No Passing Zone: Chosen Book 24 Read online

  "Alright, I'll call Grayson and see what I can find out" He caught Recker's attention through the soundproof glass by waving a hand in the air, and then he motioned for him to come inside with us, which meant my mate would be coming too, since we'd decided to have him come along to sit with them just in case someone from the warehouse was involved.

  Recker nodded, turning to Malik and Braden saying something that had them both standing and slowly heading our way.

  "When are you going to tell Malik he's your mate?" Meyers asked as I watched the man in question walk our way, subtly tossing a pencil and hitting the asshole who'd tried to kill an innocent spider a few weeks ago in the back of the head. "It's been three weeks."

  Wayne, the man he'd hit looked around, trying to figure out what was going on, but everyone in the room was in different stages of working and he never even thought to include the humans, who were both chuckling as they walked by.

  "He doesn't want a mate, and he doesn't like shifters," I said quietly, smiling in response to the devilish smile on Malik's handsome face.

  "Yeah, I think you might be the exception." Meyers said, snorting when Malik met my eyes through the glass, his face going soft. "If you think he looks at anyone else like that, you’re crazy. He definitely has a soft spot for you."

  It was nice to hear, but the conversations between Malik and Braden––that I possibly eavesdropped on a time or two––made it pretty clear that he wasn't interested in being a mate to anyone.

  I shook my head, realizing I was staring again, and not even dazed-out staring, because I was definitely watching him walk across the room with avid, wide-eyed interest in the way he moved across the floor, looking incredibly sexy in his tight jeans and dark T-shirt.

  "He probably just feels sorry for me, because I'm obviously big and awkward."

  Meyers scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Malik doesn't feel sorry for anyone."

  All three of them entered the room, and Recker shut the door behind them as Malik came directly over to me, standing by me where I sat in one of the computer chairs in front of my laptop.

  "Here," he said, taking the tiny little skunk out of his shirt and passing him to me. "Take Spritz. I think he's getting hungry." He pulled the bag off of his shoulder and dug around inside for the little guy’s bottle, handing it to me after shaking it.

  It had been sitting next to a warming pack, so it was perfect when I tested it, and in no time, the little guy was chugging with his whole body.

  "You named the skunk Spritz?" Meyers asked, after a long moment of watching us get everything settled.

  Malik shrugged one shoulder, turning to look at the screen in front of me. "I know this name," he said quietly, bending to look more closely at the picture… and sticking his ass directly in my face. "He was one of the agents that accessed all the information on the people who were saved in Crossville."

  I wanted to pay attention to what was going on, I knew whatever it was that Malik had just said was of some importance, because I could see Recker and Meyers look at my mate out of the corner of my eyes, but I was too busy looking at the firm globes in front of me, watching the muscles move under the fabric as he shifted.

  When Spritz started throwing his little head around, I managed to drag my eyes away so I could look down at the little guy, and realized I wasn't holding the bottle anywhere near his mouth. I'd been too distracted with the perfect mounds I was desperate to touch.

  "How do you know that?" Meyers asked, frowning up at my mate as I repositioned the bottle so Spritz could latch back on.

  I felt the heat crawling up my skin when Malik glanced at me over his shoulder before standing and turning, one hand on his hip, the other still on the conference table in front of him.

  Meyers and I had taken over the conference room that morning when we knew the things we were going to be talking about needed to be kept quiet. There were just too many sensitive ears in the area, and we really had no idea who we could and couldn't trust.

  "Every time you access anything on that site you have to put your ID and password in," Malik said, glancing around the room. "Even if you just move to a new page. It's how they make sure someone can't get into someone's account if that person leaves it open when they walk away. You know, like the genius out there and his phone."

  Wayne had left his phone on the table when he stepped away during an interrogation he wasn't supposed to be doing, and I'd ended up with one of the guards who were supposed to be watching Malik and Braden so they wouldn't escape, trying to follow me back to the safehouse.

  Thankfully, I'd seen the man and led him away from the house where Meyers, Recker and I had been happy to take care of him.

  "And how did you get that information," Recker asked, and I blinked down at Spritz a couple of times before lifting my head to look at my mate, also curious how he knew so much about our website. Our website that was supposed to be super confidential.

  Glancing over at a chair that was on the other side of the room, he pursed his lips. "I used Grayson's login information until I learned Meyers’." Glancing at me, he shrugged, reaching out and grabbing the armrests on my chair and moving me closer to the computer before pressing my thighs together and then turning and sitting on them. "Now I alternate."

  He leaned forward, logging out of my account and logging in with a different one while I sat there like an open-mouthed idiot feeding a skunk and blinking in shock at the man on my lap.

  "You've been breaking into the immortal division's site?" Recker asked, his voice going high-pitched. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one the man was shocking.

  "Yep," he turned the computer slightly so everyone could look at the same time, showing us a page that had names and date and time stamps next to them. "See."

  I glanced at the screen, but my attention kept going back to the firm ass against my thighs, a slow smile pulling at my mouth.

  He was sitting in my lap… or maybe on it. It didn't matter. All I knew was I wanted him to sit there forever. I wanted his permanent seat to be me.

  "How did you find this page?" Meyers asked, glancing at me and rolling his eyes in exasperation, probably at the stupid look on my face.

  Malik clicked back, quickly putting in a pin I had no hope of catching, even if I wasn't feeding a baby skunk and being super smug about the gorgeous man who was using me as a chair. "See this tiny little icon that looks like a notepad? That's the site log."

  I glanced up, and sure enough, in the very left top corner of the screen, barely noticeable, was a little notepad.

  "Whose ID are you using now?" Meyers grumbled, frowning at the pin he put in when he switched back to a different page.

  Malik threw a thumb over his shoulder, his attention still on the screen. "Wayne the brain's."

  My partner scoffed. "Wayne the brain?" he asked dryly, eyeing my mate with a raised eyebrow.

  "That was some hardcore sarcasm," Malik assured him, reaching over and patting Meyers on the forehead… a little hard.

  Meyers swatted at the hand, crossing his arms over his chest. "I should hope so." "How many IDs and passwords do you have now?"

  "Enough to last a while. So, thanks for bringing me here." He clicked a few more things, bringing up another list of names with time stamps and red or green circles next to each one. "Also, he hasn't logged in much lately at all. In fact, about four weeks ago was the last time."

  Recker jerked, leaning forward over Meyers again. "You can tell when everyone was last logged in?"

  He nodded. "When you're on the main page, up in the very right corner, there is a little shield, if you click on it, it brings you to this page. The green lights mean these people are logged in and you can have little confidential chats with them. You can probably guess what the red ones are. The messages even disappear after they've been opened.

  "At least they don't explode," Recker said, smirking. "But I actually knew about the chat feature. Only because that was how Cowan and Hollyster used to communicate when Cowan did some
thing to piss Hollyster off back before they actually met.

  Malik clicked on a picture of a pretty blonde girl and I glanced out into the large are we could see around us through the glass, knowing Lydia was somewhere in the building because she'd just showed me pictures of her kittens when I got there that morning.

  She was sitting at her desk, working at her computer, looking back and forth between her screen and the paper lying next to her keyboard.

  Malik started typing, pressing go before any of us had a chance to read what he wrote… until the text popped up on the right, much like a text message on a phone.

  Wayne: I think I just shit my pants! Like, really bad. Do you think you could come help me get to the bathroom?

  Meyers snorted and Braden gasped, putting his hand over his mouth, and we all turned to look at the blonde. She raised an eyebrow, clicking on something on her screen, and I could tell by the way her eyes bugged out of her head that she was reading the message.

  She turned, looking at the man I'd once yelled at for trying to kill a spider and curled her lip in a cringe before standing up and walking away.

  "What do you have against Wayne?" Recker asked, tilting his head as he watched Malik's face.

  "Hmm?" Malik asked, sounding innocent, which he was definitely not, as he replaced Wayne's profile picture with one of him picking his nose. "Nothing."

  I blinked at the screen, wondering where he'd managed to find that picture. The guy was seriously going to town on his nose, his upper lip pushed down over his teeth, making a mascara face with one eye squeezed closed.

  I wasn't sure how he managed to get so much of his finger up his nose, but that sucker had all but disappeared.

  "What did he say about Rowe?" Braden asked, smirking at me when my head snapped in his direction.

  What did any of this have to do with me. I was just innocently sitting there in a rolly-chair, feeding a baby skunk and excited to have my mate in my lap.

  "It's not important," Malik said, sending another message I didn't get time to read, before logging out, turning slightly to smile at me.

  I might not have known what he did, but I could tell by the look on his face that Wayne wasn't going to like it. I tried not to smile like an idiot, but the fact that he felt the need to defend me brought me a ridiculous amount of joy.

  "I don't really care what Wayne says about me," I let him know, pulling the empty bottle away from Spritz's mouth.

  He reached out and stroked a finger along the line on the baby's forehead, that evil half smile tempting me to kiss those pouty lips.

  "That's nice," he said simply.

  ***

  I piled the baby blanket around Spritz, shutting the little box we were keeping him in and turned to find Meyers watching me with his normal, his new scowl, which was what I called the expression which had been softened tremendously by the love of his mate, but still held enough authority to scare men into blabbing during interrogation.

  "Does the fact that you didn't actually break Wayne's nose with his own paperweight mean you are getting better," I heard Braden ask Malik from in the kitchen. "Or should I be worried about his body turning up somewhere?"

  "That doesn't sound like something anyone should worry about," Malik answered, moving around the kitchen.

  I chuckled, more and more intrigued every day by Malik's sometimes dark sense of humor. He could seriously be one of the most nurturing men I knew, taking care of everyone and making sure I never missed a meal, and he could also be a little scary.

  "I'm not at all reassured by that statement," Braden mumbled. "I thought you said you can't cook all that well. That's all you seem to be doing lately."

  "This is a house full of grown men, some of them shifters. Somebody had to learn to cook," Malik said, matter-of-factly. "I've been watching cooking videos."

  "Are you sure it's not because Rowe told you he was always hungry?" Braden asked teasingly.

  I let that thought sink in and tilted my head closer to the door, not really needing to hear better, but definitely more interested in the conversation. I knew Meyers was watching me, his arms crossed and smirking his ass off, but I didn't care. I was curious. Had he learned to cook simply because I'd told him I was always hungry?

  "Hmm?" Malik said on the other side of the door, and I almost laughed. I'd noticed already that he tended to do that when he didn't want to answer a question, or just wanted someone to stop talking to him.

  Apparently, Braden wasn't as easily put off as Recker or Meyers. "You like him a lot, don't you?" Braden asked, sounding soft.

  "If you aren't going to help cook, then get out of the kitchen," Malik grumbled, and a few seconds later, a laughing Braden was being shoved right out of the kitchen into the living room.

  "What are you doing?" Meyers said, suspiciously while opening his arms to his mate. "You know we can hear you two in there talking, right?"

  "Oh, I forgot you guys were shifters," Braden said sweetly, batting his eyelashes up at his mate innocently, before pursing his lips and rolling his eyes, a very clear duh on his face.

  "You're a sneaky little brat," Meyers grumbled against the side of Braden's head, sounding so proud.

  I snorted, shaking my head. "Of course, he's protective of me, that's part of the mate pull, but he still doesn't want a mate."

  I appreciated that Braden seemed to want to help get Malik and me together, and God knew I'd probably never be able to do it myself, even if my mate actually wanted to be a mate, but the reality was, it didn't matter how much everyone in the room with me wanted Malik and I to be together forever. If it wasn't what my mate wanted, I wasn't going to force him. I only ever wanted him to be happy in his life.

  "He says that," Braden grumbled, giving me a look, but it's only because he doesn’t think anyone will want him like that. Well, that and he didn't really understand the difference between a soulmate and a claimed mate for a while. And being a chosen with the ability to have children really messes with his head."

  "He doesn’t think anyone will want him?" I asked quietly, looking over at the entry to the kitchen, my heart constricting.

  Why would such a beautiful, funny, sometimes mean person, who seemed so confident in life, think he wouldn't be wanted? A shifter who actually wanted a mate and not arm candy or a baby maker, or even a slave that should only be seen and not heard, would adore all those traits. And shifters didn't care about scars. Most of us, especially the ones who'd made their entire career about finding bad people, all had our own scars. And maybe they weren't quite so noticeable, or came with near the amount of pain he must have gone through, even with the painkillers, but they were respected. Scars meant fight. Scars meant survival.

  "He hit the last guy that was trying to hit on him with a jar of pickles, because he was convinced the only reason anyone would talk to him like that was if they were trying to kidnap him," Braden reminded me dryly, his eyebrows raised and his gaze bland.

  Meyers huffed, shaking his head. "I think he just wanted to hit the guy with a jar of pickles."

  I turned quickly, striding into the kitchen through the swinging door. I didn't know what actually gave me the burst of courage, but when I'd almost made it to his side, it suddenly ran out, my heart racing as I watched him, just standing there with his head bent over the pan as he stirred the vegetables inside, his pretty brown hair falling forward.

  He tapped the wooden spoon on the side of the pan and then rested it on the counter on a napkin before turning… and nearly running right into me.

  "Holy shit!" he said, jumping and grabbing his chest. I hadn't even noticed the knife he must have swiped off the counter without me seeing until he lowered it from where he was pointing it directly at my chin. "I could have killed you! Why are you sneaking up behind me like that?"

  I blinked, wondering how he could move so fast for a human. "I didn't realize I was sneaking."

  Slipping around me, he went over to the fridge, pulling out some soy sauce and the rice he'd apparent
ly made earlier. "The food will be ready in about fifteen minutes," he informed me, putting both items on the counter.

  "Okay."

  He must have heard something in my voice because he narrowed his eyes on me, tilting his head to the side. "Is everything okay?"

  "Yeah. I…" I trailed off, not really sure what I needed to say. There was so much, and yet I wasn't sure how much I could even get out. "Everything is fine." I gave him my most convincing smile, which must not have been all that convincing, because he raised an eyebrow and continued to watch me for a moment before turning back to the stove.

  I didn't know what to do. On the one hand, I didn't want to pressure him into anything he might not be ready for, but on the other, I definitely wanted him to know that there was something out there if he wanted it. That he was actually desired.

  Indecision had me stepping to the right to get closer and then stepping to the left when I really had no idea what I was going to do with that closeness. I stepped right again, and the decision was taken from me when he spun suddenly and ended up in my arms.

  "Wow," he said, trying to use me to get himself back into a standing position where he'd tripped on my big stupid feet. "How are you that stealthy?"

  I didn't stop to think, I just grabbed the sides of his face, forcing him to look me in the eye and putting our faces close enough I could taste his breath. "The first time I saw you, I didn't see your scars. I just looked up and saw this gorgeous man with golden brown hair and mesmerizing blue eyes," I whispered, my throat clogged with emotion. "I know I stared too long. I know I stare too long all the time, but it's not because of your scars. It's because I think you're beautiful, and I'm always thinking about kissing you." And then I did.

  It was nothing more than an extended press of lips. I purposely didn't lick inside his mouth for fear if I got even one taste of him, I'd lose my mind, but I put all the feeling I could into the peck, pulling back when his lips parted to brush mine against them.

  He made a sound in his throat and I opened my eyes to make sure I hadn't hurt him, feeling a little dazed.

  I'd never reacted to someone so strongly in my life from a simple kiss that didn't even involve tongue, but my whole body thrummed with need, and seeing his sweet face lax in pleasure, with his eyes closed and his breathing heavy, I groaned wishing I could have more.