Wolves of Haven: Lone (3 page)

Akia hated that he was ridiculously
jealous, but at the same time he constantly reminded her that she
was just as jealous when it came to women checking him out or
hinting that they might ask him out after work. She turned in his
arms and rested her hands over his bare chest. His muscular
physique and velvety skin effortlessly aroused her, but when she
looked up at him, the four inch height difference between them
giving her the opportunity to look up through her lashes to gaze
upon his sapphire eyes, and when locked in their depths, she turned
to putty in his skilled hands. “You know that I wore this purely
for your benefit,” she seductively reminded him before moistening
her lips with her tongue.

He gave her a look, well aware that
she was trying to play.

“And I think it was the
perfect punishment for not telling me about my promotion,
Captain
,” she said,
cocking an eyebrow.

Damian smirked. “It was
supposed to be a surprise,
Lieutenant
,” he smugly informed her,
so she smacked him with the rose. “Hey! I’m trying to be romantic
here, since apparently you don’t think I have a romantic bone in my
body.”

Akia trailed her hand down his
chest and along his rippling abdominal muscles, her eyes fluttering
when he flexed them and they hardened under her touch, before the
backs of her fingers caressed the sizeable bulge in the front of
his slacks and she fought to keep from moaning. “Oh you have a
romantic bone,” she mused, teasingly rubbing his straining
erection. “A rather sizable one that I wouldn’t mind playing with,”
she said in a singsong tone, one that was unimaginably
arousing.

The brilliant white smile, that
only she got to see behind closed doors, filled his face before he
captured her mouth with his. One of his large hands grabbed Akia’s
backside, and he effortlessly pulled her up off of her feet then
turned them towards the stairs; champagne and fruit could wait till
breakfast.

Damian and Akia didn’t slow their
passionate battle of wills as he carried her to the bedroom before
setting her down at the foot of the bed. His hands caressed up her
toned thighs and slid under her short dress, and when the heat
emanating from between her legs washed over his bare stomach, an
animalistic growl rolled from the base of his throat, and he pushed
her dress up before dropping to his knees on the floor.

“You think so, do you?” Akia said
with a moan, anticipation causing her breathing to labor slightly
and pupils to dilate, tingles raced across her skin, and it felt as
if her blood was starting to boil.

He smirked but didn’t say anything,
then split her knees before burying his face between her
legs.

Content, Akia leaned back in the
water and made herself comfortable against the strong, muscular
body behind her, and closed her eyes. After hours of making
passionate love before collapsing in a sweaty, semiconscious tangle
of flesh, Damian decided that the bathtub was the perfect place to
watch the sunrise. The oversized claw foot tub sat towards the
middle of the second story master bath with a large window that
overlooked Old Harbor and offered amazing views of the
sunrise.

Absently Damian caressed along the
sides of Akia’s thighs under the water, his head resting against
hers, as he enjoyed the serenity of the moment with the woman he
loved in his arms.

For the past five years Damian
Nikas had risked everything—career, family, birthright, and
life—for the woman that entered his life when he couldn’t afford
for her to. After a heated argument with his father, the young,
just announced, Police Captain was trying to drown his problems in
bourbon, something he hadn’t done since he was a teenager, before
finding himself in the arms of a woman he didn’t know. Damian had
never had a one night stand before, and he was honestly ashamed of
himself for it, but the sex was beyond words, by far the best he’d
ever had, and that helped to push the guilt far from his mind as
the night of raw, aggressive and almost primal sex continued for
hours until he could no longer remember his name or feel his body
before collapsing in exhaustion.

When he woke in a strange apartment
in a retirement complex, with a young woman that looked barely
eighteen years old, sprawled out naked across his chest, he
panicked. Once he slid out from under the sleeping woman and got
dressed, he tiptoed towards the door, trying to make his great
escape, but when he reached for the handle he was flooded with
guilt. A war within him raged, something he had never experienced
before, and he wasn’t sure what to do. Since he hadn’t woken up in
a stranger’s bed before, he wasn’t entirely sure of the protocol
for such lewd actions, so he figured he’d be a gentleman and leave
a thank you note. That, he hoped, would curb the guilt flooding him
and sate the suddenly flaring possessive, animalistic side that
wanted to crawl back into bed and wake the stranger with his
thickening cock.

A thank you note for sex
with a stranger?!
he silently
questioned.

The idea was completely ludicrous,
so instead of a note he folded up the piece of paper he found by
the phone into an origami praying mantis with a penciled in smiley
face and left it on the pillow he had used before slipping out of
the door, making sure it was locked behind him.

In a daze he returned home, not
entirely sure how he got there or if he remembered to get his
change from the cabbie, and questioned last night, struggling to
fill in the chunks of time that were apparently missing from his
memory that coincided with each head spinning orgasm. For hours,
the primal side of him had been kicking himself in the ass over not
sticking around, for leaving a mate eating praying mantis of all
things behind as a thank you for the night of amazing sex, for not
offering to get coffee with the stranger… Hell, he would have even
settled for her name!

But he hadn’t.

The rational side was furious for
letting his guard slip, for being so weak, for allowing a stranger
to seduce him as effortlessly as she apparently had. The taste of
her mouth, the feeling of her tight, heated body around his cock,
even her scent, regardless of scrubbing his skin and brushing his
teeth for over an hour, haunted him, and he couldn’t shake the
haunting images of their night of carnal intimacy that flooded his
mind. The moment he tasted her, it was as if he was obeying an
instinct he hadn’t known he possessed, and that instinct was to own
the woman controlling him in ways he had never been controlled
before.

But that was no longer an option.
He ran from her, like a coward, and all that remained were a
handful of images, and the scent and taste he couldn’t
shake.

I didn’t even get her
name,
he had reminded himself more than
once.

When he arrived to the precinct
thirty minutes late for his first day as Captain, he decided that
he didn’t want to think of her or have anything to do with the
drunken whore because she was obviously nothing but trouble.
Causing him to be late was proof of that, and never had he lost
control of the animalistic side within him before, and the fact
that the drunken whore effortlessly brought that side out in him
left the usually levelheaded and put together man annoyed and
disquieted.

She would be nothing but
trouble,
he tried to convince himself as he
eyed his wristwatch and the mother of pearl display and moon dial
that was seemingly mocking him, reminding him that he was late for
work for the first time in his life.

Nothing but trouble.

And he was right.

When the newly named Superintendent
brought three transfers from traffic enforcement to the precinct,
the stone face exterior of the young Captain nearly betrayed him.
His sapphire eyes snapped to the ocean blue eyes glaring at
him.

Superintendent Manning smiled.
“Captain, I’m glad that you could join us,” he teased. “May I
introduce you to three of the finest from District A-1; Officer
Jason Grimes, Officer Sammy Henderson, and Special Operations
Officer Akia de Wolfe.”

“Sir,” they said in unison and
saluted.

Captain Nikas nodded and gave a
half-ass salute in return; it wasn’t a practice he was overly found
of.

The three officers stood at
attention as he continued to eye them, but his attention always
returned to the woman he was more than confident was the sexually
insatiable drunken whore that he spent the night with.

“Is there a problem?” Manning
asked.

“No, Sir,” he responded.

“Good!” the older man beamed. “I’ll
let you get acquainted. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with
them, especially de Wolfe. She is a very impressive
Officer.”

That was putting it
mildly.

“Your uncanny ability to read
people has always been admirable,” Captain Nikas said, getting a
chuckle from Manning in return. “Welcome to District C-11. Grimes,
may I speak with you?” he said, waving the first Officer into his
office.

The other two waited their
turn.

Captain Nikas asked the nervous
Officer generalized questions, trying to read him, to find the
reason why Manning had specifically picked Grimes to be part of
C-11. After ten minutes, the office door opened and Captain Nikas
shook his hand and motioned down a side hall. “CACU is the last
door on the right. Sanderson will be your superior and show you
around, and get you acclimated to the system.”

Grimes saluted with a
face-consuming smile before hurrying down the hallway. He joined
the force solely to be able to help children, so the Crimes Against
Children Unit was a perfect fit for him.

Captain Nikas repeated the
procedure with Henderson, but his eyes kept flickering to the stone
faced woman standing at attention outside his office, her face as
hard and unreadable as stone, ocean blue eyes narrowed in
irritation, and the hard set of her jaw slightly amused him because
he looked the same when he was betrayed.

After ten minutes, Captain Nikas
nodded and stood then motioned towards the door. “Smith in the FAS
won’t be expecting you, but he’ll get over it. Firearms Analysis
Section needs help, especially with the backlog of cases we have.
If he gives you grief, tell him to come see me.”

Henderson saluted. “Thank you,
Sir,” he barked out, in typical military fashion, which was to be
expected since he was an honorably discharged Marine that served
three tours in Iraq, then hurried off towards the
basement.

“Officer de Wolfe,” Captain Nikas
said, motioning towards his office.

Akia stood tall and with her
shoulders back and head held high and walked past him and stood at
attention, ignoring his offer when he motioned for her to take a
seat.

Stubborn and proud, two
things I can respect and find sexy as hell… Damn it,
he silently berated himself.

“I don’t want to talk about
myself,” Akia said when he opened his mouth. “I heard the small
talk you had with the other two, and I have no interest in
bothering with the inconsequential.”

Captain Nikas nodded. “Fair
enough,” he said. “Will this be a problem?”

“Whatever are you inferring to?”
she scathingly sneered. “Since I’m nothing more than a mate head
devouring praying mantis, you’ll have to be a bit more
specific.”

And that was exactly what he wanted
to hear.

“Will this,” Captain Nikas said,
looking up at her from his desk, “be a problem? Because if it is,
I’ll request a reassignment,” he said before he could stop the
words from leaving his lips.

Akia’s small nostrils flared, and
her ocean blue eyes darkened considerably. “I worked my ass off to
get this beat,” she hissed, struggling to keep her composure. “And
if you think I’m going to simply give it up, to go to some smaller
populous beat simply because you can’t stomach looking at the woman
you got shit faced and fucked, then snuck out of her bed like a
coward, you have another thing coming. You mean nothing to me, and
what we did means nothing to me, so no, it won’t be a
problem-”