"I have my moments," he smirked.
"But Mik will never go for it. He'll say it’s a suicide mission, and if anyone is getting the pleasure of killing me, it'd be himself." My shoulders dropped once more with disappointment.
"So don't tell the uptight bastard," Chris said, like I was a freaking idiot. Hell, maybe I was? "Your hit is for Sunday? So track this coyote down sooner and get the job done. Mik will thank you for it afterwards, and maybe stop treating you like you're a china doll."
"Oh shut up," I snorted. My vampire boss was an asshole in every sense of the word, so I struggled to see his worry over me as anything more than a courtesy he showed all his employees. If there was anything more to it, he’d never acted on it.
"Uh, do you see him paying visits to any of the other assassins, just to check in? Do you see him following any of them on their contracts to make sure they're safe? He either thinks you're not as strong as the others, or he's damn in love with you. Then again, this is Mikhail we're talking about so we know for sure it’s not the love thing!" Chris snorted a laugh, and ordered himself another fruity cocktail.
He was referring to one of my early jobs, not long after graduating as a qualified RADOPA employee, when I’d spotted Mik watching me from the building opposite. We never spoke about it, but I knew he knew I saw him.
"I don't get the details for the hit for a few days. I guess I can try to find an unmated female before then?"
"Go ahead," Chris said, his gaze tracking some hot, young fae boy in a banana themed g-string. "But that's about as likely as me finding a nice, sturdy working boy and settling down. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have twinks to chase."
Chris stood up, fluffed his pink feather boa in my direction and went off in search of tail.
Me, I had enough fucking tails to worry about without adding another one.
Guess I'd be sleeping alone tonight.
In the morning, I got up and hit the Internet hard, logging onto every possible shifter dating site I could find. And trust me—there were a lot of them.
"Wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf ..." I said as I scrolled through profile after profile of beautiful shifter girls, none of whom would work to satisfy the requirements the kitsune-tsukai had laid before me. Even with the power of the world wide fucking web in my tricky little fox paws, this mysterious vixen was giving me the slip.
I prayed to the goddess Inari and her harem that Chris was wrong, that I wasn't the only female kitsune in the world without a fox mate. There had to be one out there somewhere, desperate for a husband, right? As desperate as Fin was for a wife?
With a groan, I reached up to close my computer and then … paused.
"No fucking way," I whispered as I clicked on the photo of a woman with long, bloodred hair, bright orange ears, and four delightfully fluffy tails. "No way. No flipping, motherfucking way."
I clicked her profile and scanned through the information she'd typed up. Not only was this chick in leather pants and heavy combat boots which I could totally relate to, but her write-up was snarky, fun, and remarkably similar to … me.
Had I seriously just found Fin a fox mate? I knew he was still in love with me, but this girl, she was damn similar, maybe similar enough to get me off the hook?
Apparently, she was currently living in Tokyo and working for an international survey team on supernatural affairs, trying to find a way to blend all the various cultures and laws of the supes and the humans. It'd been over fifty years since we'd come out of the closet so to speak and tensions were still running high. Half the time when I introduced myself, people thought I was a werewolf-obsessed human that'd gotten the fake ears and tail part wrong. It was because of this that I often just hid them all together.
Ignorant assholes.
I typed up a quick message. This girl—Revel Jones—might be halfway across the world, but with less than twenty thousand red fox shifters left on the planet, I knew she'd come. Hell, and Fin was attractive, even if he was a piece of shit. He was toned, good in bed, and had an eight inch cock. Basically, this girl was hitting the fucking jackpot.
A small surge of jealousy spiked through me, but I hit send on the message anyway and slammed the lid on the laptop.
No way was I letting myself get sentimental and weird about a man that I'd left of my own accord. Hell, one that I'd run as fast as I could away from. I had a career now, a trade, and I made a hell of a lot more money at it than I would've working for the Earth as a guard or a secretary or living off the pittance they provided for each kit born into the group.
I killed people, yes, but … I killed bad guys, people like my Sunday hit, Nix Locklear, a man who was determined to take down the entire shifter community with his bullshit. I made the world a better place, despite how disgusted Fin and Riot might be with my chosen profession.
Grabbing my cell, I sent out a quick group text to some of my, uh, coworkers to see if anyone was willing to meet and spar with me. If I was going to take down this skinwalker without magic, I'd need to be on top of my game.
"Come on, Ziff," I said, picking up the three pound fennec fox from the couch cushion. He whistled at me happily and crawled up and under the collar of my black trench coat, settling against my neck with a sweet sounding purr. "Let's grab some coffee and see if we can't turn this day into a productive one."
No matter what I got done today, finding that fox girl was a serious score. Even if I managed to take care of the hit on Nix Locklear without my magic, I damn well wasn't going to be happy if I didn't get it back … and get it back soon.
A kitsune without her magic was not a happy little fox.
No, she was downright fucking pissed.
That same angry little fox also turned into a raging bitch if she just happened to walk outside and find Riot Langthorne standing on the driveway outside her gates—even if he did look like sex incarnate, dressed in a tight black wife-beater and jeans, a cigarette clutched in his tattooed fingers. His thick, muscular tail flicked against the beige stone of my driveway in irritation. I had to swallow past a sudden rush of lust before I could take a single, normal breath.
"Thea," he said as I stormed up to him, trench coat billowing out behind me. Ziff squeaked happily at the sight of my former lover, but I was not in the mood to entertain Ry’s bullshit today. "Fin's too chickenshit to come talk to you himself," he continued as I pressed the button on my key fob to open the gates. Not for him though, just so I could tell him to fuck off and then back my car out. Somewhere in the city, there was a cappuccino calling my name. "So I thought I'd see if you wanted to grab coffee?"
"I'm busy," I lied, despite the fact that getting coffee was my absolute number one priority at the moment. There was nothing quite like sitting in a café with a steaming hot mug and a book. It was my morning ritual. And considering the fact that my life was made up of blood, risk, and death, I felt I more than deserved it.
I was not about to share my quiet, peaceful alone time with Riot. Although the man knows how to pull off skinny jeans and boots with the best of them. No. No. Would not let myself get distracted by the rounded curves of Riot’s biceps or the hard planes of his chest, so easily visible beneath his tight tank.
"Look, can we just share a single cup? One cup of coffee won't fucking kill you, Thea." He threw up his hands as I shot a sharp glance in his direction, taking in his gray eyes, his dark brown hair, and the scars that twisted across his right arm, the ones he'd had tattooed over with black and gray designs.
A wolf had got Riot once … and he hadn't let go.
If Fin and I hadn't stumbled on the scene, he wouldn't even be here right now.