For Your Paws Only (Supernatural Enforcers Agency #2) (13 page)

“
He
,” she exaggerated the word too, “drove me home last night when it was raining. But as you well know, I didn’t spend the night with him, did I?”

He leaned back a little, slightly pacified. But, just as swiftly, his eyes bulged and he thrust his face into her neck, sniffing and dragging his jaw over her shoulder.

“What are you doing? That tickles,” she whimpered. “I’m ticklish all over!”

Cutter pulled back and leered at her. “All over?” he rumbled.

“Yes,” she breathed as her whole body flushed. “Why did you do that?”

“I wanted to scent you to make sure he didn’t touch you,” he admitted looking a little sheepish.

Lucie glared at him with open-mouthed exasperation. “You could have just asked me!”

He snorted. “You get pissed every time we talk about him.”

She tried pushing at his chest to get him to move, but he was solid as a statue. “Son of a monkey! Only because you get all jealous and whack-a-doodle about it.”

“First of all,
son of a monkey
– that just makes me hot. Second of all, I’m just trying to protect you from him.”

She folded her arms under her chest, jutting out her breasts to get his attention. When she got it, she kicked him for staring at her. She was sure she didn’t hurt him, but he did let out a sarcastic ouch.

“Resorting to violence, sweetheart?”

“Trying to speak your language, snookums,” she taunted in reply.

His smoldering eyes bore into her. “You keep up all this sexy behavior and, injuries or not, I will throw you on that bed and fuck you senseless.”

Lucie leaned against the wall as her legs almost turned to pudding. She and her hedgehog wanted to scream: yes, please! “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she moaned before she could stop herself.

Cutter shuddered and closed his eyes. “You’re making this difficult for me.”

“Humph, it hasn’t been difficult for the past year,” she grumbled, softly.

“You’ve no idea what the past year has been like for me,” he murmured before shaking his head. “Getting back to my point, do you have any idea why he left his last job?”

“Who?”

“The fucking lion shifter!” snarled Cutter.

Oh right! She was distracted by their simmering tension and Rick completely slipped her mind! “No, I don’t know and I haven’t asked him – that’s how little I…”

“He had to leave because he screwed his boss’ wife,” he told her triumphantly.

“So?”

“So!” roared Cutter.

“Why should I care?” she asked in a bored voice. “I mean I feel for his boss, but it’s really none of my business.”

He pushed off the wall with a grunt and began pacing up and down her bedroom. He looked like an oversized, wild animal in her little pink habitat.
The male wolf has approached the female hedgehog; his growling mating call only heightens the arousal the small female feels for him
. She really had to stop watching nature documentaries.

“He’s trying, almost successfully, to get into your panties…”

“Not successfully!” she objected hotly.

“That guy’s a lion – you know about male lions, don’t you?”

“Umm…”

He stopped and stood with his hands on his hips. In her pink robe, he looked like a very comical superhero. “They’re all horndogs!”

“Not like wolves, hmm?”

Cutter clucked his tongue and started ranting. “Male lions have harems of wives. They’re into multiple marriages, brainwashing, forcing women into becoming homemakers, kidnapping – the list is endless. You’d probably have to share him with six other women, and I’ll bet he’d make you quit your job at the SEA.”

“As long as I can be Tuesday,” she retorted, cheerfully.

He gave her a look of disgust. “You’re not taking this seriously.”

“You’re right, I’m not, because you’re just being silly. I know there are some male lions that have harems, but not all and they’re not the only species of shifter that does. I don’t think that they have to kidnap and brainwash women, however. Also, I don’t know if Rick is one of them and, frankly, I don’t care. Because, and let me make myself clear, I. Am. Not. Interested. In. Him.” She gave him her sternest, no-nonsense nurse look. It was the one that said:
lay still and let me take your temperature with my rectal thermometer.

Cutter looked a little stumped by her response, but he wasn’t about to give up his anger at the lion so easily. “I don’t like that he saw you wearing so little. He purposefully turned up at your house early to catch you just getting of bed.” He looked her up and down from head to toe. “And look, he was rewarded by seeing you in your sexy nightwear.”

Was he kidding?
Lucie peered down at her pink and white, thick flannel, checkered pajamas. The only parts of her that were showing were her feet, hands, head and a sliver of neck. “Sexy? These are completely shapeless, and there is very little of me left to cover.”

“Humph.”

Lucie was marveling at his comeback before something niggled at her. “How do you know how Rick left his old job?”

“Ugh…”

“Did you check up on him?”

“No…” The lie was obvious; guilt was written all over his face.

“You did, didn’t you, why?” Lucie was more curious than anything.

“Well, after our last medical examiner tried to kill Erin and was stealing people’s organs, I thought I should check him out.”

She cocked her head to one side. “Fair enough.”

Cutter relaxed a little on seeing that she didn’t want to pursue that any further, but he tensed right back up at her next question.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on? Hard to believe but I don’t find men bleeding all over my couch every night, and I’m kind of curious about what happened.”

He sucked in a breath and hesitated for a few seconds before telling her, “I’m being framed.”

Lucie waited for him to say more, but nothing was forthcoming. “You’ll have to give me more than that, you can’t just show up at my apartment almost bleeding to death, tell me someone if trying to frame you and expect me just to say okay, well I’ll leave you to it.”

“It’s a long story,” he admitted with a wince.

She sat down on the recliner and prepared to listen. “Then you better start talking, because I really do have to get to work.”

Cutter rubbed the back of his head and gave her a grim look. “I’m not sure I want you involved in this.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s too late for that.”

“I’ll have to go to the very beginning,” he warned, probably hoping she would just give in and change her mind.

“I’m all ears,” she told him warmly.

With a huff, he lowered himself to her bed and started,
albeit grudgingly
, talking. About four years ago, Cutter went undercover to try and take down Nicolas Maroni – a wolf shifter and crime boss in Ursa. He was into human trafficking, laundering money, drugs, contract killings… the list went on and on. He was suspected of kidnapping and torturing his business rivals to death. Cutter managed to get a job working for Maroni through a slightly unhinged old pack mate called Bruce who already worked for the wolf.

Clayton was his handler; only he and a few other agents at the SEA knew what he was doing. They suspected Maroni already had a mole in the SEA, so the operation was very hush-hush. They made a big show of making it look like Cutter got fired from the SEA. No one doubted that Cutter would do something that would warrant his dismissal.

For months, he worked to earn the trust of Maroni while feeding as much information as he could back to Clayton. Finally, just over three years ago, they had enough evidence to bring down Maroni, and the cherry on the top of the cake? Cutter found an informant willing to reveal the SEA mole. All he had to do was get his informant an immunity deal, and a promise of witness protection and he would reveal all.
Sadly, it never got that far
.

Maroni found out that Cutter was still working for the SEA. He and his men caught him and locked him in a silver cage – about the size for a large dog. Maroni left his torture up to Bruce. Feeling betrayed, Bruce spent hours carving his skin with silvers knives before rubbing silver dust into the wounds. It was how he obtained his large collection of scars. Cutter felt like he was dying; over and over he wished Bruce would just give up and kill him.

Eventually, Cutter really was dying. Feeling cocky, Bruce opened up the cage, and with the last of his strength, Cutter launched himself at him. They fought, and through sheer force of will Cutter was the victor. He wasn’t at his full strength, but he just about ripped Bruce’s throat out.

He managed to get out and find help. He virtually collapsed on top of a vacationing family’s minivan outside of a Pancake Factory restaurant.

By the time he woke up in the hospital, it was to find that Maroni had been caught trying to flee. He was under arrest for a variety of different charges. Maroni wasn’t talking, and no one would offer him a plea deal to talk.
They wanted him in prison for the rest of his life
.

They didn’t find out who the mole was, though. When Cutter didn’t check in, fearing the worst, Clayton orchestrated the arrest of Maroni and sent a tactical team to retrieve their informant. As soon as they stepped foot in the informant’s house, it blew up, killing each and every one of the tactical team. The informant was already dead by that point. They found the remains of his body; his neck was broken. The killing of the tactical team was just plain vicious.

They suspected the mole tipped off Maroni to get out of town, but thankfully, Maroni didn’t move quickly enough. And they suspected the mole of killing the informant before he got the chance to speak.

Lots of rumors abounded that Cutter was the mole. He as put through a rigorous investigation from II, but they could never prove anything. After everything he went through with Bruce, nobody honestly thought he was the mole.

Clayton was forced to retire; he shouldered the blame for the deaths of the tactical team. The old eagle was furious and couldn’t let it go. Cutter figured he had been obsessing over the case for the past three years.

For a while, Cutter couldn’t cope with what happened to him. He was a wreck until Gunner kicked him into gear and Cutter followed him to Los Lobos to start his life afresh.

However, then Clayton turned up in secret, someone murdered him, a woman who worked for Maroni went missing, the SEA suspect everything is linked to the Maroni case and an unidentified gun was found in his apartment. Shortly before some very heavily armed SEA agents burst in and shot him with silver bullets.
Was that it?
Yeah, that felt like it.

Lucie chewed on her cheek as Cutter huffed impatiently, waiting for her to say something. She had no idea about any of this and here she thought she knew just about everything about him! She was so naïve. Her hedgehog mewled in sympathy for her strong wolf. Nothing he had told her made her love him any less; actually, she may even love him a little more.

“So, you think Clayton was still investigating the case? Still looking for the mole?”

“Yes, I don’t think he ever would have let it go. I told him over and over it wasn’t his fault, but he couldn’t help himself. He felt guilt for what happened to those agents and guilt for what I went through. Hard to believe but he liked me.”

She gave him a reproving look. “It’s not hard to believe; you’re surprisingly lovable.”

Cutter grunted. “I think only you and Clayton have ever believed that, and he’d kill me if I ever told anyone I think he found me lovable.”

“Didn’t Internal Investigations pursue the matter?”

“No, the guy in charge was adamant it was me, he just couldn’t prove it.”

“That’s ridiculous!” she exclaimed passionately and she felt her eyes flicker to the blackness of her beast. “You wouldn’t torture yourself!”

“He believed it was an extreme way of trying to prove my innocence,” he said disgustedly.

“So maybe Clayton was onto something, and we have no idea what. Maybe Diaz can…”

Cutter silenced her with a fierce look. “Diaz already has a suspect; he won’t investigate further. I’m almost positive the gun I found is the murder weapon.”

“Surely that’s circumstantial.”

“I already have connections to all the victims, a lot of money in my bank account, and a murder weapon at my apartment. There’s too much to explain away.”

“You’ve been sewed up…”

“Stitched up.”

“You’ve been stitched up. Now, what?”

Cutter clenched and unclenched his fists. “Now I have to figure out who’s doing this.”

Lucie walked over to stand in front of him. He watched her closely. She placed a hand on his arm; his muscle flexed under her touch. “I won’t tell anyone you’re here; you can stay as long as you need.”

“Thank you,” he murmured. “I knew I could rely on you. I’ll leave as soon as…”