Enemy Mine

by Barbara J. Hancock

  And he seemed to be threatening her with her own desires.

  She had embraced the challenge of catching Walker. She had been in the right place at the right time with the exact shade of hair he seemed to prefer when the assignment had been handed out. But embracing the challenge and enjoying the opportunity to use the chemistry that flared between them to catch him…that was entirely different than willingly falling into his arms once they were alone.

  “I don’t play with prisoners,” Julia stated, firm and no nonsense, and as much for her benefit as for his.

  She drew in a sudden gulp of air when he rose from his haunches to lean over her. She held her breath as he placed a strong arm on either side of her body, bracing his palms against the trunk on which she sat. She was warmly, strongly, firmly, caught and held into place as he brought his face close to hers.

  “Fortunately for you, I do.” He no longer threatened. It was a promise. The wash of his slight accent flowed over her, sultry and sweet.

  A forbidden thrill arched from her lips, where she felt the warmth of his words, all the way to her fluttering stomach…and beyond. She thought of Eve tempted by the serpent in The Garden of Eden. Only Ross Walker was the serpent and the forbidden fruit.

  She thought he might take another kiss—or more—but when he moved to touch her it was with the warmth of his nose and cheek. He nuzzled from her temple, along the sensitive shell of her ear, and down to the vulnerable curve of her neck. She gasped when he found the intimate hollow where her pulse throbbed. He opened his lips. He pressed the heat of his tongue against her pulse and there was a slight grazing of his teeth. The unexpected intimacy frightened and teased all at the same time.

  She released the air caught in her startled lungs in a long, shaky sigh when he pulled back and stepped away.

  She was relieved and suddenly too cool, too alone as well.

  “I’ve known who and what you are from the start, and yet I allowed you to get close to me, to get close to my clan,” Ross said quietly as he stood under the stars. He looked larger than life under the huge summer sky, but he also looked as if he carried the world on his shoulders, alone.

  “Why?” she asked without thinking first. She should be warning him away, not trying to read his dark eyes as if she cared what he hid in his even darker heart.

  “Because I knew you from the start, but you couldn’t say the same of me. You have your orders, your charges, your New World government, but none of it shows you the truth.”

  “You’re a killer,” Julia accused.

  “Yes…when I have to be,” he replied.

  “You’re a criminal,” she returned.

  “Yes…because your laws are not our laws. Not anymore,” he said simply.

  “You could hurt me…badly…before I could even try to stop you,” she continued.

  “Yes, I could. But would I? Would I hurt you, Julia?”

  She didn’t know what to say because she didn’t know. Her instincts screamed “yes” even as her heart whispered deeper, more complicated truths.

  He looked at her for only a second more before he turned and walked into the trees. Puma’s loved the night. He would shift. He would hunt.

  But he hadn’t hurt her…yet.

  Chapter Three

  Julia woke to the scent of roasted duck. It turned out to be a different sort of bird altogether and so not a chocolate donut, but she ate with relish just the same.

  Ross must have raided a salvaged suitcase while she slept because he now wore a clean black T-shirt and low-riding jeans. His suitcase then, not hers.

  She should be worrying about ever-nearing shapeshifters and the hot throb in her knee. She should be hoping for backup, rescue or an act of God, but because she’d always been more apt to do than to hope, she found herself limping toward the suitcase after her meal. She needed to wash up, take a look at her knee and get her act together.

  “There’s a stream nearby. You need to have your bandage changed.”

  Ross picked up a first-aid kit. Its half-melted plastic case was testament to the heat of the fire after the crash. Not for the first time, Julia was thankful for being thrown from the wreckage. She didn’t know how her body had come free from her seatbelt, but she was glad to be alive. The pilot hadn’t been so lucky.

  If the plane going down hadn’t been an accident, then one more human casualty can be chalked up to Walker’s clan.

  It was crazy, but a part of her was ready and willing to face the approaching shapeshifters. She had felt the same way when she had managed to survive the first attack on Washington D.C. It had killed so many. It had almost killed her. Rescuers had dug her from the rubble of her apartment building. Before the global economy had crashed, they’d feared Islamic terrorists. After The Crash it had been groups within their own country that had torn it apart struggling for food, medicine, survival. She’d been weak for many months, but she had finally regained her strength. She would never get those months back. She would never get back the loved ones she’d lost.

  But she had today.

  Even with her knee trashed and her future looking grim.

  She had today.

  Walker came to her side and offered her his arm. It would have been foolish to refuse it. Unless she planned on crawling to the stream he’d mentioned she would need help to get there. It was frustrating, this weakness, when she’d prided herself on becoming stronger, ever stronger, for years. She took the arm he offered and pulled herself up. Her bad leg could only take enough of her weight to help her balance.

  Change her bandage.

  His words finally sank in.

  Heat spread from her cheeks all the way to her chest. She hoped the shadows of the trees hid her embarrassment. She could feel the binding around her knee now that she thought about it and she could too easily imagine how it had gotten there.

  She wore straight-legged jeans and they hadn’t been cut away from her injury. That meant that he had to have removed them to help her.

  She tried to ignore his body heat, the firmness of the muscles beneath his skin and the way the scent of wood smoke that clung to him managed to tease her nose like exotic cologne. He had seemed so in his element back in the civilized surroundings of his casino. It was surprising to find him equally comfortable here, miles from the neon glare, surrounded by acres of forest.

  The power of his mountain lion hid beneath his skin. The power to leap and run and pounce. Even when he walked the casino floor in a tailored suit, the dual nature of his power showed. In his confidence, his fluid movements and in a certain golden gleam deep in the brown of his dark eyes.

  Here in the forest, as he helped her to walk, his mountain lion was even closer to the surface. She couldn’t help feeling the lure of that because it called to her need to confront danger.

  She also couldn’t help feeling a little bit like prey.

  Unfortunately, she feared being consumed by the hunger in her that rose every time he touched her, every time his gaze held hers, more than she feared his puma teeth.

  Julia was glad to release his arm and sink down onto the mossy bank by a slow-flowing stream. The coolness that rose from the water was a relief even if it didn’t really soothe away the heat of his touch.

  She stopped noticing the cool air when Walker knelt beside her.

  “I don’t want your help,” she said, but even to her own ears it sounded a little nervous, a little rushed.

  “Want and need are two very different things,” he replied.

  He didn’t tease. He didn’t smile. His jaw was tense and set.

  She didn’t know how to reply to such a serious face so she bit her lip and allowed him to reach for the button of her jeans. He’d already done this. The only difference was that she was conscious this time.

  That makes all the difference in the world.

  She regretted the straight-leg jeans that made getting to her injury without removing them impossible. As he slid her zipper down slower than she would have expected
, she tried to fight the way her breath caught, her skin flushed and her heartbeat quickened.

  Julia tried to see him as a doctor.

  She failed.

  Partly because his movements weren’t quick, efficient and impersonal. His fingers seemed to linger, not long, not much, but enough to make her wonder, to make her want what she couldn’t have.

  He eased her jeans off her hips and she let him. She even lifted herself off the ground so he could slip them down.

  It was crazy.

  She was playing with fire.

  But she couldn’t seem to stop.

  Neither of them spoke, but she could have sworn their breathing quickened in sync.

  Her shirt gave her very little modesty. It was a simple white T that barely met the top of her jeans. The thin cotton didn’t stand a chance of covering her once the jeans were gone because all that was left to help it was a scrap of red satin.

  “Relax,” he murmured as his hands moved to hold the injured leg for closer inspection.

  She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to himself. His hands were warm and gentle, but they were also firm, as if he placed them where they should be and dared them to disobey.

  There was pain. It couldn’t be helped. She was certain her knee would require surgery if she made it out of the mountains alive. She had to swallow and close her eyes as he sprayed antiseptic and wrapped a fresh bandage. When she opened them he was looking at her face instead of her knee.

  The job was finished, but his hands, his strong, warm hands, were still on her leg.

  Julia didn’t close her eyes again. She wasn’t a coward. She looked at the man holding her leg and she didn’t try to fight the sensations traveling from where his fingers held her calf and thigh to other higher places she knew would enjoy his touch.

  Yes, it was playing with fire, but there were times when she thought her near-death experience after the first attack on Washington had left her with a chill that only the extreme held at bay.

  His eyes, always a deep, dark brown, were even darker in the woods than they’d been in his brightly lit casino. She saw his Cherokee ancestors in those eyes blended with a more mysterious heritage the outside world knew little about.

  She couldn’t decipher the mysteries in those dark eyes, but one thing she knew for certain…she could no longer separate “want” from “need”.

  “I’ve wanted to touch you for weeks, from that first night. I knew they were dangling another redhead under my nose, but it didn’t matter. There was something about you. Something different than the others. Something riveting.”

  “Why red hair? Why is that your weakness?”

  Walker placed her leg carefully back on the ground, but he didn’t retrieve her jeans.

  “Shapeshifters don’t mate casually or lightly.” Julia could feel a skeptical look form on her face. She’d seen him with women. The agency’s records showed him to be…popular. Very popular.

  “Oh, we have sex as lightly as anyone,” he chuckled in response to her doubt. “We aren’t saints, not by any means. But our mates aren’t merely sex partners. They complete us. I’ve dreamed of an auburn-haired mate for years. Somehow my preference became common knowledge, though its cause is not.”

  Julia didn’t jump when he reached a hand to thoughtfully finger the curls around her face. She knew he saw auburn streaked with natural highlights of lighter red. He looked at her as if she was a treasure and a temptation, as if she was the answer to his prayers and an emissary of the devil himself.

  “FBI agents—humans—don’t mate with shapeshifters,” Julia whispered as his touch teased her scalp.

  He wound the captured curl around his finger, looking from the scarlet-kissed lock to her frightened eyes and back again.

  “Our dreams don’t lie.”

  Before she accepted the inevitable, before she realized she had been waiting for him to lean over and taste her lips, he did. As soon as his mouth touched hers, she knew she’d been aching for his kiss since the all-too-brief taste they’d shared on the plane.

  This time wasn’t gentle.

  He didn’t hurt her, but he did claim her. Her lips, her tongue, the hidden, heated hollows of her mouth… He pressed close, holding her face in his warm hands while he delved and tasted and delved some more. He didn’t wait for her response. Her heat, her desire, her hunger for his taste had to rise up in a rush to catch up with the hunger he must have been controlling for weeks.

  And catch up she did.

  Because she had been controlling the same pull, the same compelling heat, from the first moment he had stepped into her life.

  Her mission had given her an excuse to get close to him, but some deep, hidden part of her had never needed any excuse at all. He called to her. His vitality, his energy, even his lion. Man and predator. Puma with a human heart.

  Julia kissed him back because the real world wasn’t just orders and charges and one dangerous mission after another. The New World was death and darkness and she’d been grasping at adventure to fight the darkness for too long to stop.

  Their mouths melded perfectly, and what began as a sudden, desperate claiming of the taste they had longed for settled and eased into a long, lazy exploration.

  He moved his body to stretch out beside her.

  This glade deep in the Smoky Mountains was far away from the expectations of his clan and her agency. The isolation freed them to follow their instincts. His tongue danced and teased and coaxed hers to follow. She licked and tasted and braved stroking his heat higher.

  She raised her hands to hold him and a shocked gasp escaped her lips to breathe against his because he was so warm, so firm, so muscled and strong in her arms that she couldn’t possibly hold him. He was power personified and at any minute he might shift and leap away, leaving her reaching for a man who wasn’t there.

  A moment of fear spiked through her. For a brief second, she almost felt as she had when she’d been weakened by injuries. Alone. Afraid. Grieving for those she’d lost. Almost certain her own life was slipping from her grasp.

  Then his arms came around her, tight and sure, and she was herself once more. The new self she’d rebuilt after The Crash. Brave. Bold. Never slowing down to feel doubt or fear.

  She was, after all, a woman who had decided to grab life and refuse to let it go.

  He didn’t hurt her knee when he pulled back to break their kiss. She watched, trying to catch her breath, as he reached out to the nearby stream and scooped a handful of the clear, cool water in his palm. He was careful in his movements, never once jarring her knee or causing her pain.

  She gasped when he allowed the water to spill from his palm onto the skin of her cheek. She sighed when he followed the cool water with warm fingers, wiping away what must have been sooty smudges left from the burning plane.

  He repeated the movement, again and again. Each time the sliding heat of his hand followed the chill of the water. Her face, her neck, her arms…everywhere that skin showed, he bathed her, and then he bared more skin.

  His ministrations were tender and erotic. Caring and sensual. That blending stole away the last of her reserve.

  He eased her T-shirt up and she lifted her torso so that the fabric could be pulled over her head. Her bra went with it and, in spite of the cool water evaporating off her skin, she burned beneath the golden glow in his eyes. She lay back down, needing the firm, mossy ground’s support. The glow was intimidating and provocative all at the same time.

  When he reached to scoop more water, she waited to see where he would bathe next. The sudden trickle cascading over her breasts made her nipples peak, but she didn’t have time to shiver because he followed the chill of the water with his hot, hot tongue. She buried her hands in his hair and held him close as he sucked each nipple in turn, nuzzling and caressing her skin with his lips as he went from one to the other and back again.

  He paused with his chin resting between the swell of her breasts and Julia opened her eyes. Her gaze me
t his and suddenly their encounter didn’t just feel risky…it felt right. For a brief, shining moment, Julia was able to take in a deep cleansing breath of air and release it as he turned his cheek to rest against her chest. She almost didn’t recognize the sweet, calm peace for what it was. She hadn’t known it for so, so long. Since before… Julia suddenly went from peace to panic. She hadn’t felt this way since before The Crash and she was suddenly afraid of this pause, terrified to feel again.

  Then, as if sensing her need for distraction, Walker pulled back from her trembling hands, taking the red bit of her satin panties down her legs as he went.

  His mouth tilted into the wicked half-smile she’d seen so many times in the past weeks. Only this time she knew he was going to share some of its secrets with her. Her panic faded away, replaced by anticipation. She wouldn’t waste time thinking about tragic yesterdays when Walker was so very here and now. She didn’t resist when his fingers brushed the tops of her thighs, nudging her knees apart.

  Julia shivered in expectation of his plans, but even expecting it, she wasn’t prepared for the cool flow of water over her most superheated flesh. She gasped and laughed and gasped again as he reached to cup water in his palm once, twice, then again. His gaze never left her. He watched her reaction as he gathered the water, as he released it from his palm, as it slid and trickled and teased. The contrast of hot to cool to hot again caused her to become so sensitized she thought the ache would build to the point of no return even without his actual touch. Her back arched, her legs trembled and finally, when it seemed as if she could wait no more, he dipped to follow a cool splash of water with the heat of his tongue.

  He danced the fire of his tongue across the tender nub he’d teased and she was scorched. His mouth, the warmth of his breath, the hot moisture of his tongue… He barely had to establish a rhythm before her body tensed into pulsing, tingling, living pleasure so intense she forgot everything—the sad past, the impossible future—everything but the here and now in Walker’s arms.

  Somehow he didn’t bump her knee when he undid his jeans to join her. He settled himself close, then closer still. As her body tightened he filled her. He slid into her moist folds, rocking against her release until he found his as well, deeper than deep, higher than high, and she was more alive than she’d ever been with him pulsing inside of her.