By the Tail Read online

  Melissa shrugged. Though fraternal twins, Joy’s older sisters looked enough alike to be identical to most people. Both blond with green eyes, her sisters had patience and an easy temperament, a total one-eighty from the rest of them, and Joy in particular. Labeled difficult at an early age, Joy took a perverse amount of pleasure in being hard to handle. Anything to stand out from her amazing siblings.

  “Stacey’s just being dramatic again,” Melissa suggested. “I like Quince. I never believed the stories that he and Lex were in it together to kill Michael. He was always more than nice to me.”

  That had never rung true to Joy either. Quince had revered Michael. The man had practically raised Quince when his mother and sister took off for parts unknown. Personally, Joy had always liked Esmeralda Castille. The older woman liked to have fun, and she never let a male rule her. But she found a lot of trouble, and her daughter followed her example. When they’d left the pride after Quince’s sixteenth birthday, every one of the pride males had seemed to breathe easier. Miles and Quince included.

  “I’m not sure what happened.” No longer interested in speculation or Miles’s say-so, she wanted to know the truth. She’d come to understand that her older brother had a blind spot when it came to Quince. He refused to believe anything good about his ex-best friend. Joy didn’t understand why, especially after the way Quince kept treating her like spun gold.

  “You still smell like him.” Stacey grimaced and stared at her manicured nails.

  “Shut it, Stacey. You smell like that mongrel Dean all the time.” Joy sneered, though she thought of Dean as her own twin. He got into more trouble than she did, on a regular basis. “And I’d know. Remember? I banged him back in June.” Actually, she’d pretended to have an affair with Dean in order to trick Dean’s brother Grady into making a move on his current wife. A female who, at the time, didn’t seem to know Grady was alive. A convoluted scheme, but Grady now had a wife he couldn’t live without. Joy’s doing, naturally.

  “Liar.” Stacey glared at her. “As if. Dean would never—”

  “You used to call him a man-whore.” Joy started to have fun.

  Amy grinned. “And Jethro. Gomer.”

  “Boy-toy, flavor of the month,” Melissa continued.

  “Oh, all right. I was peeved with his whorish ways, I admit.” Stacey sighed. “But at least his loyalty has never been in question.”

  Stacey had a point. Still… “Maybe it’s time to stop seeing Quince through Miles’s perspective. Quince did help us finish Lex.”

  “Technically, he forced me to distract Lex while Burke and our pride—” meaning the Cougar Falls pride Stacey had recently adopted as her own “—finished them off.”

  “But Quince helped too,” Joy insisted, bemused to find herself wanting to defend the arrogant cat. “Without him, we’d never have dealt with Lex, always waiting for him to make a move. Quince was an ass about it, but he got the job done.”

  Her sisters stared at her in silence.

  “You know,” Amy said slowly. “Reports I’m getting from our friends down South do hint that Quince is doing a good job rebuilding. Sharing the wealth, divvying up resources. He’s appointed lieutenants again to keep the peace. And he’s got legitimate pride accountants tracking down the money and restoring it to the group.”

  “That does look good for him.” Melissa nodded.

  “Well I don’t care,” Stacey said flatly. “The proof is in the doing.” She narrowed her eyes at Joy. “You don’t seem to care about his troublesome history. Fine. I’ll give you this bit of advice though. You want to stay a step ahead of him? Act like you despise him. Men love that.”

  “Seriously?”

  Stacey nodded. “But don’t work your wiles on him. Stay just out of reach, Miss Easy.”

  Joy blinked. “You think I have wiles?” Oh wow. Did she? She had the Bermin genes. Men seemed to love her sisters. Maybe she had a buried ability to attract men she’d never known about. She could grab them for sex but never seemed to hold on to her dates after the fact.

  “The point is moot. You can’t have a relationship with him. Remember what he did to me.”

  Joy frowned. “What, exactly?”

  “The man held a knife to my throat and threatened to hurt Miles if I wouldn’t help him. I was devastated. Scared for my life.”

  Joy rolled her eyes. “Please. I should enjoy him for that alone.”

  “Bitch.” Stacey flipped her hair back and gave Joy her infamous death glare, her light blue eyes like lasers.

  “Thanks. Back at ya, Your Highness. Honestly, I don’t know how poor Dean endures you.”

  When Stacey screeched back an insult, Joy fired one back for fun and decided it was past time she returned to Miami. She’d enjoyed keeping one step ahead of Quince, but now she was tired. She wanted to relax, like she had earlier that afternoon.

  Her belly fluttered, and she knew exactly what she needed. Some fun in the sun with Quince to see what the hell was really going on in the pride, and some distance from her perfect sisters. Even snarling, Stacey radiated beauty and poise, which was annoying all the way around.

  Melissa and Amy exchanged sympathetic looks while Joy finished packing up to go home. When Dean entered on the end of Stacey’s diatribe about how much she’d given to the poor backwoods people of Cougar Falls while Joy went off to God-knew-where, he took one look at his mate, one look at the rest of them, and advanced.

  “And then I—Dean? What are you doing?” Stacey gasped when he yanked her to him and hefted her over his shoulder. But it didn’t take her long to start swearing like a sailor.

  He turned to wink at Joy. “Good luck. Allow me to translate for your sneering sister. ‘Keep your legs closed, you hussy, and think of your poor little sister and what she suffered’ actually means ‘I’m going to really miss you and I love you dearly. But don’t worry about me, because I married the perfect man.’”

  Stacey smacked him on the ass, pushed up off his back and twisted around to be seen. She shoved her hair aside to glare. “And you, you spiky-haired cretin. Big sister or not, I’ll kick your sorry ass all the way to—”

  Joy cut her off. “Yeah, I’ll miss Your Royal Bitchiness too.” To Dean, she gave a kiss on the cheek. “See you, man-whore.”

  He gave her the one-finger salute, chuckled, then turned on his heel with a slap to his mate’s ass and a warning to tone it down. To their surprise, Stacey sputtered then grew silent and flashed them a grin and a wave goodbye.

  Joy and her sisters stared at one another in the sudden silence.

  “Embarrassing,” Amy said.

  “Such a spectacle,” Melissa agreed. She paused, then added, “Especially because she loves when he manhandles her like that.”

  “I don’t even want to think about where he’s taking her and why.” Amy cringed. “Those two have sex on the brain—”

  “Twenty-four seven,” Melissa ended.

  Her little sister and Dean, a more perfect couple Joy couldn’t imagine. “And you all wonder why I want to remain eternally single.” She shook her head and finished packing, alarmed at the excitement she continued to feel whenever she thought of joining Quince again. “Do me a favor. If I ever get like that,” she paused to nod at the door, “shoot me.”

  Her sisters said as one, “Done.”

  Chapter Three

  Quince stared through the window of the plane, uncomfortable at being in an enclosed space, one that could fall out of the sky at any given moment. At times like these he understood why raptors thought they had an edge on land dwellers.

  “Okay. Lay it on me.” Joy sipped a rum and coke, slouched in her seat as if enjoying herself at a four-star resort. She cocked a brow. “Well? I’m not getting any younger.”

  She sat close and—considering that even the first class seats seemed miniature for him—they continued to brush against each other, which made the trip almost bearable. That and he’d left Montana far behind. Thank God.

  He glanced
around them and noted that with the late hour, few passengers remained awake. Those that were listened to music or watched their electronic tablets. The rumble of the plane gave him added assurance he’d be hard to hear if he lowered his voice.

  Speaking in a voice too low to be heard by humans, he explained what he’d been wanting to tell her for far too long. “Michael was like my father. You know that.”

  “You loved him,” she said quietly.

  “Yes.” He paused, his heart still aching from the loss. It seemed like only yesterday and not five months ago that his mentor and friend had been killed. “I found him bleeding to death in the Glades. I did my best to help him through, you know, to peace. But it was hard. Lex hurt him bad.” He knew she saw his anger, but she didn’t do more than nod. “Before he passed, he made me promise to infiltrate Lex’s command. The only way to take him down, because Lex had become too powerful, luring the others with promises of wealth, women, sex, anything they wanted. And he could and did deliver.”

  She frowned. “He was such a prick.”

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “I gave Michael steady progress reports for that last week he lingered. Then he died.” Quince tried to shrug off the emotional wound. “I made a promise, and I kept it.” He prided himself on always keeping a promise.

  “But you didn’t tell Miles.”

  “I couldn’t. Your brother is—was—my best friend. I know him as well as you do. He’s a hot head, and he has no patience unless it involves dollar signs. Yeah, he’s brilliant at business—not so great when it comes to dealing with stupidity. And Lex was a dumbass. Strong and mean, but deep-down stupid.”

  “You got that right,” she muttered. She looked at him with what he hoped was the beginning of trust. “I still don’t understand why it took so long to break Lex down.”

  “Your family was never that tight with the inner workings of the pride. You focused more on business and blending in with Miami society. Lex had his select circle so tight and twisted that they wrestled control of our finances before I could intervene. We need that money to survive.” Especially in Miami, where life didn’t come cheap.

  She took another sip. “So what happened then?”

  “I spent most of my time finding others like me, loyal to Michael. Guys like Jace and Ellis. Rain, Dana, Willow, Oliver. Between the seven of us, we started gathering others in secret. Trying to take back control. It took a while, because Lex had been planning his takeover for a long time before he actually did it.”

  “I didn’t realize.”

  “Not many did. He seemed like a good guy at first, remember?”

  Charming, handsome, popular with women and men alike. And then he’d shown his true colors when anyone dared question him.

  Quince continued in a low rumble, “To make a long story short, I did my best to prevent him and his idiot brother from raping and hunting humans in the swamps. That took time and effort away from corralling him. So much energy spent on damage control until two months had passed with Lex still in power. Then I had to make my move. I got in thick with him, and yeah, I had to do some things I’m not proud of to show my loyalty.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Like beating up Mr. Jeffries and nearly scaring Maya Shields to death?”

  “Yeah.” He blew out a breath. Two of his biggest regrets—public spectacles of clear abuse. But it had been either push them around or see them killed. They’d healed from the few bruises he’d landed, and they’d since accepted his apologies.

  “So what about you trying to put a move on my sister?”

  He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “Miles told me you wanted Stacey, and when you couldn’t have her, you decided to push her at Lex to punish her.”

  “That makes no sense. For one, I hated Lex. I didn’t wish any poor woman on him. And two, your sister annoys the shit out of me. No way I wanted her.”

  “She’s pretty.”

  “So?”

  Joy just looked at him.

  “Fine. Every guy who sees your sister wonders…” He cleared his throat. “But I got over that years ago. Stacey’s so…Stacey.”

  A smile curved her mouth, and he breathed an inaudible sigh of relief.

  “Anyway, so now you know.”

  “Do I? What about you showing up when they shot Miles and kidnapped Gabby? Or when they nearly got Stacey and Dean?”

  “I just told you. I was trying to put out fires. Do you have any idea what Lex almost did? He sent me to spy on you guys for him. Hell, I could have taken any of you from Cougar Falls before you knew what had happened. As it was, I fed what information I could to sources in town. How do you think so many Shifters arrived to help you guys out at the ranch? Or how there wasn’t a total massacre before you saved Stacey? Lex wanted to use Hunters and rogue Ac-taw to kill the Chastells and that wolf living with them. I slowed him down.”

  She had to remember him and his group arriving at Chastell Tours to prevent an all out war on the Chastells and their gray wolf just a month ago.

  “Oh yeah. You did, didn’t you?” She gave him a look he couldn’t read. Did she believe him or not?

  Parched, he took the drink from her hand, downed it, then handed the plastic cup back.

  “Better?” she drawled.

  “Yeah. Thanks. That’s it.”

  “Not exactly.”

  He groaned. “Ask. I’m an open book.” After that incredible time together in the spa, he’d do whatever she wanted for another shot at her.

  “So now, going home. You said Lex’s guys are still making problems? I hadn’t noticed that the last time I was back.”

  “For all of two seconds,” he added under his breath. “We routed most of the idiots. A bunch died the last time they tangled with Hunters.” Hunters—humans who knew of Ac-taw and wanted nothing more than to kill them. “Right now, Greg Ayers and Darren Watson are making the most noise about wanting me out of the picture.”

  She nodded absently. “You know, technically, we shouldn’t even have a pride. None of us are lions. Panthers are solitary creatures.”

  He chuckled, glad she referred to them as panthers. A good sign. Though their species of Ac-taw had a lot of different names—cougar, panther, catamount, puma—the Miami pride often referred to themselves as Florida panthers. Unlike the cougars in Montana. “Don’t be too literal. Pride is just a term that applies to cats. God forbid we call ourselves a pack.”

  She scrunched her nose and stuck out her tongue. Joy was beautiful and funny. Damn, she made his heart race. Wondering if he’d be pushing it, he nevertheless covered her hand on the seat rest between them. Mine, his cat snarled, and he inwardly agreed.

  She blinked down at it, then at him. But she didn’t pull her hand away. “What do you want from me, Quince?”

  He thought about the ugly little bracelet she’d given him when she was sixteen, the one he’d kept all these years because it had been from her, snug in his front pocket. How much he loved her, wanted her. And he realized the truth wouldn’t set him free at all. He’d spook her away if he moved too fast. He needed to seduce her into accepting his claim. Slowly. Like easing a wild bird with calm words before he pounced.

  “Honestly, Joy?”

  She nodded.

  I love you. “You’re sexy, smart, and when you aren’t trying to go for my throat, you make me laugh. I thought we could try dating, maybe. And I’d like you to be a strong presence in the pride. We need worthy females to rebuild.” At her dark look, he hastened to add, “Not for breeding. I mean, to show others we have a solid team of cats down South. That we’re not all assholes but good people.”

  She stared at him. “Oh.”

  Was that a pleased Oh or a disappointed Oh?

  He gripped her fingers, conscious of her smaller size and softness as compared to him. “Well?”

  “Dating, huh? I guess we could try that. See how it goes,” she said, sounding cautious. “Don’t get your hopes up for a commitment though. I’m too young to
mate. Too much to see and do before I settle down.”

  He swallowed his disappointment, more determined than ever to show her how ready she could be—with the right cat. “Sure. So why not come back home to stay for good, where it’s nice and warm? To the ocean, to the nightlife, and to the rest of your extended family?”

  He’d missed his fellow cats when running all over the place dealing with Lex. Now that he had a chance to rebuild those ties, he wanted to do it with Joy at his side. The females were nutty without Michael’s strong arm to lead them. He’d served as a father figure for many, but a strong woman would be even better to settle nerves. The pride needed her as much as he did, he realized.

  “You think I can help the pride?” she asked softly.

  “I know you can. Besides, weren’t you doing something new with Bermin Beauty? Some new design project you were heading up, right? You have work to do at home yourself, slacker.” Her brother had started the fashion company and turned it into a million-dollar venture. All the Bermins had a hand in running it.

  “You know about that?” Her eyes widened.

  “Honey, I know everything about everything.” He smirked, pleased when she scowled at him. He loved that fierce look in her eyes. The one she leveled on him right now that made him hard and aching.

  “You wish. You…” she trailed off with a sniff and gazed at his lap. “Are you kidding me?”

  He squirmed, uncomfortable with jeans too tight around his crotch. “I wish. Just being around you gets me this way,” he admitted and leaned closer to scent at the light marker he’d left earlier. He still smelled himself there. That she hadn’t tried to mask his scent with another perfume or soap pleased him considerably. Then he caught her desire and nipped her neck, licking the sting away. He whispered into her ear, “You know, we could see how big the bathrooms are in first class. I bet we could fit you over my cock in no time and—”

  “Shut up,” she hissed, her eyes bright with arousal. “You’ve shared enough. No more talking until we touch down.”

  He grinned but kept hold of her hand.

  The trip home didn’t last long enough.