by Nina Croft
Her clothes lay in a pile on the floor. She reached to pick them up, just as the outer door opened. Light flooded the room, her hand fell back to her side, and she blinked.
Sebastian Quinn stood framed in the doorway. She reached out with her mind but crashed into the same wall she had hit earlier. He was shielded; she couldn’t read him. Where would he have obtained the technology?
He strode into the room followed by a second man. She glanced at him but her eyes were drawn back to Sebastian.
Unlocking the cage door, he stepped inside then handed the key to the other man who locked it from the outside and left the room. The cell suddenly seemed much smaller. She knew he was six-foot-one, but in the confined space, he appeared larger. Of course, she’d seen his file, but nothing could have prepared her for him in the flesh. She’d trained with men, fought them, even killed them, but none had ever had this effect on her. It was odd that she should get her first hint of real desire from a man destined to kill her.
“Get up,” he ordered, his tone icy cold.
For a moment, she considered ignoring the command. Then she swung her legs around and stood, dragging the blanket with her. Her head felt as though it would split, and she swayed then stiffened her spine. She glanced across at her clothes then back at the man standing before her. “Can I get dressed?”
He seemed to consider the question, but finally lifted one shoulder in a careless gesture. “Go ahead.”
Relief flooded her. Nakedness was a tool many used in interrogations, women especially felt vulnerable. She’d been trained to cope, but she didn’t want to be naked in front of this man. Still, she suspected it would be pointless asking him to turn around, so she dropped her blanket and reached for her clothes.
Her panties were missing. She glanced at him. He pulled the scrap of black cotton from of his pocket and tossed them to her then sank onto the single seat and watched as she pulled on her clothes.
She picked up her bra. Her pills were gone, and her heart stalled. Did he have them? Anya pushed her panic aside. If they killed her, she would hardly need her medication.
One problem at a time.
She finished dressing, feeling much calmer once she was covered and sat down on the bed to pull on her boots.
“You don’t need the boots,” he said, and she dropped them but stayed seated on the bed.
For a minute, she stared down at the concrete floor and thought about what kind of approach to take. When she looked up, she forced an expression of puzzlement into her eyes.
“Why am I a prisoner?” she asked.
He ignored the question. “So, what were you doing here tonight?”
Anya shrugged. “Taking a walk in the forest.”
“Hmm, taking your top of the range, prototype sniper rifle out for a walk, were you?” He stretched his long legs out in front of him and regarded her thoughtfully. “Why don’t we save some time, cut the crap, and you tell me what you were really doing?”
“I told you—”
He held up his hand and she stopped.
“Perhaps we could start with why you came here to kill me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then, how about—where are my people?”
“I don’t know—”
He leapt up from his chair, gripped his fist in her shirt, and pulled her to her feet. Dragging her across the room, he slammed her into the bars of the cage behind her. The breath left her lungs in a whoosh. Then he was pressing her into the bars with his hard body. He leaned in close to her ear, and his warm breath whispered against her neck. “I will make you talk,” he murmured, and she shivered at the dark promise in his voice.
He released his grip on her shirt and stepped back, shoved his hands in his pockets and regarded her closely. “It goes against my better nature to hurt a woman, but I have three people missing and to get them back I am willing to put aside my better nature. And if I do find myself too squeamish to do whatever’s necessary then there are a few of my people who actually enjoy that sort of thing. An hour with them, and you’ll be begging to tell me everything you know.”
She drew herself up tall. “There’s nothing you can do to make me talk.”
His smile didn’t reach his cold blue eyes. “You say that, but you don’t believe it.” He drew in a deep breath. “You’re tough, but I can smell your fear.”
***
It was true. The intoxicating scent of her fear filled the room, waking the wolf inside him who howled to be free.
Something about this woman called to him and his wolf. He could still feel her body imprinted against his, and his balls ached for relief. He didn’t trust himself around her. Maybe he should hand her over to his men, but the thought of anyone else touching her, roughing her up, marring that flawless skin, made him grit his teeth in denial.
He’d studied many people in his time. Just because she feared did not mean she would break under torture. Many of the toughest people experienced fear but did not give in to it.
She moved suddenly, pushing off from the bars and high kicked him in the chest. He shuddered beneath the force of the blow but stood his ground. Any ordinary man would have been down. Unfortunately for her, he was about as far from ordinary as it was possible to get. Her eyes widened when she took in his lack of response, but she whirled around in the confined space and kicked out again. He grabbed her ankle and pulled her off balance so she crashed to the floor, her skull cracking against the hard concrete.
She put a hand to her head then stared up, her brow furrowing as she studied him. “What are you?”
“You don’t know?”
She blinked and shook her head.
Maybe this was the way to make her talk. Sebastian fell to his knees beside her. He put a hand on either side of her head and lowered his face to hers. Wolf rose up inside him, peered out of his eyes, and a growl trickled from his throat. Wolf wanted to smell her, and Sebastian buried his nose against her neck. She smelled divine, and he gave in to the urge and tasted her, licking his tongue along the length of her throat. She flinched beneath him then held herself immobile as he crouched over her. He could feel his hunger mounting. Forcing it down, he rose to stand beside her.
She lay at his feet, her eyes huge. “It was you in the forest. I thought I’d dreamed you.”
He didn’t answer, just watched as she pushed herself up, first onto her elbows. She winced then gritted her teeth and struggled to her feet, gripping the bars for support. He didn’t think she was faking her weakness. She’d hit her head hard out in the forest earlier and then again just now.
“Turn around,” he said.
She frowned. “What?”
“I want to have a look at that scalp wound. The last thing I need is for you to collapse and die on me before I can make you talk.”
He put his hands on her shoulders, and she flinched under his touch. He tightened his grip and turned her around. Her hair had come loose and he ran his fingers through the silky strands. A red, angry swelling marred the smooth line of her skull, but the skin hadn’t broken. He turned her back to face him, and slipped a finger beneath her chin, tilted her head so he could look down into her face. Her eyes were an amazing color, bitter chocolate flecked with gold, but the pupils weren’t dilated, and he was pretty sure she wasn’t concussed.
Her lips were slightly parted. Without thinking, his hand moved from her chin to her face, and he stroked the pad of his thumb over her full lower lip, swollen where she had worried it with her teeth.
Her eyes widened, her body stiffened, but she didn’t move away. Sebastian slipped his thumb between her lips and felt the warm, wet velvet caress of her tongue. His reaction was instant, his cock stiffening in his pants.
A deep longing filled him, to pick her up, carry her to the cot, and lose himself in her body. Instead, he pulled away and stepped back. He shoved his hands in his pockets to stop himself touching her. She stared at him, a bemused almost hurt expression on her face, an
d he had to bite back the need to tell her everything would be all right.
Which would very likely be a lie.
Jesus, what was it about this woman? He was in trouble. He had to get out of there. He crossed to door and banged on the bars. “Riley,” he called. “Let me out of here.” He turned back to her. “What’s your name?”
She shrugged. “Anya.”
“Well, Anya, I don’t want to hurt you, but my loyalty is to my people. I will do anything needed to get them back or avenge their death.” He shook his head. Why was he explaining?
Riley entered the outer room, and unlocked the cage. Sebastian stepped out and glanced back at Anya; she hadn’t moved.
“I’m going to leave you alone for a while,” he said. “I want you to think about it, and when I come back, you will tell me what happened to my people.” He locked the door and turned to leave.
“Sebastian.”
“What?”
“I’ll never talk.”
A pain clenched his heart. “Then I think we will both live to regret it.”
Chapter Four
Anya reached up with a trembling hand and touched her lips.
What had just happened?
For a minute back there, she’d thought he was going to kiss her.
Who was this man, who threatened her with torture one moment then the next touched her with a gentleness she’d never experienced before. At the memory of that touch, her eyes stung, and she blinked, feeling the unexpected dampness on her lashes. She never cried. What would be the point?
She backed up and sank down on the cot, rolled onto her side, and curled into a tight ball as though she could shut out the world. But he would be back soon, and she needed to decide what to tell him. If anything.
The Agency was all she knew. All she had ever known. They had created her, brought her up. She owed her very life to them and without the medicine they provided for her daily, she would die.
All that was true. But recently, she had come to hate her very existence. She had spent all her life at the Agency, but sometimes, out on a mission, she would watch people go about their lives, and the craving to be part of the world had grown inside her until it was a constant companion.
But she wasn’t a person. She was a thing the Agency had made in a test tube then trained as a weapon. She belonged to them. But she didn’t want to kill for the Agency anymore. She’d found it hard even when she had believed she fought on the right side. Now she no longer believed.
She wished she could read Sebastian’s mind. The Agency had told her he headed up a group of mercenaries. A group who would do any job for the right price. Somehow, that didn’t ring true anymore. Why would a mercenary be shielded? It must mean he knew of the work the Agency had been doing with telepaths.
She’d long suspected that the Agency was carrying out other research. From time to time, she’d catch flashes of strange minds imprisoned in the cells beneath the building. She hadn’t understood who or what they were; only that they were something other than human, and she’d tried to close her mind to their pain and suffering. Was that when her doubts about the Agency had begun?
Her mind flinched away from thinking about what she had seen in the forest. Now she forced herself to confront the truth.
Sebastian Quinn was a wolf. A werewolf.
Of course, that didn’t mean he couldn’t also be a mercenary, or that he hadn’t been responsible for the death of her sister—hadn’t blown up the Facility where her sister lived. But what if it had all been lies?
She rolled onto her back and rubbed a hand across her temple trying to ease the throbbing in her head. It should be getting better, but she suspected that more than the bang on the head affected her. The muscles of her arms and legs ached and each breath caught in her lungs. Worry nagged at her mind; she had no notion how long she had before the symptoms overwhelmed her. She needed her medication.
Closing her eyes, she tried to come up with a plan. Sebastian wanted his people back. She didn’t even know if they still lived, and she wouldn’t give him the Agency’s location, not until she was sure who the bad guys were.
He needed the information, and Anya had no doubt he would follow through with his threats. The dull ache in her head flared into pain. It was obvious that to Sebastian Quinn, she was nothing more than a means to an end. Why did that thought have the power to hurt her?
Maybe the best she could hope for, was to die from her illness before he got round to torturing her.
***
The ringing of the phone brought Sebastian out of his light doze. It rang again and he picked it up.
“It’s Tasha,” the woman on the other side said. “What’s happened to Jonas?”
Sebastian could hear the distress in her voice, and he pressed his fingertips against his eyes, trying to clear his mind. “How do you know about Jonas?”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Shock tore through him. “Dead?”
“You didn’t know?”
He remained silent for a minute, thinking it through. Tasha was telepathic, and through her ties with the pack she could feel the other pack members, sense their emotions, if they were stressed, afraid—dead.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I felt him last night—such pain—then nothing. What’s going on, Sebastian?”
“They took him a week ago. He was the first, then Travis and Maria.”
“I haven’t felt them. I think they must be alive. Who took them?”
“We don’t know, but we captured a sniper in the woods last night. We’re hoping she can tell us something.”
“You want me back?”
He thought about it. If his little sniper came from where he suspected, then she’d be shielded, and Tasha would be able to tell them nothing. On the other hand, if she wasn’t shielded, Tasha could extract the information with ease and without the need to hurt Anya.
“Come back,” he said.
“Okay, we’ll be with you by tomorrow night.”
Sebastian wanted them back as soon as possible, but Jack was a vampire; it would be dangerous for him to travel during the day. “Don’t take any risks,” he said.
“We won’t.”
“Let me know if you feel anything from Travis or Maria.”
He put the phone down and stared into the darkness. He hoped tomorrow night would be soon enough, but if more of his people died because he was too squeamish to torture an assassin, he would never forgive himself.
He considered again handing her over to someone who would be more than willing to do what was necessary to get the information, but he couldn’t do it. His whole being rejected the idea of anyone harming her. Hell, the idea of anyone even touching her.
Anyone but him.
She was his.
The thought brought him up short. Over fifty years ago, he’d killed the old alpha and taken on the role of leader, and in all that time, he’d never put an outsider before his pack. He couldn’t believe he was even thinking about it now. Why did she affect him so strongly?
He glanced up as Riley entered the room. He came to stand in front of Sebastian.
“The prisoner—she’s ill—there’s something wrong with her.”
Sebastian frowned. “What?”
“How the hell should I know? You told me not to go in there.”
“So how do you know she’s ill?”
“Looks like she’s got a fever. The room’s cool, but she’s sweating, and she seems to be unconscious.”
“Could she be faking it?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.”
Riley’s tone was terse, and Sebastian’s eyes narrowed on him. “Do you want to tell me what’s got you all pissed off?”
“Yeah, I do. That woman tried to kill you last night and she may know the whereabouts of Maria and the others. Why the hell aren’t we making her talk?” He ran a hand through his short hair. “Look, I understand. She’s a woman and you don’t want to do it.
Hell, I don’t want to do it, but I will if you can’t. The pack has to come first.”
“Jonas is dead.”
Riley closed his eyes, and Sebastian gave him a moment to compose himself. Riley and Jonas had been close. When he opened his eyes, they were dark with pain. “Are you sure?”
Sebastian nodded. “Tasha felt it.”
“What about the others?”
“Still alive.”
“For now.” Riley’s expression hardened. “We need to make that woman talk.”
Sebastian knew it, but he wouldn’t give a job to anyone else that he wouldn’t do himself. His gut clenched, but he knew Riley was right. “I’ll go see her now.”
He let himself into the room. Through the bars of the cage, he could see her where she lay on her back on the small cot, unmoving, her eyes closed, her pale face glowing with a fine sheen of sweat. Every few seconds, a tremor ran through her body.
He hurried to unlock the cage door. She didn’t open her eyes as he crossed the cell to sit on the mattress beside her. He stroked a finger down the softness of her cheek and found the skin burning hot. He laid a palm on her forehead and at his touch, she rolled onto her side, curling against him as shivers racked her body.
She burrowed her head into his thigh. He sat for a minute considering what to do. She wasn’t faking it and he didn’t think it could be anything to do with the bang to the head. Which left the pills. Was she ill?
He tapped her on the cheek. “Anya, wake up.”
She didn’t respond, and he shook her slightly. Her eyes blinked open, dazed and unfocused.
“I’m so cold,” she mumbled.
Wrapping the blanket around her, he gathered her in his arms, then picked her up and held her cradled against his chest. He kicked open the cage door and strode out.
As he passed Riley on the staircase, the other man raised an eyebrow.
“She can’t tell us anything if she’s dead,” Sebastian snapped.
