Black Market Bear (A BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (Genesis Valley Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

he asked me to go to a couple of places and look into his disappearance.”
    “Mmm,” she replied. “And you’re a…bear shifter?”
    He smiled. “And your name is?” he said in response, ignoring her question.
    “Bear, wolf, whatever. No matter,” she said, pushing her glasses back up her nose as she all but examined him.
    Ajax laughed. “Oh come on now, Miss Jones. Please, don’t make me call you that constantly. A first name isn’t going to divulge any more about you.”
    She hesitated, thinking something over internally, before she finally answered. “Arianna.”
    “Arianna,” he repeated slowly, letting it roll off his tongue.
    “Don’t say it like that,” she said firmly.
    He frowned. “Like what?”
    “Like that. You know, slowly and softly like.”
    Ajax looked around the shop, trying to understand what she meant. “Okay,” he said at last, admitting defeat. He hadn’t meant anything by repeating her name, but if it made her uncomfortable, he could humor her. “So, you’re done work now?” he asked instead of any of the number of other things he wished to ask.
    She nodded, taking another sip of her coffee. “Yeah.”
    “But you weren’t at work when we met earlier?”
    “No,” she said, finishing her donut.
    He sighed. “So what, exactly, were you doing there then?” he prompted when Arianna declined to go into detail.
    “Following up a lead.”
    Ajax waited for her to say more, but nothing came. He worked his jaw, trying to keep his temper down and remain calm.
    “Why are you so reluctant to give me any details unless I all but pry them from you?” he asked, changing tactics.
    Arianna looked at him for a moment, then her eyes focused out the window, canvassing the neighborhood. He thought about asking again, wondering if she had just ignored him. But before he could, her attention swiveled back to focus on him again.
    “When you grow up around here,” she said with a wave of her hand out the window, “you quickly learn not to trust anyone, and that information can be a priceless thing.” Her ponytail swished with the movement, drawing his attention away as she readjusted her glasses.
    “Does that ever get annoying?” he asked, motioning to her glasses. They had to be a size too big, which was why they kept falling down.
    “A little,” she admitted sheepishly. “But I can’t afford a smaller size.”
    “Ah.” He wasn’t sure what else to say, so he went back to the original topic. “So work, not work?” he prodded.
    Arianna exhaled loudly. “Right. I was on my lunch break.”
    “What exactly is it that you do?” he was still confused over the whole thing. Was she a friend of Benjamin, or...?
    “I work for a website devoted to exposing the things the government doesn’t want you to know actually happened, or that they want you to think someone else caused, when it was actually them.”
    “I see,” he said slowly. “So you’re a conspiracy theorist?”
    She shrugged.
    “What is the theory about Benjamin?” he asked, his eyes watching as she tightened her ponytail.
    “Mine, or my boss’s?” she grumped.
    “Yours,” he said gently. “You’re the one that seemed to care.”
    “My boss doesn’t think it’s anything,” she explained. “That’s why I wasn’t supposed to be there, and why I had to take off on you in a rush. What I think happened is that he was abducted, taken, whatever you want to call it.”
    “By whom?” Ajax wanted to be surprised, but the way Valen had approached him about this, he wasn’t.
    “An organization. I don’t know if they’re government or independent—that one’s still up in the air. But in my line of work, I hear a lot of wacky stuff,” she said with an exasperation that told him she didn’t want to go into it. “Lately I’ve been hearing several rumors of a new group targeting a specific segment.”
    “What segment is that?” he asked lazily, beginning to feel like he had gotten himself into some sort of