In the silence of the night, they looked into each other’s eyes. She had not expected this evening to go this way. No, that was a lie. Zoe was a shifter, and she knew exactly what Rollo meant to her. She would be lying to herself if she couldn’t admit that she knew exactly where the night would go.
And now she was trapped. She hadn’t wanted to meet him for this very reason. She was physically and emotionally bonded to him already. She wanted him with every muscle, every nerve, every layer of her soul. He excited something inside her that she couldn’t express in human words. Her jaguar would not quit moaning and groaning, and constantly showed her images of Rollo sinking himself deep inside her softness.
He leaned into her and pressed a gentle kiss against her lips before he drew way.
“This was the best date I’ve ever had,” Rollo said.
“You have very low standards,” Zoe teased.
“On the contrary, I have extremely high standards. The only one I want is my fated mate. And that is you. Any date with you is the best date. The next one will be better than the last. I guarantee it,” he said in a seductive voice.
Zoe knew exactly what he was talking about. They both knew it, and they both wanted it. She knew that his grizzly was driving him mad, insisting that he sink his teeth deep inside her neck and claim her as his own.
Her jaguar wanted exactly the same thing. The animal drive inside a female shifter was exactly the same as that inside a male shifter. She wanted to claim him too. She wanted to ride his cock and slash his chest with her claws as he thrust himself inside her. She wanted to feel their mutual release as they tasted each other’s blood.
“Oh God,” Zoe muttered, reaching up on her tiptoes to kiss Rollo one more time before she pulled away and started toward the stairs.
“Good night,” he said behind her. “Until next time.”
She turned back to him, his body silhouetted by the lamplight behind him. “Until next time,” she breathed.
Zoe trotted up the steps to the dormitory of the Bright Institute for Shifters and slipped inside, her heart pounding like a maniac beating a drum. Confusion thrashed and her mind felt fragmented between her need for Rollo and her need to stay away from him.
Zoe had always been an independent, confident woman. And she didn’t intend to let that change one little bit. But Rollo did something to her that made her want to allow him to protect her. It made her want to tell him all her secrets.
But if she did, she could compromise it all. After their first kiss she knew now that, more than anything, she wanted to be with him forever. But she couldn’t allow herself to have it yet. Not with the threat of Dimitri Ivanov hanging over her head. She had to deal with him once and for all and finally be free before she could have Rollo and claim him as her own.
8
Rollo let Zoe go for one reason only. He needed to see what she would do next. Rollo was the chief of police and had almost fifteen years of law enforcement and investigation experience. He was no fool. He had seen Dimitri Ivanov walk into the lodge. He’d smelled Zoe’s fear at the sight of him. Rollo had let her pull him away from the dining room window as soon as he realized that Ivanov was the central problem.
He returned to his SUV and immediately called Damien. Tech Bear answered the phone on the third ring with and anxious hello.
“Damien, I need you to do some research for me. I have new information on the jewel theft case. Find out if there is any connection between Zoe Bright and Dimitri Ivanov.”
“You suspect Zoe in this case?”
“I have a theory about what is going on here, and Zoe is part of it. I don’t have anything concrete yet. Just get me the information I need,” Rollo said.
“On it, sir,” Damien said before he hung up the phone.
While he waited for Damien to return his call, he pulled out his cell phone and began researching Zoe himself. He looked up social media pages and scrolled through her feeds. He wanted to know what she had been doing before she arrived on Fate Mountain. Zoe had obviously been traveling for a long time, but where exactly had she been, just before arriving at the Bright Institute?
Rollo was disappointed to find that Zoe really wasn’t very active on social media and had only posted intermittently at best on her one social media page. In the timeframe he was most interested in, there was one picture of her in a bikini on what looked like a Mediterranean beach. He growled to himself, appreciating the sight of her curves under the bright blue sky. It only redoubled his determination to get to the bottom of her connection to Ivanov. Several minutes later, Damien called and Rollo answered.
“I’ve looked into Zoe Bright’s connection to Dimitri Ivanov. What I can find is that they were definitely in the south of France at the same time in the last three years. I’ve been able to trace several images of them together in what appears to be a romantic relationship.”