by Sydney Croft
Panting, Tom fell back on his hip, sat there watching her as he caught his breath. He said nothing, just gazed at her with hooded, impassive eyes. He looked exhausted, but she knew if she moved—for her room, for the phone, for anything—he’d drop her in a heartbeat.
In her arms, Luke stirred, and she closed her eyes, let his thoughts wash over her. He was confused, somewhat hungry and pissed as hell. She wanted to smile, but there was a dead man bleeding all over her floor, and the man who’d killed him was staring at her like she might be next.
“How’s the dog?” he rasped, and she blinked.
“Why? Are you going to kill him now?”
He didn’t answer. He merely stood, winced and prodded Derek’s body with his foot.
Swallowing sickly, she helped Luke to his feet and pushed him back when he looked like he might still want a piece of Derek. She got to her own feet, stood there on shaky legs. She glanced at her bedroom door, wondering how fast she could get inside and get the door locked. Maybe she could escape out the back window.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said.
“What—” She swallowed again, tried to get the lump of terror to go down. “What happened? Why did you kill him?”
He fisted his hands at his sides, looking from Derek to her, saying nothing. She inhaled deeply, needing to know where his emotions were. The danger scent had faded, but a new, sharper one sank into her lungs and sent her pulse into a pounding throb. Her body was answering his, even if the scent of lust rolling from him had come about from an adrenaline rush and a battle. Unbelievable. He could kill her right now, and her body wouldn’t care as long as he had sex with her first.
“Answer me,” she snarled. “This is my life—so, damn you, answer me!”
He stood there, all dark and menacing, and a chill ran through her because she knew she wouldn’t like the answer he was going to give her.
“HE WAS GOING TO kill you, Kira,” Ender said finally, barely recognized his own voice. But it was something about the way she stood there, looking so brave and strong, that stopped him from being a total asshole. Instead, he showed her the handcuffs Derek held, the tranq gun stuck in the guy’s back pocket with a large enough dose of ketamine to take down a few horses.
It was a lie, of course. Derek’s plans went far beyond killing her, but she was on a need-to-know basis, and right now, she didn’t need to know anything but what he told her.
She looked between him and the body, no doubt reliving the fight scene inside her mind. Her hands shook slightly, and she fisted them while she stared up at him. “Who are you?”
There were so many ways to answer that. A killer was the first that came to mind, followed shortly by The guy who fucked you like an animal earlier, but she already knew both those things. That’s not what she was after.
He’d have to settle on something she’d like and give her a little of the truth—a combined plus. “I’m the guy who just saved your life.”
She snorted, not buying it. No way, not after she’d spotted him running earlier, the way he’d fought Derek.
“Am I supposed to take you at your word?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” she said, wrapping her arms tightly across her chest. “I don’t think I want to.” She nodded down at Derek’s body. “What are you going to do with him?”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “But you’ll have to come with me.”
“Are you crazy? I’m not going with you to bury a dead body.”
“Actually, it’s not just one. I’ve got four to bury, but it shouldn’t take long.”
“Four?”
“I found your two missing farmhands,” he admitted.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, and swallowed sickly. “Jack and David…” She leveled a dark, angry gaze at him. “And what about the third body? You just picked up an extra one for good luck?”
“Something like that.”
She shook her head and stepped back, as though easing toward her bedroom door. “Who do you work for?”
“As of yesterday, I work for you.”
“Not anymore.” She stalked to the end of the hall and grabbed the cordless phone from the table against the wall. “Get out. I’ll give you a head start before I call the police.”
He almost laughed. She was all show, no action. She had no one to call, and the police weren’t an option. For the next couple of days he was going to be Kira Donovan’s entire world.
He left her staring at an empty palm as he slid her phone into his pocket.
“How did you do that?” she demanded, but her voice shook beneath the bravado.
The good-ole-farm-boy act was over. Done with. For everyone’s own good. “I work for an agency called ACRO. They know all about you. They want you to come to work for them.”
He didn’t have the touch for this shit, the special, touchy-feely, everything’s-going-to-be-okay-baby attitude the rest of the agents who did this job had. Besides, his ribs fucking hurt where Derek had ripped into him, his kidneys ached and he’d be peeing blood by morning. He was going to lay it on the line to her, tell her what she needed to do. Noncompliance was not an option.
If it is, you’re going to have to kill her…
“Why do they want me?”
“Because they know you’re an animal whisperer. They want to develop your skills, take you off the market before someone else grabs you. Someone far more dangerous than my organization,” he said.
She glanced over at Derek’s body, then back to Ender’s face.
“And you work there. As what? A thug? A killer?”
“I’m an operative,” he said.
“Is that what they call it?” She shook her head and narrowed her eyes at him. “Why are you so fast? They experimented on you, didn’t they? Some sort of crazy government research.”
“Trick of the moonlight,” he said, but she pushed her palms against his chest, put all her weight behind it. He didn’t give her an inch.
“Bullshit. Tell me what you are.”
Dammit—he’d always hated that question, never knew quite how to answer it. Dev had always gotten a good laugh out of the fact that Ender never lumped himself in with the special-ability types. Then again, he hadn’t known there was a name for what he was until he was recruited into ACRO eight years earlier.
You’re an excedo, Dev had told him.
I’m a killer, he’d answered back, and Dev had shaken his head and taken him into the ACRO fold despite major resistance.
He’d just thought he was some kind of freak. Still did in many ways, but it didn’t bother him. A lot of the rare operatives loved to moan and gnash their teeth, a woe-is-me attitude toward the special gifts nature had bestowed on them.
As far as he was concerned, if Mother Nature wanted to throw something extra his way, he was all for it. She’d bestowed on him super eyesight and the ability to move at cheetah speed. A human blur. Super eyesight and speed were the best of all combinations, in his opinion, static gifts that he put to good use on a regular basis. That and a bigger-than-average cock, also put to good use on a more than regular basis. Because sometimes nature insisted that it was time to just slow down and enjoy the ride.
Now, of course, was not the time to slow shit down. It was time to start convincing Kira of what she needed to do to stay alive. “I’ll explain more as soon as I take care of a few things,” he said. His time, his schedule. No one else’s ever.
“I’m not working for anyone but myself, especially not some mysterious agency that sends thugs to do the recruiting.”
“You don’t have the luxury of that choice anymore,” he told her, the words coming in a low growl.
“What, like it’s your way or the highway?”
“More like, it’s my way,” he said, baring his teeth slightly, because he was so done with this pre-convincing shit.
“You’re an asshole.”
“What’s your point?”
S
he stared at him and slowly shook her head. “You can tell the CIA or NSA or whatever to go fuck itself.”
He snorted. “ACRO’s not government.”
“Military? Derek said you were Army. He said you’d been dishonorably discharged.”
“Derek was correct about that. Probably the only thing he was right about since he got here,” he told her.
His own Delta Force days were more a blur than anything, a way to legally pass the time and burn off the constant, extra energy he always possessed. A way to stay out of trouble. Lots of excedos led a nice, productive life of crime, and true to form, Derek had gone down that road for a while before joining Itor Corp, a smaller agency of rare operatives that regularly went head to head with ACRO.
“What did you do to get a dishonorable discharge?” she asked.
“Don’t ask questions I can’t give you answers to, Kira. Answers you don’t want.”
“Here’s an answer I’m sure you don’t want—I’m not joining your agency. Ever. And there’s nothing you can say or do to convince me. I’ve lived through worse than you,” she said. “Now you need to get the fuck out of here before I call out my dogs.” But her voice lacked a certain conviction even though he was pretty sure she meant what she said.
Something else was wrong.
He stared at her, the tank-top strap falling off one shoulder, the hastily pulled-on shorts, her hair loose around her face and shoulders. And there it was—the need was back in her eyes. He could tell she was torn between hating him and wanting him.
Join the club, honey.
She wrapped her arms around her chest, squeezed her legs together tightly like she was trying to keep from reaching out and grabbing him. Even her jaw tensed, and she closed her eyes momentarily, swayed a little like she couldn’t control her own body.
“Let me take care of what I need to,” he said. “We’ll talk more about this in the morning. When you’ve calmed down. When you’ve gotten your needs met and you can think clearly.”
“No. I can’t stay here with you tonight,” she said. “I have to go find…someone. Seeing how you killed my backup.”
“You’re not leaving my sight.”
“Then you can come with me and watch.”
“And give you an opportunity to escape or get help? I don’t think so.”
“I have to, dammit.” The need was burning bright in her eyes, and she shifted from foot to foot. Part nerves, part lust. “Tommy, you need to let me go.”
The way she called him Tommy reverberated straight to his dick. “You need me,” he said. “And I’m all yours.”
“I’m your prisoner,” she snapped. “I can’t trust you. And I don’t.”
“I don’t trust you either. That didn’t matter the last two times, and it can’t matter now. I know how to help you.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Very wrong,” he said.
She hesitated briefly, the adrenaline almost visible around her, before she took off out the back door, and in a dead run through the empty field behind the barn. She had to know it wouldn’t do her any good, but he gave her credit for having the balls to try.
He was on her within seconds, tumbling her to the soft earth and pinning her underneath his weight. For a minute, he just lay there, his face inches from hers, letting the hard planes of his body feel every soft curve of hers, reveling in the fact that she didn’t try to struggle.
The adrenaline from the run seemed to have taken the edge off her craving slightly, but the heat from her body began to rise all around him, scorching through his T-shirt and making his skin prickle.
“Want to play This Is Your Life, Chastity Belle?” he murmured roughly against the side of her cheek.
“No,” she spat out through gritted teeth. Her eyes shot fire at him. “And it’s Charity, you asshole. But you knew that.”
He grinned, because yes, he had known that. “Too bad. We could talk about the fact that you’re much more used to wearing handcuffs than you let on to Derek. The fact that you’ve been arrested at animal-rights rallies.”
“Big deal. Protesting the unethical treatment of animals is something I have every right to do under the Constitution,” she said.
“What about lighting fires at slaughterhouses?”
“Never proven.”
“The sinking of the whaling ship?” he asked, watched her eyes grow slightly wider, half panic, half lust taking over, and the dizzy feeling he’d gotten earlier was coming back strong. “You know you’re on the government’s terrorist watch-list.”
No, she didn’t know. He could tell by the way her mouth fell open, her full, pink lips parting in a way that left him breathless.
He stared from her face down to the graceful column of her neck, thought about the fine bones that ran along the side of her trachea, knew it would take only the pressure from one of his fingers to finish his job quietly and cleanly. Humanely. So easy to end this job now, probably was the right thing to do, because his gut told him that Kira didn’t have a cooperative bone in her body when it involved anything other than her heat cycle.
“You’re all alone in this great big world, Chastity. So many people looking for you. The government, the police, the men who tried to take you away in a van outside of Memphis,” he said, and she whimpered. “Who’s going to take care of you now? Your animals can’t protect you forever.”
“Stop calling me Chastity. And don’t call me Charity either. It’s not my name anymore.”
“Why? Did you change your name legally?” he taunted her. “Oh, right. No way to do that when you’re a wanted woman.”
“At least I’m not a killer,” she said.
“Not that they’ve proven. Not yet. And time’s running out.” His fingers itched with the urge to do something, but he stayed motionless on her, his elbows propped on the grass and pressing her immobile arms against her own body, his thighs a deadweight on hers. His cock strained against his shorts, throbbed against her with a life of its own, something he couldn’t have stopped no matter how hard he tried.
Her heart beat against his, faster than when she’d first taken the drugs. Her metabolism, and her urges, were headed into maximum overdrive.
“Are you going to turn me in?” she asked.
You wish, honey. Especially if she knew the alternative.
“What if I did? Would you let a police officer take you, right there in your jail cell, with all the guards watching?”
“It’s happened before.” She shuddered and closed her eyes, and when she opened them, her gaze clung to his, pled with him. “Don’t do this to me. Please, Tommy, just stop it and let me go.”
“I can’t.”
“You won’t.”
“Same difference.”
She’d started to panic, turned her head from side to side, and it wasn’t his imagination that she was starting to gain strength. It wouldn’t be enough to buck him, but things were intensifying.
He wasn’t going to kill her tonight.
“How about I take the choice away? Will that make it better?” he asked.
“No,” she whispered, but he didn’t believe her, could smell her scent, her raw desire rising up in the night air. “You don’t understand my needs. They’re too much for one man to handle. You’ll never be able to keep up with me.”
“I think I’ll do just fine. As long as you obey.”
She shifted under him, tried to stop herself from rubbing against him. “Obey? I don’t obey anyone or anything but my needs,” she said, and Jesus, she was actually, honest-to-God purring while she lay trapped underneath him.
“You’re going to have to start if you want to stay alive,” he said, but his words had stopped registering with her.
“Don’t move. I like your weight on me,” she murmured, and the low rumbled purring started again in her throat, vibrated through his entire body. She groaned throatily and thrust her hips against him.
“Obey is th
e key word here. Don’t think I won’t take you over my knee, Kira.” His voice was rough with that promise, throbbed with a lust that shot straight through her. “Don’t think you won’t love it—bare-assed, submitting to my every single whim.”
She sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth because, dammit, she needed him, wasn’t going to be able to stand it much longer if he didn’t take her every way he possibly could, and soon. It didn’t matter who he was or what he’d done. All that mattered was the way he made her feel.
She never thought she’d need a killer to save her life.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” she whispered, clawed frantically at him, tried to tear away. But the combination of his skin on hers, his scent, the inherent command in his voice…
She wasn’t going to make it.
“I’m the only one who can keep you safe now. Keep you, fuck you, satisfy you,” he murmured, his fingers brushing between her legs deftly, not lightly, the way she liked to be touched.
“God, yes.”
“Going to let me help you?”
“I hate you,” she moaned, even as she arched up against his erection. “Do it. Do it now, Tommy.”
“One thing.” He grabbed her wrists and pushed them above her head. In one swift movement, she found her wrists handcuffed together. “You’re not the one giving the orders anymore.”
“Bastard,” she said. At least, she tried to say that, but her ears heard something more like, “I don’t care,” because right at this moment, she didn’t. Later, she’d care a whole lot, but now she needed him.
“Now that we’ve got that settled…” His voice, a rough caress, made her skin tingle. He drew the callused palm of his hand down one arm stretched above her head, then down her side, to her hip, and every inch of the path his hand took sizzled.
She wriggled, worked her legs out from under his so she could wrap them around his waist. The hard length of his erection rubbed her through the fabric of his sweat shorts in just the right place, made her groan, but it wasn’t enough.
His fingers slipped beneath her waistband, and then he released her cuffed arms and pulled away enough to strip her of the shorts. The soft grass tickled her bare skin as she let her knees fall open. Cool night air caressed the very place she wanted Tom to be, but he just sat there on his knees between hers, his eyes glittering in the moonlight. His chest heaved, his gaze burned her skin where it landed.
