Kitten Me Twice: Paranormal SEAL Surprise Baby Romance (Shifter Squad Nine Book 2)

by Anya Nowlan

  “You’re in Poland,” Rio said, turning to face her once more.

  He wore a slim, hopeful smile on his face. Kayla’s expression softened, seeing the look in his eyes.

  Rio had always been the sweeter one. He was a hothead, sure, but he had this little streak of vulnerability about him that Ryker never seemed to have, or at least he never showed it. In comparison, Ryker was the builder, the protector, the organizer. Rio was the force of destruction that got things moving, the hunter. They played off one another beautifully.

  I used to be in on that team, she thought grimly, remembering everything she’d done to not hold that distinction anymore.

  The pain was almost palpable in the room. She shook her head, clearing the cobwebs of ancient memories from her mind.

  “Poland? That’s a long fucking way from Chicago,” she commented wryly, drawing a chuckle out of Rio.

  “You can say that again.”

  “Was it Spade who picked you up?” Ryker asked suddenly, his golden hazel eyes as intense as they’d ever been.

  Kayla nodded immediately, her hands gripping one another tightly. She felt like a child, being asked whether or not she’d stolen the damn cookies. Why did she feel so guilty? It wasn’t her choice that she’d ended up here, that she’d been brought to disrupt the lives of the men she’d loved and the men she’d left just the same.

  But it is your fault. You just don’t know how.

  “It was.”

  “He’s fucking planning something,” Ryker said, fishing a cigar out of his pocket and shoving it in his mouth.

  He went to light it up but stopped at the last moment, his expression falling slightly as Kayla’s eyes studied him. He had always smoked and Rio barely touched the things. Drinking was his vice, as it was Kayla’s. Ryker took the cigar out of his mouth slowly and tucked it back in the pocket on his belt.

  “He’s always planning something,” Rio added with a shrug.

  “He did come off as the scheming type, I guess,” Kayla confirmed.

  What little she knew of the man all pointed to the fact that Spade never did a damn thing without good reason. Kayla only wished she knew what the goddamn reason was that had brought her to Poland. She hadn’t been to Europe in a few years, having exhausted what she thought were all her leads there.

  Maybe it’s time to revisit the option, if I’m here already…

  Her gaze flicked from Rio to Ryker, both of whom were staring at her with expressions that mixed together confusion, longing and, in Ryker’s case, a fair bit of anger. In her eyes, they hadn’t changed a bit since that time six years ago that she’d seen them last.

  Both of the lion twins had freshly been recruited for the US Navy and shortly after that, they’d get called up for SEALs. That was the last thing she’d managed to find out about them before they seemed to disappear off the face of the earth. While time had made the lines on their faces harder, and the intensity about them more palpable, to her they still seemed like the crazy, loving, ravenous men that she’d loved for one summer that seemed far too short and far too long ago.

  A summer she couldn’t forget even if she tried. A summer that would be with her forever.

  “Where the fuck did you go?” Ryker asked suddenly, and the weight of the world dropped back on Kayla’s shoulders.

  Yeah, Kayla. Where the fuck did you go?

  Four

  Ryker

  Ryker’s world was spinning out of control.

  From the first moment he’d seen Kayla Malone, standing in the middle of their damned bunker in her black jeans, leather jacket and combat boots, he’d felt his walls come crumbling down and he couldn’t build them up fast enough. The more he looked at her, the worse it got and he fucking hated it.

  He hated how much he wanted her. How much he missed her. And how eager he was to throw caution to the wind and forgive her for leaving them all those years ago without so much as a word.

  Running a hand through his close-cropped reddish-blond hair, he turned his back on her for a moment, grinding his teeth together as he tried to get his thoughts in order. Rio looked like he was about as eager to forget about everything that happened, grab her in his arms and kiss her until she ran out of air. Ryker would have been a liar to claim any different.

  Not looking at her helped a little. In the back of his head, a voice could be heard again, rationalizing how all of this had to be some giant trap and he and Rio were getting played in some way that they couldn’t yet figure out. It was all true, that much Ryker was sure of. Spade wouldn’t have brought Kayla in unless he knew something he shouldn’t have known, and Ryker got the ominous feeling that whatever it was, it was going to change his life forever.

  He was done with change. He was fucking over it.

  “I…” Kayla started, her voice vulnerable and shaky.

  It made him want to run to her, smother her with kisses and tell her that it was fine. That she didn’t have to tell him anything if she didn’t want to, if she couldn’t. That all would be forgiven as long as she never left again, as long as she stayed with him and Rio for the rest of their fucking lives.

  How pathetic is that? She didn’t want you, she didn’t want either of you. Get the fuck over it.

  The sad part was, until he laid his eyes on her, he’d been sure that he had been over her. Kayla Malone had been an unfortunate chapter in the book of his life, a chapter that was closed a long fucking time ago. Sure, she may have been the one, but there could be others. Fate didn’t take away from a lion what it couldn’t replace and it had been that hope, or maybe the fact that he’d just stopped caring, that had kept him going.

  The SEALs had helped. The war had helped and the carnage had really put a positive spin on things. Ryker Tyren had had plenty of time to reconsider his position in life and come to the rather fortunate understanding that he was just fine without a mate and neither he nor Rio needed a woman to function as the deadliest, most unbeatable team he knew.

  But here she was again and all of those thoughts seemed not only juvenile, but completely bogus.

  Just being in the same room with her made him feel like more of a man, like more of a lion. His animal smashed itself against him, fighting to get out, fighting to be given control. If Ryker did that, he knew that there would be no chance in hell that he wouldn’t end up fucking Kayla’s brains out before a single sensible word could be shared between them.

  Maybe that would have been the better option.

  “I couldn’t handle it,” she said finally, making Ryker lock gazes with her.

  She looked visibly shaken. The tremble of her shoulders was noticeable from across the room and Rio shared a quick glance with Ryker.

  Don’t you dare fucking go to her, he thought.

  Rio remained where he stood and both of them crossed their arms over their chests at the same moment, guided by that invisible thread between them.

  “Couldn’t handle what?” Rio asked, his tone a lot more conversational than Ryker could manage it.

  It wasn’t difficult for him to admit that standing there, looking at the only person he’d let close other than his twin, he felt like someone had taken a knife and cut open all the old wounds that he’d thought he’d managed to stitch up. How fucking wrong he was.

  Finding Kayla had been like a breath of fresh air. He and Rio had been twenty-one, young and brash, only learning to control their strength and powers. They’d never been normal kids and even without witnessing what they’d seen then going from foster home to foster home would fuck up even the most cool, centered children. But Kayla had made Ryker think that maybe there was hope. She’d shown that there could be a way in which he could feel whole again, that there was an option to fill that gaping emptiness inside of him that had opened up that day when he watched the sands turn red with blood.

  But then she’d left and the emptiness had only gotten deeper and darker. Since then, whatever he threw in there would disappear forever, the blackness turning larger still.


  “My brother died,” she said, keeping her gaze level despite the very obvious shaking in her voice. “He was murdered. I left to help with his funeral in Boston. I never came back.”

  Rio cleared his voice slightly but neither of them was surprised. Ryker had done his due diligence after her disappearing act and they knew her brother had passed – information that wasn’t easy to obtain since Kayla hadn’t said a word. They’d given her space but after she hadn’t returned with several weeks passing, they’d started looking for her, only to never find her. After a while, Ryker had concluded that she didn’t want to be in their lives and Rio had reluctantly agreed.

  She’d always had her own demons, which made her all the more perfect for them, but everyone dealt with theirs differently. Ryker was sure Rio had never given up hope that she’d come back.

  And here she was. Looking like she hadn’t felt this guilty in her life.

  “We knew,” Ryker said. “That doesn’t explain it. You never came back.”

  She looked up and Ryker could see the moment where she squared her jaw and when her fiery personality got the best of that overwhelming awkwardness that seemed to linger in the room. Pissing her off had always been the way to go when he wanted to get some straight answers out of her. It seemed like things really didn’t change all that much.

  “You wanted too much. I couldn’t give it to you. Not then.”

  Ryker frowned and Rio let his arms hang by his sides. Rio was still geared up and smelling of gunpowder and a faint smell of electrical burning, but underneath the grime and the blood, Ryker could see his expression falling. It seemed that Rio knew what she was implying at while Ryker could only feel himself getting more aggravated by the second.

  “What did we want that was too much, Kayla? You were living with us. I thought you fucking lov-… I thought you gave a fuck. You had your issues and we had ours, we never hid that from you. But you ran, like a coward, without so much as a word.”

  “Ryker,” Rio started, his tone carrying some warning in it.

  “No, fuck that. You know I’m right. You told her that you thought she was our mate. She knew that and she left the very next fucking day. Not a goodbye, not a see you later, nothing. Fucking nothing. I looked for you, Kayla. I scoured the fucking earth for you, thinking that you got hit by a car somewhere or shot your veins to hell or something worse. But you didn’t want to be found, did you?”

  The words that came out of his mouth were as hurtful to him as they had to be to the other two. Their youth hadn’t been particularly mild-mannered. Hell, the only reason they’d ever met Kayla in the first place was because she had some of the best cocaine in town at that point and they got pointed her way. Between partying, drinking, smoking and abusing every substance in the world, the three of them found one another to be more intoxicating than all those things put together.

  Over the course of a few months, Ryker had felt something resembling normalcy for the first time since that day he’d been locked in that cellar and he’d had hope. Hope that life could be better. And then she’d disappeared and everything they’d abused before seemed to no longer be enough.

  The SEALs had helped with that, giving the twins an option to blow off steam to destroy enemies of the state instead of themselves, but it only served to fuck them up more. Ryker would be the first man to confirm that.

  Kayla shook with anger and her pretty eyes flashed with the kind of violent fury Ryker remembered so fondly from back in the day. She always flared up so beautifully and she’d never been as gorgeous to him as when she was at her most enraged, scouring through the world as a woman on a mission.

  She hopped up and crossed the distance between them in a few steps, slamming her hands into Ryker’s chest as hard as she could. He didn’t budge an inch and his jaw tensed, looking down at the small, delectable woman he’d never stopped loving.

  Fuck, it was physically painful looking at her and not touching her. Even the way she’d shoved him sent sparks and lightning through him, the touch intoxicating.

  “I disappeared!? I left!? Are you fucking kidding me!? Yes, I went away, and yes, I didn’t tell you about it. But you two, you were expecting me to fix you. I can’t turn around the lives of two grown-ass men who can’t tell the difference between their asses and their heads half the time! Every fucking night we went out, you two got into some sort of a brawl with someone. Every fucking day, there was another problem. You couldn’t stand still. You couldn’t just fucking be, there had to be something happening at every waking second of the day.”

  She was ranting, her eyes ablaze and her little body shuddering with rage. Ryker had never wanted to kiss her more than he did just then, but he firmed himself, listening, even while his hands were rolling into tensed up fists.

  “After you told me about that day, that… What you’d been through… How could you think I could stay? How could you think I could handle that burden?” Her eyes were starting to well up with tears and Ryker hated the sight.

  He despised hurting her, even though there’d been plenty of times he’d lain awake in his cot, imagining the ways in which he could make her feel the kind of pain he’d felt after she’d left without a word.

  “I was a fucked up kid, Ryker. I couldn’t make you two better, I didn’t have a clue where to start. We lived off of Jack Daniels, ramen and coke. Does that sound like the recipe for a brighter fucking future!?”

  “It would have gotten better,” Rio interjected, pushing his rifle off his shoulder and putting it down. “It was getting better.”

  “Not because of anything I did,” Kayla spat.

  The guilt was evident in her features. Ryker had never imagined that this confrontation would go like this. He’d expected to find the wild-eyed, tattooed and snarling woman he remembered from when he was twenty-one and while she was here in the flesh, something about her had definitely changed. Something about her made him want to protect her with everything he had, an emotion that had always been there, but one that he never thought he had to act on.

  Kayla had always been able to handle herself and get herself out of any shit she ended up in. Now, Ryker got the feeling that things had changed.

  “Of course because of what you did,” Rio said, speaking where Ryker couldn’t find the words to say anything. “Don’t you remember? That night, when we sat down and told you about what we thought was happening, how you were our fated… Fuck, that was supposed to be the beginning of everything. We’d never told a single person about what happened, that day… Kayla, it was going to be different.”

  Rio ran a hand through his hair and then down the side of his face. His eyes flashed pure gold for a moment, his lion creeping to the surface as emotions got the best of him. It was fucking impossible holding the beast at bay at that very moment so Ryker wasn’t the least bit surprised that his brother’s lion reared its head.

  A tear fell down Kayla’s cheek in earnest now. Ryker couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t telling them everything, that there was something that she was hiding that had changed her so palpably, but he couldn’t make himself ask her what it was.

  She dropped her blue gaze to the floor and Ryker could feel the air change in the room, like someone had flicked a switch.

  “I came back. But you weren’t there anymore.”

  The next thing he knew, he had her wrapped up in his arms, kissing the air out of her lungs.

  Five

  Kayla

  Kissing Ryker felt at the same time like coming home and getting doused with cold water. It was hot and heated and chilling to the bone and Kayla wasn’t entirely sure whether she was supposed to succumb to it or fight it. Gasping, she pushed her hands against his steely chest – wider now than how she remembered it – and shoved herself away from the kiss. She didn’t get far with his hands wrapped solidly around her waist.

  His eyes were on fire, hazel and gold and orange mixing together to create a whirlpool of desire and confusion that seemed to mimic the feeling
s within Kayla almost perfectly. It had always been a small wonder how these men did it to her – how they could read her like a book while being just as broken as she was.

  “Are you sure we should be doing this?” she stuttered, trying to find words that would convey everything she had yet to tell them, everything she needed to tell them, without completely destroying the moment.

  “Yes,” came the stern, one-syllable answer from her right, with Rio stepping closer and closing the distance between them.

  Ryker’s grip on Kayla’s waist loosened only enough that she could twist to meet Rio’s searching lips in another kiss that made her melt into his touch. Rio’s was more animated, more searching, but ultimately softer and more pliable. Where Ryker took what was his, Rio gave her a chance to demand as much as give. It was a dynamic she’d always loved about her two lions and damn if it didn’t hurt like a hot prod to her side to realize that she had been missing this for all these years.

  It didn’t have to be this way, she thought sourly, blinking back tears even while she was kissing Rio, and then pulled back to Ryker. It could have all been different…

  But that was something that she didn’t have time to think about right then and there. No, she wanted to forget about everything, all the reasons she had been on the hunt for the last few years, and all the pain that would come with it the moment she revealed it to the Tyrens. For now, she chose the easier way out – one of enjoyment.

  Without thinking, her hands wrapped around Ryker’s neck and he picked her up as if she were a feather, carrying her across the room to the nearest cot. She was practically thrown down and when she hiked herself up on her elbows, she was met with the blazing gazes of both lions. They looked ferocious, sexy and entirely irresistible.

  Even covered in mud and blood and god knows what else, they were everything she remembered them to be. Rio tossed off his gear vest and then his shirt followed soon after, peeled off like a second skin to reveal his battle-hardened, granite body. He had a few tattoos on him and the one Kayla remembered the best was the one he still carried on his left pectoral – three initials reading RKR for each of their names.