Hot and Badgered. Shelly Laurenston

they headed back to the house.

      Betsey waited a few minutes before she crept down the tree trunk and shifted back to human. She put on her clothes and went around the side of the house, so she could enter through the front door.

      As she came around the garage, the middle girl was waiting for her. And Betsey knew she was waiting for her.

      Betsey froze in mid-step, gazing down at the kid with her mouth slightly open.

      The kid stared up at her for what felt like forever and then, with a little smile, she placed her forefinger against her lips and said, “Shhhhh.”

      Without another word, she turned and walked away . . . and Betsey wondered if it was possible for her to take some more AP classes so she could get into college even earlier than she’d planned. Like, maybe next week . . .

      chapter ONE

      Sixteen years later . . .

      What had she been thinking? Using the “Ride of the Valkyries” as a ringtone? Because that shit waking a person up at six in the morning was just cruel. Really cruel.

      And, as always, she’d done it to herself. Forgoing her anxiety meds so she could get drunk with a couple of cute Italian guys that she dumped as soon as the first one’s head hit the table.

      Charlie Taylor-MacKilligan slapped her hand against the bedside table next to the bed, blindly searching for her damn phone. When she touched it, she was relieved. She had no plan to actually get out of bed anytime soon. Not as hungover as she currently was. But she really wanted that damn ringtone to stop.

      Somehow, without even lifting her head from the pillow she had her face buried in, or opening her eyes, Charlie managed to touch the right thing on her phone screen so that she actually answered it.

      “What?” she growled.

      “Get out,” was the reply. “Get out now.”

      Hangover forgotten, Charlie was halfway across the room when they kicked the door open. She turned and ran toward the sliding glass doors she’d left open the night before. She’d just made it to the balcony outside when something hot rammed into her shoulder, tearing past flesh and muscle and burrowing into bone. The power of it sent her flipping headfirst over the railing.

      * * *

      “What do you think?” the jackal shifter asked.

      Sitting in a club chair in his Milan, Italy, hotel suite, Berg Dunn gazed at the man holding up a black jacket.

      “What do I think about what?” Berg asked.

      “The jacket. For my show tonight.”

      Berg shrugged. “I don’t know.”

      “You must have an opinion.”

      “I don’t. I happily have no opinion on what a grown man who is not me should wear.”

      The jackal sighed. “You’re useless.”

      “I have one job. Keeping your crazed fans from tracking you down and stripping the flesh from your bones. That’s it. That’s all I’m supposed to do. I, at no time, said that I would ever help you with your fashion sense.”

      Rolling his eyes, the jackal laid the jacket on the bed and then stared at it. Like he expected it to tell him something. To actually speak to him.

      Berg wanted to complain about this ridiculous job, but how could he when it was the best one he’d had in years? Following a very rich, very polite jackal around so that he could play piano for screaming fans in foreign countries was the coolest gig ever.

      First class everything. Jets. Food. Women. Not that Berg took advantage of the women thing too often. He knew most were just trying to use him to get to Cooper Jean-Louis Parker. Coop was the one out there every night, banging away at those Steinway pianos, doing things with his fingers that even Berg found fascinating, and wooing all those lovely females with his handsome jackal looks.

      Berg was just the guy to get through so they could get to the musical genius. And, unlike some of his friends, being used by beautiful women wasn’t one of his favorite things.

      It was a tolerable thing, but not his favorite.

      “I can’t decide,” the jackal finally admitted.

      “I know how hard it is to pick between one black jacket and another black jacket. Which will your black turtleneck go with?”

      “It’s not just another black jacket, peasant. It’s the difference between pure black and charcoal black.”

      “We have a train to catch,” Berg reminded Coop. “So could you speed this—”

      Both shifters jumped, their gazes locked on the balcony outside the room, visible through doors open to let the fresh morning air in.

      Another crazed female fan trying to make her way into Coop’s room? Some of these women, all of them full-humans, were willing to try any type of craziness for just a chance at ending up in the “maestro’s” bed.

      With a sigh, Berg pushed himself out of the chair and headed across the large room toward the sliding glass doors. It looked like he’d have to break another poor woman’s heart.

      But he stopped when he saw her. A brown-skinned woman, completely naked. Which, in and of itself, was not unusual. The women who tried to sneak into Coop’s room—no matter the country they might be in—were often naked.

      What stopped Berg in his tracks was that this woman had blood coming from her shoulder. The blood from a gun wound.

      Berg motioned Coop back. “Get in the bathroom,” he ordered.

      “Oh, come on. I want to see what’s—”

      “I don’t care what you want. Get in the—”

      The men stopped arguing when they saw him. A man in black military tactical wear, armed with a rifle, handgun, and several blades. He zipped down a line and landed on the railing of their balcony.

      Berg placed his hand on the gun holstered at his side and stepped in front of Coop.

      “Get in the bathroom, Coop,” he ordered, his voice low.

      “We have to help her.”

      “Do what I tell you and I will.”

      The man in black dropped onto the balcony and grabbed the unconscious woman by her arm, rolling her limp body over.

      “Now, Coop. Go.”

      Berg moved forward with his weapon drawn from its holster. The man pulled his sidearm and pressed the barrel against the woman’s head.

      Berg aimed his .45 and barked, “Hey!”

      The man looked up, bringing his gun with him. Gazes locked, fingers resting on triggers. Each man sizing the other up. And that was when the woman moved. Fast. So fast, Berg knew she wasn’t completely human, which immediately changed everything.

      The woman grabbed her attacker’s gun hand by the wrist and held it to the side so he couldn’t finish the job on her. She used her free hand to pummel the man’s face repeatedly.

      Blood poured down his lips from his shattered nose; his eyes now dazed.

      Still holding the man’s wrist, she got to her feet.

      She was tall. Maybe five-ten or five-eleven. With broad, powerful shoulders and arms and especially legs. Like a much-too-tall gymnast.

      She gripped her attacker by the throat with one hand and, without much effort, lifted him up and over the balcony railing. She released him then and unleashed the biggest claws Berg had ever seen from her right hand.

      Turning away from the attacker, she swiped at the zip line that held him aloft, and Berg cringed a little at the man’s desperate screams as he fell to the ground below.