“Cait?” He covered her hand on the table. “You okay?”
“Sorry. Yes.” She slipped her hand free, and patted her lips with her napkin to buy time and regain her composure. “Mine can be that way too.”
“You shivered,” he said, and the look in his eyes was nothing like the way Lance looked at her. It was warm. Intense. “Do you want my jacket?”
“Then you’d be cold.”
He shook his head, smiling a slow, hot smile. “I don’t think so.”
That made her laugh out loud, and God, it felt good. They started back in on their salad, but she noticed him monitoring adjacent tables. Their fellow patrons seemed to be engrossed in flirtations or business dealings.
“I’d hoped to ask you on a real date.”
“This isn’t one?”
His smile turned a little grim around the edges. “Despite my desire to make this a great night, and a great date, there’s an elephant in the room.”
“True. I almost said no.”
This time he laughed. A deep rumble that she felt in her middle. Then he sat there and grinned at her for a minute, and the heat dropped from her gut to the juncture of her thighs, which, dammit, quivered. “I’m persistent,” he said.
She smiled. “Three boxes worth of persistence. Yes.” She cocked her head, looking at him, seeing him. “I get the apology, and I appreciate it. Everything you sent was…well, it was perfect. But why would you want to be?” she asked, sincerely. “Persistent, that is.”
They were being fairly blunt with one another, and, given what was happening around them, they needed to be. They also needed to trust one another.
For Cait, that was going to be harder.
“Why? I’m attracted to smart, funny, loaded-pizza-loving women. And, have you looked in the mirror lately?”
She frowned. She wasn’t supposed to be attractive, or noticeable. They’d gone brown hair, brown eyes, common appearance for a reason. Never red. The one time they’d done that, it had been a disaster. Men of all ages had taken notice and flirted with her constantly. Clandestine ops had been impossible. She’d nearly had to return shipside for a different identity, but she’d pulled it off by buying a box of drugstore hair color and dying her hair black. Sometimes the Kith made her blonde, but never flashy.
“Yes, I looked just before I left. I didn’t see anything remarkable.”
“Then you must not have been smiling.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you have a gorgeous, drop-dead-sexy smile. And it lights up your face.”
He was sincere. She could see that from his body language. What the hell?
She leaned in, dropped her voice. “Aiden, I can’t afford this delay. I can’t afford you. This whole situation is bad. I can’t get any intel on the why or who of this, nor can my team. And my job is that pickup down by the river. That comes first. That said, just what little I’ve told you could get us both killed. This isn’t done, what you and I are doing.”
“Eating dinner together? Flirting a little? Really?” He forked up a bite. “That’s a shame.”
She snorted, and he laughed.
“Goof,” she said, and shook her head as she took a drink of wine. Lance tried to make her laugh, but it almost never worked. It was the timing. Hell, a lot of humans couldn’t get it right. So for a machine, it was asking a lot. God, she’d missed being with a real, flesh-and-blood man.
“I know it’s not easy,” he said. “We’re both breaking the rules,” he said, and nodded when he saw her raised eyebrows. “Yeah, I have those kinds of rules too. But the issues we’re not talking about aren’t going to get solved by the Capitol Police or the FBI, no matter how much evidence they collect.” He sat back and casually scanned the restaurant again. “I respect them. They do good work. They won’t fix this.”
“It’s not part of my job to fix it, at least not yet. But even if it goes that way, once my mission is over here, I’ll be gone. So. Tell me. Why would you want to know me?”
Aiden was momentarily saved from answering by the waiter who exchanged salad plates for dinner plates and wished them a cheerful “bon appetit!”
Instead of picking up his fork, Aiden leaned in, his face eerily lit by the small votive candle.
“Straight up, then. You have an aura, a feel to you, that speaks to me. When I look at you, I see something totally different than what you show the world.”
Her heart nearly stopped. “What? What do you see?” her hand went to her face. Had something about her alterations shifted? Failed?
“Now I’ve startled you.” He reached for her hand again, touching just his index finger to her knuckles in a gentle caress, and this time she didn’t yank her hand away. The barely there touch was clever, she realized, meant to not scare her, but still connect. And she felt it.
God, she felt it.
“Not my intent,” he said. “Believe me, the last thing I want to do is scare you. Again.”
“Yeah, big thanks for that. But—”
“It’s not the physical that’s different, Cait. It’s the verve. Your love of life. Your inner strength.” He took her hand in his, and used his thumb to trace the scar that ran over her knuckles and down the scar on the back of her hand.
She’d done that at ten, on her bike. The Kith respected scars and hadn’t repaired that one. “And you didn’t tell me to get lost that day on the canal.” He lifted his eyes to hers and holy shit, the want in them nearly melted her. “And when I touch you, you feel the power too. So. Persistence.”
“I’m not sure what to say to that,” she managed, startled into a half laugh. He continued stroking the scar, setting fire to her nerves. It made her aware of every part of her body. It sent spikes of delicious sensation to her belly, to her breasts.
She wanted him to lean over the fragrant, amazing-looking fried chicken and kiss her.
No, no, no! The thought made her pull back, slip her hand away to pick up her knife and fork. Restraint, marine. Restraint.
“You don’t really have to say anything,” he said, his voice a low growl. “I can feel it.”
She gripped the silverware until her knuckles were white. “But I will say something,” she said firmly. “I’ll say no. I’m not supposed to do this.”
“Not supposed to do what?”
“Put out your hand,” she said. He looked puzzled, but complied.
She wasn’t sure what prompted her to do it, but she turned his hand over, placed her palm to his, feeling in her bones the power they could generate together. His eyes widened and she saw the desire burn hotter.
“That,” she said, huskily. “We’re not doing that. Or anything like it.”
It was his turn to—slowly—pull away, to regroup. Interesting.
“It does make things complicated.” She’d played the card that should have scared him off, given her some distance. Instead, Aiden lifted her hand from the table and kissed it in an old-fashioned, courtly gesture. She clamped down on her reaction before she let go with a schoolgirl sigh.
A niggle somewhere in her brain whispered that she, ST Cait Patten aka Brennan, just might have met her equal. And that was scary as hell. She shoved that idea somewhere toward the region of the Andromeda galaxy and gave him her what-the-fuck? eyebrow lift.
Aiden shook his head. “I won’t hide the attraction, Cait. I’ve learned the hard way to be honest with my emotions.” His lips twitched and she saw the mischief in his eyes.
“As an aside,” he said, “you could have a whole conversation, just with that eyebrow lift.” He grinned at her, letting her go and cutting into his dinner.
Jesus.
She shook her head. “You’re good at that.”
“What?”
“Connecting. I’m not.”
“I beg to differ. I think you’re very good at it, in a very subtle way.”
That surprised a real laugh out of her. She’d been called many things, but subtle wasn’t one of them. And man, she needed a
redirect. She was about to catch on fire, she was so aroused.
“I think we’d best leave the flirting behind and talk about pinpointing my target.”
“Can’t we do both?”
She shook her head, “No.”
“Party pooper,” he joked, but got to the point. “Can you tell me what it is?”
Could she? He waited as she considered. There was no way around it, so finally she gave him a small nod.
“It’s called a Tyranalnid Opthoid, or Ty-Op for short. It’s a ship’s pet. It’s doing okay at the moment, but that’s not going to last. I need it out of here before it hurts anyone or anything.”
“If it’s something that visits here often, I need to know about it,” he insisted.
“Hopefully you’ll never hear about one again,” she said, praying that a second one hadn’t actually been dumped in North America. Simultaneously, her gut told her that second-Ty-Op-in the area scenario was waaaaaay too likely, given how much the Gretzprtica Traders were hemming and hawing over drop coordinates for this one, much less a possible second.
“Still,” Aiden said, leaning forward again. “Perhaps we can discuss it on a walk.”
“A walk?” That was a switch.
“I believe we just got company.”
“Damn.” Cait’s nerves went from sexually heated to cold and hard. Ready. Company meant the Feds, if she read Aiden correctly.
“Maybe, maybe not. Could simply be two conservatively dressed, very attentive workers here for a nice dinner out.” He smiled, but he flicked his eyes to the left, over her right shoulder, giving her a hint of where they were. “They have yet to look over here.”
“Tough town, DC,” she said, returning the smile for any onlookers. “You never know if they’re just here, or if they’re here for you, right?”
“Exactly. Any kind of agent, Federal, Treasury, Secret Service, could be here innocently, for dinner with a fellow agent or operative. Nothing to do with us.”
“Sounds very Tom Clancy.”
“I like his books. And yes, it does.”
“You think it’s unrelated.”
“No.” His smile widened and he finished off his wine.
Chapter Eighteen
They let the waiter clear, and ordered dessert and coffee. He ordered decaf. She got regular.
“My employers have a drink similar to coffee, or so they claim. They call it Ootah. Decaf tastes like Ootah. Nasty.”
He laughed and drank the decaf with relish.
“Yummm, Oootah!” he exclaimed, making her laugh again. “So, shall we take a walk when we’re done with dessert?” Aiden asked as he leaned back in his chair. “I have my reasons.”
His smile was hot and knowing and her stupid, fired-up, libido hummed right back. It was having none of her rules. Striving for sanity, she changed the subject.
“So are they sitting close enough to us to hear anything or are they lip readers?”
“Funny. Probably neither. Just monitoring our movements. They’re in the bar.”
“Good. Tell me where my target is.”
“Ah, yes, back to our raison d’etre for the evening.” He watched her again, with that careful, intense gaze. “One of my duties for my other job is to scan the city for interference, disturbances.”
“Darkness Rising.”
He nodded. “Fabulous movie. Scared the crap out of me. Del Lazaria’s a hell of a director. Reasonably accurate too.”
“Scared me too.” She’d watched it on the adapted Blue-ray player in her quarters on-ship. “And accurate in what way?”
“How to scan with magic. I scan for unusual or dark vibes, for lack of better words.” He lowered his voice as the couple next to them rose, practically intertwined around one another, to leave the restaurant. “Anything magical that shouldn’t be there.”
“Like a long-distance recon. Handy. How often?” If it helped her, she wasn’t going to quibble with the “how” of it. God knew she had some unusual skills these days, and even more unusual brothers in arms. She’d never hesitated to consult a psychic in the old days. This was like a psychic on steroids, she guessed. Bigger. More intense.
Way more intense.
“Three to five times a week, at a minimum. It’s better to kill the monsters when they’re little.”
“Oh, you can say that again!” She said it with more heat than she’d intended. “So just the city?”
“The Metro region. My territory.”
Cait cocked her head as she thought about that. “So there are more of you. How many?”
He shook his head. “I can’t share that. It won’t help you and its knowledge that would be useful to the dark side.”
Cait processed that, then nodded. “Dark side. Always a black to the white, right? So, can you give me a generalization?”
“There are either adepts or Adept Enforcers in most of the major cities.”
Okay. She could tell she’d hit his limit on that topic. She considered that as she shifted the bowl of cobbler dessert closer. The waiter had settled it in front of her, but she’d yet to touch it.
Her brain buzzed through the facts he’d laid out or implied. There was a network of powerful beings like Aiden, organized and in place around the country. They scanned for magic, dark and light, and dealt with any resultant problems. A magical police force.
And the Sh’Aitan didn’t have a clue.
She spooned up some of her dessert and her brain simply stopped. She bit back a moan.
“Peach cobbler. Oh. My. God.”
He laughed, but she felt that intense gaze again, the personal one. Then he reached over and dusted a crumb from her cheek. The defined, sensual tug hit her like a laser blast.
“It looks good on you.”
Heat curled through her and fired up a strong need to touch him, put her hands up the back of his shirt, feel the muscle that ever-so-slightly pulled the lines of the jacket. She wanted to strip off that smooth, starched shirt and…
Whoa.
“Thank you,” she finally managed.
Something distracted him, and his gaze flicked away, then back. “Our watchers have moved to a table. Their interest in us is a tad more obvious.”
“So. They are watchers for us.” Damn. Just when it was getting good—which really was bad, and totally wrong. Of course it was also distracting him from asking about who and what she was.
“I think so.” He polished off the pecan pie he’d ordered. “Let’s take that walk. It’s warmer tonight.”
“Walking sounds good.” She was antsy, thoroughly aroused, and half irritated. Hopefully, the unseasonably chilly October night would cure her of all three.
That’s why they were here. He was here to apologize, and tell her where he thought the Ty-Op was, and she was here to get his word that he’d keep her secret.
Cait tried to take the check, but Aiden shook his head.
“My apology,” he said. “My money.”
“Ah, yes. The apology,” she said.
“Yeah, we better get to that right here quick so we can move on to…other things.”
Cait’s hormones picked up their cheerleader pompoms again, and started chanting that he was already forgiven and they were ready for the aforementioned other things.
Cait smacked them down. Hard.
Her logic had convinced her body that Aiden had good reason for what he’d done, but her heart still felt the terror of being held in that cage.
Her head had almost won the battle, until he helped her on with her coat and gave her that sexy shiver again. Her body got the stupid pompoms out again.
He held the door, and they strolled out onto the wide sidewalk looking onto McPherson Square.
The valet popped up from the chair where he’d been sitting.
“Your car, sir?”
“No, but thanks. We’re going to walk for a bit.”
“Nice night for it,” the young man said.
As they walked away, Aiden took a moment to pul
l out his billfold, peel away a handful of ones, then separate them into four four-dollar sets. She wondered why, but stayed silent. Maybe for the valet when they returned?
Aiden offered his arm, an old-fashioned gesture, and they began to walk. Mrs. Potts was right. Aiden was a southern gentleman.
Not last night, he wasn’t, she reminded her libido, which had jumped up for another sideline cheer.
“Warm enough?”
She nodded. Oh, she was warm, all right. Not that he needed to know how warm, or why. She could feel the hard muscle through his coat, and having him this close, with those knowing eyes and those broad, strong hands, made her want things. Things she couldn’t have.
“Going this way down I-Street, it’s mostly offices. There’ll be a few panhandlers, though. Will that bother you?”
The thought that a poor homeless person would worry her, given what she’d been through—what she was—nearly made her laugh.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Good.”
Cait decided attack was the best defense in this case. She slanted a look up at his face.
“Why did you do it, Aiden?”
It was all Cait said, but Aiden knew exactly what she meant. He’d been avoiding it all evening because he didn’t know how to explain.
And he owed her the truth.
“I used to live in Atlanta,” he said, not sure why he was starting there, but going with his gut.
The gut he should have trusted to begin with, where she was concerned.
“I’m…let’s just say as adepts go, I’m powerful. I worked the Atlanta Metro. There were four other adepts in Georgia. We worked together.”
He took a deep breath and blew it out, feeling for a way he could get the story out without going into a full-on flashback.
“Something, a creature, was hunting outside Atlanta. We were aware of it—had felt it’d energetic presence in our scans.”
“The way you feel the Ty-Op.”
“Pretty much, yeah. We thought we knew what it was. Boggles sometimes pop up in odd places, hunt the way this did. Sometimes a bog loper or a hob will surface and hunt a bit and move on.” He shrugged. “It started out in south Georgia, killing feral pigs around the swamps. We weren’t sure it was a hostile. We weren’t entirely sure it was magical.”
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