Following Fabian (12 page)

“I’m glad you came,” she said.

He didn’t push for more. She’d judged him to be the kind of man who didn’t need his ego stoked.

He just nuzzled his face against her ponytail and pressed a caressing hand over her left breast.

When she didn’t brush it away or otherwise impede him, he dragged his thumb across her perked nipple, drawing a moan from her when the sensation sent a tingle down her core to other neglected places. Already, her sex quivered and tensed, anticipating being stretched, being filled.

He laid feather-light kisses on her cheek, and down to the sensitive hollow of her neck.

She tipped her chin back for him, giving him more access and letting his mouth roam where it would while the hand inside her shirt eased down to her waistband. He deftly unfastened her jeans and pushed his hand past the barrier into her panties.

She gasped as his fingers slipped between her lower lips and swirled at her opening.

His breath was hot against her ear when he whispered, “You’re so wet.”

“Am I?”
Lame.
Try as she might, breaking her habit of having an answer for everything was a hard one.

“Mm-hmm.” He shifted forward a bit, and the fact that he was equally aroused became evident as his erection poked her backside through her jeans.

She wriggled her ass against him, and oddly felt brazen for it. She was the kind of woman who wasn’t apologetic about asking for things. If she needed something, she made a request to the appropriate party and didn’t say sorry or beat around the bush. But, this situation was different. She was asking Fabian to fill a need she hadn’t had quenched in three years.

And maybe Maria was right. She could have had sex before now, but she hadn’t been ready.

Now she was ready. For
him
she was ready.

“Yes?” he whispered.

She nodded and locked her gaze on the television screen.

Kissing her neck, he eased down her jeans beneath the blanket along with her underwear and used his foot to nudge them to the end of the sofa to free her legs. He moved behind her, rocking back and forth a bit, probably easing down his sweatpants.

He found her clit with his left hand and eased her back against him, rubbing her, teasing her, as the satiny skin of his cock eased between her thighs.

She drew in an involuntary breath as the end of it tapped the hand she rested in front of her thighs.

That might hurt.

Gathering her wits about her, she stroked her fingers over the slick head as he shifted her top knee up and back so her leg draped over his and she was opened wide for him.

His fingers skimmed hers briefly as he adjusted his cock’s angle and pressed it at her entrance.

He shuddered behind her when he worked the head in, and paused there, breathing heavily. “I hope you…” He hissed when she clenched around him. It was involuntarily, but fuck, she hated slow build-ups. If she were going to be fucked, she wanted one of them to burn some calories in the process.

“…won’t think poorly of me if…”

She wrapped her fingers around his wrist and squeezed, silencing him. “It’s been a while for me, too.”

His nose skimmed up and down at the back of her head—a nod—and he gripped her hip and delved deeper into her.

“If I can’t last, there are other ways I can—”

She rammed her hips back, and sheathed his cock as far down as she could.

“Okay,” he said, moving now with intention. “I see what you want.”

“So give it to me.”

A chuckle rumbled in his chest as he increased his pace, gripping her knee and pounding into her hard enough that she could barely catch her breath.

The man could keep a rhythm, she had to give him that, and fuck if this one wasn’t torturous. She could hardly believe he had concerns about longevity when
she
was the one nearly ready to break apart.

He nudged the afghan down, and through her periphery could see him watching the movements—the repetitive in and out—over her shoulder.

She closed her eyes and sighed. “Bet you’d have a lot of fun with a big mirror.”

He didn’t respond to that quip beyond shifting his hand down to her clit and squeezing it between his thumb and index finger. He gave it a little sharp tug as his thrusts went deeper, harder, and she grabbed his wrist as her body began to quake.

“You’re close?”

Her teeth chattered as her core began to spasm and toes curl against his legs.

“I thought you said…you had…superior endurance,” he said between panted breaths.

“I…I lied.” And the last guy she’d had sex with didn’t hit every nerve ending in her goddamned cunt simultaneously. It’d taken her a lot to get off back then, but again, she’d been trying to put two puzzle pieces that really didn’t fit well together and expected they’d grip when in fact, their very natures were that they couldn’t bond in the first place.

He strummed at her clit, and she wheezed. “Dear Lord. I might die.”

“Don’t die yet. I haven’t had my fill of you.”

Well, that wouldn’t take long. Her average relationship length was about seven months. She had been with David for a year, but she later learned he’d started cheating six months in. He’d cheated with a woman less intelligent than him and more submissive. That was what he liked, apparently.

She blew thoughts of him away on an exhalation and concentrated on the situation at hand. She had a gorgeous man behind her who’d been so desperate to be in her company that he’d asked his brother to drive him over. This was a man who’d seen her as she was from their very first meeting, and he hadn’t been turned off by it. In fact, for some unfathomable reason, he seemed to like it.

With another little tug of her clit, he tipped her over the edge and she cried out, digging her nails into the fabric of the sofa.

His rhythm faltered, and breaths near her ear went choppy. Then his big hand grabbed at her hip and held her still as his dick pulsed inside her. “God.”

“Yeah. I think I just saw Him, too.”

Fabian jolted awake when his morning erection skimmed the crease of Astrid’s warm ass. She scooted against his body, wriggling as if to settle in closer, and he slipped his hand over her hip, targeting her thigh’s apex.

She exhaled a little sigh in her sleep, and he grinned, pressing his nose against her messy pile of hair.

What a way to wake up.

He suddenly understood why Felipe had been in such a hurry to put down roots.

As Fabian’s fingers glided over her thighs, his vision cleared. He stopped his hand.

Astrid’s messy hair hadn’t been the only thing worth noting in his periphery.

A petite woman with long, curly brown hair and bags the size of half-dollars under her eyes perched on the edge of the coffee table, looking on serenely.

Maria
. That was her name. He’d met her briefly at dinner.

Her hands were folded demurely onto her lap and legs crossed at the ankles. She could have been doing anything from waiting for the start of a church service to listening to a fortuneteller spin her future.

“Good afternoon, Fabian,” she said in a calm voice.
Too
calm.

Afternoon, she’d said…

“
Es tarde
.”

He pushed up onto his right elbow, careful not to dislodge the afghan draped over him and Astrid, and squinted at the clock on the cable box. 1:21 p.m.

“
Mierda
.” He gave Astrid’s arm a little shake.

She muttered, “What?” without opening her eyes.

He skimmed his fingers over her cheek and said in the Spanish he hoped Maria didn’t understand, “Maria is here. I think you overslept.”

“Hmm?” Her left eyelid crept up slowly like a mechanized garage door ticking up. She sighed. “What’s up, Maria?”

“I just got here,” the other Shrew said. She grunted and eased her shoulder holster off her arms. “Came straight from the assignment. Dana called and asked if either of us were going to make it to the range. I had just left the stakeout and went straight from there to take care of paperwork. I told her I didn’t know where you were.” She cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes. “Though I guess I should have suspected.”

Fabian squeezed Astrid’s arm. “What is she saying?”

Astrid yawned and covered her head with her arm. “Missed a training session this morning. Dana was trying to figure out where I was.”

“Are you going to get in trouble?”

“Doubt it.”

“We’ve got a meeting at three,” Maria said, and she pointed her index finger at Fabian. “Tell him. Dana said we should be there at the office. All hands on deck, including all the dudes.”

“Why?” came Astrid’s muffled voice.

“Don’t know. I’m going to go shower off the cigar stink from the bar I was in and throw together some lunch. Maybe we can be out of here by 2:30.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Maria stood and loped down the hall, singing softly to herself.

Fabian eased his hand beneath the afghan and pressed it against Astrid’s belly. “What did she say?”

“Dana has called everyone under the sun in for a three o’clock meeting. You included.”

“Why me?”

“Don’t know. Best you do what she asks, though. She’s not a lady you want to be on the bad side of.”

“You don’t seem so eager to get up.” He kissed her neck and pulled a giggle from her.

She snuggled back against him a bit more, brushing his semi-erect cock through his sweatpants.

He hissed and put a hand between them. Couldn’t afford to get too excited now that they’d acquired a chaperone.

“Nope. Warm under here.”

“I see.” He leaned down and skimmed his lips over her earlobe, earning him a smile from her. “I thought you said getting on Dana’s bad side isn’t wise.”

“Yeah, I did say that, huh?”

“You did.”

“I’ll get up then.”

He waited a few moments, but funnily enough, she didn’t move.

Water drummed in the bathroom, so Fabian felt safe enough to ease the afghan off.

“Fuck.” She was still naked from the waist down, and the cock he’d been chastising on and off for the past five minutes went for the gusto. He wanted so badly to put his mouth there—to taste her, pleasure her. Somehow, he suspected that after pumping her full of his spunk, she wouldn’t be amenable to the idea. She might even kick his ass when she realized he’d done it. He could have pulled out, but hadn’t seen the point of it.
What’s the worst that could happen
? was all he’d been able to think when he was inside her.

She sat up, sighing, and grabbed her jeans from the end of the sofa.

His eyes focused on the odd motif of her socks as she wriggled her panties up her legs. He pressed a hand to her waist.

“
Dragón
, are those pigs on your socks?”

“Yes. Flying pigs, in fact.”

“Cute.”

“That sarcasm? You going to ask me what little girl’s dresser I raided and wonder when I’m going to give them back?”

“No. Why?” Odd woman, and not because of her socks. He stifled a chuckle.

She stood and let her panties snap at the waist before bending to step into her jeans.

Before he could help himself, his palms met the globes of her ass and squeezed.

She yipped and took a big step away from him. “Quit it. I don’t want to have to body slam you.”

He shook his head. “
No entiendo
.”

“Yeah, you
entiendo
just fine.” She wrapped fingers around his wrist and squinted at him. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you didn’t pull out last night.”

Busted.

“If I end up pregnant, your rolling stone days are over, dude. I will ball-and-chain your ass so quick, you won’t see it coming. You’ll be down the aisle and in front of a priest before the ink dries on the marriage license, do you understand me?”

“So be it.” Like he’d thought the previous night—what was the worst that could happen? In his book, forging a permanent genetic connection was the
best
-case scenario. When she figured out how useless he was for anything else, she’d have no reason to want him around.

“Right.” She unhanded him, gnawing pensively on her lip.

“
Qué
,
dragón
?” Had she figured it out already?

She hooked her finger at him, and strode backward down the hall. “Shower?”

Together?

He didn’t make her ask twice.

* * *

“We’re running out of chairs,” Dana said as she pushed a rolling desk chair from the outer office into Shrew & Company’s conference room.

Fabian recognized a few of the people at the table. His brother, naturally, near the end closest to the door and on Sarah’s left side. Sarah rubbing her belly idly with one hand while flipping through a pile of paperwork with the other. Dana, of course. Patrick, whom he met at dinner the other night. Maria sat across the table from Fabian with his old circus crony Mr. Tolvaj at her right.

Tolvaj had been born into service of Jacques because of the contract his father had signed. He could shapeshift into pretty much anything of similar size and bulk, which made him one of Dana’s secret weapons when the agency did work requiring infiltration or casual surveillance.

Fabian had once seen the man shift into a German Shepherd when the troupe was hiding out in Siberia after one of Jacques’s failed abduction attempts. Took Jacques a while to pay off the local law enforcement there so they could travel again. Fabian had asked Mr. Tolvaj why he’d shifted into a dog, of all things, and the man had flapped his hands against his arms, teeth chattering, and said, “It’s three degrees Celsius, and I don’t own a decent coat. Jacques has been holding my pay for six months. The dog has a better coat than I do.”

Fabian knew a little something about wage withholding. By the time Felipe had fled, they “owed” Jacques so much money, they would have never been able to work off the debt before they died.

Other people filed in and made the small conference room even more crowded. The voluptuous blonde who kept looking from Fabian to Felipe and back again had her brow furrowed. Drea, the agency secretary whom Fabian remembered from their layover in Asheville. Jacques had sent the Visas out to abduct local Were-creatures, and she and her brother Bryan had been two of the unlucky victims. And finally, there was a woman leaning against the file cabinet with her arms crossed over her chest. Red hair, probably approaching fifty if she wasn’t there yet. Pretty in an old-fashioned sort of way. The Shrews kept calling her “Doc,” but Fabian didn’t know whether that was a nickname or her actual profession.

Drea sank into the seat Dana had rolled in and Dana jabbed some keys on her laptop. “Astrid, can you translate simultaneously? Can you filter so what I say makes sense to him?” She nodded toward Fabian.

He turned to Astrid and raised an eyebrow in query.

She held out her hand and he took it.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure what that’ll involve, but we’ll give it a shot.”

She shifted to silent communication.
“Uh. We’re going to try something. She’s going to talk, and I’m going to try to push through what she’s saying at the same time. This may prove disastrous. Tell me if all you’re getting from me is gibberish.”

He could tell by the way her forehead wrinkled that speaking to him that way required a lot of concentration. He appreciated the effort. “
Okay.
”

A speaker boomed in the front corner of the room, and Dana whispered “Ah,” and pushed herself more upright. “All right. I’ll skip all the preliminaries. No formal agenda today. We need to mobilize pretty quickly and take care of this mess before Gene finds out we’ve left the area.”

“We?” the blonde asked. “You mean we’re taking a field trip? All of us?”

Astrid squeezed Fabian’s hand.
“You getting all that, or am I not focusing well enough?”

“I understand.”

“Yes. All of us,” Dana said. “Well, Sarah excluded—for obvious reasons—and Drea wouldn’t go either. I’m on the fence about you, Doc.”

They all turned to the redhead, whom raised one pristine eyebrow.

“Your gut is telling you that you need me, but you don’t know why, right?” she asked.

Dana nodded. “I don’t have premonitions,” she said by way of explanation to Fabian. “I get bad feelings, and usually shit hits the fan shortly after. This is the same feeling I got when I sent Sarah on that undercover job up in Maryland last year.”

Dana paced, staring at the floor for a minute, and they all watched her, probably terrified of interrupting her train of thoughts. Dana was a small woman, but she had a quality about her that screamed
leader
even without a person knowing who she was and what position she held. She exuded authority and demanded respect just by living and being. “Okay. Easiest way to preface this meeting is to play this voice mail I got last night. Incidentally, I tried calling you, Astrid, but you didn’t answer.”

Astrid didn’t say anything. In fact, she rolled her lips in and pressed them tight.

The dragon is speechless? Unbelievable.

Sarah, down the table, sighed and said, “Evidently, it’s the Castillo effect. If you have one of them around, you can’t get anywhere on time or be reached when needed.”

Felipe raised his shoulders and let them fall. “Cut me some slack. I’m still getting used to the business hours thing. I believe I’m coping admirably given the circumstances.”

Dana laughed. “That you are. All right. Ears open, here we go.” She pushed a button, and the speaker mounted in the ceiling corner roared to life.

Static—perhaps wind being blown into a mouthpiece—filled the line, and then a deep, accented voice said, “Hello, this is a message for Sarah Castillo or her boss Dana. I am… Well, no matter that. It doesn’t matter. I have some information you will want to act on, and you will have to act quickly. I am currently at a payphone in northern Montana.”

Moan-tanya
, he’d pronounced it. Felipe must have noticed the pronunciation as well, because he immediately turned his head toward Fabian wearing a
You heard that, too?
expression.

Fabian nodded.

The man continued, “Uh, I believe near Highway 191. I have been following a man named Jacques Daniau for the past three days.”

Felipe pounded the tabletop. “That’s him. I want first crack at him.”

Fabian drew in a breath to speak, but couldn’t rustle up enough enthusiasm about encountering Jacques to push any words out.

He was still waiting, hoping he’d do what needed to be done when the time came.

“We’ll get him,” Dana said, resuming her pacing. “Listen. Our informant has more to say.”

“I know you have some interest in him,” the voice in the speaker said. “As do I. I have my own reasons for wanting to track him, however there are individuals in his entourage who require rescue. I cannot assist them. Jacques is under heavy guard, and I can only do so much without causing alarm. Making things worse for them. It’s not just Jacques that needs to be taken, but I am sure you are aware of that. He—”

The line cut off, and everyone around the table started talking at once.

Dana shouted “Hey!” over the din, and calmed the ruckus. “He called back. I guess the phone wanted more change. Here.” She pushed a button, and he was back again.

“The troupe is traveling east and west along the US-Canada border, and I think Jacques intends to pass up into the Grasslands Park area soon. From what I have observed, certain parties in his caravan lack the proper documentation to leave the country, but as soon as they have it, they will try to disappear. It is imperative that you close in on him and his party soon. Of further interest to you, there is a man here—a Were-catamount named Billy. Apparently, he worked in collusion with Jacques to cause some problems with your local Bears, and also mismanaged his Cats before that. I believe the Patrick he has mentioned in passing is your Mr. O’Dwyer. I have information for you, Mr. O’Dwyer, that I won’t relay at this time, but that you should know all the same. We will discuss it soon. The group is about to move, and I will follow. I will phone back. Please be ready. Jacques has fourteen guards that I’ve been able to count, and I suspect you know what they are.”