the time in the world. Unless you have a curfew I don’t know about.”
“I’m grown, remember?”
“Oh, I remember.” His tongue trailed lightly down the side of my neck, hesitating slightly at the four crescent-shaped scars, leaving a wet trail to be caressed by the warm September breeze. “You’re very, very grown.” His tongue resumed its course, flicking over my collarbone before diving into my cleavage. The sweet spot, he called it. With good reason.
“What about our unwilling guest?” My fingers trailed over his chest, feeling the hard planes through his T-shirt.
“He can find his own date.” Marc’s words were muffled against my skin, his breath hot on the upper curve of my breast.
“I’m serious.” I pulled him back up to eye level. “What if he wakes up?”
“He’ll be jealous.” Marc leaned in to kiss me, but I put a hand on his chest. Breathing an impatient sigh, he glanced through the car window over my shoulder, then back up to meet my eyes. “He’s out cold. Besides, we never have any privacy at the ranch, anyway, so what does it matter?”
Privacy. It had become our most precious commodity, and the supply was never enough to meet the demand in a house full of propriety-challenged werecats—noisy, overgrown children with supernatural hearing and no lives of their own. Marc was right: middle-of-nowhere Arkansas was about as private as we were going to get. Ever. For the rest of what passed for our lives.
I nodded, sliding my hands slowly beneath the front of his shirt. “Okay, but you’d better have a blanket in there.” I tossed my head toward the trunk. “’Cause I’m not lying down on this gravel.”
He frowned, and his nose met mine as he bent down for one more kiss. “Who said anything about lying—” his cell phone rang out from his hip pocket, just as his lips brushed mine “—down.”
I smiled, not a bit surprised. Timing was everything, and in that regard, my father was a force to be reckoned with.
Marc stepped back, pulling the phone from his pocket, and my hands fell from his chest to rest on my hips. “Damn it, Greg,” he muttered, glancing at the backlit screen.
“Tell him what we were about to do, and he’ll probably leave us alone,” I said, pulling open the front passenger-side door. Unlike most fathers, mine was…enthusiastic about my relationship with my boyfriend. So was my mother. They loved Marc as if he were a son, and would have done anything to make an honest couple of us, including gluing the ring to my finger. It was kind of creepy, if I stopped to think about it for too long.
“That’s not a conversation I particularly enjoy having with your father.” Marc scowled as the phone continued to ring. “And if I get one more tip from Michael, I’m going to throw him right through the living-room window, even if he is your brother.”
I flinched. “He didn’t.”
Marc raised his eyebrows.
Damn. He did. Marc wouldn’t have to kill Michael; I’d do it myself. I just could not make people understand that my private life was exactly that: private.
Smiling now, Marc pressed the on button and held his phone to his ear. “Hi, Greg. What’s wrong?”
My father’s reply came through loud and clear. “I just checked my messages and found something interesting. An anonymous call about a dead cat. I hope you have your shovel.”
Of course Marc had his shovel. Because what better way was there to end a date than by burying a corpse in the middle of the night?
It’s official. My job sucks.
Two
“An anonymous call?” Marc said, his brow furrowed. “That’s…unusual. What time did it come in?”
“Shortly after seven.” Thanks to my werecat’s enhanced hearing, my father’s voice was easily audible, even though I was several feet from the phone.
I pressed the button on the side of my watch, illuminating the face. It was just after ten. The message was three hours old.
“Where did the call come from?” Marc asked.
Over the phone, my father cleared his throat. “A phone booth in southern Arkansas. You and Faythe are closest, so keep your eyes open, because whoever made the call could still be around.” Silence settled in over the line for a moment. “I need you to identify the corpse and take care of the body.”
Marc glanced at me, and I shook my head. Hell no. We’d already detoured from a much-anticipated weekend road trip to take care of some random trespasser, and were just about to take care of each other. That was enough for one night. The body could rot, for all I cared.
Except that we couldn’t really let it rot. At least, not where a human could find it. Humans tended to get uptight and curious around corpses, and were generally adamant about pinning down the source of the problem. Which, of course, was us. Well, not my Pride specifically, but likely a member of our species. So, Marc and I would take care of the body, whether we wanted to or not. For the good of the Pride. Because that was our job.
Marc frowned at me, and I nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, we’ll take care of it as soon as we get rid of the stray in the backseat,” he said.
“Did she do it on her own?” my father asked, and I ground my teeth together. I couldn’t help it. I’d called to report the intruder like a good girl, and was rewarded with an order to take him unassisted. It was my father’s idea of a test.
Most aspects of my training didn’t agree with me. There wasn’t as much bossing around as I’d hoped for, and there was way too much following orders. Fortunately, there was also ample opportunity to vent my frustration in the guise of protecting and defending our property boundaries. That part wasn’t too bad.
“Let’s just say your daughter has one heck of a right hook,” Marc said, laughter bubbling up behind his words.
“I’m not surprised.” Our esteemed Alpha gave Marc directions to the exposed corpse as we settled into the car, and by the time we turned left out of the empty lot, he’d hung up the phone.
“So, what are we supposed to do with the body?” I asked, pretty sure I already knew the answer.
“Bury it. Unless you’d rather take it to school for show-and-tell?”
“Smart-ass,” I snapped. Burial was what I’d expected. Unfortunately, we hadn’t come prepared with a backhoe. Or a coffin. All we had was an emergency kit and a couple of shovels Marc kept in the trunk, for just such an occasion.
Huffing in irritation, I glanced at my clothes, selected with our weekend getaway in mind. But our trip had been canceled. There would be no quiet dinner in a nice restaurant with cloth napkins. No popcorn in the dark theater. No private hotel room, far from the inescapable eyes and ears of our fellow werecats.
Instead, we’d be working. All night. For no overtime.
Most of my friends had returned
