Tiger in the Hot Zone (Shifter Agents Book 4)

by Lauren Esker

  "Like this?"

  "Mmmm." Reluctantly she opened her eyes, blinking water off her eyelashes. "The conditioner's around here someplace."

  "This one?" He rinsed his sudsy hand under the shower's flow before retrieving the bottle. Peri twisted off the top, since she had two hands to do it with; one of his was still occupied in keeping her from falling over.

  "So it goes shampoo first, then conditioner?" he asked, rubbing it into her hair.

  "Yeah, why, how do you do it?"

  "I don't use shampoo at all. Dries my hair out too much. Besides, I don't have that much hair to begin with." It wasn't a buzz cut exactly, but it was cropped close to his head. "Just a little conditioner, maybe a little oil afterwards if it needs it, but this short it usually doesn't. I tried growing it out in college, and that's the only time I've had trouble with it frizzing out."

  "How long did it get?" She imagined him briefly with rasta dreads down to the middle of his back. The picture made her grin.

  "Not too long. I didn't really like it. Way easier to take care of when it's short like this." He scruffed his fingers through the buzz-cut part at the back of her skull. "I guess you can relate."

  "I need to get mine tidied up. It's already getting longer than I like it back there. I don't like the feeling of hair on my neck, especially in the summer." She reached up to pat the long punk 'do on top, matted down over her ears with water. "I've thought about buzzing the whole thing one of these days. Never could quite work up the nerve." Belatedly she realized that it was no longer just a matter of fixing her hair to suit herself. "Uh, would it bother you if I did that?"

  Noah ran his fingers through her wet hair. "You'd be just as beautiful with no hair. I gotta say I like it this way, but it's your hair. You can do what you want with it." He nibbled on her earlobe, sending pleasant tingles down to her toes.

  Which were starting to ache, along with her whole leg. "You know, as much fun as this is, I'm gonna have to get off my feet pretty soon. Foot, I mean."

  "Oh, right. Damn. I didn't even think of that. Here, I have an idea. Get down in the bottom of the tub."

  "What? Why? Oh ..." Already having some idea of what he had in mind, she accepted his helping hand down to the end of the tub opposite the shower. Sitting in the tub with her legs spread, she looked up at Noah, standing gloriously naked above her with the water cascading down his body.

  "Now this," Noah said, going down to one knee, "is what I'm talkin' about."

  The tub wasn't very long, so he had to double up with his backside pressed against the wall. "Are you comfortable?" she asked.

  "I'm a cat; we're comfortable anywhere."

  "First of all, that is not an answer, and second—" Then his tongue dipped between her folds and she completely forgot what the second thing was supposed to be.

  Okay, oral sex in the shower was definitely going on her rapidly lengthening list of New Favorite Things.

  ***

  Noah got Peri off twice, to his satisfaction, and she got him off once, and they collapsed into the big, soft bed. Peri's breathing quickly evened out, but Noah found sleep more elusive. At last, frustrated and unable to stop thinking about things, he got up and dressed quietly in the dark room. Maybe a short walk would clear his head. He could grab a snack from the vending machines, maybe walk around outside a little bit.

  There was something eerie about wandering a hotel at night, the halls brightly lit but empty and silent. Although most of the guests were sleeping, a few seemed to be awake. Behind one door, he heard the dramatic music and explosions of an action movie; from behind another came a high-pitched giggle, making him smile at the thought of what he and Peri had been up to not long ago.

  As he came around the corner where the ice and vending machines were, he caught sight of a quick, furtive movement in the vending machine alcove, and froze in place. He hadn't brought his gun; he hadn't thought he'd need it just to take a quick walk. And he thought he'd caught a tingle of shifter recognition, in the brief glimpse he'd had—

  Then he heard a quiet voice say, "Junior Mints? I didn't even know they still made those. Pretty sure I last had those as a freshman at the movies."

  There was a soft giggle. "When do you think they last restocked this vending machine? It might be the same ones."

  Trish and Delgado. He relaxed.

  "Candy isn't really my thing anyway," Delgado said. "Chips sound better." There was some rustling.

  "Awww, no sweet tooth, huh?"

  "Only for some things," Delgado murmured.

  ... right. He really shouldn't be listening to this. Noah backed away—stealthy tiger mode, activate!—and whacked the wall with his elbow.

  So much for stealthy tiger mode.

  The vending machine alcove went suddenly dead silent, except for the humming of the ice machine. Then there was a ripple along the wall, and Noah had to blink several times to realize he was looking at Delgado poking her head cautiously around the corner, color-shifted to match the wallpaper.

  "It's me," he called softly. "Agent Easton."

  Delgado relaxed; her coloring flushed normal again, and she stepped out of the alcove, holstering her weapon. She hadn't come unarmed. "Thanks for taking ten years off my life, Easton," she said. In her other hand, she had her sunglasses, and she slipped them back on as she spoke.

  With her eye the way it was, she probably couldn't go out in public without them. Noah wondered how her parents had handled it when she was a kid.

  "So everyone's awake now, apparently," Trish said, emerging from behind Delgado.

  "Sorry," Noah said. "I didn't mean to—I was just, you know .... vending machines, candy bar ... right, I'm leaving now."

  Delgado and Trish looked at each other, Trish going slightly pinker. "No, no," Trish said. "We were just leaving."

  "I didn't hear anything," Noah hastened to reassure them. "Embarrassing, I mean."

  Now Delgado was starting to flush too. "There was nothing embarrassing going on, Easton."

  "Although there might've been," Trish muttered, "if you hadn't showed up."

  "I'm going back to my room now," Noah announced, and escaped.

  When he let himself back into the hotel room, Peri jerked awake and sat up with a gasp.

  "Sorry, sorry. It's only me."

  "God, Easton. Don't do that to a girl." With his sharper-than-human night vision, he saw her flop down on the pillows.

  "Sorry. I was just restless. Did a little perimeter check and a bit of accidental cockblocking."

  "A bit of what, now?"

  "Never mind." He'd been undressing while they talked; now he slid under the sheets and Peri snuggled up to him. "I don't think we're going to need to lock Delgado and Trish in any closets."

  "Ngghhh. Right now I don't care. All I want to do is sleep." She tucked her face into the crook of his shoulder. "Which I could do, if someone would stop waking me up with midnight wanderings."

  "No more midnight wanderings," he promised, tucking an arm around her.

  Relaxing against a comfortably warm Peri, he didn't take long this time to fall asleep.

  Chapter Sixteen

  You'll never BELIEVE what's happening right under your feet!

  Posted 5:27:00 by Peri Moreland

  This innocent-looking Arizona desert hides a secret that will astonish you! Scroll down and test your eyes on these pictures.

  Looks like ordinary desert, doesn't it?

  Look closer.

  Closer yet ...

  The seemingly desolate countryside near a popular Arizona hiking trail, which thousands of people walk past every year, is one of many doorways to a secret subterranean civilization that has coexisted alongside ours for millennia.

  Call it what you will—the hollow Earth, Mu, Atlantis. I don't know their name for it, as they seem to communicate with each other telepathically. But the point is, they're here. They're among us.

  The people who were following me, the ones who tried to abduct me, are not with the
government, and they're not random psychos. They're a secret society from this underground world.

  On location in the mountains of northern Arizona, I am working hard to uncover their secrets. See the links in the sidebar for more on how you can help with that. Any sightings or information that you have for me can be sent to me by private message or left in the comments. Just be smart and be careful. Always use an alias. Don't risk your own safety.

  I know you must be clamoring for details. Who are these mysterious people? Are they human? How long have they been among us? Are they planning an invasion? I am convinced that they are human, although many of them have powers and technology beyond our own, due to their civilization's vast advancement compared to ours. As for the possibility of invasion, this is one of the things I'm currently investigating. See below for some of the photos I managed to take while—

  Noah, sitting on the end of their hotel bed, looked up from the borrowed laptop. "Have you considered a career as a science fiction writer?"

  "I know, right? Sometimes I amaze myself."

  Peri was sitting at the head of the bed, idly paging through messages on her phone, with her good leg tucked under her and the other one bent at the knee. She had nothing on but an oversized T-shirt that draped loosely over her thighs, and a flash of bare hip revealed that she was wearing no underwear. Noah wondered if she would believe him if he told her how amazing she looked just like this, wearing no makeup, her hair a snarled and sleep-tousled mess.

  They'd made love last night and again this morning, but just looking at her like that was starting to arouse him again.

  "I can feel you looking." She quirked a smile without taking her eyes off her phone. "And I can also tell you're impatient. Keep your pants on ... or off, as the case may be. We've cast our bread upon the waters and now all we can do is let it float wherever it will. I'm getting some fascinating Twitter messages already."

  "I bet you are." Noah shook his head and did his best to wrench himself back to business before his physical state got out of hand. He was wearing nothing but a pair of boxers himself, and the laptop didn't do much to cover things up. He paged down, skimming more of her blog post. "What are these pictures actually of?"

  "Well, most of them are ordinary tourist photos of the desert that I took driving up here, plus a stock photo of an old mine in Utah. The one at the bottom is an extreme closeup of the bedframe with the lights in the room turned off and half my hand covering my phone's camera lens. Remember, it's not a proper conspiracy post without some blurry, incomprehensible pictures somewhere in there." She flopped back against the pillows. "I don't know how nostalgic I should feel for the days when I really would be here to investigate a secret civilization in a hollow mountains. Nobody ever told me that being part of an actual government conspiracy is so nerve-wracking."

  Noah set the laptop aside and swung his legs onto the bed. Peri sighed and moved into the inviting circle of his arms. He leaned back against the disarrayed pillows and she curled against him, wrapped in his embrace. Resting his chin against the top of her head, he inhaled the soft scent of her hair.

  He was already learning the smell of her, the feel of her.

  "You're brave, Peri," he said softly into her hair. "This isn't your fight. You could've just walked away. Hell, after people started trying to kill you, almost anybody would have. Instead you've stayed to help my people fight our battle."

  "Using my mad conspiracy-blogger skills."

  "Hey, I don't know anyone else who has that skill set. Only you could do what we needed someone to do." He traced slow circles on her shoulder with the palm of his hand. "For the safety of shifterkind, the world can never know what we did here. We'll never get any medals. But when all this is over, when my people are safe, I believe that you're going to remake your site the way we talked about, and then everyone can admire you as much as I do now."

  Her breath tickled his collarbone as she huffed a small laugh. "Actually they're gonna think I've sold out. They'll be calling me a traitor and worse."

  "Some of them, maybe. But then there will be people like Ramona, who need someone to speak up for them. To be a voice of hope for them. You can tell your story, Peri—your real story, about how you got out, and they can too."

  "I just wish ..." She trailed off, not finishing. Instead she pressed her lips to his collarbone, leaving a slow trail of kisses while her free hand stroked his flat stomach.

  "You know, Ms. Moreland, if you're trying to distract me, you're doing a good job."

  "It's more like I'm trying to distract me." Her hand went lower, and lower yet, dipping below the waistband of his boxers. "Why, Agent Easton, I do believe that's a distraction I feel down here."

  "Is that what you call it? Because I call it—"

  His playful response was smothered in a kiss as she pulled herself up to silence him with her warm and willing mouth.

  ***

  The knock at the door came an hour or so later, as they lay tangled together on the rumpled sheets, naked and sticky and very relaxed.

  "Five minutes!" Noah shouted at the door.

  "Dibs on the shower," Peri announced. "I can tell already that I'm gonna be showering three times a day at the rate we're going." She swung her legs off the bed, hesitated for an instant at the problem of making it to the bathroom without putting her leg on, then hopped into the bathroom using the wall and furniture for support.

  "Make that twenty minutes!" Noah called.

  "Don't strain something," Thiessen's muffled and amused-sounding voice drawled through the door. "Just wanted to let you know that we're heading down to breakfast."

  "See you soon. Text me before you go anywhere."

  He lounged on the bed for a lethargic moment or two, thinking about napping a bit more. But he could hear the sound of the running shower, and the delicious mental image of a wet, naked Peri got him up.

  He found her with the shower curtain partly drawn, sitting on the edge of the tub with her legs inside and sudsing herself from a bottle of hotel body wash.

  "Want some help from the local assistive standing aid?"

  Peri jerked violently and nearly fell off the edge of the tub. "Jeez, Easton! Warn a girl."

  "Sorry."

  "And to answer your question ..." Her smile was playful. "After last night, you can be my assistive shower device anytime."

  They didn't do anything more than shower—neither of them was quite ready to go again—but it was a very long, very pleasant shower. When they came downstairs at last, they found that the rest of their team had commandeered two tables pushed together in the hotel's breakfast room. Delgado waved them over as they came from the buffet with loaded plates; she and Trish had their chairs very close together, so it seemed neither the previous night's vending-machine interruption or Caine's outburst had done any damage.

  There were a few people Noah didn't recognize at the table; he guessed the backup team had arrived. One of them was the Peri decoy, recognizable at a glance with her pouf of colorful hair and black heavy-metal T-shirt. Noah tried not to stare. It was especially disconcerting because, underneath the bright Peri haircut, she had the face of a middle-aged East Asian woman.

  "Whoa," Peri said, staring at her doppelganger, and took a chair next to her. "I'm Peri. But you probably already know that."

  "Kelly Nakamura. So you're the reason why I had to get a haircut that's going to completely freak out my husband when he sees it." But she was grinning as she said it.

  "She's from the Records office," Thiessen said. "I know what you're probably thinking, but look, we have a limited number of human employees to choose from. She's about Peri's height and build, and from a distance, with sunglasses on, we think she ought to be convincing."

  "Brought you something. Here." Nakamura leaned under the table and brought up a wide-brimmed straw hat. "Don't go out of the hotel without it. In fact, if you can help it, don't go out at all."

  Peri stared at it in horror. "Can't I at least pick my own h
at? That looks nothing at all like anything I would ever wear."

  "That's the point, kiddo." Nakamura planted the hat on Peri's head and adjusted it with a pleased look. "I've got a shirt for you too."

  "No," Peri said flatly when she was presented with a flowered Hawaiian shirt.

  "Think of it as going undercover," Noah told her, rubbing her shoulder.

  "Going undercover as a complete nerd," Peri muttered, rolling up the shirt and stuffing it in her lap. "At least this way I won't want to go out in public."

  Noah kissed her cheek. "The important thing is to keep you safe."

  "See anything I need to change?" Nakamura asked Peri, spreading her arms. "You're the expert on you, after all."

  Peri studied her thoughtfully. "Let me see you walk."

  "Walk?" Nakamura looked thoroughly puzzled.

  "Uh, yeah." Peri leaned down and pulled up the leg of her jeans.

  "Oh." Nakamura's eyebrows went up. "Nobody told me about that. Do you limp?"

  "Not much, but I don't quite put that foot down the same way as the other one. It's hard to describe. Let me show you."

  Peri and Nakamura did a couple circuits of the table. Noah was impressed at the human agent's ability to emulate Peri's body language.

  "I think we're ready to roll," Nakamura said cheerfully, and the rest of her team got up from the table. "We'll stick around town and check in every hour or so. Good luck, everyone."

  Peri watched wistfully as Nakamura and her team left the dining room. "She gets to tourist around Flagstaff, but I don't. This is so unfair."

  "Speaking of which." Delgado made little typing motions with her fingers. "Did you do the thing?"

  "My first blog posts are deployed." Peri glanced at her phone. "And it's definitely burning up my Twitter stream."

  "That's a good thing?"

  "For our purposes? Yes."