Primal Passions

by Stephani Hecht

  Jacyn tilted his head to the side to listen to her, before a brief look of emotion danced across his face. Logan couldn’t be for sure, but it looked like the same type of anger Cassie was tossing around.

  Jacyn looked over at him and their gazes locked. Logan’s mouth went dry as his heart boomed in his chest. Then just as quick, Jacyn turned away, dismissing Logan completely. Shocked and hurt, Logan continued to stand there like a damn idiot even after Jacyn and Cassie walked away.

  Logan wanted to pound the wall in frustration, preferably with his head even though he had no right to feel slighted. What did he expect? That Jacyn would be at the door waiting with wide-open arms?

  Maybe not, but he could have at least waved for old times’ sake. Stupid for him to think he would get even that. Not after the way he had left Jacyn without even bothering to say goodbye. At the time, Logan had told himself he was doing it for the jaguar’s own good. Now he knew he’d done it because he was a chicken and deathly afraid of the feelings he had for Jacyn. Because he was too much of a pussy to face those fears, he may have lost Jacyn forever.

  “You better get in there before Mitchell has your balls nailed to his wall,” Rat said as he passed by.

  Before he had time to stop himself, Logan had his arm out, hand around the cheetah’s throat. “What exactly is going on between you and Jacyn?” he demanded in a low voice.

  “What do you care?” Rat challenged, that cocky grin of his taunting. “You were the one stupid enough to leave. You honestly don’t think someone as good looking as Jacyn is going to go unattached for long, do you?”

  “Don’t play this game with me, Rat, or so help me…” Logan left the rest of the threat deliberately hanging so the cheetah could wonder what terrible punishments could be in store for him. Then Logan saw the wicked glint in Rat’s eyes and he let his hand drop. Logan heard rumors that Rat was into pain so the sick bastard would probably grin through the entire beat down.

  Rat confirmed his suspicion when he gave an exaggerated sigh of disappointment. “You’re no fun. Besides, I’m not the only one who wants to get close to Jacyn.”

  “Who else has been sniffing around?”

  “Well, let’s see,” Rat began ticking off on his fingers, “there’s Thomas, Mike, Aden…”

  Logan walked away, but Rat followed him, still firing off names. He didn’t even stop when they entered the meeting hall. Logan tried ignoring the ass, but that didn’t stop him from dropping a few more names. Much to Logan’s dismay, he took the chair next to him.

  Brent and Mitchell were already up front, ready to get the meeting started. While Mitchell gave him a small nod of hello, Brent shot off a glare that was nearly identical to the one Cassie had given. Yeah, Logan was really feeling the love today. “What are you even doing here?” Logan asked, cutting Rat off from finishing his list of Jacyn lovers.

  “Mitchell asked me,” Rat replied simply, as if that settled the matter as far as he was concerned.

  “But you weren’t on the mission, so why would you have to be here for the debriefing?” Logan had counted his blessing that he got three Rat free months, too.

  “Maybe Mitchell didn’t want to deny you all my great wisdom?” Rat cocked his brow.

  Logan noticed he’d had pierced it lately. “I find that doubtful.”

  “Then could it be because of my good looks?”

  “Even more doubtful,” Logan grunted.

  “My charm?”

  “Not a fucking chance.”

  “You wound me, Logan,” Rat sighed as he shook his head. “You really do. Now what shred of self-confidence I might have had is gone and you have only yourself to blame.”

  “However will I live with the guilt?” Logan deadpanned.

  “I don’t know, you will have to find a way to carry on.

  “If you could all focus, I would like to get this meeting started,” Mitchell called, loudly to get everyone’s attention. “I know the team that just got back is real eager to debrief and get home so I promise to make it short. As many of you already know, we had another mission compromised last week. I lost five good men and we had fifteen serious injuries. We think there may be a leak on the human side of the operation.”

  Logan felt a jolt of shock. Yet another team brought down. No wonder Mitchell was calling a meeting. Something was seriously fucked up.

  “Why do you think it’s someone on the outside who’s talking?” a soldier asked.

  Logan recognized him as one of the newer recruits who had just come of age.

  “If it were on our side, it wouldn’t just be the missions involving humans that were going fubar. We would be having issues with the Ravens, too,” Brent replied in an are-you-really-that-stupid voice.

  “I never trusted the humans anyway.” Rat’s upper lip curled into a sneer. “I haven’t met one who wouldn’t hesitate to stab you as soon as your is back is turned.”

  “Don’t hold back, tell us how you really feel,” Logan muttered under his breath so only the cheetah heard. Although given Rat’s past, he didn’t blame the guy for having issues.

  “The problem is, if we want to survive, we have to play ball with them,” Mitchell cut in, his voice tight.

  “So what do you want us to do, sir?” Logan asked.

  “We watch each other’s backs, trust nobody that’s not feline and be on guard at all times,” Mitchell answered. “Rat, can you hack into their computer system and sneak around to see what you can find.”

  “Of course. I could do it in my sleep.”

  “Just make sure you don’t get caught. While the human government may have no problem with using us to do their dirty work, we all know they wouldn’t hesitate to throw us under the bus and then piss on our remains.”

  Logan nodded in agreement. Many humans in power thought the shifters were an abomination and would just love to have an excuse to wipe them out. It was the main reason they all fought so hard to keep their existence mostly a secret. Even the Ravens used caution in that area.

  Mitchell gazed over the assembled shifters, his gaze somber. “I can’t stress to you all how important it is that we find the human responsible and figure out a quiet way to eliminate them. We’re already losing too many men to the Ravens and I’ll be damned if I’m going to have any more die because somebody got greedy and sold us out.”

  * * * *

  Jacyn sat at the desk near the back of the infirmary, trying his damnedest to get all the charting done. It was useless though, because despite his best efforts, his mind kept drifting back to Logan.

  Jacyn shoved a file away and ran his hands through his hair, frustration beating him down. Three months. Three months Logan had been away and Jacyn’s feelings toward the man had only grown stronger. How pathetic did that make him?

  He was angry with Logan, sure. The fact that it had been so easy for him to walk away had cut Jacyn deep. That still didn’t mean that he was able to forget the man. As soon as Jacyn had seen him standing there, all he could think about was the time they had made love. How good it had felt to have Logan’s hard body cover him right before he had plunged inside Jacyn’s body.

  All the pent up sexual frustration had hit Jacyn so hard he was tempted to duck into the bathroom so he could relieve some of the pressure by taking care of it himself. Not that it would help that much. He’d learned that the hard way over the past months. The only thing that could scratch his itch was Logan.

  “Wow, it’s so quiet in here,” Rat said as he strolled in.

  Jacyn smiled at the cheetah. Despite his smartass attitude and a mean streak, Jacyn had come to really like the guy. Oddly enough, Rat, the one who didn’t have any friends, had taken him under his wing and was teaching him a lot about the shifter life. “I thought you were at that meeting Mitchell called.” Jacyn kicked out a chair for Rat to sit down in.

  “I got booted out,” Rat replied in a completely unrepentant voice.

  “What did you do now?” Jacyn grinned even though he knew he wou
ld be encouraging the behavior.

  “I told Brent to suck it.”

  “Ouch, you must have a death wish.”

  “Ah, I would love for Brent to have a go at me.” Rat scrunched up his face, the first real emotion he’d shown. “It’s the only time that I get to see some action. Sometimes I get tired of always spending my time at the computer while everyone else gets to go out to kick ass and have fun.”

  “Why don’t you just ask Mitchell to put you into rotation?” Jacyn grabbed another file, but didn’t open it yet. With Rat around, he wasn’t going to be getting much work done. Not with the way the cheetah loved to gab.

  Rat narrowed his eyes. “You mean nobody has told you yet?”

  Jacyn shook his head.

  Bright patches of color appeared on the cheetah’s cheeks as he admitted, “I can’t hold my shift.”

  Shocked, Jacyn didn’t know how to react. He’d heard of that happening to shifters. Since working in the medical wing, he’d taken a crash course on shifter anatomy, what can go wrong in a shift, illnesses that are unique to their own kind, plus many other things. This was the first time he’d ever met someone affected with this particular affliction though. Probably because they considered it a taboo disease since it made one weak. “How did you get it?” Jacyn asked.

  “I don’t know, I was born with it.” Rat shrugged, acting like it was no big deal.

  Jacyn wasn’t fooled for a second.

  “It’s how I got the nickname Rat. My dad started calling me it when he found out I was defective.”

  “Because rats are considered the lowest form of animals,” Jacyn concluded, feeling a deep-seated hatred. How could a father be so cruel to his son?

  “Even when I moved here to Michigan, the name still stuck, so I just stopped fighting it and got used to answering to it,” Rat replied.

  This time Jacyn detected the bitterness coming from the cheetah. Rat’s eyes were haunted, bleak as if he was feeling the fresh sting of rejection. “Why don’t you go to Mitchell and ask him to make them stop?” Jacyn demanded softly. Inside he was a rolling mass of rage. He wanted to find everyone who had ever insulted his friend and make them hurt.

  “He offered to, but I told him not to bother. Every time I hear it now it makes me want to become something more so I can prove my father wrong. Only when I think I’ve done that will I stop using that name.” Rat traced a pattern on the desk, refusing to meet Jacyn’s eyes.

  “What’s your real name?”

  “Carson,” Rat confessed in a near whisper. It was so unlike him to talk low in shame, and not meet someone’s gaze.

  Jacyn couldn’t stand it any longer. He reached over, put two fingers under Rat’s chin and made him look up. Gazing intently into the cheetah’s eyes, so he knew he wasn’t lying, Jacyn said, “I like that name. Believe it or not, it fits you much better than Rat.”

  Rat stared back at him.

  Jacyn was shocked to see a spark of desire in the man’s eyes. The air suddenly became heavy with a sexual tension that had never existed between the two of them before. While Jacyn should have reveled in it, he felt guilty. As if he were betraying Logan.

  “Logan has no idea how lucky he was.” Rat licked his lips and leaned closer.

  Jacyn started to pull back, then the memory of Logan walking away came back. What the hell did Jacyn have to lose? Maybe if he found comfort in someone else, he would be able to finally get Logan out of his heart. He closed his eyes and waited.

  Rat’s lips pressed softly against his mouth. His touch was warm, tender and carried the slightest scent of patchouli.

  Jacyn parted his lips in acceptance and Rat slid his tongue inside, stroking and teasing. Jacyn thrust his tongue forward to meet his and Rat groaned in approval. It was nice, it was tender and it did absolutely nothing for Jacyn. A fact Rat discovered for himself as soon as he leaned in to touch Jacyn’s cock and found it soft.

  “Fuck,” Rat cursed as he pulled back, a deep heat coming to his face.

  “I’m sorry, it’s nothing you did or didn’t do, I promise.” Jacyn wanted to kick his own ass or maybe just beat his head against the wall—anything to knock some sense into his thick skull and drive away thoughts of Logan.

  “Just tell me it’s him and not because of what I am,” Rat begged in a broken voice.

  “It’s him, I swear it.” Jacyn closed his eyes and let out a curse of his own. “How lame does that make me? Here I can’t get past Logan and he could care less about me.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Rat gave a weak smile. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

  “I don’t buy it.” Jacyn shook his head. “If he felt anything for me, he would have stayed and fought for us. Instead, he hopped the first plane out of here so he could get as far away from me as possible.”

  Rat gazed longingly at Jacyn. “Logan was a fool. If I were so fortunate to get you, nothing short of death would make me let go.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Logan knew that he should leave. He was tired, hungry and craving a hot shower. Yet once the meeting was over, he found his feet beating a path to the medical wing instead. Even though he knew he would be in for a world of kickass if Mitchell found out, he just had to see Jacyn.

  Just what are you going to do when you find him? His inner doubt chided. Admit that you were a big coward for bailing on him? Do you honestly think he will give a damn and forgive you? You heard Rat, Jacyn could have anyone he wants so why would he pick a loser like you?

  He put a clamp on that nasty voice in his head and continued to make his way to the infirmary. When he got there, he was relieved to find all the beds tightly made up and empty. There wasn’t even any staff there with the exception of Jacyn.

  He was sitting behind a desk, hunched over some paperwork, completely oblivious to his surroundings. Logan smiled when he noticed that Jacyn was nibbling on his bottom lip. Some habits never died. Taking a deep breath to bolster his courage, Logan approached the desk. “I see you got a job,” he called loudly to get his attention. Jacyn didn’t even look up in surprise, showing that he knew he had company and maybe he wasn’t as oblivious as Logan had thought.

  “Hey, Logan. Yeah, I work part-time here and the rest of the time with the teams,” he replied in a bored voice as he continued to write notes in the files.

  Logan tried not to let Jacyn’s blasé attitude hurt him. After all, it was the least he deserved. “You go out on missions now?” A rush of protective worry hit Logan and he fought it, knowing he had no right to feel that way.

  “Yeah, when I heard that Mitchell likes to have at least two battle-trained medics on each mission, I couldn’t wait to sign up.” Jacyn still hadn’t looked up and it was beginning to piss Logan off.

  “You shouldn’t be out in the field. You don’t have the skills,” Logan growled, anger making him sound harsher than he wanted.

  “I didn’t,” Jacyn replied in clipped tones. “But while you were off doing your thing, I was working my ass off to learn how to survive. Cassie and Brent are great teachers.”

  “Off doing my thing?” Logan took a few steps forward so he could plant the palms of his hands on the desk. “I’ll have you know I was on a mission.”

  “Yeah, one that you specifically asked Mitchell to send you on.” Jacyn finally looked up.

  The raw hurt in his eyes hit Logan like a punch in the chest. “He told you about that?” Of course Mitchell did, what better way to drive a wedge between them. The leader had made it more than clear he didn’t want Logan to be with Jacyn.

  “Yeah, he did.” Jacyn stood and slammed a file on the desk. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do.” Jacyn stormed away to a supply room, but not before he tossed Logan one more angry glare.

  After looking around one last time to make sure nobody else was around, Logan followed him. It was a drug room, tall cabinets lining three of the walls, the fourth held the door, which Logan shut and locked. Jacyn’s back had been to him, bu
t as soon as he heard the lock click, he turned around. His cheeks were flushed with outrage and full lips parted in shock.

  “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

  “We need to talk and this seems to be the only way to get you to listen.” Logan moved forward, stalking Jacyn like a predator would its prey. A thrill of pride and excitement went through him when the man didn’t take a step back. No, instead, his once timid jaguar actually lifted the corner of his top lip in a warning snarl.

  “You’re not allowed in here. Employees only, or didn’t you read the note on the door?” Jacyn gave a snide smile.

  “You’ve become a regular smartass. It must be from hanging out with Rat too much,” Logan replied as he took another couple steps forward. The room was so small it was almost a closet so now he was standing just inches from Jacyn. Leaning forward, he inhaled deep, needing to smell the familiar and sensual scent that was his guy. Instead, what he got was the faint, yet unmistakable smell of someone else. Bending down so his lips were just inches from Jacyn’s ear, Logan asked, “Just how close have you and the cheetah been getting?”

  “What business is it of yours?” Jacyn challenged. His body posture was stiff and unyielding, but he didn’t push Logan away either.

  “I could kill him for touching you.” He turned his face slightly so his breath brushed against Jacyn’s cheek. Logan had to bite back a smile when he saw Jacyn shiver in response.

  “Leave him alone. He’s just a friend, nothing more.” Jacyn closed his eyes and took in a ragged breath.

  Despite the anger churning in his gut over Rat, Logan still wanted to do a happy dance. Jacyn may be denying that he still had feelings for him, but his body was saying a whole different story. Logan buried his nose in the crook of Jacyn’s neck and breathed in deep. “If you’re just friends, then how come I can smell his scent all over you?”

  “Because we were in the same car together,” Jacyn quipped, throwing Logan’s own lame excuse back in his face.