by Lexi Ryan
He pinched her nipple lightly, and she bucked beneath him. He tortured it between his fingers.
“God, Tanner, hurry.” She lifted her hips off the bed, rolled them, her body pleading right along with her lips for what it instinctively craved.
He wanted to feel her in his arms, under him. He wanted to feel their skin slide together. He pulled his shirt off over his head. Her eyes flashed with appreciation as she studied his bare chest. “Tell me what you liked best,” he said. He slid down beside her on the bed and propped himself up on his elbow to study her. She was gloriously perfect: soft curves over a strong body, ivory skin he wanted to taste every inch of.
“I liked it all,” she managed. “But I like this more—” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I like this more because I don’t know what you’ll do next.”
He moved to the other nipple, and she whimpered. “But, dear God, please do something.”
She liked not knowing what came next? He grinned. “I’ll be right back.” Rolling off the bed, he stood and walked out of the room.
“Tanner,” she called at his back. “Tanner, where the heck are you going?”
Chapter Fifteen
Mallory flicked her hand toward the far wall and frowned when nothing happened.
“What were you trying to do that time?” Quinton asked.
“Throw flames,” she said, her shoulders sagging. She’d tried levitating, disappearing, controlling his electronic devices with her mind, shifting into a different form, and every other wacko power she could think of, but nothing worked.
Unfortunately, she was still convinced she had some sort of superpower.
“Listen, Mal, maybe your dad lied to you and you thought—”
She glared at him. “There are people in this very city with special powers, Quinton. You’ve just been too stubborn to notice.”
He laughed. “Right, and I suppose that was your doppelganger I’ve been seeing all week? What did you call them? Shifters?”
“My doppelganger? What are you talking about?”
***
Josie sagged into the pillows. When she told Tanner she liked the unexpected, this wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind. He’d left her body a live wire and her clit swollen. The muscles between her legs pulsed, begging for attention, begging to be stretched, to have something to squeeze. She wanted him in her, filling her, pounding into her until she screamed. She wanted him to turn this handcuff fiasco into something worth remembering.
And Elvis had left the building.
“Wiley?” she called again.
He stepped into the room, a Machiavellian grin spreading across his face.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
She obeyed and felt cool fabric against her eyes. “A blindfold?”
“This way you won’t know what comes next,” he explained, his voice rough.
Her breathing quickened. With her wrists cuffed above her head and her sight taken by the blindfold, she was powerless. But she trusted Tanner so completely that what should have made her frightened—or at the very least cautious—turned her on.
He ran his hands down her body, over the cool fabric of her slip, and back up underneath. She arched her back. The heat of his hands and the barest touch intensified by her temporary loss of sight.
One hand stayed on her breast, torturing her with whisper light touches, while the other slipped between her legs. She spread them for him, and whimpered when he didn’t slip his fingers over and into her slick sex. Instead, he teased the tender skin of her inner thigh with light circular touches.
“Tell me what you want,” he whispered, his breath hot on her ear.
“Touch me,” she said without hesitation. “Touch me now.”
He chuckled and cupped her breast, fondling it ever so gently. “I am touching you.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t, Josie. I think I know what you want one minute, and the next you’re pushing me away. I’m afraid you’re going to have to tell me.”
“Touch me harder,” she whimpered.
“Where?”
“My breasts...between my legs.”
He complied, increasing the pressure on her breast and taking her nipple between two fingers. He caressed her inner thigh with the flat of his hand now, rubbing and brushing and making her want to scream.
“Is that what you want?” His words were breathy, husky against her ear.
She knew that voice, and she wanted to feel the corresponding erection in her hand. She pulled at her hands and earned another chuckle.
He placed whisper soft kisses against her wrists. “Gentle, lady.”
“Wiley,” she moaned. “Please...”
“Tell me,” he said.
“Put your hands on me.”
“Where?”
Her hips bucked, showing him. “Put your fingers in me before I scream!”
He obeyed, sliding a finger inside her slick sex and moaning against her neck. “That’s all you had to say,” he said, working his fingers in and out of her.
He replaced one finger with two and she cried out.
“This is what you wanted all along, wasn’t it? You were staying away from me but it wasn’t because you didn’t want me.” He rolled her nipple lightly between two fingers, and she moaned. He brushed circles over her clit with his thumb.
“Tanner,” she begged, “I’m so close. Please—”
“Tell me why you’re really pushing me away,” he said, ending even the teasing strokes of his thumb.
She rolled her hips, instinctively searching for his hand, for the pleasure he’d taken away. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” she admitted. “I didn’t want you to fall in love with me.”
“Too late,” he said.
She heard tearing fabric, then the cool air hit her skin. Before she could protest, his mouth was on her breast and his naked body was on top of hers. She lifted her hips to meet him as he pushed into her.
Handcuffed and blindfolded, she couldn’t do anything but work her hips, squeeze her sex around his cock, and feel the bright pleasure as it radiated through her.
His hands and mouth were everywhere as he pumped into her, squeezing and sucking at her breast, slipping under her to cup her ass and angle her hips. His mouth found hers and she kissed him hard, sucking at his lips, his tongue, tasting him before he pulled away and applied his savage mouth to her neck.
She wrapped her legs around him and rocked harder, faster. He followed suit, pumping into her with all the strength and power she craved—she needed.
“Do you know how hard it was to stay away from you when I know how good you taste?” he whispered. “Do you know how much I ached for you? I wake up so hard and all I want is your tight pussy wrapped around my cock.”
She bucked beneath him, his words making her wild.
“I don’t want anyone else, Josie,” he said, and he slipped his hand between their bodies.
The first touch of his thumb to her clit and she came apart. He moaned into her ear.
“I love it when you come,” he said. “I was made to pleasure you.”
She felt him swell inside her and she wished the blindfold were gone. “I want to look at you when you come.”
He pulled the blindfold off and stared into her eyes. “I love you.”
Her heart was torn between joy and grief.
***
When Tara was gone, Alyson let herself shift back into her own body. Collin Raines scared the bloody shit out of her, so being in his skin was beyond creepy.
The girl had bought it though. She shook her head. Experienced Shifters could tell when there were other Shifters around, but Tara was so fresh, she was clueless.
Alyson needed that journal or the man she loved might be in danger.
***
A flash of his badge had gotten Quinton and Mallory into a private examination room to view Josie Bovard’s chart—some
thing he should have needed a warrant for, but most people didn’t question an official badge and kind smile, even if they’d been trained to know better.
When he’d told Mallory everything he knew about Josie, she’d suggested Josie hadn’t had a bad diagnosis but had seen a “Healer” to repair her broken arm.
“See,” Mallory was saying as he flipped through the chart to find the X-rays, “non-Specials will believe anything to keep their view of the world from being disrupted. It’s actually pretty easy for us to keep our existence secret. You all do the work for us.”
Quinton flipped on the wall light and placed the X-ray against it. “Holy shit,” he muttered.
“Looks like one nasty break,” Mallory said. “Must have been some Healer.”
He pulled it back down and shoved everything into the folder. It didn’t make sense. There was no logical explanation.
“So, she looks like me, huh?”
“I thought she was you,” he said. Okay, so maybe they’d mixed up Josie’s X-ray with someone else’s, thus the misdiagnosis that also explained what he’d just seen in her chart.
“Hmm. When I was little, I thought I had a twin.”
Quinton looked at her. Who knew how long it would take to deprogram all the lies her father had told her? “She remembers you.”
Mallory blinked. “She does?” She grabbed her purse and threw it over her shoulder. “I want to meet this woman. Let’s go.”
Quinton looked at his watch. “Let’s go home and get some sleep. We’ll figure out the mystery of the twins in the morning.” He left the examination room and when she didn’t follow several seconds behind, popped his head back in to get her.
“Mallory?”
She was gone.
***
“I didn’t mean those things I told you in Eden,” Josie said in the darkness.
They lay next to each other, Tanner propped on an elbow. Every so often he’d run his fingers down her jaw line or over her hip bone. He’d positioned the pillows behind her head so her cuffed arms were given a rest. He couldn’t stop touching her, looking at her.
“I hoped as much,” he finally said, talking past the knot in his throat. “I don’t expect you to be ready for such intense stuff yet, but I’d love if you were at least...open to the possibility.” He shrugged. “But I don’t have a whole lot of experience with being wanted in family-type scenarios, so it’s not like I won’t know how to deal with it if you—”
“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “Tanner, you don’t understand. I was lying. Completely. I don’t want to scare you away here, but having your babies and being your wife. I kind of like the—”
He cut her off with his mouth, needing her closer, then dropped his head to her belly and rested his cheek there. If she felt his hot tears pool on her bare skin, she didn’t say so. “I’ve wanted you since the first time I met you,” he said. “Not just in my bed. In my life.”
“Me too,” she murmured. “That’s what was so bizarre about my visions. No matter how much I avoided you, they never changed. That never happens.”
“Maybe we’re just fated to be together,” he said.
“Tanner, look at me,” she whispered. “I don’t believe in fate, and I don’t want to. I want to be with you because I choose to, not because of some predestined plan for me.”
He closed his eyes, the sweetness of her words too decadent to savor open-eyed. “Okay.”
But she had been created for something, whether or not she wanted to believe it. She’d been created as a Key to unlock an evil man’s powers. And he didn’t know how to tell her without risking her making some terrible and rash decision.
“I’m going to break my own rule,” she said. “Because I can’t be so selfish as to move forward with this without telling you.”
He frowned. Did she already know the legend of the Keys? Had she seen this?
“I’m having conflicting visions,” she said. “In some, we’re just so happy. Married, in love, making babies, making love.” She drew in a ragged breath, making Tanner straighten. “In the others, you’re holding my body in your arms.”
“Doesn’t sound so terrible.”
“I’m dead, Tanner. You’re holding my dead body, and I can’t be much older than I am now.”
Shit. He ran his hand over his face.
“There’s more,” she said. “When I fell asleep after...on the beach, I had a dream that my twin and I were being connected to a machine. I don’t know why or what it was for, but I know it had to do with the Ascendants’ plan.”
The Keys. “Your twin?”
She nodded and told him about her memories of her could-be twin.
Tanner rolled off the bed. He couldn’t stay still while his blood raced like this. “Do you have a hair pin?”
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Tanner?”
He ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “How do we take Path A?”
He opened her jewelry box and found a safety pin. He walked around to her side of the bed and began to work on the cuffs. They needed to go help Chrissie and Fernandez in the library.
She studied him as the lock released. “What do you mean, Path A?”
His throat felt thick and his eyes burned. “How do we choose the future where you have my babies and I get to make love to you for the rest of our lives?”
Chapter Sixteen
Chrissie threw another file on the stack and tugged at her hair. “There’s nothing here.”
Nicholas Fernandez sat across from her, digging through files at the same speed as Chrissie, but neither had found any confirmation that Josie was or wasn’t a Key or any evidence that there was or wasn’t a Keeper.
Tanner and Josie were on their way, though Chrissie wasn’t sure what good it would do.
“Fuck,” Fernandez said.
Chrissie rested her head against her palms. “You can say that again.”
“Fuck, fuck,” Fernandez said. “But you said she does have a twin?”
“She let me look into her memories, but there aren’t many of Josie with the little girl she remembers. In one they’re playing in water—maybe a sprinkler? In another they’re holding hands with a young woman in long skirts but I can’t see her face.”
“Any idea how we can track her down?”
Chrissie shook her head. “But you know who might have information, don’t you?”
Fernandez narrowed his eyes. “Do they count when we can’t trust half the things that come out of their mouths?”
“I’m going to call,” Chrissie said, and Fernandez put his hand over hers as she reached for her purse. “We’re out of places to look,” she explained.
“Are you still in love with him?” Fernandez asked, his voice a low rumble.
Chrissie pulled her hand from under his and folded her arms across her chest. She didn’t need to ask to know he was talking about Rider. “Does it matter?”
His dark chocolate eyes burned into hers. “He doesn’t deserve you.”
“I know that,” she whispered, but it was still the nicest damn thing the man had ever said to her. “Don’t you think I know that?”
Fernandez set his jaw and pushed back from the table. “Suit yourself. Call the asshole, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”
“The asshole is already here,” someone said from the door, and Chrissie’s heart tripped as she looked up to see her ex—the man she once thought she’d marry—stride into the SIA library, his twin following behind.
***
Tara squeezed the leather-bound stand-in journal against her chest and took in a shaky breath.
She’d saved the world once. She could do it again.
Of course, the first time she’d had a plan. She’d known who the bad guy was and what he wanted. The first time she’d been prepared, and instead of keeping secrets from her, Collin had stood by her side.
Street lights illuminated the sidewalk, making the buildings throw malevolent shadows i
n her path.
She waited for the Collin look-alike to come and touched her lips. How sad that the kiss had given the Shifter away. How sad that she knew she hadn’t been talking to the man she loved because of a soft brush of lips she’d wanted more than anything.
Collin wouldn’t have kissed her.
Collin thought very little of himself, but Tara knew he was too noble to kiss a woman whom he saw as a child. Too moral to use the kiss she craved to manipulate her.
So she waited as herself, a leather-bound book in her arms, with too much fear and not enough plan. She waited for her chance to save the world again.
But she wasn’t prepared when man’s arm went around her neck and pulled her into the shadows.
***
“So, this Keeper guy, he’s immortal?” Chrissie asked Collin, flipping through Josie’s mother’s journal in the hopes she could see something, anything, even just a piece of a memory. Unfortunately, her power didn’t work like that, and it was only the very rare inanimate object that gave her a vision.
“This Keeper guy,” Collin said, not bothering to keep the annoyance from his voice, “is hundreds of years old and very dangerous.”
The library doors opened again and Tanner came through, followed by Josie, Paige, and Darian.
“Who is he?” Tanner demanded without introduction.
“Oh, look,” Collin said, sarcasm dripping from his words like so much poison, “the gang’s all here.”
Tanner stalked toward Collin, grabbed him at the neck and threw him against the wall.
Behind him, Darian said, “Answer the man’s question.”
“That’s the multi-million-dollar question. Now, let me go.”
Tanner shook him against the wall again. “If you knew about this, why the hell did you warn us it was coming?”
“Tanner,” Josie said behind him, “put Collin down. He doesn’t always use our methods but he’s on our side.”
Tanner narrowed his eyes and begrudgingly released Collin. Chrissie released her breath.