Warrior Wolf (Protection, Inc 4)

Raluca was so fucking gorgeous, and he wanted her so much. And she could barely stand to be in the same room with him.

That is not so, his wolf said. You are mates. You drank from her hands.

Silently, Nick replied, That cuts no ice with the fucking dragon princess, buddy. She fucking hates me. Want to bet whether she lasts the entire ball before she calls Hal and asks to be transferred to Destiny?

Raluca cleared her throat, a polite but firm sound that she’d probably spent years perfecting. God knew what she thought he’d been doing. Staring at her breasts, probably.

“Brief me,” Raluca said. “I will remember everything.”

Nick choked back his feelings and tried to stay as cool as her. He gave her their fake names and cover stories, plus the hotel she was supposedly staying at and her fake itinerary.

Raluca was Katarina Petrescu, a wealthy tourist from Viorel, and Nick was Adam Peterson, an American relative — a distant one, to account for their total lack of family resemblance, but related enough to explain why they weren’t a couple, if anyone asked. He’d figured there was no way she’d go for fake dating, and Nick didn’t want to either. If he had to touch her romantically but in pretense, he’d lose his mind.

She repeated it back to him flawlessly, often word-for-word, h

er tone lightly mocking as if she thought she’d shock him with her total recall. He wasn’t shocked. She might be naïve, but she was the opposite of stupid.

“Great,” Nick said when she was done. He wanted to praise her more — most clients needed multiple repetitions and role-play before they got it right — but anything else, and she’d probably think he was condescending. If there was one thing he’d proved over and over, it was that he couldn’t do anything right as far as the princess was concerned.

They drove through the city in silence, Nick with half his mind on the road and security, and half mentally rehearsing everything Rafa had taught him.

Champagne glass farthest from you and centered above the other glasses, red wine glass below it and on the left, sherry next to red wine on the right, white wine below red wine on the left, and water below sherry on the right.

Or had he mixed up red and white wine? Or red wine and sherry? And what did it matter when a fucking butler was pouring and he could see and smell what everything was?

“Because if you drink the wrong drink with the wrong course, you’ll blow your cover. And if you actually know what you’re doing, you’ll look like you’ll know what you’re doing,” Rafa had said, sounding annoyed.

Which was fair. That was the most basic principle of undercover work. Nick shouldn’t even swear in his own mind, if he wanted to avoid swearing when he was at the ball.

Next thing Nick knew, he was pulling up at the fanciest house he’d ever seen, a gigantic white thing with about a billion windows and pillars.

“The fuck?” he muttered.

“If you use that word here, you will seem out of place and attract unwanted attention,” Raluca remarked, a second after he’d mentally cursed himself out.

He handed over his keys to the valet, who wore a suit fancier than anything Nick owned. Unless you counted the suit Rafa had gotten for him, but Nick was hardly going to take it home and wear it again. It could live in Protection, Inc., with the other weird costumes the team had amassed for specific jobs.

Another valet opened the car door for Raluca before Nick could, then just stood there while she just sat there. Belatedly, Nick hurried around and offered her his hand, assisting her out of the car. Even through gloves, a jacket sleeve, and a shirt sleeve, her fingers burned like fire.

The valet took off without giving him a receipt. Nick hoped to hell that was normal. And how the hell much was he supposed to tip when he got his car back? Or was he not supposed to tip? Rafa hadn’t covered that.

He led Raluca into the house. She walked lightly, regally, as if she wore an invisible crown. Nick felt incredibly awkward in his fucking clothes that were so weirdly precise that he was sure he’d violate some fucking rich person’s law just by walking. Rafa had actually taken out a ruler to measure how much sleeve should show below his jacket cuffs!

Nick forced himself to focus. He gave the place a visual sweep, looking for anyone or anything suspicious, and saw nothing but an incredible amount of fancy stuff and people dressed just like him and Raluca, plus more people like the valets — butlers and maids, he guessed.

People came up and greeted them. Nick let Raluca do the talking, and just nodded and smiled and checked them for hidden weapons. There was nothing, just as there had been nothing anywhere they’d gone. Nick was beginning to wonder if either Raluca had ditched her assassins in Venice, or if her transformation there had scared off the entire plot against her. Sure, the assassin had carried dragonsbane, but it was one thing to know that dragons existed, and another to be knocked across the room by one.

All the same, Nick had a vial of heartsease in his pocket, along with a gun in a shoulder holster. They’d been easier to conceal under his black leather jacket, not to mention easier to get to in a hurry. But if it came to shooting or poisoning, all the rules were out the window anyway and he could just rip off his fucking stiff clothes.

Raluca coughed delicately, catching his attention. A pair of double doors had been opened, and people were headed toward a huge dining room. Nick took Raluca’s elbow, choking down the surge of unwanted desire that coursed through him every fucking time he touched her, and led her to the ridiculously long table beneath a ridiculously huge chandelier.

Hal had done his prep work: there were place cards under their fake names. Nick pulled out Raluca’s chair, then pushed it in for her as she gracefully seated himself. Then he started to pull out his own chair, only to have a waiter or butler or someone grab it. Nick forced himself not to jump — that guy had moved fast, and Nick didn’t like people doing that close to his client when he was on the job — but the waiter only seemed to want to pull out Nick’s chair for him.

Keeping an eye on the waiter’s hands, Nick let himself be seated. But he sat too soon, leaving himself too far from the table. Both Raluca and the waiter looked irritated, and even more so when Nick scooted his chair closer in, making an unpleasant scraping noise and probably damaging the million-dollar hardwood floors.

That was when he got his first good, close, non-distracted look at the place setting.

Nick had never seen Phantom of the Opera, but he’d heard that the big stunt was a falling chandelier. As he took in the horrifyingly large and complex array of forks and glasses and plates, all of which he needed to use correctly while guarding Raluca and pretending that he was a fucking rich snob, he wished the chandelier would come crashing down then and there.