Beast Denied Read Online Free PDF Page B

pursed her lips as if thinking it through. The expectation on Talia’s face called for at least the pretense of consideration. “He’s a friend,” she said, deciding the truth was always best. “He’s also extremely good in bed. Two pretty good reasons to have sex with the man.”
    She thought back to the previous evening and her lucky escape from the clutches of those two Neanderthals.
    “You don’t want anything else?”
    “No.” Because Talia’s reporter instincts were sharper than any other human she’d known, heightened even further after mating with a shifter, Naomi quickly glossed over her sharp response. “Shifter males like to push their weight around too much. While Nathan is no exception, he doesn’t want or expect anything but casual sex. Suits me, and him, just fine.”
    “But you must want to settle down sometime. Build a home with someone. Start a family.”
    She tempered her response this time, taking steady breaths to relax her squeezing heart. “Not in the cards for me. It’s not what I want.” It was not what any of the males around here would want either. Not if they knew the truth about her. None of them would come within spitting distance. Especially not Tynan. “All I want is to be a good doctor. My career’s important to me.”
    “My career’s important to me too. Caleb eventually came to understand that.”
    “Only because you can twist him around your little finger.”
    “That’s a work in progress. He’s still the most arrogant, overbearing and…” she gave a long heartfelt sigh, “…incredibly sexy man I’ve ever known.”
    Naomi smiled, thinking how pertinent that description was when applied to Tynan. Because the whole conversation was making her feel wretched and despondent, she shrugged into her coat, reminding herself that at some stage she’d need to get her best coat back from the hotel.
    “Come on,” she said, hooking her arm through Talia’s. “That drink is calling my name.”

Chapter Three
    “Two goons were sniffing around Naomi last night.”
    While Tynan waited for his leader to digest the information, he hoped his own anger would abate and allow him to start thinking straight again. He and Nathan had initially agreed to avoid telling Caleb about their concerns, deciding to wait until they had more concrete information. But that was before they had spoken with the desk clerk at Seth’s hotel.
    Now, standing with Nathan in Caleb’s office while they apprised their leader of the situation, Tynan knew they’d made the right decision.
    “What do you mean?” Caleb asked stiffly, his large frame looming over his desk. “Sniffing around her?”
    Naomi wouldn’t appreciate having her business discussed and dissected, but there was really no choice. And what they discussed would go no further than this room. Trust didn’t come stronger than the kind shared by the three of them.
    “She hooked up with them last night,” Tynan explained, sinking down into a chair when fresh fear for what might have happened to her rushed through him again. “Humans. Ran into her hurrying out of Seth’s place like the devil was on her tail.”
    “What happened?”
    “Hard to say. She’s as tight-lipped as hell. Kept insisting she could handle herself.”
    Thinking back to his conversation with Naomi, Tynan couldn’t stop the way his heart thumped. He’d bet she wouldn’t have given the same response had it been Nathan or Caleb there last night instead of him, and he tried to tamp down the irrational fear that it was because she viewed him as less than a man because of his accident. That was his shit to deal with.
    While he was a first born, a member of the Council of Principals, he was no longer a warrior. He wasn’t included when and if the first-born sons were called away to defend and protect other shifters, other packs. Damn it, he hadn’t been there when Caleb had led the warriors to defend a pack in South America overrun by radicals. He hadn’t been