Chapter 11
Shelly was sad to leave the island the next morning.
She had only been there for two days, but she felt connected…
somehow…to the place. She could very easily be seduced by the setting into doing anything Mark asked, without thinking things all the way through.
Thinking over every decision was her thing.
Some people took leaps of faith. Shelly definitely looked a few times and inspected every angle before she leapt anywhere.
She had a cautious nature that made her good at her profession, but when faced with a situation like the one she was in right now with Mark, her mind became a muddle of confusion.
She needed some space to sit quietly and think things through.
Beautiful as it was, she knew she wouldn’t get the distance or perspective she needed on the island.
No, she had to be away from this tropical paradise, back in her own element.
In her own house. The space she had claimed just for herself, with all her comfortable objects and possessions around her.
Only then could she find the calm center of the whirlwind she’d been riding since that dinner party where Mark had been targeted for assassination.
It seems like months ago now, and it had only been a couple of days.
Time was skewed. That was another thing she had to sit down and think about.
Everything had happened so fast. She couldn’t keep up.
Once she was home, working in her own studio, in familiar surroundings, she would be able to regain her balance.
At least, that was the plan. A small part of her worried that something about this trip, and Mark, had changed her forever.
She couldn’t pinpoint exactly what had happened, but she thought she knew when.
It had been when they made love in the caldera of the volcano. Something had definitely happened then. She still wasn’t sure what to call it, or what the implications for the future might be. Mark kept insisting she was somehow magical, but that couldn’t be right. Could it?
“I can’t be seen with you just yet,” Mark explained as they flew back toward her home on the mainland in a different luxury jet from the one they’d arrived in. How many of these things did he own? “We’re going to take extra precautions, just in case.”
She grew concerned at his worried expression. Was there a reason to fear? Or… She hated to think this… But was this the big brush off? Had the playboy billionaire gotten what he wanted and now wasn’t interested anymore?
Shelly had a hard time believing that, but some niggling echo of doubt wouldn’t let the thought go.
She hadn’t had a lot of experience with men—and certainly not those in Mark’s circles.
She was no supermodel. No foreign beauty who would do anything for a rich man who paid her bills.
She was just a good architect from a formerly well-to-do family.
Not much of a catch, really, for a man who could have anything—or anyone—he wanted.
Self-doubt was a terrible thing, but Shelly was as susceptible to it as anyone else.
Maybe even more, since she and her father had never had a truly close relationship.
After her mother died, she had wanted to reach out to him, but he had been dealing with his own grief.
Even though her father still lived and they saw each other often at society functions and the obligatory celebrations and holidays, they weren’t really that close.
Shelly had tried repeatedly to get to know her dad better, but he was a very controlled sort of man.
She knew he loved her, of course, but he wasn’t excessively demonstrative.
They did have a good working relationship, though.
He’d often send her invitations—like the one to the dinner where she’d encountered Mark—that he thought would help her network for her architectural business.
He thought about her and was helpful, but he wasn’t a doting father by any stretch of the imagination.
It had been hard not to feel rejected on occasion when she’d tried to deepen the relationship and her father had backed off.
Was Mark now rejecting her too? She didn’t want to believe it, but it just might be true.
Oh, Goddess, what was she going to do?
Right then, she realized she was already in way over her head with this man. She’d been so cautious, but it had all been for naught. Mark had cast the spell, and she’d fallen. Head over heels, she’d fallen.
Mark didn’t like the look on Shelly’s face, but he figured she would forgive him once she realized he had other plans in mind to circumvent any possible surveillance.
He’d had his people watching her house while they’d been on the island.
His people had also been busy installing state-of-the-art security hardware on her land.
He held the passwords and all the control.
Nobody but he—and a few trusted Clan members—could get to her by conventional means now.
Not without tripping an alarm. And Mark had made damned sure it would be jaguars answering that alarm, if it ever came.
If not him, personally, then one of his trusted Clan members.
Shelly was one of them now, and jaguars took care of their own. She may not be a shifter, but she was his mate, and after the past two days, the heart of the Clan was well on their way to accepting her. Now if he could just convince her.
“I’ve had some security measures added to your property. Nothing you’ll see—or at least you shouldn’t. It’s all well hidden and camouflaged, and the signals go directly to my people,” he told her. Maybe she’d see his need to protect her as the declaration it really was.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she protested, but her expression had changed from one of doubt and worry to something more thoughtful. Good.
“It’s my pleasure to look after you,” he told her, bringing her hand to his lips because he just couldn’t help himself.
He had to touch her. To kiss her. To remind her that she was his.
Even if she hadn’t agreed to that just yet.
“I’ll come to you tonight, if at all possible.
First, I have a few things I need to put in place, but when it’s safe, I will come to you, no matter where you are, no matter the time. ”
He kissed her fingertips, one at a time. Those magical little digits that had sparked the heart of a dormant volcano. How she could continue in the belief that she had no magic was incredible to him. How could she not see it?
But the look of doubt had disappeared from her eyes now, which gratified him. He didn’t want her to worry about anything. Especially not his commitment to her. Ever.
He knew, of course, that such things took time among humans.
Magical as she was, she still believed she was completely human—and had grown up with human standards.
He had to be patient. The Goddess was making him work for this, it was true, but he wouldn’t be any kind of an Alpha if he couldn’t appreciate a challenge.
Mark let Shelly go with great reluctance when they landed on the mainland an hour later.
He’d spent the flight talking with her in low, intimate tones, when he would much rather have been doing something a lot more intimate than merely talking.
Joining the Mile High Club with her was definitely on his to-do list, but not today.
Not in this particular plane, which had no private sleeping compartment.
Another one of their jets did, and he hoped to take her with him some place suitably distant enough that they would have sufficient time to put that big bed to good use.
But that was a plan for another day. Today, he had to check in with the security team watching her house and get updates from a number of his subordinates, as well as the Midtown wolf Pack, who had been helping. There was work to do, and plenty of it.
Mark hit the ground running and didn’t slow down for anything. The faster he got his work done, the sooner he could sneak into Shelly’s house and make love with her. With incentive like that, he couldn’t fail.
Work done for the day, Mark was already in his car—a sleek Italian sports car he liked to take out on long drives—when his cell phone rang.
It was the Midtown Pack Alpha, relaying a message from his brother, who had been helping with surveillance on Shelly’s home, along with a few other wolves.
It was a good trade—the younger brother got real-world experience and training from some of Mark’s senior people, and the jaguars got extra manpower from a local source, with potentially different local sources of intel.
Cassius reported a sighting of one of the cars they had been on the lookout for.
They had a short list of persons of interest headed by the jackass who had accosted Shelly in the elevator of the hotel.
Venifucus agent Antony Mason had three vehicles that they knew of, and all three were on a watch list for those stationed around Shelly’s home.
Mason reportedly lived in New Jersey, so seeing one of his vehicles in Shelly’s neighborhood was highly suspect. There were few legitimate reasons for him to be there. Especially at this time of night.
It was well after midnight, with few cars on the road, so Mark felt no trepidation in flooring the gas pedal and making for Shelly’s as quickly as possible. He could feel it now. The closer he got to her place, the more something felt…not right. Threatening.
A gathering gloom in the night made him slow down.
His headlights cut a path through the dark miasma like a spoon sliding through thick soup.
Pea soup fog was something Northeasterners experienced every once in awhile, but this was dark, not the white of fog.
His car’s headlights weren’t reflected off water vapor; instead, they were swallowed up by the darkness itself.
This could not be good.