by Lexi Ryan
“Josie.” Her name rang in the silent space around them.
His cock inside her and couldn’t hold on any longer. When she let herself go, her sex pulsing around him, he came with her.
It wasn’t until later that she would have the vision. Not until the afterglow began to fade would Josie see what a mistake it had been—and why she and Tanner could never be together.
Chapter Nine
Josie was throwing her emergency overnight bag over her shoulder when the doorbell rang. She frowned. She didn’t want to see Tanner this morning. After the vision she’d had last night, she couldn’t get rid of him fast enough.
She forced herself to open the door, but it wasn’t Tanner.
“Sergeant...was it Greyly?”
The officer’s red-rimmed eyes dropped to her breasts. “You can call me Quinton,” he said, his voice gravelly.
She folded her arms over her chest, even though he’d politely diverted his attention to her face. “I’m sorry. I was expecting someone else. Can I help you?”
His gaze shifted to her right arm, and he blinked. “Didn’t—”
Oh, triple shit. Tanner had cut off the cast last night. She’d saved it so she could wear it in public. So, of course, it was sitting in her bedroom. “Did you find the man who broke into my house?” Act normal, and maybe he’ll think he misremembered.
“Your arm was broken,” he said.
Okay, moving to Plan B. “That’s what they thought in the ER,” she said, “but I got a second opinion yesterday and found out it’s not.” She smiled. “Isn’t that crazy?”
Quinton cocked his head. “You got a second opinion on a broken arm?”
“If you want to know the truth,” she said, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “I think my ER doctor was drunk.”
He raised his brows. “Oh. Well, that’s not good.”
“Um, can I do something for you?”
He pulled a hand over his face, and she thought she heard him mutter, “Fuck it,” before he said, “Can I see your left wrist?”
“My...?” She stuck it out, and he took it in his hands.
He studied the pale flesh in the early morning light of her small porch, but there was nothing to see but freshly moisturized skin. When he released her, he looked almost disappointed. “Sorry, I must seem crazy to you. I just—”
Josie swallowed. How did he know? What did he know? She should keep quiet. Call her shrink. Last night she’d been given the chance at a normal life, and she wanted it desperately.
But she needed to know more. She offered her other wrist. “Are you looking for this?”
Quinton drew in a ragged breath and ran his fingers over the thick S-shaped scar tissue that marred the inside of her right wrist. When he brought his eyes back up to hers, sadness pulled them down at the edges. “Mallory?”
***
Tanner didn’t like bringing the other Stiletto Girls into the middle of this, but if Josie was going to block him out, then he didn’t figure he had much of a choice.
He wandered into the Stilettos, Inc. office and waved to Aaron, their assistant.
“Josie in today?” he asked, hoping like hell he didn’t sound as pathetic as he felt.
Aaron shook his head. “She called and said she was taking the day off.”
Well, that would make this visit easier at least, but he’d rather have a chance to talk to her.
“Hi, Tanner,” a small voice said from the couch.
Tanner looked over to see Paige’s little sister waving at him from one of the waiting area couches. “Hey, Tara.” He pointed to the back. “I need to visit with Paige for a minute. Were you already waiting to talk to her?”
Tara shook her head. “No, you first. By all means. Maybe she’ll take her mood out on you before she tears into me again.”
“Thanks.” He flashed her a smile. The kid was okay and not nearly as naïve as her big sister thought.
He passed Josie’s office and wondered again what the hell had happened last night. One second, he’d had Josie exactly where he wanted her—hot, naked, and satisfied in his arms—and the next she’d been anxious as hell to get him out the door.
“That’s what you get for messing around with a Stiletto Girl,” Fernandez said this morning when Tanner had made the mistake of confiding in him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Fernandez just shook his head. “They want nothing to do with us. Darian and Paige? They’re an anomaly. Actually, I’m not even sure they’re that. I’ll be amazed if they don’t kill each other before the wedding.”
“What’s your point?”
“Josie freaked out because she doesn’t want you in her business. Simple as that.”
Tanner wasn’t sure Fernandez was right, but as far as he was concerned, Josie was his business. She was his friend, even if they never slept together again—which would be a travesty. They’d been so damn good together.
He cared about her and they’d been good together. He’d leave it at that. No need to analyze the feeling that seemed to consume his gut more than his heart.
He couldn’t analyze the feeling because now he had the one thing she wanted most, and he couldn’t bring himself to give it to her, not if there was a chance it might make her go through some outrageous DNA conversion. Not if she would risk her life. He didn’t trust the man who’d been in her apartment last night, and he’d kept the journal to protect her. But now he couldn’t even do that.
Josie wasn’t answering his calls, so he had to find someone to look after her.
Paige’s door was half closed, and as Tanner raised a hand to knock, he heard arguing and stopped.
“No,” Paige said. “Absolutely not.”
“Paige,” Chrissie said. “You know I’m not the type to jump on being some kind of…mentor.”
“Really?” Paige said, her voice raising an octave. “Because it sounds to me like that’s exactly what you signed on for.”
“Tara has no identity.” Chrissie’s voice dropped as Paige’s rose. “She needs to feel important. To have a purpose.”
“So you expect me to be okay with her risking her life?”
Tanner turned on his heel. He could come back another time.
“Wiley, I know you’re out there,” Paige called. “Come on in.”
Tanner winced and toed the door open, not interested in getting in the middle of a cat fight. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Paige leaned back in her chair, but Chrissie continued standing against the wall, arms crossed, staring Paige down.
“I can kill Chrissie another time,” Paige said, her calm voice contrasting with her words. “What can I do for you?”
Tanner took a breath. He wanted to share as little of what he knew as possible. Not only had he opened this up as an SIA case after Josie had been attacked in her apartment, he didn’t want the girls in the middle of trouble when they needed to focus on protecting Josie.
“Get out,” Paige said suddenly.
Tanner took a step back. “Excuse me?”
Paige looked at Chrissie. “Can you believe he came here to lie to us?”
Chrissie rolled her eyes. “He’s SIA. Are you surprised?”
Tanner held up his hands. “Hey, I’m innocent. I haven’t said a word and have no intention of lying to you.”
Paige waved away his protest. “Lie, omit fact, distort the truth. It all comes across the same in your energy.”
Tanner looked to Chrissie. “Since when can she do that without touching the subject?”
Chrissie grinned. “She can’t unless the subject is real emotionally primed about something. Little sloppy, don’t you think? Walking into an empath’s office with your emotions dripping all over the place?”
Tanner ignored Chrissie’s jibe and turned to Paige.
“Fernandez is teaching me,” Paige explained. “And you can stay, but only if you tell the truth.”
“That’s fair.”
Paige narrowed her eyes. “Damn, he reined in his emotions.”
Chrissie grabbed his arm, and Tanner shifted his thoughts to block her from his memories of last night. Instead he tried to focus on the memory of his last conversation with Fernandez about how much Chrissie irritated him.
Chrissie rolled her eyes and muttered, “You can tell him the feeling’s mutual.” But she didn’t let go, and then her eyes widened. “You slept with her.”
So much for that.
Paige leaned halfway across her desk, apparently not needing an explanation as to whom Chrissie was referring. “You fucker,” she said, her voice so soft he wouldn’t have known her rage if he hadn’t heard her words. “Do you know how messed up she was last night?”
Not as messed up as she would have been if she’d known Tanner was keeping her mother’s journal from her.
“Holy shit,” Chrissie said, and Tanner cursed himself because he’d already forgotten to manipulate what memories Chrissie would find nearest the surface—not that it did him a whole hell of a lot of good.
“What kind of bastard are you?” Chrissie asked.
He looked to Paige. “Can I have a seat?”
Paige set her jaw and settled back in her seat despite looking like she wanted to come across her desk and sucker-punch him. “Sure, whatever.”
After taking his arm back from Chrissie’s grasp, Tanner lowered himself on a chair and put his hands on his knees. He was making a mess of this.
“I’m here because I’m worried about Josie.”
“But that didn’t stop you from sleeping with her when she was at her most vulnerable,” Paige said, her voice sickly sweet.
Chrissie shot her a look and shook her head, and Paige shut her mouth.
He took a breath. “There’s shit brewing. I don’t know what or who or how yet, but I think Josie’s in danger.”
“You think she’s in danger?” Chrissie said. “Some asshole broke into her apartment to steal her mother’s journal. He beat the shit out of her and broke her arm, and you think she’s in danger.” She rolled her eyes. “There’s the SIA for you. Best and brightest among Specials.”
Paige frowned. “Chrissie, let him speak.”
Chrissie gaped. “You know what he isn’t saying, Paige? What he isn’t saying is that he got the journal back and didn’t tell Josie.”
Tanner turned and narrowed his eyes. “And you’d better not either.” His voice was deadly soft.
“Why?” Paige asked.
Tanner put up a hand. “You don’t want Josie to have that journal. You have to trust me. If you care about her at all, you will trust me on this.”
“And what if we don’t trust you?” Paige asked.
“Then Josie will just have to hate me.” When he’d made the decision last night, he’d known the likely result. But he’d rather her hate him than follow through with her plan, and he had to accept that was a possible outcome of giving the journal back to her. “It’s in a safe place, but I won’t give it to her.” How much could he tell them?
“Spit it all out,” Paige said.
Hell, Darian would probably tell her anyway. “The journal holds encoded messages—messages so deeply encoded that even Josie didn’t recognize they were there all these years.”
“Wow,” Chrissie said. “That’s what she was keeping from me. Why didn’t she tell us?”
“I would guess she didn’t tell you for the same reason she didn’t tell me,” he said, earning him a punch in the arm from Chrissie.
“Don’t think you’re more important than we are,” she said.
“Chrissie,” Paige warned. She turned her attention to Tanner. “What did the messages say?”
“Josie had only gotten through some of them, but what she’d found told of her parents’ plans to see this geneticist who could change their DNA—make them new people so they could run away.”
Paige nodded. “They were planning to run before they were killed. Josie never knew why.”
“She thinks the messages might be telling her that she needs to follow through with their plan.”
“That’s outrageous!” Chrissie said.
Tanner closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “I know, but I have Darian working on it, and from what he’s decoded so far, we think she’s right. That was what her mother intended.”
Paige put her hand over her mouth. “That’s terrible. Why would they want her to do that?”
Tanner shook his head. “I don’t know, and Josie doesn’t know. Last night, a doctor claiming to have worked with her mother showed up at Josie’s apartment and told her she was no longer a part of the Ascendant plan, that her blood wouldn’t be any good to them since she’s not a virgin.”
Paige sagged in her chair. “Thank God.”
“I don’t trust him,” Tanner said.
“Jesus, you didn’t tell her that, did you?” Chrissie asked.
“Of course not.” Tanner looked to Chrissie. “Now, you see why I can’t return it to her?”
“Yeah.” Chrissie nodded. “The fertility clinics? Is that what she was looking for? Her geneticist?”
Tanner nodded. “I think so, but I never asked.”
“Because you were too busy sleeping with her?”
Tanner set his jaw. “Don’t. Start.”
“Tanner.” Paige gave him a sideways smile. “You’ve fallen in love with our girl, haven’t you?”
Tanner ignored the question. “As of last night, I opened this up as an SIA investigation.”
“Why’d you do that?” Chrissie groaned and looked at Paige. “Now they’re going to want us to stay out of it.”
Paige only nodded. “I see why you had to do that.”
Rolling her eyes, Chrissie said, “Don’t be some SIA groupie now just because you’re marrying one.”
Tanner rubbed his forehead where a dull, throbbing ache was forming. “Considering the sensitive material in the journal, including references to the Ascendants that suggest Josie’s parents were working for them before they were murdered, I had to open the case. We have every reason to use SIA resources to pursue this.”
“You can’t expect us to stay out of it, though,” Chrissie said. “We’re not going to sit back and let you play guard dog if our friend is in danger.”
“Actually,” he said, “I was hoping you would be the guard dog.”
Paige narrowed her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Fuck. They’d probably chew his head off when he admitted this. Not that he deserved it. “Josie kind of kicked me out after...last night, and now she’d not returning my phone calls.”
“What’d you do to her?” Chrissie asked.
Paige shook her head. “He’s torn up about it, Chris.” She narrowed her eyes. “Worried, confused, and…Wiley, sweetie, that’s love.”
Tanner sighed. He used to be damn good at keeping his emotions held close, but apparently where Josie was involved he was transparent. “I need you two to keep her out of this. At least until I know if there’s still a threat.”
“If there was no threat, why would someone attack her for the journal?”
“Exactly,” Tanner said.
Paige studied him for a long beat. “You really think she’s still in danger?”
“Yes,” Tanner said. “But there’s more.”
The women stared at him, waiting.
“If the SIA finds something in the journal or elsewhere that brings them to the conclusion that Josie’s mother was right—that she needs to go through DNA conversion to stop some Ascendant plot—”
“The hell they will,” Chrissie said.
“If that happens,” Tanner said, “then I want you to hide her.”
“Surely they wouldn’t...” Paige muttered. “The threat would have to be—”
“If they do,” Tanner said, “hide her until we find another way.”
***
“Darian has the journal,” Tara told Collin. “He’s decoding the messages now.” She’d sn
eaked out of the office—why wait around like a puppy dog while her sister sulked anyway? She’d come straight to Collin’s apartment with the news.
Rider, Collin’s twin—identical save for Collin’s grisly facial scar—nodded. “Good job, kid. You might just be worth keeping around.”
Tara slipped into a stool at the kitchen counter and raised her brows. “Call me kid again, and you won’t have the choice.”
Rider and Collin exchanged a look, and Collin just shook his head.
“What?” Tara said.
Collin didn’t look at her. “My brother is wondering when you became so sassy. But knowing your big sister as I do, I’d figured it was just a matter of time.”
“So, are you ready to tell me what’s going on or not?” She set her jaw. “I’m sick of being in the dark.”
They’d been testing her for the last two days, seeing how many shifts she could do and how long she could hold them. Only last night—when her power had begun to peter out completely—did the guys remember that, like all other Specials, Tara’s power drained with use, and she needed to recharge.
Since Specials recharged with sex or human blood, that created an interesting dilemma. Though Collin assured her it’d be easy enough to find a non-Special human with a vampire fetish—someone who would get off on letting her drink his or her blood—Tara was repulsed by the idea. Almost as repulsed as she was by the thought of another visit to Easy Frat Boys R Us.
The night had ended with a red-faced Collin handing her a bag from a sex toy shop. The vibrator inside was small and purple. Tara hadn’t been able to resist asking, “Aren’t you going to show me how to use it?”
So, here they were: two beautiful men, a newly deflowered woman, and a purple vibrator.
Tara sighed and rested her chin on her hand. Considering the scenario’s potential, the reality was a disappointment.
“We need you to get the journal,” Collin said, studying her.
Tara swallowed. She loved when she had Collin’s attention. Usually he looked at her like she was still fourteen, but sometimes—and more since she’d slipped into his bed as her big sister—he looked at her like he saw the woman she’d become. Those were the moments she lived for.
