She stiffened.
He kissed the scars again, one by one, and then made his way to her ear with his lips. “You are beautiful.”
“I’m not,” she protested.
He growled softly against her ear. “You are.”
She started to shake her head no, but Rurik slid his hand into her hair and gave a gentle, yet firm, jerk. With the figurine and bear still between them, she stared up into his familiar blue gaze.
“Little Paw, I’m not a man known for false niceties. Hear me when I say this. You are the hottest fucking woman I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said in a low, harsh whisper. “If you knew how old I really am, you’d understand the weight of those words.”
“H-how old are you?” she asked, unsure she wanted to know.
He grinned. “How old do you think I am?”
She did the math in her head, trying to figure out how old he’d need to be to have been there for her twenty years ago. When she landed on a number, her brows lifted. “In your fifties maybe? How can that be?”
He dipped his head more, their lips nearly touching. “Today is my birthday…so that means I’m two hundred and sixty-five years old.”
She dropped the bear but managed to keep the Statue of Liberty pinned between them. It was hardly comfortable against her bare skin, but she didn’t care. All she could think about was what he was saying. “That’s not possible.”
“It is,” he confessed.
“How?”
He held her tighter. “I’m no more human than you are, Little Paw.”
“What am I?” she asked, her voice small.
“If I remember the report correctly, you have a good deal of Fae in you,” he said.
“W-what does that mean?”
His breathing increased as he stared at her lips. “Magik. But more importantly, it means you’re fair game.”
“Fair game?” she echoed.
“Mate material,” he said.
“Rurik, you’re not making sense,” she said before stiffening more. “Hold on, is your name Rurik or is it Boris?”
He licked his lips. “Rurik, or Jackass, depending on who you ask.”
She blushed. “Sorry about that.”
He winked. “You called me the same thing when you were but knee high.”
She couldn’t help but laugh and it chased away the tears.
He used his free hand to ease the figurine from between them. He stared at it. “You’ve had this all this time?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “It and the bear are the only two things I’ve had all my life. Well, I have two stuffed bears now since I stole your birthday present today.”
He winked. “Consider it yours, Little Paw.”
“Thank you,” she said. “They’re all special to me.
“You’re special to me,” he said, pulling on her hair more before he kissed her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth. By the time he was done with his sensual exploration of her mouth, she nearly forgot what they were talking about.
He broke the kiss. “We need to talk.”
She nodded.
He looked pained as he stared down at her breasts. “Uh, can we talk with our clothes on? My dick is interfering with my ability to think and having you naked isn’t helping.”
Liberty laughed as she went to her dresser and selected a pair of boy-cut panties and a tank top. The sleepwear of champions. She glanced over her shoulder only to find Rurik there, staring at her ass, all while stroking his cock. “Uh, I thought we were getting dressed?”
He blinked. “Right. What was I doing again?”
She pointed to his discarded jeans. “You wanted to talk to me with our clothes on.”
He frowned as he continued to stare at her while she held the panties and tank top. “That was a stupid idea. Ignore me.”
She snorted. “Rurik.”
He groaned and went for his jeans, putting his back to the bedroom door.
She slipped on the panties and then pulled the tank top over her head. By the time she was done, he had almost managed to get his cock tucked into his jeans. He did a slight hop-and-jerk movement before trying to zip up again. It didn’t quite work with as hard as he still was.
He cast her a pleading look. “The talk can wait an hour or so. We could fill the time with—”
Suddenly, men dressed in special ops gear burst into the bedroom, sending the door flying into Rurik’s back.
He staggered.
One of the men lifted his rifle and used the butt of it to hit Rurik in the back of the head. Another repeated the action, again and again, causing Rurik to go down.
He lay motionless on the floor.
One of the men pulled out a syringe full of fluid and jabbed it into Rurik’s neck.
Liberty barely had time to register what was happening as a scream tore free from her. On instinct, she tried to rush to Rurik, only to find three men there, aiming weapons at her, wearing black from head to toe. Only their eyes showed, and they were all glaring at her.
“Get down!” yelled one as another came at her with a syringe.
The temperature of the room dropped rapidly, and her arms began to tingle. Items started to shake as one of the men lurched forward and struck her in the face with the butt of his rifle, halting her curse from reacting.
Her legs crumbled out from under her, and she landed on the bedroom floor, next to Rurik, her hand touching his extended forearm. She didn’t care about the pain in her face and head; all she worried about was him.
She had a bond she couldn’t explain to Rurik. One that left her heart aching at the idea he might be seriously injured—that she might not ever see him again. Some could argue that she’d only just met him—that it was too early to be in love. Others could argue that she’d known him nearly all her life. It didn’t matter who took what side. In the end, she knew she more than simply cared for him.
The man with the syringe stepped over her and bent, jabbing the needle into her neck. Within seconds, her eyelids were too heavy to keep open.
“Is she sedated?” asked a man with a deep voice.
“Yeah, she’s out like a fucking light,” returned another. “Pavel said we should administer the sedative to her in twenty-minute intervals.”
“Christ, we already gave her enough to keep a grown man down for hours,” said yet another. “I get she’s more than human, but so are we and that shit does a number on one of us.”
“She ain’t like us,” said the one with a deep voice. “Load her into the van. Pavel is on his way here to deal with Romanov himself.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rurik stirred, his head feeling as if someone had taken a bat to it and like he was in a fog. As he opened his eyes, he smelled blood. Having claimed Liberty, and tasted her blood in the process, he knew in an instant it was hers. She was injured.
Little Paw!
The smell of hybrids filled the room as well, bringing with it undernotes of death. Whatever The Corporation was doing when it came to altering the DNA of adult supernatural males had a nasty side effect—rapid decay.
Another scent filled the area and Rurik growled.
Pavel.
A pair of men’s loafers appeared before him. He turned his head slightly just as a man bent near him.
Rurik’s mind tried to wrap around what he was seeing.
Pavel was there, crouched, grinning, but the man had aged a considerable amount since Rurik had last seen him. That was something shifters didn’t do. They aged at a snail’s pace. Yet there was Pavel, his hair a mix of gray and white, wrinkles around his eyes and mouth and age spots on his skin.
What in the hell had happened to him?
“We meet again, old friend,” he said, sounding like a psychotic cliché. He lifted his to his face. “Do I look different?”
“W-what do you want?” asked Rurik.
“My life back,” Pavel said. “Since I can’t have that back, making you suffer will have to do.”
Rurik tr
ied to get again but failed.
Pavel glanced past him. “Give him more.”
Something poked Rurik in the neck and his head instantly felt as if it were wading through quicksand. He fought to stay awake.
“Lib-er-ty,” managed Rurik.
“The girl is loaded in the van, sir,” said a man from the hallway.
Liberty!
Pavel sneered. “You and I have unfinished business, Romanov. I’d hoped to end that in Savannah, when I used your mate’s scent to draw you out of the clinic, but that didn’t go as planned. But still, it left you less of a threat.”
Rurik vividly recalled smelling something he couldn’t resist before he’d been ambushed. That had been Pavel?
Bastard!
Rurik snarled, wanting to lash out at the man, but everything on him refused to cooperate. His body had already been battered and bruised from the attack weeks ago. This wasn’t helping matters any.
Pavel lifted Rurik’s head by his hair. He put his face close to Rurik’s. “The Corporation wants you brought back into the fold.”
Confusion knit Rurik’s brow. He’d never been part of The Corporation.
As if reading Rurik’s mind, Pavel spoke, “What in the hell do you think your time with the Okhrana and every variation of it was? You didn’t buy into the bullshit that they were offshoots of PSI, did you? Tell me you’re not that gullible. You were The Corporation’s bitch, just like the rest of us.”
“N-no,” Rurik managed though it was slurred.
“Yes,” said Pavel, prior to bouncing Rurik’s face off the floor. He stood and drew his foot back, kicking Rurik in the side, snapping more than one rib in the process.
Whatever they’d given Rurik kept him from being able to do anything other than lie there and take the beating as Pavel continued kicking him. Rurik didn’t give a shit about himself. All he cared about was getting to Liberty.
He had to push through it all. He had to get up and get to his mate—to his wife.
Wanting it and making it happen were two very different things.
Pavel laughed. “When I’m done carving up your mate, she’ll be unrecognizable. I’ll do a much better job than last time. What I’m going to do to her won’t be something she can heal from. Then, she’ll go back to being a science experiment for The Corporation.”
“Stay the fuck away from—”
“Your wife? I smell sex in here. You claimed her, didn’t you? This is going to be even sweeter. I’m going to make you watch as I do to her what you did to me,” said Pavel, yanking open his dress shirt to reveal ugly scars.
“No,” whispered Rurik, everything in him wanting to get up, but he couldn’t make his body do what he wanted. “No!”
Pavel winked. “Oh yes.”
Hopelessness filled Rurik. He knew his friends were on their way to Durham, but the odds of them making it in time to save Liberty weren’t good. It was up to him to protect his mate. It was his job, his responsibility as an alpha male. He didn’t need it spelled out. He understood that she was the love of his life. He couldn’t go on without her—he wouldn’t.
Yet here he was, too weak to do anything other than take a beating and beg.
Pavel looked to the others. “Secure him. Take him to the warehouse. Chain him there. I’ll be along shortly with his mate.”
With that, the bastard stood and walked away, leaving Rurik there, on the floor, surrounded by armed men.
Someone grabbed Rurik’s arm and twisted it behind his back. He felt metal wrapping around his wrist as he stared at his other arm, stretched out on the floor in front of his face.
Various scenarios played in his head—all of which left Pavel torturing and killing Liberty. Each one sent Rurik closer to the edge of losing control—of giving himself over to his beast side fully.
He flexed his hand, much like he’d done with the exercise ball.
His head swam with memories of Liberty as a child, hiding under his desk, scared to come out, her face sliced wide open. Of the pain she’d been in.
Rage consumed him as his promise long ago to kill every person responsible for her being harmed came back to him, filling him with adrenaline. His bear jerked awake fully, hungry for blood—for vengeance and for its mate.
Fur sprouted over his forearm and hand a second before claws emerged from his fingertips. The bear continued to take control and Rurik let it.
Fuck the consequences.
Fuck if he needed to be chained and locked away for everyone’s safety later.
Fuck if he never turned into a man again.
Liberty was all that mattered. There was no way in hell he was letting Pavel harm her again.
He snarled.
“Shit, look!” shouted one of the men.
Several of them leapt on Rurik’s back, trying to keep him pinned to the ground.
Blind rage rooted deep in his belly. Roaring, he came up off the floor, taking the men with him as he did. He knocked them away and stood there a second as fur sprouted over his upper chest. His mouth and jaw began to shift as well. He knew what he looked like. That he was now a cross between a man and a bear.
A monster.
The men around him regained their footing quickly but not fast enough.
Rurik swiped his clawed hand out, catching one by the throat. He brought a foot up, kicking the man in the chest, spinning him so the blood sprayed onto his buddy just as Rurik spun and took that one’s head clean off.
The remaining two men shared a look that said they were not about to come at him head on. They were going to take the coward’s way out.
They lifted their weapons as Rurik dove at one, his other arm and hand shifting forms as well. His back pinched slightly before it began to partially shift forms into a bear. He plunged a hand through the protective vest of the man—as if it was nothing more than a thin shirt, rather than bulletproof—and then right through his body.
Wrapping his hand around the asshole’s heart, Rurik locked gazes with the man, watching as the realization of what was occurring came over the asshole’s face.
The bear wanted Rurik to bite the man’s throat out. To sink his teeth into the enemy’s most vulnerable spot, savoring victory. It slammed at him from within, wanting the thought to become a reality.
Rurik restrained it as best he could, knowing all too well that giving in to a demand such as that could leave him shifting fully and getting stuck that way. While he was fine with sacrificing himself to save his mate, the longer he could hold off the pending changeover, the better.
Rurik opted instead to take the man’s heart. The action would satisfy the bear’s appetite for death. No supernatural that Rurik was aware of could survive losing their heart. The bastard had made his choice, aligning with the enemy, and daring to come after Liberty. He was getting off easy as far as Rurik and his bear were concerned.
Rurik jerked his arm back, taking the man’s still-beating organ with him. He held the heart up for the man to see in the few seconds he lived.
Using the man’s body as a shield, he went at the remaining man as the guy fired at him. He tossed the heart in one direction and the dead body in another before he made short work of the last bad guy.
When he was done, the bedroom was bathed in blood, as was he. He didn’t bother trying to cage his beast as he rushed out of the bedroom, following the scent of his mate.
He made it to the top of the staircase and was greeted by more hybrids. They swarmed him, but he didn’t back down. He seized one by the throat, lifting him off his feet before he threw him at the others, knocking them down the steps.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Liberty blinked awake and found herself bound and gagged with tape in the back end of a van. The back doors were open and male voices came from just outside the vehicle.
“Pavel’s plan was to take her to the warehouse. We’re just supposed to cut her and leave enough blood here for Romanov to think she’s been seriously hurt. But The Corporation wants her as unharm
ed as possible,” said one of the men.
“I know what Pavel said.” As the woman spoke, Liberty tensed. She knew that voice. It belonged to the reporter. “I’m telling you to do something different. You’ve all seen him. You know what The Corporation thinks of him. Do you really think he’s in charge of this mission?”
Silence greeted her.
“Do you?” she demanded, her voice rising in pitch.
“No,” said the men all at once.
“Who the hell handled everything with those nosy professors from the university here?” she asked.
“You did,” replied several of the men.
“And who kept you from being killed in Savannah like so many others, during Pavel’s failed attempt at destroying Romanov?” asked the woman, her tone mocking.
“You,” they answered.
“What are you going to do with her?” asked one of the men.
The reporter laughed, sounding like she was off her rocker. She had to be if she was involved in whatever was happening. “Libs and I have a history.”
Libs?
Only her friends called her that. The reporter was anything but a friend.
“Don’t we, Libs?” asked the reporter as she stepped into view.
Two men moved in behind her, as if closing ranks. They were armed to the teeth and dressed in tactical gear. The eyes of one were familiar. It was then she remembered he’d been the one to knock her out.
“How is she alert?” he asked. “It’s not even been ten minutes yet since we gave her a dose. Pavel said it would keep her knocked out for at least thirty. It’s why we’re supposed to give her injections every twenty minutes.”
The reporter tipped her head down partially, staring at Liberty like a crazed lunatic. Her eyes began to glow with an orange tint—looking a hell of a lot like the demon eyes from the house across the street.
The reporter was the demon?
How many times had she been across the street, looking out at their house? How long had she been planning whatever in the hell this was?
“What is it about you?” she demanded, her lip curling. “You’ve always gotten all the attention. You’re simple. Plain. Unremarkable.”
Act of Surveillance: Paranormal Security and Intelligence® an Immortal Ops® World Novel (PSI-Ops/Immortal Ops Book 7) Page 23
