His to Claim (5 page)

Chapter Seven

Grateful for a little breathing space, Kyle
took a quick shower, then grabbed the takeout menus and ordered a healthy
dinner for them both. They needed to get moving—it was probably safer to travel
at night since their possible pursuers were nocturnal and a moving target was
harder to hit—but he also needed to find out how Alex wanted to handle this.

Kyle's instincts were screaming at him to
grab the guy and run home as fast as he could. If Alex had been anyone else he
might have made the choice for him, but it was clear that the man was used to
making decisions for himself. He'd been a cop for nearly a decade in one of the
most dangerous precincts in the country. The man knew how to handle himself.

It was kind of ironic that Alex was
essentially hiding from Kyle right now.
Although, to be fair,
Kyle wasn't exactly
not
hiding
either.
Clearly, the attraction between them was tilting them both off
balance.

He was grateful for the excuse to go into
Alex's room again when the food finally arrived. This time he knocked,
unwilling to intrude if Alex really didn't want him there.

A moment of tense silence was finally broken
when Alex called that the door wasn't locked.

"Hey," Kyle said, holding up the
bags of food like some sort of peace offering. "I've got dinner."

Heck, they'd given each other mind blowing
orgasms, not gone to war, but the tension between them sure suggested
otherwise.

"Thanks," Alex said, only glancing
at Kyle's face briefly before looking away.

Kyle silently debated his next move, but
finally decided to sit and eat with Alex. Breakfast had been a little awkward,
and dinner was likely to be worse, but at least it would give them a chance to
talk about how they were going to deal with Alex's job and the mission he'd
been given by internal affairs. It was stuff they needed to discuss pretty
urgently anyway.

Kyle set down the takeout containers on the
table, quickly identified each dish, and then studiously ignored the
uncomfortable silence as he dug into his food.

The plates were almost empty before Kyle
started the conversation.

"We need to talk—"

"Hell, no," Alex said vehemently.

"—about our next
move.
Internal affairs knows
that you were threatened by your own partner."

"Oh," Alex said, blushing slightly
when he realized it wasn't the topic he'd been expecting. "I'm not sure
'threatened' is the right word. He was aiming a
Taser
at a hysterical woman."

"One that you were standing in front of
at the time," Kyle said by way of reminder.

"Yeah, but that's reckless rather than
threatening. There's no way I'm mentioning that he and his friends came back in
hyena suits, so I really don't have much to offer by the way of proof.
Especially when my most credible witness is also likely wanted for
questioning over the theft of a police car and the possible kidnapping of two
people."

"There's no chatter on the police scanner,"
Kyle said confidently. Brody would have advised him if there was. He'd stayed
in the area for that exact reason. Well that and the possibility that the
kitsune
had maybe been with another fox of a similar age.
Foxes tended to live in small family groups so it was possible the
kitsune
they'd found wasn't the only one in that area. They
wouldn't know for sure until Anaedra sensed the
kitsune
as it changed into its human form for the first time, and then only if the
kitsune
was extremely frightened or in physical distress. With
the possibility of a hyena clan wanting to exploit them, it made sense for one
of the Alateeka siblings to be in the area.

"Do you really think Terry and his clan
will come after me? I honestly don't know all that much about them. I doubt
they know about the internal affairs investigation and, even if they do, I
haven't been able to gather enough proof to pin anything substantial on him
anyway."

"I'm more worried about the fact that
he revealed his paranormal nature to you. I don't think either of us was
supposed to survive a confrontation with so many hyenas."

"They wouldn't have noticed when you
turned into a grizzly bear?"

Kyle laughed softly. "
That
they might have noticed, but they
wouldn't have known it until I changed."

"But you knew what Terry was before he
changed."

"Yeah, it's a family quirk. My siblings
and I can easily identify each species, but to other paranormals we seem human,
well, except for vampires. For some reason they usually sense we're not
edible."

"Um...
vam
…
pires
?"

"Sorry," Kyle offered. "I'm
trying not to overwhelm you with too many details, but yeah, vampires are real,
as well as werewolves and many other species of animal shifters. Few of them
live up to their reputations, however."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning most paranormals
are
defenseless against humans and would be listed as
endangered species if people actually knew about them."

"I suppose that makes sense. If
vampires were like the ones on television, they'd be the dominant species on
the planet."

"Probably," Kyle said with a shrug.
It was obvious that Alex was rather surprised by everything he'd learned in the
past twenty-four hours, but he was still thinking clearly, staying rational,
considering things carefully without prejudice or unfair profiling. He truly
was an incredible human being.

Just that simple thought had Kyle reaching
for the man, the need to hold him close nearly overwhelming. Alex seemed
surprised, but he allowed the awkward hug, even letting Kyle lift him into a
standing position as his need for the man grew even stronger.

He barely realized how hard he was crushing
the man to him until the sensual, breathless moan reached his ears.

"Shit." He let go, stepped back,
ran
an unsteady hand through his hair. "Sorry."

He paced back and forth, trying to work off
a serious overload of energy in the tiny space.

"Kyle?" Alex asked as Kyle walked
the length of the room and back again. "This thing between us…it isn't
normal, is it?"

Kyle scrubbed a hand down his face and shook
his head slowly. "I don't know," he finally mumbled. "It
feels
pretty damn perfect, but that
doesn't explain why either of us is attracted to a man the opposite of our
usual type."

"I don't think I've ever been anyone's
idea of perfect," Alex said with a soft, embarrassed laugh. "Clearly
someone is using magic on you."

Kyle knew Alex meant it as a joke, but he
couldn't quite set aside his worry over what was behind everything he and Alex
were apparently feeling. "I'm not sure what's causing it, to be
honest."

Alex looked more than a little unnerved.
"So magic is real as well?"

"Sorry, no. Well not in a modern
sense." Yeah that cleared things up, not. "I mean, over the ages
magic has just been science people didn't yet understand.
Kind
of like giving a cell phone to a caveman.
There are things in this world
I can't explain, but I don't think 'magic' is really the right label."

Alex laughed softly. "So the attraction
between us is chemical?
Pheromones?
Something
explainable?
Something avoidable?"

"Of course," Kyle said, trying to
make it sound like he believed it too.

Chapter Eight

"Stay put. We'll come to you."

Alex frowned into the phone as he tried to
understand his contact's sudden change in behavior. This morning he'd expressed
concern for Alex's safety and had advised him to lay low for a few days. Now he
was asking Alex for an exact location.

"Something isn't right," Kyle
whispered into his other ear, quietly enough that it shouldn't have been heard
through the phone line. "Keep him talking."

"So…um…you've found enough evidence to
put Terry behind bars for a good long while."

"Of course."

"So he's under arrest?"

"Absolutely," his contact said
nervously. "We'll need your testimony to get a conviction, of course. Just
tell me where you are and we'll come get you."

As benign as that was supposed to sound,
Alex couldn't shake the feeling that it was some kind of warning. He glanced
over to see Kyle on his cell phone talking urgently to the other person on the
line.

"Wouldn't it be easier if I just…you
know…came home?" Alex asked. "I can meet you at your office."

"Um…yeah, that'd be g—" He cut off
his words as if someone was advising him what to say and hadn't liked what he'd
said. "Sorry, no. It'd be best if we came and got you. Just give me the
address and we'll be there as soon as possible."

Kyle ended his call, moved closer, nodded
and mouthed the words "tell him."

Trusting that Kyle was ready for any
eventuality, Alex gave his contact the name of the hotel and the address.

"Okay, that's what…six, seven hours
away from here?"

"Roughly," Alex agreed.

"Okay, I'll try to be there as fast as
I can. In half the time if I can manage it."

"I'll be waiting," Alex said
casually, noting what seemed to be a warning.
Half
the time… He hung up and turned toward Kyle.

"You know him better than I do. Did he
sound like he was being coerced to you?"

Alex nodded, grateful to have his suspicions
confirmed.

"But I doubt it was him they were
threatening directly—maybe his family or someone he really cares for."

"That was my suspicion too," Kyle
said with a grim smile. "I've called in some help for him."

"Okay, thank you," Alex said,
relieved that the man wouldn't be left to deal with hyena people on his own.

"So right now our priority is
you."

Alex shrugged. He wasn't familiar with being
the one who needed protecting, but a part of him had known it might come to
this if the internal affairs investigation had revealed what they'd expected to
find. He'd made peace with the possibility a long time ago. He'd just never
expected to need protecting from creatures he hadn't ever dreamed might exist.

~*~

Kyle was more nervous than he'd ever
remembered being.

Alex had agreed to the plan. He knew he was
being used as bait, and he knew he was being protected by three of the Alateeka
siblings. Gavin and Derek were both here to help Kyle. Hell, Derek was so ready
for a fight he might not even leave anything for his brothers to do.

Which, ironically, suited
Kyle just fine.
All he was interested in was
getting Alex to safety the moment their trap was sprung. Fuck, if they'd been
able to set this up without using Alex as bait, Kyle would have. He'd actually
been willing to let the whole thing drop and just get the man to safety, but it
had been Alex's stubborn insistence that he was trained for stuff like this
that had made Kyle swallow his objections and stay quiet.

"He's not just some random guy, is
he?" Gavin asked, tilting his chin in Alex's direction.

Kyle shrugged nonchalantly but knew he
wasn't fooling anyone. His brother knew him too well. Four centuries together
would do that to siblings.

"I don't know what it is," he
finally admitted. "Just the thought of him being in danger is enough to
have me ready to tear something really big into teeny, tiny pieces."

"He couldn't be more different to
Tyler."

Kyle shook his head slowly and sighed. He'd
tried so hard to hide that from them all. It was kind of silly to hope he'd
succeeded, but instead of admitting out loud to an attraction that suddenly
seemed far less important than it had a day ago, Kyle turned the tables on his
brother. That sibling thing went both ways after all. "So when are you
going to make an honest vampire of Logan?"

"Logan left," Gavin mumbled
without looking in Kyle's direction.

"Left?"
Kyle asked, completely startled by the news. Logan was Tyler's best
friend, and Tyler was Logan's blood donor. Surely where one went, the other
followed.

"It wasn't serious anyway," Gavin
said, voicing a lie none of his siblings would ever believe. Kyle hadn't known
Logan very well, so he couldn't really know the vampire's thinking, but he'd
never seen his brother happier. It seemed pretty clear that whatever had
happened to cause the problem, breaking up hadn't been by Gavin's choice.

Despite the discomfort at having his own
love life examined, Kyle let his brother keep his lie, for now.

"Heads up," Derek said through
their earpieces in an almost gleeful tone.
"Two cars,
four hyenas, and one terrified human coming your way."

"Damn," Gavin whispered under his
breath. Kyle nodded in agreement. A human complicated the mission
exponentially. There was no doubt from Derek's description that he believed the
human to be a captive rather than part of the organization currently a threat
to Alex, so they needed to protect him as well. The best part was that they
didn't need bait anymore since the men coming for Alex were already breaking
enough laws.

"
Gav
,"
Derek said in a tone they'd heard from him countless times. Kyle couldn't help
but grin. He knew exactly what Derek intended.

"I'm on it," Gavin said, already
undressing. He ripped the earpiece from his ear, winked at Kyle, and then
turned and ran toward the road, changing to his furry form
midstride
.
Kyle was already heading to Alex's location when he heard the window of a car
smash and the terrified screams of several human-sounding voices.

As protection went it was effective—Gavin's
hide was as bullet resistant as the rest of the Alateeka siblings—just as long
as the poor human didn't have heart failure when a very large, furry-form
Alateeka sibling landed in his lap.

~*~

"Kyle?" Alex asked into the
mic
on his collar. He was wired and wearing an
earpiece—they weren't planning to let the people after him get close enough to
actually notice—but they were supposed to be radio silent.

He'd heard the "heads up" call,
and then "
Gav
," and then a whole lot of
screaming. He nearly leaped out of his own skin when he heard a very loud
screeching noise come from the air.

"Kyle?" he asked again, feeling
way more nervous than he'd expected. He'd faced human dangers many times over
the past ten years, but it apparently hadn't prepared him for being in the
middle of a paranormal fight.

A part of him actually hoped he was
delusional. There was a sort of comfort to the suspicion that he'd hit his head
or had been exposed to some sort of hallucinogenic drug.

"I'm here, babe," Kyle said as he
stepped through the hedge lining the driveway to the motel they'd been staying
in. He waved casually as if there wasn't a whole lot of unusual noise coming
from the direction of the road.

Alex flicked off his
mic
,
but left the earpiece in as he hurried toward Kyle. At the last moment he
realized he was running to his lover—and yeah, that was probably stretching the
meaning of the word just a tad—like some sort of damsel in distress. Shit. He'd
never felt as confused as this man made him feel.

He slowed his steps, took a deep breath, and
forced a jovial tone into his voice. "Do I even want to know what's
happening?"

"I guess that depends on what you plan
to do next."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning your cover is blown, a cop's
paycheck sucks, and APS is always on the look out for employees with your type
of experience."

"You're offering me a job?"

Kyle nodded, but Alex couldn't shake the
feeling the man was hiding something. He went with his gut instinct and asked
the question that seemed to hover between them.

"Why do I get the impression the job
puts me safely behind a desk?"

The guilt on Kyle's features was almost
comical.

"Babe—"

"Don't call me that," Alex said,
even as he denied the delicious memory of being in this man's embrace. The best
thing for both of them to do would be to walk away and get back to their normal
lives. "Thanks for the job offer, but I'm good. I've got a lot of
paperwork to sort through with internal affairs, and I already had a few ideas
for what I'd do once the investigation was over." He glanced toward the
road that was silent once more, and flipped his
mic
back on. "Do we have an ID on the human?"

"He's unconscious and not carrying a
wallet," one of Kyle's brothers answered. "The situation is under
control if you want to come see if you know him."

Alex avoided Kyle's gaze as he turned and
headed to the road.

~*~

Kyle doubled back to his position behind the
hedge, grabbed Gavin's clothes, and then followed Alex out to the roadway. To
his credit, Alex didn't seem shocked or particularly disturbed by the fact that
both Gavin and Derek were naked. Kyle was the one struggling to cope.

Shit. Alex had just made it very clear that
he wanted to go back to his own life, so Kyle needed to get these ridiculously
possessive feelings under control.

Derek raised an eyebrow when Kyle threw
Gavin his clothes and then oh-so-casually asked—okay, it was more of a growled
order than a request—for Derek to go and get dressed. Fortunately neither of
them argued, but he knew his siblings well enough to know that wasn't the end
of it.

"Miles?" Alex asked as he leaned
over the unconscious human. "Wake up, kid."

"Yeah," the guy mumbled as he
shook his head.
"Just a couple more minutes."

Alex patted the man's face and laughed
softly. Miles woke suddenly and jack-knifed into a sitting position.

"Whoa, slow down, kid," Alex said
with another laugh. "We don't need you fainting again."

"Faint…
ing
?"
the guy asked as he colored with embarrassment. He turned wide eyes up to the
man hovering over him. "Alex?" The relief in the young man's tone had
Kyle grinding his teeth. He was acting like Alex was his own personal hero.

"Yeah, kid. You're going to be all
right. Do you remember what happened?"

The young man opened his mouth to say
something, grimaced, shook his head, and then slammed his mouth closed.

Alex laughed again, and then leaned over to
whisper in the human's ear. Thankfully, Kyle's hearing was much better than
that of a human's so he also heard Alex's words. "Just forget it all.
Trust me, some things you're just better off not knowing."

The kid nodded and smiled a little,
apparently happy to trust anything his hero, Officer Alex Jones, said. Kyle
couldn't control the possessiveness or the disappointment worming through him.

Fuck. When had he become a jealous, insane
asshole? And why would he pick here and now to start, especially when it was
all over a man nothing like his usual type?

"I take it you two know each
other," Kyle said in a tone that really didn't hide his emotions. Alex
arched a brow, apparently picking up on his attitude, if not the actual cause,
and then smiled at "the kid" again. And okay, he was far from being a
kid in human terms, and probably only a decade or so younger than Alex, but
Kyle refused to think of the man by name.

If he did that he might have to acknowledge
the arousal he could smell coming from the young human. Apparently even
life-and-death situations didn't curb hero worship.

Kyle was absolutely horrified to realize his
fingernails had grown into claws as he watched the two men interact. Fortunately—he'd
worry about the embarrassment later—Derek noticed his loss of control and
stepped in to take over.

"Brody has several suspects in custody
back at internal affairs headquarters. Alex's contact and the guy's family are
all safe and accounted for, and the rest of the IA officers on this case have
already gathered enough evidence to put these guys behind bars for a very long
time."

"Is that a good idea?" Alex asked,
keeping his voice low as he moved away from his starry-eyed admirer and closer
to where Derek and Kyle were talking. Kyle swallowed hard, shoved his hands
behind his back to hide the claws, and tried to understand Alex's reasoning.
Wasn't the whole idea of working undercover and putting his life and career in
danger to try and make this crime family face justice? Why wouldn't he want
them to go to jail?