Rafa
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As usual, Rafa woke to an empty bed. But unusually, the feeling of his long limbs stretching out and touching no one didn’t bother him. Instead, he was filled with contentment. He’d finally met his mate!
He folded his arms behind his head, as relaxed as if he was stretched out on a sunny savannah, and leisurely recalled every moment of making love with Grace. It was a memory he’d treasure forever. And as long as he avoided any catastrophic screw-ups, he’d have an entire lifetime of new memories to create with her.
Energized by the thought, he scrambled out of bed and took a shower. Recalling that Grace had seemed to like his tight white shirt and black jeans of the day before, he selected blue jeans (to make sure she didn’t think he was one of those same-clothes-every-day guys) and another tight white shirt. She’d also seemed to like his hair, so he took special care with it. Then he scooped up Melissa’s pants and headed to Protection, Inc.
He’d tried shifting and sniffing them the night before, but he hadn’t caught any unusual odors. But lions hunted by sight, not scent. While his lion’s sense of smell was better than his man’s, it was nothing compared to what a wolf or bear could do. He needed to enlist Hal or Nick. Preferably Hal. While Nick’s wolf had the best sense of smell out of the entire team, Nick the man had no tact whatsoever. If he noticed that Rafa looked unusually happy, he’d want to know why.
Rafa didn’t intend to tell his teammates about his mate just yet. It wasn’t because they’d tease him. He was a big boy—he could take it. But they’d demand to meet Grace, then haze her to make sure she was worthy of him. Sure, he’d hazed his teammates’ mates, but it was different when it came to Grace. She could undoubtedly handle it, but she shouldn’t have to.
He wouldn’t say one word about his mate until he’d had a chance to head off the hazing at the pass. When the time was right, he’d reveal Grace to his team, just like he’d reveal his lion and his former marriage to Grace. If being a Navy SEAL had taught him anything, it was that no mission was impossible, so long as you planned it carefully and executed it with finesse.
Filled with confidence, Rafa strode up to the Protection, Inc. lobby and flung open the door. There was a yell, a crash, and a thud as the door banged into something and bounced back at him.
Cautiously, he pushed open the door, only to be confronted by an overturned chair and Nick’s hot green glare.
“What the fuck?” Nick snapped. “Watch where you’re going!”
“I walked in the front door of my own workplace,” Rafa pointed out. “It’s not usually barricaded.”
Nick dusted off his black leather jacket, then righted the chair. “I was hanging a picture.”
“Should’ve waited and asked me,” Rafa suggested. “I’m tall enough to put it up without having to stand on a chair.”
Nick gave him another good glare. “Whatever, man. Enjoy your extra two inches and monkey arms.”
“Three inches,” Rafa corrected him, then took a look at the picture Nick had just hung on the wall.
All the members of Protection, Inc. had photographs of themselves in their shift forms hung in the lobby—even Lucas, who was shown circling the skies above his ancestral palace, the sunlight glittering off his dragon’s golden hide. Rafa’s photo had been taken on a family vacation, with his pride lounging on an African savannah. The newest member, Catalina, had recently put up her own shot, of a lithe leopard climbing a towering redwood tree.
Nick’s old photo, which was now on the floor, was of himself at the head of a wolf pack chasing a deer in a forest. The one he’d hung in its place was of his wolf in the snowy woods outside of Santa Martina, his eyes bright and alert. But though Nick was alone in the new photo, he didn’t look lonely. His intense gaze was fixed on the unseen person taking the picture.
“Did Raluca take that shot?” Rafa asked.
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
Rafa couldn’t tell him the truth: that he now understood how people felt when they looked at their mates, and he’d seen it shining out of the gray wolf’s eyes. He shrugged. “She’s your mate. It’s the obvious guess. She’s a good photographer.”
Proudly, Nick said, “Raluca is fucking awesome at everything she does. She’s going to be the best fashion designer ever.”
“Maybe she’ll give you a makeover,” Rafa teased. “I hear pink is the new black.”
Nick didn’t rise to the bait. Touching Raluca’s gift to him, a starkly hewn silver dragon coiled around his forearm, he said, “If she gives me something pink, I guarantee you it’ll look fucking badass.”
Rafa gave up. Nick was probably right, anyway. “Is Hal around?”
“Nope. Just me.”
Rafa considered waiting for Hal to return, then decided against it. Nick did have the best nose of any of them. And he hadn’t noticed Rafa’s found-my-mate glow, so it probably wasn’t that noticeable.
Rafa took Melissa’s pants out of a bag. Before he could say anything, Nick said, “They’re not your color.”
Rafa didn’t dignify that with a response. “Do me a favor and smell them? I think someone might have put some kind of scent on them.”
Nick took the pants and sniffed.
“I meant as a wolf,” Rafa began.
Nick tossed back the pants. “Don’t need to. You’re right, they’re scent-marked. Someone sprinkled them with vanilla.”
“Huh. I’d have thought I’d have been able to smell that myself.”
“Just a tiny bit,” Nick said with a shrug. “Not enough for anyone but a werewolf to pick up. So what’s this about?”
Rafa explained, leaving out any mention of Grace.
By the end of his story, Nick was laughing. “The big cat catches the rat! Well, call me if you need any more help sniffing or whatever. I’m taking off. I have to pick up Manuel at the airport.”
Rafa’s ears pricked up at the mention of Manuel. He’d once delivered the kid to an airport himself, back when Nick had been the alpha of a werewolf gang and Manuel had been its youngest member. “How is the kid?”
An alpha’s pride lit Nick’s eyes as he said, “He’s doing great. Loves his new pack, and they love him. Loves college, and his professors think he’s a fucking genius.”
“Is he here for his Christmas break?”
“Winter break, yeah. He’ll fly back to spend Christmas with his pack, but he’ll be here for a while. He’s crashing with me and Raluca. I’ll bring him to see the team, of course. I know he wants to catch up with you all. But don’t call him a kid. He’s almost twenty.”
Rafa tucked “don’t call him a kid” away for later teasing purposes, as he did with anything that annoyed Nick, and asked, “What’s he majoring in?”
Nick shrugged. “Hasn’t decided.”
“Still?”
“He’s got another six months to make up his mind,” Nick said, instantly leaping to his former packmate’s defense. “You don’t have to declare your major till the end of your sophomore year.”
It was always mildly surprising to Rafa when he heard phrases like “declare your major” or “sophomore year” come out of Nick’s mouth. The street-smart werewolf had grown up with no contact with college (other than maybe spraying graffiti on one) or college students (other than maybe mugging some). But once an alpha, always an alpha. If something was important to a member of his pack or even a former member, then Nick would learn about it.
Just like Raluca had gone to college and there discovered a gift for clothing design, and suddenly Nick was throwing around phrases like “fashion-forward.” Or rather, being Nick, “fashion-fucking-forward.”
Rafa wondered what new interests he’d develop because Grace cared about them. Theatre, obviously. Musicals, maybe. Electrical equipment. Unusually-flavored cupcakes.
A pop startled Rafa. Nick had snapped his fingers under Rafa’s nose.
“What?” Rafa asked, jolted back to his senses.
“I said, ‘See you!’” Nick shook his head reprovingly. “Man, you’re spacey today. Get some sleep before you go back on the job.”
He sauntered out, the old photo under his arm. Rafa folded Melissa’s pants, made a mental note to pick up a bottle of vanilla to test the rat-attractor theory, and headed for the tech room to collect a nanny cam.
When he opened the door, he saw the room with new eyes: Grace’s eyes. He’d been telling the truth when he’d said he’d loved watching her fix the sound board, and it had been not only because of her obvious competence, but because of her even more obvious enjoyment of the work.
When he brought her to the tech room, he was sure she’d love both the cutting-edge devices and the oldies but goodies. To her it wouldn’t be a mere repository of useful stuff, it would be a Wonderland and a playground. And most of all, he bet, she’d love the handful of gadgets Fiona had designed or remodeled.
No, what she’d enjoy most of all would be meeting Fiona herself. Not only would Grace appreciate a woman who knew her way around wires and microchips, but Fiona was another woman succeeding at a male-dominated job. They had so much in common.
As if his thoughts had summoned her, Fiona looked in. She was dressed to kill in a spectacular black gown with silver accents and black silk opera gloves. Her white-blonde hair, which she usually kept braided and coiled atop her head like a crown, fell loose, flowing all the way down to her hips.
“Hi, Rafa. What’re you looking for?” Then her sharp green eyes narrowed. “You look happy. What’s up?”
“Do I usually look miserable?” he parried.
“You don’t usually look like you’re walking on air. Found another set of twins last night?”
“Nope. Triplets,” Rafa shot back. “Identical.”
She laughed.
Before she could pursue the interrogation further, he jumped in to deflect her. “What’s up with the outfit? Are you on your way to an undercover job?”
“No, an opera matinee.”
Fiona liked musical theatre! Sort of. Grace would love her.
“What are you doing here, then?” Rafa asked.
“I needed to pick up some ammo. I didn’t have anything small enough for this at home.” Fiona twitched aside a fold of the gown, revealing a discreet slit in the fabric and a tiny pistol strapped to her thigh.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” She shot him a look like he was the weird one for asking. “I never go anywhere unarmed. Do you?”
“Sure. I only carry when I’m on the job.”
There was a brief silence in which Rafa was sure he and Fiona were thinking the same thing: all this time working together, and I didn’t know that about you.
Come to think of it, there was a lot he didn’t know about her. Which was strange, given how long he’d been on a team with her. Hal had planned Protection, Inc. when he and Rafa had been Navy SEALs, and Hal had brought Destiny on board before they’d launched the agency.
Fiona had been Hal’s first recruit after they’d started. But Rafa had never gotten the whole story of how Hal had found her or what she’d been doing before. Hal had said not to ask and that she would tell him eventually. But she never had.
“Fiona, has Hal given you a new job yet?”
She shook her head. “Got something for me?”
“I hope My Fair Lady isn’t too much of a come down from the opera. Because I need someone to look into it...”
He outlined the sabotage of Mars: The Musical and his theory that someone from My Fair Lady was behind it. He felt guilty for omitting Grace’s heroism and cleverness from his account, but he had to leave her out entirely. Fiona picked up on subtext much better than Nick did. If Rafa so much as said Grace’s name, Fiona would figure it all out.
When he finished, Fiona nodded. “No problem. I’ll do some spying on My Fair Lady and keep you posted.”
“Thanks.”
He selected a nanny cam from the surveillance equipment, and then they walked out together. After they parted ways at the parking garage, Rafa drove first to a market to buy a bottle of vanilla and a few other things, then to a florist’s to buy a dozen bouquets of red roses. Then he drove home and installed the roses in vases around the bed, along with an array of candles, and arranged the final bunch of roses in a vase in his living room.
He made sure he had a lighter for the candles, bottles of red and white wine plus an excellent champagne, romantic music, and of course condoms. Also some scented oils. Silk scarves, useful for bondage or blindfolds or simply rubbing over skin. And so forth. He had everything his mate might desire, whether her tastes ran to the simple or the elaborate. Much as he’d enjoyed their tryst under the table, he knew that women appreciated romance, and he wanted to give his mate the best a man could offer.
When he brought her home, he’d escort her to the living room, offer her a glass of whatever she wanted (he’d also bought a selection of sparkling fruit juices in case she didn’t drink), then duck into the bedroom to scatter rose petals over the bed and light the candles.
Later, when they were cuddling in the afterglow, he’d introduce the topic of getting to know each other better, and so naturally lead into telling her about those goddamn twenty-four hours in Vegas.
Possibly also about shifters. He’d play that part by ear. But he felt confident that he’d be able to reveal Big Secret Number One in a way that would not lead to conflict or heartbreak or anyone running away screaming, and had an excellent shot at getting Big Secret Number Two out of the way at the same time, also without conflict or heartbreak or anyone running away screaming.
Nothing could go wrong.