Walk on the Striped Side

by Jessie Lane

  Elena was damn near panting now. Man, that voice of his was practically a purr that seemed to resonate all the way through her body until it was buzzing through her girly parts. It was such an amazing feeling that she was considering giving him a new nickname. The Talking Vibrator. Her own breath was coming in small, rapid pants now, and suddenly she realized that she’d not been this turned in a long, long time. What in the hell was it about this man that was pushing all her buttons? WAIT. It didn’t matter what it was about him that sent her libido into a frenzy. She couldn’t have him. He was forbidden fruit for a couple of different reasons.

  First of all, she was investigating him on behalf of the Major General. Second of all… well, the first reason was all she needed. But just as Elena was about to open her mouth and tell him no, she didn’t want a demonstration, she wanted a confession, he did something that shocked the shit out of her.

  He took in a long exaggerated inhale, nostrils flaring much like that lion she likened him too earlier, and then his tongue came out to lick his lips like he was savoring something extravagantly tasty. “Damn you smell good all pissed off and turned on.”

  That. Fried. Her. Brain. Dozens of images of him using that tongue to actually taste her overloaded her mind. If she’d thought she’d been turned on before, now she was practically on the edge of an orgasm from just looking, listening, and daydreaming about the man. Her mouth went dry, making speech next to impossible. She had to get her act together though. There was no way she could let this pushy, arrogan- her inner rant ended as Ivanov closed the distance between the two of them. Leaning over the desk, with his hands braced on either side of hers on the desk top, he placed his nose at the base of her neck. She felt him inhale again as he ran that nose up the length of her neck until she felt a rough, wet swipe of his tongue on the spot below her ear.

  Holy shit. Her will power took a hike along with her common sense. He pulled back from her and settled back into his chair on his side of the desk with what seemed to be forced constraint. His knuckles were actually white from the force he was using to dig his fingertips into the desk top in front of him. There were small lines around his mouth and eyes as if he were actually strained somehow. Working up the nerve to tell the sexiest man she’d ever met, that she wanted him to use that tongue on every inch of her body, she nervously licked her dry bottom lip. She saw the moment his eyes zeroed in on the tip of her tongue. Watching it rapturously as she swiped it slowly over her lip, and then his head shot back up to look in her eyes before he lunged. Not moved in smoothly or suavely, but freakin’ lunged at her.

  Expecting his lips to crash into hers any second, Elena closed her eyes. Anticipating what would hopefully be a kiss that rocked her entire world. If she was going to give in to temptation, and risk getting herself in trouble fraternizing with another soldier above her rank, this had better be the best kiss of her entire life. She waited.

  Nothing.

  She waited some more. She kept her lips slightly pursed while her entire body was tingling in anticipation of his touch. Where the hell was the touch of those lips anyways? Opening her eyes back up she found Master Sergeant Ivanov across the room, at least ten feet from the desk, and her, being held back by a man she’d never seen before.

  The stranger was largely built, showcased by his olive green Army t-shirt was stretched tight across his broad shoulders, but still smaller than Ivanov. It was a miracle the unknown soldier was able to hold back the struggling Master Sergeant at all. With sandy blond hair that was so thick and lush, falling almost to his shoulders, it could be described as a manly mane, and unnerving chocolate brown eyes that seemed out of place in context to the rest of his appearance. He was both beauty and a beast. Beautiful because Elena had never seen anything like him with his golden tan skin, matching hair, and a body that was clearly built better than any body builder she’d ever seen except for perhaps Ivanov’s. Beast because of the four ghastly scars, which looked like claw marks, that went from the top of his forehead down to his jaw on the left side of his face.

  The man was hissing something in tones too low for Elena to hear at the man he was restraining, trying to settle him down. Her lust fizzled out as she watched the strange show in front of her, and curiosity surged instead. She’d almost be willing to hand Ivanov’s duty weapon over to him if she could find out whatever it was that the stranger said to him that seconds later put that weird look on his face as he still stood staring at her.

  What the fuck was going on here?

  ***

  Gage

  “Get your shit together before you expose yourself! Do you want a death sentence for letting the woman see that you can be orange, fluffy and cute like a kitten?”

  Like a bucket of ice cold water had been dumped over his head, he stopped struggling with his friend and fellow teammate and reason started to return for Gage. Jesus. Tyson was right. He’d almost flipped his shit in front of Demos and taken her. Granted, she seemed to be willing, but he’d been so out of it that there was no telling what he would have done to the woman. Kissed her? Hell yes. Flipped her onto her stomach, pulled her up on her knees with her shoulders pinned to the floor, slipped her pants over her ass and shoved inside of her till she could feel him in her tonsils? More than likely. Which was bad, because who knew if anyone was back here with them in one of those offices with the doors shut? But what made it all worse was that Gage couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t have really fucked it all up and let some of his beast out in some way. His claws or canines could have made an appearance, and his eyes changed color with strong emotions. Like what he was feeling right now. Mind boggling lust. If he’d given into that desire to take her like the animal he really was, and someone had seen something, he’d be a dead man walking. Fuck.

  Gage leaned his head back against the wall, closed his eyes so he was no longer looking at the woman he wanted to screw seven ways from Sunday, and took a deep breath to calm himself.

  “You cool now dipshit?” Tyson asked.

  Clearing the lump from his throat Gage rasped one word. “Yeah.”

  “This is my fault so I’ll take care of it. You just stay right against this wall behind me and don’t move until it’s time for us to leave.”

  Gage wanted to ask his friend why he thought the fact that he’d officially flipped his shit was somehow his fault but couldn’t manage more than deep slow breaths in and out. The sooner he got out of this building, off base, and on his way home, the better. He’d met a potential mate or two over his lifetime, but no one that had caused this kind of reaction. This was just ludicrous.

  He heard Tyson talking in low tones to Demos, but was still a little too out of it to understand what was being said. His sensitive hearing picked up the dial tone of a phone before the beeps of buttons being pushed to dial a number. He didn’t bother to open his eyes and see what was going on. Tyson would take care of the situation as he said he would. The man had never failed to have his back in the hundred or so years that he’d known him, Gage didn’t really expect him to let him down now.

  With the surge of adrenaline running through his body, and battling his tiger who was still fighting to break free of its human shell, Gage damn near felt buzzed in the head. He wasn’t sure how much time was passing as he stood there getting his shit together, but eventually the sound of Demos’ raised voice cut through and penetrated his brain.

  “Do you have any idea how much trouble you could have gotten him into? You Special Forces guys all think you’re all so special and above everybody else, but I swear to God that if you ever pull some shit like this on my base again I’ll throw you in the brig so fast your head will spin. Right after I kick you in the nuts for all the trouble you’ve caused me. Here’s Ivanov’s gun. Take it and go. I don’t ever want to see your faces again.”

  Gage finally opened his eyes to look at the pretty brunette as she glared at the bigger man in front of her like she wished she could take a frying pan to his head. It would have been hysteric
al to him if her last words hadn’t pissed him off for what should be no reason at all.

  She didn’t want to see him ever again?

  Good. Because he didn’t need to take a chance with the disaster that she could become to him if he ever got her alone. He didn’t need to sink balls deep inside some human he couldn’t claim as his own without the fear of breaking her in the process. He was better off waiting for the next potential mate that came along.

  CHAPTER-TWO

  June 2011

  Elena

  She loved her job, but sometimes this shit was ridiculous. It was damn near midnight and here she was driving to the edges of the Fort Bragg Army base to investigate an anonymous call about vandalism. If she got there and found some dumb grunts spray painting she was going flip out, maybe kick them in the junk after she hand cuffed them, and then haul their asses down to the station and call their COs. To think she’d just come back from deployment in Afghanistan, where her unit had patrolled through roads and cities with constant vigilance for terrorists and suicide bombers, to this was kind of surreal. Now she was dealing with knuckleheads who probably needed a good swat upside their heads and a solid dressing down from their superiors. The difference between where Elena had been a couple of months ago, and where she was now, almost made her head spin.

  She pulled her car off the paved road and onto a level dirt road that led to a large abandoned building. She wasn’t sure how old the building was, but she knew it used to be where some of the mechanics worked on the vehicles used on base. It hadn’t been used in years except for the occasional training exercise on how to clear a structure in a hostile environment. The building itself basically butted up against some of the woods the Special Forces units also utilized for training exercises, so overall, it made for a pretty creepy scene to look at as she parked the car about fifty feet away from the structure.

  As Elena quietly exited her vehicle she heard raised voices followed by a loud crash coming from somewhere inside. Her right hand went to the hood of her holster, snapping it open so that she could quickly and easily clear her pistol if she had to. With quick, silent steps she hurried up to the front door that was cracked open a few inches and braced herself against the wall beside it. With the toe of her boot she pushed the door open a few more inches and craned her neck around so that she could take a peek through the larger opening. What she saw next made her left eye twitch. A sure symbol that her patience had been shot to shit.

  Kicking the door open in annoyance, Elena stomped forward until she stood less than ten feet from a small group of eight large, burly men covered in muddy BDUs. All of them were in various stages of wrestling with someone else. Four of those men were grappling on the floor. Arms and legs tangled around their opponent’s bodies as they tried to pin their victims to the cold, hard concrete slab beneath them. As she watched the mayhem in front of her, one soldier put the man he was tussling with in a kneebar. She grimaced as the man who now had his knee hyperextended grunted in pain before tapping out.

  As she took a slower, closer look around the room, some of Elena’s annoyance slipped away as she admired all the delicious male specimens. Finding this was definitely better than finding some bored punks spray painting the place, but it still wasn’t worth leaving her post. Why couldn’t she have found them in a mud pit wearing nothing but their skivvies? Instead, they had to drag her ass out of the station in the middle of the night to break up their testosterone fest without giving her anything that would have made it worth the trip. Given the right circumstances, such as the aforementioned preferred slippery, mud covered naked body parts, this could have easily been fantasy material for a solid decade. Why did men always have to ruin a good thing?

  Movement on the peripheral of her vision caught her attention. Another soldier stood a few feet off to the side from the four men tangled on the floor, with a sixth man firmly placed in a headlock. His victim punched him in the stomach a couple of times in quick succession, before grabbing his captor’s wrist, twisting it to break free from the arm that had held him immobile. Elena finally looked over to the last pair fighting in the room and locked her eyes onto the back of the head of the man who seemed to be turning into the bane of her existence.

  Master Sergeant Ivanov.

  He had his buddy, the one who had damn near put him into a lot of hot water with the gun fiasco last year, pinned up against the wall with a forearm to the throat. Elena watched as Ivanov’s friend’s lips moved, and figured the man was taunting him with something ridiculous. Her guess seemed to be right, because before she could blink, Ivanov had slammed the man’s head against the wall. The force in which Ivanov’s friend’s head hit the wall actually shook the sheetrock, and put a nice sized hole in it to boot. She should have stopped everything then and there, but the hole from Ivanov’s victim’s head drew her eyes to some rather odd marks on the wall. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say they were claw marks from a bear. Raking deeply downwards for a section of about three feet. But that was impossible because Elena wasn’t aware of any bears on base. Her feet started to move in Ivanov’s direction, compelled to take a closer look at those ragged marks on the wall. The hairs on the back of her neck suddenly stood up in true radar form, as if trying to warn her that something was off about those marks. She never made it to her destination though.

  Three steps in her legs were swept out from under her, and Elena was unexpectedly covered with not just one man’s body, but two of them. Two of those idiots that had been wrestling around on the floor had managed to take her down with them in their brawl. Not liking being pinned down by the two oblivious fighting men, she did what any woman would do when suddenly pissed off at a man. She kneed the first one she could reach as hard as she could in the nuts. He roared out in pain and rolled off of her.

  The loudness and intensity of the injured man’s angry sound surprised her. Should a man be able to yell that loudly? Elena had never heard anything like it. Sensing the new danger, his wrestling partner tried to roll off of Elena, from where he had been lying on his laid back on top of her, but didn’t move quickly enough. Her fist flew out and connected with the vulnerable area of his throat, causing a strangled yelp of pain to escape from him.

  As her second victim clutched his throat, gasping and gurgling, she pushed him off of her and got back to her feet. When she looked up, it was to the realization that now all eyes in the room were on her. Including the pair of exotically green and gold ones belonging to that annoying bastard Ivanov. He was watching her in his own subtle version of shock. Or at least she was guessing that was what the cocked left eyebrow and slightly widened eyes meant. From the way one side of his mouth started to slide up, she could guess it also might mean amusement. He was kind of hard to read.

  Elena put her hands on her hips and ignored him as he took her in from head to toe. Making somewhat lengthy delayed intervals to stare at the apex of her thighs and then her chest. When his eyes finally made it back to her face, the slight surprise had yet to melt from his face. Which annoyed her. Had the man never seen a woman kick a guy’s ass before? Only now, as she glowered back at him, there seemed to be something more lingering in his eyes. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say those golden yellow rings around his pupils were growing larger. Becoming almost molten with some kind of heated promise. And what his eyes were smoldering at her with caused Elena to feel torn between wanting him and wanting to punch him in the face for it.

  Desire.

  ***

  Gage

  Had he really considered her weak and breakable before?

  Gage stood there, practically shaking with lust and violence. Lust because he’d just watched the human woman that nature had determined was a potential mate for him temporarily incapacitate two feline shifters from Tyson’s pride. Of course, the two had deserved it. They’d just bodily taken her down to the floor during their little disagreement. Apparently that had pissed her off enough to take action against them though.

 
; The violence he was feeling, now that was what bothered him most. He’d already been holding onto a tenuous leash on his inner animal after having to subdue Tyson when the man had started to lose control of himself. Not that he blamed Tyson for that. The mission they’d just come off of, a recon of an old dilapidated hospital for the criminally insane in Norway, where they’d found a big heaping pile of nothing. Well, nothing but old scents that proved their targets had been there, and the smell of some kind of chemical in the air too. Probably some kind of drug to keep the individuals they were looking for incapacitated. The knowledge that Gage and Tyson’s team had finally been so close to where their targets were being held, and yet still too late to save them, had ended in nothing but pain and frustration for the Lion. Which was understandable since Tyson was looking for kidnapped members of his pride. Including his brother.

  What wasn’t understandable was the fact that most of the violence Gage was feeling wasn’t towards Tyson’s inability to keep his Lion leashed. No, it was due to seeing Sergeant Demos pinned under two much larger male shifter bodies. He’d instantly wanted to beat both of the men on top of her senseless. His tiger roaring inside his head, needing to send the message that he was the only man allowed to pin her down. Preferably while he was inside of her.

  Damn these mating instincts! They were driving him certifiable. It’d been so long since he’d last seen her that he’d started to doubt his initial reaction when meeting her before. But now, as every raw animalistic instinct he had was screaming at him that there’d been no mistake the first time. Sergeant Demos was prime mate material. He wouldn’t change his mind though. He absolutely would not take the feeble human as a mate. They died too soon and were way too easy to kill. That left him with two options. Either tell his team that he had to take a leave of absence so he could stay away from the mouthwatering woman. Or fuck this overwhelming need he had for her right out of his system. And since Gage refused to leave a teammate in hard times, like right now when Tyson needed him, his decision was made for him.