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either.”
    “Bullshit,” he whispered. “Those people down there care about you. Trust me. I’ve been warned not to mess with you.”
    She slipped both arms around his neck with a soft sigh. “Tell me you’re not going to let that stop you.”
    He shouldn’t kiss her. A decent man wouldn’t, not when she was spinning out of control. Her body trembled under his fingers, so much of her strength stripped away by the emotional blows of the day.
    He shouldn’t kiss her, but he did, sliding his fingers into her careful hairdo with enough force to dislodge it. But the kiss—gentle. Soft. He licked her lower lip, tasted her like he’d imagined a thousand times before, and wondered if there was a hell dark enough for him.
    “Don’t think,” she whispered, tilted her head and fused her open mouth to his.
    Still so wrong, but he fell into her anyway, sliding one hand down to her ass to lift her against him as he bit her lip. Her moan disappeared into his mouth, swallowed along with the taste of her, and her trembling intensified.
    Then Anna’s fingers bit into his shoulders through his shirt, and she turned her face, breaking the kiss. “The stairs—”
    He caught the sound a second later, footsteps tromping up the stairs so loudly the noise had to be deliberate. Wincing, Patrick lowered her and hoped like hell the darkness was heavy enough to hide his hard-on.
    Not that it would hide Anna’s disheveled hair. He smoothed one strand back into place as the door pushed open, revealing Alec Jacobson, his eyes tight with stress and worry. “You two have a second?”
    The top of Anna’s strapless dress had twisted just enough to reveal an edging of flesh-colored lace. She tugged it back into place. “What is it?”
    When the wolf didn’t crack a joke about the two of them making out like teenagers on the roof, Patrick knew they were in trouble. Instead, Alec exhaled sharply. “I got a call this morning, but I wanted to get Julio out of here before I said anything. There’s trouble on the Southwest council.”
    Anna nudged the broken whiskey bottle with the toe of one satin sandal. “Most people would consider that Jorge Ochoa’s problem.”
    “That was my first instinct. Then I talked to my younger brother.” The already tense set of Alec’s shoulders tightened. “Wolves have been going missing across the southwest region for a while now. I guess it just didn’t make a dent in the council until Ochoa’s son disappeared.”
    “Goddamn, motherfucking—” Anna sucked in a breath. “If the investigative stuff you were talking to me about is going to involve a lot of stupid political dancing, you can shove it up your ass, Jacobson.”
    Alec huffed. “If it was about politics, I’d have sent Julio, honeymoon or no. But if wolves are disappearing in the next state over, I don’t get to ignore it. Especially if Ochoa’s too busy grieving to take care of the problem without getting humans involved.”
    She lifted a challenging gaze to meet Alec’s, though she jerked her head toward Patrick. “It’s up to him. If he says we go, we go.”
    It caught him off guard, and Patrick blinked. Alec was doing the same thing, and it was a good thing he didn’t have an easily wounded ego, because the expression on the wolf’s face was picture-perfect shock.
    Alec continued to stare at him, and Patrick felt compelled to point out his qualifications. “I do this for a living. For money, which is the operative word. Investigations like this don’t come cheap. Informants need to be paid and officials need to be bribed.”
    “I know.” Alec reached into his jacket, pulled out a folded piece of paper and looked at Anna. “This isn’t simple politics. Oscar Ochoa just got engaged to my baby sister.”
    “Emily? And you didn’t rip his…” Anna trailed off and groaned. “I get it. We have to find Oscar or his body before his daddy does, or maybe Jorge will think you made his kid disappear.”
    With Oscar Ochoa’s