Moves Like Jagger (Wolf Mates Book 4) Read online

  Published 2015

  ISBN:

  Published by Book Boutiques. Copyright © Published 2015, Dakota Cassidy.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Book Boutiques.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or event is wholly coincidental. The names, characters, dialogue, and events in this book are from the author’s imagination and should not to be construed as real.

  Manufactured in the USA

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  Blurb

  The weather outside is frightful, but the romance is so delightful in Cedar Glen!

  Vivienne Hathaway is a cat shifter who's still learning about the ways of the paranormal. Sometimes she finds herself in a bit of a mess as she works out the kinks.

  Like looking out from the inside of a dog crate.

  Naked.

  And on her way to be spayed.

  EEK!

  When she meets hot bear-shifter, Jagger Dubrov and Cedar Glen's local mobile veterinarian during a catch and release program designed to thwart the population of feral cats in his new hometown, Jagger mistakenly catches Viv, and it's all out holiday magic at first sight.

  As Viv and Jagger begin a perfectly fine Christmas romance and get to know each other over eggnog and mistletoe, a problem lurks. Someone’s hunting pets and killing the wildlife in Cedar Glen, a strictly forbidden practice. And that someone? They also want Viv dead.

  Chapter 1

  Vivienne Hathaway fought to open her eyes, the foggy haze of what felt like an ugly hangover making it a struggle.

  She attempted to roll her head in order to fight off the sleepies, but her head hit something she was unable to identify that sounded strangely like metal.

  Huh.

  And on that note, why the hell couldn’t she stretch her legs and arms out?

  “Yeah, she was pretty freaked last night. Scratching and hissing, howling like I was peeling her skin right off. I ended up having to sedate her. But by the time I went to bed, she was out like a light,” a deliciously deep, buttery voice said.

  There was a pause, and then the man with the rumbly deep voice said, “Nah. It was a low dose. She’ll be fine. I put her in Scar’s cage for the night rather than take any chances she’d hurt him. Because you know Scar, he’d make Satan his BFF if he didn’t hate the heat so much. So no worries. I’ll just put the cage in the back of the van after I shower and bring her right over. Do you have the surgery suite prepped?”

  The what now? Viv’s heart pumped when she attempted to sit up, but found she was thwarted by some kind of metal, cold and pressing against almost all every area of her flesh. Damn it. Why wouldn’t her eyes open?

  “Perfect. I’ll see you in about twenty. I’d like this to be as painless as possible. I’d also like to have some flesh left on my body,” sexy-buttery-rumbly said on a pleasant chuckle.

  Using her index fingers and thumbs, Viv pried her eyes open and licked her lips. Why was her mouth so dry?

  Forcing her eyes to remain open, she fought a gasp. Not just because of her surroundings, but because she was buck naked.

  In a crate.

  A dog crate, if she wasn’t mistaken.

  How ironic that she, a domestic cat shifter, would end up caught in a sworn enemy’s crate. This was one for the books.

  She sniffed the air and ran her fingers over the fuzzy blanket beneath her backside. Yep, that was definitely the distinct scent of dog. Though, she mentally cheered her ability to even note the scent of a dog, because she sucked at sniffing out most everything else.

  The crate was sitting on top of a wide chest, as far as she could tell, giving her a good view of a rustic bedroom, which, incidentally, was quite manly. A large four-poster bed sat in the middle of the room with a mattress so large and wide, it looked like it was made for an entire NBA team.

  The thick comforter was blue, cream, and taupe, with matching square pillows; the wall behind the bed made of scarred logs. There were throw rugs on either side of the bed, covering the gleaming wood of the floor.

  Only one nightstand, which possibly meant the person who owned this manly bedroom was single. There was a book sitting on top of the nightstand’s wood surface, but she couldn’t quite make out what the title was due to the angle the book was at.

  Okay, so it was time to take some mental personal inventory before she panicked.

  A. Why are you in a dog crate, Viv?

  B. Why are you in a dog crate in what’s actually a pretty nice bedroom?

  C. What did you do last night that landed you in a dog crate?

  She didn’t have time to take stock or reflect on how she’d ended up here. She needed to get the hell out of here before Mr. Delicious Voice came in and took her to the surgery suite. She didn’t even want to know what that meant.

  Maybe some mad scientist was lurking in Cedar Glen, looking for paranormal subjects to test out his mad scientist skills. Wasn’t that how Max and Derrick and their poor family had been cursed to begin with? By some crazy scientist who’d messed with their family’s DNA back in the eighteen hundreds?

  She was, after all, now living in the country as opposed to the sort of city-like atmosphere of Hoboken. The perfect place for a lunatic to hide his laboratory. She was also living in a town made up only of other paranormals. She’d never lived in a community where people could do what she did. What if, in this community, fanatics lurked?

  When she got out of this damn crate, she was going to kill JC for ever talking her into moving to this place—no matter how scenic or how welcoming the people of Cedar Glen were about other species of shifters.

  A shiver ran along her bare arms as she allowed her vivid imagination to take hold. Pictures of her tied to some cold metal table, an overhead light flickering with an electric buzz as a man in white scrubs and a surgical mask laughed maniacally while he showed her his sharp, gleaming scalpel flitted through her head.

  Yeah. It was time to get the hell out.

  Vivienne Hathaway was good in emergency situations. Okay, that was mostly when it came to the animals she rescued, but whatever. She could do this.

  Shaking off the haze of her sedation, Viv took a deep breath and attempted to reach forward in the crate to slide the latch. Not a snowball’s chance in Hell was she going to be able to relax enough to shift. Not that it would help her anyway—cats didn’t have fingers.

  The dog crated in this cage was big, but not quite as big as a human being—even a short one like her—making getting past her knees to the sliding latch almost impossible.

  Attempting to make herself as small as she could, Viv pulled her knees to her chest, took a deep breath, and hooked her hands around her ankles.

  “Woof.”

  Viv froze as a cold nose pressed to her arm and sniffed. Her nostrils flared as she tried to turn her head enough to see what she was dealing with. This must be whose crate she was occupying.

  “Woof.” The dog made another Eeyore-ish attempt at sounding out a greeting.

  “Go away!” she hissed, gripping the side of the crate she flapped her fingers at him through the hole.

  “Woof, woof, woof,” the dog barked again, still slow, lazy emissions, but with a bit more attitude.

  Viv winced, fighting the ache in her belly—which was unused to any sort of exercise, let alone this crazy, pretzel-like pose.

  “Shhh, buddy! Can’t you see I’m trying to get out of he
re unnoticed? Now go away. Go chase a squirrel, steal a steak. Sit. Lay down. Quiet. Go—shoo!”

  His tongue swiped out and licked her arm, making her jump.

  It was obvious she wasn’t going to be able to unlock the crate herself; she couldn’t get her knees far enough out of the way.

  The dog sniffed at her, his wet nose exploring her arm with snorts and grunts. She managed to turn her head enough to the left to take stock of her new friend—a bulldog. An enormous bulldog, white and tan with a jutting lower jaw and two scraggly teeth pushing upward toward his flat nose.

  Even in her heightened state of anxiety, Viv couldn’t help but smile. He was precious in the most squishy-faced of ways. She loved animals—all of them—even ones whose owners were mad scientists.

  The dog sat back on his haunches, looking up at her. “Is this your bed, pal? Am I squatting in your special place?” she whispered.

  He cocked his head at her in question. Obviously he wasn’t a shifter. Or was he, and she just couldn’t smell him?

  As she assessed her predicament and the various means to an exit, she discovered there was only one way out.

  There was no other choice but to tip herself over and hope she could manage to jar this latch loose when she hit the floor. She’d figure the rest out when she got free. Like, how she was going to fight her way out of here if the mad scientist caught her trying to escape when he was done showering.

  Using the bottoms of her feet for leverage, Viv began to lurch forward in the crate, rocking it until it sat at the edge of the chest, teetering.

  The dog didn’t appear to mind either; rather, he watched in quiet fascination, occasionally cocking his head as she worked up a sweat.

  “I know, I know,” she mumbled on a huff of exertion. “You probably think I’m a lunatic, but I’m not the nut your owner is, with his surgery suites and pointy objects. Maybe—if I can get out of here, that is—you should come home with me before he turns you in as his project for the science fair. I have six cats. They’ll love you like you’re one of their own. Promise. Now look out below, buddy.”

  Slipping her fingers between the crate’s bars to get a good grip, she used her arms now, rocking, rocking until—timber!

  She fell face first toward the floor, hitting it with a rattle of metal and biting the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out.

  The bad news? The cage landed on its side and the latch at her feet remained locked.

  Damn.

  She fought a groan at all the racket she’d made and her sore limbs as the dog came over to inspect. He let out a low woof again then sighed, sitting back once more and watching with lethargic eyes.

  Now on her side, Viv moaned to him. “I know. I get it. Failure to launch and all. I also know, technically, we’re a species of animals known for warring. But I love dogs, and I like to think of myself as very loveable. So I’m going to ask one little favor. Go keep your master busy, would you? I need a distracti—”

  “Scar?” that grumbly-deep voice called out, followed by heavy footsteps coming her way.

  Shit!

  Viv began to kick at the door of the crate in panic, using all her strength to try to break the latch.

  “Aw, hell!” sexy-smexy voice yelled. “Hold on!”

  As the voice came into full view, towering over the crate, she looked up to find one of the largest men she’d ever seen. Easily he was six-five.

  Yowza, he was good-looking. Dark and brawny, with ruddy skin, hands that would easily palm a basketball, thick thighs in a pair of black jeans, tapered waist, and coal-black eyes full of genuine shock.

  Damn. Wasn’t it just her luck that this gorgeous man was a raving lunatic? Why couldn’t the hot guys just be normal? Either they were far too into themselves to care much about anything other than vagina, or they lacked a brain, or they were nutjob mad scientists.

  His eyes were wide when he asked, “You’re a shifter?”

  “You’re a mad scientist?”

  “A what?”

  Viv rolled her eyes, panic settling in her belly. “Oh, please. I heard you on the phone, talking about your operating suite. I know what you want to do to me, you crazypants! But I’m here to tell you, I won’t go down without a fight, buddy! I’m small, but I’m scrappy. Also, people will miss me. They’ll come looking for me—like my friend JC. She won’t rest until she finds me and when she finds out about you, she’ll sic her husband Max on you. He’s a ferocious—” She stopped short.

  He’d asked if she was a shifter. But that didn’t mean he was one, or even that he knew everyone else in town was, too. She wasn’t going to risk exposing the people of Cedar Glen to cover her own butt.

  “Max Adams? The were?” he asked affably as he stretched out on his stomach and put his chin in the palm of his hand in order to see her better, yet respectfully keeping his eyes on her face.

  Her eyes narrowed as she looked into his, still unsure how he’d come upon this information.

  She decided to feign innocence. “The what?”

  “We’re talking in circles.”

  “This is awkward.”

  He grinned, and damn, it was amazing on a man who was so burly he made her cramped knees buttery. “Yeah. Tell me about it. Me fully dressed and you…well, not dressed at all. The least you could have done was put some clothes on. We hardly know each other.”

  Her eyebrow rose as the metal of the crate dug into her cheek. “Who are you?”

  “Jagger Dubrov. Cedar Glen’s new mobile veterinarian. Who are you?”

  “Naked—I mean, Vivienne Hathaway. Cedar Glen’s newest cash-poor resident.”

  “JC’s best friend?”

  “How do you know JC?”

  “She’s married to Max and we play pool together sometimes at his brother Derrick’s bar. She said you’d moved here to be closer to people who are like you.”

  Well that. But mostly because her trust fund had been embezzled and she’d had nowhere else to go when her apartment building had gone into foreclosure, but whatever.

  “People like me?” She feigned more innocence.

  If JC and her husband’s family had taught her nothing else, they’d taught her discretion, and while this Jagger smelled delicious, she didn’t know if that was delicious man or delicious deranged. She still couldn’t pinpoint species with her nose very well.

  But give her the scent of a can of tuna opening from five miles away, and she was a superstar.

  Jagger swished his finger, his deep eyes sparkling. “We’re doing the circle again. You’re a shifter, obviously. I put a cat in the cage and woke up to a beautiful woman.”

  She fought a smile. He thought she was beautiful. She’d twirl her hair if she could lift her arm.

  Then she wondered what kind of shifter he was. Cedar Glen was made up primarily of werewolves, and, judging by the size of him, he fit the bill.

  “Are you a shifter, too?”

  “Yep,” he said on another grin that stole her breath.

  “So not a mad scientist?”

  “Nope. Just part of the catch-and-release program we’ve begun here in Cedar Glen. You know, I humanely trap feral cats, spay or neuter them, then return them to their colonies.”

  He liked animals. Dreamy.

  You’re naked—nightmare.

  That was when it all came back to her. She’d been practicing shifting and running in the wooded areas surrounding Cedar Glen, the urge to shift overwhelming when living amongst people like herself. But it was the safety of Cedar Glen and its paranormal inhabitants that made it such a huge draw to someone like herself, who’d had very little practice shifting.

  Shifting wasn’t easy in a populated place like Hoboken, and she didn’t know many of her particular kind to begin with in order to learn. She’d always done it in secret.

  So last night, after she’d moved into the guesthouse at JC and Max’s, she’d decided to explore her new home and the next thing she knew, she was caught in a cage. The rest was a bit of a
blur. Though, she was beginning to remember putting up quite a fight.

  Then his good intentions with the catch-and-release program dawned on her. Holy moly, she’d just missed being spayed.

  But it made her breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe not so mad scientist after all. “So you were going to spay me? That’s what the surgical suite was about?”

  Jagger grimaced, his luscious lips thinning. “Yeah. Damn good thing you shifted. I was just about to take you over to the clinic in town that I share with the local MD. Can’t believe I didn’t smell you as a shifter. Sorry about that.”

  Viv shuddered. She had to figure out this shift thing and get it right at least half the time or she was going to end up mounted as part of some crazy cat lady’s collection.

  “I need clothes.”

  He chuckled. “I guess that depends on who you’re asking.”

  She fought a flirty snicker. “I really need clothes.”

  “You sure do. You can borrow something of mine, if you’d like.”

  Viv pointed toward her feet, to the latch on the door. “Would you mind?”

  “Damn. Sorry. You bet.” He used a long finger to slide the latch over. “You get yourself out of there, I’ll go find you something to wear and take you home. That work? Or would you rather I call JC? Me being an alleged mad scientist and all.”

  She found herself smiling even though she was naked. Not a mad scientist who wanted to play lab rat with her, super-duper hot, liked animals, and was willing to give her a ride home?

  Um, yes, please.

  But she played it cool—because well, naked.

  “No. Don’t bother JC. She’s probably busy at the new salon. I’ll take you up on that ride, though, if you don’t mind.”

  Jagger smiled at her again, still keeping his eyes on her face. “Done deal. You can use my bathrobe for the moment. Just gimme a shout and let me know when it’s safe to come back in.”

  Viv watched him and his hunky ass as they exited his bedroom and flushed all shades of red.

  As she managed to push her way out of the cage, un-crimping her muscles one by one, she looked at Scar, who looked back at her with expressive, sad eyes. “You could have told me he wasn’t a mad scientist looking for his next subject, you know. You might have also mentioned he was hot times infinity.”