The Spot wasn’t too far from the clubhouse. Router and I pulled in behind the back of the building and went through the back door. Oz was running the back room tonight, monitoring the high stakes games. Router went straight to the security room. I watched her go, curiosity buzzing in my mind.
“What’s up with Router?” I asked Oz, wondering if he’d noticed anything.
“Don’t know. What’s up with you lately?” I shrugged, knowing something was off, but not knowing what.
“You know?” I asked, grabbing a glass and a bottle of whiskey from behind the bar.
“Yeah, brother.”
I tipped the glass and drained the amber liquid. “I had another vision cut off. Makes three now.”
“You’re on edge, maybe Router picked up on it and decided to keep an eye on you?”
“Want to find out for me?” I grinned at him knowingly.
“Fuck that, I’ve been in her mind before. She’s into that weird gamer and anime shit. Not to mention the coded shit she’s got going on in that head of hers. I swear the girl thinks in binary.”
I shook my head and poured myself some more whiskey. I froze with the glass halfway to my lips. That smell. I dragged in a deep breath, my heightened senses zeroing in on the sweet scent of honey and vanilla. It was more potent to me than any other odor in the building. It rose above everything.
My eyes scanned the room, searching for the owner of that sweet intoxicating scent. My leopard was on alert inside of me. He was hunting, clawing at me to find the woman the smell belonged to. “Pres?” Oz asked when he noticed me going on alert. His body was tightening as he looked around for possible danger.
“My mate. She’s here.” I set the glass on the bar and moved out into the room. She was here. We had to find her.
She was beautiful, her long dark hair hung down to the center of her back, and the tight leather pants showed off the slim lines of her body. She had just a handful of tits that were hidden under her loose-fitting shirt, and a slight curve to her hips. Her ass was small, tight, and bouncy.
I watched her across the den of the game room. She sipped slowly at her drink. It looked like the drink was just a prop to her. Like she wanted to fit in enough to go unnoticed. There was no way I wasn’t going to notice her. She looked around as if she felt my gaze, but she didn’t see me through the dimness of the room.
As I watched her, her eyes went from dark to iridescent. I’d never seen anything like it before, but I knew that she was a shifter of some kind. Her smell had traces of fur, but I couldn’t place the underlying scent. People walked past her without glancing her way, and she didn’t pay them any mind either.
I moved in her general direction, never taking my eyes from her. She was up to something; I could feel it. My leopard was locked on her as much as I was. I could feel him inside me, stalking her like prey. He’d never done that with women before. Usually, I could feel his annoyance when I bedded a woman, but all I felt from him right now was intrigue and interest. The urge to claim her then and there was powerful, but I fought against it.
When she went into the high stakes room, I watched as she moved toward the back table. The game going on was between some of the seedier businessmen in the area.
Hector Luis Moran was suspected of being part of the local Mexican mafia. It wasn’t confirmed, as far as the police knew. He didn’t get where he was by being careless or an idiot. For a human, he was as dangerous as they came, but he didn’t know all of the company he kept. The man next to him was Damian Diaz, a crooked cop that was on the payroll of just about anyone who wanted to shell out a little money for him to look the other way. There were a few more men that were bad news, but none of them were as dangerous as the one at the end with his back to the wall and his golden eyes.
King had a stack of chips and a glass of our best bourbon in front of him. An ugly scar ran down the side of his face all the way down to his neck. Had he been a normal man, he’d have been dead from an injury like that, but King was the Alpha of the Demon Pride, and my mate sat down right next to him.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath as worry and jealousy warred within me. How the fuck did she know King? Was she one of his women? If she was, I was going to kill the fucker and start a war. Maybe this was the something big that my visions had failed to show me. A battle between the Dark Leopards and the Demon Pride. FUCK! I cursed.
She didn’t join the game, she just sat there quietly watching. For a moment, I wondered if she was King’s woman or a member of his pride, but by his body language and the way he completely ignored her, it was like he forgot she was even there. I released the breath of pent up air I was holding. She wasn’t his; there’s no way he’d ignore his woman like that.
It was odd, the way everyone seemed to look right through her. King sniffed the air again; I saw his eyes go from dark yellow-brown to golden, like his lion was directly below the surface. The girl hesitated like she knew exactly who and what he was, but she stayed where she was right beside
