Chapter 18
SEAN
Kiera’s glorious hair lay spread over Sean’s pillow exactly the way he’d always imagined, and this time it wasn’t because he’d accidentally tilted her into a coma.
Rather, after Round Four of their late night fuck-a-thon and after finding most—though hopefully not all—of the ways she liked it, they’d crashed into mutual unconsciousness.
Now, it was morning and someone was knocking on his cabin door.
Having a pretty good guess who it was, he carefully peeled back the covers and slid out of bed without disturbing Kiera’s sleep.
He pulled on a fresh pair of briefs and walked to the door.
“Who is it?” he asked, low.
“Yo, Murph. It’s Rafe.”
Sean opened the door to his team captain. Slung over Rafe’s shoulder was a hot pink duffel with rhinestones that spelled out the word Juicy. The sight of that bag on Rafe’s shoulder made Sean chuckle.
“Shut it,” Rafe said. “I’m doing you a favor.”
“And it’s appreciated.”
“She okay?” Rafe tipped his head toward Sean’s bed without actually looking.
“Perfect,” Sean said. “The other three women?”
“All good. I got Amy to help me pick out some clothes for Kiera.”
“Amy helped you?” That was an interesting development. “Does that mean you’re finally making progress with her?”
“Nope,” Rafe said. “She barely looked at me the whole time.”
Sean grinned. “Well, you are an ugly fucker.”
Rafe growled. “Fuck you.”
Sean wanted to make a smug retort, something like Sorry. I’m all fucked out. But he didn’t. That would have been salt in Rafe’s wound.
Unfortunately, all of those thoughts must have shown on his face because Rafe’s eyebrows raised and he said, “No shit? Well, at least one of us took his shot and scored.”
“It’s not a game,” Sean reminded him.
“Of course not,” Rafe said. “Shit’s serious. Lukas is going to have round the clock security on Elli until this whole thing gets sorted. By the way, the guy’s name was Chandler Moss. Ring any bells?”
“Nope,” Sean said.
“Hmph.” Rafe handed over the bag.
Sean took the strap, then lifted the bag up and down a couple of times, judging its weight. “I hope it’s enough clothes.”
Rafe seemed to take that as a joke because the duffel was stuffed to such maximum capacity it was straining the zipper.
Sean, however, hadn’t been joking. Kiera was a clothes horse, and he didn’t want to give her a reason to leave his cabin too soon.
“She had a bigger bag,” Rafe said, and his hellhound eyes glowed red, something that often happened when tensions ran high. “A black one. But it had been sliced up.”
Sean’s heart pounded. He imagined this Moss guy seeing a black bag, thinking he might have hit the jackpot, then taking out his frustration with a knife.
What would have happened to Kiera if she’d interrupted him when he had frustration to vent?
“We need to talk to Rogue,” Sean said.
“Yeah.” Rafe sighed. “Seems so.”
“Team meeting or one on one?”
“Somewhere in between I suspect. I’ll let you know.” Rafe turned to go.
“Do it soon,” Sean said, stepping into the doorway.
“Absolutely.” Rafe lifted his chin in a parting gesture and said, “Later.”
There was a small pop, and Rafe tilted out, leaving a fading glimmer of energy on the doorstep before a breeze blew it all away.
Sean shut the door and brought the sparkly pink bag to the bedroom, set it gently on the floor, then slid under the covers.
“Who was that?” Kiera murmured, not opening her eyes.
She was naked, but only one shoulder was exposed to the air. Sean kissed it, then pulled the covers all the way up.
“Rafe. He brought you some clothes.”
Her lips curled up though her eyes remained closed. “Elli said he would. That’s so sweet.”
Sean took her in his arms.
She snuggled in, pressing her tits against his chest.
He slid his hands down over her round ass and squeezed, not because he was trying to take this somewhere, just because she felt so nice.
She made a satisfied, purring kind of sound deep in her throat and kissed the underside of his jaw.
They fell back asleep.
“Who are these guys?” Kiera asked
It was hours later, and Sean was pulling bacon and eggs out of the fridge. He looked up to see Kiera standing in front of the framed, autographed posters that hung on his wall.
“Savage League greats,” Sean said, then dropped into a crouch to get his biggest frying pan out of the lower cabinet. “Liam Boyd and Thor Magnusson. They were my heroes when I was a kid.”
He found the pan and set it on the stove. “My mom took me to a game and bought me the posters, which was awesome. But things got even more amazing when my seat number was announced, and I won the opportunity to meet the players. That’s when I scored their autographs.”
“Prized possessions,” she surmised.
“Yeah. In their own right. But they’re also a souvenir of that day, and that time with Mom was the best day ever.”
He couldn’t help the smile spreading across his face. It wasn’t often he smiled in remembrance of her.
Kiera traced her finger along Liam Boyd’s autograph. “Does your mom live close?”
His smile faded, and a flash of pain squeezed his heart. He turned toward the stove to switch on the burners. “Yep.”
“Do you ever cook breakfast for her?”
That heart squeeze dropped to his gut, burrowing a pit in his stomach. He was glad his back was turned to her when he answered, “Not anymore.”
“Why not?” Kiera asked.
“Because she died.” He quickly laid four strips of bacon in the pan.
“What?” Kiera asked. “I thought you just said she lives close.”
“She died, but she lives.” The bacon sizzled, and he moved it around with a fork, keeping his back to Kiera, not wanting to see the confusion on her face because he really didn’t want to explain.
“Yeah…” she said. “I don’t get that.”
There was no reason she should. “It’s a dryad thing.”
“So, I’m not allowed to know? Kinda like Elli was never supposed to know what was going on with Lukas being named alpha of his berserker clan?”
Sean bowed his head, then lifted it and turned to face her. “It’s not that you can’t know, it’s just not a fun topic, and I don’t want us to get into anything too heavy.”
“Sean, we’re caught up in a crime.” She crossed the living room to the kitchen island. “My apartment is destroyed. Your teammates killed a guy in my foyer last night. We’re already into something pretty damn heavy.”
“Right. So why add to it? Now…” He tapped the carton of eggs. “I don’t do poached, but I can do over-easy. Or are you a scrambled girl?”
She exhaled sharply through her nose. “Lately, that’s exactly how I feel. Totally scrambled.”
“Is that your order?” he asked, trying to keep things light, despite the pit in his stomach.
“Actually…if you’re taking orders…I like them sunny side up. Runny yolk.”
Sean’s shoulders relaxed. “Got it. Sunny side up, two pieces of bacon, and toast.”
“Maybe after breakfast we could go for a walk?” she suggested.
“You want to do that?” He glanced down at her outfit.
Out of all the things Rafe and Amy had packed, Kiera had chosen to wear a silk blouse, wide-legged trousers, and the same ankle boots as yesterday, which were kick-ass, but not great for the terrain.
At least Rafe had been able to stuff a coat into the bag. It was purple (the coat, not the bag), and its hood was edged in faux fur.
“It would be good to stretch my legs,” she said.
“I would have thought you got enough exercise last night,” he teased, reminding her of their tangle in the sheets. “You were breathing pretty hard.”
“There’s that arrogance again.”
“Can’t help it.” He turned back toward the stove. “Last night was incredible.”
Probably the most incredible night of his life. And it wasn’t just the sex. He’d felt so alone for such a long time. That was partly his fault, building his cabin this far from civilization. But with Kiera here, just standing in his kitchen, that odd icy feeling was slowly melting away.
“It was incredible,” she agreed, “but fresh air helps me think.”
“And what do you need to think about?” He moved the bacon to the side of the pan and cracked the first egg into the grease.
When several seconds passed without her answering his question, he glanced over his shoulder and saw the look on her face. Oh, hell no.
“Kiera, you’re not going to get that bag back.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, her eyes widening.
He cracked her second egg into the pan. “You’re trying to think up some harebrained plan to find the bag—which, I’m telling you, is highly unlikely. Even if you found the bag, it would be empty. That money’s probably spent. The gun will be untraceable.”
“You think so?”
Her tone sounded… Sean didn’t know what. Hopeful maybe? But why?
“Yeah, I think so.” Sean cracked two more eggs. “No one steals a bag of cash and a gun, then displays them in a shadow box and hangs it on his wall.”
“You don’t have to be so snarky about it.”
He raised his eyebrows at the frying pan. “I’m not.”
“Sounded like it to me,” she said.
“You heard it wrong.”
She sighed. “That’s not actually what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking I’d get the bag back. I was thinking…what if the bag was supposed to go to someone who could make the gun disappear? Someone like my brother.”
“They wouldn’t need your brother for that. Anyone can toss a gun in a river.”
“Guns tossed in rivers have a way of being found. Not like a gun that’s sold on the black market.”
Sean glanced over his shoulder at her. “Your brother knows that world?”
“Braden used to call himself the black market magician.”
“Then I guess that’s possible.”
“So, maybe the gun didn’t end up with the person who was supposed to get it, but if it’s gone and untraceable, like you said… Maybe it just took a different route to the same destination.”
Sean nodded slowly and turned back toward the stove. “It’s a nice idea, but there’s no way to know for sure what happened to it.”
“And if we don’t know,” she said on another heavy sigh, “there’s no way to prove to the bad guys—whoever they are—that they can relax and quit screwing with my life.”