Seven Years

to get her something like this.

Austin walked quietly up Lexi’s stairs with the heavy bouquet in his right hand. The man had done an excellent job, somehow attaching them to a ball in the center so that they stayed in place and gave it a handle that he could hold on to. It looked just as good as any flowers, and a delicate white ribbon wrapped around the bottom. The man urged him to fill out a card, but Austin found out he had more to say than what would fit on a small note card. He ended up writing his message on a sheet of paper that was folded up and burning a hole in his back pocket.

“Lexi, these are just the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen!” he heard a woman exclaim through the cracked door.

Austin eased up at the entrance, holding the bouquet behind his back. He peered in and his jaw slackened when he saw the obscene amount of roses all over her table. The woman in the tall shoes he recognized as her neighbor.

“Lorenzo,” Naya said, holding a card. “Is he Spanish? I love Spanish men.”

“You love all men.”

“Italian?”

“No, I think he’s Native American,” Lexi replied with her back to the door. She touched one of the flowers. “They are pretty, aren’t they?”

“Pretty penny,” Naya agreed. “And the note! Totally swoon-worthy. I can’t imagine a man topping an offer like this, Lexi. You should take it. If he’s good-looking, then that’s just icing on the cake, but you already have my approval,” she declared, placing her hands on her hips and jutting them out.

Lexi shouldered her and they both admired the roses. Austin’s nose filled with the smell of defeat and he stepped back.

One of the suckers clacked on the concrete beneath him and Naya said, “What was that?”

“You left the door open,” Lexi chastised. “Always lecturing me about locking up and you get all swept up by flowers and lose your mind.” They giggled and Austin quickly backed away, hurrying down the stairs.

His chest actually hurt. Like someone had a grip on his heart and was strangling the breath from his lungs. It felt like the walk of shame across that lawn as he heard the door shut behind him. Austin squeezed the handle to the bouquet even tighter and wanted to throw it, but it would have scattered a hundred suckers across the lawn, leaving evidence he had been there.

Instead, he tossed the cheap bouquet in the passenger seat and moved his Dodge Challenger into a less obvious parking space. As he watched Naya leave her apartment, Austin glanced at the candy beside him and then back at her window. The lights eventually dimmed and he rolled down the car window, wishing he had a shot of something strong.

It was a stupid idea to give her cheap candy. They weren’t kids anymore and she would have been insulted.

Lexi deserved to be taken care of. There was no rule that she had to be mated to the Packmaster or anyone else in a pack in order to be part of the family. It didn’t stop how fiercely protective he felt of her. How when another man’s eyes roamed across her body, Austin wanted to rip them from the guy’s sockets. Lexi wasn’t abrasive like many of the female Shifters, and that made her vulnerable. Growing up in a pack (and within the Shifter culture), a woman learned how to talk to men and get what she wanted. Ivy was an exception with her shyness, but he could sense a tough girl beneath her quiet exterior.

His father had warned him that a pack without balance turns on itself, and women provide the harmony necessary for a family to sustain itself over the years. Austin hadn’t been raised in a pack environment. His parents had forbidden them from going rogue, and the only way to leave the family unit was to join a pack or become a bounty hunter. Too many bad things happened to rogue Shifters. When Austin stepped up in his alpha role, his parents made the decision to move on. It wasn’t ideal for parents to be under the leadership of one of their children.

The idea of having Lexi’s family living with them, even if they weren’t Shifters, was appealing. Someone also needed to protect that little girl, and he didn’t have a good feeling about leaving her and her mother alone. Bringing them into the pack was exactly what his men needed to shape up.

Damn Lorenzo. Even early on, he was always a man who did anything it took to get what he wanted. Now that he was advancing on Lexi, Austin was feeling more possessive and territorial.

He turned off his radio since the noise was distracting. The CD player was a nice addition to the car. The guy who sold it to him had a gift and could have converted a car into an airplane if you gave him enough money. He’d installed a CD player along with new speakers and did a little work restoring the body to maintain the vintage appeal.

Austin slid down in his seat when Lexi emerged from her apartment and noticed a piece of candy on her doormat. She glanced around before hurrying down the sidewalk that led to the mailboxes. While she checked her mail, Austin leaned down to read his text messages, not wanting the light from the phone to draw any attention to his car. He sent one to Reno to make sure they had everything under control at the house with Lynn. After several minutes, he sat up and rubbed his eyes.

A few fireflies lit up and Lexi paused on the way back, scooping her hand in the air to catch one. He laughed quietly, eyes sliding down to her hips as she jumped in the air and the bottom of her shirt came up just enough that he could see her belly button.

Then he shifted in his seat, because the thoughts racing in his head were sending blood to all the wrong places. He needed to stop thinking about her in a sexual way.

That’s when he glanced to the right and saw something out of place. An expensive Jaguar blocked the fire hydrant—a car that had no business in this thirty-year-old complex. The driver appeared to be sleeping, and knowing a Mage was hunting her father, Austin launched himself out of the car to confront him.

Chapter 22

After Naya left, I went to check my mail and found a lollipop outside my door. She wasn’t into eating candy, so it was an odd thing to find. I shrugged it off, but on the walk back to my apartment, I stepped on something hard and bent down to pick up another one. It was my favorite brand, and I looked around in bewilderment without knowing what I was really looking for.

Candy Claus? Sent to deliver all the good Shifters a bucket full of sweets in the middle of summer?

I laughed and swung open my door, stepping into the living room. My bedroom light cast a dim glow in the apartment and the smell of flowers filled my nose. When I turned the first lock, a shadow moved behind me. My heart did a flip-flop and I got that prickling sensation you get when you’re not alone.

“I missed you,” Beckett said, wrapping his arms tightly around my body from behind.

I squirmed, trying to break free, but his pythons were constricting. He loosened them just enough so I could turn to face him.

“You’re drunk,” I accused, smelling it all over his breath and seeing the glazed look in his bloodshot eyes. Not to mention his eyes were bruised; someone had finally given him a dose of his own medicine.

“Like what your boyfriend did to me? See what kind of man you got? What the fuck are those?” Without removing his eyes from mine, he pointed his heavy arm at the roses.

My mouth wasn’t working and all I could do was open it and shake my head.

“You belong to me, Lex. Not some pussy fucking roses man,” he slurred. “You got flowers and I got eighteen stitches in the back of my head,” he spat angrily.

“Those flowers aren’t from him, Beckett. Please, go home and calm down. You’re worked up and I don’t want to fight.”

His slobbery mouth kissed my cheek and his broad chest pinned me against the door so I couldn’t move.

“You can’t tell me what I fucking need, because I need you. I’ll forgive your slutting around, but you tell that motherfucker you’re coming home with me,” he said against my cheek. “Pack up