Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed (7 page)

Just in case his own theory was wrong and they
were stuck here for eternity.

He’d never actually grasped the
matter/anti-matter thing beyond a vague notion that it was sort of
like the opposing poles of a magnet—and that it sounded scary as
hell—and wasn’t something he had any desire to experiment with. He
had to wonder if it had anything at all to do with them and their
situation, though. Wouldn’t they be able to tell just from
looking
that they weren’t the same? That one of them was
anti-matter and one matter?

Not that Lucien had insisted that they were.
He’d simply suggested that they might be.

Even if he was right about that, though, and
they were matter and their counterparts anti-matter or vice versa,
and couldn’t occupy the same space, who was to say they
were
occupying the same space? It wasn’t as if they’d run in to
themselves since they’d arrived.

They
could
be occupying the same
universe/plane as their counterparts, but he’d always figured that
that storm that had brought them over had flung their copies that
were living here back into
their
universe to take their
places—that they’d swapped places.

Poor bastards!

If it had they were probably in a much worse
situation because it had been
hell
for them trying to adjust
and they were no longer involved in a war halfway across the known
universe from home. They were home, at least—a really bizarre copy
of home in some ways but
also
very familiar in some ways and
not nearly as miserable a place as Xeno-12.

But if he was right and they were all made of
the same stuff then there shouldn’t be a problem interacting with
people on this side—not an explosive one, anyway.

He’d figured Lucien was right about not
getting too involved with anybody here more from the standpoint
that that was just looking for misery than the suggestion that it
was possible they might both disintegrate if they touched. They
didn’t belong here. Sooner or later, it seemed to him, they were
going to get snatched back to where they
did
belong even if
they never figured out how they’d gotten here. That part didn’t
matter in the scheme of things. Whether it was a natural occurrence
or unnatural—meaning somebody had fucked something up and caused a
rip or something—nature would right itself … eventually. It always
did, given time.

Given those thoughts, he hesitated to knock at
Laurie’s door, but he figured
one
of them needed to keep
their head and check on the client.

He was relieved for about two seconds when she
opened the door a small crack and he could see she had the security
lock on. Not that that would stop a determined man or even slow him
down a hell of a lot, but it showed she was alert to danger and
doing what she could to remain secure.

As she’d pointed out herself, it wasn’t as if
she couldn’t be shot
through
the door as soon as she
answered it.

Then he noticed she wasn’t wearing anything
but a loose t-shirt and panties and he could almost see through the
sheer t-shirt.

The blood rushed to his groin and inflated his
dick so fast, his head swam. He swallowed with an effort because it
felt like his balls were lodged in his throat. “Just wanted to
check on you and let you know that we’re occupying the rooms on
either side of you if you need anything,” he managed to say a
little hoarsely. In retrospect, he didn’t think he would’ve managed
that much except that he’d rehearsed it in his mind all the way to
her room and it just sort of spilled out of his empty
brain.

She blinked at him. “Oh. Well … now I feel a
lot safer,” she said after a prolonged moment and then smiled at
him.

She had a really nice smile. Damien felt his
heart flutter.

That wasn’t all that fluttered
either.

He struggled to think of something to say to
keep her standing in the door a little longer so he could get a
better look at her in the t-shirt and panties, but not only did
nothing come to mind, he also couldn’t really see what he wanted to
when she was staring straight at him. His peripheral vision just
wasn’t cutting it.

He swallowed several times. “Maybe I should
check the room?”

She looked surprised but finally shrugged.
“Ok.” She closed the door. Then he heard the scrape of her removing
the security bar lock and the door opened again. “I’m not exactly
dressed for company,” she said, heading away from him and looking
around like she was searching for something. Finally, she merely
climbed back on the bed—a spot he could see she’d been occupying
when he arrived—and covered herself with the coverlet to the waist.
He was disappointed, but he could see her fine breasts just fine.
He stood staring at them for several moments before it dawned on
him that he was supposed to be checking the room.

And he needed to do something before he gave
in to the impulse to dive into the bed with her.

Moving to the windows, he checked them and
made sure there wasn’t a ledge wide enough for an intruder or a
balcony close to her window.

“
You don’t really think anybody
would try the window? I mean, we’re on the tenth floor. Who in
their right mind would try something like that?”

Damien felt his face heat but struggled to
regulate his discomfort. “Not too many people,” he agreed. “Then
again most people wouldn’t walk up to a federal agent and blow them
away. He’s pretty ballsy.”

Laurie gaped at him. “Federal …?”

Damien glanced at her sharply. “You didn’t
know?”

Laurie frowned, but she knew nobody had told
her and she certainly hadn’t heard it in the news. No wonder they
were acting like this was such an important case! “And you think he
knew the guy was a federal agent when he killed him?”

Damien shrugged. “Who knows? I do know it was
broad daylight and you were standing close enough to identify him
without any trouble at all. Unless he’s a gecko, though, the
windows are safe.”

Laurie shivered. “What about that
door?”

Damien stared at her when she pointed,
discovering when she lifted her arm at just that angle the sleeve
of her t-shirt gaped just enough to give him a completely
unrestricted view of her breast. His mouth went dry.
“What?”

“
The door?”

He glanced toward the door, trying to make
sense of what she was asking when he hadn’t actually heard more
than a couple of words above the sound of the blood rushing through
his brain on its way to his dick. “Me and Lucien are occupying that
room.”

“
And Basil and Kane
there?”

“
Right,” Damien responded slowly.
“So if you need us all you have to do is bang on the door. We’ll be
here inside of two seconds.”

“
That’s reassuring anyway,” Laurie
told him with a weak smile instead of informing him that he’d just
screwed up any chance of her getting a wink of sleep!

He smiled at her and Laurie felt her brain
shut down for a handful of seconds. My god! The man was a heart
stopper! Almost literally.

Don’t get your hopes up,
stoo-pid
, she
told herself. No man that looked as good as he did was ‘free’ and
if he was it was because he was too busy screwing everything that
moved to settle down—in which case he couldn’t be had. And she
shouldn’t want him if she had an ounce of brain matter—that wasn’t
tied up in her crotch area!

Oh for a wild fling with something that drop
dead gorgeous, though!

That was scrapbook material!

Nothing one would want to pass down to the
grandkids—Well, she supposed mature grandchildren could appreciate
that sort of thing. ‘Boy grandma must have been something else in
her day!’ Sigh!

She was so wrapped up in the daydream she
almost forgot to follow him to the door to put the deadbolt and
security lock on. Seeing he was heading for the door ‘woke’ her
though and she bounded out of the bed. “Thanks for checking
everything for me,” she chattered as she followed him to the door.
“Honestly, I’ve hardly been able to sleep since it happened. I’m
going to be so glad when this is all over and I can have my life
back!”

Damien paused at the door and stood staring
down at her. Lucien was right. She might look like Lindsey, but
this wasn’t Lindsey. He couldn’t resist lifting a hand to lightly
touch her cheek. In all honesty he wasn’t really aware of the
gesture. He was just thinking how soft and sweet she looked, how
vulnerable. Contact was electric, but not the sort of annihilation
Lucien had feared.

He came within a hair’s breadth of kissing her
before sanity intruded. He’d leaned close enough he could feel the
gentle tickle of her breath against his lips, taste her scent.
Truthfully it was the annihilation of his brain function that made
his instincts for survival kick in and brought a wall down in time
to save him from his folly. He checked his advance, eased away from
her and glanced down the hall.

Kane, an ice bucket in his hand, was staring
at him from the next room over, his expression perfectly blank.
Even as their gazes met, however, Damien saw Kane’s hackles rise,
almost literally.

He stepped away from Laurie. “Just knock on
either door if you hear anything or even if you just get uneasy.
We’re close.”

He didn’t hear her door close and the deadbolt
shoot home until he reached his own door and paused to look back.
Kane was still standing at his own door, glaring at him now, the
ice bucket in his hands slowly crumpling from the strength of his
grip. Damien shook his head at him and went inside.

Obviously, they were going to have a
problem.

He encountered Lucien’s fist as he turned from
bolting the door. It caught him squarely on the jaw and sent him
back into the door behind him hard enough he was surprised it
didn’t buckle. A red haze of rage clouded his vision as he
rebounded.

Fortunately, Lucien was ready for him and
caught him in a chokehold. By the time he was seeing black dots
swarming in his vision, he’d had time to consider the wisdom of
losing control of his beast in the posh hotel and Lucien had, too.
Lucien released him and stepped back.

Damien glared at him. “What the fuck was that
all about?”

“
Don’t play stupid with me,”
Lucien growled. “You questioned my fucking professionalism and then
went straight over there and started slobbering all over
Laurie?”

Damien flushed—partly with anger and partly
with discomfort. “Do you think you could bellow a little fucking
louder and announce it to everybody on this fucking floor?” he
growled.

The comment struck home. Lucien’s rage
abruptly collapsed. “I wasn’t that loud,” he snapped.

He didn’t sound convinced, however, and Damien
thought that was probably a good thing—the doubt. He shook his
head. “I think we’d do better to shelve this and discuss it when we
have a little more privacy.”

It was unfortunate that two things struck
Damien just as he was about to doze off because one of those two
things really pissed him off and made it damned near impossible to
get any sleep.

Laurie hadn’t tried to evade him when he’d
almost lost his mind altogether and kissed her.

And he didn’t have a fucking clue of whether
she’d known it was him or if she’d thought it was Lucien who’d come
back to check the room!

He’d pointed out that he and Lucien were
sharing the room next to hers, but had she caught that?

* * * *

Considering how wired she was when Damien left
Laurie didn’t know how she’d managed to calm down enough to
sleep.

He’d
almost
kissed her!

What worried her was why the ‘almost’? Why had
he reversed engines just when things were starting to look real
promising?

She’d checked her breath, but she hadn’t eaten
the onions that came with her meal and she couldn’t find anything
offensive about her breath and she hadn’t discovered she had food
on her face. She didn’t think that had turned him off.

Maybe he’d
meant
to tease her for some
reason?

Just to drive her batty, maybe?

Or to butter up the client?

But she hadn’t hired them. The DA apparently
had so it wasn’t as if she could make or break the job—or that
she’d be hiring them for anything else later.

So it couldn’t have been an effort to make
points with her for the sake of income.

He’d looked pretty turned on, though. He’d had
that ‘look’.

Thought better of it because he realized she
was a job and it might not seem very professional to try to hump
her?

His brother had already called dibs on her and
he remembered that at the last minute?

Oh yeah! That sounded good, but how likely was
it?

Probably not very.

Well, she didn’t know why, damn it! All she
knew was that he had almost kissed her and she’d gotten all worked
up just to be let down and left hanging, damn it to
hell!