The Moon Rises (3 page)

Maybe she bought Were pheromones and splashed it
on to get better tips? It wouldn’t be the first time a waitress used magic to
make her stand out. Gigi though didn’t seem all that interested in how much
interest she was receiving.

“Do you want something to drink?” Gigi asked, pen
and paper at the ready.

“Of course they do. It’s a bar,” Sara muttered,
her bright blue eyes annoyed.

Gigi blinked hard, finally noticing Sara’s irritation.

“She doesn’t have a clue, so she’ll be shadowing
me tonight. What can I get you guys?”

Sara wasn’t in the mood to do introductions which
was a plus. Declan really didn’t want his guys getting any ideas about drooling
over the new girl more than they already were. Gigi was worth drooling over
though.

Gigi looked like sex. No, maybe not sex, Declan
decided. His body didn’t want sex when he gazed at her - studying her every
curve, the strand of blonde hair which lay out of place, the richness of her
dark eyes. His body wanted everything – all wrapped up in a desperate need in
his gut. Declan wanted to smell her, taste her, feel the heat of her skin
against his, hear her say his name, and yes, eventually he wanted to slide inside
her and make her whimper with pleasure. He would enjoy every minute of it, but
he didn’t screw the girls at The Moon Rises.

After Dave made the mistake of bedding Lisa, the
waitress had smiled so sweetly the next night the pack had been in. Every night
afterwards, her smile was just a tad less sweet until there was only bitterness
in her eyes as she realized how she given her body away for nothing. Soon she
stopped working on the pack level and then disappeared altogether.

When the pack males slept with the girls at the
club, things became difficult for Silas who wasn’t the kind of shifter Declan
wanted to make things difficult for.

Declan watched Gigi and wondered if it was her
real name. Maybe Gigi was short for something? Normally a girl named Gigi would
be loud in bed, lots of moaning and giggling, but not this Gigi. Declan
suspected she didn’t do anything more than purr and sigh. She looked like the
type of girl who was soft in every way. The kind of girl that a guy would marry
or keep in a nice place and visit regularly. Not a one night stand or a quick
bang like Dave had with Lisa. Gigi was the kind of girl a guy would want to
keep around.

Across the room in his section, Anton was
watching Gigi in his subtle way. Those dark eyes weren’t watching Gigi’s curves
sway as she glided through the bodies around her. He was watching her face,
noticing the same qualities Declan noticed, feeling the same need, but Anton
didn’t screw club girls either. Roger would screw her, but Roger wasn’t around.

Declan noticed how every male in the room stopped
what they were doing and focused on Gigi whenever she appeared from the kitchen
or from behind the bar. She moved so gracefully like she was literally floating.
She moved like a Vamp or maybe a powerful witch, but Declan smelled neither on
her. When she leaned towards him to pick up an empty beer bottle, he smelled an
alluring richness to her scent – like hot cocoa and a roaring fire - something
homey and intoxicating.

Besides her softness and rich aroma, Gigi had two
other interesting qualities. One was that she made way too much eye contact.
Most girls bounced and blinked, refusing to hold gazes because Weres tended to
view extended eye contact as a challenge. Apparently Gigi hadn’t received the
memo because she held every gaze like she was trying to read the guy’s mind. A
soft gaze, nothing particularly challenging behind it, yet she stared without
an ounce of trepidation.

Maybe she was on something, Declan wondered. She
moved too fluidly and stared too deeply. Then there was also her passivity. When
one of Roger’s guys knocked a plate off a table, the loud clatter sent Sara a
foot off the ground.

Gigi though was taking an order from Anton’s table
and barely noticed. She was definitely on some kind of tranquilizer, but he
didn’t blame her. The Moon Rises could be a scary damn place for a human chick.

Declan knew the guys around him weren’t really
talking as much as babbling while they played a peeking game with Gigi’s ass.
He wasn’t listening to them anyway. His mind on the blonde and Anton and what
Roger might be up to.

He even thought to Katia – the waitress whose
death allowed the club to hire the luscious and possibly stoned Gigi. A part of
Declan worried Katia’s disappearance wasn’t isolated. Other girls just outside
the Circle had disappeared in the last few months. Some were thought to be
runaways while others were believed to have died at the hands of their raging
partners.

Declan always watched for patterns and he worried
the pattern of missing human girls had moved away from the suburbs and into the
city center. Was the creature who stole those girls now in the Circle, hunting
the lovely waitresses at The Moon Rises?

Anton Volkov sat in the main area of his office,
staring out the front windows towards the park across the street. With one of
the Circle’s Alphas missing, Anton was worried and likely so was Declan.

Maybe Roger’s plotting was Anton’s fault. There
was an uneasy truce for nearly a year now, but Anton knew the truce was coming to
an end. Wanting insurance, he approached Mira Petran and her clan of witches
about an alliance.

Anton and Mira shared a Slavic heritage – her clan
from Romania, his family from Russia. Declan’s family was Celtic, Roger’s
Germanic. They would never make nice with Mira and the witch liked having her
ass kissed.

Anton kissed it for months, finally giving him the
alliance he needed to stand against Declan when the war came. Mira’s older son
Nolan kept the alliance a secret, but her younger boy Spencer blabbed to a girl
at The Moon Rises who blabbed to Ella who immediately blabbed to her Alpha.
Once Declan knew, it was only a matter of time before Roger heard. Once he did,
Roger left for his mysterious trip out of state.

Anton wasn’t sure what Roger might be up to, but
he was happy for the Alpha’s absence for one very specific blonde reason.

Gigi.

Girls came and went at the club and they were all
beautiful in one way or another. Yet Gigi set the damn floor on fire. Anton
couldn’t put his finger on just what was so special about Gigi besides her
ability to remind him that his wolf existed.

No matter what his wolf wanted, the accepted rule
in the Circle was that the Alphas did not take mates or have children. Anton’s
inability to commit was why he planned to stay far away from Gigi. She was too
something and everything about her made him nervous.

The night before when she looked at him, he had
been tempted to kiss her right there in front of everyone. Tempted even now, he
was overwhelmed with the urge to find her and know how her lips tasted. Wanting
to avoid any complications in his life, Anton planned to keep the need for Gigi
in his pants where it belonged. For all her lovely qualities, she was the type
of girl who made men do stupid shit and Anton wasn’t in the position to make
those mistakes with a war on the horizon.

“Boss, you have to see this,” Garrison said.

Anton’s assistant was also laughing and Melanie
waved for her boss to come closer to the front windows. For a few seconds as
he stared out the windows, Anton couldn’t understand what he was witnessing.

Gigi ran back and forth down the street, her
ponytail flying frenzied around her head. Once he realized why she was running,
Anton laughed.

Cats.

At least a dozen cats were chasing Gigi. She ran
up one side of the street before turning and running the other way. No matter
which direction she headed, the cats followed. When Gigi disappeared up the
street, the whole office craned their necks to see where she had gone.

Suddenly she was running past the office with the
army of cats in pursuit. Anton heard their kitty calls, sounding in heat
really, and he started laughing harder.

When Gigi ran back towards the office, Anton
opened the door and pulled her inside. Shutting the door on the needy cats, he
watched as they clawed at the glass, trying to find a way in through the big
storefront windows. The army of cats stared inside, looking for Gigi who stood
next to Anton, out of breath.

“Did you bathe in catnip?” Garrison asked.

“I don’t know. What’s catnip?” Gigi said with a
calm expression, instantly looking perfectly calm as if a horde of horny cats
weren’t just chasing her.

The Weres said nothing, but Anton smiled. There
was no shaking his desire for her, so he inhaled her luscious scent and enjoyed
her presence.

“Are you alright?” he asked, just for something
to say.

“Yes, thank you. I’ve never met a cat before. I
wonder if they all like me?”

“Want me to get rid of them for you?” Garrison
asked, tugging off his shirt.

Anton glared at him and the Were shrunk under his
Alpha’s gaze. For some reason, Anton didn’t want to rub Gigi’s face in what
they were. He wasn’t ashamed to be a shifter, but Gigi was human and they could
be weird when they actually saw the beast hiding inside a Were’s human facade.

“Oh, because cats don’t like dogs, right?” Gigi
said.

Normally this sort of comment would irritate the
Weres, but Gigi said it with such innocent sincerity, they just laughed.

“Yes, something like that,” Anton said, forcing himself
to step back because her scent was making him a bit lightheaded. “They don’t
look ready to give up. Would you like to sit down and wait until they go away?”

When Gigi nodded with a smile, Anton felt like he
had accomplished some great feat. He was being ridiculous, but he wanted Gigi
in a way he had never wanted another female. With her standing so close, she
awakened both the wolf and the man.

“Would you like something to drink?” Anton asked
as his wolf whined for him to move closer to Gigi.

“Oh, yes, please. I threw my sports bottle at one
of the cats, but I don’t think it was impressed.”

Smiling, Anton went to the kitchen, needing a
moment to calm his senses which were on fire. Shaking off his desire, he found
her a bottle of water in the refrigerator.

When Anton returned to the office, Gigi was
sitting at Melanie’s desk, filling envelopes while the pregnant Were sat nearby
with her feet up. The males were alternating between watching Gigi and the
horde of cats which were still milling around on the sidewalk.

“What is she doing?” Anton asked Melanie who was
brushing her long black hair.

“She offered to help.”

Rolling his dark eyes, Anton set the water in
front of Gigi who looked up from the stack of empty envelopes waiting to be
filled. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Am I doing it wrong?”

“No, but you don’t work here.”

Gigi peeked back at Melanie who waved for her to
continue. Anton glared at Melanie and the Were just grinned.

“She wants to help, so let her.”

Anton looked down at Gigi who stared up at him
with those big brown eyes. For that moment, it was as if the world fell away
and only the two of them remained. He wanted to kiss her so badly he could
already taste her, but Anton just stepped back and shrugged.

“Stop when you get bored,” he said and Gigi smiled.

Anton sat nearby, trying to concentrate, but she
was too lovely and he was seriously distracted. Then suddenly a question occurred
to him. A question he should have considered the second he saw those cats chasing
Gigi.

Why was a horde of cats chasing Gigi?

Anton thought to ask her, but she was busy
filling envelopes as if nothing else existed in the world. The cats were losing
interest and only a few remained at the window, staring inside at their object
of desire.

Anton had never seen animals behave so strangely
with a human and Gigi was definitely human. He knew the smell of magic – from
Vamps and witches to the weirdest ghouls – but Gigi didn’t smell of anything
besides her lovely scent.

Humans could smell wonderful, especially women
with their scented lotions and hair products. While Gigi smelled better than
anyone Anton had ever met, she smelled human. Yet the cats wanted her enough to
ignore the presence of the Weres. More than weird, their behavior was a little
creepy.

Gigi didn’t stop filling envelopes when the cats
finally gave up. She didn’t even stop when Melanie and the guys left for lunch.
She just kept filling them like a machine.

Anton was glad to be alone with her, only because
he liked watching her and wasn’t sure how subtle he was being with the others
around. Gigi didn’t seem to notice, not reacting when the others left. Then
suddenly she stopped and looked at Anton. The smile she gave him stopped his
heart. The beauty of it startled him.

“Do you like working at the club?” Anton asked
only because he felt stupid just staring at her.

“Yes, it’s fun and I got to cook yesterday. The
witch only spit at me once which everyone said was a compliment.”