A. Arthur: Shifter's Claim

Biting her lower lip as she moved the bullet up and down and around the tightened bud of her clit, she closed her eyes and saw him once more.

Sebastian Perry.

His name echoed in her head even though she’d willed it not to. His eyes hungrily devoured her as they’d done something so cordial as share a drink in a bar. In the dream he’d slid around to the side of the booth where she’d been sitting. His hand had touched her thigh, sending spikes of heat to every pleasure point throughout her body simultaneously. She’d tried to be calm, taking another sip of her wine, but that had been futile. Clever fingers worked her dress up slowly, slipped between her thighs to find her waiting for him.

“Hot,” he’d whispered against her ear as he slipped the first finger past her swollen lips. “So hot for me,” he’d continued, his tongue licking over her lobe.

She’d kept her eyes open, acutely aware of the fact that they were in a public place where anyone could walk past and see them. They’d know instantly what was going on as the pad of his thumb pressed against her clit and she’d hissed, bucked, and closed her eyes to the pleasure.

At the vivid memory of the dream, Priya rubbed the bullet fiercely over her clit, loving the sensations rippling through her body, the fullness of her breasts, the stinging hardness of her nipples. She moaned louder, bit her lip to stop herself, then cursed and let out a long, low scream.

In the next dream Sebastian held her against the wall in the hallway at the Willard InterContinental. He’d lifted her feet from the plush forest-green carpet, wrapping her legs around his waist and clasping them there. In seconds he’d unzipped his pants to free his erection, pushing his engorged length into her waiting pussy with the gush of her already potent arousal. And then he’d gone to work.

Her hands moved frantically, one controlling the bullet between her legs, the other grabbing her breasts, squeezing until tears stung her eyes. Her breath was coming in loud gulps now, her head tilted as her back arched off the bed.

She could imagine him inside her, filling her, pleasing her, and she bucked her hips. A flash of thought and she almost tossed the vibrator and pushed her fingers into her aching center instead, but penetration was cheating, she’d often told herself. It was okay to bring herself to orgasm by stimulation alone, any type of penetration and she might as well kick the celibacy habit and go get laid.

In the dream he’d rammed into her so hard her head had snapped back, rapping soundly against the wall, but she hadn’t cared. He’d grabbed her breasts, squeezing tightly, groaning as he looked down to see his efforts had pushed them over the rim of her dress. Her thighs clenched around him as her nails dug into his shoulders and when they both came it was like the grand finale at the Fourth of July fireworks display—exhilarating and extremely satisfying.

On the bed her thighs quivered, her head thrashing against the pillows until she moaned with the rush of release and finally lay slack against her now-damp sheets.

“Dammit!” she cursed, jumping off the bed and heading straight for the bathroom.

Leaving the apparatus on the side of the sink for later cleaning, she moved directly to the shower to switch on the hot water. Yanking the nightgown so hard she thought she may have heard it rip, she tossed the material to the floor then stepped out of her panties. In the next instant she was in the shower, letting her head fall back as the sting of the water hit her still-aroused body. She scrubbed herself as if she’d been touched by some sort of disease, raking her nails over her skin while muttering something about arrogant, too-fine men.

About a half hour and two cups of coffee later, Priya had regained some semblance of control, putting the dreams and the morning’s escapade behind her as she sat down and powered up her laptop. Checking her e-mails was the last thing Priya wanted to do, dread settling quickly in the center of her chest as she pulled up her mailbox. So instead of checking them she composed one to Lolo, her computer-geek friend at the paper. She and Lolo had been the best of friends for the last two years, after she’d felt so bad about turning down his date request that she’d taken him out for a Big Mac meal that had been on special that week.

She sent Lolo the pictures she’d taken with her cell phone at last night’s dinner and asked him to go through the databases to provide her with names and connections to Roman Reynolds. After sending off that e-mail she thought briefly about cleaning her apartment, then changed her mind in lieu of another cup of coffee. Oh, how she loved the convenience and quickness of her Keurig.

Then, as if it had been on the agenda all along, she sat back down in front of her laptop and typed his name into the search engine. She shouldn’t have, she knew it and berated herself while waiting for links to appear. She didn’t give a damn who Sebastian Perry was, he wasn’t going to help her with this story, his parting words after he’d walked her to her door last night had said it all.

“Stay away from Roman Reynolds and forget about the notion of cat people. You’ll be much better off if you take my advice,” he’d said in a mellow tone that matched his reserved demeanor. He’d stood close to her as he always seemed to do, like at any minute he would reach out and touch her cheek, pull her closer, gently kiss her lips … no, no, NO!

Priya slammed her hands down on her desk and closed her eyes. “Do. Not. Think of him that way,” she told herself sternly. “Just do not!”

When she opened her eyes again it was to more than a couple of hits on his name. Words like playboy, eccentric millionaire, and recluse were all mentioned in the descriptions of him. His bio explained why he was so arrogant—heir to a communications fortune and yet he’d earned his own fortune. The rich simply got richer. And good-looking rich guys showed up on the cover of GQ, multiple times. She groaned as she remembered assuming he was Reynolds’s bodyguard last night. As arrogant as Perry was, he was probably thinking she had to be a colossal idiot not to know who he was.

Pictures of him with various women appeared on gossip pages, all with titles insinuating they were a “hot” item. Yet she never saw the same female twice. Perry’s background seemed to personify some of the things Priya hated about men—entitled, conceited, and distracted. In the midst of all these things that she shouldn’t give a damn about, she came across something important. While Perry owned his own string of resorts across the world, he seemed to be extremely close to Reynolds, Delgado, and Markland, all of whom lived right here in D.C. It was a picture of Perry and Markland at Perry’s Sedona resort taken only a week before that night she’d seen Markland and the other men in the alley behind Athena’s. To Perry she’d made it seem as if someone had given her that information, when in fact, she’d been there and had seen it for herself. She shivered at the memory of those eerie eyes. She and her photographer had been rushed out of the alley by a forceful and attitudinal female and warned not to come back. And the next morning Priya had received the first e-mail with instructions on how she would be the one to reveal the creatures living among them, she would be the one to take Reynolds and his crew down.

She’d been about to ask who was sending the e-mail and what gave them the right to order her around. The picture of her brother gagged and bound and bleeding from a gash in his head had been the only answer she’d needed.

Before Priya could think more about the man she’d met last night in connection with the man she was determined to get to, her phone rang. Instantly, she knew who it was and wondered if she should answer it. Nobody used her house phone besides her family, all her business contacts and Lolo used her cell. Prior to receiving that first e-mail, Priya may have ignored the ringing phone, at least for an hour or two until she was able to get some work done. Starting her day with the drama that inevitably came with the Drake family was not something she enjoyed doing. But now that had changed, the e-mails she’d begun receiving had changed how she dealt with her family. They had inextricably connected her family and her work so that this next story was literally do or die.