Hunger's Mate Read online

  Not sure how long this lasted, only positive that it wasn’t working, she finally sighed. While the water felt good, the clean bathroom a welcome change from that dingy hotel she’d been in the night before, the fact still remained that she was in some underground hideout with a legion of people that were not human.

  And so was her father.

  In the years she’d known Bas and Jacques she’d never seen either of them do anything other than be perfect gentlemen and excellent businessmen. They treated their staff fairly and still maintained a very down to earth relationship with those around them. Even after she learned what they were, she’d had a hard time believing that she should be afraid of them. She liked to think of them as just being dealt a different hand in life. Just as she’d originally been given a crappy hand, so had they. In the end, they’d both made the best of it.

  Now, however, people were dying. There were guns and man-made abominations roaming around. Suddenly it hadn’t seemed like worrying about having a normal life was the priority, but that worrying about staying alive, period, was. She had no doubt that Larry had planned to kill her. Of course he would have had sex with her first, he always liked sex first, but then he definitely intended to kill her. So Jewel had decided she would be the one to strike first. She had planned to kill him.

  It hadn’t worked, and even though, before Larry, she’d never imagined herself taking another life, she was pretty damned pissed off about that fact. Larry was still alive, but he hadn’t gotten the chance to take her sexually again. He hadn’t gotten the satisfaction of watching her beg for her father’s life, which she would have done at any moment if she’d thought it would help. Maybe on some level she had won where he was concerned.

  After scrubbing every part of her body until her skin tingled she stepped out of the shower and went into the bedroom knowing instinctively that Ezra was not there. She felt alone, almost as if something were missing. It was a weird feeling centered in her chest. Her heartbeat was loud, steady but still echoing in her ears, another fact she couldn’t figure out.

  On the bed was her backpack, which held her clothes and at the very bottom, the velvet pouch full of diamonds. Unless … panic hurried her steps across the room—the very large, very bright room that had the furnishings of an upscale hotel. She yanked at the bag, hoping, praying that they were still there, that he hadn’t … no, please say he hadn’t.

  Rummaging through the bag, finally pulling out all the clothes and tossing them on the bed, Jewel breathed a sigh of relief as she saw the familiar black bag with its pearl-white drawstring. The diamonds were still hers, nobody in this place had decided to take them from her, even though they all now knew she’d stolen them.

  She dressed quickly in leggings, a tank top, and a longer, baggier sheer top. Slipping her feet into her sandals brought forth the memory of Ezra stripping all her clothes off in that smaller room and leaving her sandals on. Those thoughts brought heat washing over her body so quickly and so powerfully she stumbled a bit. She had to grasp the heavy duvet on the bed to keep her balance.

  Her vagina throbbed, an intense pulsating that had her thighs shaking. She tried to take a deep breath but her nostrils filled with an eerie scent. It was rich and potent like someone had spilled a man’s cologne. Her head spun and she closed her eyes, one hand going between her legs, pressing hard in an attempt to stop the almost painful throbbing. Now coming in quick pants, her breath was loud, to the point where she could have sworn someone was watching a porn flick somewhere nearby.

  Then there was a knock at the door and she almost whimpered at the interruption. She needed to go answer the door, she knew, but couldn’t quite move. Willing whatever madness that had come over her to go away she forced her hands to her sides and stood up straight. The heat was still intense, the scent settling around her like a shroud.

  The knock sounded again, this time a little more persistently. She tried to take a step and still could not move. To keep whoever it was on the other side from possibly knocking it down, she yelled, “Come in,” just as the third knock sounded.

  “Hey,” Priya said, coming inside and closing the door behind her. “Is everything okay?”

  Jewel put forth every ounce of effort she could to appear just fine. Priya always seemed to have everything together, even when she was running around the resort trying to pump Jewel for information about Bas. She had a confidence about herself that Jewel admired. And when she’d left Perryville to go back to her home in D.C. instead of staying in Sedona pining after Bas, Jewel had even greater respect for her. Bas was a great-looking guy, with that blatant kind of sex appeal that just grabbed a female by the throat. And yet, Priya had made him come to her.

  All Jewel had ever done was make hundreds of men come. Then pay for her services. Closing the door to that thought, she cleared her throat.

  “I’m fine,” she lied to Priya. “Just getting dressed so I can go see my father.”

  Priya nodded, her highlighted hair pulled away from her face by a thick black band. She wore black jeans and a white fitted T-shirt and looked like an urban princess when the light hit that massive diamond on her ring finger.

  “I stopped by the medical facility on my way here because I knew you’d want a report,” Priya said, coming closer until she sat on the opposite side of the king-sized bed. She crossed one leg under her, leaving the other to dangle off the side as she turned to Jewel.

  “He was dehydrated. They have him hooked up to an IV and were considering strapping him to the bed since the first thing he tried to do when he opened his eyes was jump out of that bed to find you.”

  “Oh,” Jewel said, lifting a hand to cover her mouth. “I should have been there,” she said, surprised to find that this time when she attempted to move, she actually did.

  She was near the edge of the bed where Priya sat when the woman reached out to grab her arm. “He’s doing fine now. They’ve got his vitals stable and are trying to make sure they have all the meds he needs on hand. If not, one of the medical assistants will have to go out to get them.”

  “No,” Jewel replied, pulling her arm out of Priya’s grip. “I have a complete list of his medications and the pharmacist we go to all the time will happily fill them before we get on the road. I just have to go and let him know that we’ll be leaving soon.”

  Priya nodded. “So you’re just going to leave Ezra.”

  It was an accusation, spoken with an edginess that Jewel didn’t understand.

  “I was never with Ezra, so I wouldn’t be leaving him.”

  Priya nodded again. “Is that what you really think?”

  “Look, Priya,” Jewel stated matter-of-factly. “I don’t know what Ezra told you, but I am not one of his conquests. And I’m certainly not hung up on him, nor am I staying here to wait for him to…”

  “Wait for him to do what?” Priya asked, lifting a perfectly arched eyebrow.

  “Nothing,” Jewel said after gritting her teeth and berating herself for talking too damned much. “Nothing. That’s precisely what’s going on between Ezra and me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to see to my father.”

  “Is that going to be your excuse for everything?”

  Jewel had already turned her back on Priya and was a couple of steps away from the door when she looked over her shoulder. “What did you just say?”

  “I asked if your excuse for every decision you make will always encompass your father?”

  “How dare you?” Jewel said, moving quickly until she stood directly in front of where Priya sat.

  “How dare I what? Tell the truth?”

  She had the audacity to chuckle and Jewel’s fists clenched.

  “You don’t know me, Priya. I know you came to be hot shit around Perryville the moment you slept with Bas, but I’m telling you that you do not know me, or what I’ve been through,” Jewel said, still trying to hold onto her composure.

  “Oh, don’t I,” the other woman replied. “I know that you think you’re specia
l because you’ve had to fight for something all your life. You fought to get into school, fought to pay those financial-aid bills, and then what? Your mother gets sick and you’re standing right by her side while she fights the cancer that was ravaging her body. And when that battle was lost you thought it was because of something you didn’t do. So you took that ‘take care of your father’ straight to the heart and your brain. You dropped everything and did anything to make sure he was taken care of. And when the every- and anything got out of hand you ran, all to save your father. Never once to save you.”

  Jewel exhaled. “Look, I didn’t sign up for a counseling session.”

  “And I didn’t sign up to be the only one with an ounce of good sense in my family. I didn’t ask for my brother to be kidnapped and for me to be blackmailed. I sure as hell didn’t ask to fall in love with a man that could shift into a gorgeous jaguar. But that’s precisely what I got. That’s the hand I was dealt in life, and it’s the hand I fully intend to play until I take my last breath,” she said with a shrug.

  “What are you saying? That I shouldn’t have taken care of my father? That I should have left him to die the way my mother left us both? Are you really saying I should have stayed with that abusive man?”

  “Not at all. But I’m guessing that being a martyr is a much harder job than giving lap dances.”

  “How dare you?” she asked, outraged, lifting her hand to smack the woman.

  But Priya grabbed her wrist before it could connect. The other woman stood so they were now face-to-face. She dropped Jewel’s arm and said without pretense, “Don’t let this ring and my newfound status fool you; if you smack me, I’m going to smack you back. Now, if it’s a fight you want, if that’s what it’s going to take to put some sense into your head, then fine. We can do this. But if you really want to lash out at someone, it should be yourself, because you’re the one that walked into this situation, you’re the one that decided to run away and steal that man’s diamonds, and now you’re deciding to let a good man walk away because once again, you think running is the only option.”

  “I made the best decisions I could!” she yelled back. “And you don’t have any right telling me otherwise.”

  Priya shook her head. “I’m not trying to tell you otherwise. Yes, you did what you thought was best at the time, but you have to understand that those were your decisions. You made them and then you ran away from the repercussions.”

  “What was I supposed to do, stay there and take his abuse just so he’d keep giving me money?”

  “No, you were supposed to kick him in the balls so hard he got the news flash that you weren’t his whipping post. You were supposed to walk away with your head held high and take care of yourself and your father in another manner.” Priya sighed. “See, it’s easy for me to stand here and tell you that now, after all is said and done. But believe me, Jewel, I know how hard it was for you to make the decisions you did. I know how it feels to be desperate and running out of options. All I’m saying to you now is to not walk away from all that is standing before you. As long as you and your father are here with us, Bas will never let Crowe touch you.”

  Jewel shook her head, not ready to absorb all that Priya was saying. “It’s not his responsibility to care for my father.”

  “You’re right,” Priya conceded. “But you are Ezra’s.”

  “No. I’m not,” she argued.

  Priya simply smiled. “You’re his mate, Jewel. I smelled the companheiro calor the minute I walked into this room. You belong to him and he belongs to you.”

  Heart pounding, tears threatening to fall once again, Jewel continued to deny. “I do not belong to anyone.”

  Priya nodded. “Right. So pack your bag, get your sick father out of that medial facility, try to sell those diamonds that have already been reported stolen, and hit the road. Call me in twenty-four hours and tell me how that’s all working out for you.”

  Jewel sighed. She walked away from Priya, running her fingers through her hair once more. It was all so overwhelming, hearing all that, those words she’d been saying to herself for so long.

  “Remember that you are in charge of your life and that while your father is sick, he’s not dead. Carting him around in hiding and attempting to lie to him is disrespectful and hurtful to him. You have a chance at something more permanent here, something beyond anything you could have ever imagined.”

  “Something that may get us all killed,” Jewel said quietly. “If I stay, Crowe continues his hunt and that will lead him here, to all of you.”

  Priya chuckled, putting a hand on Jewel’s shoulder. “Girl, I know you know exactly what they are. I knew that the first day I saw you. Do they look like they’re going to be killed easily?”

  “You’re not afraid of them?” Jewel asked.

  Priya shook her head. “No. And neither are you, or no amount of fear from a human could have kept you at Perryville, holding their secret, for as long as you stayed. You trusted Jacques and Bas and now you need to trust Ezra.”

  “He’s so bossy and demanding,” she complained.

  “They all are,” Priya stated, laughing out loud this time. “But they’re also loyal and trustworthy and special on a level we could have never imagined. I never thought I’d want to belong to any man either, but Bas isn’t just a man, he’s a part of my soul and I don’t want to live another day without him. I want you to sit down and be completely honest with yourself and if you still feel like you’re better off someplace else, then the decision is yours.”

  She left her alone then and Jewel sat on the bed. She reached into her backpack and pulled out the pouch of diamonds. She thought about her father and his health and the continued strain of running with him. Because there was no doubt she’d always be running from Larry. As long as that man lived he would hunt her. And one day he would find her again, or her father would die from the strain of being uprooted all the time and worrying about her, and then what?

  Tears filled her eyes, falling from her cheeks to disappear into a dark spot on the black velvet bag.

  * * *

  “These were in Crowe’s safe with the diamonds,” Ezra said, tossing the flash drives that Jewel had given him onto the marble-top table in Bas’s private room.

  Rendezvous’s floor plan was like an H, with bedrooms along the two longest sides and connecting with the medical facility, a kitchen and dining area, and a large meeting space in the center. It could house up to one thousand shifters at a time. Right now, there were only about two hundred of them, the guards that Bas had employed to work the Sedona area. Once Perryville went up in flames they’d all been radioed to come here.

  Bas, who was still pretty damned pissed off about his prized resort being destroyed, and internalizing the pain of his best friend’s death, sat at the head of the table and didn’t make a move to reach for the flash drives.

  “She said he’s been working on the Genesis Project for a while, that he’s planning to build more of those like ADAM, and then sell them either to the U.S. military or the highest bidder.”

  “It makes sense,” Paolo said, to Ezra’s chagrin. “I mean, look, he obviously managed to capture a shifter. If you were captured, how long do you think it would take before you shifted?”

  “So you’re saying he caught this shifter then found out what it was and figured he’d capitalize on it?” Ezra asked.

  Paolo shrugged. “It’s the American way.”

  “I want this bastard dead, now!” Bas yelled into the otherwise quiet room. “I want his head on a platter, frozen and kept in storage so that every time I think of Jacques I’ll know that he was avenged.”

  Ezra, Paolo, Dyson, and Syfon, the only ones in the room besides Bas, all looked at the FL in silence. Bas never lost control, he never exploded—well, except for when it involved Priya. But what Crowe had done to Perryville, to Jacques—he’d crossed the line. If there was ever a moment that Ezra realized that fact, it was right now.

  “He might g
o back to the labs, to try and salvage the project. Since I killed ADAM, he’d have to start over with another prototype,” Ezra told Bas.

  “If we can get in there and get all his shit before he does, the bastard has nothing,” Syfon added.

  Paolo cracked his neck by moving it from side to side. “Or we can go there, get his shit, then wait for his ass to show up and take him down. No witnesses, no loose ends.”

  Ezra looked to the younger shifter. “I like how you think.”

  Bas tapped the table as he sat up, leaning in and looking at his men. “Give us a rundown of the security system there. We’ll go in tonight. He’s cocky so he’s probably thinking we’ve run away. But I don’t want to waste another moment.”

  “Right. The iron’s as hot as it’s going to be, we strike now and we strike hard!” Paolo added.

  “We kill this sonofabitch before he creates something that will kill millions more, before he tells who and what we are,” Ezra said solemnly.

  Chapter 23

  Security was tight at the government facility, especially in the dead of night. A caravan of eight SUVs was bound to set off alarms. So about a mile before they reached the facility, the order came over the com link for all drivers to turn off their headlights and slow down. Heavy tires rolled over the dirt road, crackling lightly as the first truck approached the gate.

  Ezra rode in the front seat of that first truck. The plan was to use his work ID to get at least two of the trucks behind the entry gates. Once inside, Dyson, who was riding in the second truck, would disable the alarm system so the others could come around the back entrance. By that time, Ezra, Bas, Syfon, and Paolo would have already entered the lab. They would gather what intel they could, then destroy everything else in the place that even referenced the Genesis Project and, if Crowe wasn’t there, they’d get the hell out. It was a good solid plan.

  But there was something to be said about the best-laid plans.

  Ezra rolled down the window, extending his arm to swipe his ID card through the card track and waited. It took a moment, which seemed like eons, but the light finally blinked green. The locks holding the gate closed disengaged and Ezra drove through, the second truck following directly behind him. He drove around to the employee lot and once parked, eight shifters disembarked and headed for the side door. His card worked again and he and the others moved quickly inside.