Werebeasties (10 page)

She halted her breath. A miasma of stale beer and cigarettes hit her nose. The room hadn’t been cleaned recently. Usually in a motel like this, they had maids do the cleaning every day. Maybe Jared had asked them not to clean his room. Then, maybe, or more likely, he was doing something in here.

Sam’s hopes rose. She wasn’t completely foolish either. There was a chance Jared had made copies of the tape and hidden them in his apartment in Indiana. Either way, she had to try.

She padded to the closet and began her search through Jared’s bag first. Clothes. An extra pair of sneakers. Parka. What kind of idiot would pack a parka in July? Well, her idiot ex-husband for one. Sunglasses. Underwear. Eeewww… Sam cringed and made a note to herself to wash her hands extra clean. She found nothing in his overnight carryall.

Sam moved to the nightstand. Drawers. The bed. Under the bed. She went back to check the underside of the drawers—maybe he’d taped the disc to it. Still nothing. She crawled underneath the writing desk, poking and prodding. Nothing looked suspicious. Sam checked behind the drapes and every nook and cranny for possible hiding places.

Nothing.

She thought hard, trying to recall all of Jared’s habits. She remembered she’d caught Jared hiding his marijuana in a plastic bag inside the toilet tank one time. She had been furious with him openly smoking pot and had told him to get the hell out of the house if he wanted to get stoned.

She quickly ran into the bathroom. A shiver of disgust rolled over her. Jared had only spent a few days in this place, but he’d managed to turn the bathroom into a slob’s paradise. She walked between the wet towels and dirty clothes on the floor and stooped over the toilet. She lifted the heavy tank lid.

Bingo.

A big Ziploc bag was stuck in there. She fished it out. Inside the bag were more drugs in forms of pills and weeds. It also had a disc in a slim case.

Her heart leapt.

Could it be?

Sam opened the bag and plucked out the disc. She put it in her purse. The drugs gave her the willies. She could return the bag to the original hiding place and call the cops to snitch on Jared. But alas, her fingerprints were all over the bag and every surface she had touched in this room. She should have bought latex gloves before she’d gone sneaking. Shit. She hadn’t thought about it.

She wanted to kick herself for not thinking things through.

She decided to dump the drugs in the toilet. Once Jared found the disk was gone, he would be pissed knowing that she had also flushed the drugs. Especially his beloved weed. For the past several months, he couldn’t let a day go by without smoking a joint.

Grinning, Sam dumped the drugs into the toilet. Before she could pull the lever, the room door opened. She froze. Jared had come back early. Heavy steps shuffled on the carpeted floor.

She turned around. She stiffened.

He grimaced. “Sam.”

* * * *

David slammed on the brakes of his black Porsche when they hit an intersection. Adam lurched forward, but the seatbelt prevented him from hitting the windshield. Calvin, on the other hand, wasn’t buckled up in the back seat. The panther’s head hit the headrest. An angry snarl filled the car. Calvin was pissed.

“Which way is it?” David barked back. “Left or right?”

Calvin sniffed the air through the crack of the window. His tail smacked the leather seat repeatedly.
Left. She is close…

“That’s what you’ve been saying for the past ten minutes.” David scowled.

If you let me go on foot, I would have found her by now.

“Yeah. And how are you going to manage to conceal yourself in the general population?” David fixed his attention on the road and hit the gas. The Porsche pounced with ease, entering the main street. As much as he wanted to speed and break all rules of the road, he couldn’t. He caught a glimpse of a police patrol vehicle about two cars ahead. Speeding wasn’t going to happen, unless he wanted to get a ticket. The last thing David wanted to do was to attract attention. With Calvin in his beastly form, a simple explanation as to why he had a wild animal in the car wouldn’t do.

He cruised along Carmel Street, passing several shops and restaurants.

She’s close. That way…

“Where?”

That motel. Her scent is strong.

Adam craned his neck and squinted. “Isn’t that Morgan’s car?”

David saw what Adam was pointing at. Their cook’s blue Plymouth sedan was parked in front of Willwood Lodge. Morgan had said that Sam had borrowed his car to go to Walgreens to get something and she’d felt awkward borrowing Adam’s car again.

 
Want. Want her…

Calvin looked eager to jump out of the car as David slowed and glided into the parking lot.

“Stay here.” David rolled up the tinted windows. Calvin would be safe from prying eyes. “We’ll be back soon.”

He heard bones creaking. Calvin shifted to his human form.

“No fair,” Calvin protested. “I need to go with you.”

“Naked?” Adam reminded him.

“Fuck.” Calvin pounded his fist on the seat. “Let me borrow your jacket.”

“Absolutely fucking not.” David pulled the key from the ignition. “Then what? You go in there bare-assed?”

Calvin swore again.

David got out. “Stay put.” He slammed the door.

Adam followed suit. He nodded at him. “I’ve caught her scent too. Let’s go.”

They broke into a run to the motel. The clerk lifted his head from the magazine he was reading, looking terminally bored as they stormed through the doorway.

“Can I help you, gentlemen?” the clerk asked.

David dismissed the semi-stuporous man immediately. That dumbwit wouldn’t be able to help them. Besides, David had a lock on Sam’s scent. It was getting stronger. “No thanks.”

Adam strode towards the elevator. David was one step behind. His tiger was restless. He sensed Adam’s lion was too. When the elevator’s door slid close, Adam leaned on the panel and took a sniff of the buttons. Adam looked at David. “Looks like first floor.”

“Let’s find out.” David pushed the button.

It was a short ride. The elevator bell chimed. First floor. The door opened. David could practically sense Sam’s scent in the corridor. It lingered where she had passed. He followed it until the scent led them to room 104. He heard muffled screaming behind the door. His tiger growled, trying to claw out. David was able to resist it at the last second. He mustn’t lose his cool headedness.

Adam, on the other hand, couldn’t. The second he heard her crying, his animal jumped out. Adam charged at the door, blasting through it. The lion’s roar reverberated. David lunged in and found Jared on the floor under Adam’s paw. Samantha was sprawled next to the bed, her eyes and lips swollen.

There was blood on her blouse. And drops of blood on the carpet. Suddenly, David couldn’t control his beast any longer. His tiger clawed out. Before he could shift completely, a great black shadow zoomed past him and pounced on the prey. Angry snarls echoed in the room.

Calvin pawed Jared’s pale body from under Adam’s clutches. The female screamed in panic. Jared might have been shitting his pants too.

Pathetic.

David went to Samantha, scenting her. He half-expected her to recoil in fear for having him near her in his beastly form. Surprisingly, Sam lunged and wrapped her arms around his mighty head.

“Oh, David, thank goodness you’ve come.”

David licked her. A salty, coppery tang flooded his palate—her tears.

He knew everything would be all right.

Epilogue

Sam opened the wooden-framed windows of the living room and inhaled the fresh air. It had been raining all morning, but thank God, it had finally stopped. The breeze rushed past her. The scent of earth, leaves and salt water smelt so invigorating. From the window of their condo, she could see the beach without any obstruction. Rain had kept people away, though it was usually jam-packed with sunbathers at this hour. Sam breathed in more fresh air. It was nice to see the beach and the sea in their natural beauty. Hawaii was beautiful. She had spent a month here after the incident with Jared in Colorado. David had a condo in Honolulu and thought she should get away from it all while he, Adam and Calvin sorted everything out. He called it damage control. She preferred to think of it as payback. He and Calvin had arranged some legal mojo that had brought Jared to his knees.

Her lovers had saved her that night. They had argued in the past, but Jared had never manhandled her before. He must have reached an all-time low. Maybe it was the drugs. Or the alcohol. Or the fact that he wasn’t going to get more money from her. Jared had gone berserk. She’d thought he was going to kill her. But Adam had stopped him. And Calvin had scared the hell out of him by nipping and pawing him. The rest of it was rather blurry. She remembered being hauled into an ambulance and a paramedic checking her vitals. There were sirens, bright lights, and plenty of police officers strutting around. They’d asked questions. Weird questions. But Calvin always had answers for them. She didn’t remember how Adam, David and Calvin had shifted back. She recalled they had all been in the motel’s bathrobes when the first officer had responded to the call. And Jared…

That son of a bitch kept screaming his head off, saying a tiger, a lion and a gigantic black cat had attacked him. Of course nobody believed him. Not with drugs and weed in the toilet and his blood alcohol way over the legal limit.

She was glad everything was over.

Besides a restraining order and the whole nine yards of Jared not being allowed to contact her without risking his ass being hauled away by the cops, her ex was now in the Aspen county jail facing assault charges for beating her up. Calvin also charmed the prosecutor into adding drug and blackmailing charges to the rap sheet. And if everything stuck, Jared could face a long time in prison.

She was just glad that Jared was off her back for good. Now she could put everything behind her. She was done with the past. Seven years in a marriage from hell. She looked forward to the future. With Adam, David and Calvin. The arrangement was unconventional and she was sure her mother—her adoptive mother—would disapprove if she ever found out about the ménage relationship, but hell, this was what she wanted. Her men were happy and she had never been so content. Her financial woes were over. She would never have to deal with that jackass of an ex-husband again and for the first time in her life, she discovered that it was nice to have someone—in her case, three men—to depend on for a change. With Jared, she had always been the one who shouldered the burden. She thought of going to back to school to get her degree so she could contribute something back into the relationship. Adam told her to take it easy for now. She had been through a lot and he said she deserved a break.

“Has the rain finally stopped?” Adam asked from the couch.

“Yeah. We can do some grilling out today.” Sam went to sit next to him, snuggling. “I bought some excellent steaks from the butcher yesterday. He said it was a special order from Peter Luger.” Her men loved steaks, like carnivores addicted to their meat. Considering what they really were, she wasn’t surprised.

Adam curled an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. Sam relished his warmth, his body heat. His spicy and musky scent. It made her heady. He found her lips and kissed her. She wanted to melt instantly.

“But I’ll do the grilling. Adam can’t do shit. He always burns the meat.” Calvin threw a smirk at Adam. He had just arrived from Colorado with David this morning after tying up loose ends in Jared’s case. The three had gone back and forth between Aspen and Honolulu. But one of them always stayed with Sam in rotation. Today they were all together for the first time in weeks.

Adam snorted. “You always eat my charred steak anyway.”

“That, my friend,” Calvin wriggled a finger in front of Adam, “is because a growing lawyer needs his vitamins and meat to grow up to be a healthy lawyer.”

“You give ninety-nine per cent of lawyers a bad name.”

“Or one per cent of lawyers a good name.”

“Dick.”

“Jerk.”

David emerged from the bedroom. He looked as if he had just stepped out from the shower. His perfect body was wrapped in a towel. His hair was wet. He padded to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. David took his coffee black. He sipped it as he came into the living room. “Are you two already bickering at this hour?”

“We’re just having a civil conversation about steaks,” Calvin said.

David perked at the mention of it. “I hope its Peter Luger’s steaks.”

Sam winked. “You betcha. The butcher ordered it special for me.”

“Atta girl.” He flopped on the coffee table and lifted her foot, taking her slipper off.

“What are you doing?” Sam grinned.

“What do you think? I haven’t seen you in a week.” David massaged her calf then caressed her thigh.

Heat spiralled to her centre from his touch. All of a sudden, her body craved for more of his touches. His caress. His kiss.

Adam nuzzled behind her ear. “Let me help you with that. I love undressing a pretty girl.”