“All the subtlety of an anvil, Jack.”
“I might say the same to you, sweetheart.”
He approached from behind, and she let him wrap his arms around her waist, but she dodged his kiss and made him peck her cheek instead. Jack made no comment, and Cassie pretended she hadn’t just reacted like a firecracker at his touch.
Jack made a disgruntled sound in his throat. “You went running without me again?” He sniffed the back of her neck down to where her arm met her torso. She noticed that he’d actually shaved when he nuzzled his face on her skin. It seemed an animalistic gesture, dragging long breaths and sighing. He liked that post-workout smell?
“I was unaware you are my keeper.”
He huffed, “You don’t even try to fit in here, do you?”
She turned and scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She had to half-shout over the blender noise.
“The way you talk — convent princess.”
“Forgive me if I don’t speak caveman as well as you.”
“Honey, you were raised by aristocrats and nuns. And Kyros, for the love of Pete, who could kick my ass into tomorrow, is the world’s biggest science geek. The apple didn’t fall far.”
“Me?” She laughed coldly. “That’s grand, coming from a man who turns his brogue on or off, depending on whether or not a girl is watching.”
That got him.
“Sometimes you’re mean.”
“I say whatever comes to mind.”
“You’re a spoiled brat, Cass.”
She slammed her mind shut and bit down on her lip, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her rattled. “I suppose this is where I call you a jerk and we go on as usual?”
He shook his head and stared with a raw look in his eyes that made her want to squirm. His fingers drummed on the small of her back. She let the silence hang. He still stared. No way would she fall for his puppy dog eyes. What a player.
She turned back around, cursing under her breath. He kept his arms tight around her, and she couldn’t help feeling some sort of messed-up pleasure over it. She sliced strawberries and ignored his fingers tracing the slope of her neck from the nape to between her shoulder blades. His presence brushed her adamantly closed mind like a dog scratching at the door to come in. She ignored him and added more fruit to the smoothie.
Cassie nearly jumped when Jack’s arms reached around her to drop a peeled banana into the blender. He hooked one arm around her waist as he leaned to pull a handful of wheat grass growing in a windowsill pot. The grass went into the blender, as well as a scoop of bran, which required him to press his hips into hers to reach the canister.
She sliced fresh avocado and he purred in approval, an overtly sensual sound right in her ear. Cassie remembered being entertained as a kid by Jack’s lifelike animal noises, but the jungle-cat-purring against her neck now made her want to stretch out on the counter and arch her back. Still, she feigned nonchalance.
She scoffed as he drew his KA-BAR from his pants to cut coconut chunks. Couldn’t he use a sanitary kitchen knife? Blueberries and carrots went in the blender as his knee rubbed the inside of her thigh — he was trying to coax her into submission. Persuasive, but she couldn’t let him blow hot and cold and think she would still be at his beck and call. Girls who did that got into all kinds of trouble.
He poised his hand over the top of the blender, ready to crack a raw egg when Cassie cracked first. “Gross, Jack! I draw the line there.”
“Great protein. Grows hair on the chest.”
“Just what I need.”
“Generations of your ancestors ate this for breakfast every morning.”
“I know — the two-minute egg. Kyros still does, and it’s gross.”
He reached for the blender again. “You won’t even taste it.”
“No egg!” She blocked the top with her hands. “See? The smoothie already looks disgusting. No reason it should stink too.”
She realized the revolting sewage color would be lost on him, as he probably only saw an indeterminate shade of gray-blue. He dropped in five more peels of lemon rind and two pinches of cinnamon.
“Back off, you’re ruining my smoothie.”
“I like these pants, Cass.” He ran his fisted hand down the outside of her thigh and back up, thankfully without breaking the egg. He teased it over her navel, tracing in circles with a more facetious mood than seductive.
“Not a chance,” she insisted, sending a mental explanation to include both the egg in the smoothie and his playful advances.
“I think you’ll change your tune.”
“Wishful thinking, Jack.”
I’m going to tell you everything about last night.
Her heart leaped and she spun around to look at him. His eyes reflected sincerity. She wanted to squeal and cheer, but instead she played her cards close. She cocked one eyebrow and said coolly, All right, dish.
Breakfast first. Make it look innocent, I’m not supposed to do this. And Kyros has the ears of a bat.
Jack chattered out loud about nothing while she poured their vomit-looking smoothie into tall plastic tumblers. He suggested they go out on the beach, and she understood he wanted the noise of the water to obscure their conversation. Kyros and Lyssa came through the door as Jack was about to open it. Cassie smiled at Kyros’ snarky T-shirt which read, I’m huge in Japan, and saw Lyssa surreptitiously give Kyros’ backside a rough squeeze. An electric charge vibrated the air, his pupils dilated. Cassie and Jack took the cue to flee. Cat darted out the doorway behind them with her ears laid back.
Newlyweds, Jack groused, and they both chuckled. Kyros and Lyssa’s fourth anniversary had come and gone. Still they behaved like horny teenagers. Four years, and Cassie was still jealous. How would it be for a man to need her like air to breathe? A fairytale she would never have believed if she didn’t see the way Kyros and Lyssa looked at each other.
Jack took a long drag on the straw and complained, “Needs egg.”
He collapsed on a hill of cool sand, lying flat on his back with his cup tilting precariously in his fist, uncaring that he dusted himself in sand. His other hand patted the ground beside him, and Cassie sat after extricating that infernal cat who had wormed her way in first. Cat hissed in protest, Cassie hissed back and tossed the feline away while Jack chuckled. Apparently his considerable thermal output was in demand.
Without preamble he whispered, Want to know why I can’t tumble you first, or what the big deal with the Lake Powell ranger is?
Cassie hid her shock at his bluntness. First tell me why you’re disobeying orders. I’m not in the club, remember?
You should know. And I won’t keep secrets from you anymore. I refuse.
She could see there was more to it but didn’t press her luck. Besides, his confession had already sent her soaring, and she thought she might throw herself at his feet. At last! She arranged her features into a gamely expression but was still not ready to hear whatever filled in the blank for why he didn’t want her. Okay, what happened at the lake?
The man you had the sudden urge to dismember is one known only as Boris. Russian, low-grade extra-sentient. Known minion of Merodach-the-Oh-So-Dead.
Did he recognize you?
Hope so. Mine was the last face he saw before he choked to death on his own blood.
You killed him?
Obviously not.
When was this?
Four and a half years ago. Before Lyssa defeated Merodach in Paris.
Cassie didn’t want to distract Jack, or she might have admitted his smoothie concoction was surprisingly tasty. Okay, so Merodach found Boris and healed him, she guessed. No one else could have done it … except Kyros.
Seems so. He watched her lips on the straw then shook his head as if to clear it. He’s
a hunter. A kidnapper. I had a hell of a time keeping him from infiltrating the London academy.
What does he want?
What you don’t know is that Merodach set up an operation in the U.S. He had two goals, to infiltrate the government and brainwash captured extra-sentients for his own army. Kyros thinks someone else is running the operation in his legacy, and Boris is his henchman.
Cassie already knew extra-sentient children were Kyros’ top priority, and having spent four years in his academies herself, she knew how carefully they were guarded. He wants the academies, she breathed, wary of the nervous rhythm of her heart pounding. Who’s behind it? And why Lake Powell?
The two questions we can’t solve either. My guess is that Boris tracked me there. Chances are he’ll come here too. As for who thinks he can run Merodach’s operation in his stead, I’d like to meet the man myself.
Cassie watched his mouth pull from a grim smile into a frightening grimace. He flexed his fingers, rippling tendons and muscles from his wrists to shoulders. She hoped Jack got his hands on the mystery villain too.
Merodach, the Babylonian thousand-year-old extra-sentient with the power of resurrection and mindbreaking, first declared war on Kyros in the eighteenth century. He didn’t appreciate Kyros interfering with his sabotage of the American Revolution, and the vendetta evolved into a centuries-long private war. Kyros’ own family had been the casualties.
Cassie wanted to ask, “What do we do now?” but reminded herself she wasn’t in the superhero club. What happens now?
Kyros will reinforce security at the academies. They’re in Inverness, Rio and Quantico now, but he won’t send me in case I’m being tracked. Jack twisted his neck and clenched his jaw, and Cassie could see this rankled him.
Will Kyros relocate again?
No. He thinks Boris is waiting for it. I’m going to play bait instead.
Cassie groaned, just now remembering that Jack had carried his duffel down the stairs this morning. She should have noticed the giant block letters, MACGUNN stenciled below the drawstring — his soldier pack. Jack thought he was invincible, and she hated when he left on black ops missions. She couldn’t take much more of the sleepless nights and fruitless hours waiting for the phone to ring with news of either his safe return or grisly demise.
Okay, I’ll ask. How are you going to play bait?
Got asked to do Hell Week in Coronado.
A smile sneaked past her pursed lips. The only adventure Jack loved more than a dangerous mission was training gullible mortals to go on dangerous missions, and he was Naval Special Warfare Command’s favorite instructor for their grueling initiation.
When do you leave?
Today.
Figures.
Kyros also wants me away from you.
She turned her head to look down at him, finally meeting his gaze. No harm in speaking aloud now. “I suppose this brings us to the second forbidden topic.”
“I didn’t want to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“I’m a berserker, Cassie.” He said it so gravely, she nearly laughed.
She lifted her shoulders and her eyebrows in tandem to mean, Yeah, I know?
“This reaction between us. It’s not supposed to happen with you. It means we’re mates. At least, it’s a biological compulsion to mate.”
“How romantic.”
“You haven’t met my family, but you should know that all of them, including the women — especially the women — are big.”
“I figured you were six-foot-six for a reason.”
He smiled, but tension pulled the corners of his mouth. “MacGunn women are big like their husbands, because they give birth to big berserker babies. You don’t know what that entails, and I’m glad.”
Cassie couldn’t help the shudder down her back. A few years of residency in an L.A. emergency room had honed her vivid imagination.
That stray thought, a reminder of her greatest failure — quitting her residency program in her last year — made Jack cringe. She heard an echo of his anger and frustration and thrust the topic from her mind, making it clear she didn’t want to talk about it.
Jack cleared his throat. “You should know there is no contraceptive that works for a berserker. I can’t sleep with you, Cass — I’ll get you pregnant.”
Her eyebrows hiked even higher and she tried not to grimace.
He added before she could argue, “Doesn’t matter what time of the month. One-hundred-percent, since the Vikings recorded their history.”
Cassie watched the water swallowing the beach, the seagulls fighting over washed-up Cheetos, and turned Jack’s words in her head. Cassie’s mind wandered to the legion of blonde peppy women he flirted with, undoubtedly went home with …
He snorted. “No little bastard MacGunns running around terrorizing the world. I wouldn’t do that.”
Cassie blinked, then burst out laughing with her head tossed back. Imagine! Jack MacGunn: insatiable flirt, smokin’ hot Atlas lookalike … a virgin. Impossible. “But that’s what you mean, right?”
“Laugh it up, princess. You are, too.”
That sobered her. She shouldn’t have laughed. It was unkind. She felt a little guilty. Only a little. “So, you’re some kind of monk?”
“No way. I’m sixteen years past due for taking a mate from the clan and settling on the family land.”
Her eyes flickered to his impressive form, lying stretched on the beach with his hands tucked behind his head. It flexed his ridiculous twenty-one-inch biceps and inflated the cords of tendon around his neck. His Navy-issued BDU pants hung jauntily on his hips, contrasted by the designer watch strapped to his wrist. “I’m trying to imagine you with a bushy beard, hiking over the heather in a kilt, and I just can’t see it. Where would you park your Camaro?”
“Next to my truck.”
“I bet you don’t even like haggis.”
“Might eat it on a dare. But I do have a kilt.”
“That’s totally hot, Jack.” She mocked, “So, you’re a misfit among the highlanders?”
He shrugged in agreement and raised his head to study his wristwatch, clearly uncomfortable. “They’re a dying breed, and I succumbed to the soulless ways of the modern world.”
“I see.” All the fight went out of her. The realization that she’d made a dozen wrong assumptions about him sat uncomfortably. It was humbling. She spread his fingers open and slowly razed his palm with her nails. This hypnotized him, she knew. “So, if you were to show up with me at the MacGunn family reunion … ”
“They would say it figures. They wrote me off as a loser long ago.”
“Never mind that you save the world at least once a week.”
“No fealty to God and country, that’s me.”
What he didn’t say, was that he’d chosen Kyros, and by so doing had chosen Cassie over his family, since he had been her bodyguard all her life. The revelation hit her like a car crash. The air seemed too thick to breathe, her eyes stung and her tip of her nose buzzed, reverberating the powerful emotion tugging on her heart. She’d felt a taste of it yesterday in the truck when Jack pulled over to yell at her, and now she let it have its way with her.
“Jack.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “I think I’m in love with you.”
He froze, then made a choking sound. “Crazy woman. You really do say whatever comes to mind.” His eyes narrowed, then flashed iridescent. “I’ve loved you all along, Cass.”
He reached to take her cup and twisted the base into the sand, then tugged her wrist, pulling her down to lie over his chest. Waves of heat wafted from the sand as it heated. He grazed his fingers over her sides, lingering where her shape dipped inward or flared out. At least he appreciated what curves she did have.
Wish you wouldn’t think that
way. He circled his hands around her waist and rubbed his thumbs over her abdomen. “You’re strong, and tight, and shaped like … ”
“Like what, Jack?” Impossibly, he heated even more, apparently embarrassed. He wouldn’t finish the sentiment, but she was curious. If Jack somehow found her figure attractive, she had to hear why. “I thought men want women like Lyssa.” Cassie gave a mental salute to Lyssa’s 34E bust and twenty-seven-inch waist over shapely legs on a five foot seven frame. Proof that life is unfair.
“Most do,” he agreed, weathering the death threat her eyes sparked at him. “It’s the contradiction. She always looks like she’s just been tumbled but manages to look innocent about it.”
“Wow, Jack, you’ve really thought it through. Does Kyros know you’re hot on his wife?”
“Am not. Just explaining. Besides, he’d disembowel me.”
“True.”
“But you, Cass … ” He paused to carve her shape with his hands again. “You intimidate men. You’re classical. A goddess. You definitely give off the unattainable vibe.”
“You make me sound scary.”
“You are, lass.”
“But you don’t think that?”
“Course I do. I’m scared witless of you.”
He half-mumbled this while staring at her mouth. Even the unspoken suggestion that he might repeat the sort of kiss he gave her last night set off a dozen alarms in her head and kicked her heart kick.
“Just do it,” she taunted, her lips brushing his as she said do.
Shouldn’t. He nipped back, paused, then kissed her lightly as though asking a question.
It was too gratifying to provoke him, to make him war with himself. Cassie stretched and shifted, fitting against him like biological puzzle pieces. She felt his pulse through his arms and throbbing near his groin, felt every muscle contract. Their pulses had matched since he first came into the kitchen, but now the tempo increased in unison.
Cassie gripped his jaw on both sides and stole control of the kiss. She tilted her head to delve in, catching him off guard. She answered his half-hearted plea to stop with a slow lick using the tip of her tongue from the bottom of his throat to his earlobe.
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