He couldn’t help the growl that escaped. “I
can
shift. I choose not to.”
Dammit,
how did she get under his skin so fast? He sucked in a breath and tried to regain his calm. “Are you going to answer my question, or do I have to bring in my pack to persuade you?”

She glanced at the front door, but lucky for her, she decided not to make a run for it.

She turned back to study him, folding her arms across her chest and cocking her head to the side. “Why didn’t you just shift to catch me?”

“That’s really none of your business.” He was glad to hear his voice returning to its normal cool. “And you’ve got three seconds to come clean.”

“That offer of naked interrogation is still on the table.” She smirked at him again.

“Two.”

The smirk faded, and her voice dropped. “Look, I don’t need any trouble—”

“One.” He glanced up the stairs where the River pack was still slumbering away. One howl would bring them down.

The girl threw up her hands. “Okay, all right.”

He waited.

She pursed her lips and hesitated. Then she said, “My name is Piper Wilding.”

Jace narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t recognize her. Then again, he’d only met a few of the Wilding pack members personally. They were a different breed—still fiercely loyal like a pack should be, but looser in their organization. Whereas Jace and his brothers and their pack all worked for the River brothers’ security company, Riverwise, the Wilding’s were literally all over the map. Research professors, military, lawyers… they each went their separate way, not just in Seattle, but all over the world. And they had a reputation for being…
unstable.
He’d personally encountered the Wilding brand of crazy—most recently when Terra Wilding tried to crawl into his bed upstairs after Jaxson turned her down. She was an artist who normally lived downtown, but she had been hiding out at the safehouse after they’d rescued her baby sister Cassie.

Terra was a black-haired tornado.

Not unlike the girl standing before him.

“A Wilding,” Jace finally said, nodding. “I should have known by the way you wrapped your legs around me before saying hello.”

She bit her lip. “You’ll never know how great that could have been, River boy.”

He hated the effect that had on his cock, which was finally starting to settle down.

“I don’t think I’ll miss explaining the smell to my mother,” he said, keeping his voice ice cold. “And besides, that doesn’t really explain anything. We have a doorbell. You could have used it.” The Wildings might be hot-blooded, but they really weren’t completely insane. Some were even decent and reasonable, like Daniel Wilding, the Army grunt who helped out with their last mission. And who was also parked upstairs, waiting to help them track down Agent Smith and the other captured shifters.

The smoldering sexiness dropped off Piper’s face. “I’m not really supposed to be here, River boy.”

“No kidding.” He glared at her. “And my name is Jace.”

“Jace.”
She rolled his name around in her mouth in a way that had him thinking about tearing her clothes off again.
Damn,
he really had to get that under control. “Well, Jace River,
The Wolf Who Chooses Not To Shift…
I’m not supposed to be
here,
as in Seattle. But I need to see my brother, Daniel. And when I heard you had stashed him and my cousins up here…” She shrugged. “I needed to reach him without alerting the rest of the Wilding family network.”

“Have you heard of a cell phone?” He looked askance at her. This story wasn’t holding up. “They’re a real handy invention. Reduces fatalities from breaking and entering a hundred fold.”

She gave him a small smile that didn’t completely piss him off… because it was the first one that seemed like it might be real. “Can’t fool you, can I,
Jace?”
Then the smile dropped off. “Daniel and I… well, how can I put this?”

“How about the truth?” he asked, coolly.

“We don’t talk. Ever. I’m the blackest of sheep in a pack filled with nothing but black sheep. And Daniel’s one of the straighter arrows. And yet… I need his help.”

“So a phone call wouldn’t cut it.” Strangely, he believed her. With so many wild cards in a single pack, no wonder they were scattered to the winds. He couldn’t imagine not speaking to his own brothers, but the River pack was different.
Different
meaning
normal,
not insane.

Piper nodded, and her face opened up like she was amazed he understood. This softer expression stirred something inside him—something like sympathy for being the outsider in a pack of crazy wolves—but Jace shut that down fast. If there was one thing he’d already figured out about this one, it was that she was a master at manipulation.

Piper ducked her head and said softly, “Daniel and I have a younger brother, Noah. He’s good people.” She looked up, eyes round and wide. “The best kind, in fact. And I’m not completely sure, but… I think something’s happened to him. He’s gone missing, and everything I’ve done to find him has come up zeroes. You have to believe me—coming here is my last resort.”

That had the ring of truth, but Jace still raised his eyebrows. “Missing shifter? Sounds like you’re in the right place. Daniel hasn’t said anything about a missing brother, though.”

She frowned. “Noah was stationed overseas. Army, like Daniel.”

Which made sense. Jace nodded. “Sporadic contact. No reason why family stateside would know. At least, not right away.” He sucked in a breath. Missing military shifters? Overseas? This thing just got bigger in a way he didn’t like.
At all.
“You could have just said that in the first place. If there’s an Army brother missing, we’re going to find him. Double that for a fellow shifter.”

She smiled, and this one was definitely real. It stirred something inside him again, both man and wolf. Maybe she wasn’t
all
manipulation. Of course, that only made this hot shifter female even more dangerous to him. But none of that mattered.

A missing brother-in-arms trumped everything.

He tipped his head toward the stairs. “Let’s go.”

God, what a mess.

All Piper had to do was sneak into a mountain estate and convince her brother to help her.
Sneaking in
was supposed to be the easy part. How many times had she infiltrated buildings, lifted documents, and planted surveillance?
Come on, Piper.
Granted, she wasn’t normally tackling a house full of shifters. And she should have anticipated at least one of them being a night wanderer. Not only had she been caught, but she’d been forced to spill a ton of intel to a man she didn’t even know.

An extremely hot man, but still.
Sloppy work.

Piper winced internally as she quietly followed Jace River up the creaky wooden steps of his rambling estate. The man was hotness personified, climbing the stairs in nothing but pajama pants and bare feet. She’s already had the pleasure of being pressed up against his sublimely-muscled chest. It had been so long since she’d been that up-close-and-personal with a shifter… she’d forgotten how freaking gorgeous the men could be. And that kiss…
sweet mercy
that was hot. She’d meant to distract him for a moment so she could make her getaway, but then her wolf had insisted they stay and ride that big hunk of shifter for all he was worth.

That
was unexpected.