by Lynn Graeme
“Lucky bastard.” A swift twist and pump left Jamal bucking with another stream of curses. His eyes narrowed with a murderous glint. “Your father did a piss-poor job of keeping his little girl safe and protected from men like me.”
Terris kissed his neck, feeling his pulse beneath her lips. Just as she felt him pulsing in her hand. “I’ve never ever met another man like you.”
To Terris’s astonishment, Jamal suddenly grabbed her wrist and wrenched her away from him. He launched to his feet and searched the room with almost animalistic zeal. At first she thought somebody was approaching the room, but Jamal didn’t so much as glance at the door. Instead, he zeroed in on the spare set of clothing that lay folded in the corner and jerked on a pair of sweats.
“Let’s get out of here,” he panted. “Finish what we started. Uninterrupted.”
Terris froze, brought back to the reality of the present. What was she doing?
“Your place or mine? No, scratch that. Yours. I have roommates, and Council agents are notoriously nosy sons of bitches.”
“Jamal, we can’t.”
He looked at her sharply. “What are you talking about? We sure as fuck can. All night long—and morning too. Hell, you might as well wipe your schedule clean for the next few days. There’s no way I’ll get enough of you so soon.” His expression cleared. “I feel fine. Don’t worry about my arm. I hardly feel a thing—at least not that part of me.” A slow grin. “Let’s see how much I can accomplish with just one hand and arm. And mouth and dick. Looking forward to the challenge.”
Terris flushed. “Jamal, we can’t get involved.”
He stared. “I get why you were hesitant about pursuing anything between us before, but I’m not your ex. I’m nothing like him.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Or do you think I’ll do exactly what he did to you? Fuck around with your feelings—with your trust—and then hound and harass you before dragging your name and reputation through the mud?”
“No! Of course not!”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m just like him. After all, I can already tell I’ll never get enough of you—I wouldn’t let you go so easily.”
“Stop it, Jamal. I know you’d never hurt anyone like that. You’re too … good.”
“Good.” He spat the word out in disgust. “An empty, meaningless term. Use it to justify your response to me if you want—after all, you could never care for someone who wasn’t innately good, could you? But I’m the farthest thing from good on this wretched earth, Terris. I hurt people. I hurt people all the time. I’m not ashamed of it. It’s what I’m made for. I revel in it.”
Terris rose to her feet, shaking her head in denial. “I’m not so sheltered that I don’t know the realities of what you do. You do what you do to protect people, Jamal. You fight for what’s right so that there’ll never be another five-year-old girl crying because she lost her leg in a deadly explosion. You channel your aggression in a way that will never hurt a young child the way your father hurt you. You put yourself through incredible amounts of pain to punish yourself for surviving a battle that claimed your teammates. You have integrity, Jamal. A bone-deep conviction that doesn’t waver in the face of intimidation or corruption. You drag yourself knee-deep through bone and blood so that the rest of us don’t have to.”
“A good man,” Jamal sneered. “But not good enough for you.”
“Don’t you say that! Don’t you ever say that!” Upset and unable to control her frustration, Terris swung her fist without thinking. It gave a satisfying thump against Jamal’s left pec.
Then she realized what she’d done and gasped, covering her mouth.
“Oh God, I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you?”
Jamal rubbed the spot where she’d hit him. “I’ll say this for your father: he taught you how to throw a good punch. Might have to work on your form, though.” He shot her a brooding look.
“I can’t believe I did that. I jumped a man and hit him when he’s barely woken up from surgery with a broken arm.”
“A broken arm and a hard-on that won’t quit. You’ve accomplished much today.”
Terris glared.
Jamal’s hooded gaze turned probing. Inscrutable. “I never took you for a coward. Terris. Yet you’re so ready to throw this away, without even having the courage to try. Even I know this … this connection between us is rare and special, and I’ve seen a lot of fucked-up things in this world. Yet you, Ms. Sunshine and Smiles, are so ready to dispense with it. You think it’s doomed to fail from the start.”
“That’s not what I’m saying at all!” Sadness pierced through Terris’s frustration, and she sagged beneath its suffocating weight. “Yes, I know what we have is special. Part of me is terrified of exploring it, but the other part is so eager to jump right in. You make me … you make me want to live and love wild all over again.” She raked her hand through her hair. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m involved in the study you’re participating in. Pursuing a relationship with you puts me in an ignominious, unethical position.”
“The way I want to spread you wide and put my tongue in your pussy should be unethical. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong. We both know it’ll feel so right.”
“It’s a clear conflict of interest, Jamal. Before, what happened with my ex—I had plausible deniability. I genuinely hadn’t known about his involvement in the project. I can’t claim the same in this case. Not with you.”
“You say I’m a man of integrity. Integrity’s not going to keep me warm at night. If it meant choosing between my code of honor and you, I’d choose you. Every time.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Then you don’t know me at all.”
“Are you asking me to resign?”
He swore. “No, that’s not what I’m… . Dammit!”
Tears prickled. Already Terris felt a welling of grief for what might’ve been.
Then Jamal’s gaze turned sharp. “So you can’t date clients.”
“You know I can’t.”
“Fine. I’ll leave the damn trials. Fuck the trials.”
Terris stared at him in shock. “No.”
“If I’m not a participant, there’s nothing preventing us from being together.”
“This is your chance to regain your hand, Jamal. Your chance to make a difference. Not just for yourself, but for other shifters out there in similar situations. I know we failed you with this recent attempt—God, you’ll never know how sorry I am for what happened. I was so frightened. I still am. But I swear it’ll never happen again. I’ll ride them hard to fix the damn problem before subjecting you to such horror again. Please believe me.”
Jamal swatted away her words with an impatient hand. “You think I blame you for that? I don’t. I don’t care about what happened.”
“Liar. You told me yourself how important this was to you. Your ability to shift at a moment’s notice is integral to your job as a Council agent, especially when you’re battling rogues. If you withdraw from the trials now, you might have to wait months—possibly a few years—before BioSynth is released to the public. You’ll be handless until then.”
“You think that matters?”
“I know it matters to you! It would mean being stuck behind desk duty. You’d never be happy being confined that way.”
“I know I’ve not shown myself to be a patient man, Terris, but I can learn. I’ll wait for that prosthesis to be released to the public.”
“And, what, not shift until then? I remember your words: you bloody need to shift. You forget I come from a family of shifters. I know how deeply that need is ingrained. Eventually it’ll claw at you and drive you mad. If you wait until the trials are completed that means being unable to shift for up to two or three years, not unless you amputate the rest of your arm so that you can do so without an incomplete limb. That’s not the kind of life you want.”
“You’re what I want!”
“You’ll wind up resenting me, and
I couldn’t bear that.”
“Never.” Jamal stepped forward, closing in on her. “What we share is real, Terris. We’re real. This spark and chemistry between us, that’s real. We both know it comes only once in a lifetime, if that. It’s not just sex. It’s not just physical. If it was, I’d never have listened to a single word you said from the very first second I saw you. All I would’ve done was plot how to get under your skirts.”
“Didn’t you?”
He looked at her coldly.
Remorse consumed her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“Didn’t you?” He silkily threw her words right back at her.
Terris placed her hands on either side of his face. “Jamal, please. Don’t withdraw from BioSynth. Don’t throw this chance away.”
He gently gripped her wrist with his one hand. “I’m not throwing us away, Terris.”
Jamal’s expression was warm, almost tender. So incongruous with the usually harsh lines of his face. Terris traced those lines with her desperate gaze, unable to speak, her heart brimming with untold emotions—hope and fear, joy and heartache, love and despair.
It was too late, she realized. She’d fallen in love with this man, and there was no help for it.
“I’m not giving you up,” Jamal said softly. “I can’t. You know why?”
Terris shook her head, mute. He lowered his face to hers, his unshaven jaw sending delicious little shocks through Terris as he brushed it against her cheek.
“You’re my mate, Terris.”
She stilled, then pulled back slightly to meet his gaze. It was serious and intense, and—she realized with dawning wonder—it was true. Jamal didn’t whisper sweet nothings or attempt to manipulate in order to get his way. He was inherently straightforward and direct. Whatever he said, he meant every word of it, even if it hurt the other person’s feelings. Especially if it hurt the other person’s feelings.
And this didn’t hurt her at all. Terris stared up at him, feeling her heart thump in a rapid, uneven rhythm that surely couldn’t be good for her, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care at all.
Jamal’s thumb swept over her escalating pulse. He watched for her reaction, taking note of her silence.
“Do you know what that means?” he asked slowly.
Terris wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. She wanted to dance and swing into Jamal’s arms, then collapse to the floor and beg him to reconsider, because he deserved a good life. A better life. She’d gotten her second chance many times over—a new leg, a new life, a new love. It was only fair that Jamal got his second chance too. And he was turning it down—for her.
It was wrong and selfish to let him do it, yet she so desperately wanted to be that selfish. She so desperately wanted him.
Terris managed to choke out a soft laugh that didn’t appear to reassure Jamal at all.
“I’m my father’s daughter,” she said. “I was born to a lion-shifter who fell in love with a human woman during a time of war, and who convinced her to stay with him forever and a day. Of course I know what that means.”
Jamal’s lips curved. “Well. I guess that means we have to go forever and a week. Can’t let your father upstage me, can I?”
Terris rested her forehead against his, expelling a shaky breath.
Jamal nuzzled her nose, sipped from her lips. Coaxed her into responding to his cautious, tentative, yet seductively insistent invitation.
“You’re my mate, Terris. Which means there’s nothing on earth that can induce me to let you go.”
Terris couldn’t tear her gaze away from him—he wouldn’t let her. He held her captive with so little effort at all.
“You can persuade me into doing any little thing that you like, sweet Valkyrie. I’ll enjoy every moment of it. But I won’t change my mind about this. I don’t want to waste a single second waiting for our life together to begin. I don’t want to miss a heartbeat that I could be sharing with you.” His voice turned whisper-quiet. “I’m not a good man, Terris, but I’m a fighter. I’ll fight for you. I’ll fight for us.”
It was a solemn vow. Terris nearly shuddered under its very weight. Jamal meant every word. She knew there was no changing his mind and, she discovered, neither did she want to.
Even knowing the part she was playing in hampering his recovery by allowing him to give up his place in the study, she couldn’t deny him—deny them—any longer. The only question was, could she find a way to live with the guilt?
“Tyrant,” Terris whispered, her smile slow and shaky.
Jamal’s own mouth crooked at the corner, victorious and triumphant. “On my best days.”
*
Jamal broke the news to BioSynth’s reps the next day. Not that he told them precisely why he was withdrawing from the trials. They assumed, of course, that it was because of the malfunctioning prosthesis, and he didn’t disabuse them of the notion.
A few of them likely suspected the truth. Terris’s constant company during his convalescence was surely a big giveaway, unless they were blind enough to think she extended the same care and vigilance to each and every one of her clients.
She doesn’t, Jamal tried to console himself, even as insecurity continued to gnaw at his bones.
The reps kept him a few more days for observation, but after that they ran out of excuses. Overkin gave him a once-over that morning and confirmed that Jamal didn’t need to be confined to bed—or to the infirmary—any longer. He needed to take it slow for the next couple of weeks, but there was no reason he couldn’t recuperate at home.
The guilt-stricken group was at a loss as to how to convince Jamal to remain with BioSynth. They’d apparently braced themselves for his notorious rage and scathing temper, crafting their battle plans accordingly, and were now stumped when he remained civil but adamant in his refusal to continue treatment.
Terris watched them from the corner. Several times she looked like she wanted to talk Jamal out of it herself, but she subsided when he shot her a warning glower.
“A respite, then,” insisted one of the managers. “Take some time to think about it.”
“There’s nothing left to think about.”
The others looked at each other, but there was nothing else they could do. They shook Jamal’s hand and wished him well, echoing the sentiment that they hoped he’d return. The despondent group began to leave the room.
Terris approached him. “They’re right, you know.”
“Don’t start.”
She shook her head but didn’t launch any further protests. “I’ll drive you back to your place.”
He responded with an arch look that made its silent but no less imperious demand: No, yours.
He wasn’t letting her off that easy. Fuck, it’d been days since he’d had a taste of her. He was haunted by memories of Terris climaxing so sweetly out in the hallway, and her boldly giving him a handjob in this very room. Both times he’d been this close to coming. A man could only put up with so much.
Terris colored as she read his expression. Jamal scented her sudden rush of desire and punctuated it with a slow, wicked smile.
“I’ll grab my bag,” she said. “You stay put until I get back.”
“I can meet you at the elevators,” he grumbled. “There’s nothing wrong with my legs.”
Terris rolled her eyes, though somehow imbuing the expression with a touch of affection. She headed out the door.
He had to admit, letting himself be coddled like this felt foreign but it also felt good. Of course, it helped that Terris was the one doing the coddling. He wouldn’t have taken it from anyone else.
Then he realized Overkin still remained in the room.
Jamal eyed him with apprehension as the doctor scribbled out what looked like a prescription and handed it to Jamal. “For the pain.”
Jamal cast a withering look. “What pain?”
“Ah, to be young and arrogant again. The painkillers we pumped into you won’t last forever, and neither will the wave of hormon
es and adrenaline you’re riding now. Best to have this at the ready, else you won’t get any sleep tonight.”
Jamal already planned on not getting any sleep tonight—for completely different reasons—but he grudgingly accepted the prescription. He hated the thought of muzzling his senses with painkillers, but he didn’t want to end up collapsing in the throes of agony while attempting to seduce his mate. That did a man’s ego no good, plus he’d only end up frightening her. He didn’t want his mate frightened.
“She’s a good woman.”
Jamal snapped his attention back to Overkin. The man’s expression remained placid, the words spoken casually, but Jamal recognized a warning when he heard one.
“Too good for the likes of me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Didn’t have to.”
Overkin peered at him over his glasses, looking like a wise old owl instead of the shuffling bear he was. “You ought to have more faith in yourself, Agent. She does.”
Jamal stared at him, at a loss for words.
The doctor shook his hand. “I regret the pain we put you through. Please believe me when I say we’ll be working day and night to find out what went wrong with the prosthesis. I hope we’ll see you soon.”
“You won’t,” Jamal replied quietly. “You know why.”
Overkin nodded. “I know.”
“I’m not ashamed of what I feel. I don’t care who knows about us. But it’s important to Terris that I not be… .”
“I know that too.” He arched a brow. “Just as I know she’d want you to stay and see the trials through.”
Jamal remained obstinately silent.
Overkin bowed his head in a nod. “Well. Door’s always open if you change your mind.” He plodded over to the door.
Jamal cleared his throat. “You know I don’t blame you guys for what happened to my hand, right?”
Overkin merely waved in answer, not glancing back.
Chapter Seven
They stopped to fill his prescription before Terris drove them both to her condo. Jamal took one look at the crisp, cream-colored furnishings, with oversized paintings and baby’s breath clustered in ridiculously tiny vases, and choked.