by Dianna Love
This was not the place to make that mistake.
She hated the thin, white gloves she wore to protect the sensitive electrical equipment. She should probably have them on now, but she didn’t plan to touch any of the gear. The gloves were stuffed in her pocket for handy access in case someone else on staff came in and she needed to help in some way.
Some people claimed they couldn’t wear a wristwatch due to electrical current in their body killing the battery. What Tess had experienced as a child had been similar, but her watches had actually stopped, then run backwards.
Some of those watches had not used batteries.
Over the past seven years, since the night Cole-Asshole-Cavanaugh vanished, the problem had gotten continually worse. She’d lost countless phones, computers, kitchen appliances, clocks and more when the electronics had fried.
Was she admitting that to anyone?
Not a chance. The staff would look at her as if she were stranger than a shifter.
She’d kept it hidden from her dad for years, especially the details of what happened the day her mother died.
The weird energy inside her had intensified the very night Cole disappeared, which made no sense to her back then. Through trial and error, she’d figured out that gloves would dull the effect and had finally started wearing them almost constantly while at law school. She’d explained them away with the excuse that she was highly allergic.
If someone asked her specifically what bothered her skin, she shook her head and said there were too many things to list.
In recent years, high-end phone cases offered a layer of protection as well as the stylus she used on her cell phone and laptop. But other electronics still got toasted if she grew careless.
This new intensity to her energy wasn’t about MIA Cole, though. The buzzing had felt stronger in general over the past two weeks, interrupting her sleep and distracting her.
Right now it droned in her ears and her skin actually vibrated. Between that and erotic dreams of the bastard who had broken her heart, the last two weeks had been hellish.
Why dream about Cole at all? He’d left.
Stupid mind.
John Doe grunted.
She watched the part of his face she could see for signs of pain. The medical log hadn’t indicated any significant change since yesterday.
Shifters often responded to SCIS drugs, but not absolutely. Not like they did with Jugo Loco.
She gritted her teeth over the sting operation that had gone badly. She wanted to rail at this shifter for his role in putting humans—and other shifters—in such danger just for personal gain. Oh, and money always played a role.
Her conscience argued, what if he isn’t part of the Black River pack?
What was he doing there when the bomb exploded? she countered.
No answer. Just as she thought. This guy was guilty of something even her conscience couldn’t argue.
Still, she believed in due process. Innocent until proven guilty even for nonhumans.
Glancing at the clock, she frowned. It was time to get some rest. When she turned away, though, she couldn’t take a step. Her body still functioned like normal, but the energy inside her stopped her cold. It didn’t want to move away.
She knew that, but didn’t understand why she knew.
The buzzing inside her cranked up even higher.
“Don’t leave,” a voice implored.
Tess jerked around, looking everywhere around her, because it had sounded like the whisper filled the room.
Looking down, she stared at John Doe.
He couldn’t have said anything. He was still out cold and that had sounded ... ethereal.
She was losing her marbles.
Then again, a few years ago she would have said the same thing at the idea of shifters being real. Could that have been some sort of telepathy?
She’d never read about shifters speaking telepathically in human form. Nothing in her studies had shown evidence of actual telepathic communication, but a jackal on staff who’d once had a mate said he had been able to communicate with her when they were both in animal form.
She’d never heard of any shifter using telepathy with a human. But if anything ever fit the ideal definition of telepathy, that desperate cry in her mind hit dead-on.
That couldn’t happen, right?
Lack of sleep was screwing with her. Had to be.
But that didn’t explain why her heart raced and her skin felt hot. What was going on?
She had no idea, but she was loath to leave this man alone for some reason. The longer she stared at him, the more his suffering bothered her.
He was a shifter.
A Black River wolf shifter, almost certainly. One who had no thought for the well-being of anyone other than himself. She should be standing far away.
But when she looked at John Doe, she saw only a man in pain. Logic said that made her a candidate for some serious therapy.
When would he open his eyes?
She had the sudden urge to put a hand on his forehead and check that he was okay.
As if her touch could determine that?
“Touch me,” whispered through the air, reaching her ears past the soft sounds of humming and whirring equipment.
She froze and looked down at his mouth.
Had he really spoken this time? She battled a mix of fear and excitement. Curiosity and a sense of purpose had driven her to take on the study of shifters. That same curiosity took over now.
He was restrained. If not incapacitated, he was injured and she had a stun weapon designed specifically for shifters.
She gently ran her fingers down the length of his broken forearm.
Something moved under the skin.
She snatched her fingers back, watching as the bones in his forearm appeared to mend.
But only that arm.
The one she’d touched.
Could that mean ... that her energy could heal?
Right. If that was the case, why hadn’t she healed anyone else in all these years?
“More touch.”
His masculine voice was hardly more than a croak, but she understood the words.
Was he dreaming?
Had she actually made him feel better with her touch?
Afraid to touch anywhere else, she slipped her fingers over his newly mended arm and down to his hand. His fingers lifted in tiny increments and wove through hers as she watched, dumbfounded. According to the X-rays, that hand was broken in at least eight places. He should not be able to move those fingers.
He sighed, a deep sound of peace.
She couldn’t speak. Her throat clogged with an unnamed emotion. His hand was warm and strong.
Energy inside her churned all of a sudden and heat flushed down her arm, brushing along her skin until it reached her hand that still held his.
She started to pull away, but her fingers refused to do what she told them.
He wasn’t holding her. She just wouldn’t—couldn’t—let go of him.
Panic rushed up her spine and her heart rate jumped. Her whole body trembled. She had to get a grip or she’d start hyperventilating any minute now.
His thumb barely moved, brushing slowly across the skin on the hand he held.
A strange sense of peace settled over her as she realized he was touching her now, soothing her.
She didn’t want to let go.
Her heart thumped hard, then slower with every second, until she could swear she felt the rhythmic pumping of his heart ... in sync with hers.
What was happening to her? Was he causing it? Or was she?
This was foolish.
And dangerous. He was a shifter.
Never forget that.
She flexed her fingers, relieved to have muscle control, and started to withdraw her hand again.
His fingers tightened around hers, not the crushing grip that a shifter was capable of, but one that begged her not to let go.
She turned into a statue
. Her brain short-circuited.
What other reason would explain this feeling that he was trying to let her know he needed her to stay?
He needed her close to him.
How could she know what he was feeling or needing?
The energy reversed course and raced back up her arm, then spread into her chest, warm and comforting. She could definitely hear the double thump of two heartbeats in her ear, beating in time.
Nothing like this had even happened with her internal energy.
But something bizarre was going on with John Doe. The last time something really crazy happened with her energy, she’d exploded her phone and never received the last call from her mother.
A call that might have saved her mother’s life.
Tess couldn’t catch her breath.
She’d never passed out, but she felt clammy and light headed.
Mangled words slipped from John Doe’s lips. “Won’t ... hurt you. Not ... you.”
What?
He moaned a sad sound, then his grip relaxed and his hand fell loose.
She grabbed her chest where her heart now beat like it auditioned for a heavy metal band.
The unburned, but badly bruised, right side of his face relaxed and his breathing evened out. He mumbled something else that came out garbled.
She rolled her eyes at herself for thinking it was all about her.
You’re an idiot. John Doe had been caught in a dream and her energy was playing tricks on her mind.
She whispered, “Enjoy your dreams. Reality won’t be nearly as nice once you wake up.”
Thinking about his upcoming interrogation made her sad, which was ridiculous since being present to witness shifter interrogations was part of her job.
He murmured again.
She couldn’t stop herself from leaning close to his lips to hear him. She whispered, “What?”
On the next exhale, he said, “Need ... you.”
Tess stood up and backed away, pulling the gloves from her pocket. She left before she started seeing ghosts or faeries or mice turning into pumpkins.
He was screwing with her somehow even though all his vitals showed him deeply under the tranq’s influence.
She had to keep a certain distance between them. She couldn’t have John Doe exposing her weird energy.
If that happened, she’d lose her job and her father would find out. He’d look at her like she was a freak.
No one, not a shifter or human, was going to cost her the job she’d fought so hard to earn.
Chapter 5
Cole moved his jaw. So thirsty.
A nasty creature had crawled around in his mouth and died there. He licked his lips.
“Ready for a drink?” an angel’s voice asked.
He forced his eyes open.
Correction. He slowly pried open his right eye, the one that was not covered with a bandage. He squinted to focus, but all he got was a blur of sun-kissed skin and black hair. At least, the black was where he’d assume a head would be.
What the hell had they given him and why hadn’t he been encouraged to shift yet?
His mind tripped back over a memory of being hit with a stun gun while he was injured. That couldn’t be right.
He tried to talk, but got a croak for his effort.
The bed moved up slowly until he was halfway to a sitting position. He inhaled the sweet smell of her lotion. He’d dreamed about that scent. The fragrance woke up parts of his body he hadn’t been sure survived the blast.
Now he recalled. This was the woman who had the same lotion as Tess.
Gray Wolf was there, Cole could feel him, but the wolf was being strangely silent.
Cole was glad for the drugs that had quieted Gray Wolf, because this was not the time to think about ... her.
“Open your mouth,” the angel said softly.
When he did, she slipped a straw in and he sucked down the best tasting water he’d ever drunk.
Then the straw went away.
“Hey.” That should have sounded forceful, not whiny.
“You can’t have a lot yet, but you can have sips more often for the first hour.”
His angel was right. He knew that, but it didn’t change the fact that he wanted to drink a lake dry.
His brain jumped from thirst to her voice.
He’d heard it before. Sort of.
She almost sounded familiar. Where would he have heard her? He hadn’t been in the infirmary at headquarters for years. Maybe that was a voice from a television broadcast.
That made zero sense.
The drugs must still be screwing with his head.
No one who worked close enough with the Guardian to treat a Gallize shifter would ever show their face on television. He should just stop trying to figure things out on his own and get someone in here who could update him.
Licking his lips again, but with success this time, he asked in his rough voice, “Where is everyone?”
He sensed her hesitation before she replied, “Who do you want to see?”
Warning bells rang loud in his head.
The Guardian would have already been in here and made it clear he was to be notified the minute Cole could speak.
Rory and Justin would have been taking turns staying here.
Damn it, Toto, we’re not in Kansas or anywhere friendly.
Who Toto? Gray Wolf grumbled.
Cole silently hushed him. We’re captured. Let me think.
His wolf hadn’t seemed drugged. Odd, but okay.
He had to answer his angel in a way that sounded normal for someone in his position. “The doctor. Where is he?” Cole quickly amended, “Or she? You just smell too good to be a doctor.”
“Wasting your time. I’m allergic to bad boys.”
She sounded insulted, but that wasn’t what snapped Cole to attention.
His heart rate clicked up.
He did know that voice. Intimately.
It couldn’t be her.
His heart rolled in his chest.
The first time he’d met Tess, she told him, “Wasting your time. I’m allergic to bad boys,” in that same cocky tone.
Add that to the lotion and ... damn. This had to be some twisted nightmare.
That couldn’t be Tess. Not his Tess.
What the hell would she be doing here?
“That all you got?” she said with just a hint of tease in her voice.
Oh, hell. That sounded just like Miss High and Mighty Tessella Janver when she’d ranted about laws and how when she was an attorney she wouldn’t stand for this or that. Her father had been an up and coming politician back then.
Now a highly respected Senator, Janver led the congressional charge against shifters, trying to eradicate Cole’s kind like a bad disease.
Cole had to find out just how deep a pile of shit he was in.
Keeping the conversation light, he avoided admitting he knew her and explained in his scratchy voice, “Not flirting. Doctors reek of blood and medicine.” When in trouble, bluff and flatter in spite of claiming he wasn’t a flirt. “You smell like a rose garden in full bloom.”
She didn’t say anything.
Not too encouraging.
Maybe she’d fill in a few holes in his memory, but he had to be careful with his questions.
He must look really bad for her not to recognize him.
On the other hand, he was seven years older and he’d beefed up quite a bit once he joined the shifter teams. He’d had the slender, but muscular, frame of a runner when he was taken to the Guardian at nineteen. The day he’d had to say goodbye to his human life when he discovered that he was a Gallize descendant who was shifting earlier than anticipated.
They normally didn’t come into their powers and meet their animal until well after they turned twenty-one.
That’s me. Overachiever in everything.
Shifting into his wolf early had not been a good thing, though.
It had taken a year for Cole to learn how to
control the massive wolf. After that, his world narrowed to the Guardian’s missions.
Save people and avoid thinking about no longer being a human.
Now he was inches from the woman he could never forget.
For now, he needed to stick with the basic dialogue anyone would expect. “How long have I been here?”
“Two days. It’s Wednesday evening.”
He hadn’t shifted or healed in two days? What the hell was wrong?
Or maybe what the hell drug were they giving him?
At a loss for where to go next, he started with a more direct question. “Are you my doctor?”
“No. I’m not a part of the medical team.”
At least that jived with her plan to go into law. Still, what was she doing here? Hmm. Would she tell him her true identity? “Who are you then?”
The blob shape he was now convinced belonged to Tess moved closer and dropped down, probably into a chair. “Let’s focus on you.”
He drew in a deep breath that didn’t punish him quite so much this time. He smelled the mix of her favorite skin cream and her unique scent that he had never before catalogued as human.
He’d never had the chance to sniff her as a shifter.
Now, he longed for her scent with every breath.
The last time they’d been together, he’d been human and had thought his future looked too bright to stare into directly. The night he vanished, he’d possessed a ring that would fit her finger perfectly. They had already made plans for after college for him, and law school for her. They hadn’t specifically said so, but they both knew she was going to have his children and they would grow old together.
His future had vanished in one night.
That loss hit him so hard, he hissed.
“Are you okay?” she said, concern wafting through her voice.
“I’m fine,” he lied. He wanted to break free and get out of here. For weeks, he’d kept his wolf locked down, fighting it for control.
But now? He’d like nothing better than to unleash the beast. If he was anywhere but near her.
He would cut his own throat before he allowed the wolf to force a shift and harm her.
“I can call someone,” she offered, sounding unsure. Nothing like the woman who had taken his heart by storm and been prepared to marry him in spite of her father expecting her to strive for a man who could match her social background.
