Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
bloom
Maverick worked my clit slowly with his tongue and fingers. It took everything I had not to moan.
“You’re so fucking sweet,” he rumbled into my mind.
Being eaten out in a semi-public area was unexpected, but I was trying all sorts of new things these days.
And I knew he was too possessive of me to let anyone else actually see anything. Thanks to my werewolf-sized desk, the worst any of my coworkers would see if they walked past was me looking a little flushed.
I choked on a gasp, trying to stay quiet as my head tipped back and my fingers dug into the desk.
His teeth grazed my clit as he slowly took me to the edge.
My toes curled.
My breathing shallowed.
Finally, I shattered.
I bit my cheek so hard it bled, muffling my cry of pleasure as I climaxed.
A glint of light in the hallway had me going still.
Maverick pulled my leggings higher even though I wasn’t really exposed.
I tried to make it look like I was focused on my computer screen as I discreetly caught my breath.
Maverick rolled my chair backward and somehow managed to climb out from beneath my desk without looking like a crazy person, other than the smug expression he wore. His erection strained against his jeans as he picked me up and set me back down on his thigh.
I leaned against his back again, and he kissed the scars on either side of my throat.
“Thanks,” I murmured.
“Anytime.”
Someone appeared in the hallway, and the door flew open.
I blinked at Phyllis.
She stomped into the room, pointing violently in the direction of the rest of the office. “I have had it up to my chin with that bastard,” she snapped, entirely unfazed by the position Maverick and I were in.
“What did he do?” Maverick asked for me, sounding amused as he perched his chin on the top of my head
I could smell myself on his breath.
Phyllis launched into an explanation about something Carter had fucked up. He seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.
I barely listened. Mostly because she’d already sent an email about this, and I read the email.
“We’ll get that figured out,” Maverick interrupted her, after a solid minute and a half of her rant. “Thanks for letting us know.”
She nodded and strode out of the room. “I’ll send him in.”
“Wait, what?” I asked.
“She wants us to let her fire him,” Maverick explained.
“She can’t fire people.”
“I’m aware. Can you imagine the chaos if she could?”
I bit back a grin.
Carter stepped inside almost as soon as she was gone. He looked exhausted, but his sister’s condition was to blame for that.
His nostrils flared slightly, and his forehead creased just a little as he took in our position.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hi. I know I screwed up with that last batch of reports, but I’m working on it. I’ll get this figured out.”
“Alright,” I said.
The stress he was under would do that to anyone. I’d just experienced it myself, though it hadn’t made me any worse at my job.
I was just more cold hearted, I guess.
“Great. I need to bring my sister something to eat, but I’ll be back in later tonight. Thanks for covering with Phyllis.”
I nodded. “Of course. Good luck.”
He slipped out of the room and headed down the hallway, his steps smooth.
That was strange.
Carter had never been graceful before.
Maverick squeezed my hip as soon as the door shut. “Sutton’s wrong. There’s no way Phyllis is a vampire. She was completely unfazed by the scent of what we’d been doing, and any vampire would’ve noticed that immediately.”
“Good point.”
I thought back to Carter’s reaction.
His forehead had creased when he stepped in.
His nostrils had flared.
I thought back to the paperwork he’d been screwing up.
He’d never had a problem with it before. He’d been on the top of his game before he was promoted. Yes, his job was definitely harder now, but if his sister hadn’t been so sick, I never would’ve expected him to struggle.
My mind went back to the way he’d acted when Maverick attacked him for flirting with me. He’d stayed calm. Too calm, for how violent Maverick had been with him.
He had worn the scarf Mav sent him every day without fail, instead of taking it off to potentially expose his bruises. They could’ve been healed the whole time.
And his sister was dying. That could make anyone desperate.
Separately, none of those things were that alarming.
Altogether...
Fuck.
He had been on his way out of the office.
It had been long enough that he could easily be at the elevator already. If I was fast, maybe I could catch him outside it.
I was on my feet, sprinting out of my office at vampire speed a heartbeat later. Maverick’s growl followed me out.
“Carter’s leaving. I think he’s the killer. I’m going to try to catch him,” I said into Maverick’s mind, skidding to a stop as I reached the elevator.
The doors were already closing—and Carter was inside.
Our eyes collided.
His flashed with anger.
I had a split second to make a decision, and I did the stupidest possible thing:
I lunged through the doors.
They shut behind me immediately.
Shit, shit, shit.
Bad call.
Really bad call.
“NO,” Maverick snarled into my mind.
“It’s too late. Poor decisions were made. Meet me in the lobby. I’m in the elevator with him, and I’ll try to stall.”
Carter’s nostrils flared with disgust that he couldn’t hide.
He had to smell what we’d just done.
I had to be right.
“I’m taking the stairs and sending the security team to meet you in case I don’t make it in time. Don’t even fucking think about dying,” Maverick snarled.
I didn’t take the threat personally. I was also going to be pissed if my stupidity got me killed.
“Nice day, huh?” I asked Carter, rocking lightly on the balls of my feet.
Was I going to confront him?
Hell no.
I hadn’t signed up for that shit.
This wasn’t a cute little murder mystery. If I was trapped alone in an elevator with a devolving, bloodthirsty turned vampire who had already tried to kill me, I wasn’t going to call him out inside the world’s slowest elevator.
I was going to avoid that topic at any cost.
Carter’s gaze was unamused. “Where’s your Alpha?”
Racing down the stairs like he was possessed, probably.
“I think he’s grabbing me some coffee,” I said.
No one ever claimed I was good at lying.
Or under pressure.
It was the middle of the afternoon, so despite the elevator’s slowness, it wasn’t going to make many stops. I had no idea if it would pause at all before it reached the bottom floor.
I counted the dings as the elevator descended.
Twenty-one.
Twenty.
Nineteen.
Eighteen.
“How stupid do you think I am, Bloom?” Carter remarked.
“I’ve never thought you were stupid. You were incredible at your job. And given that Steven only ever promoted attractive men, you probably would’ve made it to the top of the company in a few years.”
Thirteen.
Twelve.
Eleven.
“Can he take the stairs faster than I can get out of here?” Carter tilted his head to the side, suddenly looking like the predator he was.
Technically, I was also a predator. But let’s be real, I was a shitty one.
He’d killed two people now, and successfully poisoned me too.
I either hadn’t really known him, or he’d changed. Maybe some of both.
Guess we weren’t pretending anymore.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
Seven.
Six.
Five.
“I didn’t want to have to hurt you,” Carter said.
His expression was eerily calm.
The beating of my heart was anything but that.
“You should’ve known better than to tie yourself to to the wolf,” he added.
“Fate doesn’t care about logic, Carter.”
“Logical people don’t give a shit about fate.”
The elevator dinged.
The doors began to open slowly.
My complete attention was fixed on Carter. I needed to be careful. He was just as fast as I was, on top of being both more deadly and athletic than me.
He also had nothing to lose.
I let out a soft breath—and dodged, when he lunged for me.
The first time, my back hit the elevator wall, and his hand flew past my arm.
The second, my knees hit the floor as I threw myself ungracefully across the elevator.
It was another bad call.
He grabbed me by the throat and hauled me back to my feet, holding me in front of him with his fangs only inches from my new scars as the doors opened completely.
We were at the elevator’s entrance, probably so no one could rush past and catch him from behind.
Maverick stood in front of the doors, his hands up next to his head as if in surrender. There was fur on his arms and cheeks, the button on his jeans strained against the swell of his growing body, and his eyes were glowing so brightly that I knew he was only a heartbeat away from shifting.
“Step back, or she dies,” Carter said in a low voice,
I didn’t recognize it.
He had always been fun. Polite. Decent, at the very least.
Whatever vampirism had done to him, the version of him I’d known was gone.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered mentally to Maverick. “What should I do?”
“Just trust me.”
That shouldn’t have settled my mind, but somehow, it did.
Maverick didn’t step back, but he lifted his hands a little higher, emphasizing the lack of weapon in them.
As if he needed a weapon to be dangerous.
“You have something I want,” Maverick said. “I have something you want, too. Let’s make a trade.”
Carter went still behind me, clearly caught off guard.
He was listening, even if he didn’t say as much.
“You need me to tell you how to keep a turned vampire from losing their mind. I need you to let her go and tell me who was behind this.”
Carter took a sharp breath in.
“They turned your sister too, right?” Maverick studied Carter. “That’s how they said they would save her, and it worked at first. That’s why you killed Arthur, and Celeste, and even poisoned Bloom. But it backfired. She’s getting sick again, and it’s worse now.”
“There’s a way to stop it?” Carter’s voice was desperate.
“There is.” Maverick made it sound much more certain than it was—not that I blamed him for exaggerating.
He was trying to keep me alive, which I appreciated very much.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” Carter asked.
“You know Bloom. She might have been able to hide what she was, but can’t lie worth a damn. Ask her,” Maverick said.
He knew that wasn’t true.
I could keep secrets just fine, and I could stretch the truth like nobody’s business. I just didn’t like to.
Carter manhandled me, forcibly spinning around. Maverick’s chest rumbled light, a clear warning. “Is he lying?”
“He’s not. There’s a way to stabilize a turned vampire. The werewolves are really careful with the secret, though,” I said.
And there wasn’t a chance in hell that Maverick would let anyone save Carter, even if by some miracle, someone offered. When he poisoned me, he sealed his fate.
Carter stared at me for a long moment before he finally shook his head. “If I let you go, he has no reason not to just kill me.”
“He does, actually. He needs to know who turned you, and who sent you.”
“You could be lying,” Carter said.
“I could. But what other option do you have here? There are probably dozens of werewolves waiting outside this building right now. He’s the Alpha of Alphas, and I’m his mate. He’s not just going to let you walk away, even if you kill me.
Carter closed his eyes for one moment.
Followed by another.
He was actually going to let me go.
His grip started to loosen.
Then, in the blink of an eye, he threw me over his shoulder and ran.
Or tried to, at least.
Unlike Maverick, he wasn’t six and a half feet of pure muscle, and he hadn’t carried a woman like a fucking sack of potatoes before. It slowed him down a little.
That little was enough.
Maverick crashed into him like a freight train, taking all three of us down in one hard hit. My head cracked against the tile, but it was a wound I was thrilled to have because it meant I was still alive.
Mav managed to shove me away and pin the turned vampire down in the same second. Ryker dragged me further away from the fight while Carter snarled and bucked, fighting the Alpha’s hold.
Maverick had already proven that even the most experienced werewolf fighters had nothing on him, and Carter had nothing on them.
The Alpha’s furious eyes met mine, traveling quickly down my figure and back up. “Did he hurt you?”
“No.” I could tell him about the new bump that probably adorned my skull later.
Mav inhaled and exhaled slowly, like he was trying to get his shit together.
Then he slammed Carter’s forehead against the ground so hard, it knocked the vampire out cold.
I walked out of the building beside my mate as he carried Carter’s limp body out onto the sidewalk, heading for the tower. People were taking more pictures of us, but I was learning not to care.
They were going to say whatever they wanted to say and photograph whatever they wanted to photograph. There was no point in dwelling on it. Not to me.
“If you ever risk your life like that again, I will lock you in our fucking apartment for a decade,” Mav said into my mind flatly.
“I love you too.”
His hand landed on my hip, and he pulled me two steps closer, so our sides brushed as we walked.