Chapter One
As it turned out, werewolves were just like anyone else, Barrett Simmons mused, nursing his beer and watching the interaction around him. The green room of the Lyric Hounds, the most famous werewolf rock band in the world, was full to bursting…starlets and fans mixing with seasoned industry professionals and the guys, the Hounds themselves, right there in the thick of it.
He sat back and surveyed proceedings with an experienced eye. Although dressed in a sharp suit with his hair and beard neatly clipped, he hadn’t come to party. Far from it. Since his sister, Melody, the diminutive figure dressed in black satin chatting to one of the guests on the other side of the room, had married the Hounds lead singer, Aaron Rixx, almost a year earlier, Barrett had been responsible for the band’s security detail.
A veteran with more tours than he wanted to remember behind him, he was more than suitable for the role. Sure, he might be human and no match for a werewolf in terms of speed and strength, but he’d yet to meet any creature that could outrun a bullet. He had no arrogance when it came to his abilities. A member of Special Forces, it had only been injury and the loss of most of his detail in a mission f**ked up by bad intelligence that had forced his retirement. The mission when he’d lost Sax—
He rolled his shoulder to make it click, easing the stiffness there. As his mood took a nosedive, he forced thoughts of something else. Anything else. All in all, despite what had happened, he wasn’t in bad shape physically. Since getting out of therapy, he’d hit the gym every day until he’d ended up in the best condition of his life. Muscle-wise anyway. His left knee and shoulder were f**ked, but not so much he couldn’t put down any threat in the room. He and the Glock nestled next to his ribcage.
A waft of air behind him warned Barrett a moment before he got company. Sav, the band’s drummer, half flopped, half fell into the seat opposite, his beer bottle crashing into the table top with so much force Barrett expected it to shatter.
“She’s a beauty, ain’t she?” Sav slurred, waving his free hand.
Barrett arched his eyebrow and glanced around in the vain hope of identifying the particular ‘she’ Sav meant. Since that wave seemed to encompass the entire room though, with numerous candidates, he was shit out of luck. Taking a swallow from his own bottle, he shook his head at the other man.
“I give up, which one are you talking about?” Because he knew the guy, he cut him some slack and kept the irritation out of his voice. Sav had issues. Some problem or edge the tall werewolf hadn’t worked through yet, which resulted in mood swings and an acerbic nature that pissed Barrett the hell off at times. At others though, when Sav thought no one was watching, Barrett caught the utter loneliness in his eyes. The longing.
He hadn’t a clue why. The guy was famous and, as the Hounds’ only g*y member, had men throwing themselves at him. Some handsome enough that even Barrett might have been tempted had he been that way inclined. What the f**k did Sav have to be lonely about?
But that expression…the loneliness and longing for something…that Barrett knew well. He saw it in the mirror each morning. The thought softened his manner. Whatever Sav was looking for, he hoped he found it. Soon. Before they had to have a ‘chat.’
“Tempest!” The half-drunk werewolf exclaimed, sweeping his arm around to indicate the band’s bass player and only female member, and almost knocking out a waitress at the same time. “Oh fuck, sorry, man…you okay?”
Barrett flicked a glance over to the woman in question as Sav picked the young girl up and set her right with her tray. Pity it hadn’t been one of the very handsome male waiters circling the room. At least then Sav would have been distracted enough that Barrett could make his escape before the drummer could carry on with his line of questioning.
It wasn’t that Tempest wasn’t attractive. Totally the opposite. The woman could only be described as gorgeous. Tall and slender, with waist-length black hair, she no doubt had a starring role in the wet dreams of most of the male population. Add to that, the allure of a female werewolf, and most men would have been on their knees in love with her.
But he wasn’t most men and he had no heart to lose to Tempest. He’d lost his heart on blood-soaked sands, to a petite, feisty soldier with a man’s name, but a woman’s curves. Memories of Saxon burst free from the box he’d tried to lock them into. The tumble of blonde curls around her neck, her green eyes alight with love and laughter as she teased him. She’d always been teasing him for being too uptight and by the book. And he had been, insisting on procedure. And procedure, reliance on the protocols of the system, had sent them out into the field with bad intel and gotten the woman he loved killed.
With a gasp, he hauled himself back to the present before memory could fill in all the details of that day. The heat that licked his skin faded away, the hot smell of sand and blood receding from his nostrils. Only a memory. Not real. Not there.
“I knew you thought so as well.” Sav’s deep voice broke through Barrett’s semi-trance and he blinked, realizing that he was still staring at the female werewolf like a vision sent down from heaven itself. And she’d seen him, giving him a glance back like he’d sprouted two heads.
Quickly, he averted his gaze. He’d been told all about female werewolves and their take-charge attitude when they wanted something. Trouble was, half the stories he’d heard made him want to turn whatever moody little madam over his knee and give her a good paddling, then tell her to damn well behave. He sighed. I’m too old for this shit.
“No, man. You’ve got it all wrong,” he said, watching the grin spread over the Sav’s face with dawning horror. Christ, they didn’t really think he had the hots for Tempest. Did they?
But Sav wasn’t listening. Instead he looped his arm over Barrett’s shoulders; no mean feat given Barr stood half a head taller than the somewhat stocky werewolf. “Now, what you got to remember with female wolves is that they like to think they’re in charge. But you have to dominate them. Show them who’s boss.”
He slid Sav a sideways glance. “If the words ‘mount’ or ‘dry hump’ are heading for your lips then I’m taking you out the back and dumping you in the water butt.”
Sav snorted. “In your dreams, human.”
“Trent Savage!” Melody’s voice cut through their stand-off. “Behave yourself or I’ll have you waxed and plucked the next time you fall asleep!”
Sav’s eyebrows winged up toward his hairline as he stared the petite woman down. Barrett stood with his arms folded and watched with amusement. The inevitable outcome wouldn’t be pretty. Melody might be human, or wolf-mated as the furry community preferred to call it, but she was female and therefore any man, human or not, took his life into his own hands if he messed with her. Besides, he knew his sister. She was more than capable of waiting until Sav had gotten himself dead drunk, then had every hair on his body dyed pink or something.
“Huh,” Sav grumbled, unhooking his arm from around Barrett’s shoulders and grabbing a fresh bottle from a circling waiter. “Only trying to give him some advice so Temp doesn’t tear him a new one. My bad.” Lifting the bottle to his lips, he took a long swallow and walked off, his gaze already scanning the crowd for likely prey.
Melody bit her lip, concern for the guy written plainly on her features. Barrett smiled to himself, the soft, squishy feeling he got when dealing with his sister filling his chest. Yeah, she was short and bossy, but she cared and that made all the difference. She didn’t do anything without a reason and most of the time she put herself out for others far more than she needed to. Including him, something he had never been more grateful for than when he’d flown home from Afghanistan, alone and injured.
“He’s a big boy, Mel. Whatever problems he’s got, he’ll get through them,” he reassured, lifting an arm to wrap around her shoulders and giving her a quick squeeze.
“Yeah, I know. But….” She sighed. “You know what I’m like. Mother hen syndrome.”
He chuckled and dropped a quick kiss on her hair, about the only guy in the room who could do so without Aaron tearing him a new one. Even now, the tall rock star scanned the room, his expression tight until he saw his wife tucked into Barrett’s side. He relaxed and offered a smile before going back to his conversation. Like Barrett was the one person in the room he trusted with Melody’s safety.
“Perhaps you guys should have a couple of kids, put that mother-henning to good use.”
The comment was light, meant as a joke, but she stiffened, color flowing over her cheeks. Suspicion creased his brow. “Mel? Are you…?”
“Shhhh!” She hissed, as though they were discussing state secrets and she didn’t want to be overheard. “We were going to tell everyone next week. After this leg is done.”
Pleasure flowed through him, both for the parents to be and the fact he was going to be an uncle. “Congratulations!”
He pulled her tighter in a bear hug for a moment, emotion overflowing, then remembered her condition and set her down like he would bone china. “Are you okay, do you need to sit down? Perhaps some water?”
“Barr!” She slapped his shoulder. “I’m fine, honestly. I’m not ill, just…well, you know. Besides, I want to talk to you about something else.”
He lifted an eyebrow in question. What could be more important that his imminent uncle-hood?
Melody reached into the clutch bag and withdrew a slender, cream linen envelope. He froze.
“I really hope that’s not what I think it is.”
She lifted her chin in determination and held it out to him. “Chance meetings, remember? You told me that.”
Chance meetings. Ever since childhood that’s what they’d called the good things that happened to them. Their parents’ chance meeting had led to the sort of true love talked about in fairy tales, yet never excluded the children they’d had. Melody’s chance meeting had led to the love of her life…Aaron.
Slowly, he took it from her.
“Chance meetings,” he said in a low voice, and tucked it into his jacket pocket to please her.
It wouldn’t matter. No exclusive one-night stand service would be able to provide what he needed. Would be able to provide his chance meeting.
Because he’d already met her.
And lost her.
***
“Huh!”
Saxon jerked awake, heart pounding, body slick with sweat from the nightmare that haunted her sleep. The sheets tangled with her bare legs as she clutched them, shuddering in relief to see her bedroom around her instead of hot sands splattered with blood. Dropping her head, she took deep breaths, bringing her heart rate back down to something approaching normal.
The door clicked open to reveal a familiar figure. Swathed in a dressing gown, rubbing sleep from her eyes, her mother looked in. Sax picked up the concern in her eyes with ease despite the blackness in the room. Wolves had perfect night vision. Nocturnal predators.
“The dream again, sweetie?”