Cat and Mouse (Claimed by an Alpha Paranormal Romance Book 1) Read online

  Lilith T. Bell

  Copyright 2017 Lilith T. Bell

  As far as Luke Kapur knows, he might be the last weretiger left in the world. Orphaned at a young age, he's only had limited exposure to other shifters and has never met a female he wanted as a mate. That is until he met curvy Dawn Biancardi, a woman who unknowingly carries shifter blood in her veins. It just happens to be something a little more prey than predator.

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  Other Books by Lilith T. Bell

  The Claimed by an Alpha Series

  Cat and Mouse

  Like a Cat in Heat

  Once Bitten, Twice Claimed

  Lost in Heat

  Fighting Like Cats and Dogs

  The Captive to Egypt Series

  Taken

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Further Reading

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Conferences aren’t generally that fun for me. Unfortunately, engineering really is a boy’s club even after all of these years. There are rules about harassment and inappropriate behavior, of course, but it still happens. Sexist jokes abound. There’s always the undercurrent that women don’t belong here. Not just at the conference in Las Vegas that weekend, but in the field at all.

  That was why while most of my associates were all clustered together in the hotel bar, I was sitting alone down at the end. The other women I knew at the conference had already left the bar and I couldn’t really blame them. It was after midnight, with more panels to attend tomorrow morning and then exhausting flights home, followed by work again on Monday. Those who used the conferences for fun instead of business were still out drinking and that crowd mostly consisted of men.

  I was not there for fun.

  There was a whiskey sitting in front of me, as well as my mobile phone. I was staring down at the text message. Then I took a swallow off of the whiskey before setting it down again.

  I picked up my phone to answer. My thumbs typed the message out with quick, angry jabs, then I set the phone down again to take a longer drink off my whiskey, finishing it off.

  “What did the phone do to you?” a rich voice like warm velvet up the spine asked. It was a familiar voice, too.

  Describing our relationship as friendship wouldn’t be entirely accurate. Friends implied we got together and hung out one-on-one, which was something we had never done on purpose. Our time alone together had always been incidental instead of a plan, at least as far as I knew. While we did work for the same company, we were assigned to different areas of interest. Our projects would occasionally cross over and so Luke and I knew each other—whenever we socialized with our co-workers we both included the other—but there had always been something there stopping us from more. Some unspoken tension that didn’t seem appropriate before. Whether it was me concerned about my marriage or his decency, we knew better than to be alone without saying a word.

  He was one of the most likable people at work and I had grown fond of him even if there had been that carefully constructed barrier between us. I had recognized his voice immediately, but looked up to confirm it was him all the same.

  Luke Kapur had taken the stool next to mine at the bar. Black curls were left just long enough to be tousled attractively, matching the thick, dark fringe framing his eyes. Those eyes of his were some of the strangest I had ever seen. He was of East Indian descent and his coloring all matched that normally enough except for his eyes. In theory, they were brown. The brown was interrupted by narrow rings of orange around his pupils, however. The orange wasn’t obvious at first, but once I had noticed it I hadn’t been able to ever ignore it again.

  I sipped off of my whiskey, then set it down again. “Do you really want to know?”

  Unlike him, there wasn’t anything even remotely dark in my coloring. The rest of my family was relatively dark Italian American. They had hair that ranged from dark brown to black and olive toned skin. Some trick of recessive genes had spat me out with skin that burned after five minutes in the sun and auburn hair. I’d been convinced I was switched at birth until I was ten, when I saw old photographs of my great-grandmother who had looked quite a bit like me.

  Luke shrugged, which was a strangely elegant gesture on him. Muscles bunched and moved fluidly, briefly drawing his shirt a bit tighter across his shoulders as they were drawn up. “Wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

  “It’s my ex-husband. Just officially ex-husband.” I brushed the fingers of one hand over where my ring should have been.

  “Are congratulations in order?” he ventured.

  “I guess so, yeah. It’s a good thing.”

  Luke smiled. “Good. I couldn’t pretend to be sad you finally got rid of him.”

  I laughed softly before I grew more serious, since this wasn’t a very funny topic for me. “We’ve been separated for the past year because of his affairs and—“ I cut myself off, unsure of whether or not I wanted to go into too much detail about our marital problems.

  Having had more than my share of victim blaming in the past, I decided against it. I had made the mistake of trying to talk about it once with my friend Jenny, whose response had basically been to call me an idiot for staying with him for so long. She couldn’t understand how threats and fear kept me chained. I didn’t speak to Jenny any more, but even my more supportive friends had struggled to grasp the situation. My parents had stopped speaking to me at one point. I understood their concern and the fact that it hurt them to see me in such an unhealthy marriage, but being further isolated had only made it harder to break away.

  There were easier things to talk about, besides. “Anyway,” I went on. “He told me he never wanted kids. He kept pushing me to get my tubes tied. I had always wanted children, but I was willing to make what sacrifices I had to for the sake of our marriage. The only line I drew was surgery for his sake. If he was the one who didn’t want kids, he should be the one to get a vasectomy. It’s safer and less invasive and it’s for his benefit. I didn’t think that was unreasonable.”

  Luke was frowning, his brows drawn together in concern. “It’s not. I really hope you didn’t have a tubal ligation just to make someone else happy.”

  “No, I didn’t. That fight was what finally pushed us to separate. We kept going to marriage counseling for a few months after that and even when I stopped going he kept pushing to get back together. He kept saying he wanted to be with me.” I looked down at my phone, making a sound of disgust in the back of my throat. With one finger, I slid it over in front of Luke for him to see the text from Chris.

  It was a brief message, but Luke silently stared at it for a long time.

  “He got his girlfriend pregnant and still wants to work things out? That certainly takes...balls.”

  “Yeah.” I drained my glass of whiskey. I tried to focus on the heat of alcohol down my throat and entering my blood stream. That was a far better feeling than the burning of tears in my eyes.

  Luke raised a hand to wave over the bartender, then nodded to my empty glass. “Two whiskeys,” he said as he laid a twenty down on the bar.

  “Thank you,” I told him after I picked up my fresh drink.

  “Don’t mention it. So what are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. I divorced him for a reason. Him panicking because he knocked up his girlfriend and she won’t get an abortion doesn’t mea
n anything to me.” I paused, feeling a sudden wave of sadness. That wasn’t entirely true. It did mean something to me. It meant that his girlfriend was stronger than I had been. She wasn’t letting him bully her into giving up control of her own body. Good for her. I hoped she ran as fast and far from him as she possibly could.

  “I only wish I’d had the sense to get a prenup so I would have come out better from the divorce, but I was in love.” I said the last word as though it were an obscenity. “I thought everything was going to be happy forever.”

  “Doesn’t really work that way if the other person is only in it for himself.” Luke sipped off of his own whiskey. “The good news is that you’re young and smart and beautiful. You’ve got a lot of life ahead of you still.”

  “I’m not as young as I used to be. That biological clock is starting to tick.” My age didn’t bother me for anything else, but being on the other side of thirty and having spent my twenties with a man who never wanted children had made me much more aware of my dwindling fertile years.

  “So you do still want kids?”

  “Yes.” I just about sighed the word. “I’m happy with my career and I love my friends and my family and I feel very satisfied with all of that, but it just doesn’t feel—”

  “Complete?” Luke interrupted, smiling.

  I gave him a surprised look, then nodded a little.

  “Don’t start writing your future off yet. There are opportunities out there to get everything you wanted, maybe opportunities you never even noticed before. Be glad you got rid of that asshole now.”

  I didn’t really have much I could add to that. The fact was that I’d been sure I wanted to divorce Chris since about two months after the honeymoon, so it wasn’t as if I was especially depressed over the end of the marriage. He always threatened me when I tried to leave, though. I’d just gotten lucky that refusing the surgery had been enough to make him throw a fit and leave. Less than a week after that and he had been wanting to come home. Keeping him out, keeping him at arm’s length, refusing to take him back and acquiesce to all of his demands had been the hardest thing I’d ever done. Telling him that I was filing for divorce had been shockingly easy.

  I’d told him through a lawyer so I didn’t have to worry about him hitting me after saying it. It’s amazing what wonders getting rid of that fear can do.

  “Can we talk about something else?” I asked Luke, giving him a brittle smile. “How are you? We haven’t had much of a chance to talk lately.”

  “No, we haven’t. I didn’t even know you were separated from your husband,” he pointed out. There was something like regret in his voice, as though he would have had something to gain by knowing it sooner.

  “I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it at work. It was a really...difficult relationship.”

  Luke reached out toward me, his thumb lightly tracing my cheekbone. I went still at the touch, chest frozen around a lungful of air. His skin felt a little rough against the smooth skin of my face, reminding me how much more hands-on he was with life than most people. While I swam and walked my new dog for exercise, it seemed like almost every weekend he was out fishing and hiking and hunting.

  And there was more his touch reminded me of. It reminded me of a day a years before when I had come into work a little late, wearing foundation much thicker than I normally did. Most people hadn’t paid any attention to it. Some days other women at work came in more made up than usual, so it raised few eyebrows.

  Luke had been different. I’d walked past him and I’d seen his nostrils flair slightly, as if he had smelled the extra foundation. His hand had caught my arm to stop me from walking away and his other hand had raised to my face. His thumb had brushed against my cheekbone, unerringly finding the bruise I had ineffectively tried to hide from the world.

  The look in his eyes had stayed in my memory ever since. When other people had seen signs of abuse, they had mostly pitied me or been embarrassed or acted just a bit disgusted, as if they believed what Chris did was my fault. As if I really had asked for it.

  Luke’s face had held pain like a cup running over and then behind it had been a pure, dark rage. In that instant I had felt sure down to my bones that he would have killed Chris with his bare hands if I had but breathed his name. Remembering that day and the fact that someone was so passionately on my side had rekindled strength inside of myself I had forgotten I had.

  The fight over the tubal ligation had been the straw that broke the camel’s back, but it had been that touch and that look from Luke that had helped me find the strength to keep Chris gone.

  “I noticed,” was all he said.

  I blinked, the spell broken. When his hand drew away from my face, I took a deep breath and leaned back a little on my stool to put space between us while I gathered my scattered thoughts. “Why don’t we talk about your love life instead of mine?”

  Luke chuckled, shaking his head. “Nothing to speak of there.”

  “Really? That’s too bad. Unless you like it that way, I suppose.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t really mind. I’ve just been waiting on the right woman and the right time.”

  “You can’t find something if you’re not looking for it.” I’d heard similar from my friends, when they were urging me to get out and date. Getting out and seeing new people might not give me any real emotional satisfaction at first, but it was better than hiding and wasting away, in their estimation. They knew I didn’t want to go back to Chris and had thought that finding a new man and reminding myself of how much fun dating could be would make it easier to finally file for divorce. They really hadn’t understood the extent to which I was held captive.

  “Maybe I’ve found what I’m looking for and don’t need to search.”

  I narrowed my eyes slightly at him. He took a sip from his glass nonchalantly.

  A body built like a refrigerator slammed in between us and up against the bar. Charlie gripped the edge of the bar with a hand to keep him up on his unsteady feet, then waved with his other hand for the bartender’s attention.

  “Jack and Coke over here!” he called, then turned to take the two of us in with a sloppy grin. “Hey guys. Didn’t expect to see you still drinking, Dawn. Feel like staying up partying, huh?”

  Charlie was hovering around six and a half feet tall and easily weighed over three hundred pounds, his hear kept in a perpetual blond crew cut. He was smart and well-respected in our field, but unfortunately he was one of those guys who overestimated his own intelligence. Because he knew a lot about engineering, he assumed he knew a lot about everything. The day when he’d tried to lecture me about how evolutionary psychology had hardwired all women to love the color pink because it reminded them of the berries their gathering cavewoman ancestors picked was still burned into my mind.

  Luke’s quiet question about how many types of berry are pink when ripe had remained there, too. Every time I remembered it I had to laugh.

  “Luke and I were just talking,” I told Charlie politely.

  “Yeah?” Charlie leaned against the bar and twisted his body to fully face Luke, blocking out my view of him temporarily. “So what did you think about the ‘Developing for the Future’ panel? I thought that chick talking about how we have to make investments with an eye on current technology becoming obsolete eventually was pretty spot on.”

  “I missed that panel,” Luke said, then leaned out on his stool to look at me past Charlie’s back. “You were going to that one, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, I was on that panel.” I frowned faintly. “I was sitting next to Rebecca Ford, the ‘chick’ Charlie talked about.”

  “That was you?” Charlie shook his head before taking a drink off his Jack and Coke. “Sorry. I didn’t even notice you.”

  “Clearly,” I muttered. I was starting to shrink in on myself, feeling out of place again even while engaged in the conversation.

  “How’s the family?” Charlie asked Luke, turning away to dismiss me once again.


  Luke blinked at him. “What family?”

  “Huh? I mean...” Charlie searched his memory, frowning. I could see the moment he remembered that Luke wasn’t married and had no children. His eyes narrowed slightly, his nostrils flaring. He searched for a way out of the social misstep. “Your folks.”

  “I’m an orphan,” Luke reminded him, then offered a good-natured smile. “Sounds like you’ve been enjoying yourself at the bar, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah, guess so.” Charlie paid for his drink and offered us both a smile before wandering off again. He got a few feet away to a table where some others from the conference were sitting. I heard him shout names enthusiastically and be welcomed by a chorus of cheers.

  “Sorry.” I glanced over at Luke, frowning sympathetically. “I’d always sort of thought it was me, but I guess he has a bad habit of forgetting basic details about everyone.”

  Luke shook his head. “It’s no big deal. If I got upset every time I was reminded I’m an orphan, I’d just be a whimpering ball in a corner by now.”

  The tone was light, joking, but it made me hurt for him all the same. I couldn’t imagine not having my family. I knew from prior conversations that he had no siblings, no cousins, and all four of his grandparents had died before his parents as well. His parents had been well off, at least, and so left him a trust fund that had helped with college and getting on his feet in adulthood. It couldn’t have done much for a lonely little boy growing up without a single blood relative to turn to, though. My family had never had much money, but we had each other now and a day didn’t go by since my separation that I wasn’t grateful for that fact.

  “You know, I normally enjoy a bit of company at these conferences,” Luke said with a sly tone to his voice. “They’re good for more than just the panels.”

  I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, noting the way he was looking at me with those two-toned eyes. They made me shiver as if he had touched me.