"I understand." She trickled a finger over his lips as she pretended to consider their options. "Perhaps we'd better try again while I consider better adjectives."
"Only for that reason."
A cold wind swept past, but Mandy was surrounded by a bubble of heat. Justin's body under her a flaming furnace. He kept himself in control, though, the power and strength of his passion tightly leashed. His restraint allowed her to concentrate on everything else as she got lost in their kiss.
She was trying to think of a description that would impress the wolves, really she was, but words were blurry, fuzzy things that seemed to bubble and fizz in her brain in an unknown foreign language.
The next time they pulled apart she was seeing stars. His hands firmly grasped her hips, her fingers were buried in the short hair at the back of his neck.
She sucked for air before managing to speak. "Wow."
Justin grinned. "Much better."
It was tempting to go farther. To ask him up to her apartment, and maybe move on to another item on the list, but something inside told her she wasn't quite ready.
She might be willing now, but if things went too far, too fast and she had to call for a stop, that would be worse than sticking to her original plan of going slowly.
She crawled off his lap and straightened her clothing, glancing up to discover he was grinning.
"What?"
He just shook his head, holding out a hand. Their fingers linked as he escorted her to the security door.
"Do you know your plans for tomorrow? Because … " He cleared his throat. "I'll just make a fool of myself once and for all. I want to be with you, Mandy. I want you to let me know what you need a hand with, but I can't help myself. If you don't call me, I'll come looking. And it's not because I want to control you, it's because I want to be with you."
His confession sent a shiver skipping over her skin. It wasn't a shiver of fear like Ainsworth had put in her, but Justin's admission was borderline bossy, and she wasn't ready for that. She wasn't ready to be even remotely thrilled at how much he seemed to care.
The line between obsession and caring was too raw in her memory.
"I'll call you," she promised, stepping inside the building.
He waited until the door closed, the lock clicking firmly shut between them. The six or seven paces it took to get to the elevator, she could sense he was watching, his gaze fixed on her until the doors closed and blocked them from each other's view.
She leaned her forehead against the wall and let out a long, slow breath, willing her heart to slow its frantic pace.
"Oh, Mandy. He's a fine one, but you don't need to rush," she chastised herself as the elevator doors opened with a soft ping. She slipped down the hallway to her suite and used the access card. The door swung open.
Mandy stood in the doorway, frozen, nerve endings tingling a warning.
Once again, something seemed off, but she couldn't tell exactly what. The sensation of someone having been where they shouldn't have been struck like it had at the pool, but even stronger, and the edge of uncertainty was enough to have her stepping back and pulling the door closed silently.
She headed down the hallway rapidly, her heart racing. The urge to message Justin hit, immediate and strong. And it wasn't a bad idea, but was it the best idea?
Justin would willingly protect her-there was no doubt about that-but if she was overreacting, she didn't want him to think she was going to constantly jump at shadows. Maybe the wolves had sent someone to the apartment for some reason. It was a plausible explanation. It was …
But she wasn't going to be stupid and assume everything was okay.
Don't think-act.
Mandy took out her phone and sent a text to another she knew she could trust implicitly.
Amy. I think someone's been in my apartment.
Mandy took the stairs, clutching the railing to slow herself as she hurried downward. She rushed outside and glanced around.
Keeping their animal natures secret in the midst of a mostly human city had made the development of certain items logical in the shifter community. Since the Takhini pack owned the apartment, they ought to have shifters stay there, ergo, there should be a place nearby where she could cache her clothes.
She found the box elegantly disguised as a decorative post office box. For all she knew the top half of it was used for snail mail, but the bottom held a door that slid open to reveal two private compartments. The back of the box was set just deep enough into the trees that she could strip down quickly and stay out of sight.
Standing in the nude, Mandy placed all her things into the hidden space. That included her phone, but she would have no way to answer it within seconds anyway.
Then she closed the door and applied her thumbprint to the small pad, thoroughly impressed with the Takhini pack's high-tech security.
The momentary distraction gave her something else to think about other than how scared she was-unreasonably scared, probably, but with her history, unreasonable became reasonable enough in a heck of a hurry.
She crouched low and willed the change to come over her, limbs and torso rearranging themselves quickly to her other form. Her animal side was more powerful and less delicate than her human form, but still susceptible to tranquilizer guns of human animal enforcement.
Staying out of sight was imperative. Mandy wasn't trying to do anything other than keep safe.
She slipped quietly through the trees until she had a good vantage point of the back door, her apartment windows visible above her. Silently she lay on her belly and waited.
Chapter Five
Justin wasn't even through the doors at the pack house when he bumped into Evan racing the other direction.
The Alpha wolf put a hand on his shoulder and turned him forcibly, all but spinning him out the door toward the parking lot.
Justin was in no mood to be tolerant of impulsive wolf behavior. "What the-?"
"We just got a text from Mandy. She needs us."
That was enough to cause a total change of attitude and plans. In a split second, Justin was charging alongside the wolf even as he slipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out his phone to check for messages.
Nothing.
An unwelcome sense of disappointment kicked in along with rising concern, and he hit one of his autodial-preprogrammed texts and sent off a secret message.
"What did she say?" Justin demanded as they ignored their vehicles and ran full speed down the path between the buildings, headed to the apartment faster on foot using shortcuts than driving and parking.
They might have been moving rapidly, but Evan barked out a warning instead of an answer. "Advice for you."
Justin bit back the growl that wanted to escape.
The wolf Alpha led his boisterous and seemingly borderline-out-of-control ragtag crew, but he did it in a way that meant very few arrests or deaths in the shifter community he cared for, which was a powerful statement in itself.
His advice shouldn't be tossed aside, no matter how much Justin questioned his timing. "What?"
"You're ready to roll in there, guns blazing. Or you're going to do the exact opposite of what your gut is telling you, and you'll pull your punches and control the beast because you don't want to scare her." They were already only a block away from where Justin had left Mandy when Evan laid a hand on his arm, pulling him to a rapid walk from their all-out sprint. "Either one of those would be a mistake. I don't envy you the balancing act, but learn from my mistake. When Amy and I were dealing with our past, I didn't take it seriously enough how much she needed me to be me, as well as listen to her concerns."
"This isn't the time for a lecture," Justin snapped, frantic to keep moving.
"We'll be there in thirty seconds," Evan promised, "but this is important, man. I didn't get my kick-in-the-ass until I'd already screwed things up, so from one Alpha male to another, listen to what she needs, but don't hold back."
"Fine." Justin stored the advice away for later, rushing forward at Evan's side as they closed in on the tall apartment house at the edge of town.
Evan took a deep breath then snapped a finger toward the trees. "Mandy's over there, in her bear form. You wanna talk to her while I go check out the apartment?"
Justin nodded at Evan's retreating back before peering into the darkness, trying to spot the shifted form of the woman who'd sent his heart racing. "Mandy? Hey, pretty lady. Everything's going to be okay."
He stepped forward again, following her scent to her hiding place. He paused at the edge of the clearing, offering a reassuring smile when when he finally spotted her in the shadows.
Appreciation rose for her skillful camouflage because she had a more difficult task than most. Justin had known she was unusual, but this was the first time he'd actually seen her animal form.
Her fur was the delicate mixture of white, grey and silver that was often mistaken at first glance for polar bear, but was instead the marker of a member of Kodiak Island. Ghost bears-rare and beautiful.
"I don't know what spooked you, but I'm very impressed," he admitted. She'd done a great job hiding. "If Evan hadn't told me where to start looking, you'd still be hidden, and that can't be an easy task with your white fur."
Mandy rose to all fours, coming beside him to lean her shoulder and head against his leg.