A. Arthur - Shifter's Claim

Priya was still stunned.

“I’d like to offer you a job,” Roman Reynolds had said to her as she sat across from him in his office. To his right, Kalina stood draping an arm over the back of his chair. She looked as flawless as ever with her chin-length bob, an orange and bronze color that fit her buttery complexion perfectly. Her dress was simple, long-sleeved gray cashmere that hugged her tightly, but not vulgarly. Black leather boots that reached her knees gave her an edgy appearance and that bling-tastic rock on her left ring finger gave Priya an instant migraine.

“Are you serious?” she’d asked when the words had settled over her mind for a second or so.

Rome nodded. “I am deadly serious.”

And since that little sentence was spoken in a matching tone to be followed up by that chilling stare that she’d only seen on one other man in her entire life, Priya was inclined to believe him.

“What kind of job would you offer me?” Another question which reminded her of someone who’d told her she had an insatiable need to know everything. With a deep inhale she quashed that thought, he’d been banished from her daily thinking, or at least during the daylight hours he had. At night, she was a victim of the broken-heart syndrome. She ached for Bas, for his serious looks and hesitation to laugh, his scorching kisses and overprotective gestures that foolishly made her feel like a princess.

“We’d like you to be the public relations liaison for the Stateside Assembly. You would supervise and administer all of our official statements, maintaining a working dialogue between us and the humans,” Kalina told her.

Priya swallowed then looked at the woman whom she’d spent quite a bit of time with over the last few weeks. After she’d returned from Sedona and when she thought she’d never see or hear from any of the ones she now knew as Shadow Shifters again, Kalina had called two days later and invited her to lunch. From that little outing there’d come an invitation to dinner where Kalina had brought along Ary and Caprise. After that the foursome enjoyed a couple of happy hours, at Priya’s suggestion and Caprise’s overjoyed reaction. Still, a job offer had been the furthest thing from Priya’s mind.

“But I didn’t write the story. I didn’t tell anyone who you really are,” she insisted.

“We know you didn’t and we’ll be forever grateful to you for making that decision,” Rome stated. “But since we’ve been back there’s been one story after another, all speculation of course, but the questions are mounting. I’ve been having my secretary take messages from local reporters and international tabloids. The same goes for Nick and X. We want to say something, to issue a blanket statement that will cover us completely, but none of us are experts in that area.”

Kalina spoke up next. “You are, Priya. You can write press releases and you can deliver statements. You know who we are and what we stand for, you can defend us as the unknown to the people you know so well.”

Priya shook her head. “Let me get this straight, you want me to come and work for you? But I’m not a Shadow Shifter. In fact, I’m one of the very species you don’t want to reveal yourselves to.”

“You’re one of us,” Kalina continued. “You’re Bas’s ma—” she started, only to be cut off by Rome clearing his throat loudly.

“We trust you, Priya,” he finished. “We trust you as a professional and a friend. Because you know our secret and you could have told the second you found out. But you didn’t, instead you offered to help us. You did help us and took a bullet for your troubles. Come work for us and I promise we’ll take very good care of you.”

“By that you mean a lucrative salary, health, dental, and vision benefits. Fully vested 401(k) and maybe a company car,” she added because she believed they were just jerking her chain anyway, so why not play along?

“All of that and then some,” Kalina replied. “You even get a new apartment closer to the new Assembly Headquarters Rome is setting up in Maryland.”

“Moving? Me? Wait a minute, this cannot be happening,” she said, continuing to shake her head. In a minute she was going to have a crick in her neck from all the back-and-forth motion.

“I bet you thought that when Bas told you what we really were, and yet here we are,” Kalina offered in that kind, makes-perfect-sense way of hers.

She’d left the office with the promise to think the offer over thoroughly before giving them an answer. Now, as she stepped out of the cab and walked toward the front steps of her apartment building she was thinking that maybe it would be nice to have a car of her own and an apartment where the security door really worked and the buzzers to allow people to call up to her apartment weren’t a bundle of open wires just waiting to singe somebody’s fingers off. Then again, there was much to contemplate about working for, not just another employer, but another species entirely.

As she took the steps she remembered the first time she’d seen those eyes in that alley. She’d been intrigued. The next time she’d felt vindicated that her suspicions had been confirmed. And when she’d seen Bas’s cat up close and personal an array of emotions had volleyed for attention, the most prominent one still stalking her to this day. With a frown she pulled out her key and walked down the hall toward her apartment. Her mind was still whirling around the Shadow Shifters, Rome’s job offer, and the full circle she’d come with that man and his family, and … wait a minute. Priya paused right in front of her door, the door with the shiny new gold knob and dead bolt. She stepped back and looked up to the apartment number that had been crooked since the day she’d moved in. This was her apartment but her locks hadn’t looked like this when she left. Just to assure herself that she wasn’t totally losing her mind, Priya reached out and tried to insert the key in her hand into the lock on the door. It didn’t work, which did not surprise her in the least. What did give her more than a little start was when the door was wrenched open and a man stood on the other side. She backed up in disbelief and stumbled. He reached out an arm, catching her around the waist, pulling her up to his chest.

And her mind went back to over a month ago when she’d worn a red dress and crept through the halls of the Willard InterContinental Hotel. A man had grabbed her to him this way then, stopping her from breaking into a suite. He was a man she’d never forget.

Bas pulled her into her apartment before she could manage to wrap her lips around any coherent words. He closed the door with a resounding thump, then pushed her up against it.

“Every night you’ve invaded my dreams until finally I realized what will make a person travel thousands of miles without a second thought. It’s this, right here, right now, this between you and me.”

His last words were a bare whisper over Priya’s lips before he took her. His mouth pressing hard against hers, his tongue not obediently requesting entrance, but pushing its way inside, almost daring her to pull away, which of course hadn’t quite occurred to her yet. Instead her tongue readily reunited with his, her head tilted, and she took, damn she took what she too had been dreaming of for weeks that seemed more like years.

His fingers raked through the short strands of her hair, scraping her scalp as he held her head in place, his mouth ravishing hers all the while. Her back pressed against the door as his front—the delectable hardness of his sculpted abs, toned pectorals, and oh yes, the enticing bulge of his erection—pushed deliciously into hers. She was on fire immediately, her center pulsating with need, her hips jutting forward instinctively.