by Sydney Croft
She’d been away for six weeks this time. Kat was pissed that he hadn’t even tried to be with anyone else—she knew it meant Annika was special to him. She was right, of course, and there was no reason to try to deny it.
“Come home with me, Annika,” he murmured, his thumb stroking her nipple through the thin fabric of her camisole. “Come home to my bed.”
“It’d be hotter here,” she countered, and at her long, cocky look, he nearly lost his resolve.
“My house,” he said firmly, put a hand around her upper arm in an attempt to steer her out of the bar.
“No,” she said loudly, her voice carrying over the jukebox music and generally raucous patrons of the bar. Which made all of them stop and stare.
Most everyone here knew Creed. He was a hard man to miss because of his height and the tattoos. He was always being approached and asked the name of his tattoo artist, and he’d tell them that he’d gotten them done out of the country. Which, technically, wasn’t a lie.
He just didn’t mention how far out of the country.
“Problem?” the bartender asked.
Creed looked between him and Annika, who still wore that I’m-determined-to-win-this-round look he knew so damned well, and he let go of her arm.
“Nothing that’s going to get solved tonight,” he said, right before he walked out, sans Annika.
He kicked his Harley roughly into gear and revved it twice, his normally calm demeanor shot to hell. Even Kat’s attempt to soothe him wasn’t going to help him tonight—nothing but Annika in his bed was going to make it all better.
CHAPTER
Five
TUESDAY 10 P.M. MST
Ender was restless—woke with the blankets half off his naked body and a thin sheen of sweat covering him and he knew he wouldn’t go back to sleep. There were a few things that could cure that restlessness instantly, things Kira could help him with if she wasn’t passed out, so he limited his options to outdoor activities he could do alone.
He’d never slept much anyway. A few hours of REM would do, and the ability to achieve that state quickly, and with maximum effectiveness, had been drilled into him from his first days of Delta training.
He flipped open his cell phone, brought up the feed of Derek’s room and Derek’s image, splayed across the bed in the same position Ender left him in hours earlier.
Derek’s strength might top his, a fact he grudgingly admitted to, but Ender’s metabolism allowed him to drink the same amount of the drug as both Derek and Kira with minimal effects. He’d get a brief, mild high, the same as he would with double or triple the dose of what he’d used, or even stronger drugs. And the good people at ACRO had certainly tried them all with him when he’d been brought in, freshly released from the brig and hating the entire fucking world.
That hadn’t really changed.
He slid on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, left his feet bare as he padded to Kira’s room, opened the door quietly and slid inside.
The various animals lifted their heads in greeting, a few wagged their tails at him and looked back at Kira, like they were worried.
She’d shifted in her sleep, was facing the door, lying on her side, her head resting on her arm. Totally freakin’ naked.
He hadn’t been able to get a good look at her in the barn or earlier when all the animals were jumping around. But now, with the moonlight through the windows, he was able to take it all in—the fact that she was tanned golden all over, the dark pink of her nipples framing two of the best-looking breasts he’d ever seen, the slim waist and the curved hips leading to long, shapely legs.
What time is it? Should I be horny yet? Because I don’t think I am. Maybe you could touch me and find out.
He approached the bed, put two fingers to the pulse on her neck and counted. Again, a little faster than he’d expected, faster than it should have been. He used the light from his cell phone to check her color—pink in her cheeks and lips, breathing wasn’t labored and there were no signs of distress.
I don’t catch human diseases. No colds. No flu. I got Parvo once. I have to go to the vet.
He made a mental note for ACRO to check out her metabolism and realized his own pulses were now running too high. He turned to leave the room and got distracted by the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, something he hadn’t given himself a chance to check out earlier. On the middle shelves, the most easily reachable, was a collection of Shakespeare plays that rivaled his own. He pulled out Macbeth, his favorite, saw that her copy was also well-worn. Written in too, with passages underlined.
It didn’t mean anything. He shoved the book back to the shelf and left the room without a backwards look, headed down the steps to the outside. Because something was up.
Once his feet hit cool grass, he expected to feel better. When he didn’t, he knew something else was wrong.
He’d never wanted psychic abilities, but sometimes they’d sure come in handy.
He moved swiftly toward the back of the barn, letting his instinct guide him. Something threw a shadow across the back wall and he moved in a way he’d never been able to describe, not until the people at ACRO taped him in action and he realized that he moved so fast, he was barely a blur on the screen.
Whoever it was wouldn’t know what hit him, and Ender didn’t hesitate for one second to get the guy into his death grip. He looked him in the eye for one second and was reminded again about who he was and why he was here.
With a snap, the neck broke and he let the guy’s body slump to the ground. He searched the pockets, knew he’d find nothing except the gun that was going to be used on him, and on Kira.
He’d made Derek nervous enough to call in backup. A nervous operative always made mistakes, stupid ones too, but this could work in Ender’s favor.
This was also going to move things along much more quickly than Dev had predicted, but between Kira’s spring fever and Itor’s agents coming out of the blue, it couldn’t be helped.
Kira had bonded with him—she’d taken him without hesitation, as if she couldn’t help herself, and he’d known out there in the barn that everything the file said about her was true.
At least you got to her before Derek.
He was still restless, and thinking about Kira’s body taut against his didn’t help. He dragged the body roughly through the wooded area that backed up the barn and tried to shove him up under one of the old tarps that covered the cords of wood.
Two other bodies were in the way. The two missing farmhands, most likely guys who never did anything worse than spit tobacco and screw the farmer’s daughter. He peered more closely at them for cause of death and saw that their necks had both been broken cleanly—with very little effort, based on the state of the bodies.
Derek.
They’d been dead for a couple of weeks—with the smell of compost and manure out here, the decomposition of rotting flesh would’ve been easy to miss. His fresh kill joined the other two men and he re-covered them with the tarp. He’d bury them later so the animals didn’t come into contact with them. That was sloppy on Derek’s part.
He glanced up at the main house to check that all the lights were still off. He wasn’t worried about Derek—the guy was going to sleep through until morning. He wasn’t as sure about Kira, but figured he had at least a few more hours alone.
Something brushed his back, and he turned swiftly, figuring it was that goat again. But thankfully, there was no sign of the tattletale creature. Instead, one of the more beautiful horses he’d seen earlier whinnied and stomped in front of him.
Nothing more beautiful than a female when she’s looking for attention.
“Come here, baby,” he murmured, and she complied, head down, and nuzzled against his chest. He brushed his hands over her neck, then put his head against it and breathed in deeply.
He missed this, no matter how much he told himself he didn’t. Maybe if it had been more of his choice to leave the farm all those years before, things would’ve been different.
But tonight, right now, there was no difference between the boy he’d been and the man he’d become. His muscles stretched, taut under his skin, his pulse raced steadily, and he knew what he needed. He gave the nag a firm pat on the rump, and she took off, eager for the game. He was right behind her, cutting through the night air until his skin was damp with sweat and the trees were a blur, ran until he couldn’t think or feel anything beyond his own limbs flying and the natural, desperate high he craved.
THE TINGLE THAT WOKE KIRA made her shiver between her sheets, even though her skin felt hot to the touch. She groaned, rolled to a cool spot in her bed and looked at the clock. Just after ten. Five hours since she’d had Tom. Five hours. She must have been exhausted, because her body never let her go more than four.
A slave to the tight pull between her legs that was worse than usual thanks to the extra hour she’d slept, she groggily swung her feet to the floor, yawned. Her head swam. She pressed her palm to her forehead. Sex withdrawals. Right on time. She needed to hurry.
She stood. Frowned. Looked down. She was naked. Not normally anything to cause concern, since she slept that way, but she didn’t remember getting undressed.
She didn’t remember much of anything after dinner.
Her body didn’t care about what her mind remembered or didn’t remember. It hummed with hunger, throbbed with need, and she decided she’d solve the memory mystery later.
Quickly, she threw on a pair of shorts and a tank top, and padded out of her room. A dozen dogs and cats sleeping in various places on blankets on the floor lifted their heads to watch her with exaggerated hopefulness, like she was a total sucker.
“Nice try, guys,” she whispered. “Not time to eat.”
She crept up the creaky stairs, her pulse already pounding in anticipation of having Tom inside her. At the landing, Spazzy, a wire-haired terrier mix, lay at Tom’s door like a sentry. For a moment, she thought Spazzy might have the same issue as Cheech, but when she reached down to scratch him between the ears, the sensation that flashed through her wasn’t one of suspicion. Spazzy liked Tom. And Spazzy had also seen him go outside in shorts and bare feet.
Odd. Tom wasn’t a smoker; she’d have smelled that. Maybe he’d gotten too warm. The old house didn’t have air-conditioning, and the rooms overheated on sunny afternoons.
She hesitated at the landing, cast a glance at Derek’s door. Derek, who had warned her about Tom. Who had flirted with her, had liked her cooking. Who didn’t seem to want Deb like Tom did. She closed her eyes, sucked in a deep breath, pushed away the strange pinch of jealousy that tweaked at her for the second time today. She had never been territorial when it came to men. How could she be, given that she couldn’t limit herself to one man per season?
None of that mattered right now. She needed sex, and she needed it now. Derek might not mind her climbing into bed with him out of the blue, but she already had a connection with Tom. She could save Derek for later. For when Tom wore out or he decided he’d rather have a stacked blonde.
She hurried down the stairs and stepped out onto the front porch, grateful for the cool breeze that rippled the fabric of her baggy sweat shorts and that seemed to shrink her tank top to her aching breasts.
Find Tom.
The dewy grass tickled her toes as she headed toward the barn. She didn’t need the bright light from the nearly full moon to guide her—she could find the barn blindfolded—but it helped her keep an eye out for Tom, who was nowhere to be found.
Lifting her nose, she inhaled, seeking his scent. Now that they’d mated, his fragrance had become a beacon, stronger than it had been before, and she should be able to smell him if he was nearby. She caught a lingering impression—he’d been this way recently.
Frowning, she stopped at the stack of hay bales that had been delivered yesterday and that needed to be hauled into the barn. A T-shirt lay draped over one corner. Horse snorts and sleepy chicken trills and the sounds of animals moving about in stalls collided in her ears, but no footsteps.
She glanced back toward the house, cursing. Derek might be her only option right now. But dammit, sleeping with him would only cause problems this early in the game. Dinner had been mildly amusing, the way the two men had been so blatantly competitive, but in all seriousness, the rivalry was a bad sign. Clearly, neither was the type to share, and she had no time or desire to deal with jealousy or posturing or idiotic alpha-male chest pounding. And unfortunately, Tom and Derek seemed to be as alpha as it got.
Hands on hips, she looked into the distance, into the forest behind the farm, up the hill toward the exotic animal acres, in the field to the west.
The field where one of the horses frolicked, seemingly chasing a man. A man who moved like an Olympic sprinter. She blinked the sleep out of her eyes. There was no way a human could keep up with a horse. No, her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. The man was Tom, and he was running a race with Shamal, her little gray Arabian mare.
She inhaled sharply, her mind trying to make sense of what she was watching. Did Tom possess some sort of animal gift like hers? Was he somehow genetically enhanced? She wouldn’t put it past the government to try something like that. Especially with soldiers.
The graceful power of his body mesmerized her, drew her, made every cell quiver until they felt ready to burst, and she suddenly didn’t care if he was Robocop. Heat washed over her until her clothes felt sticky and confining, and she stripped out of them, spread them on the bales of hay. She threw back her head and let the night breeze cool her, caress her naked, tingling skin.
When she looked up again, Tom was heading back, following Shamal now as she cantered in a beautiful, easy stride. It was hard to believe that at one time the horse had been so starved she’d been only hours away from death.
Kira climbed up on the bales of hay and stretched out, stomach down on the clothes, wanting a view of Tom as he jogged in, wanting to be ready for him.
She lifted her hips slightly, slid her hand down her stomach, dipped her fingers between her legs and found that she was definitely ready. Her juices already ran hot and heavy, matching her breathing, her pulse, her desire.
Burying her fingers to the second knuckle inside her core, she stroked herself. Her blood surged, and she knew she wouldn’t last long once Tom entered her. Heck, she was on the verge now. She imagined her thumb circling her clit was Tom’s tongue, that her fingers were his…it had been so long since any man had done more than simply screw her, and she craved the attention.
Tom’s attention.
He drew closer, her breath grew more rapid and, reluctantly, she slid her hand from between her legs and admired the way his sinuous, effortless lope brought him to her quickly. As he slowed, she reached for him. “Tom.”
A blur of silvery, shadowy motion hijacked her vision. Pressure and a pinch of pain shot through her. She barely had time to blink, and then the pressure and pain evaporated. The hand that had been crunching down on the back of her neck was gone, balled in a fist beside Tom’s thigh.
“Fuck! Kira, what the hell? You scared the shit out of me.”
She pushed up to her knees and brushed bits of hay from her cheek that had been smashed into the bales of hay.
“Yeah,” she muttered, moving her hand to rub the back of her neck. “Ditto.”
His sharp, angry scent mingled with the sudden musky scent of arousal. Her lack of clothing had registered.
“What are you doing?” His voice, already slightly labored from his run, now sounded a little low and rough. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”
“Why aren’t you?”
He swore, ran a hand through his hair. “I needed to burn off some energy.”
She twisted around to sit on the bale, planted her feet on the edges and spread her legs wide, letting the cool night air ease her where she burned. “So did I.” Boldly, she palmed her inner thigh and stroked her way to her sex. Using the tips of two fingers, she found her bud, swollen, hard, slippery. “I hope you d
idn’t burn off too much.”
His audible swallow rang in her ears, almost as loud as the hum of blood rushing through them. “No, ma’am.”
She’d never masturbated in front of a man, but thanks to the extra hour, her need had doubled, and the more aroused he was, the more semen he’d spill. Besides, inhibitions flew the coop when she was in heat. When her cycle was over, she’d be humiliated and full of regret at the things she’d done, but right now she didn’t care.
Biting back a moan, she slid her two fingers, one on each side of her clit, up and down, and then added a grind with her hips.
“I’ve imagined your tongue doing this,” she said, and the way he watched her, his gaze like blue fire, set her blood alight like her veins contained gasoline.
“I’ve imagined the same thing.” He took a step toward her, and though she was dying to let him do what she suspected he was going to do, she couldn’t wait any longer.
Quickly, she shimmied down the hay pile. She strutted up to him, drew a finger through the sheen of moisture on his bare, muscular chest. “Another time. Right now I need you inside me.”
“You aren’t afraid to ask for what you want, are you?”
She shuddered at the sound of his voice, at the heavy scent of her arousal, and his, at the way his nostrils flared as she dragged her hand down through the light dusting of chest hair. “Never.”
Spreading her fingers, she flattened her palm over his abs, took in the way they bunched beneath her touch. A wave of dizziness spun her head, and there was no more time for foreplay.
Greedily, she yanked down his sweat-dampened shorts. His cock, dusky and marbled by thick veins, curved upward so the tip nearly touched his stomach, and beneath the magnificent length, his sac drew tight before her eyes. As she rolled her spine straight, she let her cheek brush his erection, let the velvety skin caress hers. The way his breath caught and his body went taut brought on another wave of dizziness and desire. Oh, she wanted to take the time to taste him, to suck him until he begged her to let him come, but the dull ache in her womb had worsened.
