by Sydney Croft
She spun around. Three steps later, James seized her arm and jerked her around. She swung. Clocked him in the jaw. He fell back against the wall, but then Brad was blocking her escape, and her feet wouldn’t move. Nothing would move. Her arms were pinned to her sides. How were they doing this?
“Kira, you need to calm down. We’re not going to hurt you. We’ll keep you safe and serviced.” Brad withdrew a hypodermic needle from his shirt pocket and uncapped it.
“Let me go,” she shouted, because now it was too late to calm down. Images of the jail cell kept flashing in her brain, turning the trainers into cops who wanted to use her over and over.
Terror ripped through her until she shook with it. Rapid, gasping breaths didn’t provide enough air, and she grew light-headed. A scream welled in her throat, and she let it loose, if only to get more oxygen.
“Let her the fuck go.” Tom’s voice, a deep, guttural growl, punched through her scream and panic. When had he come up behind Brad?
She heard running footsteps, knew that people were on the way.
“Ender, we can’t. You know that.”
“I know you were planning to make her suffer, you son of a bitch.” The next thing she knew, Tom was a blur and Brad was against the wall, Tom’s forearm across his throat. “Go, Kira.”
Released from the invisible bonds, she ran up the hall, gasped when Tom grabbed her hand and dragged her to the lobby.
“Shit,” he muttered. “Shit. I am in so much fucking trouble.”
“Tommy—”
“Don’t. Just run.”
They sprinted to the parking lot, and once they were safely inside Tom’s vintage Mustang GT500, he peeled out of the lot and through the gate. Tom checked his rearview mirror several times before he slammed his fist into the steering wheel so hard she heard something crack.
“Dammit!” He cursed a few more times, and then looked over at her. “This is just until your fever is over. And then I’m taking you back there, hog-tied and over my shoulder if I have to. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said, her teeth still chattering. “Thank you, Tommy.”
He shoved sunglasses over his eyes. “Don’t thank me. Don’t you dare thank me.”
NINETY MILES AN HOUR ON THE DIRT ROAD that led to his house did nothing to tamp down Ender’s anger. It boiled in his veins, seethed in his thoughts, and again he strangled the steering wheel.
He couldn’t even look at Kira, and she wasn’t saying anything either. Which was good, because he could barely think over the roaring in his own brain.
She’d panicked. He understood why, hadn’t even wanted to think again about what happened to Kira in the jail cell, and hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it.
He’d fucking panicked too when he’d realized how they would test her limits—making her go without sex for as long as she could handle it. Fuck.
Inherently, there was nothing wrong with the training and experimentation methods they’d been planning to use on Kira, with seeing just how far someone could be pushed. That’s what the military—and then ACRO—had taught him. It was about knowing your limits, learning to deal with them in case of capture.
It didn’t matter whether or not he understood the whys of the situation—her panic was enough to send him into a white-hot rage, his protection-mode engaging full force.
They hadn’t seen her by the river, when she’d gone without for too long. And he didn’t have the time or the patience to explain it to them. Instead, he’d done what he’d been doing for days now—he kept her out of harm’s way.
“Tommy…”
“What?” he barked, and Kira just pointed to his ringing phone. “Shit.” He used one finger to open the flip phone, only to bark, “What?” into the receiver.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Don’t start with me, SEAL.”
Remy ignored him. “Christ, Ender, you nearly killed two trainers. You’d better haul your ass in here.”
“I don’t need you to tell me what to do,” he growled.
“But you will listen to me,” Dev’s voice rang on the other end of the line. Ender drew a deep breath and closed the phone as he pulled into his driveway.
“Let’s go.” He got out of the car and strode into his house and she followed him inside. He turned on her suddenly. “Did they hurt you?”
“What? No, they didn’t—”
“Are you sure?”
She cocked her head and looked at him and he had a sudden urge to cover himself up. He had to check to make sure he was fully clothed, and then he realized that she was seeing right through him. And for some reason, she liked what she saw.
He picked her up by the waist and carried her to the bedroom and then the bed. By his calculations, she had three more hours until she needed her next mating. He’d have everything figured out before that.
But for now, he grabbed her arms before she could resist and he locked them to the headboard with the leather wrist cuffs he usually reserved for play.
“Tommy, you can’t do this.”
“I won’t leave you for long. I have to go back to ACRO and deal with this mess you’ve created.”
“I’ve created?” She started to struggle and he recognized the panic rising and falling in her chest. He pushed the phone within reach and wrote down the number to his cell.
“I’ll be back before you need me.”
“I don’t understand this. Or you. You cared enough about me to get me out of that place and then you do something like this.”
And that right there was enough to give him that final push over the edge of sanity. “Don’t you get it? I don’t care about you, Kira. I can’t care about you.”
“Right. I’m just a job. You’ve made that perfectly clear,” she said. And then she turned her head away from him, mustered as much dignity as she could, and he forced himself out the door without a backward glance in her direction.
CHAPTER
Nineteen
Dev sent Remy away, because he knew Ender’s next move. Ender would come in and take his reprimand like a man, growl and then attempt to kill a few more people on the way out.
Dev wasn’t sure why that made him smile, but it did. He prepared himself for Ender’s visit—had to be careful not to let on that his sight was completely restored. He and Oz had decided that, until the mole was caught, it was better to let everyone think it was business as usual at ACRO. Which meant no sight for Dev.
He’d expected that his other senses would lessen, that some sensory perceptions wouldn’t feel as heightened as they once had. But the opposite seemed to be true. And when that son of a bitch burst into his office without knocking, Dev sensed something he never, ever got from Ender.
Fear.
“You’re back,” Dev said, and just because Ender was in pain didn’t mean Dev was going to go easy on him. And that pain was even more apparent now that Dev could see the man in full Technicolor and not the muted visions of his CRV.
“Yes.” Ender stood in front of him defiantly, his eyes blazing with anger that didn’t hide the worry. At least not well enough.
“I hear you’re refusing to bring your acquisition back in. I hear that you haven’t followed one goddamned order I’ve given you. I hear that the animal whisperer hasn’t even agreed to join. Which means she should be dead.”
“Her name’s Kira. And she’ll join.”
Dev nodded, slowly. It had happened just the way he’d figured. “You can’t be sure of that.”
“She can’t be sure of anything until her heat cycle’s over, Dev. She needs sex every four hours.”
“We have men who can service her safely. Humanely. No one’s going to hurt her here. Bring her in.”
“I won’t do that.”
“You don’t have a choice; I’m giving you an order. She’s still vulnerable, even if she is with you. They’re after her.”
“She doesn’t want other men. She picked me.”
“What do you mea
n, she’s picked you?”
“I don’t know—something about picking a mate when she’s in her heat cycle,” Ender said.
Dev turned and walked toward his desk, focusing on Kira’s mind while he did so. He got a fleeting mental image of Kira on a bed with a dark gray comforter, saw restraints on her wrists and, despite that, felt Kira’s thoughts about Ender.
This was the first time she’d ever picked one mate. Normally, she needed several. And even though she was pissed to hell at him at the moment, she loved him. And that was enough to soften Dev. For the moment.
“Fine. You can continue to be her mate, Ender. But you’ll do so here. So we can observe her and figure out the best way to ease her transition.”
When Ender finally spoke again, his voice was quiet but firm. “I won’t do it, Dev. Do you have any idea what they were planning to do to her at the training facility? I’ll keep her safe until her heat cycle’s over and then I’ll bring her in.”
“And suppose it’s too late by then? She’s dangerous and you know it.”
“As dangerous as Remy was, but you didn’t think about putting him down unless there was no other choice. Why are you so quick to off Kira?”
“Remy had military training and a power that he alone could control. It would have taken time for an enemy to break him, get him to work for them, if they could do that at all.” Dev ran his fingers through his hair, hated to hear Ender calling her by name. “In the wrong hands—or even in the right ones—the animal whisperer is potentially a weapon of mass biological destruction. Itor wouldn’t need her consent to use her, they only need her body. You know that as well as I do. Tell me, if she refuses to join, are you going to be able to kill her?”
“It won’t be the first time I’ve had to fuck a woman and then kill her. All part of the job, right, Dev?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“It’s something you shouldn’t have asked. And why are your nightmares back?” Ender asked.
“I could ask you the same question,” he said, heard Ender’s sharp intake of breath and saw a man who claimed to call nobody friend with his hands fisted in his jeans pockets pretending not to give a shit. “You still underestimate me. Just because I can’t break into your mind doesn’t mean Kira’s isn’t wide open to me. She’s concerned about you.”
Ender was silent for a long minute, and then his tension, his realization filled the room. “This is about Oz, isn’t it? You always get the nightmares when he comes back into your life. I’ll kill the motherfucker.”
“You’ll finish your own goddamned assignment, stop lying to me and figure out a way to bring Kira into ACRO. It’ll be the only way to break this bond you’ve formed with her.”
KIRA WAS WHERE HE’D LEFT HER. Ender noted that her eyes were slightly red-rimmed, like she’d been crying. Now all he saw was anger in her eyes, and all of it directed at him.
“I’ve worked it out with Dev,” he said. “You can stay here with me until your heat is over.”
“Are you going to keep me tied up the whole time?”
“If I need to.”
“Asshole.”
“You don’t have the right to be pissed at me, Kira,” he said. Warning bells bounced inside his skull and he knew he was still skating on the damned edge. Dev knew it too.
“You don’t own me, Tom Knight. You can’t tell me what rights I have. So. Let. Me. Go. And who knows, maybe I’ll find someone else to help me through the rest of my heat.”
She didn’t mean it—he knew that, but it still cut right through him to hear her say it.
“So you want someone else, then?” he asked.
“Yes. Anyone but you.” She jerked her bound hands. “And that kills you, doesn’t it?”
“Keep talking like that, Kira, and I swear I’ll take you over my knee.”
She snorted, as if she didn’t believe him. And as much as he wanted to keep her tied up, not deal with it, he remembered all too clearly how not well that had worked days earlier.
He leaned forward and undid her restraints quickly, then stepped aside as she lunged.
This time, he was ready.
He caught her, a bundle of infuriated indignation, and he turned her over his knee, holding her squirming body there easily enough. She wasn’t as strong as she was a few days ago, but he didn’t think about that for too long. Because he was pissed—at himself for caring, and at her for calling him on it.
Held there, she still managed to turn her head to look at him. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Yeah, I would. I promised you I would and I always keep my promises.”
She gasped, more with surprise than pain as his large palm took its first whoosh through the air and made contact with her perfect ass. But the slap was through her BDU pants, and he wanted skin-on-skin contact.
He didn’t bother to try to pull them down. He ripped them off greedily instead, so he could touch her.
“You are not in charge here, little one,” he murmured, even though he couldn’t conceal his anger. “I am. And the sooner you learn to deal with that, the better.”
“Fuck. You.”
He slapped her again and again and as his anger dissipated, so did hers. His palm heated quickly. Her ass turned bright red and each slap took her closer to making her his, which he wasn’t sure he wanted but still he couldn’t stop himself. Each connection of palm to flesh made his dick harder, and she squirmed and begged, but she wanted it. He knew because she’d started to lift her ass to greet his steady slaps and he felt her orgasm shudder through her body, watched her toes curl and heard the low moan in the back of her throat.
He no longer had to hold her down to make her stay across his lap. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t still angry.
“Who do you want, Kira?”
She didn’t hesitate to answer. “You, Tommy. You know that already.”
He stood, taking her with him and flipping her onto the mattress. But she was up within seconds, her face flushed from orgasm and humiliation and anger, and he readied himself for another battle.
“What do you want from me, Tommy?”
For you to stop calling me Tommy. For you to stop giving a shit about me. For this to all go the fuck away. “What do I want? I want my life back, dammit!” he roared finally.
“Which one, Tommy? Which life do you want back?” she asked, and it was the complete and utter wrong thing to say to him. Too logical, and it only served to anger him more. She wasn’t the right person to take out his anger on, but she was going to bear the brunt because she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, stop talking.
He grabbed her by the shoulders, prepared to shake her, to shut her up. He hadn’t been prepared to kiss her, but that’s exactly what he did, a hard kiss that sucked the air out of his lungs, one that bonded them together more than sex ever would, and still, she was slamming her fists against his shoulders, trying to pry herself away from him even as her tongue met his.
He was losing it. Losing it. And instead of backing away from her, he continued with his mouth pressed against hers in a kiss he insisted had nothing to do with love. Because there was certainly nothing romantic about the kiss. It was one of dominance as his mouth took her again and again—and again, Kira did not back down.
Her mouth held firm against his and she welcomed him—and he was dimly aware that this was the first time he’d allowed himself to kiss her. He’d never been big on kissing—it seemed too intimate, too messy, too full of…stars-in-your-eyes entanglements that he didn’t think he could ever have.
Why being with Kira had triggered this reaction inside of him was still a mystery. He blamed the pheromones she was giving off, blamed his cock, blamed his genetic makeup. Anything so he didn’t have to admit the truth.
He loved Kira Donovan. And there was no room for that to happen in his life.
Her hands held his face, letting him know that she was still fighting for dominance. And when he ripped his mouth away, he let her know that she wasn’t g
etting it.
He took a step back and she remained kneeling on the bed. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and she touched her lips with her fingers. His first instinct was to apologize, and that made his anger return full force. His body flushed, his cock jumped and she was climbing him again before he had a chance to think, claiming him until his orgasm was imminent.
“I’m sorry, Tommy. Sorry for getting you in trouble. Sorry for all of this,” she murmured, over and over.
She’s a job. Your job. Nothing more.
He continued lying to himself while he spilled deep inside of her.
“KIRA? KIRA, wake up.”
She blinked, focused her gaze on Tom’s face, staring down at her. A quick glance at the clock showed that nearly four hours had passed since he’d taken her, their mutual anger fueling the frantic pace of their mating and igniting a series of orgasms that wrung her out emotionally, leaving her level for the first time in days.
After sex, he’d thrown on some shorts and disappeared into what she discovered was his exercise room. She’d showered, and then, utterly exhausted after several days of nonstop running and sex, she crawled into his bed and crashed.
“It’s time.”
Right. Heat pooled in her loins at the thought of sex with him, but for some reason, the fiery, crazy need felt dimmed, was more of a tickle in the background than a pounding nuisance that hijacked her mind and body.
He climbed into bed with her, and she welcomed him, but before he could mount her, she wriggled onto her side, facing him.
“Are you still mad at me?”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s never mattered when you needed me.”
The scent of his arousal stirred hers, and she clenched her thighs to ease the ache there, but the pressure only heightened her desire. “It matters now.” She dragged a finger from his throat to his cock. “Because we can’t keep going the way we are. I’m sorry I’m making your life so awful.”
“We’re not talking about this.”
“Yes, we are, and you’re going to listen to me. I’m sorry I turned your life upside down. I’m sorry I got you into trouble at work. I’m so grateful for what you did…but you didn’t have to take me from ACRO. It was your choice, and if you’re going to keep punishing me for it, you can take me back there right now.”