by Abby Niles
Destined to kill each other sounded more like it. But eternal love? Yeah. Right.
But even as he tried to convince himself of that, a shiver of doubt ran through him. A shifter had only one true mate. One.
He shook himself.
No. No.
There was no way Val was his mate.
Either way, the next few days would be a lesson in restraint. If the unwanted attraction to her was almost too much to resist now, what would it be like in a few hours, or hell, a couple of days?
Aidan and Liam had both gone stupid as soon as the Drall kicked in. Zombie stupid. Britton apparently still had some sense left in him since he was able to walk away. But for how much longer?
He and Val were trapped here together. Now that he knew the risk, he had to push her away. Keep her at a healthy distance. Because if she got too close, he feared he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from kissing her.
And once that happened, he’d be lost.
One single kiss, and there’d be no turning back.
Chapter Eight
Val dumped a can of Beefaroni into a bowl, then shoved it into the microwave as she tried to calm her racing heart. Unfortunately, her mind kept rewinding to just a few minutes ago, when Britton had his hand locked around the back of her neck, his lips an inch away from hers, his breath warming her mouth…and the damned organ started hammering against her breast again.
Britton had almost kissed her.
Not once, but twice today.
And both times, against her better judgment, she’d wanted him to.
The first time he’d pulled away. The second time, he’d hesitated, and that had given her the strength to pull away.
She understood his indecision. They’d always wanted to rip each other’s throats out, not rip each other’s clothes off. However, she was damn close to grabbing some T-shirt and yanking. Fighting this attraction was becoming exhausting. No, she didn’t want to be just another one of his many women, but she did want him.
She’d finally faced that fact in the hot tub. The man had worn boxer briefs for Dea’s sake. The material had hugged every manly curve of his impressive package, and when he’d caught her gawking, that package had started to rise for an official greeting.
Oh, yeah, she wanted the blasted the man.
The microwave dinged. She grabbed the bowl and walked to the table. She’d just put a forkful of the pasta in her mouth when Britton’s cell phone rang at the end of the table. But he was still in the bedroom. Was it someone from the PD? She craned her neck to peer at the screen.
“Olivia Johnson.” The pretty fingerprint analyst from the PD.
Val’s stomach twisted with a shocking amount of jealousy.
He opened the bedroom door. Just like the other night, she couldn’t drag her eyes away from how the henley hugged his chest and his flat stomach. She silenced a groan. Jeez. Didn’t the man have anything to sleep in that wasn’t so damn tight?
When his phone gave a chirp, he walked toward it. She shoved another forkful of sauce-covered noodles into her mouth, trying not to watch for his reaction to the missed call and failing miserably. After he grabbed it and flicked his finger across the screen, his gaze shot to her. Her stomach somersaulted when their eyes connected. Emotions she couldn’t identify swept across his magnetic blue irises. Then he blinked, pressed a button, and put the phone to his ear.
“Hello, lovely lady. I see you called.”
Jealousy sparked to an all-out inferno in Val’s gut. Swallowing her food was almost impossible, but somehow she got it down.
This was a reminder of what a man-whore Britton was. She’d needed this. If this wake-up call hadn’t happened, there was a good chance she would’ve jumped his bones tonight. Now she was back in control. Silver linings. Thank you, Olivia.
“Yeah. I’m fine. Just took a spill off a ladder while trying to replace some rotting wood at my place. Pulled some muscles in my back.” There was a pause then, “Friday?”
Val zeroed in on that one word, her muscles tensing as she waited for his response.
He walked a couple of steps away and hung his head. “Of course I’m looking forward to it. The only problem is I’m still not very mobile yet. My back is giving me fits.” There was another long pause. “You don’t say. That sounds very interesting.”
Val clenched her teeth. Hard. She could just imagine what Olivia was saying…offering. Most likely she wanted to play housemaid to poor, hurt Britton in some skimpy-ass outfit.
He cleared his throat. “My place at seven sounds fantastic.” Pause. “‘Til then.”
After he ended the call, he stood with his back to Val for a few moments before he took a deep breath and joined her at the table.
“Hot date?” She tried her damnedest to keep the bite out of her tone, but if his lifted brows were any indication, she’d failed again. Flipping great. It perturbed her enough that she was jealous; she didn’t want him catching on to it.
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat again. “Friday. Olivia Johnson. You know her, right?”
“Yep.”
“She offered to play nurse if I wasn’t feeling up to going out. I’m not one to pass up an opportunity to be coddled by a beautiful woman.” He winked.
Suddenly losing her appetite, she dropped her fork in her bowl and strode to the kitchen to put it in the sink. “You do realize that tomorrow is Thursday and we’re planning an overnight. So we’ll most likely still be up in these mountains somewhere on Friday, right?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. We could have this all wrapped up tomorrow. Never hurts to have a backup plan just in case. Know what I mean?”
Did she ever.
Why did that comment have an ouch factor? But the pain socked her right in the chest, which irked the crap out of her. “Whatever. We should go to bed. I have a feeling sleep won’t come easy for the next couple of days.”
As if that was any different from the other nights she’d been cooped up with Britton in this microscopic cabin, but it sounded like a plausible excuse to bail to the bedroom. The truth was she didn’t want to look at him, afraid that he might see the blasted hurt his thoughtless attention to another woman had caused.
Face it. Somewhere along the line Britton Townsend had wormed his way under her skin.
And she was not at all happy about it.
…
Calling Olivia back last night and making plans with her in front of Val had been one of the hardest things Britton had ever done. His beast had thrashed around, enraged at his insensitive actions. And guilt had erupted inside him until he could no longer look at Val, but had to turn his back to finish the phone conversation.
Not that she’d seemed too put out by his date. Although she’d gone off to bed last night right after the phone call, this morning she was acting totally normal.
He studied the red backpack in front of him as he followed her up a steep hill, a little aggravated.
If anything, she’d come into the living room this morning chipper as hell. All smiles and isn’t-it-a-glorious-day attitude. What the hell?
Using Olivia to push her away had been the point, but Val’s lack of response was irritating. Making his beast edgy—making him edgy. He wanted to grab her and demand to know why she wasn’t jealous. Then kiss her to prove she wasn’t immune to him, that she did have feelings for him, and that she did care he was going out with another woman.
But that was just the Drall speaking. So he clenched his hands and fought it, knowing in a few short days he’d be human again and all of this would be over.
And it couldn’t come soon enough. Being around her was pure fucking torture. And the torment was increasing as the instinct to mate became fiercer, more dominant, pushing him to do something he wanted no part of.
For the first time since he started feeling his beast again, he couldn’t wait to be human. And how fucked up was that?
He dragged his gaze away from her, refocusing on what they were in these woods to do.
/> Last night after Val had gone to bed, he’d called Harwood and asked for scent samples from the founders of MASK. It was somewhere to start, although the group had seen substantial growth in the last few months. Harwood said he’d send them over once they got them…but Britton and Val wouldn’t be back at the cabin to retrieve them for a couple of days.
His gut said MASK wasn’t behind this, anyway.
However, someone could be using MASK as a decoy, knowing it would take time for SPAC to get concrete evidence because of the size of the group.
He halted. “Val. I just thought of something.”
When she turned around, she put her hands on her hips as she caught her breath. As she gasped in air, her breasts heaved forward, and his gaze dropped before he remembered and yanked it away. That insidious need to close the distance between them roared through him. He shoved his hands in his cargo pants pockets, clenching his jaw with the effort not to act on it.
“What?” she asked.
He took a second to collect himself, then said, “What if the people behind this aren’t connected to Samantha Mills personally, but instead to the reason she was convicted?”
She regarded him. “You mean, like maybe they are hiding another mutated baby?”
“Exactly.”
Sliding off her backpack, she sat down on the ground. “So they’re trying to spook the High Council into law reform before they’re caught like Samantha was. Damn, Britton. That makes perfect sense.”
The more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. “It would also explain why they didn’t take this public, to the media.” He hiked over to her, removed his own backpack, and took a seat beside her. “It’s the perfect scenario. They would’ve seen that MASK was getting nowhere with its protests, and knew the group would have to up the ante. Taking the issue to the public would’ve been a stupid move. By keeping it all quiet, they are giving the High Council an opportunity to show it has evolved past its archaic laws, and to change them.”
“Which would make a lot of people happy, not just whoever’s doing this.” She fiddled with the leaves by her hip. “But it also means anyone could be behind the kidnapping, with no way of narrowing down the suspect list.”
Britton dug through his pack and held out a bag of trail mix. “Eat.”
She didn’t argue as he pulled out a topo map, his portable GPS locator, and some pens.
Yesterday, he’d drawn a circle around the second cabin and its surroundings. Now he checked the latitude and longitude on his GPS, and drew a line from the cabin to their current location. He knew they had taken an extreme left somewhere along the path, but mapping it out showed a possible pattern.
He shifted closer to Val. “Look at this.”
Pointing to the cabin where Val had found Charlie’s blanket, he said, “This is where the first cabin is.” He traced the line to the second cabin, then another one to where they were now. “See something?”
“It’s a corner.”
“Correct. My instinct says we’ll wind up somewhere here.” He pointed to an area. “Then they’ll lead us here.” He used his fingers to trace the expected path.
Val jerked back. “You think they are going in a square?”
“I won’t know until we find the shift in scents. But if they go to the extreme left again, I can assume that is exactly what they are doing, and are headed right back to the original cabin.”
“Should we just make our way back there and wait?”
“Not yet. I’m rusty with this stuff, and I could be wrong. We need to keep following the trail until we know if they switch directions again.”
“You’re scared.”
His head shot up. “Excuse me?”
“You knew we should have followed the propane trail the first day, but you made the call to split up. You wanted to be sure then, too. Damn, Britton. I’ve heard the stories about your abilities. And your arrogant confidence. You would never have second-guessed your judgment four years ago. But now…you’re scared.”
He forced a smile. “Not scared. Cautious. You’ve seen how edgy the High Council is. If I screw up, they may decide the best place for me is Kerker. And there’s not just me to think about this time. There’s you, too. I need to be sure the decisions I make won’t somehow come back to bite you.”
She flicked a hand. “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.”
He grimaced before turning back to the map and muttering, “That’s easier said than done.”
The heat of her reaction to his obvious concern practically seared his skin, and the Drall bubbled up inside him. He pushed to his feet and moved a few yards away, keeping his back to her. “Finish eating and we’ll get moving. No telling how much farther we have to walk, and we need to find the shift in direction before nightfall.”
Nightfall. Her in a tent…alone with him. Fuck. He raked a hand through his hair, taking deep, calming breaths until he heard her move behind him. Under control again, he faced her. “Ready?”
She motioned for him to walk. “Lead the way.”
They spent the next two hours in silence trudging up inclines, climbing over rocks, fording streams. All the while he was aware of her behind him. Heard every deep sigh as she caught her breath, her muttered curses when she tripped over something, every little sound she made. They beckoned him to spin her around. Take her in his arms. Kiss her.
Fucking Drall.
By the time they came across a dilapidated cabin worse off than any of the others so far, his body was literally shaking from fighting the instinct. He approached the rickety structure, determined to keep his focus on the job.
Trees and vines grew up around the outside of the tumbledown cabin. The door hung off its hinges. Most of the roof was completely gone, and the walls looked as if they’d collapse if a bird dared to land on them.
Val stopped beside him.
“Anyone around?” she asked, putting her hand on her gun.
“No. The place is clear.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s a letter waiting inside.”
But there wasn’t. Nothing had been disturbed to indicate anyone had gone inside, and when they carefully peeked in through the door, he couldn’t pick up any scent at all.
“What do you think it means?” she asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
His cell phone rang. Tugging it off his belt, he glanced at the caller ID and frowned. “It’s Councilman Seeder.” He lifted the phone to his ear. “Hello?”
“Townsend? Can…hear me?”
“Barely. There’s a lot of static.” He put his finger to his other ear and walked around to check if he could get a better signal. “I might lose you.”
“…make…quick then. The search…hold…further notice. Return to the cabin…wait for instructions.”
What the hell? “We’re hours from the cabin. Nightfall is only an hour out, it’s too dangerous to hike back tonight.”
“Return…in the morning…do not pursue until given the go-ahead…couple of days before anything…resolved.”
“The deadline is in a couple of days,” he protested.
“Imperative…you return to the cabin…received package…no longer track suspects. Do you copy?”
He sighed. “Ten-four.”
Seeder hung up.
“What was that all about?”
“Dea. I think the High Council is waving the white flag.”
…
Forty-five minutes later, they had set up camp. Britton had filled Val in on the phone call with Seeder, and she’d gotten an uneasy feeling. Britton had agreed, so to be on the safe side, he had put in a call to Harwood to make sure everything was legit. Turned out it was. The search was on hold for now. But the connection with Harwood had been just as bad as the one with Seeder, so they couldn’t get the details.
Which made Val even more nervous.
Threatening to expose the shifter species hadn’t been enough to sway Harwood’s determination
to find the kidnappers, so what could have?
She and Britton wouldn’t know the answer until the council contacted them back. It better be sometime within the next thirty-six hours, though. The deadline was approaching…and fast.
Which meant Britton could have less than two days left with his beast. If the council caved to the kidnappers and reformed mutant law, it would make a lot of shifters happy, but it would also guarantee that Britton wouldn’t be granted a full pardon. Why would he? He’d failed to do what they’d requested of him.
He’d tried to be flippant about being a human again last night, but had failed. She’d seen the worry…the fear, and it had caused her heart to ache for him. Britton Townsend may still be a womanizer, but she’d learned one thing about him she’d never known: he was a good man.
A loyal, compassionate, protective man, who had risked everything to save a little girl.
If she could see this after the years of nastiness between them, how was the High Council so blind? And why did her chest get so tight every time she thought back on his expression as he told her about the little girl hugging his neck?
But, boy, it did. It almost suffocated her, as if something was expanding beneath her breasts, stealing all the room for her lungs to draw in air. And each time, she had the craziest need to hold him.
She was already uncomfortable enough with wanting to jump his bones, but wanting to hold him was really messed up. That meant something way more than she was even willing to contemplate. Val was not the comforting type. So why did she want to comfort Britton?
Girl, you are so losing it.
She spotted another twig, bent to pick it up, and thrust her odd thoughts of Britton out of her mind, concentrating on her task of gathering kindling for the fire.
She wished Seeder had called five hours ago so she could be sleeping in a nice, warm bed inside a sturdy cabin, instead of on the cold, hard ground inside a flimsy tent. The sky had turned a bright orange as the sun began to set, casting shadows everywhere that gave her the heebie-jeebies. She was a tough-as-nails detective who burst into bloody crime scenes without a second thought, but dark woods freaked her the hell out.