Tempting the Fire

by Sydney Croft

  Don’t think. Just fuck.

  Her belly was still flat—no signs of baby there yet.

  But it was in there. His son or daughter.

  Stop thinking.

  And then Ani’s soft, hot mouth circled his cock and he nearly shot to the ceiling, and yeah, thinking was definitely impossible.

  * * *

  “WE’VE GOT A REAL FUCKING PROBLEM WITH A NEW BREED OF Itor agent.”

  Those were Stryker’s first words, not I’m sorry about Akbar, or even Mind if I come in?

  Of course, Devlin could more than understand—he watched Stryker carefully, looking for the signs of the breakdown he knew would happen eventually. A good friend and mentor getting killed in one of the most horrific ways possible right in front of you was not something agents dealt with on a daily basis, even though the threat was always there.

  Stryker stood, fists clenched, not ready to talk about anything else beyond revenge, and so Dev rubbed his forehead and motioned for Stryker to continue.

  “I think she’s a split personality. Name’s Phoebe.”

  “I’ve never seen a report of anyone like that—under Itor or any free agent.”

  “I saw it with my own damned eyes. One half tried to roast me and the other wanted to freeze me to death. Logan’s sister reports the same thing: kidnapped, worked over by a sadistic bitch, left tied in the jungle with no food or water for hours; then the same exact woman came back, had no clue who Caroline was or why she was there, apologized and let her go.” Stryker played with the bandage on his hand. He’d already been to the healer—and Dev could almost guarantee that by tomorrow the severe burn on his palm and the cuts on his chest would be a mere memory.

  But the split-personalitied agent … Stryker wouldn’t be able to shake her. Didn’t want to, from where Dev stood. And that’s where the problem lay. “I’ll send Ender after her.”

  Stryker nearly hit the ceiling. “No!” Obviously fighting to hold back his emotion, he spoke next through clenched teeth. “This. One’s. Mine.”

  “We’re going to need to find her first.”

  “Last known locale: running through the Amazon jungle. Send me back in now. I’ll find her.”

  Dev took two steps, bringing him face-to-face with Stryker. “Last time I looked, you do not give me orders. This isn’t the field. This is my goddamned office. I know you’re pissed, but you need a little time to cool down and get your shit together. I don’t want you getting killed too. Understood?”

  Stryker nodded, but he didn’t look happy.

  Dev thought for a second. “Go see Ryan Malmstrom in Comms. He spent time inside Itor and he’s remembering more and more about it every day. Maybe you can jog his memory and get his help finding this agent.” He leaned across his desk and typed something quickly on his computer. “Go now,” he told Stryker. “They’re expecting you.”

  Stryker closed the door behind him, and ten seconds later Christine buzzed in.

  “Mr. O’Malley, Marlena West is here for her debriefing.”

  He didn’t wait for her to finish before he was striding across the room and opening the door.

  Marlena sat, legs crossed, wearing the same black BDUs from the jungle, as evidenced by the rips and dust. She looked gorgeous—and tired. And conflicted. And fuck, he’d missed her.

  Christine waited nervously at her desk, hands folded, looking between them as Marlena stood and walked past Dev into his office.

  “You’ve been a real bear to her, you know,” she told him after he’d shut the door behind him.

  Dev grinned. “I’ve never liked bears—you know that.”

  She rolled her eyes and shook her head slightly as they fell into the routine, comfortable and familiar.

  He fought the urge to tell her that she never should’ve taken the Seducer job, that she could come back to her old job, that he needed her to. He didn’t say any of that, simply motioned for her to sit down on the leather couch, rather than one of the stiff chairs across from his desk. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  She proceeded to explain about Chance, the SEAL turned chupacabra. She told him everything, as was required, and he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary for her job as a Seducer. Of course, sleeping with a half man, half beast went above and beyond, but …

  “Chupacabras mate for life,” she blurted out. Dev nodded slowly and wondered if everyone had gone a little crazy in the jungle. “Chupacabras mate for life, Chance is now part chupacabra, and he’s mated. With me.”

  Oh, shit. Not good. “We’ll fix it.”

  She shook her head, covered her mouth with a palm for a second. This was not the Marlena he knew. Sure, he’d seen her emotional at times—he was probably the only one she let her guard down around—but something was really different about this.

  “I slept with him, Devlin,” she said. “Chance likes me and we’ve slept together multiple times. And I like him, but not in that crazy, cursed way, and he needs the cure and then this chance—no pun intended—will be gone, but—”

  He all but put a hand over her mouth to stop her babbling; she was in a state of near panic. “I’m guessing Chance doesn’t know about the curse.”

  “No. And he won’t. You save him, Devlin, if it’s the last thing you do—save him and change him back into a man. A fully human man.”

  “But then—”

  “I owe him that. Want the best for him. And I don’t want a man who only wants me because he’s got this crazy urge to mate for life.”

  “Most animals—most humans—don’t mate for life randomly, Marlena. They choose based on attraction.”

  “Maybe.”

  Dev narrowed his eyes. “You’re scared.”

  “For Chance.”

  “For yourself.” He paused. “I’m not saying I’d like to keep the man the way he is—it’s safer for all involved if he’s cured.”

  “Exactly. He needs the cure. There’s no way anything could work between Chance and me anyway. He knows what my job is. He knows I’m a Seducer. I told him. So he thinks I fucked him to get him to ACRO. And you know what? That’s what happened, to a certain extent.”

  “You need to tell him everything about the curse.”

  She shook her head stubbornly. “It’s better this way.”

  “And what happens if we can’t cure him?”

  Marlena stared at him. “You can do it, Dev. ACRO can do anything.”

  “We couldn’t do anything for you. That magic happened all on its own. Sometimes things are meant to be.”

  She snorted. “You’ve got Oz helping you with your magic, Devlin. I don’t have anyone. And maybe it’s better that way.”

  She walked off and he let her go—for the time being. He’d have to assess Chance on his own, after Sela and the other scientists gave him a full workup and tested his triggers. He hadn’t lied to Marlena—he’d been told by Sela herself on the phone from the plane that a cure was so far unheard of; even Logan’s company, which had been studying the chupacabra for months before it escaped, had no success in figuring out its complicated DNA structure.

  WHEN CHANCE WOKE, HE WAS ALONE, TERRIBLY ALONE, IN A hospital bed in the ACRO clinic.

  He’d made it easy for Marlena on the helo, and again on the jet, by pretending to be asleep, which hadn’t been difficult. Sela had explained that it would be best to run an IV of tranquilizers for the flight. Just in case.

  They’d barely worked, but they took enough of the edge off for him not to give a shit where he was going or what would happen to him.

  “She used me,” he’d heard himself murmur during the long flight, shifted to find Sela staring at him.

  “Chance, you don’t understand,” she’d insisted.

  “She told me everything. I know everything.” Marlena had slept with him because she had to. Anything she said outside that was a well-done lie. A testament to ACRO’s training.

  But a big part of him refused to believe that. He told himself it was the chupacabra mating crap ta
lking. That it made him vulnerable and jealous. That Marlena hadn’t lied to him.

  But it all hurt too much to deal with right now.

  Sela had stared at him with a silent pain in her eyes and Chance wondered what she’d done in the name of ACRO, whether Logan felt as betrayed as he did.

  Because Chance didn’t know much, but he knew that when a man looked at a woman the way Logan did Sela … well, that man was pretty well destroyed.

  Now he glanced around the small, clean room, complete with monitors and cameras—so he could see the team of people in the hallway … and so they could see him, he presumed.

  He’d been impressed by the facility when they’d arrived. There hadn’t been much time for a tour, though, because of course he’d been whisked away with Sela for an extensive examination, which had thankfully been nothing like the one he’d received from the docs at the GWC camp.

  He’d gotten the distinct impression that he was being treated with the same cautious respect he’d always had for grenades.

  Both the doctors and the scientists told him there was no known cure for what ailed him. Half man, half chupa was obviously a new chapter for the medical books labeled “Crazy.”

  “Just do what you can,” he’d said wearily, and he’d been assured by the head of ACRO, Devlin O’Malley, that they would do just that.

  “Have you thought about what you’ll do after this?” O’Malley had asked him early yesterday morning during his debriefing.

  “I haven’t thought ahead more than two hours since all of this happened, sir,” he’d admitted. “I’m assuming I’m being reported as MIA, or suspected KIA.”

  O’Malley had nodded. “They discovered what was left of the remains of your team. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, me too. Look, if you can cure me and get me the hell out of here, that would be great.”

  Dev had stared at him for a long moment, as if he wanted to say something. But he didn’t, simply stuck out his hand, which Chance shook, and then left.

  And Chance lay alone, in a hospital room with the tranquilizers still coursing through his bloodstream, and he thought about Marlena and cursed the fact that the meds took away his resolve to hate her for what she’d done to him.

  She did her job, asshole—you’re the fool who fell for it. And her. And her amazingly hot body, her beautiful face, and if he stroked himself, he could almost pretend it was her doing it, could picture her mouth opening to take his cock deep inside, to drive him crazy with her tongue, her teeth …

  “It’s time.” One of the doctors had walked in without knocking, and yeah, what a way to blow a fantasy.

  Chance nodded, watched as the doctor produced a syringe and plunged the contents into his IV line. It was the first of several injections that he would need, and then they would lighten up on the drugs and try to get him to turn into a chupacabra. The drug stung his arm as it entered his bloodstream.

  “We’ll cage you first, of course,” the doctor said casually. “You’ll be safe, and so will we.”

  “Sounds like a blast.”

  “We’ll try to replicate what’s made you change in the past,” the doctor continued. “From the debriefing, we’ve learned that you’re quite protective of—”

  Chance heard the growl, and for a moment didn’t realize it had come from him.

  “Whoa—easy … we don’t have to re-create the scene exactly.” The doctor kept his voice calm, but his hands shook.

  Chance squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated on not changing. Of course, what stopped him from changing was thinking about Marlena—she appeared to be the key to everything in his life right now. “I think it’s better that we don’t.”

  The door opened, revealing Marlena, dressed in a curve-hugging blue blouse and black skirt, on the other side. A nurse pushed past her. “I’m sorry—she insisted.”

  “It’s okay. I want to see her. Need to,” Chance said. Because his body had heated the second he’d seen her.

  “Five minutes,” the doctor agreed. “We can’t put this off much longer. And you know better,” he told Marlena as he walked out of the room and she walked in. She remained near the door, and he wondered if she felt like she might need to make a quick escape.

  “I had to see you. To explain.” She stared, and, man, she looked gorgeous. And sad. And a little turned on, but that had to be bullshit, because he’d been a job. She’d told him as much.

  And then she tried to save your life in the jungle. “Look, I get that you work for the good guys. I know that you’re what they call a Seducer. You’re trained to give it away in exchange for intel. I hope you got everything you were looking for.”

  “I did,” she said quietly. “And with you, I got something I thought I’d never have.”

  He shook his head slowly, lighting up inside with an angry fire. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO DO BETTER THAN THAT.

  Those were her stepsister Kelly’s snarling words to her after Kelly found her boyfriend flirting with Marlena, and after Marlena had made a token, mocking apology.

  Because Marlena had been flirting right back. With a vengeance.

  Seventeen years of dealing with Kelly’s growing bitterness and constant abuse had finally brought Marlena to the edge, so when Michael had come with Kelly to Thanksgiving dinner, Marlena had, for the first time, decided to get back at her stepsister, if only in a small way.

  Except Kelly hadn’t seen it as small.

  For years Kelly had told Marlena that she’d cursed her as an infant. Cursed her to not grow, to be ugly, to be stupid. It was all bullshit—Kelly had believed herself to be a witch, or maybe she just told Marlena that. Didn’t matter; none of it had come true.

  But then …

  Marlena blew out a long, bracing breath before looking Chance in the eyes. “I’m cursed,” she blurted.

  Chance cocked an eyebrow. “Cursed.” His tone dripped with skepticism, and her resolve dimmed. “As in …”

  “As in, a curse was put on me and it doomed me to a loveless existence. Well, I fall in love, but no one can fall for me.” Her voice was a low murmur, because this all sounded so lame when she said it out loud. “Remember I told you I had a stepsister?”

  Chance nodded. “She died in a car accident? With your dad and stepmom.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I think their deaths were … punishment.”

  Silence stretched, broken only by the incessant drip of the IV machine’s contents. Chance must think she was crazy. Finally, he cleared his throat. “I’m not following.”

  Marlena moved a little closer to the bed, close enough that she could have taken Chance’s hand if she wasn’t so afraid he’d push her away. “Kelly hated me,” she began. “From the day I was brought into the family as a baby. She was awful, always saying I shouldn’t have been born, and that if it weren’t for me, my dad would love her and her mom more.”

  Sadly, Kelly was probably right. Once, when Marlena was six, Kelly pushed her down a flight of stairs and then claimed it was an accident. Marlena knew the truth, told her father, and he’d believed her. That had caused a huge rift between him and her stepmom, which nearly ended in divorce. After that, Marlena had kept Kelly’s torments to herself.

  Chance’s eyes gave nothing away, but he was still there, listening, which she took as a good sign.

  Heart in her throat, she continued. “One Thanksgiving I’d reached my limit. Kelly had moved out years before, but she came back for holidays and she brought her boyfriend. I flirted with him just to piss her off. She went crazy. She swore she’d make sure I was miserable for the rest of my life. I wasn’t a scared kid anymore, and I laughed at her.” Her voice became unsteady, because this was where things got a little hard to believe. “A couple of days later, I lost my virginity to the boy I’d been dating. The moment it was over, I was madly, deeply in love with him. I mean, before that I’d liked him in that high school crush way, but I wasn’t in love, you know?�
�

  Chance snorted. “Not really. Thanks to my mom, I was pretty adept at avoiding relationships.”

  “Yes, well, I’m sure you must’ve broken a few hearts in your day.” Maybe you’ll break mine too.

  He didn’t answer, simply waited for her to continue. She did, quickly, before she lost her nerve or threw up or something.

  “Anyway, after sex, the crush was replaced with this insane kind of love. Obsession, really. But he suddenly loathed me. The second he pulled away from me, Jared was a different person. Hateful. Disgusted.” He’d called her names and kicked her out of the backseat of his Mustang and made her walk the two miles home.

  Chance’s lips tightened into a hard, grim line. “He was an asshole.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. But I still loved him. Humiliated myself over and over trying to get him back. A couple of weeks later, in a stupid attempt to make him jealous, I slept with his best friend. Before I could even pull my pants up, I fell in love with his friend with the same intensity I’d felt for Jared.” It had been so strange, confusing. Her feelings for Jared were gone, but she instantly wanted Brad even though she’d despised him before the sex. “And just like it had been with Jared, Brad hated me. That’s when I got suspicious. I went to Kelly, and she gloated about this love spell she’d cast on me. Said I’d finally gotten what I deserved. The next day, the day before my eighteenth birthday, the car accident killed her, my stepmom and my dad. Someone here at ACRO told me her dark deed had come back on her with a vengeance, and my dad and stepmom got caught in the cross fire.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Chance whispered. “And since then?”

  She shrugged. “Since then, it’s been the same story. I never feel anything for any man unless I sleep with him. Then what I feel is this horrible, consuming love that at once seems so real and yet artificial.” She squeezed her eyes shut, felt her emotions shift inside her as though urging her to finish her confession. When she opened her eyes again, Chance’s expression was warm, caring, and her heart skipped a beat. “All of that has changed. Now there’s you.” She managed a small smile. “So that’s the story. Pretty unbelievable, right?”

  Before turning into a chupacabra, Chance never would’ve believed that shit like this really existed. “So I broke the curse?” He sounded humiliatingly hopeful, and when Marlena’s smile turned sad, his gut sank.