Panther's Promise: BBW Panther Shifter Paranormal Romance Read online

  There was no one else here. But even in human form, he could trace Irina’s scent. He rolled to his feet and moved quickly, his footsteps as silent as a panther’s paws.

  He found the door the waiter had led Irina through. The waiter had closed it behind the two of them, but now it hung open. Grant pushed through.

  Halfway down the corridor, the air grew thick with the sour smell of fear. And under it, the soft rasp of a man’s breathing.

  Grant clenched his jaw. He could smell the man lying on the floor—but there was no sign of Irina. Only the remnant smell of her terror.

  He took a deep breath, fighting for control. His panther was wild inside him, teeth bared and roaring to be set free.

  That won’t help anything, he told it, but he could feel cold sweat forming on his forehead with the strain of keeping his panther in check. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to control it.

  He crept forward and knelt beside the unconscious man. Whatever had happened here, it was clear this unfortunate server had nothing to do with it. His breath and pulse were steady, but Grant couldn’t rouse him.

  A blow to the head? Grant felt around carefully, and found a vicious lump behind the young man’s ear. On a sudden thought, he felt at the base of his own skull.

  So that was how they had got him. He hadn’t even noticed the pain when he woke up. All his focus had been on Irina. He couldn’t let the dull throb distract him now. Whatever injury he had, his shifter healing would deal with it.

  He inhaled, mouth open. Irina’s scent was stronger here. She had knelt where he was now, and touched the unconscious man. Which meant that he was attacked before her. Before she came out of the bathroom, maybe.

  Whoever had taken her must have lain in wait here. They’d attacked the server before taking Irina.

  Grant concentrated, trying to sift through the stifling scents of fear. He stalked forward slowly, tasting the air. Irina had been here, and then—

  There. Two other men, their scents masked by—by what? Grant shook his head. Their scents were faint, as though days old, but whatever trick they had used to mask themselves was ruined by the overlap between their own scent and Irina’s.

  Grant broke into a run. The trail of mingled scents lead him to a locked door at the far end of the corridor. Snarling, he slammed his shoulder into it and heard the crack of splintering wood. He backed up and charged again, bursting through the door in a hail of splinters and dust.

  The room on the other side was dimly lit, a storeroom of some sort, with piles of crates and bottles stacked against the walls. A real storeroom or another fashionable fake? Grant couldn’t tell and didn’t care. He ran on.

  Another door led to a dusty tunnel. A cracked pipe leaked water down the walls, making the floor slippery. Grant skidded but kept going, following the trail only he could sense.

  The corridor ended in a steep flight of stairs. He raced up them three at a time. The landing at the top was only a few paces wide. He crashed through a barred double door with more brute strength than any human ever had and stopped, blinded by sudden light.

  Grant blinked, staring around himself. After so long in the pitch black, it took even his shifter eyes a few moments to adjust.

  He was standing in a loading bay. Harsh fluorescent lights floodlit the concrete flooring and heavy metal garage doors.

  And nothing else. The bay was totally empty.

  One of the doors was open, but beyond it was nothing but the cold dark of the night. Grant walked forward, fists clenched at his sides. Just beyond the open garage door, tire marks revealed where the getaway car had skidded before disappearing into the city streets.

  No.

  “No!” he screamed aloud, unable to hold back any longer. He sprinted outside, but it was no use. The car was long gone, its tang of oil and gas indistinguishable from the thousands of other vehicles that had used the road.

  She’s gone. And I can’t track her. Grant groaned and fell to his knees on the icy ground. Something crinkled in his suit pocket. Paper.

  The only thing that should have been in his pocket was his phone. Grant clapped one hand to the pocket. Back in the dining room, when he had felt that presence – had someone slipped past his defenses so well that they could place something in his pocket without him noticing?

  That’s impossible, he thought. But then he remembered the strange, muffled scents of Irina’s kidnappers.

  Whoever did this knows that I’m a shifter. And they came prepared.

  Ice crept up his spine. Someone was targeting him: and they were using Irina as—what? Bait? Collateral?

  His hand closed over the paper. He pulled it out, stomach clenched in dread at what he might be about to read.

  He caught his breath as he scanned the paper. There were no demands. Just a set of coordinates and a short message:

  Follow her, or lose her forever.

  Grant’s pulse thundered in his ears and the world swung around him. The words seemed to burn into his mind. Lose her forever.

  He fumbled at his watch. It was a special model, a gift from his mother. All the bells and whistles, including a panic button. The watch would send an alert to Lance, letting him know Grant’s location. The bodyguard would be here within moments.

  As he lowered his hand, something else caught his eye. The time.

  —But that can’t be right. We only arrived at eleven. It can’t have been five hours.

  His watch read four in the morning. He could hear the city coming alive around him. Delivery trucks. Early commuters. His world had just been broken into pieces, but everyone else’s spun on.

  He’d lost five hours. And now, every second counted.

  Grant tried to stand but stumbled. The dull throb in his head swelled to a pounding pain, like someone was driving a wedge into his skull. Worse than the pain, though, was the fuzziness the injury left in his mind.

  It hadn’t been so bad when he was focused on one simple task—following Irina’s trail—but any thoughts more complex than run and hunt were like punching through cotton wool. He couldn’t focus enough to form a plan of attack. Or defense. Or any sort of plan.

  He stared helplessly at the single sheet of paper. The note was printed: no handwriting, not even a remnant scent of the writer to give him any clue who was behind Irina’s abduction.

  Dimly, he noted the purr of the car’s engine as Lance spun around the corner into the front of the loading bay. He looked up as his bodyguard leapt from the car and knelt by his side.

  “What happened?”

  Grant explained the situation in a few words, his voice hollow.

  “Someone left this in my pocket.” Grant crushed the note in his hand, then desperately smoothed it out again. This could be his only way of finding his mate: he couldn’t let his panther’s anger risk destroying it.

  Still kneeling on the concrete, he pulled out his phone and plugged the coordinates into a map app. They led to the middle of nowhere, a tiny patch of mountainside miles from the nearest road or town.

  In the Adirondacks.

  Grant smiled grimly. They may not have meant it, but this brief note told him more than just the coordinates. The location was hundreds of miles away. Whoever was behind this must know that he would be able to fly there; if they were taking Irina there, to get there before him they must have access to some kind of aircraft, as well.

  Whoever had taken his mate had access to money. Which meant this might not be about separating Grant from his fortune.

  And…

  “The Adirondacks,” said Grant slowly. “Why is that so familiar?”

  He met Lance’s eye and saw him work it out at the same moment the pieces clicked into place in his own mind.

  “I’ll call Harley,” Grant said, his jaw stiff. “You drive.”

  15

  IRINA

  Ow. That hurts.

  Irina groaned. Her arm was twisted up behind her uncomfortably. Both arms were. Ow.

  Did I fall asleep on it? On both of
them? While sitting up?

  Am I sitting up?

  I feel like I’m sitting up.

  “Mmmph?” she mumbled groggily.

  Why am I sitting up?

  For Irina, waking up was a daily ordeal. Other people seemed to make the transition from asleep to functional easily, but for Irina, it was like swimming upwards through cold molasses. Without any arms or legs.

  Wriggling upwards through molasses. Like a very sleepy, grumpy worm.

  It usually hurt less than this, though.

  Irina groaned. She normally groaned a bit as she woke up, but this time, it was because she was waking up into a body that ached. Her shoulders weren’t happy about her arms being twisted up behind her. Nor was her neck. Or her head. It felt like someone was playing drums on the inside of her skull.

  She shook her head groggily and tried to roll over, but couldn’t.

  What the hell?

  Irina lifted her head and opened her eyes. Or tried to, at least. They were strangely heavy, and her eyelids clung together, refusing to separate. Which was nothing new, except…

  Except she wasn’t lying down. She was sitting upright.

  No wonder my neck hurts, she thought hazily. God, I really need a stretch…

  She couldn’t stand up.

  She wasn’t just sitting down. She was tied down.

  “What the hell?” she mumbled and tried to move again. This time, she felt the straps binding her to the chair.

  “What the hell?”

  Her yell echoed in her ears. She struggled, confusion fighting with panic. It was pointless. She was strapped into a high-backed chair, thick tape crossing her torso and securing her ankles to the chair-legs. Her arms were stretched around the back of the chair, wrists tied together.

  Irina gathered her strength and yanked at her arms again, twisting her wrists against each other. The strain sent pain lancing through her shoulders. In response, she slumped back, panting with exhaustion, as her head rang from the effort.

  What the hell is going on here?

  The last thing she remembered, she had been at the restaurant, finishing up her meal with Grant. No, wait—that wasn’t the last thing.

  Irina concentrated, sifting through memories that seemed as hazy as mirages. She remembered getting up to find the bathroom… the server’s light touch on her elbow…

  “Oh, God,” she blurted unwillingly. The server. She’d found his body on the floor. And then—

  And then she woke up here.

  Her chest constricted as she pieced together the pieces. Someone had attacked the server at the restaurant, and then… kidnapped her.

  The word rolled around Irina’s head, not fitting in anywhere. Kidnapped? Her? A twenty-six-year-old nobody, an artist with no money, no valuables, no connections—

  Oh, no.

  A sick feeling spread through Irina’s stomach. No connections? What about a freshly minted billionaire boyfriend, with enough money and valuables to fill any number of ransom demands?

  Grant.

  And her kidnappers thought that kidnapping her was their golden ticket to that wealth.

  Irina’s eyes stung as hot tears seeped out under her lashes. She wished she could believe that Grant would jump to her rescue, but she had to be honest with herself. They’d only known each other a few days.

  She was on her own. The only question was how long she could convince her kidnappers that she was worth keeping alive.

  No. That’s not the only question.

  There’s also: What am I going to do to get out of here?

  Irina gritted her teeth, fighting back the tears. She was on her own? Fine. That didn’t mean she had to give up.

  She closed her eyes. There was no point keeping them open—not when she couldn’t see anything. She took another deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly.

  Right. Okay. Here’s what’s going to happen. You can either panic… or figure out how to get the hell out of here.

  Let’s start by not panicking. Great job. So, step one to getting out of here: figure out where here is.

  She concentrated on her surroundings. Wherever she had been brought, the place was as dark as the restaurant, but somehow she knew she wasn’t still cozied away under New York City’s streets.

  Irina took a deep, ragged breath and realized why. The air here didn’t smell like it did at the restaurant, which had been climate-controlled to within an inch of its life.

  No. The air here smelled… wet. And cold. She could feel it cling to her skin, as though it had been years since anything warm and alive had been here.

  Wherever here was.

  Now that she had noticed the cold, clinging air, other things started to leak into her awareness. The quiet, for one thing. Even in the restaurant, there had been a hum of distant machinery, the occasional rumble of traffic far above. Here, the silence seemed to press in. Except…

  A soft trickling noise, so faint she couldn’t be sure she wasn’t imagining it.

  Water? Am I near a pipeline of some sort? A sewer? Not that it smells like a sewer at all.

  It smells like the outdoors.

  She held her breath, concentrating fiercely, and heard something that made her heart freeze.

  Breathing.

  Someone else was in here with her.

  “Inattentive little creature, aren’t you?”

  Irina’s own breath hitched in her throat as she gulped back a scream. The voice was female, a passionless alto.

  “Who are you?”

  She thought the woman was behind her and twisted to look, eyes wide in the darkness. Suddenly, a bright light flared, blinding her. Eyes watering, Irina squinted into the light, trying to see whoever was on the other side.

  “Who are you?” she repeated, trying to make the question sound like a demand. Her words echoed back from the walls, unanswered.

  She couldn’t see anything through the harsh light. The woman might as well have been invisible.

  “Tch. As though you’re in any position to ask questions.” The woman’s words echoed, just as Irina’s had.

  We must be in a large room, Irina thought. Or… She thought of the smell of cold, damp air, the feeling of old, bone-deep chill, and the sound of trickling water. ...underground? Are we in a cavern of some sort? How long was I knocked out for?

  “Does that mean you have questions for me, then?” she spat out loud. “You didn’t pick an especially nice location for an interview if you were hoping to charm me into talking.”

  Good one, Irina. Antagonize the psycho kidnapper.

  The light was suddenly cut off as a dark figure lunged toward Irina. The woman slammed her hands on the back of the chair, either side of Irina’s head. The chair rocked back, steel legs scraping on stone.

  “Questions? Questions? I’ve only got one question for you, you evil bitch. Where is he?”

  The blinding light haloed the woman’s face, but for one brief moment Irina was able to see her features.

  She was pale, white with fury but with dark shadows under her golden hazel eyes. And she was instantly recognizable, even with her face twisted with rage and hatred.

  “Francine Delacourt?” Irina gasped.

  Francine slapped Irina across the cheek so hard her head snapped sideways. Hissing with pain, Irina turned back to her attacker.

  Francine was nothing but a silhouette against the harsh spotlight. Still, Irina could feel the other woman’s eyes on her, burning with hatred.

  “But you’re rich,” she blurted, too shocked to hold her tongue. “Why would you need to ransom me?”

  There was a pause. Irina saw Francine’s silhouetted hands flex, and hoped it was a trick of the light or her imagination that made them look like claws.

  “I don’t want any ransom,” Francine said at last, her voice burning with barely-controlled rage. “I want your boyfriend to tell me what he did with my brother’s body.”

  She leaned closer. Irina’s breath stopped as her eyes glinted icy gold
.

  “And he’s going to tell me,” she hissed, “because if he doesn’t, I’ll make sure he never finds your corpse.”

  16

  GRANT

  The helicopter roared through the air, shattering the majestic solitude of the mountains. Grant leaned out the open door, baring his teeth into the wind that whipped across his bare flesh. Out here, there was no smog of fumes to stifle his senses: he inhaled the scent of evergreen trees, small creatures, even the smell of mud under its light dusting of snow.

  And overlaying it all, the unmistakable, acrid tang of another chopper’s exhaust.

  We’re getting close.

  “We’re coming up on the coordinates,” came Lance’s voice through his headphones. He was sitting in the co-pilot seat, as comfortable as though he was sitting in a café on solid ground, not hovering hundreds of feet in the air with the helicopter doors open.

  Next to him, a red-haired man in aviator glasses was seated at the controls. Harley Ames, whose love for speed had finally come in useful.

  “You ready to go?”

  “Ready,” Grant confirmed, nodding firmly. “Harley, can you bring us around that ridge?”

  Harley grunted in reply, and the chopper swung around. Grant spared a glance for his pilot as he readied himself to jump.

  Harley wasn’t one for awkward conversations. So he’d barely said a word since the revelation that he had prepped Irina’s kidnapper’s flyer for a cross-country trip.

  Francine Delacourt.

  Grant was still struggling to understand. Why would Francine do something like this? They were friends. Not close friends, maybe, but they had all grown up in the same circles, more or less. Different social strata, brought together by the fact that they were all young, bored shifters. Grant, Mathis, Harley, Lance—and Francine.

  What happened?

  Part of him didn’t care. Part of him, a very big part, didn’t care what reasons Francine might have for taking his mate away. He just wanted to find her, stop her, and get Irina back, and nothing else mattered.

  But a small part of him—more human-shaped than panther-shaped, though there was plenty of human in the part of him that didn’t care—that small part of him wondered what the hell was going on.