He didn’t fall off.
It was a tall bike, but she handled it ably on the desert caliche and once on the road, shifted smooth and fast up to speed. Good thing, that smoothness—the back suspension wasn’t adjusted for his weight, and it wallowed.
They managed the turn onto Houghton; he clamped his hands at her hips and lurched into her back. He sent her across the bridge to the access road and south, staying off the highway. They cruised down along the Pantano wash, and then onto the little side roads toward Pisto Hill and towering Rincon Peak. The developments fell away and turned into worn, distant homes, baked dry in the sun over the years. A country store and post office, a small farm supplies store, a mom-‘n’-pop grocery…
Nick didn’t truly see any of them, sidetracked by the tremendous effort of staying upright on the motorcycle, of hanging on. And his dimmed and fuzzy senses were otherwise full.
Of her. Jet. The scent of her, swirling around them with the billowing dust, settling into his pores. More wolf than anything he knew, the scent of fresh clean wild and honest effort and some edgy unknown element that came through as pure Jet.
Then again, that was the problem, wasn’t it? More wolf than anything he knew. Because far too much about her didn’t mesh with Sentinel blood. Not the scent, not the way she’d changed, not the way she spoke.
Not the way she worked with Gausto.
And here I am, bringing her home. Lurching and slumping against her until the strong, athletic lines of her body became familiar—until his hands took for granted what they would find when he adjusted his grip, and yet still that shape—the flex and stretch of steady muscle as she handled the tall bike, the neat curve of her ribs and the quiet tuck of her waist, the swell of her hips and the push of a gorgeously rounded ass against his thighs—made him greedy for more.
Dumb bastard. She’d poisoned him. She’d left him helpless for Gausto.
And then she pulled me out of there. Saved his wolf hide.
Dammit, I can’t think. He leaned his forehead against her shoulder, let it settle there.
Eventually, he realized they’d stopped again—that she needed direction. “Little,” he told her. “Adobe…Beagles.”
She turned her head; her voice came muffled by her helmet, full-face sport helmet in stark red and white against black. “I don’t understand.”
But Nick wasn’t going to be much help. The best he could do, as he slid down against her back and tipped off the bike, was not take her with him.
Jet stared at him, oddly bereft without the sensation of lean, hard muscle pressing up against her, the warmth of his hands at her waist. He sprawled in the dirt at the side of the road—gritty pale sand scattered over caliche, full of rock and dryness and surrounded by all things spiny. An ocotillo soared above him, its thin, spindly arms offering no shade; a cactus wren churred nearby and flittered away.
Her hand slipped the clutch; the bike stalled out. Silence settled around her, until the sound of her own breathing within the helmet magnified, filling her mind with a surreal susurrus of white noise.
She’d never been out on her own before in the human world. Entirely on her own. Not on an assignment with carefully learned routes, not accompanied in the Tortolita foothills while learning to ride the bike. Not accompanied by Gausto out on training runs on the street. No one looking, literally, over her shoulder.
It was simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.
And what of Nick Carter? Did it even matter?
Oh, yes. That answer came swiftly and inexplicably. It didn’t particularly make sense, not with so much inner drive to simply start this bike and step it swiftly through to sixth gear, heading out to some wild place where she could change to wolf and gather herself to save her pack.
But, oh, it mattered. Sitting here in the silence at the side of an ill-defined desert road…she was just as fettered as ever, this time by the sight of Nick Carter, sprawled ungainly in the dirt. A scant breeze stirred his hair, ruffled by wind and dampened by sweat here in this dry climate where the air sucked away perspiration before it ever had a chance to soak anything.
Sick. Damaged by the amulet, in spite of Gausto’s assurances. Not likely to survive out here in the open.
Run. Oh, run. Do it now. The instinct spoke strong in her—spoke smart.
Jet lifted her head, gazing around the foothills—the fingerlike extensions of raised earth, extending every which way—some low and long, some sharp and high. Here, in this spot, she saw no houses, no buildings. No humans at all. A power line in the distance; a windmill pulling a slow turn in another direction, a barely visible stock tank beneath it. Run, Jet. Do it now.
Jet started the bike, and her hands on the clutch and throttle felt like someone else’s—so fundamentally wrong, neat fingers and trimmed nails folding gracefully around the clutch lever on one side, the throttle and brake lever on the other.
And, as though they were someone else’s, they throttled the bike up and forward, feathered the clutch to a release point, and sent her off down the road.
Chapter 5
Marlee knew better than to carry the viral thumbnail drive around with her. Even flush from success, with Nick Carter’s machine simmering in viral malfunction and his phone redirected to the prepaid cell currently in her pocket, she wouldn’t be an overconfident fool. She jammed a screwdriver through the thing and dumped it down the incinerator shaft, and then she got an iced tea from the vending machine on her way back to her own floor and her own cubicle. In her mind she practiced just the right disdainful tone to use with Gausto when she let him know it was done.
Of course, she’d wipe the virus and reverse the phone forwarding after today—it was all the time she would have given Gausto even if he’d wanted more, and he hadn’t. Just one afternoon…a distraction. Big deal. Phoenix APS could cause them more trouble than that with a slow response to a service outage.
Besides, it very much suited her. After everyone else failed, Marlee Cerrosa would be the one to restore Carter’s computer. The hero. And if all went according to plan, no one would even catch on to what she’d done with the phone.
In fact, as she jogged down the stairs to her floor, her cell phone trilled the special ring she’d assigned to the forwarded calls—bypassing Carter’s admin, who could still call out but might well go hours before even wondering why there hadn’t been incoming calls, especially with Carter out of the building.
She tucked herself off to the side, turning toward the wall to keep her voice from echoing up the stairwell—even if it was carpeted to keep echoing noise from hammering against sensitive Sentinel ears. “Nick Carter’s office.”
Just that easy. Marlee breezily told the caller that her boss was out of the office, and then she took a message.
She was grinning when she exited out into the stairwell. So she wasn’t as strong as these Sentinels, and she didn’t have the special skills and senses they shared. She was still strong enough. Skilled enough. Human enough.
The grin faded right off her face when she rounded the corner and found a whole little pack of them in the hallway. Lyn Maines and Joe Ryan, from earlier in the day, nodding a greeting without breaking off their conversation. And oh, crap, was that Treviño? The last Sentinel she wanted to see, this hard man who took the jaguar. He hadn’t softened a bit since Meghan Lawrence had snared him—she who had been raised without Sentinel training and had her own very human ways of dealing with things.
There’d been talk, of course. And Marlee made no apologies for listening. She’d known, long before she hit true Sentinel training, that these thickly blooded shapeshifters needed to be watched.
She just hadn’t realized she didn’t have to be alone in it.
So she knew of Dolan’s history, his grudge against the Sentinels, his barely tolerated independence in the southern-most Southwest territory. He’d also not been to brevis for years…until recently. Marlee had to stop herself from scowling at him. Why now?
Meghan stood
beside him—pure lean cowgirl in worn, hard-worked jeans and boots and a rolled-sleeved flannel shirt over a snug tank top—her features a bit sharp and her eyes faintly tipped up at the outside, coyote eyes in shape if not in color. No one, Marlee thought, should be that comfortable standing next to Dolan Treviño.
And there was Annorah, come out of her communications shell. Annorah, Marlee could admire. Envy, even, for her vast skill, uncoupled with physical prowess as it was. But not trust. Not when she’d worked with the others so closely, even if she was still atoning for her misjudgment in her first and last field assignment.
The final member of their little group, she’d been watching. Maks, who took the tiger. He was big; he was quiet. He’d been badly hurt in Flagstaff, and he hadn’t quite been released from care. Why he didn’t bear a grudge against Joe Ryan, Marlee couldn’t figure.
With Marlee hesitating on the edge of them, Meghan said, “It won’t be long, Maks. You look so much better than the last time.”
Treviño snorted. “You mean back when his eyes were still crossed?”
Maks muttered something Marlee couldn’t hear, but it was short and sweet and emphatic, and it made Ryan snort in laughter.
“A happy ending is nice when you can get it,” Lyn pointed out, not nearly as relaxed as the rest of them—as if she ever was. “Even Michael is recovering, and I honestly thought Shea was dead. But Nick—”
Meghan ran a hand over the wall beside her. Never just a simple gesture, with Meghan Lawrence—she was always reading the wards around her, soaking them in and sorting them out. “Do you really think…?”
Ryan shook his head. “He’s been out of contact for a couple of hours, that’s all.”
Completely? That startled Marlee; she wondered what Gausto had done to Carter’s cell phone. And why hadn’t Annorah been able to reach him?
Ryan added, “But it’s time to find him.”
Treviño shifted, impatience on his face. “Dane doesn’t need to get wind of this.”
The consul. Not a man many people saw; not a man considered at the top of his game. Not anymore. Ryan agreed, apparently. He snorted, no amusement at all this time. “Not Dane, not his people.”
“I think it’s already beyond that,” said Annorah, a plump woman who moved with strength and assurance. “I don’t think you’re getting it. I haven’t been able to reach him at all. There’s only two ways that happens—one is if he’s been closed off somehow. The other is if he’s…” She hesitated, looked uncomfortable, and said it anyway. “Dead.”
Meghan frowned. “What if he’s sleeping?”
“Then I still get a sense of him. He can shield me out, too—not many can, but he’s got the way of it. But I can still sense him.”
Marlee said, without really planning on it, “I bet he’s just caught up in that dog show.”
As one, they turned to her. Oh, crap. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just…well, I need to get through, and I got caught up in your conversation.”
“No problem,” Ryan said, so laid back that she floundered a little. Had she been wrong—? Then again, he had that reputation: laid back, easy to take lightly…until it was too late. That new scar…a cogent reminder. Now he added, “You’re not worried?”
She found a smile, offered it up. “The thought that Nick Carter can’t take care of himself at a dog show…” She shrugged. “Nick is good at what he does. It’s not convenient, having him out of touch like this, but he’ll be back soon and we’ll figure it out.”
Meghan shared her smile. “It’s hard to imagine things going wrong on quick check into disappearing dogs.”
“He thought the disappearances might be tied to bigger things,” Annorah said, a bit sharply—defensively. Had a crush on her boss, did she?
It was then that Marlee realized she was reveling in the moment. Tense at the prospect of being caught, yes. Anxious to make sure she walked the line she’d set for herself without crossing it, yes. But she also knew more than they did—if not the exact nature of Carter’s disrupted communications, she at least knew who was behind them. She knew that there were parts of it they hadn’t even discovered yet, and weren’t likely to discover. And she knew it would be over when she removed the virus—half a day of disruption.
She knew all those things, and it made all the difference in the world. Didn’t it?
“Back to work,” she said. “But it’d be great if someone lets me know when you hear from him.”
“You know,” Meghan said, her words drawn out with the pondering of it, “I’m thinking that it’s a good day for a dog show.”
Marlee wondered at the relief she felt.
Maybe not so complacent after all.
Can’t be good.
Dry, hot ground dusting close by his face, full of sharp desert scent. The sun beating on his chest, his legs…his shoulder grinding into hard, gritty caliche. Can’t be good.
Could be hours before anyone found him here. Longer.
He tried to consider the amulet, to consider Jet, to understand how the one was tied to the other, and to pull together what little he knew. She’d been with Gausto. Now she was on the run. She had answers that he needed.
He couldn’t trust her for a moment.
He had no idea what she really was.
And he wished like hell she would get her ass back here so he could find out.
But since she was running, and since no one would find him here, and since his Sentinels had to be warned that Gausto was making some sort of move…
This time, he really did roll over.
And found himself staring at a pair of black leather lace-ons, soft slipperlike shoes over sturdy, well-arched feet that would have been happier barefoot.
“I found it,” Jet said. “Little adobe Beagles. Maybe.”
He hadn’t heard her bike. He looked for it, dull and thick and slow to think.
“I left it there,” she told him. “You would fall. So we walk.” She stepped back to look at him, hands on hips, head cocked…frowning. “Or I carry you.”
And she did.
Jet rubbed her feet. These shoes hadn’t been meant for walking alongside a desert road, and they definitely hadn’t been meant for carrying a man over her shoulders across that same terrain.
Gausto’s men had thought her freakishly strong, like the Sentinels they hated so much. She thought herself no more than what was necessary to survive.
And now she had no way to get inside that small adobe house, which was nothing like Gausto’s ostentatious residence. More welcoming; more lived-in. A human den. She took Nick through the side yard gate instead, trailing a hand over the fence coyote rollers and taking note of the small tricolored and red-patched hounds who gave her instant berth, circling at a distance with their noses lifted to scent the air—hanging ears, bright eyes, tentatively wagging tails, brows wrinkled in worry…but seeing her. Knowing her. Not daring to bark at her.
She lowered him from her shoulder-carry into a patio lounger and stepped back to look around, finding the back door—steel security screening with a geometric design that couldn’t hide its stout purpose. Locked.
No matter. He was in the shade. And there was water. Jet had already dumped her jacket and her helmet in the front drive; now, after a thoughtful glance at the dog water buckets, she stripped her shirt off, bundled it up, and dunked it.
She carried it back to Nick Carter, letting it drip all over his face…letting it trickle into his mouth. The flush on his face highlighted the hard line of his cheek and the echo of it in his jaw; even in the shade, the strong light of the desert day brought out the silver scattered on his eyebrows, made the silver hoarfrost of his hair shine bright.
She pulled his shirt up, became impatient with the inconvenience of buttons, and ripped it aside so she could sit on the edge of the lounger, spreading water over his chest. Goose bumps rose on his skin, tightening his nipples and raising the hair, more silver than black, that grew crisply across his chest.
She thought, then, of their desert romp. She closed her eyes and felt it—the connection they’d forged out among the cactus and creosote, the wolf in them driving past human concerns and human interference. Deep and pure and as strong as any instinct…stronger than any rational understanding. It had resonated in her then; it tingled in her now.
Jet shivered. She looked down at herself in surprise, at her own tight skin, and then out at the hot sunny yard. By no means was she cool enough to be chilled…and this feeling was far from it. No, this feeling was hot and vaguely uncomfortable and seeking—wanting. On its own, her wet hand drew down along her body, from collarbone past the thin material of her bra and across her stomach—hard and toned, and yet somehow softer than his.
With no more thought than that, she trailed fingers down his torso, feeling the smoothness, the hard strength beneath…the texture of the crisp hair and distinct flutter of his skin beneath her touch. She lingered at his collarbone, following the curve to his shoulder and arm—so different from her own.
She had examined her body often enough, those first days. Looking down at herself, or in the mirror Gausto provided. Never had it looked quite as it did now, simply for being in contrast with his. A sweeping curve of waist, a lean flare of hip; her muscles, while just as hard as his, ran sleeker beneath the skin. Her hair stayed fine and downy soft, nearly invisible in most places. Not at her crotch, which had surprised her at first. Not on her head.
She frowned at her breasts, now—even beneath the one-piece hosiery bra, they looked different to her. Fuller, tighter, nipples distinct beneath silky material. They felt different—hot and heavy and aching. She crossed her arms, cupping herself with protective uncertainty. Trying to ease herself. Being held…
Yes, she wanted that.
And she wanted…
She didn’t know.
And, too, she did. She needed, she wanted, her body demanded. She felt hot in places she’d only considered with matter-of-fact practicality until this moment. She wanted to touch herself; she wanted to touch this man before her. She put a hand on his damp skin, above his waistband where his abdomen hollowed out as he breathed.
Sentinels: Wolf Hunt Page 5
