Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed by Madelaine Montague Read Free Book Online Page B

couldn’t concentrate worth a flip.
    Laurie wasn’t the only one having trouble
focusing on something besides the encounter at the door. Lucien
returned to his room like a sleepwalker and dropped into the easy
chair next to the window. Damien had been flipping through stations
on the TV, but he noticed something seemed just a hair off about
Lucien’s demeanor. “Problems?”
    The question penetrated Lucien’s abstraction
and he glanced at his brother. “Why would you ask that?” he
barked.
    Damien was taken aback and looked it. “You
went to check on the client. I was just asking about the status,”
he said slowly, turning Lucien’s response and behavior over in his
mind and trying to decide just what it was that they pointed
to—beyond the fact that something had happened that Lucien hadn’t
been expecting.
    Lucien felt his face heating with discomfort.
“Oh. Yeah. She’s tucked in for the night. Still doesn’t have the
sense of self-preservation of a bird.” He frowned at the comment.
“It’s almost like she’s the complete opposite of her counterpart on
our side, you know?”
    Damien was beginning to feel a vague sense of
‘something’s not quite right’ about the situation. “What happened
when you went to check on her?”
    Lucien managed a credible expression of
surprise. He shrugged. “Nothing really. I knocked. She opened the
door. I reminded her that she could be in danger as the only eye
witness to the murder and not to open the door without checking to
see who it was first and then came back here.”
    “ That’s all there was to it?”
Damien demanded suspiciously.
    “ Yeah. Why?”
    Damien stared at him. “You mean aside from the
fact that you went over there to check the room security and came
back without, apparently, checking a damned thing? You came back in
here like a … zombie and flopped in that chair without saying a
damned thing. What the fuck is going on with you?”
    That time Lucien felt more than just a faint
heating of discomfort. The blood flooded his face and he could feel
each heartbeat as a pulse in his cheeks like a flashing neon sign.
He cleared his throat. “You questioning my judgment?”
    “ I’m wondering if I should go
check on Laurie myself, yeah,” Damien responded tightly.
    Lucien surged out of his seat. “Just when the
hell did you start calling her Laurie? You’re referring to a client
by their first name and questioning my professionalism?”
    Damien gaped at him for a split second but
that was all the time it took to bring his own anger to the
forefront. He slid off the bed and straightened as Lucien got out
of his chair and approached the bed where he’d been sitting.
“You’ve been fucking referring to her as Laurie since we got the
job,” he growled. “I hadn’t questioned your professionalism.
We all agreed that it would probably be best to keep our distance
as much as possible from the people on this side—and it was you that suggested it—that it could make things miserable at
the very least if and when we go back and could be dangerous in
ways we haven’t even thought of.
    “ Now I’m starting to wonder what
the hell’s going on, though. You’re sounding damned possessive to
me, and I’m thinking I don’t like the reasons for that that occur
to me.”
    “ Like what?” Lucien snarled,
almost nose to nose with his brother by that time.
    “ Like you’re fucking her or you’re
seriously considering it!”
    “ And you have a problem with
that?” Lucien growled.
    The question rocked Damien back on his heels
for a split second before rage rushed in to fill the void shock had
left. “You’re god damned right I’ve got a problem with
that!”
    They’d just seized one another by the throat
when the door swung open. Instantly focused on the possibility of
attack, both men swung toward the door and crouched to
spring.
    “ What the hell is going on in
here?” Basil demanded. “You two trying to get us thrown out of the
frigging