Desired, Alisa Woods [ebook offline txt] 📗

“I’m locked into the dorm payments for the summer!” she said, stating the obvious. “And where would I go? All the good summer leases are gone by now.” The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced he had to be joking. She hoped he was joking.

“We’ll take care of all that,” he said, his voice uncompromising. “You don’t have to worry about the money. We’ll find a place for you. Starting this weekend. We can move you into a hotel tonight, then get you an apartment in the morning. You have to do this, Mia.”

“I… what in the world, Lucas!” She couldn’t believe he was serious, but her blood pressure was creeping up. He was ordering her to move out? And what if she didn’t? Would he fire her? This was getting more and more… crazy. There was no other word for it.

“I’m just trying to keep you safe,” he said, but his voice was more strained now.

She shook her head and crossed her arms. “You know what? You can work by yourself this weekend. I’m going home. To my dorm.”

She stomped around her desk, yanked open the drawer that held her purse, pulled it out, then brushed past him, headed for the door. “We can discuss this on Monday!” she called back over her shoulder. She only hoped she actually had a job on Monday. But she was not letting him order her around and move her out of her dorm and just… gah! What was he thinking? The whole thing frustrated her beyond measure.

He was following right behind her. “Mia, stop.”

“No,” she said, without slowing down. “I am tired of this keeping Mia safe thing all the time.” She wasn’t really, but the idea that he wouldn’t even discuss what happened between them but felt like he could order her around… even her inner wolf was growling about that.

He kept tailing her all the way out to the front of the office. “Mia, I’m just trying to…” He dropped his voice as they reached the elevator. A bunch of other people were already waiting for their chance to flee the office for the weekend. “Mia, stop,” he said under his breath. “Listen to me.”

Luck was on her side, because the elevator dinged at just that moment. The other people filed in, and she followed right after. Mia glared at Lucas to keep him from following, and he stayed back, strung tight, watching as the elevator doors closed.

She left him behind on the 32nd floor.

The ride down was just a little awkward, but Mia ignored the stares.

At the parking garage level, she got off the elevator with everyone else, but as they dispersed to their cars, she remembered she hadn’t called the driver. He had left her with a card for when she was ready, but she had left in such a hurry, she’d forgotten about it. She briefly debated taking public transportation just to make Lucas angry, but decided that was childish. Instead, she fished out her phone and the card and started dialing. Before she could finish, a limo entered the far gate from the street level. It was the same one that had picked her up that morning—at least it had the same stretched length and tinted windows—and she wondered how they knew, but then a glance at the waning light outside reminded her it was already late. Most people were leaving for the weekend, and surely the limo company had other customers to pick up. They didn’t just sit around all day waiting for her call.

Only she didn’t see anyone else to be picked up—everyone had already disappeared into their cars. She put away her phone and flagged down the limo as it slowly rolled between the parked cars of the half-full parking garage. It came to a stop in front of her, but she couldn’t see if the driver was stopping for her or not. She edged forward, looking around to double check if there was anyone else waiting. She was alone, so she crossed the rest of the space and reached the passenger side just as the driver’s door swung open.

“You guys have great timing!” she said cheerily, returning the driver’s smile. Then a chill swept through her. She recognized him—but he wasn’t the driver she had this morning.

He was the red wolf from The Deviation.

She froze. He leered as he came around the front of the limo toward her, but just as she unlocked her legs, the passenger side door swung open, and a second man, another of the red wolves, scrambled out of the car after her. She didn’t get two steps before he was on her. Her wolf roared as he grabbed her roughly from behind. Her arms and legs flailed, trying to wrench loose from him, but his arm was locked around her waist, and she couldn’t get hold of anything. He was dragging her toward the car. In moments, they would have her. Her wolf raged underneath her skin, wanting loose so she could tear into him with her teeth and claws, but the first one grabbed her failing arms and held her fast.

Two against one. Both wolves. Both bigger than her.

She took a fast breath and started to scream, but a beefy hand clamped over her mouth, and her shriek died in the echoing chamber of the parking garage. She prayed someone would hear her one muted attempt at a cry for help before she was stuffed in the open door of the car.

Suddenly Lucas was there, his own roar reaching them just before his fists. He hadn’t shifted, but even in his human form, he was able to clock the guy holding her arms. He went down on the pavement in a heap, and she renewed her struggle against the man holding her, slamming her heels back, trying to catch a piece of him. He grunted, so she must have hit something. As his hold on her loosened, Lucas yanked her free. When Lucas released her to go after him, she stumbled, falling over the body of the first wolf, who was still in his human form. Why weren’t they shifting? She didn’t understand, but she scurried away from the fallen wolf, putting distance between them and her before looking back.

Lucas was beating the shit out of her second abductor, the one who was still conscious. He had fallen to the ground, and still Lucas was pounding on him. She smelled blood in the air, and there was more on the car… she rushed forward.

“Lucas!” she shrieked. “Stop! You’ll kill him!” She flailed for his arm as it pulled back for another strike, just barely catching hold of it. But her touch seemed to break through his rage. His chest heaved, and there was blood on his hand. She couldn’t be sure if it was his or not, but he took a step back. The man was down, moaning, cowering on the parking garage floor.

Lucas blinked several times, still looking at her attacker, then he turned to her. For a moment, his face was blank, but then he slipped his hand around her waist and hauled her away from the limo.

“My purse!” she said, tugging against him to stop so she could retrieve it from the floor. She didn’t want them having anything of hers. He bent quickly to scoop it up, then locked his hand around hers and towed her away. They ran down one ramp of the parking garage and then another, down to the next level. Her legs were unsteady with the adrenaline of the fight, and her heels clicked a jittery echo throughout the garage, but the sound was mostly drowned out by Lucas’s heavy, pounding heels. They reached his car—it was some kind of Audi, red and black and sleek, but she would have preferred something less like a race car and more like a tank. Lucas practically yanked off the door getting it open for her, and she dropped into the low passenger seat as fast as she could. He raced around to the driver’s side, and within moments, they were screeching out of the parking garage. She caught a final glimpse of the two kidnappers by their limo.

They were still human lumps on the ground. Only one was moving.