Business With Pleasure (Empathy in the Preternatural PNW Book 2) Read online

  Owen’s face changed minutely from curious to calculating. I felt that spike of annoyance again, but it wasn’t directed at me. His lip quirked after a bit and he nodded.

  “That explains a lot about my day,” he finally said. I raised a brow, watching him, before he shook his head. “And what does Madeline want me to do with this information?”

  “For starters, she’d like you to reconsider killing her.” The fingers on his left hand twitched slightly and his expression went thoughtful. “Chloe said that she was going to look into it," I added.

  “Oh?” he asked, a narrow, fingernail-sized sliver of amusement seeping through. “And what is she going to do if she finds something helpful?”

  I frowned. “I’m not sure, to be honest. There’s a lot about that girl I don’t really know, and I can’t predict what she’s going to be doing at any moment. She hit on me earlier.”

  “Really? And you weren’t up for it?”

  “S’why I’m here. We’re friends and it seemed… I mean, I wouldn’t look at her and want to have sex with her on most days, so to do it because my brain had been influenced seemed wrong.”

  “But you’re okay with showing up at my place in the middle of the night to use me for sex?” He gave me a smug half-smile, and I noted that the desire I’d so affectively chased away earlier was coming around again. I shrugged a shoulder.

  “You and I have already been the beast with two backs. We’ve—quite enthusiastically, I’d say—discussed doing it all again.”

  When he continued to stare at me with that half-smile still on his pretty face, I straightened my posture, lifted my chin slightly.

  “It’s just good sense,” I said, affecting an air of arrogance. If I had a pipe, I would’ve tucked it between my lips and checked my pocket watch. The other half of Owen’s smile returned, and he gave a slow nod, as if considering an important proposition.

  “Well, if it’s just good sense, then we should get to it.”

  “Just like that?”

  “If I think of anything else I need to ask, I’ll let you know,” he said, stepping closer. He slid his hands around my hips, cupping my ass and pulling me against him. Every ounce of lust that had receded to percolate in the back of my head rushed forward, making me feel thick and warm all over. Leaning up to kiss him, I linked my fingers across the back of his neck and helped hoist myself into his arms. I wrapped my legs around his hips as he moved toward the back bedroom, and kissed a line from his lips to his ear.

  “Please hold all questions until after the presentation,” I said, before tugging his earlobe between my teeth.

  ##

  I woke topless, sprawled facedown across a bed that wasn’t my own. My cheek was wet against the sheet, my groggy gaze aimed right at a pair of sleep pants I didn’t recognize. I squinted, rolled slightly to look up across a naked belly, and found Owen standing over me, shirtless. I took in the attractive sight of the line of pale hair peeking out from his pants before I tore my attention upward to a mug of something warm in his hand.

  Noticing where my attention had been, he smiled, affection hitting me as he tipped his head to mirror the position of mine. I gave a half smile, yawned hugely and rolled completely over. The blanket only followed enough to cover one breast, but I was both too tired and feeling too good to care. Owen’s eyes flicked to my exposed nipple as he spoke.

  “You sleep like a toddler on crack.”

  I pouted and pulled the blanket up to cover myself, which made him laugh. He sat on the bed next to me, gestured with the cup.

  “Not that I think you need it after all the thrashing you did last night, but I brought you coffee.”

  “I’m not really into coffee.”

  “It’s half flavored cream and nearly a quarter sugar.”

  “Gimme,” I demanded, pushing myself into a sitting position. I pulled my knees to my chest to hold the sheet in place and reached for the mug. He smiled as I took a tentative sip and then held his other hand out to me. My phone was in it.

  “Your phone was nearly as busy as we were last night.”

  “Eh?” I grunted, frowning down at it. Resting the cup on my knee, still holding the handle, I grabbed the phone and unlocked it. “Holy crap.”

  I had eleven missed calls from a local number I didn’t recognize and six voicemails from the same number. Fighting off a brief bout of panic while I reminded myself that Stan and my family all had area codes outside Seattle, I decided to leave the voicemails until later. It had been four hours since the last one had come through, and I had a handsome, shirtless man attending to me in bed.

  As I took another sip of the saccharine coffee, which I was fairly sure no one but me would’ve been able to stomach, it occurred to me that I hadn’t really mentioned my sweet tooth to Owen. Or, if I had, I didn’t remember making clear the exact depth of sweetness I preferred.

  “This is suspiciously good.”

  “Ah, well.” Owen dropped a hand onto my foot through the blanket and I felt a hint of sheepishness slide through his perfect emotional wall. “I kind of have a confession.”

  “Mmm?” I asked vaguely, taking another giant gulp. The sugar had mostly settled to the bottom, which meant I was getting to the syrupy good part.

  “The Sneed con wasn’t the first time I saw you.”

  Lifting a brow, I tipped back the cup all the way, waiting as the last of the toothsome globules slid onto my tongue. The motion dropped the sheet further down my chest, but I just gestured for Owen to continue as I set the cup down.

  “Saturday morning I was at The Internets, just seeing if I could catch Madeline. I saw you come in, sleepy and out of sorts. You ordered tea and the woman working the counter told the barista to add in a few extra pumps of sweetener. You were cute, so I noticed.”

  “Oh, Holly,” I said, feeling a sudden spike of affection for her; I was going to have to start tipping better. “You should have come over and said hi.”

  “I did later,” he protested. “At the café, though, you looked half-asleep and I was there on business. It was only after the fifth person asked where Madeline was that Holly got frustrated. She vented on the one of the others behind the counter that, if she had to answer that question the whole weekend, she was going to make a giant sign with some very rude words on it. I left when I realized Madeline wasn’t coming in. It’s why I got to the Con so late.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing you thought I was cute or I wouldn’t have had anywhere to go in my time of need.” I reached out to press a hand to his cheek, wishing he was near enough to kiss. When he didn’t move closer, I dropped my hand. “Something wrong?”

  “Not with you. We both have to go soon, though. I let you sleep—and drool, it seems—” I wiped at my mouth self-consciously. “For as long as I could, but according to the beeping alarm on your phone, you’re only an hour out from your first appointment.”

  “Oh shit,” I said, shoving at the covers and hopping to my feet. I was thirty minutes from home, unprepared to go into work, and at least twenty minutes out from home to work. After the post-coital clean up I’d had the sense to pull on underpants, but that was it. Where my other clothes had gone was a mystery. Before I could rush by in search of them, Owen grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him, spreading his knees so I slipped between them. Since he was sitting down, this put my naked breasts at just about his eye level. I frowned down at him, but it was half-hearted.

  “I have to go.”

  “At least kiss me goodbye before you tear out of here topless.”

  “What if I said I have notoriously bad morning breath?”

  “I’d point out that you just smell like sugar and coffee, now.” He didn’t give me another chance to argue, but I wouldn’t have anyway. He slid a hand up the side of my body, his thumb probably—okay, very likely—deliberately grazing my nipple before he cupped the back of my neck and pulled me down into a kiss.

  Good god, nothing sounded better right then than climbing into his lap an
d making what was probably epic bed-head even worse. His hair looked great, but there was no way mine wasn’t a mess after both sex and cracked-out-toddler sleep.

  My skin tingled everywhere but, instead of grabbing on and straddling him until he moved those talented lips to the rest of me, I kept my arms down by my side. He broke the kiss and I stood up straight, putting his face between my breasts again. His gaze staying on mine, he jerked his chin toward the other side of the room.

  “Your clothes are on the dresser. You kind of just threw them off haphazardly last night and I tried to straighten up in here. I almost couldn’t find your left sock, and your bra ended up behind the nightstand.”

  “Pretty sure that was your fault, buddy.”

  “Oh,” he said, feigning deep thought. “Maybe it was.”

  “Now let go of me so I can get dressed. I’m going to be late enough as it is.”

  “Only to work, I hope.”

  “Unless you bought joke condoms, yes. Just to work.”

  He lifted his hands away from my skin, holding them out like I was about to frisk him for weapons. Believe me, I considered it; good sense won, though, and I moved across the room, yanked on my clothes as fast as I could, snagged my phone from the bed and then leaned down to give Owen a kiss on the cheek. He stayed seated on the bed, watching me calmly, his emotions a low pulse of contentment and mild arousal.

  “I’ll call in a few hours and we can talk more about the succubus problems.”

  “Sounds good,” he said, getting to his feet. I didn’t give him a chance to see me out as I sprinted out of the bedroom and across the living room. I grabbed my bag off the table next to the couch, where it looked like Owen had rummaged through it to get my screaming phone, and ran out the door.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rather than take the time to get home and then back to the office, I’d called Chloe on the way, asking that she bring me the extra clothes I kept at her place. I tore into the building with twenty minutes to change, brush my hair, and give my patient’s file a quick look-see. As I pushed open the door to the office, Chloe jerked a thumb at the hall behind her desk, not saying a word. I hustled around the desk, down the hall past the records room and into our private bathroom that I paid good rent money for. Chloe had left my clothes on the little IKEA cabinet where we kept toilet paper and soap. Set out deliberately on top of my pants were a brush and a travel kit. I opened the kit and found a toothbrush, toothpaste, face wipes and a little mini-stick of deodorant.

  I made a mental note to give her a big, sloppy kiss of thanks at some point, and got to making myself decent. By the time I was done, you could barely tell I’d spent the night having sex and drooling buckets on someone else's pillow.

  “I take it you—oh!” Chloe’s brows shot up in surprise when I leaned in, grabbed her face and kissed her on the mouth. I made a show of it, with a big, “mwah!” sound and a pinch of her cheek as I pulled back.

  “I thought you just wanted to be friends,” she said, smiling up at me from her seat. I shrugged and leaned a hip against her desk.

  “I just would not have made it home and then here in time. I left a message on Stan’s cell, but he wasn’t awake I guess. Hopefully he won’t be insulted that left him there alone all night.”

  “He’ll probably make himself a sensible breakfast and spend the day writing. That should distract him from everything that’s going on.”

  I nodded, turned and moved into my office. Chloe followed me in, sitting in the chair across the desk from me as I booted up my computer.

  “So where were you last night that you couldn’t change clothes or clean up?”

  “Owen’s,” I said, ignoring the teasing in her tone.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, Madeline left me all fired up and Stan wasn’t going to be of any help, so I drove out to Edmonds.” I sat down, logged into the computer, and then looked back to Chloe. “Totally worth it.”

  “I bet,” she said with a laugh. We sat in silence for a bit as I opened the files I needed, scanned them and then glanced at the clock.

  “Only two today, right?”

  “Yeah, Georgia and then Carlos later.”

  “Good. I’m going to actually talk to Owen later about the succubus issue. I was able to pass on Madeline’s request and tell him about Norma, but then we were a little too busy to really do...anything that wasn’t sex, actually.”

  “Gotcha,” she said. After a second, she continued, “What did he say about Norma?”

  “Not much. He said that Madeline not being at fault explained the day he’d had yesterday and that was about it. Oh!” I said, remembering my voicemail-laden phone. I looked around for my bag, realized I’d left it in the bathroom, and bolted to my feet.

  I gave a wave at Georgia as she stepped in and, instead of asking me where I was hustling off to, Chloe went right into business mode. When I returned from the bathroom with my purse, Chloe was handing Georgia her credit card back, sticking the tablet computer we used for payment into the drawer. She scooted back, grabbed a receipt off the copier as it printed, and then handed it over.

  I realized my curious voicemails would have to wait.

  ##

  “Do you know this number?”

  I handed Chloe my phone as we took the elevator down to the main level, following the hall to the front of the building. She read it, nodded and gave the phone back.

  “That’s Mel’s cell.”

  “It is?” I asked, confused. Why had Mel called me so many times the night before and left six messages? Knowing we had several hours until my second appointment and knowing that I was completely starving, I’d coaxed Chloe into heading out for lunch. Despite the fact that I would have been completely fine with eating several cakes and cookies at The Internets, Chloe tugged me the opposite way, toward the same Thai place I’d taken Owen.

  I scrolled through the list of voicemails, chose the earliest one and hit play.

  “Gwen. It’s Mel. I’m doing it. I’m gonna go, I’m gonna do it. I just thought you should know, since you never got to experience my hot body. I thought you should know that, now that I’m Mated, it’s over. You haven’t got a chance.”

  “That was weird,” I said, as the message finished. His voice had sounded resolute, but hollow, like he’d made a decision he wasn’t particularly happy about.

  “Hmm?” Chloe asked, peering left and right as we crossed the street.

  “Mel left me a bunch of messages.” I hit play on the next.

  “Me again. You should know, though, if you really feel you need to have sex with me before I go off and have babies, I could make it happen. Call me.”

  The next was even briefer and just as confusing. “Or text me. You can text me. You could email me if you want.”

  By the fourth message, which had arrived only fifteen minutes after the third, Mel’s speech was slightly slurred.

  “I forgot to give you my email. But texting would be quicker.” He'd hung up without giving me any email address.

  Time-stamped ten minutes later, another slurred mess asked, “Did you email me? I haven’t seen it. Let me check my other ac—hic—counts.”

  I paused before the last message as we got seated, asked for a pot of green tea and then held the phone to my ear. This one rambled so long I wasn’t sure how it had gotten through.

  “Gwen. Look. I know it’s a whole thing with us. With you and me and you pretending you don’t like me but you like me. You like me, right? We’re cool. You’d do me a solid, right? I’d make it fun! For you, I mean. I could have fun, too. But we should get naked and have sex and just see where it goes. Do you know how long it’s been since I had sex? It’s been, like, a week. A week! You don’t. That’s not. A week!” His voice cracked, and paired with the slurring, the message started to make me very uncomfortable. “A week, Gwen. That is so long. My penis is lonely! Even the pretty girl wasn’t interested. She said she could rock my world but wouldn’t! She wouldn’t! Why wouldn’t
she? There’s a smiley face on my dick and no one wants to see it!”

  On that note, he started weeping. I skipped forward a few seconds, but it was just more weeping through the end.

  Feeling like I’d just witnessed someone strangling a puppy, I set the phone down. On second thought, I slid the phone away from me, staring at it like it was radioactive. Chloe just sat across the table from me, chin in her hands, watching.

  “So? What was up?”

  “You…just listen. It’s…horrifying.”

  Chloe grabbed the phone, leaned back and listened to each voicemail in succession. Her face matched her emotions as they changed several times, from amusement, to confusion, to sadness and finally to a level of discomfort that didn’t quite reach mine, but was close.

  “Jeez,” she said, setting the phone down. Like me, she pushed it away as if scared it was going to make her listen to the messages again.

  “Is that what all werewolves get like when they—he called it being Mated?”

  “I hope not. It’s supposed to be pleasant; love, basically. That doesn’t sound like love, doesn’t sound like it would make someone a great parent.”

  “You lost me.”

  “Oh, ah.” Something piped up from the back of Chloe’s psyche, but her face remained pleasant. The odd mix of nostalgia and lust died down quickly enough that I didn’t address it. “Basically, werewolves are sterile until they find The One. If Mel’s fallen in love, he’s liable to start making babies. Not by himself, obviously.”

  “Yuck,” I grumbled. Chloe laughed.

  “Why yuck? You love babies.”

  “But baby Mels running around? That would be terrible. They’d be just as obnoxious, but they’d also smell like diapers.”

  “Diapers,” Chloe snorted, shaking her head. Deciding I didn’t want to hear anything else about this subject, I shook my head and got to the business of deciding what I wanted for lunch.

  ##

  After lunch, Chloe excused herself and I dialed Owen’s number. He didn’t answer, so I left a message, making sure to keep it brief; listening to Mel ramble on had made me a bit gun-shy of voicemails. Surprisingly, he called back as I was hanging up.