Summer Cursed

Chapter Twenty

It had been two weeks since Stella disappeared. Liam’s medical staff had treated the shifters for malnourishment and trauma. They’d given their statements to Liam’s investigators and numerous therapists. Liam compensated them for the money they lost while out of work and, if needed, set them up with help to find new jobs.

The shifters had had little information other than a small group of regs would wander through the zoo every week. We’d been lucky to have seen them. Had we shown up the day before or the day after, the spectators wouldn’t have been there.

Stella made them shift so often and hadn’t fed them enough to make up for it. That pissed me off the most. She knew how much the shift took out of us. She knew how much food we needed to shift that often. She’d purposely kept them weak.

The shifter who had been there the longest had overheard a lot in the beginning. Stella was charging the regs ten thousand dollars a pop to tour the facility. That meant the night we were there she’d made fifty grand. She definitely hadn’t needed Liam’s charity for her dad.

Things had been quiet. Too quiet. There had been no attacks, no explosives, no arson, no more chocolates, and no new missing shifters.

On the flip side, Patricia had given my fifth book the thumbs up for publishing, and I’d already finished the first draft of book six and had sent it to her. It was past my deadline, but after telling her about my house she’d forgiven my oversight. And without work to distract me, I became really frustrated by Stella’s disappearance, and almost lost my mind.

According to Liam’s contacts no one matching Stella’s description had boarded a plane, train, or boat. If she drove somewhere, that’d be a little harder to find out. They checked the borders to Mexico and Canada and came up empty-handed. They had her mom under surveillance, but she hadn’t gone to see her. There were a few BDSM clubs in the area, some of them underground, but no one had ever seen her there. Or so they said.

Liam was confident if the people were lying to his men, they’d have known.

“Yeah? And how can you be so sure?” It hit me the second the words left my mouth. “You have vampires on the payroll.”

He winked at me from across his desk. I rose from the armchair and moved around the desk, sliding my bottom onto it. I placed my feet on either side of his legs and leaned in toward him.

“Who are you, Liam Fraser?” I asked while toying with the top button of his shirt.

Faster than I could see, he grabbed me by the waist and pulled me forward so I was straddling him. “I’m Batman, remember?” he whispered as he pressed his lips to mine.

I fell into the kiss, letting my brain shutdown while I finished unbuttoning his shirt so I could run my hands over his bare chest and abdomen. His hands took their own journey from my ass to my breasts. When he lowered his mouth to suckle my nipple through my shirt, my head fell back, and I ground myself against him.

I groaned when his phone dinged signaling a text. I thought about making him ignore it, but we were waiting to hear from too many people about Stella. He reached behind me for the cockblocking device, and I leaned over to read it with him.

“I forgot all about the quarterly pack summit,” I said.

He replied to the text and tossed his phone aside. “So did I,” he said, sliding his hands under my shorts to cup my ass. “It’s not like me. I never forget anything… You’re bad for me, Red.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I guess I should just get out of your way then.” I leaned forward so my breasts touched his face as I pushed myself to stand. “Oops, sorry about that.”

A surprised laugh escaped me when he grabbed me to pull me back on top of him. “I like being bad.”

“Really? What do you do that’s so bad?”

He winked and shot me that sexy smirk of his. “Batman never reveals his secrets.”

“Mmm, still the sneaky one, I see.”

“As I told you once before, Red, you have no idea.” He kissed the spot just below my ear and trailed his lips down my neck, his beard tickling me as he moved.

I let my head fall back to give him better access as I slid my hands into his hair. I thought back to that conversation. A small smile played at my lips remembering how much I had annoyed him. “Should I still mind myself?”

He growled as he rose from his chair and sat me back on the desk. He grabbed me by the hair and tugged to angle my face toward his. “Yes, you should.”

“Oh, but Mr. Fraser, what’ll happen if I don’t?” I asked, looking up at him from under my eyelashes, while running my fingers around the waistband of his pants.

“Damn you.”

He crushed his lips to mine, and I tasted blood, but I didn’t care. I undid the clasp and lowered the zipper freeing him from the pants. His hips twitched forward when I gripped his shaft tightly, and he groaned when I moved my hand over the length of him.

He broke the kiss and placed a hand over mine to stop it. “Stand up.”

I slid off the desk and stood in front of him. He still had my hair wrapped around his hand as he locked eyes with me. He didn’t react when I pressed my lips to his, so I nibbled his bottom lip.