Big Bad Beast

CHAPTER 20

Dee decided to walk in the front door of Ric’s building, rather than skulking around the back until she found a way in. As she approached the big glass doors, the doorman rushed to open it.

“Good evening, Miss Smith,” he said, tipping his hat.

Dee froze, her body tensing. She scowled at the full-human, but he only smiled and waited for her to walk through the door. She did and entered the elevator, taking it to the penthouse.

Going against everything she practiced on a daily basis, she used the set of keys Ric had given her and opened the front door. She pulled off her jacket, hung it up in the closet, and walked down the hallway. She still felt like she was skulking, sticking to the shadows of the dimly lit apartment. Deciding she didn’t want to skulk around the man’s apartment any more than she wanted to skulk around his building, she stepped more into the middle of the hallway and headed toward the kitchen. The one place he always seemed to be.

“Ric?” she called out, assuming people who didn’t skulk made noise. They always did in movies and on TV. She pushed open the swinging door and stepped in to the kitchen. “Ric? Are you here?” That always seemed like a stupid question coming from shifters since she knew the man was somewhere in the apartment. Her nose picked up his scent, her ears could hear him moving around, and she could feel his presence. But it was a normal question and she could do normal in short, controlled bursts. Like gunfire.

A low growl came at her from the darkness and Dee stepped out of the kitchen, letting the door swing closed behind her. The growl moved closer, and eyes reflected the light from the few lamps that were lit.

Smiling a little, despite the problems she and her team had walked into, Dee moved away from the kitchen door and more into the hallway.

“Now what do you think you’re doing, Mr. Van Holtz? To some poor little gal all alone in the middle of your big ol’ apartment. Defenseless.”

Big paws padded softly against the marble flooring, the wolf circling around Dee-Ann, staying hidden in the shadows, but she knew where he was at every second.

Thinking that play should wait, Dee-Ann said, “We need to talk, Van Holtz.” But he snarled at that. “I know what you’d rather be doing but that’s not the point. We should talk. About business. Like two professionals.”

He stepped out of the darkness, all rippling muscle and power passed down from ancestors hundreds of years gone. He lowered his head, bright blue gaze locked on her face.

Dee stepped back and shook her head. “This ain’t professional, Ulrich.”

And that’s when he charged her.

Dez walked into the Brooklyn home she shared with her husband and mate. Her two purebred Rottweilers met her at the front door, greeting her with wet kisses and excited tail wags. She’d refused to dock their tails like some owners and she was glad she hadn’t. Nothing drove Mace crazier than when her dogs knocked shit down with their tails.

She petted them and scratched the spot where their tails met their rumps until they were nothing more than wiggling dog flesh on the floor. Standing up, she pulled off her jacket and placed it over the banister. Her backpack dropped at the front door, Dez walked toward the kitchen, but before she got too far, the door opened and the most important thing in her life charged straight at her. Dez fell to her knees and opened her arms wide, laughing as the hyperkinetic bundle slammed into her body, knocking both of them to the ground.

She showered Marcus with kisses, knowing that everything she did during these long days and many nights was to ensure that one day he’d be able to roll around on the floor with his own son or daughter or both and all their dogs—because her son would have dogs. Even if he was a cat. Because what was a life without dogs?

“What is this on your face?” she asked him, realizing it was probably all over her face now, too.

“Okay,” Blayne Thorpe told her, barreling through the kitchen door. “It was just a slight mishap with the brownie mix. No reason to panic!”

Except Blayne appeared worse off than Marcus. Christ, the kid was covered. Did they actually bake any brownies?

“But I called in the heavy artillery,” Blayne went on, “to get this place spic and span.”

Dez got to her feet, lifting Marcus up until he wrapped his arms around her neck. “You called your boyfriend in to clean my apartment?”

“Someone had to do it,” came a voice from behind the kitchen door.

“Any other problems?” Dez asked, turning toward the front door as it opened and her husband walked in, his dog beside him. Apparently the mixed Rottie rescue was too good to stay at the house among Dez’s average, run-of-the-mill purebreds. Instead, she had to go into the city with Mace to help him endure the work day and keep Smitty’s dog, Shit-starter, from bothering him.

The little whore.

“Sorry I’m late,” Mace said. “Job ran long.”

“No problem,” Blayne chirped. She was perhaps the chirpiest person Dez had ever known. Marcus adored her and Mace . . . tolerated her more than most. And that said a lot. “No derby practice tonight.”

“My son,” Mace said, pulling Marcus out of Dez’s arms without an invitation and holding him high above his head. “Future of my bloodline.”

Dez shook her head in disgust, Blayne giggled.

Marcus scowled down at his father, pulled back his arm, and slashed at Mace’s handsome face with nonexistent claws.

“Viper child!” Mace snarled.

Holding out her arms, Dez ordered, “Give me my son, Llewellyn.”

“Momma’s boy. That’s what you’ve turned him into.” He shoved his son back into Dez’s arms. “An ungrateful momma’s boy. I allow you to live, boy! Don’t you forget it!”

“Thank you, Blayne,” Dez said over all the bellowing and her son’s giggling. “Are you sure we can’t pay you?”

“Absolutely not!”

“Yeah, because everything should be for free,” Bo Novikov complained from the kitchen. “So we can live in a Blayne-like utopia.”

Blayne smiled and said, “Excuse me a moment.”

Dee waited until Blayne had gone back into the kitchen before she faced her husband. “We need to talk.”

“What did I do now?”

“Nothing.”

“Because whatever it was, I’m sure I didn’t mean to do it.”

“You’re not helping yourself, Captain Ego.”

“And if I want to help a friend,” Blayne bellowed from behind the kitchen door, “I’ll do it! And you’re not going to give me any shit over it, you oversized Visigoth!”

“ ‘They’re such a cute couple,’” Mace imitated back to Dez from a recent wild dog party where she’d had a tad too many margaritas.

“They are a cute, if unstable couple.”

“He’s more bear than lion.”

“Which means what? That his head’s not as big as yours?”

“Okay.” Blayne came back through the door, her hand gripping Novikov’s forearm. Dez would never say it out loud, but the size of that man was . . . off-putting. To her anyway. Mace was only a nice, relatively normal six-four, but getting into the seven feet and over range just freaked Dez out. What was it like to fuck someone that size? Could you be smothered? Especially when he wasn’t some skinny basketball player type but nearly four hundred pounds of muscle. God, what if he died on top of her? Would Blayne be able to drag herself out?

Mace bumped her with his hip and Dez realized she was staring at Novikov again. She probably had what Mace called her “look of abject horror” expression. She had to work on that.

“Thank you both,” she said to hide the fear.

“No problem,” Blayne kissed Marcus on the forehead as the boy tried to latch on to Blayne with one arm while still holding on to his mother.

“You’ll need to buy more cleaning products,” Novikov told her, scowling down at her like he might bite her head off at any second. “I had enough to clean the kitchen but that was it.” He glanced around. “Although you really need someone to clean the whole house. It’s kind of a sty.”

“Okay!” Blayne began to charge toward the front door, dragging Novikov behind her. “Anytime, Dez. You need me, you call, and I’ll be there! ’Night!”

“ ’Night, Blayne.”

The door slammed shut behind the couple and Mace headed to the kitchen, shaking his head. “I think our house is clean enough, thanks. What a freak.”

He disappeared behind the door.

“Let me put Marcus to bed,” Dez said, “and then we can—”

The kitchen door slammed open again, Mace standing there, his eyes wide. “Dez, you have to see this kitchen. It’s like something from a freakin’ Lysol ad.”

Cella disconnected her call with her boss and tossed the phone onto the old kitchen table. It was one of the few things her mother hadn’t replaced as she’d done with almost all the other furniture in the Malone Long Island family home Cella had grown up in.

She knew that now she was back in New York, she’d have to get her own place. Probably a place in the city, but at the moment she was enjoying living with her family. One of the rare tiger families that had a male involved who wasn’t a son. Most She-tigers couldn’t stand having a tiger male around once they’d gotten pregnant, but her parents had met each other in grade school and had been together ever since. That was her parents, though. Cella had gone about things a little differently.

“You just getting home?” her seventeen-year-old daughter asked, closing the door to the basement that had been her bedroom since her mother had joined the Marines and left her in her grandparents’ care.

“Yep. Busy night.”

“Busy couple of days. There’s some leftover lasagna from dinner. You want me to put some in the microwave?” Her daughter always phrased such things as a question even while she was already cutting up the leftover lasagna, putting it on a plate, and dropping it into the microwave.

“Sure. Thanks, baby.”

“No problem.”

Cella stood, heading toward the stairs to her room. “I’m going to change clothes. I’ll be right back.”

“Okay. But Uncle Kevin spent the night so—”

Before her daughter could even finish, Cella was tackled from behind, her younger-by-four-years brother slamming her to the floor.

“Your skills are weak!” he told her like he told her every time he did this. “As always, I am the stronger sib—owww! Damn, Cella! Why do you always hit so hard? I’m telling Ma!”

Dee’s naked body collided with the wall, Ric buried deep inside her, his face pressed against her neck. He slid his hand under her thigh and lifted her leg, his condom-covered cock tapping some delicious new angle that had her panting hard and gripping his shoulders.

“I thought you’d never get home,” he gasped, nipping the tendons along her neck.

“Working,” she said, yipping when his fingers tugged at her nipples, his hips grinding against her.

“I have to give you better hours.”

“Ric—” But he kissed her before she could finish, his tongue plunging into her mouth. She kissed him back, unable not to. He had the sweetest-tasting mouth.

His body kept her pinned to the wall, his hands moving off her breasts so that he could force her arms against the wall.

“We have to talk,” she tried again when their mouths separated.

“Later,” he told her, now fucking her with powerful strokes. “Tell me all about it later.”

“Okay,” she squeaked.

Mace Llewellyn pushed the dark chocolate ice cream he’d scooped out for himself and Dez away, shaking his head at her words. “That can’t be right. They’re lying.”

“They have no reason to lie.”

He paced away from the stainless-steel kitchen counter and back again, the dog he’d made his own right by his side, sensing her master’s mood.

“The information has to be wrong, Dez.”

She came out from behind the counter and put her arms around his waist, understanding how hard this was for him. “But it’s not. You know it’s not.”

Dez held Mace tight, relieved when she felt his arms wrap around her body and hold her.

“We’ll fix it,” she said. “I promise.”

“There’s only one way this will get fixed,” he said, and buried his face against her neck.

And she knew he was right.

Ric sat up in the middle of his hallway floor and gazed at Dee-Ann.

“Missy Llewellyn? Mace Llewellyn’s sister?”

“That’s where the money leads.”

“Are you sure? We have to be sure.”

“I’m sure that the information I have is right.”

He scratched his head, unable to wrap his mind around this. “It can’t be Missy, Dee-Ann. It can’t be coming from her.”

“Why not? Because she’s too rich?”

“No,” he argued. “Because she’s too damn lazy.” He laughed, resting his arms on his knees. “I’ve known Missy for a lot of years. We run in the same society circles and although she’s not a fan of hybrids, Missy isn’t a fan of anyone. She hates equally across the board. But to invest this kind of money and risk, you’d have to really hate hybrids with a passion. Missy doesn’t do anything with passion except complain. My God, can she complain.”

Dee-Ann sat up and Ric forced himself to focus on her face. If he looked any lower, he’d be all over her again rather than focusing on the bigger issue.

“Then what do you think’s going on?”

“I don’t know. Unless she’s being set up. By hyenas, maybe?”

“Hyenas ain’t puttin’ money out for hybrid fights. They hoard their cash.”

“Very true.” Ric grimaced. “There’s a Llewellyn on the Board, you know.” The Board had come into existence in the late 1800s to handle territory disputes that had turned ugly. Representatives from the bigger Prides, Packs, and Clans now met twice a year to discuss any issues or concerns, but would meet more often if there were problems that couldn’t be resolved easily and quickly through phone calls or e-mails. “Matilda Llewellyn. So we’ll have to be careful how we handle this.”

“Yeah. Wouldn’t want to insult the rich felines who’re maybe killing their own kind.”

“That’s not what I meant. So feel free not to put words in my mouth. And why are we arguing when we’re both naked?”

“Let’s face it, Ric, to put together an organization like this, to run it right—there has to be some serious money involved.”

“The Van Holtzes have money like that. The Magnus Pack. The Löwes. And that’s what Missy is going to say, and she’d have a valid argument. What about her brother, Mace?”

“Forget it.” Dee shook her head. “I can go on and on about Mace Llewellyn and why he’d never in a million years be involved in something like this, but most important is that he’s never had direct access to pride money. Not ever.”

“Can he be trusted if we go to him?”

“Absolutely.”

“Let me talk to Uncle Van. He deals with Matilda, so maybe he has some ideas.”

“Malone’s people may deal with it.”

“If they do, I might end up feeling a little sorry for Missy.”

“Oh?”

“Felines are mean, Dee-Ann,” he said, standing up. “Just . . . mean. At least you’d be in and out quick.”

“True enough.”

Ric started to walk away to get his phone, but he came back, crouching in front of her.

“You said you need to call your Uncle Van.”

“I know. I just wanted another kiss.”

“We start kissin’, you’re not going to call your uncle.”

“Cousin.”

“Whatever.”

Ric leaned in. “Kiss me anyway. So we can make up for arguing while naked. We should never argue while naked.”

“Lord, once you set your mind to something—”

“—like a wolf with a bone,” he finished on a whisper.