by Marie Harte
“Different, my ass.” Jules straightened beside Tersch and looked at Mrs. Sharpe. “You specifically chose Morgan to join us. You knew all about him before he arrived. What aren't you telling us? And why does he seem to have so much insight into Montaña?” Mrs. Sharpe squared her shoulders. “Jules, I don't tell you half of what I know, simply because you need to focus on specifics, not the bigger picture.”
“That's bullshit,” Jules answered. “Admiral London kept me in the loop.”
“Did he?” Mrs. Sharpe asked quietly.
Kisho saw that Jules's patience had neared its end and intervened to prevent a showdown.
“Hold on. Morgan still has a few things to explain. Like how he turned Circ.” Once again, his lover had managed to avoid answering the question.
“You said that before. He's Circ?” Tersch rose and sniffed. “He doesn't smell Circ.” His eyes narrowed. “He smells like you.”
Kisho flushed.
Morgan rubbed the back of his neck and muttered, “I borrowed your energy, Kisho.” Jules shook his head. “But you didn't turn Circ after you took Kisho's energy to heal.”
“Yeah, but I also took energy from Mrs. Sharpe and Ava. I didn't think too much about it. I just told Kisho what to do, and he did it.”
“But how did you tell him?” Fallon asked. “You said you're not a telepath.”
“He's not,” Mrs. Sharpe answered. “His energy had parted from his body after the blast. He used his tie to Kisho to heal himself. Those self-preservation instincts he was talking about? He used them to live.”
“What do you mean, 'parted from his body'?” Olivia frowned. “Like he was dead?” Ava swore. “Yeah. Mr. Moron—I mean, Morgan—dies a lot. He's a real pain when it comes to burial arrangements. You're never quite sure when it's time.” Everyone stopped and stared at Morgan in shock.
“Is she serious?” Jules asked.
Tersch growled, “Just how the hell does Ava know so much about you, Reynolds?” The others groused over the confusing information. Kisho wasn't satisfied either. He'd seen his lover turn Circ, had felt the larger, expansive body. Hell, Morgan had satisfied his beast, and only a Circ could do that. Why was Morgan lying? He leaned closer and asked again, through the noise building as his team began arguing with each other, Mrs. Sharpe, and Ava.
Morgan whispered back, “I turned Circ when you were inside me. During sex. That's the difference. Your energy then was your beast, and I shared it to complete you. I'm yours, remember?”
Kisho hadn't considered that, and it made a weird kind of sense. If Morgan really did manipulate energy, then he'd tapped into Kisho's beast during sex. No wonder he'd been able to handle the rougher stuff.
“I'm not Circ, not really. Actually, you're a lot more like me than you know.” Morgan finished, confusing Kisho once more.
A loud whistle quieted the cacophony around them. “That's better.” Ava turned to her boss.
“Mrs. S.? The floor's all yours.”
“Thank you, dear. Gentlemen and ladies, let me clarify something. This is my meeting, and you'll remember to keep quiet unless asked to speak.” The wave of power that slapped at them all had Kisho shrinking back and Morgan swearing under his breath and holding his head.
“Yeah, sure. Got it,” Morgan rasped, and the others agreed.
“Now. One, Morgan is psychic. Two, he's on our side. Three, yes, he can die and somehow revive himself, but he doesn't know how many lives he has, so putting himself needlessly in harm's way is a stupid risk.” The look she sent Morgan made Kisho glad she hadn't directed it at him. “Four, we know where Delancey is now. He's definitely with Montaña. The incident at the dock that blew up involved several of Montaña's unhappy employees. They were more than willing to share what they knew.”
Jules smiled, an alarming grin that said Delancey was a walking dead man.
“And five, Kisho has something he needs to share with me. I'd like the rest of you to file out while Kisho stays behind. Jules, take the others and Morgan and go train. My time with Kisho shouldn't take long. Then you can plan to take out Montaña and Delancey for good. Once you have a strategy in place, we'll meet to go over details.”
“Right.” Ava grabbed Olivia and dragged her to her feet. “Come on, Olivia. I have coordinates, but we need your intelligence system to coordinate everything.” Olivia leaned down to kiss Fallon. “See you later.” She left with Ava.
Kisho looked from Morgan to his team. “Don't kill him,” he warned Tersch.
“I won't. I promise. We're just going to train some more. Right, Jules?”
“Right.” Jules gripped Morgan's arm and pulled him to the door. He said to Kisho, “Come to the gym when you're through. We'll occupy Morgan while we're waiting.” Morgan groaned in protest and soon disappeared with the others.
Kisho's beast gave a soft growl of displeasure because not only had Morgan gone with other males, but he'd left, period.
Mrs. Sharpe smiled knowingly. “You seem much better now. Funny how Circs settle once they've bonded with another, hmm?”
He really wished the woman would turn off that insight. It was alarming how much she seemed to know and how little they actually knew about her.
Kisho didn't answer her, not sure how he felt about a mate. On the one hand, it gave him real joy, and on another, real dread. He didn't look forward to explaining Morgan to the guys, and thought if he avoided it long enough, an answer would appear. Maybe he could explain his new “boyfriend” as a result of Circ hormones. That might work. Not his fault he was attracted to a guy. Not as if Kisho actively sought males for sex. Except that he did. Christ. Tersch would have a field day with his “fruitiness.”
“Kisho?” Mrs. Sharpe pulled his attention. “Tell me about your dream.” Yeah, best to deal with what he could handle at the moment. “It wasn't a vision, but it was more than a dream.” He described it in detail. “I can't help thinking Jules is still in danger. And the fact that the danger took place here, in our home, worries me.” She frowned. “Me too. The two foxes have to be you and Morgan. The owl? I'm not sure.
The hawk would be Jules, of course. But the flowers? The light? More exotic jungle, hmm?
Everything we've been dealing with concerning Delancey lately has a connection to that laboratory in Brazil. I have a feeling we might have missed it.”
“How? When we got there, everything was gone. We checked over the place thoroughly.
Trust me; nothing was there but dead scientists and useless trash.” The look in her eye disturbed him. A dot of red flared in the center of her pupil before it disappeared as if it had never been. But Kisho had seen it. What the hell did that mean?
“What if the lab we found the first time wasn't the lab at all, but an annex? A place designed to mislead us?”
“But I saw it, and I saw Delancey there.”
“I believe you did.”
“I don't understand.” Kisho was starting to get a headache.
“Kisho, look for me. See the laboratory again. Focus, the way you know you can.”
“Right now?”
“Yes, right now.”
He didn't want to deal with this, but he wanted answers to these never-ending questions.
Mrs. Sharpe wanted him to look into the future, so he'd try to get something.
He sat down on the floor, crossed his legs, and peered inward. Taking himself to the calm center from which everything appeared, he tried to focus. But he saw nothing but Morgan.
Frustrated because he couldn't think without his mate's face in his mind's eye, he tried to go through Morgan.
When he did, he touched the magic. The pleasure, the sheer belonging he'd felt while in Morgan's arms. Their time in the shower and in bed, together, touching. Two individuals, one heart.
And that simply, everything else faded. He sat in his psychic center and concentrated on William Delancey. For the first time ever, the object of his search immediately appeared.
He looked older, tired, and worrie
d.
William Delancey faced a man Kisho had tried like hell to see before but never could.
Colonel Ricardo Montaña was a large man. Brutish and evil looking, with a scar along his cheek, a thick mustache, and dark eyes that gleamed with sick satisfaction as they watched several men dump bodies into the ocean.
“They served their purpose, and your monsters have fed, no?” Delancey snarled, “We're stuck at sea for another week, under orders to keep a low profile until the boss says otherwise. Great going, Ricardo. You killed them, but my rogues aren't done.
We'll need more men, women, whatever the fuck you can come up with, or those things in the hold will tear through everything to feed their hunger.”
“A hunger we know well, don't we, my friend?” Montaña laughed and crudely grabbed his own crotch. “The whores, they swallow much, eh? The drug is good. Gives the man much power in mind and body.”
“And some fucked-up headaches.” Delancey rubbed his forehead, his once-dark hair now fully gray. “I saw them again, Ricardo. The Circs were here, on board the yacht. I shot Hayashi and the other one, but Hawkins killed me again. Tersch and Fallon I couldn't see. But I died. It's always Hawkins.”
Ricardo stroked his thick mustache. “This one intrigues me. Nothing stops him. I like that very much. And the other one. This Reynolds. My men know of him. He's a problem, William.
One that needs to be taken care of.”
“I thought you were going to take care of Hayashi. Fuck, you threw him off a goddamn roof! But instead of dying, he survived and killed more of our men last week. Just a few days ago, the navy tried to get them to talk. If they'd known anything, we'd be hanging from a rope.”
“Which is why I tell the peons nada.” Montaña smiled. Nothing seemed to bother him, and the animated spark to his gaze looked and felt unnatural. “We continue to manufacture the product here, but it won't last. We need more of the flower.” Delancey shrugged. “So ship some more in.”
Montaña's smile faded. “We can't, not now. The heat is everywhere. We need to take a break, let the authorities have a few of our criminal friends to satisfy their thirst for justice. Then we bring over more of the flower. Jefe doesn't mind. In fact, he agrees. By early April, we'll be set for a broader distribution. Oh, and Chung Hee Park wants in.”
“The North Koreans? I thought we were dealing with no-names and a few third world countries.”
“Not anymore. Not now that we know the formula really works and the repercussions of a traumatic death no longer worry us.”
“True. I've just had some bad headaches, but nothing worse than an erection that won't quit.”
“Yes, that little item was my idea. Nothing like coming into knowledge while coming, eh?” Delancey snorted. “So you talked to the big boss. What did he say? Did he mention me?” The vision started to fade.
“No, but I finally met him in person. You won't believe who we've been working for all this time.”
“Who, Ricardo? Is it—” Outside noise made it hard to hear him.
Ricardo smiled and fingered the scar along his cheek. “No. It's actually…” Kisho swore as he roused before he gleaned anything else.
“Well?” Mrs. Sharpe asked.
“They've perfected the formula.”
She sighed. “I was afraid of that. Now we not only have to fight criminals from other countries, but psychic terrorists as well. We need to eliminate the lab concocting the drug.”
“They're making the stuff here, on U.S. soil,” Kisho said, thinking fast. “But they need a flower from their lab in Brazil. You're right. We missed the main lab the first time. We need to go back. I'll look again and see if I can find—”
“No. Not yet. First we find and eliminate Delancey and Montaña. Then we work on the rest. Trust me, I'll make Delancey share every bit of information he knows.” He had no doubt she could. “I also heard them talk about a boss. They're clearly working for someone else, a shadow Montaña recently saw. But before I could find out who it was, the vision left me.”
She nodded. “You're not meant to know yet. Like I keep reminding you, the future isn't written in stone. Some things have to unfold as they are. And those you can't see.” He'd often thought the same. Kisho rolled his neck, feeling uncomfortably stiff. “Man, that hurts.”
“You've been deep for two hours. Of course you're stiff.”
“Two hours?” He started. “I've never had a vision that long.” A few minutes, half an hour at most. What the hell? Two hours?
Her satisfaction should have bothered him, because there was something in her smile that agitated his beast. “But now that you've mated, you'll find information flows when you need it.
You'll have an easier time accessing your abilities, Kisho. Just accept Morgan, and everything will work out as it's meant to.”
Shit. Morgan. He'd been alone with the team for two hours. Kisho could only pray he hadn't pissed off the entire team. Fallon would play nice, because Olivia liked Morgan. And Jules would keep Tersch in line.
If he wanted to.
Chapter Eight
“The problem isn't me. It's you pricks,” Morgan pointed out again, not caring in the slightest how upset the Circs were. He wiped his lips and spat the blood welling from a cut inside his mouth.
He'd dodged their verbal inquisitions for over an hour while shielding himself from an impressive psychic assault as Fallon and Jules tried to peer into his mind and soul. Then they'd added some physical “training” to further weaken his shields. Dealing with Tersch's brawn and Hawkin's and Fallon's brains was a major hassle. But humor conceded he acknowledge how well the Circs worked together as a team.
“You know, this just isn't getting old. I thought I'd get tired of pounding him. But I'm not.” Tersch grinned and rubbed his knuckles. “Check it out. Fucker's mouth is healing as we speak.”
“And you wonder why no one likes you,” Morgan muttered.
“I want to know why Kisho thinks of you as his.” Jules's quiet voice settled over the group and stopped Tersch's raised fist. “Like you belong to him.” Fallon and Jules exchanged a long look. Damned telepath.
“Just say out loud whatever the hell you're thinking. Freak,” he added to annoy Fallon.
It worked. Fallon bared his teeth, long-ass incisors that should have threatened Morgan, except seeing them made him think of Kisho and Kisho's beast.
“Yep, he keeps flashing to thoughts of Kisho.” Fallon nodded to his teammates. “Tersch, you owe me.”
“Fuck, no.” Tersch glared and dived at Morgan again.
Except this time, Morgan was through playing. These men meant something to Kisho. He knew that. It was vital they accept him. Taking their crap had gotten him nowhere. He dodged Tersch's clumsy attack and spun around with a swift kick to Tersch's gut.
He didn't move the man back but a few inches, but he'd landed a blow. Tersch's gaze narrowed. “Finally. Started to think you were a real pussy. Good to know I'm not wrong.” Morgan bared his own teeth in a smile that didn't match his eyes. “I didn't know the word
'think' was in your vocabulary.”
Tersch growled. “You know, I didn't like you the minute I laid eyes on you, and I don't like you now. This if for Ava.” He lashed out so quickly, Morgan could do nothing but take the blow.
He jerked back as what felt like a cement truck lifted him off his feet. He landed on his ass, his cheek throbbing as he slowly healed. But he knew he deserved that.
“And this is for Alicia,” Tersch followed and tried to kick him in the groin.
Morgan moved to save his dick and ended up with a solid blow to his hip. “Shit. Ease off. I apologized for that.”
“But I still don't know how you did it.” Fallon leaned close and tugged Morgan's head up by his hair. “I don't trust you, Morgan. Too many secrets, and you're way too obsessed over Kisho.”
Morgan saw Jules's eyes narrow.
Fallon continued, “Olivia swears you're jonesing for him. How do we know you're n
ot using him for some other reason?”
“What exactly does Olivia know?” Tersch asked.
Fallon let him go and straightened.
“Yeah, Fallon. What exactly does Olivia know?” Jules asked as well, a whisper of meanness lacing his words.
Fallon flinched. Good. Let them turn on each other and leave me alone. Morgan rubbed his jaw and tried not to moan. He slowly rolled to his knees.
Jules yanked him to his feet and shoved him at Tersch, who locked an arm around his neck and refused to let him go.
“Fallon,” Jules warned and bared his teeth. He walked right up into Fallon's space, a clear show of dominance that seemed to daunt the easygoing Circ.
“Shit. Okay, okay. Easy.” Fallon held up his hands and backed away. “Olivia thinks Morgan is in love with Kisho.”
“So? Olivia wants all of us to mate. Not gonna happen,” Tersch said through gritted teeth and tightened his arm around Morgan's neck.
Fallon shook his head. “Yeah, but there's more. Remember when we found Kisho at the Sunfield building? He was broken and bruised, should have died?” The three of them quieted, and Morgan felt a surge of rage, recalling what Montaña's men had tried to do to his lover.
“Morgan saved him. Kisho kept seeing green eyes, watched Morgan lift him from the ground and take him into the building. That's who put Kisho on that table and saved him. And man, sometimes when we're deep in the mating heat, Kisho has these visions of green eyes. Big-time lust, man.” Fallon's cheeks flushed.
Everyone stared at Morgan.
“What?”
“None of us have green eyes.” Jules didn't speak with the same bite he'd had before. “So Kisho mated you, hmm?”