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From what Roman could recall, he’d been slammed into the wall by Paris’s powerful tongue.
Definitely a Type III Class B Exemplar, he thought as he tried to steady his vision, the taste of blood at the back of his throat. Maybe a Type II...
He was belly down on his living room floor, hogtied, his lower back and chest screaming with pain. Paris sat before him in her blouse and pencil skirt, one leg crossed over the other as she looked through a small notebook.
“Good, I’m glad you could join me.”
“You’re an exemplar...” he spat, feeling the strain from his muscles pulling tight across his chest.
She snapped her small notebook shut. “What gave it away? Was it my tongue?” she asked, licking her lips. Paris squatted before him. “I really should have killed you. Not that there aren’t people willing and ready to take your place. But that’s what shifters are for. It’s too bad we couldn’t have at least finished what we started.”
“Who said we can’t?” Roman asked, doubling down. When it came to deceit or trying to get his way, Roman always doubled down.
Paris raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re serious?”
“Why the fuck not?” he asked, ignoring the strain in his muscles. “If you’re going to kill me, I’d at least like to go out with a bang, and by ‘bang’ I mean...”
A smirk formed on Paris’s face. She dropped her hand to his side and slowly stroked her fingers down the muscles on his arm, to his waist and then to his nude hip. From there, she traced her fingers along a vein that pumped blood to his penis, and flicked his growing erection.
“Nope, that’s not what I came here for.” She stood. “I have two options for you: One, I kill you and we replace you with a shifter.”
“They’ll know,” Roman barked. “We do checks for that.”
“Not to worry. We have a new way to replace you with a shifter, and it’s quite painful.”
“Damn.”
“Two, you become my informant on the inside. The Western Provinces have questions about Centralian immigration.”
Roman tried to contain the look of realization on his face. She’s a Western Province spy.
“You answer these questions, collect data, and provide it to me. I may also need you for other matters, such as a future processing concern I have. Do a really good job, and I just may find the time to finish what we started earlier, with or without my tongue, if you get my drift.”
Roman swallowed hard. He’d never been loyal to the state, and while he may have worked for Centralian immigration, he treated it just as he would any other day job.
No, Roman had loyalty to one person, and one person only—his dark secret something only a few people would ever know.
“Fine,” he told Paris. “What information do you need?”
