by A. C. Arthur
He reached across the seat, grabbing Cannon by her waist and pulling her back inside. Of course she couldn’t come quietly, or limply, for that matter. She kicked and screamed and yelled and he ignored every second of it, opening the driver’s side door and rolling out with her wrapped tightly in his arms, only seconds before the Jeep crashed into a tree, creating another loud noise and burst of fiery light on the mountaintop.
* * *
She was beneath him again.
For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Nivea Cannon’s strong, athletic body with all its barely there curves that enticed him more than he wanted to admit, was flush against his harder, tougher body, wreaking holy hell all over the place.
The tall licking flames coming from two downed vehicles had already invaded the mountaintop range. Eli moved, spreading his legs wider, grabbing the back of her neck and tucking it tightly into his chest. The heat surrounding them was palpable, sweat rolled down the back of his neck and spine prompting him to hold onto her even tighter. There was a crash and he figured tree limbs were burning and breaking, falling to the ground where, if unattended, this accident might actually turn into a catastrophe. But he couldn’t think about a forest fire right now, couldn’t think along the lines of being trapped between the flames and the night elements—which were quickly turning chilly. His truck was gone and with it, backup clothes, weapons, and a first-aid kit he thought he might need soon.
Still, he didn’t let Cannon go.
Until she squirmed.
She moved beneath him and goddammit, Eli felt like she was gyrating, like she was pushing her pussy up to meet his raging hard dick in an effort to join the two forevermore. His temples pounded at the thought. His temples and his dick throbbed while inside, his cat hissed.
They weren’t safe. They were definitely not safe enough for him to be lying here thinking about fucking his trainee when he should have been thinking about how to get them out of here sooner rather than later.
“… me.”
The solitary word broke through his thoughts and he looked down to see the top of her head. Her hair was mussed, he thought with a frown. Then out of the corner of his eye he saw flames reaching higher into the evening sky and cursed.
“… off!”
It was the next word he heard before he felt something rising between his legs. Something that wasn’t what he wanted to rise down there at this particular time. He moved the lower half of his body to the side just in time to avoid the knee she had raised.
“What the hell?” he asked, looking down at her again.
This time she pushed at his chest until she was able to lift her head and glare back up at him.
“Get off me, you idiot! I can’t breathe.”
“You can’t breathe because there’s fire and smoke all over the place and if you hadn’t noticed, I’m trying to protect your ass from that.”
In reply she pushed at him again, this time with much more force. Cannon was not a weak woman. In fact, she was stronger than a lot of the guards Eli had trained. He’d always known that about her, just hadn’t liked admitting it too much, and never to her. She was still no match for him, but he did move a bit to oblige her efforts. She let out a whoosh of breath and squirmed a little more, until he could swear he felt the tight buds of her nipples moving across his chest. But that was just TMI—too much imagination—on his part.
“They’re dead,” she said solemnly, her dark eyes looking up at him.
There was no emotion there and he hadn’t expected to find anything. Cannon was, above all else, a professional at what she did. She took her job as a guard more seriously than he thought he did sometimes. With any other woman he would have expected tears or fear or whichever emotion she chose to cope with what had just gone down. But not Cannon.
Her eyes were focused, her hands steady as they pushed at him again, her voice clear and concise. She was right at this moment—aside from wanting him to get the hell off her—assessing the situation to see how they could get out of there before anyone showed up to ask questions.
“I gave them our location when we first heard the shots,” he began. “They would have pulled up the Jeep’s tracking immediately.”
“The Jeep’s gone,” she said, coming up to a sitting position and looking around.
Eli looked around too. He glanced at the side reflection of her face—no cuts or bruises. Farther down his eyes raked over her body looking for blood or burns, anything to say that he’d been off in his protection and she’d gotten hurt anyway. A lump formed in his throat as he waited for the final results.
She was saying something but he didn’t hear her, he was too busy grabbing her jaw and turning her so that he could see her whole face at once. Smooth caramel-toned skin, thick eyebrows arched perfectly, long lashes, high cheekbones, thin lips—the lower one plumper than the top, long neck … she was unharmed, he thought with a blink or two to get his mind back in the right place.
“I’m fine,” she said with a little bite. “We can’t sit here. The smoke’s getting thick and the police and rescue units will be here soon. We weren’t far enough away from the resort for no one to have seen or heard anything.”
Eli nodded. “You’re right. Can you walk?” he asked as he got to his feet.
She stood, reaching behind to pull her backup gun free from the band of her pants. “Can you?”
He removed his gun from his side, trying like hell not to notice how totally sexy she looked just now. “Highway’s this way,” he told her, turning his back on her and walking in the direction he wanted her to follow. “They’ll come through the main roads to find us.”
“Yeah, but they’ll find the cops first. We should call them and give them an alternate route,” she was saying from behind.
“You know an alternative route?” he asked.
“No,” she replied after a few hesitant seconds.
“Then we’ll head for the highway.”
* * *
It seemed like they were walking forever and getting absolutely nowhere. The terrain consisted of branches and dirt-impacted leaves riddling the ground. It was rough going downhill, up a winding incline, and then back to level ground once more. Yet Nivea wasn’t tired. Adrenaline buzzed through her body with a uniform rhythm.
Her muscles were bunched, her senses heightened, her steps sure and purposeful while moving through the night. Above, the trees weren’t as thick and tangled to create a canopy like in the Gungi, but they were full and mature, standing like guardians to the area, protecting what wildlife it could. Only they weren’t humans and the hike to the highway was much longer than they’d anticipated.
Eli the Great would never admit that, nor would he stop to regroup or possibly ask her thoughts on which way they should go. He was following his instincts, she knew, but her instincts were telling her something else. They were warning her that this little escape was about to turn bad, quick.
“Stop!” she said finally, halting her own steps, knowing that if he chose to ignore her words, he’d hear that she wasn’t crunching along the ground behind him.
It was well-known that Eli’s and his brother’s senses were much more acute than any of the other shifters. Nobody was really sure why, and the twins weren’t the type to wear their secrets on their sleeves. Yet they were renowned for their added awareness and much more powerful shifters because of it. Nivea didn’t think that made a difference in how she felt about Eli … until he kept walking.
“Eli?” She yelled to him once. “Eli!”
He finally turned, already about fifteen feet away from her.
“What is it?” he asked. “Why are you stopping?”
Even through the night she could see his features plainly, the sharp cut of his jaw and the light sprinkle of his goatee. His eyes were blocked as usual, but the wrinkle in his forehead told her he was worried. The muscle ticking in his jaw said he was angry on top of that worry. And the rigid stance he took when he was looking at her with noth
ing short of irritation said that now might not be the best time to question him.
Still, Nivea had never been known to take the easy way out.
“I think we might be lost,” she told him.
“I don’t get lost.”
She nodded, knowing that was what he was going to say.
“I didn’t say ‘you’ were lost, I said ‘we.’”
He frowned.
“Look around you, there’s no road in sight, nor is there any illumination from a streetlight.”
“No streetlights on the highway,” he corrected her grimly.
“Fine, but when’s the last time you heard a vehicle driving by, saw some headlights?”
“In case you failed to notice, we’re in the forest,” he told her. “How would we hear cars or see headlights, if we’re in the goddamned forest, Cannon? Think!” he yelled at her.
Nivea didn’t speak, she was thinking, and not because he said so. She was very aware of everything around them, down to the creaking of the crickets pouncing about on the forest floor and in the trees. She could still scent the burning of the gas in the truck that had crashed, hear the crackle of fire that wasn’t too far behind them. She could taste the rain as a shower was imminent and she hadn’t heard any vehicles on the road or seen any headlights. If she was aware of all those things, why wasn’t Eli?
She walked to him then, feeling the rage and something she couldn’t quite name surrounding him like a barrier.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He huffed. “I’d be better if we weren’t standing here having a futile conversation. There’s an extraction team on their way for us. We should keep moving.”
“Maybe we should take a rest. The team will be able to locate us through our e-bands. We don’t have to keep trekking around this forest, going in circles. I think we’re deep enough in to have sufficient cover. Besides, nobody’s following us.”
“How the hell do you know that?” he asked, gritting his teeth.
“Because I don’t smell them,” she said slowly, eyeing him carefully. “Do you?”
Eli remained quiet, his lips tight, shoulders strained. “If you were tired of walking all you had to do was say so,” he told her roughly, pushing past her and heading back to where they’d just passed a grouping of trees with protruding roots.
“Come,” he demanded. “Sit here and rest.”
Nivea didn’t like his tone and might have considered arguing if he weren’t her commanding officer. Her mind was also whirling around the possibility that Eli’s senses weren’t working as well as they should be, and what that might imply.
She walked over and lowered herself to the ground, folding her legs beneath her as she sat. Eli still stood, staring down at her like she was a disobedient child.
“Your turn,” she told him, patting the spot next to her.
His movements were much more reluctant than hers but in seconds Eli’s six-foot-three, two-hundred-and-twenty-five-pound body was folding down beside hers. He didn’t cross his legs as she had done. Instead his long limbs were extended in front of him, his palms resting on his thighs.
“What do you think happened back there?” she asked, looking away from him and staring ahead into the night.
“Somebody was shot,” he snapped.
“Don’t be obtuse,” was her quick comeback. “Dorian Wilson wasn’t one of the dead bodies, but we saw him go into that cabin. So was he one of the shooters? And why? He’s an FBI agent, not a murderer, at least not that I’ve seen in all the time I’ve been watching him. What if something changed? If somehow, now he is growing desperate.”
“Assess the situation, Cannon,” Eli said after a heavy sigh. “Three men went into the cabin, we saw two lying on the floor covered in blood. Wilson wasn’t one of them.”
“Wilson also wasn’t the one chasing us in that truck. So there had to be more than just those three men. Somebody had already been at the cabin waiting for Wilson and the others.”
“And what did all these men have to do with us? How are they connected to Wilson’s investigation of the shifters?” Eli asked.
He wasn’t really expecting her to answer, Nivea knew. He was staring ahead also, contemplating. He didn’t know what had happened in that cabin just as she didn’t, but he was thinking about it, and he wasn’t happy about his thoughts.
“Wilson’s focus has always been on Rome and Nick. I didn’t recognize those men that were with him. What if they were military men? What if they were connected to Crowe?”
“Only focus on the positives, Cannon. Crowe’s our number one target, but Wilson’s a threat as well. We need to keep them separate, consider they have two different agendas and work both issues separately, yet with equal vigor.”
“Separate, but equal,” she said softly, thinking over his words and trying like hell to ignore the heat sizzling between them as he sat closely beside her.
It was becoming enough of a distraction that Nivea had almost forgotten the tattoo she’d seen on one of the dead men’s wrists before Eli had ordered her away from the window. She’d seen it before, the scaling length wrapping around the entire wrist, the head with its mouth open right at the vein of the man’s arm. It was an anaconda and represented a reminder of certain death.
“If Wilson has help in his little crusade we’re going to find out.” Eli had continued talking.
Nivea took a deep breath, sitting up straighter and forcing herself to deal with the matter at hand, to keep the issues in her life separate but equal.
“Right,” she said with a nod. “I’ve got a feeling he’s still playing this close to the vest and today’s little meeting may have shocked him as much as it did us.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He doesn’t strike me as an underhanded dealer. I mean, sure, he’s hunting Rome and Nick, but honestly, he has good reason. He’s a human and they’re not. He knows something is going on and he’s right. Hell, it’s been in the news for months now. I saw some newspaper clippings on the desk in his home office. So I know he’s following each one of those stories carefully, especially the one in Sedona where there were witnesses who actually gave statements of seeing large cats at the resort when it was burning down.”
“Whose side are you on, Cannon?” Eli asked with a rise in his tone.
She looked at him, still feeling the desire drawing them together like being sucked unknowingly into some hypnotic trance. His entire demeanor was guarded, defensive, angry, but he was too stubborn to admit why. The scent she always associated with him was notches higher than the normal fresh, earthy scent of the Shadows. No, Eli, had a scent of his own. It was stronger, headier than anything Nivea had ever encountered, whether here in the States or in her visits to the Gungi. It was power and strength and primal masculinity all combined with a robust musky flavor that never failed to arouse her.
“How dare you ask me that!” was her quick and slightly overreactive response. “I’m on the right side,” she continued. “I’m just stating the facts that I’ve gathered so far. Wilson is searching for the truth. He knows the answer is out there and that’s why he won’t stop.”
“Until I stop him.” Eli scowled back at her, a low grumble from his cat echoing through the clearing.
“We,” she corrected. “We’re in this together, remember?”
The way he cocked his head at her said he’d been trying to forget. But in the next instant his hand was at the back of her head, pulling her hard and fast to him, his lips taking possession instantly.
Chapter 5
Dammit! He was doing it again!
Why couldn’t he keep his hands … and mouth … off of her?
Eli knew why and he wanted like hell to ignore it, just as he had been ignoring all the other signs. It wasn’t easy, then again, nothing in his life had ever been easy. Not since he’d turned sixteen and experienced his first shift. From that moment on it had been downhill and only the cat within had ever been able to offer any solace.
<
br /> But right now it wasn’t solace that the cat was offering, it was a long, ragged purr as Eli’s tongue stroked alongside Nivea’s. She kissed him back with such vigor and intensity, just as she did everything else. Her arms wrapped tightly around him, offering him everything he’d been giving her. As if they were equal opponents in fighting as well as kissing. That thought made his dick hard, his kiss grow hungrier as he used his tongue to lick over her lips, sucking hard on the lower one as she breathed deeply.
Her cat was also at the surface, sending a clear message that it was ready and available and just as needy as his. At that point Eli wanted to pull back. He did not want their cats joining forces, their animalistic urges meeting and combining. He did not want to be connected to Nivea in any way.
Unlike what the other shifters wholeheartedly believed, there was no perfect mate for Eli. He’d realized that long ago. It seemed silly now to hang on to one of the human sayings for dear life, but he absolutely believed in the three strikes and you’re out philosophy. Acacia had been his first, Leanne, his second, and now … no, Nivea was not next. He was not going to put himself in that position, or take her through what his track record had proven was an ordeal. He could not do that to her.
And yet, he could not pull away, could not release this hold that his attraction to her seemed to have on him. For months he’d been trying to avoid her, going to whichever part of Havenway was farthest from her. Then Rome pushed them together, giving the assignment for him to see her through her final training, to see if she was ready for a promotion. Eli understood that and he knew what his job was. But damn, why couldn’t it have been another guard, any other guard? Why Nivea and why now?
“This isn’t going to stop,” she whispered through panting breaths as he bit along the line of her jaw. “We might as well accept it and get on with it.”
