by Alyssa Day
Them. Touch the pants. The fabric. She wanted to touch—oh, crap. She was totally standing there gawking at him while he was looking right at her. How many margaritas had she downed? She could feel the heat of a blush rising up her cheeks, but she had a good tan, too, and hopefully he wouldn’t notice.
Except—she was still standing there staring at him.
A slow, wickedly delicious smile spread across his ridiculously beautiful face, and his eyes were positively sparkling with amusement, if the way his sensual lips—sensual lips, omigoodness—started to curve up.
"Hey, she's back!"
The shout came from behind her, and she chanced a glance back over her shoulder to see that the frat boys hadn't forgotten about her after all and were about to launch what they probably considered to be a charm offensive.
She had no time to think, only to act, so she took the last three steps across the floor until she was standing right in front of the gloriously gorgeous man occupying her bar stool. She brazenly reached out and touched his arm.
"Quick," she said breathlessly, in a seductive voice she didn’t think she'd ever heard coming out of her mouth before. "Act like you're with me, so those boys leave me alone."
His smile deepened. "Sure."
Then he wrapped an arm around her, pulled her close, and kissed her.
3
The Sea Wolf, an hour earlier
Jake wondered why top-secret missions in his job as one of Poseidon's newest warriors—one whole month in—kept landing him in bars. It was kind of a cliché that the bad guys always congregated in bars, right? Except clichés were clichés for a reason.
At least the scenery was great, and he wasn't thinking about the ocean view from the beachfront bar. The tanned, gorgeous women all around him were making his head spin. Tall women, short women, slim women, plump women; it was a cornucopia of riches, if only he were here for socializing. Instead, he was being briefed on a mission whose purpose he didn't understand and didn't agree with, instead of getting a chance to check out a particularly intriguing tall, smiling woman at the bar. She had the loveliest smile and blue eyes that sparkled when she laughed…He shook his head.
Mission.
"Look," he finally interrupted, not giving much of a shit that Denal, the leader of this jacked-up group of misfits, was aiming the stink-eye at him. The fact that the stink-eye lost none of its fierceness, even though Denal was wearing a KEEP CALM AND GO TO JAX BEACH T-shirt and jeans to blend in, said a lot about Denal. "For eleven thousand years of hiding beneath the sea, only our elite warriors were allowed to go forth and protect humanity from the supernatural big, bad in the world, yeah, yeah, we get it. But now that Atlantis has risen and is taking part in the world again, that doesn’t mean that our job changed. We're not policing humans, no matter how useless the FBI's Paranormal Operations division is at its job. So what in the nine hells are we doing here?"
Denal, who had been one of King Conlan's elite fighting force before he took some kind of weird detour into the Fae lands, shot a glare at Jake. He had a good glare, Jake had to admit; the man was one of the biggest badasses he'd ever seen. Naturally, back in January Jake had run right into him—literally—and they'd jumped into a fist fight, because how else would you want to start off working with a guy?
The mission had gone well, though, at least if you could call "well" a result where one of the team was now in love with a Demon Whisperer. Poor Flynn
At least they'd rescued those girls.
The third man at the table stretched out his long legs and sneered at both of them. Or maybe that wasn't a sneer, after all, Jake had never seen Lucas without it. Maybe that was just his face. It made Jake want to beat the shit out of him, so that boded well for the mission, too. Not.
Lucas shook his black hair out of his face and stared down his aristocratic nose at Jake out of icy gray eyes. "No, dumbass, we're not policing humans. We're here to talk to shifters about some of their own who've gone rogue and have infiltrated this human hate group."
Lucas downed the rest of his beer and turned his scowl to Denal. "Why, again, is this idiot part of the team? I don't expect Poseidon to be anything but capricious, but you at least have a reputation for good sense."
Denal's dark blue eyes narrowed. "You may be Reisen's son, but remember, little lordling, that I was part of the team forced to track down your traitor of a father when he stole Poseidon's trident. Don't make the error of thinking your lineage gives you any advantage here."
The air turned blue with crackling tension and Jake put his beer down fast, because if he'd started seeing blue sparks in the air, then the Sea Wolf Pale Ale was way too strong for him. Two seconds later, the reason for the blue sparks strode up, yanked out a chair, and sat down.
Griffin was an arrogant ass and a mage, and Jake wasn't sure which was worse. But the man had definitely had Jake's back in that mess the month before. He was just under six feet tall, held himself straight as an arrow at all times, and had eyes that were silver rather than blue or gray. He also had pure white waist-length hair that hung straight as silk, vivid against his black clothes. Griffin was Atlantean, but one of his ancestors had definitely gotten up close and personal with a Fae.
Needless to say, they were suddenly getting a lot more female attention. Even the blonde at the bar with the blue, blue eyes glanced over at Griffin, but then she met Jake's gaze and held it for a moment or two, smiling.
Damn, she had a good smile.
Denal ran a hand through his black hair and grimaced. "Griffin. Tone it down."
Griffin's eyes widened, and he glanced around and swore under his breath. "Sorry." He murmured a few words in ancient Atlantean that were either a look-away spell or a prayer for goats to feast on somebody's armpit hair—Jake had never been much good in his language classes—and suddenly everybody in the bar went back to what they'd been doing.
Not the goat thing, then.
"I've been scouting the location for the Humanity Prime retreat, and we're going to have a hard time getting into it. They've built a damn fortress with cameras and men patrolling all sight lines. Not to mention dogs and electronic security. I barely got a glimpse inside, and I was in the air and hiding my presence."
"Some day you've gotta teach me how to fly without turning to mist form," Jake drawled lazily. "That's cool as hell, dude."
Griffin raised one white eyebrow, stark against his darkly tanned skin, and pinned Jake with his silver gaze. "In your dreams, mermaid boy."
"I'm never gonna live that down," Jake muttered. He raised a hand to the waiter and made a circling motion with his hand in the universal language of "another round, please." Bar talk was a language he did understand.
"Get on with it," Denal growled, his jaw clenched so tight Jake was surprised his teeth didn't crack. The man needed to relax.
Griffin nodded. "The only way we're getting in there is with an overwhelming assault force."
Denal blew out a breath and leaned back in his chair. "We can't do that. This is strictly undercover."
"Speaking of which," Lucas said, apparently done sulking, "Is this our contact?"
The woman headed to their table at an easy saunter was clearly at home in the bar. In her mid-fifties, maybe, she had short dark hair that swung around her face at chin-length, and she wore a red Sea Wolf shirt with a collar and black shorts that looked good on her muscular legs. She had a word for everybody she passed, and most of them called her by name.
"The owner and manager, Yvonne Stravinski," Denal said quietly. "Griffin, we're going to need a more heavy-duty version of the look-away magic."
Griffin nodded and tapped the fingers of his right hand on the table as if he were playing a miniature piano, and suddenly the sound of the bar conversations subsided to a dull roar and the air pressure changed just enough for Jake to feel a pop in his ears as Yvonne reached the table. The air around them seemed to blur, too, and he knew from experience that nobody in the bar would be interested in them as long as the
look-away lasted.
Jake looked at Denal. "Shifter?"
Quicker than thought, Yvonne reached over and tweaked Jake's ear. "Alpha wolf, pup, and you ask me questions about me, nobody else."
He bent his head, deeper than a nod, not quite a bow, giving the alpha her due, and the gold that had started to roll over her eyes faded.
"They're definitely in the Humanity Prime group," she said quietly, smiling at them like they were having a friendly chat. "I don't know who though, or what kind of shifter or shifters are in the group, for the most part. The leader is a bear, but he's got a partner who's some kind of lunatic raptor. Falcon the size of a freaking eagle. That one's a stone killer—don't mess with him without a lot of firepower and balls of steel."
Denal stood and bared his teeth in a horrible grimace that nearly made Jake flinch, until he realized Denal was smiling.
Ouch.
"We're going in," Denal told her bluntly, scanning the room as he always did, looking for any danger. Good habit to get into. Look out for danger before it tracked you down and killed you.
Yvonne blew out a long breath and then paused, as if considering something. Finally she nodded. "Okay. We know Damon Jones with P-Ops, and he says you're okay, so I'm going to tell you this. We have a guy inside, too. He's a wolf, also with P-Ops, but his job is to observe, nothing more, unless things get bad. Then he's to report in so the authorities can storm the place and rescue the asshole human supremacists."
"The world is insane," Lucas said, almost under his breath, but Jake nodded. The lordling wasn't wrong.
"Our man has a tat sleeve with running wolves ink, but it's easier to know him by his eyes. One blue and one green."
Denal jerked his head around and stared at her. "Pine? Pine, the werewolf prince of Europe, is working with P-Ops and infiltrating Humanity Prime?"
"Pine is with Interpol, actually, but it's some kind of joint task force," she said grimly. "This is not a U.S. problem, it's worldwide."
"We'll be headed out, unless you've got more information for us. This is not good," Denal muttered.
Yvonne laughed, but there was no amusement in it. "Yeah. 'Not good' is an understatement, if they're doing what they did in Canada last week."
Griffin rose to his feet, graceful and deadly. Jake stood, too, and forced himself not to step away from the mage. It's not like the man could turn him into tiny blue cinders where he stood or anything.
Well. He could, but he wouldn't.
Jake hoped.
Lucas sighed, rolled his eyes, and then he stood, too. "Fine. I'm standing. We're all standing. This isn't conspicuous or anything."
"Shut up, lordling," Jake said, before he turned to Yvonne. "What did they do in Canada?"
She threw back her head and laughed and then patted Denal on the shoulder, still carrying on the "we're all friends here" charade for the other bar patrons. Then she turned to Jake and he saw something that looked a lot like terror move behind her eyes. "They forced the shift on the humans at the Humanity Prime meeting, against their will."
Griffin inhaled sharply and leaned toward her. "All of them? All three hundred humans?"
Her hand on Denal's shoulder tightened until her knuckles turned white.
"Three hundred and seven, to be precise. Yes. All of them," she confirmed, her face pale and somehow sharper, as if her wolf were trying to break free. "Every single one went into Transition—and most of them died."
Jake needed a drink.
Bad.
After the others left, he headed for the bar just as the beautiful blonde got up and walked over to the restrooms. He decided he'd keep her barstool warm and maybe strike up a conversation, or maybe even a little something else, out on the beach or back at her place to pass the time until Denal told them how they were going to infiltrate Humanity Prime's retreat facility the next morning. He settled himself on the barstool, looked at the fresh drink on the bar in front of him, and smiled. He was pretty sure that meant she was coming back. He raised a hand to the bartender, who nodded. The waiter he'd signaled earlier rushed by, but Jake caught his attention and told him that his friends had left and to cancel the drink order unless it had already been poured.
"You were up next, man," the harried waiter replied. "It's all good."
Jake handed him a twenty-dollar bill for his trouble, hoping that was right. He still was not entirely confident with American currency, having spent most of his time Topside in other places.
He'd just turned to the bar again when a tickle of awareness shivered down his neck. He glanced up into the mirror behind the bar and saw that the blonde was back. She'd stopped about a half-dozen paces away and was staring at him. He swung around and flashed his best "Hello, I'm Jake, you want to get naked with me," smile at her, but she didn't get the entire effect, because she got distracted by something the young guys at the table behind her had called out.
When she turned the full force of her attention back to Jake, he felt it like a blow to his nerve endings. He sucked in a deep, almost shaky breath, suddenly feeling like the cool night air didn't contain enough oxygen—and if she kept looking at him like that, he might never be able to breathe properly again.
She was spectacular.
A word he'd never spoken or even thought before, but it applied in a hundred different ways to the human woman in front of him. She would be maybe a couple of inches shorter than Jake when he stood toe to toe with her. She was all long, lean muscles and tan skin in her white denim pants, pink shirt, and matching pink shoes with white laces. She'd taken her hair out of its braid, and the sun-streaked thickness of it curled in a slight wave across her shoulders and down nearly to her waist.
And her eyes.
They were were intensely, strikingly blue. The blue of a sunny sky on a calm day at sea. The kind of blue a man could drown in—especially an Atlantean, whose very existence was tied to the sea. Jake thought he might never get tired of looking into those eyes.
And she was staring right back at him.
The guys behind her shouted something at her again, but it had the opposite reaction to what they'd clearly intended. The vision in pink and white with the amazing blue eyes quickly crossed the floor to Jake, who couldn't believe his luck might be about to change so dramatically—from meeting a beautiful sea Fae who'd tried to kill him in January to meeting a beautiful human woman who wanted to, at the very least, he hoped, talk to him, now.
Before he could say a word, she touched him. The feel of her fingers on the bare skin of his forearm sent an electric current pulsing through his body. He leaned forward, drawn toward her as if by a particularly potent magic spell.
"Quick," she said in a husky voice that echoed through his body with little quakes of pleasure. "Act like you're with me, so those boys leave me alone."
He would never be able to explain why he did what he did next, but he couldn't help himself.
"Sure," he told her, and then he pulled her to him and kissed her.
It was the briefest of kisses, barely a touch of his lips to hers. He wasn't the type to take undue advantage of the situation, and he was already mentally beating himself up for doing this much. But the feel of her body in his arms, all lean muscle and soft curves, and the scent of flowers in her hair combined to flip a switch inside Jake, almost as if bringing back to life some part of him he'd thought long dead. He wanted to pull her closer and kiss her for hours; he wanted to sweep her into his arms and carry her out of the bar; he wanted to find a dark corner of the beach, strip her bare, and see the moonlight play across the contours of her body.
He did none of those things.
Instead, he quickly released her and stood, catching her shoulders gently when she stumbled back a step.
"Well," she said, her lush lips curved up in a wickedly seductive smile. "That's one way to act like you're with somebody."
She threw her head back and laughed, and the sound was like bells. Like music. A lilting peal of laughter that flowed through him lik
e liquid silver. She had a gorgeous laugh to match her incredible eyes, and some distant corner of his mind realized that he would be devastated if her personality wasn’t as beautiful as she was.
But he knew better—knew it was a risk to even hope for that. He'd been wrong about people more times than he could count. If only he could see a person's character as easily as he could see the color of their eyes, he wouldn't have wasted so much time being deceived by pretty faces that masked empty souls.
This time, though…this time, for some reason he couldn't explain, even to himself, he hoped so hard for that not to be true.
"I'm Savannah," she said, holding her hand out to him.
"Jake." He shook her hand in that ridiculous human custom, mostly to discover if the electricity would spark between them again, this time hand to hand.
It wasn’t like before, this time. It was far more intense. He inhaled sharply, feeling shaky as he realized he'd just had a very strong physiological response to this slightly tipsy human woman, just from touching her hand.
The odd thing, though, was that she gasped, too. As if she'd felt the same electric connection. They stared at each other, eyes wide, and then they both spoke at once.
"Do you –"
"Are you –"
They both laughed.
"You go first," she said, smiling at him.
"I was just thinking that maybe you'd like to go for a walk on the beach," he said hesitantly, with a complete lack of his usual confidence. Her answer somehow mattered so much more than any answer he'd had to any question before.
Suddenly, his earlier thoughts about getting some woman – any woman – alone for a naked interlude seemed cheap and unworthy. Since he'd never particularly worried about being unworthy before, and he certainly didn't think getting naked was cheap, he could only think that something about Savannah was doing weird things to his brain. He drew in a deep breath of ocean-scented air to steady himself.