Operation Saving Daniel (Entangled Covet)

by Croft, Nina

  She could imagine Daniel letting a werewolf bite him out of scientific curiosity to study the effects. But she was beginning to suspect that nothing that had happened to him was voluntary. The questions bubbled up inside her.

  “I’m not explaining anything to you,” he said. “In fact, I want you to forget this ever happened.”

  “Yeah, like that’s going to happen,” she muttered.

  “It has to happen. You have no idea what I’m involved with. I want you to go home, pack your bags, and get out of London. And take Julia with you if you can.”

  “What about us?” The question slipped out without conscious thought.

  “There is no us. This morning was all the ‘us’ there can ever be. And even that should never have happened. And it won’t again. We’re finished. Over.”

  Lissa sat up, hugged her knees to her chest, and studied him. He was warning her off. Telling her this was a one-off and not to expect anything more from him.

  “You sound like you’re not planning to be around in the future.”

  He pulled himself up so he sat facing her, the top of his head almost grazing the rock roof above them. His face took on a closed, shuttered expression. “No, you’re not going to be around.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Why should I go?”

  She thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he shrugged. “Do you have any clue what happened last night? They lured you here to kill you. And they would have done it without a moment’s hesitation.”

  “Why would they want me dead?”

  His laugh held no mirth. “Sophia doesn’t like you—that’s reason enough for her. But they also wanted to teach me a lesson, keep me in line.”

  “They’d kill somebody for that?”

  “They might.”

  “Just tell me one thing. What do I mean to you?”

  “Don’t you know? Are you still running scared?”

  “Running scared?”

  “That’s why I let you go all those years ago. I knew you were messed up. I thought you needed time and space, but in the end, you would accept that loving me was worth the risk of getting hurt. And that you’d come back to me.”

  “I did…eventually.”

  “Far too late. But it doesn’t matter anyway. I won’t allow them to use you against me. I’ll tie you up and put you on a plane myself first before I’ll risk having to watch you die.”

  “I want to help you.”

  “The only way you can help me is to get the fuck out of my life and stay out. You’ve seen what we’re like and there’s no way you want to be part of that violence.”

  Maybe not. All the same, she had no intention of getting out of his life, but perhaps now wasn’t the time to reveal that. She’d come home to get Daniel out of her system, which hadn’t happened. But at least she’d saved him from The Evil One. He couldn’t go back to Sophia after this.

  But no matter what he said, his family had to be warned. If they even believed her. They needed to protect themselves. Maybe she’d talk to Jason. He might be able to help.

  “I can almost see you thinking, but you can’t tell anyone, Lissa. Whatever you’re considering doing, forget it. How do you think they’ve stayed secret for so long?”

  “How?” She was sure she wasn’t going to like the answer.

  “By being ruthless killers. Now get dressed, we have to get out of here.”

  …

  The journey back to the car park took half a painful hour. Daniel was still naked and she tried not to stare, but couldn’t prevent the odd occasional sideways glance. Luckily, the hour was early, too early for dog walkers, and anyone else for that matter, and they made it back without seeing anyone.

  Daniel found his way through the forest with ease, which was just as well. Left alone Lissa would probably have been wandering around all day. Like her, he was barefoot, but it didn’t seem to bother him. Her feet, already battered from the night before, were killing her after ten minutes. She managed to hide it for another five but then tripped over a tree root and stubbed her big toe. “Crap.”

  She hopped and glanced down. Blood oozed from the end and she swore again.

  Daniel had continued for a couple of steps, but now he stopped, gave a long-suffering sigh, and turned back. “What’s the problem?”

  “The problem Mr. I’m-a-werewolf-and-therefore-super-tough, is that I’m not and I’ve hurt my toe.” She lifted her foot and waggled it in his direction.

  He took one look at the bruised and bloody foot, scooped her up in his arms, and set off again, carrying her with an inhuman ease. Which made sort of sense.

  At first, she held herself tense, until it occurred to her that if Daniel had his way, this would be the last time he held her. She should make the most of it, so she wrapped her arms around his neck, and one by one, she relaxed her taut muscles and snuggled close to him.

  He stumbled slightly and his brows drew together in a frown, but he didn’t say anything, just tightened his arms around her, and carried on. Lissa closed her lids and let the smooth motion of his walk and the familiar scent of his hot skin soothe her.

  “We’re back,” he said and she opened her eyes.

  They’d halted in the trees at the edge of the car park, which was deserted except for Julia’s little yellow car. As they got close, she saw that poor Buffy hadn’t fared much better than she had. The car was spattered with something that looked like old blood, dried to a dark brown.

  “Yuk,” she said, hobbling toward the car. Julia was going to be pissed. She was going to be even more pissed at the slashed tires and the smashed windscreen.

  “Don’t worry, it’s animal blood,” Daniel said.

  She glanced at him. “It is? And you know that how?” Did she want to hear the answer?

  He sniffed the air. “I can smell it. Deer.”

  “Lovely.”

  “I parked my truck down the road,” Daniel said. “It should be okay. I’ll drive you home.”

  …

  The sun was well and truly up as the truck pulled up outside Julia’s apartment building. Lissa sat rigid in the passenger seat next to Daniel.

  He’d called Julia on his cell and told her they were both fine and on their way back. After that, he’d withdrawn into himself and hadn’t spoken a word since. It was as though their torrid lovemaking had never happened.

  She’d asked a couple of perfectly innocent questions and received nothing more than a couple of grunts in return. She was starting to suspect that while he might be a werewolf, there was also a good dollop of were-pig in there as well.

  “No need to get out,” she said, when he made no move.

  As she reached for the door handle, intent on jumping down, he touched her arm. She tried to shake off his hand, but his grip tightened, and she sank back into her seat and turned to face him. “Yes?”

  “You’ll do what I asked—you’ll go? See if you can persuade Julia to leave with you. But don’t go to my parents.”

  She glanced at him sharply. “You don’t think they are safe.”

  “I hope they are, but Ethan knows where to find them.”

  “Ethan?”

  He rubbed a hand over his face; suddenly he seemed tired. “Just take a holiday. This should be over soon.”

  Lissa didn’t like the sound of that, but a glance at Daniel’s closed face suggested she’d get nothing further out of him this morning. And he probably needed time to think, to come to terms with the fact that his secret was out.

  So did she; she needed to go over what she’d learned, to let it sink in and accept the truth.

  She was irretrievably in love with Daniel. And he was a werewolf.

  How did she accept that?

  She climbed out and slammed the door, took two steps, turned back, opened the door, climbed back in, and kissed him quickly. For a second, his lips softened against hers, then he pushed her gently away.

  “This is good-bye,” he said. “I won’t…can’t ever see you again.”

>   He couldn’t mean that, but searching his face, Lissa found nothing but resolve.

  This time she got out and didn’t look back.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lissa closed the door behind her and rested her back against it. Now that she was away from Daniel, she felt shaky, and her legs threatened to give way beneath her. “Bloody hell.”

  Everything was catching up with her, and despite the fact that nothing seemed real, everything inside her was in turmoil. Taking a deep breath, she pushed herself away from the wall.

  Across the hall, the kitchen door opened and Julia appeared. She looked at Lissa warily. “What’s up?”

  Lissa pursed her lips and tried to make her expression as bland as possible. “Why should anything be up?”

  “Daniel said you were fine, but you seem totally frazzled,” Julia said. “And was that Daniel dropping you off? What happened to Buffy?”

  A good question. And one she really didn’t want to answer. Buffy was still parked in a car park outside London with the tires slashed and covered in deer blood. Somehow, she suspected that Julia wouldn’t want to hear that, even less than Lissa wanted to tell her. Why upset her with something she didn’t need to know? If Lissa was fast, she could get it sorted without Julia ever finding out. Still, she needed to say something. But she had no clue what.

  Luckily, there was movement behind Julia, which saved Lissa from fabricating any lies. Jason strolled out of the kitchen with a mug in his hand. The fragrant scent of freshly brewed coffee wafted across and Lissa almost swayed.

  Jason grinned as he saw her, but the grin faded quickly. “What’s up?”

  Couldn’t anyone think of a more original question? She scowled. “Why does everyone think there’s something up?”

  Julia shrugged helplessly. “You seem a little odd,” she said, eyeing her closely from top to toe. “And where are your shoes? Oh my God, what have you done to your feet?”

  Lissa glanced down. Her feet were a little worse for wear, scratched and bruised, and her pretty gold toenails were embedded with dirt and caked with dried blood. She winced. “I was communing with nature,” she said. “Feeling the soil between my toes.”

  Jason put his cup down on the nearby table and stepped up closer to her. He reached out with one hand and stroked a finger down her cheek. “Someone hit you.”

  She’d forgotten that bit, but at his reminder, her cheek started to throb. She shrugged off Jason’s hand and shuffled a few steps across the hallway to stare at herself in the mirror hanging on the wall. And winced again.

  Frazzled was one way of putting it. Total and complete mess was another. She looked like she’d been chased through the woods by a pack of hungry werewolves, then spent the night sleeping in the bushes, and then… Maybe best not to think of the “and then” in the present company. A dark bruise was forming beneath her right eye where Sophia’s friend had punched her. And to top it all, her hair stuck on end. She reached up and plucked out a twig.

  “Well?” Jason said

  Lissa shrugged again. “We were communing in the woods and I suppose I might have banged into a tree.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?” He studied her closely. “Did the tree hit you in the mouth at the same time?”

  She ran her tongue over her lips, swollen from Daniel’s kisses. “Hey, it was a vicious tree. But honestly I’m fine. I had a good time, we camped out. It was great.”

  Peering at herself in the mirror, she frowned. On top of everything else, she looked well and truly shagged. Which wasn’t surprising, considering she had been well and truly shagged. A wave of heat washed over her as she remembered the feel of Daniel, on her, in her, his hard body moving against hers.

  Julia coughed and Lissa remembered that she wasn’t alone. And the two other people in the room were studying her as though she were some sort of interesting specimen.

  “You’re blushing,” Julia said.

  “Am not.”

  “Oh yes, you are.” Julia peered into her face, and pulled another twig from Lissa’s hair. “And you’ve been out all night. And your T-shirt is on inside out.” She turned to Jason. “I reckon your little sister has been up to no good.”

  Lissa shrugged. “I suppose it depends on how you define ‘no good.’”

  “So how would you define it?” Jason asked.

  “I wouldn’t.” She ran a hand through her hair as if checking for anything else that might be hidden in there. But really to give herself time to think. How much could she tell them before they called the men in the white coats and had her taken away and locked up? She decided that offense was the best method of defense and turned to face Jason.

  “What are you doing here this time in the morning?”

  Jason stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I wanted to talk to you about your friend, Daniel.”

  “He’s Julia’s brother as well. Can’t you talk to her about him?”

  “I’d like to talk to both of you.”

  Lissa had no clue what Jason could want to talk about Daniel for, but she had an idea it wasn’t good. Maybe that had something to do with discovering he was a werewolf. But Jason couldn’t know anything about that. Could he?

  The beginnings of a headache throbbed against her skull, and she pressed fingers against her forehead. She could also feel the bruises forming beneath her skin. She hadn’t noticed them before, probably because Daniel had been making mad, passionate love to her. It had taken her mind off the other things. But she really wanted to be clean before she had to face those other things. And maybe a cup of coffee and a sleep and…

  “Okay, okay I really am okay, but we can talk later. First, I need to shower. So, why don’t you two go and make me a nice cup of coffee and I’ll be back quicker than you can say—you’re blushing—which, by the way, I won’t be anymore.”

  “You will tell us what you’ve been up to though, won’t you?” Julia said.

  “Probably not.”

  Not waiting for either of them to say anything else, she turned her back on them, and hobbled up the stairs. Shutting the door to her room, she released a sigh of relief, then pulled the T-shirt over her head. A slight rash covered her pale skin and her breasts were sensitive. She stroked her palm over one and the nipple stiffened to a hard little point. Daniel’s mouth had been there earlier, though she was finding it almost impossible to believe. In fact, she was finding it hard to believe any of the previous evening or this morning in the forest had really taken place.

  For the first time, it occurred to her to wonder what had happened to Sophia. Was she still alive, or had Daniel killed her? Everything had been so confused, fighting all around her. She’d seen Sophia go down and not get up, but other than that, she knew nothing. One more unanswered question.

  Part of her really hoped the woman was dead, but how would Daniel feel about that?

  The Daniel she had known years ago hadn’t been capable of killing anything. But obviously, he’d changed. She slapped her palm, to her forehead.

  Of course, he had changed.

  He was a freaking werewolf.

  Daniel Melville was a werewolf. She said it over a few times in her mind to see if she could make it sink in. But it still didn’t seem real.

  Flopping down onto the edge of the bed, she lay back and stared at the ceiling. Maybe she was going crazy. Maybe this was some sort of return of her fever. And she was hallucinating. And there really was no such thing as werewolves.

  Wouldn’t that be nice?

  Yes, she liked that theory. There was no such thing as werewolves, Sophia hadn’t tried to eat her last night, and Daniel was a nice, ordinary guy who was about to marry a complete bitch. There was nothing unusual about that. A lot of men married complete bitches like Sophia, especially if they were beautiful bitches.

  Actually, maybe she didn’t like that theory after all.

  She had to get off the bed. Julia wouldn’t wait forever. And Lissa needed to get the story sorted out before she went back and face
d them again. Growing up, she’d never considered Jason particularly bright, maybe because of his rebellious teenage behavior. Then over lunch the other day she had noticed a shrewd intelligence and she really didn’t fancy having that intelligence directed against her.

  Jason and Julia weren’t the enemy. For that matter, she wasn’t even sure who the enemy was, especially if Sophia was out of the picture. But she had an idea that Sophia had been acting under someone else’s orders.

  Sophia had meant to kill her. Really kill her, not simply frighten her. A shiver ran through her, and a cold lump formed in the pit of her stomach. If Daniel hadn’t turned up last night, she would be dead.

  Dead and eaten.

  That thought gave her a twinge of nausea.

  But Daniel had come. And he’d killed, or at least incapacitated Sophia. Somebody probably wasn’t going to be too pleased about that, meaning Daniel was in danger. But from whom?

  Poor Daniel.

  For years, he had faced this alone, unable to confide in anyone.

  But he wasn’t alone anymore. And whoever was manipulating him would have to deal with her as well.

  So how did Sophia fit into this? She was betting the other woman had never been a real girlfriend. More likely, she had been put in place to keep Daniel in line.

  But what had he been told to do? And why?

  Without Daniel’s cooperation, she doubted she would ever find the answers, which might make her head explode. Maybe if she proved she could be useful and not merely the hindrance he considered her, Daniel would allow her to help.

  She had walked out on the man she loved once; she wouldn’t do it again.

  Holy crap, she was in love with a werewolf.

  “Lissa!”

  Julia’s voice shouted from downstairs, definitely impatient, and Lissa still hadn’t worked out what to tell her. She pushed herself off the bed, crossed the room, and opened the door a couple of inches. “Five minutes,” she shouted back.

  After peeling off her jeans, she headed into the bathroom and stood under the hot spray. Maybe Jason could help. He was, after all, an ex-soldier and a security expert.