She went down on him, pulling his hands on to her head, encouraging him to take charge as she worshipped his cock.
But he didn’t force her, instead gathering her hair in his hands and caressing her as she quickly got him up a second time and brought him over with a gasping, shuddering moan when he spilled and she lapped up every drop.
Crawling up his body, she nestled in the crook of his shoulder, half-draped across him. “Nowit’s a perfect night,” she said.
He laughed and shifted position to face her. “The most perfect ever.”
CHAPTERFORTY
BADGER
Badger spenttwo days in St. Louis combing through newspaper archives, searching cemeteries, and studying maps and real estate records.
On the third morning, he set out from his hotel several hours before dawn, driving around the neighborhood where his target house was located. The neighborhood was full of older homes on larger lots, most surrounded by fences or walls, and with gates. Over the years the real estate value of this particular zip code had gone up substantially as monied residents left the city and spread out.
Not exactly a walkable community where he could easily blend in and poke his snout around on two legs during daylight hours without attracting attention.
Figures.
A few blocks from the house he located an older shopping center, a main building with several out-parcels, some businesses open that time of morning, some closed, including a 24/7 gym that was currently busy.
He parked there, left everything locked inside the car except the key fob, and quickly made his way to a thickly wooded swale at the edge of the parking lot. There, he stripped, tucked his clothes and the key fob up in the branches of a tree, and shifted.
It only took him a few minutes to run back to the house, where he sniffed around the edges of the fence before he found a gap he could wiggle under.
They didn’t have any dogs that he could tell, and the grounds were wooded, not unkempt but like the owner wanted them left semi-wild when compared to the manicured lawns of the neighbors.
Interestin’.
He took three paces onto the property before he scented the shifter.
Gotcha.
Carefully, aware there might be motion-detector lights, he crept toward the house, listening, sniffing.
Just the one shifter then.
He also picked up faint human scents, like maybe landscapers, especially around the fence where the grass was kept trimmed about two feet from the fence.
There was a large in-ground pool just behind the house, and Badger settled into the deep cover under a thick bush to watch the back of the house for a few minutes and to search for security cameras or lights.
The occupant didn’t have their curtains drawn. Badger spotted it a few minutes later when a light came on in the kitchen. An older man appeared, walking across the Badger’s field of view in front of the window, but from the angle and brevity of the sight Badger couldn’t positively confirm his identity.
After watching for another twenty minutes, Badger moved closer to the house, skirting around the pool. The scent of the shifter was much stronger now, especially at an outside table where there was also an ashtray that smelled like cigar ashes.
He circled the house and spotted one car parked in the long, winding driveway, just outside the garage. A new Mercedes, which made sense, now that Badger had the confirmation he needed.
Aware that sunrise was fast approaching, Badger retraced his steps and beat a hasty retreat back to his clothes, shifted, dressed, and returned to the rental car without being spotted.
Well that’s that, then.
He sent a text to Peyton, who was boarding a flight back to the US in the next hour, and then looked up the dealership on his map app. He’d stop for breakfast first, then go wait for Hamish, hopefully beating him to work.
Badger had just pulled into the parking lot of a restaurant down the block from the dealership when his phone buzzed with a text from Peyton.
Proceed as you feel best. Full authority. Keep me posted.
Badger acknowledged it and then headed inside to eat.
