Between a Rock and a Hard Place

  Paranormal Protection Agency: Book II

  Between a Rock and a Hard Place

  Mina Carter

  Published: December 2011

  Published by Summerhouse Publishing. Copyright, Mina Carter. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.

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  Marisa Chenery

  Cover Artist

  Mina Carter

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

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  Between a Rock and a Hard Place

  “Hello? Is anybody there?”

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth and echoing around the emptiness of the deserted office, I kicked myself. I’d seen more than my fair share of horror films in my time. Including the ones where I screamed at the too-stupid-to-live heroines that of course there was someone there. It was as though the question itself was a circular prophecy. Where the very act of asking ensured that there would be.

  Without saying anything else, I reached for the emergency kit located down the side of my desk, my hand finding the iron banded baton with ease as my other slid open the desk drawer to get at the Glock concealed there. Long gone were the days where you could just wave a gun and frighten any intruder off. Ten years ago, everything that went bump in the night had not only come out of the closet, but out from under the bed, grave and nightmares too. These days, our anti-intruder kits contained silver for weres, iron for the fey, and garlic and stakes for the vamps, amongst other things. I’d never asked what the Pokémon was for…because I seriously didn’t want to know.

  Thumbing the safety off the Glock, I gripped the stake in white-knuckled fingers, pointed down along my forearm. The entire staff had gone through hand-to-hand training 101 with the elite of the armed forces, and that was before the real combat training had even begun. “How to kill a werewolf in ten gruesome and violent ways” had gone down as a treat in the office, and “Staking for Success” had been a laugh, despite the obvious marketing speak in the title.

  It was just a pity the instructor had known fuck-all about staking vamps. Given his impressive waistline, I’d suspected he was far more familiar with steaks of a different type. After we’d done the stuff the government recommended, we got the big boys in. No one could teach you how to kill a vampire better than a vamp, and combat training with the were we’d brought in had given me a healthy dose of respect for the furries.

  I kicked my heels off before I padded toward the front of the office—all the while aware that if Miriam had forgotten to lock the front door again, and it was a member of the public, I was going to look a right twat. I’d probably end up facing a charge of assault and battery, or at the very least, scaring the crap out of a poor, unsuspecting criminal. Be still my bleeding heart.

  The office was L-shaped with my desk hidden away in the corner. I liked it that way. It meant I could plaster my desktop in pictures of scantily clad men without anyone whining at me. Nothing worse than an office do-gooder preaching about sexual discrimination, or harassment, or whatever posting half-nekkid pictures of hunky men on your desktop was called. Miriam called it scandalous, and after the third lecture I’d gotten on the disintegrating morals of the younger generation, I’d rearranged the office. It was that—or risk going postal with a stapler and a letter opener.

  And that was just over pictures of human men.

  My lips quirked as I edged along the wall to the corner and tried to listen with every cell in my body.

  If she only knew I’d gotten down and dirty with a paranormal guy, then… Perhaps I should lock up the stapler and the letter opener.

  There was a sound from around the corner. The scuff of a boot, then a muffled curse. Papers were shuffled to the accompaniment of more cursing. Drawers were being open and searched. Slammed shut.

  Thieves looking for a cash box? I was certain there was someone—some little arsehole—trying to rob us. Sure, it was just a cash box, but that didn’t matter. Theft was theft. Theft hit the bottom line of the company. And if the company got into trouble, we’d have to let some of the staff go…most of whom were paranormals that couldn’t get another job elsewhere. Anger ripped through me like wildfire. I’d always laughed at that expression in books before, but now I understood it. Starting small, a mere spark, it grew as realization dawned and tore through me with explosive force.

  “Stop right there you little, fucking wankers!”

  I stepped around the corner, and levelled the Glock. I was sure now that I faced humans. Paranormals as a whole had bigger fish to fry than trying to rob offices for the measly sums contained in the average cash box. Most of them, like vampires, were old enough to have amassed fortunes of their own, or like the wolves, simply didn’t care about money unless it could buy them land to escape from humanity. Brownies just sat there to count the stuff, which could be a help if you left them some paper. They had a fetish about double-entry bookkeeping.

  “Stop right there. Oh, fuck—”

  I got a quick impression of a hulking figure before it turned, and the flash of green where its eyes should’ve been gave it away. It grew, shoulders filling out to the size of a barn as it turned toward me. My heart hammered, my body registering the danger even if my mind refused to.

  “You stay right there, mister.” I waved the redundant Glock as if to warn it off. What the fuck was it? I’d heard of the green-eyed monster, but this was ridiculous. “These are silver—”

  It moved quicker than humanly possible. No fucking surprise there, since there was no way it could be human—I’d been dead wrong before. I backed up, stumbled over my own feet and went down hard on my arse. A scream welled in my throat, part anger, but mostly fear as the creature loomed over me. Its fetid breath, like rotten meat and sulphur, washed over me, making my skin crawl as if it were trying to get on the opposite side of my body and away from it.

  The roar almost burst my eardrums and I flinched, expecting hitherto unseen claws and teeth to rip through my skin like rice paper, to get to the tasty treat of my internal organs within. But funnily, the sound seemed to come from behind and above the creature dry humping my legs.

  A second later, there was the meaty sound of flesh tearing. My body tensed as I waited for pain to kick in. A whimper escaped my lips. But there wasn’t any pain and that meant it was bad…very bad. Something warm, wet and icky dripped onto my shoulder before the creature above me was suddenly torn away.

  Flung across the room, it thudded against the wall and slid down it into a small heap on the floor. The landscape that’d been mounted there dropped with it, crumpled around its shoulders like a fanc
y necklace. I wasn’t sorry. Fine art it might’ve been, but to my uncultured eye, it was merely shades of shit on a landscape of more shit.

  A sob broke from my throat. Why was I thinking about a bloody painting when some dumb-fuck of a para had nearly taken me out, and not in a good way? Strong arms closed around me, and hauled me up bodily against a broad chest. Harder than human, encased in skin like warmed marble, I breathed a sigh of relief as I recognized the touch of a gargoyle.

  “Cal,” I breathed, wrapping my arms around his neck and holding on for dear life. Cal—or Calcite—if you wanted to get technical, was one of our gargoyle guards. As a species, they loved to guard…on like…an instinctive level. Even I hadn’t realized how seriously they took their jobs, right up to the point when my shit of an ex had decided my face would look better in shades of purple and blue.

  Luckily for me, he hadn’t managed to land a blow. Unluckily for him, that was because near seven feet of pissed off gargoyle had appeared in the way like an inconvenient garden ornament. The kind you not only stub your toe on, but fall over only to have them land on you as well. Possibly even get you tangled up in the garden hose and into an argument with the rake too. In other words, total-fucking-garden-carnage.

  He and Cal hadn’t argued. Rather, Cal had gotten his words mixed up and threatened to give Kenneth a blowjob instead of blowing him away. The last time I saw my ex, my current lover had been carrying him off like a limp sack of shit down to the lobby for the doorman to deal with. Since I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Kenneth, or a body, I’d assumed he managed to haul his pathetic arse home.

  Then, like now, Cal had been my knight in shining armour, and six months in my bed hadn’t dulled my lust for his ripped and gorgeous body. Or the wonderful things he could do with his tongue. Some people say vamps or wolves are the way to go, but believe me, once you go gargoyle, there’s no way you go back.

  Breathing a deep sigh of relief, I snuggled closer to my stone man and tried to forget whatever flavour of nastiness had just tried to get his jollies with me. And in a way I was certain would leave me little more than a bloody smear on the floor. As always, Cal was warm and solid, his arms around me a safe haven from the rest of the world. Strangely for him, he was wearing a bomber jacket. The times I’d seen him wear a coat, I could count on the fingers of one hand if I discounted the three I wore rings on. Perhaps he was feeling the cold as we headed into the grip of winter?

  Putting the thought from my mind, I ran my lips across his neck. Nibbling lightly, I worked my way down and smiled against his skin as the thick length of his cock hardened and pressed insistently against me. Oh, yeah, my boy was always ready for a little—or a lot of—action. No “Sorry baby, I’m tired,” or “I have a meeting in the morning and I need my sleep,” or even worse, “Mr. P hasn’t had any mouth action in a while.” The latter was always the worst. Kenneth would whine and whine until he got some head, then it was all over in two minutes and I was back to dealing with my own needs in the damn shower.

  Gargoyles? They didn’t get tired and they had ridged tongues.

  And tails.

  Just sayin’.

  I chuckled against his neck and ran my hand down to stroke along the solid length of his cock. Despite myself, my eyes widened. Damn if he didn’t feel bigger every time I touched him. I knew they could change the…err, proportions of their bodies, but damn, his erection felt as big and swollen as if we hadn’t fucked in a week, despite the fact we’d broken another kitchen countertop last night. It might sound amusing, but believe me, when the kitchen fitters give you knowing looks as they repair the damage, you’d think otherwise.

  “Didn’t realize offices did it for you, baby,” I murmured against his neck, fumbling with his belt buckle. Perhaps we could get a quickie in against the wall. Yeah, so there was a dead para a few feet away, but screw that. I needed some life-affirming sex here with my gargoyle man.

  “Iliona? Are you okay?” Cal asked, which brought another smile to my lips. We’d been working on his vocabulary, and he was up to full sentences now. My hand and lips paused. There was just one problem with the picture: the guy I was molesting wasn’t the one who’d spoken.

  “Fuck!”

  Heart pounding, I shoved away as though I’d been burnt. Three rapid steps backward and I was stopped by the edge of Miriam’s desk, knocking into it so hard the plant on the corner did a crazy two-step. I ignored it in favour of looking up at the guy whose cock I’d been getting up close and personal with. The guy I’d thought was my lover.

  “Fuck. Me.”

  My eyes must’ve been like dinner plates as I stared up at him, only widening farther when Cal came to stand level. They were freaking twins. The only difference I could see—other than the dress sense—was that the new guy was slightly broader in the shoulder and carried a vicious scar on one cheekbone. I recognized it. Someone had tried to take a chisel to him when he’d been in his stone form. Cal had one too, on his chest.

  “I’m Granite.” New guy cocked an eyebrow, heat in the same blue eyes I saw before I fell asleep every night. Which was disconcerting as fuck. I didn’t get time to frame a reply before Cal grinned and dragged the newcomer into a quick bear hug. I waited, not surprised by the lack of verbal communication. Between themselves, gargoyles were telepathic.

  When you spend most of your time unmoving on a building, I guess you had to develop some way of communicating, other than the voices in your own head, or go stir crazy. I’d seen a gargoyle freak out before, and it was not a pretty sight.

  Finally, I got bored with them staring into each other’s baby blues.

  “Hey, stone guys! How about a little explanation for the freaky doppelganger thing you got going on here?”

  * * *

  “So, he’s like what…a twin or something?”

  After what seemed like hours of questions at the local cop shop, including a lovely little discussion with a counsellor who was more interested in how I felt about the gargoyle who rescued me than the creature who’d tried to gut me, we’d finally made it back to my apartment.

  Thanks to said counsellor and endless Rorschach inkblots, I was tired and pissed off. I had no clue what she hoped to gain from interviewing me after the attack, but she’d waved some kind of paperwork at the detective in charge as if it were an order from the Almighty himself, and within seconds, I was banged up in a room with the mad doctor. And I was the victim. God help the actual criminals. They finally let me go after I answered “cock” to every inkblot.

  What? I had a hunky gargoyle to take me home and get all up and cosy with. No way did I want to spend the evening providing some dried-up old nun of a doctor with the basis for an amazing new thesis on the sexual implications of paranormal attacks or some such crap.

  Cal closed the door behind us, his very presence comforting as he took me into his arms. Warm, solid body. Reassurance. Safety. Somehow, from a casual screw, he’d become an integral part of my life. And I’d virtually had my hand down his twin’s pants, yet he hadn’t batted an eyelid. What was up with that? Most men would be tearing strips off anyone even looking at their woman in the wrong way.

  “Who? Gran? Yeah. Kind of,” he said between kisses as he walked me through the apartment to the bathroom, the heat of intent showing in his eyes as he snapped the shower on. Cal wasn’t dumb. He’d quickly realized that to feel sexy and thus increase his chances of getting some action, I liked to be clean and smell nice. Lazy heat coiled low in my belly as he looked at me, his blue eyes dark with need and filled with erotic promise. My chain of thought skittered off like a hyperactive ferret with a new toy.

  “Strip. In. Don’t take long.”

  He turned around as soon as the order was delivered and headed for the door, leaving me to pout in disappointment. Obviously, it wasn’t going to be a coed shower tonight. Damn, and just when I was looking forward to getting soaped up and kinky against the tiles. I watched his retreating back for a moment. Okay, okay, I watched his retreating a
rse. God, that man…gargoyle…whatever…had an arse on him firm enough to crack nuts with. Firm and lean, just enough to get my fingernails in when he pounded into me.

  Shaking the thoughts from my head, I stepped into the shower and cranked it up to “not-thinking-about-sex, freezing-my-tits-off” cold. I didn’t shower so much, more like bouncing off the cold water from my skin and shivering as I soaped myself, continually chuntering about sexy-ass gargoyles who didn’t know what was good for them. What seemed like hours later, but was probably nearer to five minutes, I emerged into the living room, shaking like mad and trying to rock “looking sexy in a bathrobe” that had ears on the hood. Rawr.

  “Okay, explain—” I started to demand, but then got a good look at the room.

  Candles were dotted on every available surface, a flickering display of light that would have your average health and safety inspector foaming at the mouth—and any romantic weak at the knees. The potential of a fire hazard fled my mind as my gaze found Cal. Settled in the middle of my new and expansive couch, he was stark bollock naked, and sported a hard-on like an iron frigging bar.

  He held my gaze boldly and wrapped a hand around his cock. Slowly he pumped, sliding his hand along his shaft from root to tip, the flushed, broad head playing peekaboo as he pleasured himself. But it wasn’t pleasure, not all of it. The muscle jumping in his jaw and the expression in his eyes told of how much control he exerted over himself. I walked toward him, eyes greedily drinking in every detail. This wasn’t about pleasuring himself. No, Cal was teasing me…tormenting me.

  He groaned and dropped his head back, showcasing the strong lines of his throat. His chest rose and fell, the movement doing nothing more than drawing my appreciative gaze as it travelled downward. A flat stomach gave way to lean hips and his hand moving over his cock. Male beauty at its ultimate.