Chapter 8
Cricket
“What would you like to know?” I say as the gates automatically open.
“Everything!” She throws her hands in the air, her eyes bouncing between me, Crash, and Pitch. “How did you know to have these contingencies in place? There was no intel to suggest we needed it.”
“This is what—” Crash and I say at the same time.
Clenching my jaw, I let Crash continue, “—we do, Doralee. We plan for everything. Every exit has two contingency exits.”
He licks his lips, his eyes coming to mine in the rearview mirror. “But to be honest, I don’t trust the agents from the other teams.”
I’m glad he said it, because I have the same niggling feeling that at least a few of them aren’t on the up and up. Rumpert is a predatory asshole, and there’s something off about Melon too. Castor seems okay, but Caldwell and Bennet appear to be pretty useless.
She bites her lip and stares out the window. “Yeah.”
“Do you have the same suspicions?” I glance over at her profile, the dashboard LEDs giving me more than enough light to see how beautiful she is. My cat watches her with me, but he’s not pushing me to claim her, and I wonder if it’s because of Crash’s presence and our lifelong bullshit.
Unlike many shifters, we were raised outside of a shifter community.
As children of a human mother who had no idea what we were, things were harder for us in the beginning.
Thankfully, before we shifted for the first time, we were invited to a free camp by a cat-shifter named Sam who knew our father and had been watching us from afar for years.
Our father died when our mother was pregnant with us—killed by a poacher in the national forest. Sam got us through our first few shifts and helped us hide our secret from our mother.
He also introduced us to other shifters, inviting us to parties and full moon ceremonies.
That’s where Crash met her—Miche, a cat-shifter raised in a pack.
They spent a night running with their animals, swimming as humans, and making out under the full moon.
I never met her, but for the next three months, all I heard him go on about was how she was his fated mate and they were destined to be together.
We knew very little about pack dynamics or fated mates at the time, but I thought he was a bit obsessed for a guy who’d barely gotten to second base with a chick. My understanding was that fated mates couldn’t keep their paws off one another—but what did I know at the time?
Graduation night, a sexy girl from another school sat on my lap.
I’d been doing shots with a couple other football players, and while I was barely buzzed compared to their slovenly drunk asses, I rolled with it and kissed a complete stranger, who quickly moved to straddle my hips.
My hands were everywhere, as were hers, but it didn’t dawn on me to stop and ask her name.
The guys cheered us on while I lived every teenage boy’s fantasy.
My hands were on her breasts when Crash pulled her off me and into his arms.
“What the actual fuck, Cricket?” he’d barked.
“What?” My cock was painfully hard as I tried to jump to my feet.
“Why are you making out with my girlfriend?”
Miche pulled out of his arms, looking from me to him and back again. “I’m not your girlfriend, Crash.”
That alone should have told him she knew exactly who I was when she’d climbed onto my lap and sucked my tongue into her mouth, but there was also the shifter thing. She knew by scent that I wasn’t him, but that wasn’t something we could fight about in front of a bunch of human high schoolers.
The look on his face was crestfallen. “But, you’re my mate.”
She laughed. “No, I’m not.”
“Maybe we should go somewhere else to talk about this,” I tried to intervene, but he jumped back from me, tears filling his eyes.
He’d rushed out of the party, leaving me and Miche staring after him.
Part of me wanted to follow, but I thought giving him some time to cool down was best. The footballers called after him, but they weren’t helpful with their teasing taunts.
Pulling Miche out of the party, I asked her what she was thinking by coming on to me like that, and she explained our rampant sexual appetites and the fated mates thing.
To her, it hadn’t been a big deal, and apparently my desire to fuck every pretty girl at school wasn’t just a teenage boy thing.
I mean, it was that, but it was amplified by my shifter hormones, which went into a frenzy every full moon.
I remember looking up to find a full moon hanging over our heads that night.
A few hours later, I went home to catch Crash walking out with two duffle bags. We argued, and before I could explain what had happened, he’d driven a blade into my back.
Doralee brings me back to the present. “Does this stay between us?”
“Yes,” I say at the same time Pitch and Crash say the same.
“My immediate boss, Agent Lucas, wants me to fill him in with details that could blow up the investigation if our targets realized who we are and what we know.”
“Why does that bother you?” Crash asks.
“Because he’s not read into this investigation, and Agent Castor specifically told us that nothing leaves the task force without his approval.
He should read the debriefs after the fact, not before.
” She glances up at the roof. “Agent Melon is feeding him information too, so I know I can’t trust him. ”
“You can trust us,” I say for Crash, but I’m not completely sure that is true either, considering the shit we talked about earlier. The mission dictates I save shifter children, but in my heart I know I can’t walk away from any of them.
Is Crash so heartless that he could? I honestly couldn’t say. He’s never been the man I thought he was, and I learned that lesson while lying helpless on my living room floor.
“I hope so. All I want to do is save people and dismantle an evil empire. I don’t really care who gets credit.”
Everything within me wants to reach out and take her hand, but I fight the urge while begging my cat to back down.
The longer she’s within reach, the less he cares about our audience, and I’m thinking back to the way Kade was the first time he brought Dinah to Bearclaw, or how Wiley was the day he busted into the store in his wolf form, singularly focused on his mate.
I thought they were exaggerating their veiled control on themselves.
They were not.
We drive through town, using side streets to avoid Main before hitting the dirt road that leads us back to base.
Once we’re parked, I let the team reconvene to debrief their counterparts in the command post and slip back to my room, where I pull out the GPS monitor I nabbed from our closet of gadgets earlier.
When I recruited Pitch, I’d given him six trackers stashed inside a fast food bag I’d found in the trash.
He executed his part flawlessly, placing three of them on the two SUVs and one mini-van parked in the parking lot.
Now I’m noting where the dots are. One of them is still at the hotel, so they are not involved or are using it as home base.
Two of them are heading south out of town, and I’m betting those are the ones we played with outside of the mansion.
I wait another twenty minutes and note where they’ve stopped for the evening, tagging the location on my map and expanding it to find a series of buildings in the middle of what appears to be a cattle ranch or dairy farm.
Fitting.
Grabbing a black balaclava and gloves out of my bag, I slip knives onto my belt and two expandable batons into my calf pocket.
I slide the flashlight, syringe, and pellets into my other cargo pocket before snatching my bike keys.
Walking out of the warehouse, I round the corner to find Doralee waiting for me, her sexy ass straddling the seat of my Harley.
Her eyes light up, and she smiles at the surprise on my face. “You don’t think you’re the only clever one here, do you?”
I glance over my shoulders to make sure no one else is around. “What are you doing out here?”
“When you didn’t follow us into the command post, I figured you had other plans. Did you track their location?”
Licking my lips, I take in her black, long-sleeved, spandex bodysuit zipped up to her chin. It hides none of her curves—even if every inch of her skin is covered—and fuck me if I’m not tempted to pull her flush against my body and inhale her sweet scent. “When did you have time to change?”
Her smile widens. “When I sent the boys down a rabbit hole and excused myself to take a shit. You know how men get when a woman admits she has bodily functions. They tuned me out and it’ll be hours before they realize I haven’t come back.”
I want to spend time with her.
I need to give her time to get to know me.
But with a near full moon overhead, I’m not sure I can focus on the task at hand—one that she can’t be part of.
“You can’t come with me.” I get the words out, but my cat objects loudly.
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t move like I need to with you there.”
Her eyes narrow. “I can handle myself.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” I take a deep breath, her scent filling my lungs.
The image of her straddling the seat, thighs spread wide and hugging my hips while she wraps her arms around my waist causes every muscle in my body to tighten, and I know I’m going to take her with me even though I continue to throw up reasons why she shouldn’t.
“They’ve seen your face. If we get caught—”
“If we get caught, you look exactly like my partner, Mr. Parks, except for your longer hair. If we get caught, this operation is toast and I’m busted down to coffee bitch for the rest of my short DHS career.
” She pats the seat between her spread knees and fuck me, my cat is fully on board now and I can’t tell either of us no.
He pumps mating pheromones out of my pores before I can beg him not to, and I know we have to get out of here before Crash or Pitch catch a whiff.
“You’ll do exactly as I say?”
She gives me a look that says, ‘fat chance in hell’, while nodding her beautiful head. “Yes.”
Handing her my balaclava, I throw my leg over the frame. “You need to cover your head and face.”
She surprises me by pulling out her own from the front of a belly band holster around her waist. “I’ve got my own.”
We both don our masks and I back the bike out, facing the road before I crank the engine.
“Hang on.” One loud rumble and I twist the throttle, hitting the road out of the compound before anyone can make it to a door.
Doralee clutches my sides, her knees pressed against my outer thighs as she buries her head between my shoulder blades. Once we’re on a regular road, I slow down and she relaxes, bringing her head up and mouth to my ear. “Were you worried Crash was going to stop us?”
“He would have tried,” I yell back. While I could hear her even if she wasn’t putting her mouth on my ear, I know she can’t hear me.
“You should tell me y’all’s story.”
“Maybe someday.” If she becomes my mate, she’ll hear every story and secret I have to tell. If she is mine, there’s nothing I won’t share with her.
“How far are we going?” she asks after a few miles.
“We’re fifty-five miles out, but we’ll stop two miles short and hike the rest of the way.”
“Okay.” She presses her cheek to my shoulder and my cat purrs, which vibrates through my muscles. Then I nearly come undone when she presses her face to my back and inhales deeply. “You smell good.”
“Fucking hell, woman,” I mutter in the wind as my cock jerks awake. Turning my head, I yell back, “You do too.”
“How can you smell me?” She giggles and I suspect she’s getting high on me right now—relaxed, protected, and Fates willing, turned on.
I grab her hand from my side and bring it to my nose and mouth, pressing an imperceptible kiss to her palm. “I just can.”
Letting go, I hold still as she trails her hand down the front of my chest before wrapping her arms around my waist. She spreads her legs wider and melds her body to mine, the heat from her core radiating against my lower back.
My cat pumps out more of our pheromones, which she inhales with each breath she takes. If we had time, I’d pull off somewhere cozy and overwhelm her with them until she was clutching at my clothes and begging me to fuck her.
Man, that’s a shitty thing to think, but it's where my cat takes me. This is what Miche said it would be like with your fated mate, and if Doralee was a shifter, we’d already be naked with our fangs in each other’s flesh.
But no—the Fates had to give me a human, just like they did to Kade and Wiley. I wonder why that is when my life would be so much easier with another shifter. Both of Kade’s parents were shifters, as were Wiley’s, but only my father—whom I never met—passed along the gene.
Parentage is obviously not a factor. Honestly, I never thought I’d meet my mate considering I wasn’t raised in a shifter community, but I guess this proves that theory wrong.
Doralee is definitely mine—a gift from the Fates that I don’t know how to claim.
How do I convince her we’re meant to be when there’s no time and no privacy, plus a cock-blocking asshole desperate to make sure I’m never happy actively working to keep us apart?