Special Ops Shifters: Dallas Force: The Complete Series Collection (Shifter Nation)

by Meg Ripley

  She knew it was against Ben’s rules. She knew she was taking a major risk by attempting to go against the grain on the first night. Still, she launched herself from the side of the bed and went to the door. Her hand rested on the knob for a long moment, almost afraid to turn it. Ben had said nothing about locking their new friends in, but he did say they were supposed to remain in their rooms until everyone arose at six in the morning. She cringed as she slowly twisted the brass handle, her eyebrows lifting when the door released with a small click.

  The hallway was wide but plain, giving plenty of room to move around furniture or large crowds. The sealed concrete floor shone faintly in the interspersed wall lamps. Erica watched the pools of light and willed her heart to be quiet for a moment so that she might listen. No one was coming.

  Erica was careful to twist the knob as she shut the door behind her, not wanting even the faintest click of the latch to give away her position. She flicked her tongue across the roof of her mouth, thinking. Each of the rooms was labeled with a number, and Ben had explained that men and women were all separated unless they were a married couple, but he hadn’t told them if there was any kind of system that indicated who might be in what room. She turned to look at her own door, looking for her name or even some sort of mark that might indicate she was a newcomer or a female or something. It was all plain and clean.

  In working with Winston and Mr. Worth, they’d decided against any forms of communication with each other or to the outside world. It wasn’t worth the risk of Ben or his minions finding a wire on them. The only thing they’d smuggled in was a small, specialized transmitter from Hudson’s communications company that couldn’t be detected until one of them pulled a tab out of the back to activate it. This was to be used only in the most extreme emergency when requesting an extraction. While Erica had completely agreed with this idea in the first place, she cursed it now. She needed to find Jack, but she couldn’t possibly break into every room until she found him. The longer she stood in the hall, the more she risked being discovered.

  There’s always a backup plan, she reminded herself as she closed her eyes. She reached out and placed her fingertips on the wall to steady her body as she opened her mind. There was only so much she could do to cut off other presences that invaded her head, but she now opened up every facet of her psychic powers in order to listen.

  The thoughts of those peacefully slumbering the night away came to her like gentle curls of smoke on a breeze, carrying with them only the wisps of their dreams. Erica brushed these aside. She highly doubted Jack was any less awake than she was, and none of these hazy presences felt the same way Jack did. Erica reached out further, searching, testing her powers in ways she hadn’t for a long time. She was always trying to get everyone out of her mind, and now she was trying to pull them in.

  There he is. She’d only known Jack for a few days, but there was no mistaking his signature. He was strong and restless, his spirit so much bigger than his body. Erica moved more quickly down the hallway, turning a corner and trotting silently down the next hall. Her heartbeat picked up once again as she drew nearer. She needed her eyes only to make sure she didn’t bump into a wall because her mind was leading her straight to Jack.

  She paused for a moment outside his door. Was this a mistake? What would Jack think of her for coming to him in the middle of the night like this? She instantly chastised herself once again. The two of them were coworkers, partners. If she couldn’t come to him, then what was the point of any of this? Just because it was late and she hadn’t been able to completely set aside her desire for him in favor of doing the job they’d set out to accomplish didn’t mean this was wrong. A knock would be too loud. She tentatively reached out a finger and scratched at the door.

  It whipped open, the air from the movement pulling her loose hair along with it. Jack stood in the doorway, bare to the waist. He’d already been impressive to look at, but seeing the way his tight abs tapered into a V under the edge of his pants made her core ache with need. His chestnut eyes flashed in the dim light as they flitted from her face to take in the rest of the hallway. Seeing she was alone, his strong hand gripped her arm and yanked her into the room, closing the door silently behind her. “What the hell are you doing? You could get us both killed.”

  “I know that,” she said impatiently. “I’m perfectly aware of the rules Ben set forth. Like I said, this isn’t my first time doing this. But I can’t sleep, and we need to talk. I’m worried he’ll keep us separated and we won’t get a chance to put our heads together and fully analyze this place. Besides, I can’t stop thinking about what you said on the way over here.” There were plenty of other things she couldn’t stop thinking about, too, like how the warm skin covering his brawny arms would feel under her fingertips as she glanced at the intricate tattoo on his bicep.

  “About Ben being a shifter?” Jack pulled a shirt over his head, something Erica was grateful for. She didn’t need the distraction of his impeccably chiseled muscles.

  “Yes. Well, but it goes back further than that. You mind if I sit?” The room was small, just as small as her own, and yet Jack’s presence filled it completely. It was a different sensation than what she’d felt with him in the car on their way up from Kentucky. It was her awareness of him more than anything.

  “Sure.” He gestured her toward the bed while he occupied the firm chair near the wall, his feet spread wide on the hard floor and his elbows braced against his thighs.

  Erica pulled in a deep breath. She hadn’t wanted to go into all these details. Life, she’d learned a long time ago, was simpler when the hard stuff stayed buried. No one needed to know her secret or how difficult it was to deal with it. Even though Jack knew of her power now, there was so much more to it than that. “First, I need to apologize to you. I didn’t trust you from the instant I met you.”

  He flicked an eyebrow. “So I noticed.”

  “You can’t really blame me,” she said with a glare. “I can feel people inside my head. It’s like I can tap into their mental energies. In fact, I could sense both sides of you. I just thought it meant you were some sort of double agent. Up until earlier today, I had no idea shifters existed in anything outside of teen movies. Sorry.” She realized after she said it just how much she’d cheapened his very existence.

  Jack didn’t seem affected. “There are a lot of us, actually. You’ve met others, I’m sure, but it’s not my place to tell. We keep it to ourselves, for obvious reasons.”

  Erica nodded and licked her lips. “Can you tell me a little more about how it works? I mean, is it the kind of thing where you can turn into whatever you want?” It’d been a little difficult to imagine that anyone like him existed at all, and she felt so rude in asking, but she was desperate to understand.

  “No, nothing like that. Each of us has an animal side, and it’s only one animal. Some people are wolves, others are bears, and a few are dragons if you can believe that. I’m a fox.”

  “Oh.” She stifled a smile. He was a fox for damn sure, but she wasn’t about to say it out loud. On the more serious side, she could even see it in him now. Not just in the auburn tones of his hair, but in the intensity of those light brown eyes. “Do you have control over it? Shifting, I mean.”

  “Most of the time, I’m absolutely in control. There are certain circumstances, like in the presence of the full moon or… strong emotions, that make it a little harder to remain human.” He cleared his throat and glanced away. “But I’ve met plenty of shifters who hadn’t let their other forms out in months if they didn’t want to.” He folded his fingers together and looked her in the eye. “No offense, Erica, but I thought you wanted to talk about the mission.”

  “I do. I mean, this is about the mission.” She made a sound, disgusted with herself. Erica could be perfectly articulate during a business meeting, but there was something about Jack that made him impossible to talk to without sounding like an idiot. “It was difficult to be around you before I understood why yo
u had so much extra energy surrounding you. Once I did, it helped me sort things out in my mind and block some of it out. My concern now is you said Ben is a shifter, and that maybe his recruits are, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I don’t sense that same energy within them. Not in Ben, and not in the people he’d introduced us to here while he was giving us the tour. They were all so bland, if you will, that it’s like they hardly have any mental energy at all. It’s disturbing.” Jack had really gotten her mind working when he’d mentioned that Ben and the others might be shifters, and Erica had been searching for similar cerebral patterns in everyone as Ben had shown them the gardens, the solar array, and the massive pole barn that had been converted to living quarters. There had been a man hoeing a row of corn who smiled pleasantly and touched the brim of his hat, a woman in the kitchens who beamed at them over a pot of stew, and several others gathered in a common area who enthusiastically hugged them and shook their hands while welcoming them to the fold. None of them, however, had given her anything to latch onto other than mild pleasant sensations.

  “I see. That’s interesting. You see, shifters can sense the animal inside others. We can’t always tell what kind, and I don’t think it blows us away like it did to you at first. But if I hadn’t already known to look for it with Ben, I might not have noticed. It was very faint, barely even there at all.” His gaze wandered up to the corner of the room as he thought.

  “Wait, how did you know to look for it?” Erica was exhausted, physically and mentally, but that tiny phrase was an important one.

  Jack cursed under his breath as his eyes flicked to her and then away again. “Like I said, there are other shifters you’ve met, but it’s not my place to say. I shouldn’t be telling you this either, but I actually work with a group of shifters who are all Special Ops vets. Coming in as a consultant for the DHS was just my way of paying back a favor for Winston.”

  “I see.” She’d hoped for answers, but it only spurred on more questions. Just how many people like Jack was she surrounded by? Had it been Winston? Mr. Worth? Why hadn’t she noticed it in them? This team he spoke of was certainly something she wanted to know more about, but first, she needed to understand just who and what he was. “Are some people just better at hiding it? I mean, in your experience, when it comes to sensing them?”

  “It’s not always that they’re trying to hide it,” Jack explained. “It might just be that the more feral side of themselves isn’t as active at the moment. Honestly, I thought maybe you were one of us at first.”

  “Me?” she squeaked. Erica had always been getting into other people’s minds, whether she wanted to or not. She’d never imagined it being the other way around. Somehow, the idea of Jack looking inside her like that wasn’t as disturbing as she would’ve thought.

  “There was definitely something… different about you.” His eyes were intense on her now.

  She turned away. Jack was just too much. Not in any way that she truly knew how to explain. It was just so easy to get lost in the deluge of his energy. “That’s something I’ve heard plenty of times before. I was always the weird kid growing up, and it really hasn’t changed at all in my adult life. I’m sure there are plenty of other agents who don’t trust me or like me.”

  “I never said I didn’t like you,” he corrected.

  Heat flushed her cheeks, and she chided herself for reacting to him that way. There was something so distinctly male about him that was difficult to ignore, and anything that could possibly be misconstrued as a sexual remark instantly got translated that way in her mind. “Maybe not, but you did say you didn’t trust me. Everyone else I’ve worked with has had some notion of that. My boss doesn’t like the reports I write up because he thinks everything should be hard and fast facts. No one wants to talk about intuition or instinct.”

  “Is that how you refer to it?” he asked quietly. “Instinct?”

  Had the room suddenly gotten smaller? Why did she still have to be so damn aware of him? When they’d first started talking, Erica could’ve sworn he was across the room. But with her on the edge of the bed and him in the chair, their knees were practically touching. She could feel the heat radiating off his skin and smell the sandalwood soap he’d used. “It’s one way,” she gulped, trying to keep her mind on the conversation and not his body. “I can’t exactly explain it to anyone else.”

  “Now that, I definitely understand,” he remarked with a wry smile. “It’s not easy to hide a secret from everyone you work with, everyone you run into on the street, and even people you want to be friends with. Not when your chances of them understanding are slim to none.”

  “But you said there are a lot of shifters,” she countered.

  “I only meant that there are probably a lot more than you would imagine. I’ve got my Special Ops buddies and other shifter friends, but humans still outnumber us by a long shot. I can’t imagine there are very many psychics running around, either.” His eyes danced over her features, lingering on her lips for a split second too long before returning to her eyes.

  “No. I’ve never met another one, anyway.” Erica frowned, thinking about how lonely her life had been. Even her friends and family had never truly known her, and she’d longed for a deep connection with someone. “It would be nice, though. I’d like to have a bond with someone who understood me like that.”

  He tipped his head. “Do you think if you did, it might be the kind of thing you just couldn’t deny? Something that you felt in the very core of your soul and couldn’t stop, no matter how hard you fought against it?”

  Something about his words made a shiver of electricity course through her nerves. She bit her lower lip. Why did Jack do this to her? She should have been focusing on their mission and finding out who Ben and his recruits really were, but instead, she was getting completely lost in Jack’s entrancing eyes and voice. Erica felt hypnotized by him as she slowly nodded. “Yeah, something like that.”

  “It’s like that for shifters,” he said quietly.

  “Like an alliance? You have to be on their side?” She was getting into dangerous territory, and she knew it. Erica was about to botch this entire operation with whatever was going on inside her mind. “Is that going to be a problem if you have to fight shifters?”

  The corner of Jack’s mouth curved seductively. “That’s not what I mean.” He’d moved forward on the chair and reached out to pull her hands into his. Her fingertips crackled with energy as he ran his thumbs over her palms. “It happens with all of us, but not with every person we meet. Sometimes that person is another shifter, and sometimes they’re not. But that one person, when we do meet them, makes it difficult for us to control our form. It’s like we completely lose our heads when we finally meet the person we’re destined to be with.”

  “Destined?” There was hardly any room in her throat for the word to come out. This wasn’t happening. She’d fallen asleep and was having some wild dream.

  But Jack had leaned forward, and their faces were only a few inches apart. “Destined. I can tell we’re fated to be together. As mates.”

  Perhaps he’d been controlling his spiritual energy once she’d told him she was psychic, or perhaps she’d just been doing that good of a job of blocking it out, but neither was stopping the flow now. She could feel him, not just physically, but psychically. He’d wrapped around her as he delved into her mind. He was like cool water on a hot beach: refreshing, invigorating, and absolutely irresistible. “How do you know?”

  “I just do. And I think you do, too.” He pressed his lips to hers, a slow but deliberate gesture. “Mission or not, I don’t know how long we can really ignore this, Erica.”

  She closed her eyes, savoring the sound of her name on his voice. “I know.”

  “Does that mean you feel something, too?”

  Feel something? Hell, she couldn’t get away from it. Jack was a blur of colors, images, and emotions in her mind, massive and engulfing and utterly delightful. Erica wa
nted to get completely lost in him and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist. “Like nothing I’ve ever felt before.” Her lips found his again then, and Erica didn’t know which one of them had initiated the kiss. It didn’t even matter. His fingers twined in between hers and gripped them tightly as though he might lose himself if he let go as his mouth explored hers. His lips were warm and inviting, and their tongues were soon a tangle. At that moment, Erica allowed the rest of her concerns to float away. It didn’t matter that they were in the middle of potential enemy territory or that they should be behaving like professionals. She just knew that she needed him.

  He got out of the chair and pulled her to her feet along with him. Just as she’d envisioned before, she felt his hands on her lower back and pressed herself against him. The evidence of his need for her was hard against her stomach, which sent a spark of excitement through her core as their kiss deepened. Erica touched him tentatively, exploring his hard abs beneath her fingertips before bringing her hands up his back and into his thick hair.

  He pulled back slowly, breaking their liplock with the utmost delicacy. “Erica,” he breathed.

  “Yes?”

  “I can see where this is going, or at least where I’d like it to go, but I don’t want to do anything if it’s not what you want.” He pressed his forehead against hers, his shoulders tense with the effort of holding himself back.

  She smiled. For all the distrust she’d initially held for him, Jack was a good guy. “I thought at first I was just attracted to you because we’d been put in a dangerous situation together. That makes people think and feel things that aren’t quite true. I don’t think it’s like that with us.” She dared to find his mouth with hers again.