Lover Behind Enemy Lines

by Liv Olteano

  “This won’t be a casual thing, Nathan. Do you understand that?”

  He nipped my earlobe and then repeatedly kissed my ear. “I’m hoping it won’t be. It certainly won’t be casual for me.”

  I ran my hands down his lower back and paused before following the curve of his ass. “Are you sure?”

  “Freaking positive,” he gritted out.

  I continued my exploration over the swell of his cheeks. He sighed, sounding contented as I caressed his ass and gripped each cheek in my hands. He pushed up against me, rubbing his groin against mine.

  “Play nice,” I muttered.

  Resisting the urge to rip the clothes off him was one of the toughest things I’d had to do in my life. But I did it.

  “Why do you insist on torturing us both?” He stepped back to look into my eyes. “Is this a power play kind of thing? Because I’m cool with that. I’m cool with whatever you want. Just help me get what that is.”

  “I want both of us to be sure that this is the right thing to do.”

  “I’m very fucking sure. So if it’s about you not being sure, then tell it how it is.”

  He turned around and stepped closer to the window to look out.

  While I could believe that he truly did desire me—maybe as much as I desired him, in fact—my visions and dreams had been warning of two possible outcomes. So I couldn’t just throw caution to the wind, no matter what my heart yearned for. Our being together could take us in one of two directions: together as dreamcatchers, or together as his sister’s allies. I was doing the best I could to make sure things would end with us on the right side—the dreamcatchers’ side. But I couldn’t tell him about my fears; there had to be a reason why the ancestors had given me those warnings.

  I walked up behind him and wrapped my arms around his middle. “Can you blame me?”

  “A little.” He huffed. “I’m hard in the same room with my fantasy-man come true and a bed, and we’re not headed in the direction of fucking each other’s brains out. I blame you entirely for that last part.”

  I chuckled. “Okay. I admit that’s my fault.”

  “Well, good. Awesome. Now can we move beyond that and make things happen?”

  I didn’t say anything; just enjoyed feeling him in my arms. The tingles that his presence sent up my nerve endings were unlike anything I had ever felt. I’d felt desire in many ways throughout my life. I’d used desire in many ways: to alleviate solitude, to get closer to some people or to put distance between me and others. But this kind of desire I’d never felt. It went straight to my head, like very expensive champagne that made my thoughts bubble.

  Nathan turned in my arms and set his palms on my chest as he looked into my eyes. “Is this about you not fully trusting me yet?”

  “A part of it, yes.”

  “Do you hope to get something out of me before we move forward as a couple?”

  “Also part of it,” I admitted. “Does that hurt your feelings?”

  “A little bit. But I broke into your house. That must have hurt your feelings a little bit too,” he muttered and shrugged. “What can I do to level the playfield?”

  I flinched as I felt Aashi’s summons.

  “What’s wrong?” Nathan asked, looking concerned.

  “I have to go.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Duty calls. There’s something going on. I’ll be back, wait here.”

  “But—”

  “I really have to go,” I said as I walked out of the room.

  When I got downstairs, I realized that the other guys were going into the webs room too.

  “I don’t like this,” Taka said as we all got in.

  Aashi was leaning against our weapons table. “We have multiple attacks in the area.” She gave us each get-in and get-out charms: pills, one red and one green.

  We got our weapons and swallowed the charms. One by one, my team members disappeared from the webs room.

  Aashi reached out to me, but before dropping the charms in my hand, she looked into my eyes. “You’re still not sure.”

  I shook my head. She dropped the charms. As I swallowed the get-in one and the image shifted before my eyes, all I could think about was the man I’d left upstairs in my bedroom.

  Chapter Eight

  I WAS the last one to make it back to home base. The spaga I ran into was a ghoul that was trying to drain a whole family at once. Though it had the peculiar ability to drain more than one victim at a time, it didn’t drain any faster than they usually did. So it was an improved version of a ghoul, but not as enhanced as the ones we’d met a while back—those ones could also teleport a short distance and drain a lot more people at once than a family.

  It was clear Vivian was still experimenting with what sorts of spirit servants she could make. If they were less improved than what she’d been using before, then maybe her resources were fewer now. Or she was saving for one major attack again. I had to hope it was the first and not the latter.

  I set down my Hawk on the weapons table. Aashi made sure I was all right, then dismissed me. I exited the webs room and closed the doors. Everyone was congregated in the dining room—I knew because I could hear them talking. So I walked over to them too. “Mass-drainers?”

  They all nodded.

  “At least they’re only trying to work on a home at a time,” I muttered and slumped down in a chair.

  “She’s still outdoing any caster we’ve ever run into,” Taka said in an irritated tone. “And we know she can do worse than this. Why isn’t she doing it?”

  “Maybe she’s weaker,” I said.

  “Because of the connection between her and Nathan that I weakened?” Ginger asked.

  I shrugged. “That’s one thing we know about. Good job with that, by the way. It’s a very interesting ability.”

  Ginger grinned. “Thanks.”

  Taka’s fingertips ran over the keyboard of his laptop. He was probably updating the maps with attack spots for tonight’s missions. “What does she need her enhanced humans for, though?” he asked, and looked at me over the edge of his screen.

  Drew glanced at me. “Good question.”

  “I have no idea. But I’ll ask Nathan. Maybe he can shed some light on that. Or at least give us some clue, if he doesn’t know for sure.”

  Angelo nibbled on his lower lip. “How did the date go?”

  “It was going well, but then we had to leave.”

  “Let’s call it a night.” Drew reached out for Angelo’s hand. “We’re going into our soundproofed room.” He winked at me as they walked by.

  Taka snorted but didn’t comment.

  Ginger got up from the chair and walked into the kitchen, only to return a moment later with two bottles of water. “My man gets testy when he’s dehydrated,” he loud-whispered and winked at me.

  Taka didn’t say anything, but he did give his lover a look that spelled some kind of trouble.

  I didn’t want to know what precise kind, though. “I’m going upstairs too. Good night, guys.”

  “Good night,” they replied.

  I was tired and a bit cranky. I opened the door to my bedroom and was greeted by darkness. The candle was out and the table cleared. I had begun to unbutton my shirt when my bed creaked. Nathan lay there on his side, facing the window. The steady rise and fall of his chest said he was asleep. A sudden rush came over me. The instinct was to stay out of any clothes and get him to the same point. But instead of doing that, I got into sweatpants and a T-shirt and crawled into bed behind him.

  When I was close enough, he mumbled something in his sleep and pushed his ass back against me. I turned on my side and wrapped a hand around his middle, hugging him tight. His scent wafted up my nose and pulled my thoughts in very carnal directions. I pushed those thoughts down, fully aware that postponing the inevitable only made me want it all the more. Maybe that was why I was really doing it: to make sure that we were both as nuts about each other as we could possibly get. Or to make sur
e that he was as nuts about me as I could possibly get him.

  Either way, I forced my breathing to slow down and my body to relax. The boner didn’t pay me any attention, but I didn’t give its demands any attention either—not yet. After a while, sleep finally claimed me.

  I WOKE up to the feeling of being hot and sticky. It took a moment to make sense of what was going on. I had a mop of blond hair in front of my eyes and some comfortable and delicious weight on part of my chest and on my leg. I was hot and sweaty because of it, but I didn’t want to move.

  Nathan squirmed a little and then stretched like a cat, still not moving from his half-on-top-of-me position. I couldn’t suppress a chuckle.

  He lifted his head a bit and opened one eye, but only halfway. “Morning.”

  “Morning.”

  He put his head back down and nestled even closer to me, if that was even possible. It put a wide smile on my face.

  “Are we getting up?” he asked, not sounding enthusiastic about the prospect.

  “We should be.”

  He squirmed even closer. “Okay, but are we?”

  I chuckled again and ran my hand over the side of his chest in a slow caress.

  He hummed. “That feels great. Want to go lower?” He rubbed his hard-on against my hip.

  Before I could answer, there was a knock on the door. “Come in,” I called out.

  The door opened a little, and Taka poked his head in. “Morning, guys. Claw, can you join us in the dining room?”

  “Sure. Give me a moment.”

  Nathan became immediately alert. “Is something wrong?”

  “Actually, it would be great if you could both come downstairs,” Taka said. “We have breakfast ready too.”

  “Okay, we’ll be right down,” I said.

  Taka closed the door.

  As soon as he did, Nathan got out of bed. “Do you suppose we have time for a quick shower first? I’m a night-sweater. Sorry about that.” His cheeks colored.

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m not.”

  “Really?”

  I smiled, and he returned it.

  “It was great coming back to my room to find you in my bed.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t want to fall asleep, though. The plan was to wait for you. But then I lay down, and—yeah. I ruined the clothes Angelo was nice enough to get me too.” He looked down at the frumpy state of said clothes.

  “Angelo got your clothes?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I kind of asked him to. I mean, I had a hot date. I wanted to impress, but I couldn’t go out shopping and didn’t have any of my stuff.”

  “That’s cute.”

  He stuck his tongue out. “Not cute enough to get me laid, though. So we’ll call it a moderate success.”

  I exhaled loudly and he grinned.

  “Let’s skip the shower for now and head downstairs.”

  He nodded, and we did just that. Everyone else was already there. The wagging eyebrows we got were bad enough, but I ignored them as best I could.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Drew and Ginger walked into the kitchen and returned with two plates of English breakfast, complete with sausage, and then brought two mugs of tea. We dug in since everyone else seemed to have already eaten.

  When we were just about done, Taka turned the laptop toward me. “This is the updated map,” he said.

  I looked at it, not sure what he was trying to show me. Nathan—who was sitting beside me—looked at the screen too. He frowned and looked at Taka and me, probably not sure what he was looking at.

  “Every time there’s a spaga attack in our area, we mark the spot on a map,” I explained. “We’re hoping to find some kind of pattern, rhyme or reason to how victims are picked.”

  Nathan looked at the screen again. “Have you tried adding a ley line map overlay?”

  Taka nodded. “We have. Sometimes the intersection of some ley lines, even minor ones, are very close to the location of an attack. But not always.”

  “What were you going to show me?” I asked.

  “Not all attacks happen around a ley line intersection, as you know,” Taka said. “But generally speaking, they’re in the vicinity of one. The more recent ones don’t follow the pattern at all. There’s something different.”

  “How recent ones?” I asked.

  “Since Nathan’s been here,” Taka replied without blinking.

  “What does that mean?” Nathan asked.

  “We don’t really know,” Drew cut in. “We’re hoping you might get some idea, maybe.”

  I had my suspicions. Without using Nathan as another source of power, Vivian had to be weaker right now. Enhancing regular humans on top of creating spirit servants had to take a lot out of her. Maybe she was winging it, as opposed to following a strategy as she seemed to have been doing.

  Nathan put down his fork and knife and looked at the map. “I might be able to tell something from looking at the locations. But I’m not really good with reading maps,” he said after a while. “Could I see this on a street view kind of version instead?”

  “Give me a second.” Taka turned the laptop to work on it. A few seconds later, he showed us the screen again. “There.”

  “Much better,” Nathan said. He studied the image for a while, frowning every now and then. Then he said, “Okay. See this one here?” and pointed to the location of one of the attacks. “There’s a car wash on this street. My sister and her buddies meet there sometimes. She asked me to see her there once.”

  Taka made a note of that on his phone. “Okay. Do any of the other locations ring any bells?”

  “This one here,” Nathan went on. “I think there’s an apartment building there. I saw her and one of her people go in once when I drove by. And I saw them again a couple days later, when she didn’t answer her phone. I drove by because I was worried,” he explained, and shrugged.

  “Were these locations supposed to be a secret?” Drew asked, tapping his chin.

  “I’m not sure. She didn’t comment on what she was doing there. In fact, when we did talk on those occasions, she seemed to behave a bit too normal. You know what I mean?”

  “Like when someone is trying to convince you that there’s nothing going on?” Angelo guessed.

  “Yeah. Like that. But I followed her lead and gave these things no importance. We usually met in public places, at cafes or restaurants—stuff like that. She rarely asked me to take her anywhere. Her goons usually do the driving. I think she pretended to want to spend time with me to reinforce her draining connection.” Nathan shrugged. “I kind of encouraged her to think that I was a moron, so I’d learn more about what she was up to. I guess it worked.”

  Taka cleared his throat. “Other locations that jump out at you?”

  Nathan looked at the image carefully. “Sorry. I don’t know anything about these others. But since two of these spots are near places she frequents, I’m going to guess that more of them are close to some of her hangouts, right?”

  Taka hummed. “We can’t say for sure, but it’s possible. Do you know of any other hangouts of hers?”

  Nathan rapped his fingertips on the table for a few seconds. “Let me see. I think somewhere around here there’s a supermarket?” He frowned.

  Taka said “Yes” after a few seconds.

  “She asked me to pick her up from there a couple of times,” Nathan said. “She never said why, and I didn’t really ask. But she never carried shopping bags when I did,” he added. “The only other place I can think of is this one.” He pointed to an area close to Club Zee. “I saw her go into the building when I was coming out of the club once. It seemed weird that she’d go in there because it’s a spice shop. Vivian is not big on cooking, that’s for sure,” he muttered.

  “Taka, make me a list of these locations and email them to the special interventions teams,” I said. “I’d like them to investigate the places and see if they come up with anything. Two of these are spots with no attack near th
em. At least not yet. Maybe this is our chance to get ahead of things.”

  He nodded and turned the laptop toward him again.

  “Thank you for sharing that.” I smiled at Nathan.

  “No problem. I’m sorry I didn’t think to mention it sooner. But I had no idea you guys had a system like this in place. Very smart.”

  “It was Taka’s idea,” I said.

  He didn’t comment, but I saw him smile a bit behind his screen. The old fox liked compliments.

  “Do you need us for anything more?” I asked.

  Taka shook his head. “I’ll let you know what special interventions come up with, if anything.”

  “Let’s have our showers, then,” I told Nathan, and we left the dining room.

  “Together or separate?” he asked and grinned when we got to the top of the stairs.

  “Separate, I’m afraid. I need to prepare for a meeting with other team leaders. I’ll see you when I’m done with that, okay?”

  He stepped closer to me and pecked my lips sweetly. “Okay. I’m looking forward to it.”

  My stomach squeezed for a moment. When he stepped back, I grabbed him by both arms and pulled his mouth back to mine. I gave him a hungry kiss, indulging my craving for a thorough tasting of him. He moaned into my mouth. I ate it up, loving every moment of it. Then I pulled back and grinned when I noticed the dreamy expression on his face.

  “I’m looking forward to it too,” I said.

  Then I turned around and went into my bedroom. I had to. If I spent another minute looking at him, I would have forgotten all about the day’s agenda. Meetings be damned, I would have taken him back into my bed and locked us away from the world. And that would have been exquisite and all I wanted. But I couldn’t be selfish enough to actually do it. I had responsibilities.

  Instead of giving in to my desires, I took a quick shower and rubbed one off so I could relax a little. Then I dressed, looked over what bits of new information I had, and left for the team leaders’ meeting. While I drove there, I couldn’t stop thinking about the future of Nathan and me. Had this been the turning point? Had I managed to push our future clearly into the dreamcatchers’ direction? The knot of restlessness in my stomach eased some, but not entirely.