by Sydney Croft
“Thank God, ma’am,” Remy said from near the door, where he was holding Haley’s hand. “I was about to turn a hose on them.”
Heat seared Kira’s cheeks, but Tom just grinned like the cat that ate the canary. Clearly, the food was already working.
The veterinarian sighed. “Remember what I said about waiting a week?”
“Don’t worry,” Kira said. “I can restrain myself.”
Tom looked at her like she was a big, fat liar, and if he weren’t lying in a hospital bed she’d have hit him.
“Good.” The vet glanced at Haley and Remy. “I have some news, but it might be best to have some privacy.”
Before Remy and Haley could back out of the room, Kira shook her head. “No. They’re friends. Family. They can stay.”
Tom groaned, and she could have sworn he mumbled the words “So screwed.”
Dr. Lavery nodded. “If you’re sure. I’ve been working with the research department and the lab, and we think we can help ease your spring fevers. Before you get your hopes up, you need to know that the cure could take time, as in years. But in the meantime, we can make them more manageable. We’ll create prepared applicators—backup in case Tom gets sick, injured or just needs a break.” She shifted her weight and steeled herself with a deep breath, and Kira knew this was going to be interesting.
“We’ll have Tom bank his—”
“Ah, wait.” Tom struggled to sit up. “What? No. Whatever you’re going to say, no. A couple of weeks is not a problem.”
Kira bit her lip. “Um, it’s four.”
“Four what?”
“Four weeks.”
Tom slid back down in the bed. “Christ.”
She patted his shoulder. “It’ll be fine. Since I’m on abstinence orders this week and you’re not, we can get started with the bank thing right away. Fun!”
For the first time ever, Tom’s cheeks flamed, and Remy wasn’t helping things, not with the way he was laughing so hard he was in danger of busting something. Like his ribs, which had Haley’s elbow in them. Over and over.
“There’s more,” Dr. Lavery said, and Haley took the opportunity to drag Remy out, apparently deciding that Tom could handle only so much family.
Dr. Lavery drew a photo from the folder she’d brought with her and clipped it to a lighted board on the wall. “This is your ultrasound. See these circles?”
Kira’s lungs seized, and Tom went taut. “Is something wrong? Is Kira okay? What about the baby?”
“Everything’s fine,” the vet said in a low, reassuring tone, and Kira felt the breath she’d been holding blow out in a rush of relief. “It’s just that we think, based on your estimated window of conception and the size of the fetuses, that your gestation period might be accelerated.”
“Fetuses?” Tom sounded a little strangled.
“Yes. Each circle represents one fetus.”
“But there’re three.” Kira frowned. Tom’s hand tightened around her waist. “Oh, my God. Three.”
“It appears you have a lot more in common with the animal world than we thought,” Dr. Lavery said. “Litters.”
TWO DAYS AFTER ENDER WAS DISCHARGED from the infirmary and Kira had moved out of Haley’s house, Haley hurried into the reception area of Dev’s office, to find a scowling Marlena. The woman must not like working for a new boss.
“I need to see Mr. Oswald,” Haley said. “It’s an emergency.”
Marlena buzzed Haley in, and she stepped into Dev’s office to find a man she’d never seen before, though he looked familiar. “Mr. Oswald, I’m Haley Holmes.”
“Call me Oz.” He threw a foot up on the desk. “So what’s up?”
What a strange man. Definitely not military. Once again, Haley wondered why Dev had turned ACRO’s reins over to him, but really, it wasn’t any of her business as long as this guy knew what he was doing. Which, at the moment, she had her doubts about.
“I don’t think we’ve met. I’m the head of the Meteorology department. Did Dev fill you in on the weather-machine situation?”
“Itor supposedly has some monstrous thing capable of creating massive tornadoes and hurricanes?”
“Yes. I’ve been looking for it since September.” She opened her briefcase with shaking hands. “I think I’ve found it.”
She slid a computer printout across the desk to him. “It took this long because I had to compile known data from the mini-machine’s weather patterns—I’d encountered it last fall, and then had to search the world for similar patterns, as well as determine—”
“I trust your research. Skip to what I’m looking at.”
“The coordinates.” She strode to the giant map of the world on Dev’s far wall, her stomach queasy with excitement. “It’s here.”
One dark eyebrow crawled up his forehead. “That’s the middle of the Atlantic. That’s impossible.”
She nodded. “That’s what I thought. Then I got some satellite photos.” She hurried back to her briefcase and pulled out a stack of papers. “At first, all I saw was water.”
She handed him the photos, and he sifted through them, seeing nothing of significance.
“But then I got a close-up with this one.” When she pushed the last photo in front of him, he glanced at it and then looked up again.
“It’s more water.”
“Look closer.”
What he did was look at her like she was insane, but he finally peered down at the picture. After a moment, his eyes went wide, and she knew he’d seen it.
The fuzzy, nearly invisible outline of a monstrous oil platform.
“Holy shit,” he breathed. “They have a light-bender.”
“A what?”
Tracing the oil rig with his finger, he breathed deeply. “Someone who can bend light to create an invisible shield. ACRO used to have one. Maybe he’s still here. But he could only do this to himself. I’ve heard rumors of a guy who can do it and take small things like chairs with him, and that is extraordinary.” He stabbed the photo with his finger. “This…this is un-fucking-believable. And an oil platform…”
Before she could say anything, he slammed his fist on the desk.
“Mother. Fuck.”
“That’s kinda what I was thinking.”
He pierced her with a hard stare. “We’d have an easier time breaking into Fort Knox than we would getting onto this. They’ll know our methods, and this thing will be a fortress. Not to mention they have the world’s biggest moat around it. We’re screwed.”
She snapped her briefcase closed. “Welcome to ACRO.”
Epilogue
Whenever Ender came home from a mission, he was on edge. He thought about taking a hotel room or staying at ACRO for the night, just to decompress. This was the first time he’d ever come home from an ACRO job to someone. And not just someone—his mate.
Except, fuck, he missed Kira like crazy and with the babies due in just a few months, he wanted all the alone time with her he could get.
He walked into the house carefully. He’d already put the safeties on his weapons and now he placed them into the steel-doored closet he’d had built the second he’d realized he was going to be living in a fucking menagerie.
He’d put his foot down when Kira told him that Spazzy had requested to live inside the house. Because a man had to put his fucking foot down at some point.
He tripped and cursed, because she’d rearranged the living room furniture while he’d been gone—no doubt, to balance his chi or something crazy like that.
He shook it off and moved on.
They attacked him when he was halfway through the kitchen, took him down hard on the ceramic-tile floor.
“Dammit, Babs!” he yelled at the Weim, who’d Velcroed herself to his side. She merely raised her ears and wagged her tail, while Rafi was fucking sitting on his chest, staring down at him. And there was Spazzy, standing over him and so not outside the house.
So. Screwed. And that was without the three little monsters, three
girls, who were going to be running loose around this place and running roughshod on him.
Kira was watching him from the doorway, and God, she looked even more beautiful than she did last week when he’d left. She was round and curvy and he was going to make love to her tonight—she’d left him a message a few days earlier that Dr. Lavery had given her a clean bill of health at her August checkup.
“I’d like to have some time alone with Tommy,” she said now, and immediately the animals dispersed, though they hung around in the distance. He stood and embraced her gently.
“Hey,” he whispered.
“Hey yourself.” She ran a hand along his cheek. “Are you okay? Need some time alone?”
He looked around at the animals surrounding them, and at Kira’s belly, and finally at her. “No,” he said. “Not right now.”
She tugged his shirt and began to walk up the stairs, him trailing closely behind. “Remy said that you tried to strangle the pilot tonight when you landed.”
“He had a shitty touchdown,” Ender said. “And Remy has a big mouth.”
They were on the landing, right outside the bedroom, and she turned toward him, shaking her head.
“Wait a minute…You don’t expect me to be…nice, all of a sudden, do you?” he asked.
She laughed at what must’ve been the look of horror on his face. “No, Tommy—I want you just the way I fell in love with you.”
“Well, good. But that guy’s an asshole.”
“Yes.”
“Moody.”
“Of course.”
“Not a nice guy,” he said. “Never going to be a nice guy.”
“I don’t like nice guys,” she said, and he growled deep in his throat. She growled right back at him before she ripped his shirt open, and he knew he’d found the not-nice woman for him.
About the Authors
SYDNEY CROFT is the pseudonym of two authors who each write under their own names. This is their second novel together; their first was Riding the Storm. Visit their website at www.sydneycroft.com.
Read on
for a sneak peek
of
SEDUCED
by the
STORM
by Sydney Croft
Coming from Delta in Summer 2008
SEDUCED by the STORM
On sale Summer 2008
Faith Black had been beaten, drugged, and imprisoned, but none of that scared her. No, what frightened her to the core was the man confined with her. Chained to an improvised medieval rack and bare from the waist up, he lay on his back, arms over his head, his incredible chest marred by bruises and a deep laceration that extended from his left pec to his right hip.
He might have been rendered immobile, but he was in no way helpless.
His weapon, far more dangerous than the telekinesis—to her, at least—was his overpowering sexuality, a force that tugged her toward him, made her burn with need despite their grave situation.
Head pounding from the blow she’d taken to the cheek, she pushed to her feet and padded close, her nudity barely registering. She’d been stripped naked while unconscious, her clothes tossed into one corner of the windowless, steel-walled room. The weak yellow light from the single bulb emphasized the deep amber of Wyatt’s eyes, no longer green, as he settled into the transitional period many telekinetics experienced when their powers flared up. The air in the room stilled, and the chain around his right ankle began to rattle.
“Don’t,” she said quietly, and he shifted his head to look at her as though he hadn’t realized she’d regained consciousness.
“Faith.” His voice was rough, as haunted as his gaze. “I didn’t tell him. I swear.”
“Tell who what?”
“Your boyfriend. I didn’t tell him about us. He knew.”
“Sean’s not my boyfriend,” she said, and Wyatt cocked a dark eyebrow like he didn’t believe her. “And I know you didn’t say anything.”
She knew, because she’d been the one to confirm Sean’s suspicions that she and Wyatt had slept together.
Wyatt’s head lolled back so he was staring up at the steel beams crisscrossing the ceiling. The corded tendons in his neck strained and tightened as he swallowed. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”
“You didn’t.”
A growl rumbled in his throat. “I seduced you. I shouldn’t have. Not here. Not on the rig where he could find out.”
She inhaled him into her, the masculine scent that threw her off balance whenever he came near. No, she couldn’t blame him for anything, least of all her out-of-control desire for him. He was here to do a job, just like she was, which meant getting the assignment done by any means necessary.
“I’m not here because Sean is jealous.” Though Sean was, furiously so, but Wyatt didn’t need to know that.
“Then why?”
Dragging her gaze from the strong, brutally handsome features of his face, she let her mind focus on a realm of existence most people never saw. Instantly, Wyatt’s aura became visible, a shifting, undulating layer of light around his body. And God, something was wrong, so wrong she nearly gasped.
Wyatt radiated power, so his aura should reflect the same. Instead, it stretched thin around his body like an ill-fitting, secondhand coat, ridden with weak spots and holes, like he’d suffered repeated supernatural attacks. She could repair the damage, but her efforts would amount to little more than a patch job on his psychic garment. Replenishing his aura, renewing it…that, only he could do.
For now, she concentrated on the cut on his chest, worked her power into beam of energy that knit the wound together. The muscles in his abs rippled, carved so deeply that they cast shadows on each other. She knew how they felt beneath her touch, how they flexed when they rubbed against her belly, and she had to clench her hands to keep from reaching for him.
The wound closed in a whisper of sound, and Wyatt sucked in a harsh breath. “Jesus. You’re a fucking agent.”
His eyes glowed amber again, and the chains binding him rattled.
“Please don’t,” she said, letting her psychic fingers slide south on his body. “Let me. Follow my lead.”
He moaned and then grit his teeth against the sensations she sent streaming into his groin.
“I’m going to need you to scream, Wyatt. Scream like I’m killing you.”
The bulge in his pants began to grow with each of her virtual caresses deep inside his body, and his eyes flashed green fire. “You are, Faith.” His voice rumbled, dark, dangerous. “I’ve been through the gates of hell and survived, but somehow, I think you’re going to be the devil who takes me down.”
Chapter
Two
FOUR DAYS EARLIER
Wyatt Kennedy was a dead man, and other than a few problems like being unable to use his credit cards, it hadn’t been so bad.
Of course, he’d already been declared dead once before, a long time ago, so he knew the drill. Lay low, use cash, watch your back.
When he’d dropped off the face of the earth years earlier, he’d had ACRO—the Agency for Covert Rare Operatives, of which he was one—on his side. ACRO had recruited him, changed his name, and killed him off so he wouldn’t face a murder rap for the death of his half brother.
Which, for the record, he still wasn’t sure whether or not he was responsible for, thanks to a slight memory lapse that lasted for five years, despite ACRO’s best efforts otherwise.
This time, he got to keep the same first name, at least. The most important part of being dead this go around was letting everyone at ACRO think he’d been killed—for reasons he didn’t quite understand but when orders were given, orders were followed. The rest of the world, and Itor Corp—ACRO’s major rival, had never known Wyatt had existed anyway, and he knew the mission he was dealing with—finding the weather machine that Itor Corp had built and hidden on an offshore oil rig, was some serious we plan on destroying the world shit.
It’s not like he looked like he had special powers,
anyway. But he was tall enough that most of the men in his general vicinity gave him a wide berth, which was cool with him. He tended to live mostly inside his own head anyway and preferred his own space, big-time.
The bar crowd tonight was rough, made up mostly of roustabouts who wanted to be roughnecks and roughnecks who wanted to be drillers, all either preparing to rejoin their offshore rig or just coming off their two-week workweek. Wyatt was just coming off his own fourteen days off, prepared to go back in and finish up the job he’d started for ACRO.
Wyatt had grown up in this life under the name of James Jasper—his father owned his own drilling company by the time Wyatt had been born, and he’d already had three sons from his first wife.
Ten years had separated Wyatt and the next youngest sons—twins—and a twenty year difference separated him and the oldest. That oldest half brother had been killed the week Wyatt was born—bringing Wyatt onto the earth during major family chaos. One of the twins lost an arm and a leg in a rigging accident a week later—the other twin helped his father run his rigs—mostly in the Indian Ocean. The twin with missing limbs worked the business angle until he was found murdered, his neck broken in a mysterious accident they blamed Wyatt for since he’d been in the military at the time and more than capable of snapping a man’s neck.
His hand wrapped around the neck of the beer bottle and he shifted on the barstool, hating that particular uncertainty with a passion. He’d dealt with everything else concerning his special abilities, but the idea that they might’ve had something to do with murdering his half brother in cold blood left a lingering unease that never fully allowed him to come to grips with his destiny.
Wyatt’s mother died when he’d been thirteen, just around the time all the other crazy shit had started happening all around him full force.
For as long as he could remember, he’d always had what he’d thought of as secret powers. He remembered moving an object with his mind when he was just two years old, but it had gotten worse when he’d hit puberty. Out of control, until every time he lost his temper even slightly, shit would fly.
