Echoes of Fire (The Mercury Pack #4)(42)
“Well, my pack mates aren’t going to subject you to any kind of interrogation or intervention. It’s just a barbecue. And I’ve already made Shaya promise she won’t ask you to shift just so she can meet your cat.” He gave Madisyn a pitiful look. “Please come. For me.”
She sighed. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good enough. Missed you this morning.”
She curled her arms around his neck. “Did you?”
“Yes. I don’t like you not being there when I wake up.” He kissed her, licking into her mouth, groaning as her taste sank into him. “I like opening my eyes to find you lying right there.”
She snorted. “You like morning sex.”
“That too.” Tucking her hair around her ear, he said, “For the first month or so after I lost my family, waking up in the mornings was the best part of my day.”
Having lost her own parents, Madisyn understood. “Because for those few seconds that you didn’t remember what had happened to them, everything was fine.”
He nodded. “Then it would all come flooding back, and the rage would be right behind it. When it finally sank in that they were gone, I didn’t have those few seconds of contentment anymore. I’d lost them. I’d wake with a dull feeling in the pit of my stomach. I still do. But then I open my eyes, I see you, and it goes away.” He caught her face in his hands. “Until it properly sinks into my brain that I’ve found you, I’ll keep on waking up with that dull feeling in my stomach. So yeah, I like to find you right there when I wake up.”
Melting a little inside—God, she was turning into such a girl—Madisyn swallowed. “I’ll wake you before I leave the bed next time.”
He kissed her forehead, silently thanking her for what he knew wasn’t a reasonable concession. “Now, since I didn’t get my taste of you this morning”—he lifted her and sat her on the table—“I think I’ll have it now.”
“No, I don’t want more gouges in my table.”
Sitting on the chair, he gripped her thighs and pulled her toward him. “Then keep in those claws.”
But she didn’t.
That evening, blood buzzing with annoyance, Madisyn poured herself a shot of tequila and tossed it back, relishing the burn as it slid down her throat.
Ally’s mouth twitched into a smile. “You do know that, as my fellow barmaid, you should be serving drinks, not drinking them, right?”
“Either I drink a few shots of tequila to calm my fraying nerves, or I go slap that bitch around.” Madisyn gestured at Claudia Brookson, who was busy eye-fucking Bracken.
Ally winced. “Tequila it is.”
So Madisyn downed another shot. Whenever Claudia came to the club, she always sat in the same corner in the same seat, surrounded by the same male wolves—all of whom were members of her security team. Sometimes she’d attempt to talk to Bracken. Other times she wouldn’t. But she always did her best to, at the very least, catch his eye—flicking all that blue-black hair, thrusting out her breasts, continually crossing and uncrossing her long, slim legs. Thanks to the slit in the side of her dress, there was a lot of leg to see.
Bracken had been manning the door with Derren for most of the night, occasionally ducking his head inside the club to spare Madisyn a brief glance, checking on her. Then, half an hour ago, he’d switched with Eli so that he was patrolling the indoor perimeter of the club. Bracken had to be aware that Claudia spent a lot of her time watching him—the guy missed nothing—but he was paying the she-wolf no attention. That didn’t seem to bother Claudia at all, though.
“Maybe she thinks he’s playing hard to get as opposed to just plain ignoring her,” Madisyn mused.
Sitting on a stool, Gwen sipped her mojito. “Or maybe she likes that he’s not proving to be an easy conquest for her. Having guys fall at your feet with little effort on your part must get old after a while.”
One hand on her hip, Ally braced her other hand on the bar. “No, this isn’t just about her wanting to play hide the sausage with him. She’s determined to have him as her bodyguard.”
“Yeah, Zander mentioned that,” said Gwen. “Why is she so determined, though? I mean, I get that Bracken would make a good bodyguard, but so would lots of guys. Or is this just her having a problem with the word ‘no’?”
“I don’t think Daddy’s Princess is used to being denied things,” said Madisyn. “Also, Bracken really would be an excellent personal bodyguard. Extremists fear him. Shifters admire, respect, and fear him. Humans know of his story, and those who believe he executed the extremists don’t seem to judge him harshly for it, if at all.”
Gwen nodded. “I can speak on behalf of my fellow humans when I say we knew intellectually that extremists made such attacks. We also knew that the Movement retaliated. But we never had a personal story to follow before. The majority of humans feel bad for Bracken—he lost his entire family. There are photos of him at the scene of the attack, cradling his dead nephew. No one with a heart would be unmoved by that.”
“He made the extremists look like monsters to both shifters and humans,” said Madisyn. “Claudia likes to be seen with the right people. Having Bracken Slater as a bodyguard would say a lot about her. Not just to humans, but to shifters.”