Jace (River Pack Wolves 2)(4)
However, he was definitely going to fantasize about this later.
When she was finally dressed, her smile shone in the moonlight. “You better wipe up the drool, River boy.”
He ignored that—it was a show she obviously wanted him to watch, and he needed her to know it wasn’t going to work. Plus he needed to cool this whole thing down, including his raging hard-on, and find out exactly what she was doing here.
Jace strode across the great room until he was face to face with her. “Are you going to tell me who you are now? Or do I have to haul out the torture sticks?”
She frowned at his cold look, then matched it with a defiant one of her own. “Are you going to tell me why you didn’t shift?”
He mouth dropped open, just for a second, then he snapped it shut and scowled. “Let me be clear about this: you’re going to explain why you’re breaking into my house, and you’re going to do it right now.”
She leaned back and threw a pitying look in his direction. “Oh… I see… you can’t.”
He couldn’t help the growl that escaped. “I can shift. I choose not to.” Dammit, how did she get under his skin so fast? He sucked in a breath and tried to regain his calm. “Are you going to answer my question, or do I have to bring in my pack to persuade you?”
She glanced at the front door, but lucky for her, she decided not to make a run for it.
She turned back to study him, folding her arms across her chest and cocking her head to the side. “Why didn’t you just shift to catch me?”
“That’s really none of your business.” He was glad to hear his voice returning to its normal cool. “And you’ve got three seconds to come clean.”
“That offer of naked interrogation is still on the table.” She smirked at him again.
“Two.”
The smirk faded, and her voice dropped. “Look, I don’t need any trouble—”
“One.” He glanced up the stairs where the River pack was still slumbering away. One howl would bring them down.
The girl threw up her hands. “Okay, all right.”
He waited.
She pursed her lips and hesitated. Then she said, “My name is Piper Wilding.”
Jace narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t recognize her. Then again, he’d only met a few of the Wilding pack members personally. They were a different breed—still fiercely loyal like a pack should be, but looser in their organization. Whereas Jace and his brothers and their pack all worked for the River brothers’ security company, Riverwise, the Wilding’s were literally all over the map. Research professors, military, lawyers… they each went their separate way, not just in Seattle, but all over the world. And they had a reputation for being… unstable. He’d personally encountered the Wilding brand of crazy—most recently when Terra Wilding tried to crawl into his bed upstairs after Jaxson turned her down. She was an artist who normally lived downtown, but she had been hiding out at the safehouse after they’d rescued her baby sister Cassie.
Terra was a black-haired tornado.
Not unlike the girl standing before him.
“A Wilding,” Jace finally said, nodding. “I should have known by the way you wrapped your legs around me before saying hello.”
She bit her lip. “You’ll never know how great that could have been, River boy.”
He hated the effect that had on his cock, which was finally starting to settle down.
“I don’t think I’ll miss explaining the smell to my mother,” he said, keeping his voice ice cold. “And besides, that doesn’t really explain anything. We have a doorbell. You could have used it.” The Wildings might be hot-blooded, but they really weren’t completely insane. Some were even decent and reasonable, like Daniel Wilding, the Army grunt who helped out with their last mission. And who was also parked upstairs, waiting to help them track down Agent Smith and the other captured shifters.
The smoldering sexiness dropped off Piper’s face. “I’m not really supposed to be here, River boy.”
“No kidding.” He glared at her. “And my name is Jace.”
“Jace.” She rolled his name around in her mouth in a way that had him thinking about tearing her clothes off again. Damn, he really had to get that under control. “Well, Jace River, The Wolf Who Chooses Not To Shift… I’m not supposed to be here, as in Seattle. But I need to see my brother, Daniel. And when I heard you had stashed him and my cousins up here…” She shrugged. “I needed to reach him without alerting the rest of the Wilding family network.”
“Have you heard of a cell phone?” He looked askance at her. This story wasn’t holding up. “They’re a real handy invention. Reduces fatalities from breaking and entering a hundred fold.”