Binds that Burn: A Werepanther Romance Suspense (Urban Dwellers Book 3) Read online

  "Can we all just back up for a minute, please?" Nina asked. “This is actually all about me, so I’d appreciate getting a word in edgewise.”

  The three people in the room looked at Nina in surprise.

  "Go ahead, Nina," Kelly said. “Of course, this is absolutely all about you.”

  "Has anyone been able to figure out exactly what it was that bit me?" This sat at the core of Nina's issues. She had been hired to take a look into a dead girl's background, and then said dead girl had suddenly appeared on her doorstep the night before and bitten her.

  "You're talking about Jillian," Eric said. Nina wondered if he was stalling for time by repeating information that was already obvious.

  "Yes, Jillian. The girl whose background you had me looking into. The girl that you supposedly murdered a couple of days ago."

  Eric winced. Kelly looked at him with a chagrined look on her face. Dr. Clarkson just appeared bored.

  "There are things about Jillian that we are still trying to understand," Eric said slowly. "This is what I'm talking about. You need to rest. There are too many things going on that are all connected together somehow, and we’re working on it. Right now, it's better that you focus on conserving your strength," Eric said.

  "Like hell. Whoever or whatever this woman is, she has affected the rest of my life. I’m helping you go after her, because payback is a bitch." Nina was angry. She wasn't going to just sit by and let somebody take control of her destiny. "Based on what you said, I will either shift, or I will die. That's unacceptable, Eric. If we can find her and do something to stop this, I want in."

  He reached over and tried to take her hand, but Nina batted it away. "I will take care of this, Nina. I'm trying to help you."

  "Stop trying to help me! You are the reason that this happened!" Nina felt her emotions jumble up into an angry, tangled mess. She felt her chest heave as she tried to draw a deep breath to calm down. She had gone from calm to wickedly pissed off in less than ten seconds.

  Dr. Clarkson watched her closely. "Extreme emotional anxiety is also one of the side effects of the transition, and the drug we gave you will only temper it so much. Your body is trying to figure out the balance of having two of you in there.” He pointed at her head. “The more emotional you get, the more you expend energy, the sooner your new metabolism will wear out the medicine. We can only give you one dose, so once it’s gone from your system, it’s gone," Dr. Clarkson said.

  "That was a really rambling and scary way of saying that it's better if you stay calm," Kelly said. Nina could see the sympathetic look on her face again. "I know that you want to help, but Eric is right."

  Eric snorted. “Mark that one down in the history books.” Nina had to wonder how often these two actually were in agreement.

  "It's risky for you to leave here. But I also understand that you might not be able to do that," Kelly continued. Eric's look of satisfaction shifted. "We can do what we can to keep you comfortable here. Or, if you think that you can help them find Jillian, I think that they could use it. Maggie trusted you. Clearly, you have something that we don't have here within the walls of the Urban Dwellers organization, and considering you are personally involved in the outcome as well, you might be the best person to do the job."

  Eric stood up. "That is just plain ridiculous. She needs to stay here, and she needs to rest. What kind of fucking doctor are you?"

  Kelly stared at him calmly. Nina had to admire that she didn’t back down one inch. "She’s in this like the rest of us, Eric. What’s even worse is that her life is on the line. If she understands the risks and wants to help, then you owe it to her to let her do that."

  Nina watched the interplay like a tennis match. Once again, somebody else was saying what she could have easily said. Then Nina realized that the time for words was done.

  She swung her legs out of bed, causing Dr. Clarkson to backpedal. Then she stood up. She tested her legs for just a moment. They seemed to be strong and true.

  "Just tell me where my clothes are. You all are welcome to debate this until the cows come home, but I'm getting the hell out of here. I’ve got work to do."

  CHAPTER TEN

  Eric paced back and forth outside of Nina’s hospital room. He felt like he was wearing a tread in the tiled floor. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who thought so when he heard a sarcastic voice behind him. Eric whirled around.

  “I heard you had quite a brawl with the doctors,” Tony said. Eric hadn’t seen Tony in person in two days. He was wondering if the man had been avoiding him now that he had found his mate. He needed Tony focused on the issues at hand.

  “I got into it with Kelly and Dr. Clarkson because I don’t believe Nina should leave the hospital,” Eric said. “There’s a deranged lunatic out there who has set her sights on the three of us, and anyone around us could become collateral damage. You should be more worried about your own skin as well as your new mate’s.”

  He saw Tony’s face darken and knew he hit a nerve. “This isn’t about me, Eric. This is about you.”

  That was when Eric knew he was about to be psychoanalyzed, and he had no time or patience for it. “Save the bullshit for somebody who cares, Doctor Atwood.” He emphasized the title in a way to let Tony know that despite the fact that he had a PhD, in Eric’s opinion, he didn’t rank as high an actual medical professional who could prescribe drugs and save lives.

  “I heard from what Kyle told me that you have some feelings toward this particular woman,” Tony said, gesturing toward the door.

  “Some feelings? That’s rich. Do you have some feelings for Ms. O’Hara? The panther says she’s my mate. Yes, some feelings exist.”

  “Your panther says it’s true, but you do not? Why is it so hard for you to admit what is happening here, Eric?” Tony said.

  Eric cut a glance toward the door. Really this was the last conversation he wanted to be having when Nina walked out of the room. She was already frustrated with him and blamed him for what had happened. Not that he thought she was wrong. In this situation, he was the culprit. It didn’t sit right with him either.

  “You know, if your mate hadn’t dragged Nina into this, it wouldn’t have been a problem.” Eric did what he did best. He went on the offensive.

  “Regardless of whether Maggie called Nina or not, she would have been pulled into your sphere at some point in the future regardless. That is the way it works with fated mates, and you know it.” Tony was clearly kicking into lecture mode, but Eric wasn’t interested.

  He shook his head and put up his hand. “Save it. I’m not interested. This whole idea of fated mates is bullshit. The universe doesn’t work like that. I am in control of my destiny, and I will choose when I am ready to settle down with someone. In the meantime, Nina is the one who ended up on the short end of the stick because of what’s happening with us. That is all of our faults, not hers. I am just trying to protect her and do what’s right.”

  “Fine,” Tony said. “We’re all aligned on that, Eric. Of course, we won’t leave her to face any of this alone.”

  Eric was relieved that it sounded like Tony was going to drop it. The last thing he needed Nina to hear was anything about fated mates. He had to cross one bridge at a time with her, and he wasn’t interested in having help on that front. That was why he had pushed back so hard when Tony tried to get involved. His friend wasn’t welcome in his love life. “What have you got?”

  Tony sighed reluctantly. “I’ve had Samuel on this ever since we got back from Croftsborrow. He hasn’t been able to find anything on where she’s been or what she’s been doing since that night at the quarry. It’s like she has appeared out of nowhere. I feel like we’re chasing a ghost.”

  “I refuse to believe that,” Eric said. He wasn’t willing to believe yet that Jillian was haunting them. “We have to find her. If we can find her, there’s a chance maybe we can make things right for Nina. Dr. Clarkson is willing to try a potion or something that involves having Nina ingest her blood
. Like what he did for Billy when he was bit by the wolf from the legacy bloodline.”

  Tony paused. “I guess it’s worth a shot.”

  “Anything is worth a shot at this point. We have to find her,” Eric persisted.

  “If she has been alive this whole time, she’s been hiding for eighteen years, Eric. You don’t think that if she wants to go underground so we can’t find her, she doesn’t know how? She’s been off the grid and off our radar this entire time. Trying to look at it with an objective eye, I’d say she has been spending all that time figuring out exactly how to come back and fuck with us.”

  “So far, she’s doing a bang up job,” Eric said. “What’s the point of having all this money and all this power if we can’t find one little woman?”

  “It’s more complicated than that. You know that. It all goes back to the spell. I didn’t know it would do what it did. I feel responsible for a big portion of this.”

  Eric had had enough. He swiped his hands in the air in the ‘I’m done’ signal. “I didn’t believe in that stupid spell back then, and I don’t believe in it now. There is some kind of logical explanation for what happened. She is a reptile. Perhaps she figured out how to cut herself apart, knowing her limbs would grow back. That isn’t completely unheard of. I refuse to believe that this has anything to do with magic or the supernatural.”

  Tony looked at him as if he was the one who had grown an extra limb. Which considering the topic, it should have been vice versa. “You were there on the beach when she came off the water. She was inside that sphere of light, and it sucked Tiffany and Allison into it. She had control and then she lost it. You were there. You saw it. I understand that you want to try to explain it away with logic, believe me, I do too. But the fact remains that something we did that night created something that was unnatural and shouldn’t exist. We are the ones who are responsible for what happened.”

  Eric was saved from having to respond by the door opening. He felt his breath catch a bit in his throat as he looked at Nina standing there, framed in the doorway. She was lovely despite her paleness. She was wearing her standard issue jeans and a loose-fitting sweater. He liked her like this much better than the consummate professional appearance that she had tried to pull the night before.

  The jeans hugged her curves in ways that reminded him about what he ached to do to her if they were alone, but he put those thoughts aside. Those kinds of activities weren’t going to happen anytime soon based on the scowl she threw in his direction. That was assuming that she lived through the transition, which was a thought he put far from his mind.

  How inappropriate could he be in the face of Nina’s possible death? Eric knew he was an ass, but those kinds of thoughts bordered on major-league asshole, even for him.

  Nina looked at the two of them with an expression that told him she was getting ready for a fight. “I’m leaving. I don’t care what the two of you say, but I am out of here. You can’t keep me here.”

  “Where are you going to go?” Eric asked.

  “I can go stay with my sister until I figure out what I’m going do,” Nina said defiantly.

  Tony shook his head. “You can’t stay with anyone. We don’t know when you will transition. You are a danger to yourself and everyone else around you if you transition and people are around who don’t understand what’s happening.”

  “I am going to figure out how to get myself out of this,” Nina said. It was as if she was trying to talk herself into it by saying it out loud. “I heard what the doctor said. There may be another way if I can just find her. Then there’s no transition to have to worry about at all.”

  “We haven’t been able to locate her yet. I’ve had my best men on it, and they have come up with nothing,” Tony said. “I don’t think it will be as easy as you think, Nina.”

  Nina squinted her eyes and looked at him. “You haven’t tried my ways. I can find her.”

  Eric was amused by her spunk. He suddenly realized that if anyone probably could find her, it would be Nina.

  “So there’s no way I’m going to be able to talk you into staying here?” Eric asked one last time.

  “No way in hell,” Nina said.

  “Then you’re going to have to stay with me,” Eric said.

  “You mean walk through the media circus that is going on around you right now? Have you forgotten that you are the prime suspect in a high-profile murder case? That’s not going to be helpful or less stressful for me.”

  “I’m not staying at my condo,” Eric said. “We’ve got places around the city that are safe houses when we need them for shifters coming through Copper City who are in trouble and on the run. I’m staying at one of those, and you can stay with me. I can keep an eye on you in case anything happens.”

  He could see Nina struggling with this information. She really did not want to have to put herself in his hands. But what choice did she have? Eric knew that her sister had a son. He had kept track of Nina over the past couple years. So Eric went in for the kill. “You really wouldn’t want to inadvertently hurt Mia, or God forbid, Carlos, would you? Or worse, would you make them watch you die if you didn’t make it the way you had to watch Tomas?”

  He saw the flush rise in Nina’s cheeks, and he knew he had hit his mark. He saw Tony shaking his head, as if he thought he had gone too far. Eric didn’t see any point in beating around the bush. Nina was a danger to herself and to the other people around her. She needed to start recognizing that.

  “Fine,” Nina said stiffly. “I need my stuff. We have to stop back at my place.”

  Eric started to shake his head, but then Nina straightened her spine. Eric always thought she was cute like that. She barely came up to his chin. “If you want me to go to your place, then you need to give me a chance to get the stuff that I need to help. I have things at my apartment that I need.”

  “Give me a list, and I will have one of my men get whatever you need for you,” Eric said. “Jillian knows where you live, and she’s already attacked you once. What if she decides to come back and finish the job?”

  “You mean biting me and poisoning me wasn’t enough to do the trick?” Nina asked. The words were said with such pointed sarcasm that Eric could suddenly hear the true underlying emotion underneath them. The hard shell that Nina was projecting was going to crack. She was holding it together by sheer will, and as much as his panther wanted to go in for the kill and tear that shell to shreds so that they could claim her, he realized this was what was keeping her going.

  He sighed. “Okay, we’ll go get your stuff.”

  He saw Tony’s eyes widen and knew what his friend was thinking. It wasn’t like Eric to give in to anyone. When Eric worked a negotiation, he always made sure that he came out on top. It made him pause to think that he might be maturing in an entirely new way.

  Eric gestured for Nina to walk in front of him. They passed Tony, who gave him a small smirk with a raised eyebrow. Eric ignored him. He was done with both Kyle and Tony for a while. He’d let them run around in circles and chase their tails. At least he was doing something productive.

  He and Nina walked to the elevator bank. She looked around the hallway and cast a look at him. “It feels like I’m the only person here,” she said after a moment.

  “We haven’t opened the facility yet,” Eric said. He was relieved to be talking about something that didn’t involve ghosts, magic, rattlesnakes, or dying. “It opens in three months. But the staff is getting everything calibrated and starting to get to know each other. Kelly is working on the lab and making sure everything is up to snuff. We’re going to be filing for several patents for new medicines she’s developed.”

  “She and Kyle seem pretty happy,” Nina said offhandedly.

  Eric hadn’t thought about it too much. He’d gone to their wedding. He’d gotten drunk. He was missing a good chunk of the evening, but that had nothing to do with anything related to magic. It was simply that he was sad to see one of his comrades finally fall. He s
upposed that he would be getting ready for another wedding in the near future if he understood how things were going between Tony and Maggie.

  “Yeah, I suppose so. Seems like your friend Maggie and Tony have also gotten pretty close.”

  “I noticed that too,” Nina said. “We used to joke that we were going to be crazy old cat ladies together.”

  “I didn’t even know you had a cat,” Eric said.

  “I only had one, but it ran away,” she said snidely.

  Now Eric got the joke. “At some point, we’re probably to have to talk about that,” he said. “As well as what happened last night.”

  The elevators doors opened, and Nina stepped between them. She turned and looked at him. “At this point, I don’t know that there’s that much to talk about. I could be dead in three to seven days. I don’t even know what to think about that.”

  Eric followed her into the elevator. When the doors closed, he was taken completely by surprise. Nina pushed against his chest and pressed him back against the elevator wall. He didn’t resist; there was no way that he was going to turn this down.

  Her lips found his as she pushed up onto her tiptoes. His fingertips dug into her hair, and he dragged her close to him. It had all of the same sensations as the night before, except this time she was the one in charge. He sensed that she got off on that a little bit, and while that wasn’t normally his speed, there was something that was intoxicating about it. He reached down and cupped her ass and pulled her closer to him so that she could feel how instantly hard he was for her. She moaned against his mouth.

  It felt amazing, but it didn’t feel right for one very good reason. As much as it pained him to do it, he cupped her face in the palms of his hands. Then he gently pushed her away.

  He saw the surprise in her eyes. “What the hell are you doing?”

  He held her gaze steadily. “I can’t believe that I’m going to say this right now,” Eric started. “You don’t know what you’re doing. I am not going to take advantage of you in this state.”