He wanted to ask her how she was feeling about Matt, and yet he didn’t. He wanted to know more about her father and what had prompted him to leave, why they were concerned about him returning home, and how she felt about her parents’ divorce, because things like that would affect any relationship she might have in the future. Like with him. But he was afraid to pry.
The situation concerning Matt was tough. He wasn’t just some guy she had dated and fallen in love with. He’d been Everett’s good friend. Losing him on the mission had affected Everett even more. No matter how much he told himself that he couldn’t have stopped what happened to Matt, that he could easily have been the one shot and killed instead, he still felt bad about it.
He finished his cocoa and set his mug down, ready to get down to business, when she said, “Everett…”
He braced to hear what she had to say.
She finished her hot chocolate and set the mug on the Christmas-tree coaster on the coffee table. “I know how close you were to Matt. Like blood brothers. He talked about you all the time.”
Okay, so Everett really didn’t want to hear this. He’d thought with the passage of time he could deal with it. But hearing her talking about him, sharing how much Matt had cared about him, and knowing he hadn’t been able to save Matt’s life…
She sighed again and took Everett’s hand. “Matt mentioned you’d always wanted to date me. He talked about it constantly.”
Everett stared at her, shocked. He hadn’t remembered ever telling Matt that. Maybe in jest, or perhaps an offhand comment. But he didn’t think he’d been that obvious about showing his interest in her.
“I think he knew I wanted to date you. I think that’s why he tried so hard to make it work with us. But we just didn’t fit together, not like I feel with you,” Demetria said.
Everett had wondered why they hadn’t married before the last mission.
“He knew I felt it wasn’t working out between us. But I think he was afraid to let go of me because then you and I might have dated. He was afraid of how that would have affected your friendship. I didn’t want to ruin the friendship the two of you shared either. When you weren’t off doing things with Huntley, you were with Matt. We had fun, Everett. I won’t deny it. We had a lot of great times. He was a good friend. Like he was a good friend to you.”
A good friend. Not a lover. Not the man she wanted to marry?
Everett stared at her now, not believing what he was hearing.
She took a deep breath and let it out. “I really hadn’t thought he planned to ask me to marry him over the holidays. Not until he hinted at it right before the two of you took off. I would have said no.” A teardrop rolled down her cheek, and then another.
Everett had felt much the same way, torn between wanting to date Demetria and maintaining his close friendship with Matt. Everett pulled her into his arms, and she sobbed against his chest.
“I felt bad that I had planned to end things between us. I’d waited because I didn’t want to do it right before a mission. I hated to hurt him, worried I’d even upset you, and if I dated you? I was just torn up about all of it. But I never expected him to die.”
“I’m sorry, Demetria. I didn’t know you felt that way about him. I felt guilty that I was lusting after his girlfriend. And then, I thought you needed the time to heal.”
“I did. I had to sort out my feelings about all of it. And I felt you did too.”
He agreed.
She smiled up at him through her tears. “And I think you were afraid I’d bite.”
“You did.”
She growled a little. “You shouldn’t have dated my cousin.”
“I thought maybe she was like you. That I’d capture what I’d lost when I learned that you were dating Matt.”
She slugged Everett on the shoulder. “I’m not anything like her.”
“No, you’re not.” He pulled her close again. “It was my grave mistake.”
Demetria snuggled against his chest. “I couldn’t have married him. I didn’t love him. We had fun, but I needed something more. He was a jokester, never serious. I find humor in situations all the time, but I need someone who’s more serious like me, not so laid-back. I felt terrible when he died. I had planned to end it between us, and then there you were, depressed, disconsolate, bringing me the horrible news that we’d both just lost a dear friend. I thought you’d hate me for what I had intended to do to him, and I just couldn’t…deal with it.
“I felt guilty I hadn’t ended our relationship sooner. Like I’d led him on. I had tried to break it off a couple of times, and he just begged me to give him another chance to make this right between us. He was always competing with you. I don’t think he could have handled the idea of us dating as well as you did him dating me.”
“Like hell I could.”
She smiled. And that smile cheered him to the marrow of his bones.
He’d wondered if something was wrong between Demetria and Matt. Matt had been so evasive about how things were going with Demetria. Everett had never suspected he had been the reason for her reluctance to fully commit to Matt. Everett thought the world of her for having held back in the hopes that he and she could make something of the muddled mess.
“And now?” he asked, wanting to make this work between them and feeling they had to make up for lost time.
“I won’t forget the good times I had with him, but I really am ready to move on. Are you?”
Hell yeah, but he knew it would still be tough because of the close ties they had to Matt. “I am.” Everett rubbed her shoulders, looking down into her liquid brown eyes, dark, mysterious, sexy. “Where do you want to go on our first official date?”
“We have this case to take care of.”
“We don’t know how long it’s going to take us to find Corey’s family. We’ll work around the case. Here’s the deal. Tomorrow is the big birthday party. While Corey’s at the party, we’ll see if we can learn anything more about Paddy’s whereabouts, but we can have lunch out, your choice of place. The next day, we could go Christmas shopping with Corey. Help him pick out presents for his mom, dad, brother, and sister. Maybe his uncles. He can sit on Santa’s lap and give him his Christmas list and have a picture taken. I want to be ready when we finally find his family and can bring him home bearing gifts.
“We could look for the mother and her triplets. And if you don’t have any really warm gear, we should pick some up because I’m sure we’re going up north with Corey as soon as we have a better idea where he’s from. I’ll need to pick up a few things too. Then he could stay with my mom and work on that puzzle with her while we take a break and go out to dinner.”
Demetria smiled. “I think somewhere in the schedule, we need to go see my mother. That is, if you’re up to it.”
“Have I mentioned I love it when you challenge me?”
Chapter 16
Demetria heard Everett’s cell phone’s familiar jingle as she was dozing on the couch with him. To his credit, Everett was trying to answer it without disturbing her. She was so tired that she felt like she had a hangover. When she pulled away from him, he realized she was awake and put the call on speakerphone. Then he pulled her back into his arms. She’d never imagined that working a case with a teammate would be quite like this. She snuggled against his hot, hard body and listened to what Howard had found.
“We checked out O’Flaherty’s Pub. Paddy wasn’t there, and no one knows where he went. One of his fellow poker players is Lucian Covington. He wasn’t in the least bit cooperative, but no news there. We have Paddy’s place under surveillance. Millicent O’Brian isn’t home either. She’s a retired clerk from the city water department, so no one’s missed her at a job. Her car is gone. We’ve checked with her grown son and daughter. They knew about her affair with Paddy, but they haven’t heard from either of them. They figured Paddy and their mothe
r went off somewhere together, but they have no idea where. In the meantime, we have her place under surveillance too.”
“Okay, good. If anyone finds him, no matter the hour, we want to question him right away.”
“Gotcha.”
After they ended the call, Everett asked Demetria, “What do you want to do about tonight?”
She looked at the clock. “Midnight.” She snagged his hand and got up from the couch. “I think we’re beyond first dates.” She smiled up at him. “Don’t you?”
“Hell, yeah.” When they entered his bedroom, he turned the light on, and she looked at the room for a moment. It was masculine—black and white with touches of red—with a large, fake zebra rug at the foot of the bed, zebra throw pillows, and a matching zebra-striped chair.
“Nice. Love the zebra touches. And I’m glad you don’t have a caiman skin framed on the wall.”
“Rite of passage. Matt was proud of taking down his first caiman as a jaguar. I got rid of mine a few years ago.”
She smiled up at Everett, and he wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned down to kiss her, his arms sliding around her back to pull her close. Even snuggling with her on the couch had aroused him. Touching her, breathing in her scent, seeing her cast him an interested glance his way—they all turned him on.
He devoured her mouth, her jaw, her neck. Groaning with need, he tackled her clothes and then his own, tossing them aside. Then he jerked the covers to the side and they fell onto the mattress. Kissing her full lips, he pressed her body into the soft mattress with his, claiming her, possessing, pinning her in a way that said mine.
Their hearts were pounding, their breathing labored, as he held her arms to each side and began to kiss her throat and breasts with a fever, dragging in the scent of her soft skin, hot and she-cat sweet.
He nuzzled her breasts with his whiskery cheek and she moaned, wrapping her legs around his before he began to rub his stiff cock against her mound. He swore he had been doomed to love her from the first moment he saw her.
He moved over, releasing her arms so he could stroke her into oblivion, rubbing her harder and smelling her pheromones wild with excitement. Her arousal called to him, and his responded with the same jaguar jungle craving.
She clawed at his back like a jaguar in love. Her breath hitched, and she gripped him tighter before she called out in bliss. He quickly covered her mouth with a searing kiss, but too late to muffle her cry of rapture. He paused for a moment, waiting, making sure that Corey didn’t come in to check on them.
When Corey didn’t, Everett nudged Demetria’s legs wider, pushed into her tight sheath, and felt the ripples of climax tightening around his cock. He captured her mouth with his again, tonguing her, and sliding in and out. He pushed his cock deeper, rocking her against the soft mattress. Her hands caressed his back, her foot sliding up the back of his leg, her body moving with his. He pumped harder, pushed in and pulled out, and thrust again. He felt the end coming, uttered a deep growl before he released, and growled again with hot satisfaction at the last.
Moving off her, he pulled her tightly against his body, enjoying the feeling of her softness planted against him, the silkiness of her skin, her heat, her heart beating steadily, and then he yanked the covers over them.
“I will never be the same,” she said, cuddling against him.
“Is that good or bad?” he asked, kissing the top of her head and rubbing her back gently.
She kissed his chest, her warm lips stirring him up all over again. “I’ll let you know in a little while when I wake you up again.”
He chuckled. “I’ll never be the same again either.”
* * *
Demetria felt eyes on her when she finally woke that morning after making love again to Everett in the middle of the night. They were two tired old cats after that and had slept just a little late. But her jaguar senses told her they were not alone.
She opened her eyes to see Corey in his pajamas, watching her.
She smiled. “Need some breakfast, honey?”
“Yeah,” Everett said and tried to pull her back into his arms.
“We have a little boy to feed,” she warned Everett, chuckling.
He peered over her and smiled at Corey. “Good morning, bud. Why don’t you go in the living room, and I’ll be right there to fix you breakfast.”
“Okay.” Corey padded out of the bedroom and headed down the hall.
Everett hugged and kissed Demetria. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” He pulled away and hurried to get dressed.
She folded her arms behind her head and watched the sexy jaguar as he pulled his boxer briefs on. “Depends on what you’re thinking.” She smiled a little and raised her brows in question.
Everett was buttoning his shirt as he leaned over to kiss her. “The future. Our future.”
“A wolf puppy in our future?”
Everett laughed. “I’m thinking more of a jaguar cub.”
She groaned. “You haven’t even met my mother yet or taken care of my dad.”
“You haven’t told me what’s going on with your dad. And your mom? I’ll do everything in my power to make her love me.” Everett finished buttoning his shirt and tucked it in.
She smiled at him, then sighed. “My dad left us, but every once in a while, he shows up out of the blue. My mom starts thinking he’s here to stay, but then he’s gone again. It’s a real roller coaster, and I don’t want him upsetting her.”
“How does your mom feel about it?”
“She just tells me she’s a grown woman and can deal with it, but she gets so upset.”
“Has he visited you?”
“A couple of times. I told him off.”
Everett smiled at her.
“Well, he deserves it!”
“Okay, I’ll talk to your dad and see what his problem is. And then we can see your mom at some point. But first, I need to feed a hungry wolf pup.”
“What did I tell you about trying to save the whole world at once?”
Everett smiled at her. “For you, I can handle it.” Then he headed down the hallway. Demetria sighed, climbed out of bed, and walked into the bathroom to take a shower.
If she could have a mate like Everett who would take care of the little ones while she had a leisurely shower before work, and he dropped them off at his mother’s day care, well, that could work, couldn’t it? She smiled and poured shampoo onto her hair, wondering if this was still a pipe dream and she’d wake up and it would all be over. But if Everett could reason with her dad and make him stop coming around and upsetting her mom, she was keeping him.
* * *
Everett fixed “the family” breakfast—eggs, sausages, toast, and hash browns, thinking how he could handle being a papa jaguar. How he could make love to his sleepy wife, take a quick shower, make breakfast, and rouse the kids. Then he’d drop off the kids at his mom’s day care and still make it to work on time with his lovely teammate. And they had plenty of family around to take care of the kids when they were on missions out of town. In any event, all of this could work out.
After fixing breakfast, he was still smiling about it and talking away with Corey, who was busy coloring in one of the coloring books that Demetria had picked up for him.
“So what does your mom fix you for breakfast?” Everett asked. They talked about favorite foods and swimming and Corey playing with his brother and sister, and Everett shared what it was like playing with his too. Even though Corey was a wolf and he was a jaguar, they shared a lot of common likes and dislikes, played the same kind of games, and loved to fish and swim.
“I caught a fish once but it got away,” Corey said.
“Sounds like me and a caiman I caught when I was little.” Everett showed him the picture on his cell phone of what a caiman looked like. “I grabbed for him but didn’t quite suc
ceed in gripping him in the right place with my teeth, and he got away. Next time, the caiman I went after wasn’t so lucky.”
Corey looked at the caiman, wide-eyed.
“Jaguars’ teeth can kill a caiman. But I wouldn’t recommend going after one as a wolf.”
“Never seen one before,” Corey said.
That gave Everett an idea. “Have you been to a zoo?”
Corey shook his head.
“Maybe we can take you to the one here. They have lots of animals and probably even a caiman.”
“Now what are we planning?” Demetria asked, smiling as she joined them. “Oh, wow, this looks good.” She sat down to eat with them. “A trip to the zoo?”
“Yeah,” Corey said. “To see the animals.”
She smiled up at Everett as he served the rest of the food. “I’m game.” Demetria took a deep breath and then turned her attention to Corey, who was busy eating his sausage. “Do you have any idea what Belinda and Paddy were fishing for?” She finished her eggs and set her fork on the plate.
“I smelled walleye in the truck. I saw mooses out the window of the camper. I wanted to stop and get out and see them.”
“Moose?” Everett asked.
“Yeah. Three of them.” Corey held up three fingers.
“Okay, so your parents live in the wilderness where they have lots of forests? Not too many people? So they can run as wolves? Arctic wolves? White wolves?” Demetria asked.
“Yeah. So we don’t get shot.”
“You live near a river,” Demetria said. “Do you know the name?”
He shook his head.
“What about lakes?” Everett asked.
He nodded.
“There are ten thousand of them,” she reminded Everett. “Are there other wolf packs there?”
“Yeah.”
Demetria frowned. “Like yours?”
“Nah. They’re real wolves. We got to be careful of them, Daddy said.”
“Okay, so his parents settled in Minnesota because there are no other wolf-shifter packs there. Not near a town—” Everett said.