She kept her gun tucked at her side, close to her bare thigh, all the while scanning the street, making sure none of Gideon’s neighbors were out and about.
He lived in an older, more established neighborhood in Houston’s university section. Most of the residents were elderly. Quiet and retiring, in-bed-by-nine types. Still, it wouldn’t do to frighten some blue-haired old lady out walking her dog.
Finger poised over her trigger, she stopped at the driver’s-side window and found the seat…empty.
The hair on her nape tingled. She pivoted, gun clasped tightly in both hands.
“Looking for me?”
Kit spun around, leveling her gun squarely on Rafe Santiago. “You.”
He swiped the gun out of her hand. She reacted, throwing a punch. He caught her fist in his hand the moment before her knuckles made contact with his face.
“You need to work on your approach. I heard you coming like a herd of elephants.”
“I wasn’t going for discretion,” she bit out, struggling to wrench her fist free of his bruising grip. “I came out here to tell you to leave me the hell alone. Take your stakeout somewhere else.”
“That’s not likely to happen.” His fingers tightened around her hand. Hard enough to make her wince.
“No?” She cocked her head to the side and gave up on freeing her hand. Instead, she threw her head forward and crashed it into his face, willing to endure the headache, knowing he would suffer more.
He dropped his hold on her fist.
She jumped back a step and backhanded him across the face. The sharp sound cracked through the air.
His head snapped back, but he did not so much as stagger from the blow.
She waited, balanced on the balls of her feet, watching as he rolled his head around to face her once again, blood trickling from his nose.
She stifled a pang of guilt. Remorse was weakness, and she couldn’t afford to be weak.
So he wasn’t her standard target. Even mortal, he was still a pain in her ass, and needed to be dealt with.
Smiling, he wiped the blood away with the back of his hand, staring at it for a moment before licking it clean.
Her stomach clenched at the act. So primitive, so male.
“Impressive. What else have you got?”
“Oh, there’s more where that came from.”
“Let’s see it then,” he invited, with annoying calm, beckoning her with a mocking wave of his hand.
Irritation zipped through her, feeding her a shot of needed adrenaline.
She came at him, taking a quick jab at his face.
He blocked her fist, smiling that arrogant grin.
Growling, she came at him again. And again.
Each time, he either ducked or blocked her. They moved off the street into a yard. A dog barked somewhere nearby, its frenzied yaps imitating her every strike and punch.
After several more attempts, she paused, panting from both exertion and fury.
Oh, he was good. Her eyes narrowed on him.
He cocked an eyebrow, waiting. Waiting.
He was toying with her! Blocking all her blows, but never coming at her or trying to hit her.
“Fight back,” she snarled, diving at him.
He ducked and circled her. “I would hate to bruise your face.” Laughter gleamed in his dark eyes, which shone down at her in the night.
“Don’t hold back! Fight, dammit. Fight! It doesn’t matter that I’m a woman.”
“No?”
She charged him with an angry bellow, swinging wildly.
He stepped to the side. Before she knew what had happened, he gripped her arm behind her back. Propelling her forward, he slammed her against a tree. Her cheek ground into rough bark.
“Watch your anger,” he advised.
“Go to hell!” She kicked behind her, digging her heel into his shin.
He tightened his hold on her arm almost to the point of pain. “Your temper works against you.”
“There you go,” she spat out, trying to look around at his face. “I knew you had it in you. Knew you could hurt a woman. Nice play at chivalry, though.”
He pressed his body against her back, every hard line of him sinking against her softness. His hold on her arm loosened.
“I’ll give it you. You are pretty tough.” His breath feathered her ear. She shivered, jerking as he brushed a hair off the side of her face. “For a woman,” he added.
“For a man,” she flung back, heat licking her cheeks, indignation firing through her.
“I suppose,” he agreed. “Most men would find you a force to reckon with.”
But not him? That was his implication. And it burned a bilious trail down her throat. I’ll show you.
Swallowing her anger, she let herself relax, soften. Thrusting her hips back, she subtly brushed herself against him.
“Most men do,” she agreed, dropping her voice in pitch, nearly choking on the provocative words.
His breath caught behind her, the sharp sound rising the tiny hairs on her nape. He released her arm, and she brought it around, splaying her palm against the trunk. She rubbed her ass against his hardness.
She smiled as he pushed himself against her. Then her smile slipped when she felt a certain hardness grind into her ass. Her belly tightened at the feel of him there.
Before things got too far out of hand, she rolled herself around, her back against the tree.
He remained as close as ever, a wall of heat flush against her, staring deeply into her eyes, unsmiling. The hard ridge of him prodded her belly.
“Is this what you do when you’re in a tough jam? Tease and give a guy a hard-on?” The centers of his dark eyes glowed brightly.
No. She’d never been in such a bad scrape that she felt the need to use her body. Never before him, anyway.
His gaze slid down. She followed his eyes, not realizing until she felt his hand on her breast that he meant to touch her. He rolled her nipple through her T-shirt, squeezing it until it grew hard and distended.
She gasped at the perfect pain of it. Her belly clenched, and she grew wet. Shifting her legs in attempt to ease the ache between her thighs, she bit her lip to stop from crying out.
“How far would you go, Kit March? Hmm?”
That light at the centers of his eyes intensified as he worked his fingers harder over her nipple. A knot grew in her belly, twisting and tightening. A cry escaped from between her teeth.
He pressed his mouth to her neck, breathing warm air over her flesh. “I, for one, would be very interested to know.”
She lifted a hand to cling to his arm. “Please,” she gasped, fingers digging into his hard bicep. This was crazy.
“Please what?”
Rip off my clothes. Put your mouth where your hand is. Take me. Pound into me right here against the neighbor’s tree.
“Stop,” she hissed as he turned his attention to her other aching, neglected nipple. His fingers rolled it into a hard, tight bud. “I said stop!”
And then he was gone. His heat. His marvelous hands. Him.
She blinked. Gone. Vanished, it seemed.
His hand, his wicked touch on her breasts. As abruptly as it had begun, it was over.
She blinked again. Breath coming fast and hard, she moved away from the tree. Crossing her arms over her chest, she surveyed the neighborhood, craning her neck and looking all around. Nothing. No sign of him.
A humid breeze shook the trees as she stepped out of the neighbor’s yard and into the street.
She squeezed her arms tighter over her throbbing breasts, trying to erase his touch. No use. She still tingled and ached, wanted to take her own hands to herself in a simulation of what he had done to her.
His Hummer sat unmoving along the curb, but he was nowhere to be seen. She strained her ears, listening for him, but heard nothing. No sound of running feet.
The night hummed around her, alive. She glanced up at the moon. Almost full. Only a sliver remained. Despite the eve
ning’s heat, she shivered. Bending, she scooped up her gun from the street.
How could he have just disappeared?
She eyed a dark line of nearby shrubs for several moments before returning to the house.
He leaned against a tree, chest lifting in ragged breaths that sawed from his lips as he listened to the light footsteps of Kit March as she moved across the street. He dared not look. Not if he wanted to remain where he was. In his mind he could see her. Her tan legs, her sweet ass, round and firm in her boxers. That was temptation enough.
That’s it. Run. Run fast. Run far.
He could still smell her. Clean woman. Her mild scented soap. She had showered, but he still detected on her the faint vanilla from earlier in the evening.
Dragging a hand through his hair, he glanced at the watching moon and cursed. His cock pushed painfully against his jeans, begging for relief. The relief he could have had moments ago. With Kit March.
She hadn’t wanted him to stop. At least her body hadn’t. He could have persuaded her, could have pushed those boxers down her hips, wrapped her legs around him, and slid inside her heat right there against that tree.
It would have been good. Great.
Wrong.
He heard a door open and shut as she entered her house and he heaved a sigh of relief. Hands clenched at his sides, he beat the back of his head against the tree, punishing himself, feeling more alone than he had ever felt before. Bereft. Even worse than when his mother banished him and his brother to the mountains that summer, isolating them from the world. Freaks to be cut off from mankind.
The blood pumped through him, hot and thick. “Shit.” This assignment had just gone from tricky to total and utter shit.
He’d stepped over the line. In a big way.
It wouldn’t happen again. Kit March was a job. Nothing more. He wouldn’t let her get under his skin again.
CHAPTER 6
Kit woke with a jolt, the remnants of a dream crumbling like dust around her. Chest heaving, she choked on air, a pair of familiar dark eyes flashing across her mind. Dark eyes with unusually bright centers.
Rubbing her chin, she sat up, immediately remembering the night before. Her breasts remembered, too, growing heavy at the memory of his fingers on her, tormenting her in the most wicked ways. Moaning, she fell back on her pillow and pulled the comforter to her neck.
She so needed sex. And not with some damn EFLA agent.
Sighing, she stared out the window. The gray dawn air washing the room somehow soothed her. Dawn. She always preferred this time of day. Even when the moon was at its peak, lycans would retreat and head for home at dawn. And so would she. A time of retreat. Rest. It meant she had survived another hunt.
“You look like a little girl when you sleep,” a deep voice murmured, cold as glacial wind.
Her hand dove beneath her pillow, and she lurched up in bed with the gun clasped and ready. For a moment she feared it was him, Rafe Santiago. Again.
That would explain why she was trembling.
There was something about him. Something more threatening to her than his association with EFLA and his not-so-subtle threats to her family. He rattled her. Made her belly tighten and breath come quick and hard.
Her eyes focused through the gloom to the large figure standing before her bed. Pewter-colored eyes glowed down at her.
Not Rafe.
But not someone she wanted to see, either. Even if he wasn’t one of the oldest lycans on record, he was one tough-looking son of a bitch. Dressed from head to toe in black, he was the kind of guy who stood out in a crowd. Which was strange, considering he led a fairly discreet existence.
Handsome, she supposed, with a square jaw and hair so black it glowed blue in the light. His lips were well-carved but looked incapable of curving into a smile.
“Darius? What are you doing here?”
In the softening air, his unnerving stare raked over her. “Kit. Charming as always, I see.”
Lowering her gun, she snapped, “What do you want? Gideon’s not here.”
Gideon called him friend, but she did not. Would not. He was a lycan. No different than the monsters she hunted. Like any other lycan. He was damned. Cursed. A predator. Even if he hadn’t killed in generations. Even if he locked himself away every full moon to resist the overwhelming need to feed. Remove those walls, and he would kill, feed—on her. On Gideon. Friend or no. She could never forget that. Never trust him. And he knew that. Knew she thought he deserved a bullet in his head.
“I know he’s not here,” Darius replied in strange formal accents that hinted at an age lived and lost within the annals of time. He moved closer, with all the grace and stealth of a jungle cat, eyes forever glowing.
She snorted. Of course. Her brother had probably given him an itinerary of their trip.
“Then why are you here?” She pulled the sheets higher, trying to pretend his presence did not affect her, did not make her uneasy. She was accustomed to being around lycans—just not to conversing with them as though they were anything less than bloodthirsty monsters.
A deep breath rattled loose from his chest, a hint of humanity she would never have credited he possessed. Several moments passed before he answered, his deep voice clipped. “Cooper’s dead.”
His words penetrated slowly through her mind, like a pebble sinking through water. Still, she heard herself ask in a faint voice she did not recognize, “What?”
“Cooper’s dead.” His lips barely moved as he spoke, and she wondered if he felt anything at all. Or was he every bit the cold bastard she’d always suspected.
“He can’t be.” She shook her head. “He called here last night—”
“Trust me. He’s dead.”
“No,” she insisted, her hands fisting under the sheets, her chest tightening. “Who told you this? How can you be sure?” The words flew out of her mouth as fast as gunfire. “Cooper wasn’t exactly your friend. He only let you live because of Gideon. I doubt you made it to his call-in-case-of-an-emergency-list.”
She didn’t want to believe him, wanted to deny his words, but she knew through Gideon that Darius had an uncanny way of knowing everything that went on in NODEAL and among the larger lycan packs in the city. He had informants everywhere. If Cooper were dead, he would likely know.
She supposed she shouldn’t put it past him to know all the comings and goings of NODEAL—and EFLA, for that matter. The guy was richer than Donald Trump, living in a fortresslike mausoleum with a full staff to wait on his every whim. Not to mention a state-of-the-art research lab staffed with a pair of Caltech scientists working around the clock to find an antidote to his curse. What a joke. He didn’t deserve a chance at redemption. The only thing staying her hand from reaching for her gun was Gideon.
Cooper. Dead.
A terrible pain, swift as wind, swept through her too-tight chest.
She could only shake her head. She should have kept calling last night. She should have driven over to Cooper’s house. Done something. Anything.
“A delegation from EFLA has arrived in Houston.”
Her mind leapt to Rafe and his ominous dark eyes as he proclaimed himself an EFLA agent. “Yes. I met one of them—”
“You met one? When?” The hard line of his lips barely moved as he spoke.
“Last night.”
“And he let you go?”
She frowned, thinking over their tussle out in the street. Staring into Darius’s chilly silver eyes, she knotted her hands in the sheet and replied, “Why shouldn’t he?”
“For the very reason Cooper is dead,” he replied, his accents crisp. “EFLA wants you dead. You and Gideon. I’m guessing Cooper wouldn’t go along with it.”
“He sounded…anxious on the message,” she murmured, her lips numb as they moved. She lifted one hand from the sheet and pressed it to her forehead. The skin felt tight and hot as a balloon in the sun, ready to burst.
Had Rafe Santiago been the one to pull the trigger? An angry burn
ing sensation crept up her neck. She should have killed him last night, instead of letting him put his hands all over her. “I don’t understand any of this. Why is it so important to kill us just because we go against—”
“A hit has been placed on you and Gideon. It’s all over town. The packs are allying. You’re not safe.”
“A hit?” she exclaimed, shaking her head. “That’s absurd. Why are they going through so much trouble for us?”
“EFLA’s in charge, Kit. It’s what they’ve been working toward for over a century. They want to bring NODEAL to heel, rid it of all rogue agents and policy breakers. Gideon. You.”
She pressed both hands to her cheeks. “This can’t be happening.”
“The top players with NODEAL wanted Cooper gone. They’ve never liked the way he handled the Houston division. They knew he tolerated Gideon and you.”
“So they killed him.” Bastards. She pressed her fingertips to her suddenly throbbing temples. “None of this makes sense. Even with everything I’ve heard about EFLA, I can’t believe they would kill Cooper after all his years of service—that NODEAL would allow that to happen.”
“They believed him untrustworthy. Disloyal.”
She recalled Cooper’s cryptic message, the urgency in his voice. She recalled the uneasy feeling in her stomach.
Darius’s pewter-colored eyes glowed down at her, his face a granite mask, impenetrable, incapable of any expression that might reflect emotion. “It’s time to get out of town.”
She studied him for a moment, his ink-black hair darker than the room’s deepest shadows. Fury burned in her chest. She did not want to run. She wanted to make them pay. She owed Cooper that much. He had saved her life all those years ago. Hers and Gideon’s.
“You’ll be next,” Darius added, his voice matter-of-fact. Heartless bastard. “And Gideon.”
“Because we’re rogue operators? They’ll kill us?” Even for EFLA, known for its extreme measures in the hunting and exterminating of lycans, it seemed drastic. “I don’t buy it. There’s something more going on here.”
Kiss of a Dark Moon Page 4
