When An Alpha Purrs(26)

She listened for another thirty seconds, silently counted in her head.

Still utter quiet.

Easing it slowly open, Kira used the door as a shield to peer around its  edge. Through the palm leaves of the potted plants, she noted the many  empty couches.

As a matter of fact, the whole main floor appeared absent of life,  except for the check-in desk, where a male guard in his late fifties sat  playing with his smart phone and, just outside, the guy by the front  door who stepped from his post to grasp the handle of a yellow cab that  pulled up.

Seeing her chance, Kira slipped out of the stairwell and quick-walked to  the door. She thought she heard a, "Hey, where are you going?" from the  guy at the desk, but she ignored it and skipped out.

Hitting the pavement, she didn't pause, nor did she look at the doorman  at all. She briskly walked away, moving faster and faster, probably  because of the murmur of excited voices behind her.

Soon she was running. She made it down the curved drive of the condo to  the sidewalk. It wasn't a busy place, and the cars trolling it at this  twilight hour were few, the area too residential.

She high-tailed it, feet pounding pavement, and, to muddy her trail for possible pursuers, ducked in the first alley she saw.

She'd escaped. She'd done it. As she reached the far end of the alley,  which spilled onto a busier seeming street, she couldn't help but think  it seemed too easy.

At any moment, she expected Arik to recapture her and ask in that husky murmur of his, ‘Where are you running to, mouse?'

Except when the arms did snag her, they weren't the gentle haven she'd  come to expect. And the voice was a grating lesson in why she should  have listened to Arik and stayed safe in his condo.

"Hey, bitch slut, about time you showed your cheating face."





Chapter Nineteen


The tip from Jeoff's men saying they'd cornered Gregory proved a bust.  The mangy wolf had evaded them yet again. Worse, he'd made fools of  them. The rabid annoyance toyed with the men tracking him by leaving a  trail that led to a pile of his clothes, along with a great big, still  almost steaming pile of insult.

The bastard taunted them.

But why? He surely had to know it was a bad idea. Arik wasn't king for  nothing. Now that Arik hunted, Gregory's days were marked. Because once I  find him, he'll learn a valuable lesson about messing around in my  city.

Big emphasis on the when Arik found him, which didn't happen that night.
                       
       
           



       
Foiled, not in a great mood, and a sense of wrongness nagging, Arik returned to his condo. An empty condo.

"She left!" He said it aloud, unable to stem his disbelief. How could  she have left? He'd disabled her access to the panel. He'd known better  than to believe her. What sane woman would stick around after a guy told  her he was a lion?

But he'd anticipated that, and as soon as he hit the elevator, he'd  logged onto the condo's security system and locked down her access. Yet,  according to the log he pulled up, someone had tampered with his  instructions.

"Mother." He growled her name, and just in time, too, as she sauntered  from his kitchen, a martini glass in hand, several green olives floating  in the bottom. "What are you doing here?"

"Can't a mother visit her son?"

"Not a meddling one who, for some reason, gave my mate access to the building after I'd revoked it."

"Oh dear. Was I not supposed to do that? I was just trying to make the  poor dear feel welcome since apparently someone foolishly decided to  dally with a human." Her lips twisted, and not because of the sip of her  martini, extra dry.

"Kira is my mate."

"Over my dead body."

"That can be arranged." He said it quite seriously, arms crossed over his chest.

His mother didn't seem the least bit affronted. She casually took  another drink from the fluted glass. "Such melodrama. I expect that from  your younger cousins-my sisters are such ninnies when it comes to  raising cubs-but you are the pride's alpha. You are king of this city  and lord over those who inhabit it. Act like it."

"I am, and it's as alpha I'm stating you've gone too far. Kira is my mate."

"Not a very willing one."

"That will change as she gets to know me, which would have been a lot  easier were she still here. Where did she go?" Because she sure as hell  hadn't been in the front lobby. A lobby that was rather empty, as most  of his pride had probably gone to watch an underground shifter-fighting  ring. The Ultimate Fur and Fang Throwdown came to town only once a month  and proved a huge draw.

"How would I know where she went? I merely provided her with the means to exit. I didn't drive her to her destination."

And she didn't have a car. Arik suddenly didn't like where this was headed. "Do you know if she hailed a cab?"

Even as he asked, his feet were moving, a sense of foreboding forming a  ball in his stomach. Don' t tell me the whole Gregory-is-cornered thing  was a ruse. A wily and brazen one, yet it would explain the false trail  Arik and Jeoff had followed. The rabid wolf had distracted his hunters  while he went after his true prey, Kira.

The elevator wasn't moving fast enough and stalled a few floors down.  His sense of urgency mounted. He couldn't stand still. He took the  half-dozen strides across the short hall and slammed into the bar that  opened the door onto the stairs. His mother followed, haranguing him,  "Where are you going? Why the hurry?"

"Why the hurry? I'll tell you why. Because you foolishly overstepped  your bounds as my mother and allowed my mate, a woman in danger from a  rabid wolf, to leave the safety of my home. You put her in danger." He  leaped over the railing as opposed to jogging down and hit the landing  for the floor below with a thump.

"I didn't know she was in danger," his mother cried, her voice faint from her spot at the top of the stairwell.

"Doesn't matter." What did matter was Kira. Not knowing where she was  had his inner lion pacing. Perhaps she was fine. Kira might have simply  left and made her way safely to one of her family's homes or even her  own. But his gut didn't believe it, and it proved right.

Less than a block away, in an alley stinking of wolf, Arik came across  her purse and a note, a note that was short but to the point.

Cum to the wearhouse alone or she dyes.

A misspelled invitation to violence. How fun. And he knew just what to wear. Fur and teeth. Rawr.





Chapter Twenty


Kira woke up … and cursed.

There were times in a woman's life when she wished she wasn't so independent. So stubborn. So bloody stupid.

I should have listened to Arik.

But, no, like a ninny, just to piss him off, and because he wasn't the  only one who could act contrary, she'd made the wrong choice. She  thought she was smarter than him, that she knew better, but it turned  out she should get her IQ tested because a lack of good judgment had led  to her current situation, bound to a chair.

This isn't good.

A brief squirm of her body showed she wasn't going anywhere easily.  Rope, the nylon braided kind her grandma used for her clothesline in her  backyard, was looped several times around her upper body. Nothing  fancy, certainly not kinbaku level stuff-which, for the uninformed, was a  Japanese style of BDSM rope bondage, something she'd learned from an  ex-boyfriend who'd expressed an interest in educating her. She politely  declined.                       
       
           



       

Deviant bedroom acts aside, professionally tied or not, the rope  effectively immobilized her to the seat. Good news, though, her legs  remained unfettered. Kicking her feet, in petulance since she had  nothing else in reach, didn't do much to help her situation.

Since she wasn't going anywhere, she took stock of her current  situation. It resembled a low-budget movie set. The place appeared  rather squalid. The dim lighting that filtered through high square  windows didn't allow for deep scrutiny, just some basic generalities.  Judging by their lofty position, along with the dusty concrete floor  and, to either side of her, what appeared to be stacks of shipping  crates, Kira surmised she'd found herself in some kind of warehouse.

Totally cliché, and had someone played an ominous soundtrack in that  moment, she probably would have wet her pants. She knew how this went in  the movies. Either the girl got killed, which she wouldn't put past  Gregory, or the girl got rescued in the nick of time-not likely given  the person who might have noticed she disappeared had no idea where  she'd gone. And there went that dum-dum-dum soundtrack again.

A scuff from behind had her straining to see who approached. Even before  he spoke, she could have rightly guessed. "Finally awake. It took you  long enough. My fault. I forgot when I injected you with that  tranquilizer I stole from the vet that you're human and a little slower  to process drugs."