In the Shadow of the Wolf 3 - Splintered Lies (5 page)

Sitting quietly in the dark, Nick did his best to ignore the brush of Joe's breath across his groin. It wasn't easy. In human form Nick had no sexual desire for Joe the wolf. Sexual relations didn't work that way among wolves, but the awareness that in the space of a single heartbeat the wolf could become the man kept Nick on edge.

And then it happened. The sleek form of Joe's wolf disappeared and a very human Joe lay still and quiet on the ground. His head still rested in Nick's lap. Nick froze, the fingers of one hand caught in the act of caressing the line of Joe's throat, the others stroking his ear. Joe didn't move or make a sound, the undisturbed rise and fall of his chest suggested he still slept. It was unusual, though not unheard of, for a wolf to change in his sleep. Since arousal was a frequent culprit, Nick wondered what Joe was dreaming. Despite what Joe claimed about his dreams over the past years, Nick suspected that since her death, Mara filled Joe's mind asleep as well as awake. Her good-natured sass had been the perfect foil for Joe's intensity; her soft petite form had fit into his strong arms as if she were made for him.

Mara had been impossible to hate, though Nick had longed to do just that. He'd been angry and hurt when they met, but it hadn't lasted. Knowing what was best for Joe, Nick let go of his dreams and let go of his friend. Allowed him to go forward with his life into a place Nick couldn't follow. Now, Mara, for all her goodness and beauty, was gone and Nick remained. Surely wishing for a second chance to regain something so precious couldn't be wrong. He felt the brush of Joe's lips against the naked skin of his thigh. Nick froze, not daring to even take a breath.

Guilt over not knowing if Joe was awake or asleep brushed Nick's conscience, only to be washed away by a rush of white hot lust when Joe turned onto his belly and buried his face against Nick's groin. Joe took a deep breath and then another. His entire body shuddered.

"Goddamn you," Joe groaned, nosing Nick's cock that stood only at half-mast but was quickly rising to the occasion.

Nick moved his hands to cup Joe's head; they hovered there barely brushing his hair. "Joe?"
"Shut up." Joe's tortured growl snapped Nick's lips closed on whatever he'd been about to say. Even he wasn't sure what it would have been. Joe's mouth closed over the head of Nick's cock and Nick's world spun out of control
. Stop him
. His conscience tried to flare to life. Nick couldn't move.
Stop him!
Joe sucked. White light flashed behind Nick's eyelids and he gasped. When Joe palmed Nick's balls all was lost. Nick fell backwards into the moss. Nothing had ever felt more natural than lying there under the moon with Joe's mouth devouring him. The eager, hungry noise Joe made swallowing Nick's cock curled his toes. Nick's fingers slid into Joe's hair, the texture was very much like he remembered—like silk.
Joe tongued the underside of Nick's cock, suckling the head as he slid down the full length and buried his nose in the coarse curls at the base. Nick cried out, and his fingers tightened against Joe's scalp as his hips lifted from the ground, pushing his dick deeper. Joe didn't choke, instead he relaxed, humming slightly, and Nick felt the vibration resonate to his core. He whimpered and squirmed under the torture of Joe's mouth, pumping his hips, desperately chasing his orgasm. When Nick's movements made reaching his cock awkward, Joe rose up on his hands and knees and crouched over Nick. Making no attempt to hold him down, Joe let Nick fuck his mouth as hard and fast as he needed it.
When he came, Nick's howl of Joe's name split the night. Joe didn't back off, taking Nick deep and sucking hard, swallowing the thick strands of cum as it pumped from Nick's body. Joe eased him down, sucking more gently, caressing Nick with long strokes of his tongue as Nick slowly relaxed back onto the ground. His fingers threaded through Joe's hair in a gentle caress but Joe pulled away, collapsing to sit cross-legged on the ground beside Nick's hip. Not looking at Nick, he stared off into the dark stand of trees at the edge of the clearing. Nick lay still, barely daring to breathe, terrified Joe would bolt.
"I hate you."
The softly spoken words barely broke the air between them. They would have crushed Nick, torn his heart asunder, except Joe's tone said something else entirely.
"I hate you. You're here and she's gone." Joe crouched over Nick again; he leaned and pressed his face into Nick's abdomen. He breathed and licked his way up Nick's torso. The moment, as heartbreaking as it was erotic, held Nick frozen in place, waiting to see what Joe would do. Joe buried his face in the hollow of Nick's throat. "You're here, always here. Never asking. Taking up space. Stealing my air. Smelling." Joe moved his mouth and nose along the underside of Nick's jaw, behind his ear, finally burying his face in Nick's hair. "Do you have any fucking idea how good you smell?" Joe inhaled again, deeply. The full weight of his body pressed Nick into the ground. Joe's hands clutched Nick's biceps, fingers pressing deep into the muscle. Bruising.
Nick realized Joe was crying the same moment the first sob escaped. Nick wrapped his arms around his best friend, holding him close and feeling the frantic beat of Joe's heart against his chest. "I'm sorry."
"Just shut up." Joe clutched Nick tighter. "There's nothing to say. I hate you. I hate you so goddamn much."
Pressing a kiss into Joe's hair, just behind his ear, Nick didn't say a word, simply held Joe close and let him cry.

The silence in the car was telling. Joe stared out the window and his head spinning with what-ifs and maybes. Nick was the one driving, Joe wasn't sure he could have managed the driving even if he'd tried. Every thought he had was filled with grief and anger. Not a good mix. What had just happened between them was the last thing that should have happened.
Fuck
. He was destroying Mara's memory by giving in to his overwhelming lust for Nick. That was all it could be. All he would allow it to be. Lust. Pushing away thoughts of more with his best friend, of a future of any sort, he concentrated on the case at hand.

Rob had agreed it was best to talk away from the office and they decided to meet at Rob's apartment. Dan answered the door and immediately pulled Joe into a hug. Dan's expression showed that he had been given all the information about Mara and the baby. He looked devastated, shocked, and furious. Joe shook his head as Dan opened his mouth to speak. He didn't want to talk about his wife and what had happened. Dan simply nodded. He understood and he didn't push it. Instead he sat at Rob's wide table, pulled out a sheaf of papers, and spread it out. He passed down mugs of steaming coffee to both Joe and Nick, and if they smelled of sex, Dan wisely didn't say a word. Instead he waited for Rob to take over the direction of what they were discussing.

Dan summarized in a few words. "Chase VaughnHyland, fifty-three, married, a Yale graduate, made his own money in textiles, but his family background is in pharmaceuticals. His grandparents were part of an initial team of chemists and marketers who created Ardenvale Pharmaceuticals. They grew in the sixties off the back of contraception. Chase's parents had the reins until nineteen ninety-nine when they were killed in a car accident. The whole place was bought out by shareholders and is now run by a husband and wife team—"

"We met the wife," Nick commented.
"Susan Young," Dan said.
"Cold as ice and twice as tight." Joe shuddered

inwardly. She had looked right through him with her fixed stare. So damn polite but still closed off to Joe's natural empathy with people.

"Looks to me like the husband is nothing but a figurehead. The research is where it's at. There's something here—" Dan paused and rifled through the papers until he found a printed image of a newspaper cutting. The headline said 'pharmaceutical giant probed by senate ethics committee'. "Appears our Senator Vaughn-Hyland was on that committee as a newbie."

"That's wrong. If he has connections to Ardenvale then how did he get on that committee?" Nick asked.
Joe thought that was a very good question.
Dan shrugged. "We checked. He has no income from Ardenvale. He sold all his shares, so I guess he was cleared."
"We need to get his financials—"
"We can't without a warrant, Joe." Nick sighed. "And let's face it, we have nothing to support a warrant except one e-mail mentioning a senator, supposition, and coincidence. We can only go on what is made public."
Joe's temper spiked. Rob placed a firm hand on Joe's arm and even though Joe shrugged the touch away he had been warned.
Fuck
. All he wanted to do was go and rip someone's heart out. May as well start with the senator if there was one single shred of evidence pointing his way. Politicians were a waste of space anyhow.
"There is something else." Dan's voice broke the tension. "Just after the parents died there was some kind of problem with their other son, Chase's brother. He was killed in the shifter riots of ninety-three."
"Shit." Nick vocalized what Joe was thinking. That had been a bad time and part of the reason why the human/wolf liaison team existed now. Tension between humans and wolves had been high in the poorer areas of the city and things had ended up bloody before agreement was reached for sit-down talks.
"The senator lost a brother. Was anyone arrested?" By anyone Nick meant a wolf. Over fifty humans and six wolves had been lost in the riots that lasted four days.
Dan tapped some keywords into his laptop and then frowned at the results. Joe knew what he was going to say even before he opened his mouth.
"No specific arrest or absolute confirmation of fault." He read lower. "Oscar was found after the second from last wolf/human clash." He sat back in his chair and looked Joe straight in the eye. "Throat ripped out."
"Wolf."
"So what do we think is happening? The senator is finding ways to cull the wolf population in memory of his dead brother? Or as some kind of twisted revenge? This is despite his very visible work for equal rights and interagency cooperation?" Rob wasn't trying to pour salt on open wounds. He was playing devil's advocate. Still that didn't stop Joe from standing in a flurry of motion and half growling his displeasure. Rob didn't need to sound so disbelieving. The riots had been a part of shifter history that remained an open sore. Forever labeled the ghetto riots, simply because they blew out of tension in what were the city's poorest areas, every child at school learned the horror of what had happened. So many human deaths had made fear of shifters almost commonplace for so many years. The tension hadn't gone away in some areas but it was managed.
"It's a place to start," Nick said firmly. Joe looked at his best friend, almost pathetically grateful that at least one person saw some mileage in this approach.
"I say we go and interview the senator," Joe announced. He stood with every intention of going right now but Nick's thoughtful, assessing gaze made him stop. "What?"
"If we go marching into his office, or home, then he will know something is wrong. We need to play this subtly."
Joe let the others argue about the best way for Joe and Nick to orchestrate a meeting with the senator. He didn't have the patience for working out details. Nothing in him wanted subtle. His wolf was barely contained and scratched and snarled to be let free. Whatever they decided they needed to do something soon. He stopped pacing when Rob stood in his way and held up a hand. Joe bristled at the unspoken command but his wolf reacted so very differently he was thrown. It calmed immediately, as if the very act of Rob standing there was enough to take control. He had to stop himself from tilting his head and offering his damn throat, to a fucking human no less.
"There's an open charity event at the Vaughn-Hyland estate this evening. It's a weekly thing for local charities to network," Dan said.
"Cover enough for us to have a look around while he's busy?"
"No. Cover enough for us to attend."
"What the fuck?" Joe looked over Rob's shoulder toward Nick and Dan who both sat with deadly expressions on their faces. That was the big plan? Attending what? A freaking charity event? Joe was sure his expression said it all.
"It's a valid excuse for us to be on the senator's property without raising suspicion and for us to have a nose around."
"Really? And how the hell do you propose we get in?" Joe didn't imagine for one minute that people just up and walked in the front door of a senator's place without invitation.
"Leave that to me," Rob said confidently. That took care of one question. No doubt Rob could get them in, and the invitations would even be real. The guy could be scary like that. Joe had to admit, if only to himself, there was a reason his modern pack had a human alpha.
"We have one problem," Dan said thoughtfully.
"One?" Joe cocked his head at Dan. "Really?" Honestly, the entire plan was so full of holes they should be thankful the thing wasn't a boat.
Dan grinned, his expression wicked. "Do you have a tux?"

Joe turned the letter of invitation over in his hands, folding it this way and that. Tonight was a joint initiative between various charities, all hosted at the open home of the senator.

"Don't you realize how ironic this is?" Nick said next to him. Joe couldn't look. In jeans and T-shirt Nick was hot, in a suit he was hot, but a freaking tuxedo? He was sex personified.

"What?" he asked tersely.
"That the way in for two wolf shifters to nose around the senator's home is a cat protection charity?" Nick sounded amused. Rob had definitely come through on the tickets, or Jamie was using his connections to a charity he was deeply involved in. Freaking cats. Joe said nothing and Nick subsided into silence for the rest of the cab ride to the city limits and the most expensive of the suburbs—the residential enclave of Gentle Hill. Single mansions separated by acres of grass and surrounded by tall fences and walls were not conducive to breaking and entering by a wolf desperate for information. The guise of concerned patrons was exactly the perfect cover for Nick and Joe to get inside without tripping alarms. The gates slid open smoothly as soon as they showed the invitations. Joe catalogued the security. Three guards on the gate and cameras on every plinth and statue secured the drive ending in a simple round drop-off area with a fountain at the center. The cab deposited them at the front entrance and drove off immediately. Nick watched the gates shut behind the retreating taxi. Two more guards checked invitations against a list. Both wolves, unlike the humans on the gate. One of the wolves scented the air and narrowed his eyes at Joe.
In response Joe pasted on his best innocent smile and gently rearranged his identification badge. This drew the security wolf's attention to what the badge said. The Cat Protection charity lent them an air of innocence. After all no wolf who liked cats was anything other than completely off his rocker. Right? He saw the wolf guard smirk and ached to shift and put an end to the whole farce. Struggling, Joe didn't let the aggression rise to the surface. Nick was doing a very good impression of urbane wolf about town and there was no way Joe was going to fuck this up.
Wolf guard one inclined his head. "Have a good evening, gentlemen." And finally the two of them made it through the huge carved-wood front door. The scents inside were overwhelming. The cloying smell of vanilla and something else assaulted Joe's nostrils as soon as he stepped inside. Fucking candles everywhere, all releasing the same scent. He couldn't get a real handle on anything except the stink of the candles. Suspicious thoughts of deliberately disguising a smell, one potentially harmful to wolves, spun in his head. Joe felt vulnerable without the grounding of his ability.
Joe could see Nick was just as confused, but he had to depend on visual clues. Even the familiar scent of friend was missing, making staying in control of his wolf just that much harder.
"Gentlemen?"
Joe realized a smaller man, short in height and wide in girth, was standing patiently with his hand extended, clearly waiting for something. Joe, still off balance from the loss of a sense he depended upon as strongly as his sight, wasn't following what the guy wanted.
"Could I see your invitations?"
Nick grabbed Joe's and passed both to the little man whose face broke into a wreath of smiles. "Aha, you're the representatives from the Covington Cat Rescue. I've heard great things about what you've been accomplishing lately. I am so pleased to meet you."
"Likewise," Nick said conversationally. "We're very pleased to be here. Aren't we?"
Joe realized Nick was talking to him.
"Very." His terse response caused Nick to raise a brow at him. Joe thought Nick should be grateful the he managed to refrain from rolling his eyes.
"My name is Errol and it's my job to arrange for likeminded charities to connect. I know just who you'll be interested in speaking with."
"You do?"
"Oh, yes! I know everyone. Vera and June BoylesHayward are the people for you. They have an Alpaca sanctuary. You will have so much in common."
Joe inhaled and took a lungful of vanilla as well as the other aromas flooding the manor. He smothered a cough in his fist and little man looked concerned.
"Are you feeling all right, sir? Can I get you some water?"
"I'll be fine." Joe managed to string the words together. He looked at Nick. "We'll be fine."
Little man looked concerned a while longer until finally he appeared to believe what Joe was saying. Straightening his cerise tie he looked around him as the front door opened behind Nick and Joe and more worthy charity representatives came in.
"Would you excuse me? Please make yourselves at home, and do look out for Vera and June."
"We will," Nick replied pleasantly. Leaving Nick and Joe, Errol began his introduction to the next couple, managing to repeat himself almost verbatim. Amused in spite of himself Joe chuckled, moving toward the door leading out of the entry with its overabundance of candles. He led Nick through the huge double doors to what he hoped was the party's center for all things 'charity'.