Dawn Endeavor 4: Gunnar's Game

by Marie Harte

  Both of them had responsibilities that pulled them apart from one another. His had been to the United States Navy, while Alicia's had been to her family and the future her mother had long ago shown her. When she'd met Lonnie, it seemed as if fate smiled upon her, because Lonnie and his aims were a part of it all.

  She didn't know how her life would end. Nor did she know if the things she influenced would come back to one day haunt her. She only did what her mother and her mother's mother had done before her. She trusted in her spirit, in the totem of her foremothers, and in herself. She loved Lonnie with the same passion she stored for those she considered her own. Like her daughter and her descendants, her sisters and her nieces and nephews.

  Without her help, Ava, Morgan, and Olivia would never have come close to achieving their potential. Now Morgan had a mate to love. Olivia had a husband and father for her child. Ava still needed her help, but her great-great-granddaughter had to do things her way. Stubborn brat. Alicia curbed a smile, knowing that in Gunnar, Ava had found a man worthy of the title mate.

  Her pleasure in their stunted courtship faded. Gunnar had a world of hurt in his broad frame. A lifetime of cruelties suffered by an innocent child who'd turned into a brusque, hardened man. Only a stubborn woman like Ava would be able to pierce his hard shell and conquer the monster within.

  A strong female for a strong male. The pair were obviously alike, both stubborn yet fierce. Unlike Alicia and Lonnie. He'd said it had never bothered him that Alicia was physically stronger than he was, so psychically gifted. But perhaps it had. Maybe that's why he'd turned against her in this time of strife.

  She blinked away useless tears, distressed and disgusted that she could be so weak in the presence of others. Alicia never cried, and she couldn't have said why she lately had trouble containing her emotions. To her relief, Berstrom and Robert seemed to be engaged in conversation and unaware of her distress.

  Subtly composing herself, Alicia reined in her awkward emotions, not used to feeling so much uncertainty. She believed in a higher power, in the spirits that guided her. She'd deal with Lonnie the way she'd dealt with so much other stress in her long-lived life. One day at a time.

  “Right, Mrs. Sharpe?” Robert said.

  “I'm sorry, dear. What was that?”

  Berstrom sniffed. “He just said that there's no reason for you to remain while he and I iron out the details the two of you already agreed upon.” She smiled and nodded at Robert, grateful he'd decided to deal with Berstrom's unpleasantness by himself. No reason for them both to suffer. But before she could thank him, she felt a distinct sense of wrongness. Without letting either man see her unease, she slowly rose from her chair.

  Robert moved forward to assist her and caught her hand in his. She felt the slow draw of his finger over the back of her hand, a familiar stroke he often used when they met. Come to think of it, Robert often found an excuse to touch her.

  Nothing sexual, just platonic touches to endear himself, or so she'd once thought.

  Not sure why she'd never noticed it before, she instinctively pushed a psychic block at the contact. Then she caught the faint trace of Melissa Ramirez on him.

  Stunned and not sure what to think, she kept her expression pleasantly polite and nodded her thanks. “I'll see you later, Robert? Dinner, my treat.” She forced a smile and glanced at Berstrom.

  Robert's lips quirked. For an older man, he kept himself in shape. Thick black hair threaded with silver was coifed in a sophisticated cut and gave him a polished look. His nails, his grooming, even his manners were always so carefully displayed.

  Wondering if Melissa thought to use Robert against them or if Robert could possibly be an enemy to beware, Alicia kept up her internal shields while projecting friendship and the scent of trust. Unlike others of her kind, Alicia could and did scent emotions. Robert's seemed typically driven, nothing dark or untoward. Yet Alicia couldn't help feeling a bit hazy where he was concerned. Too bad Olivia or Jesse couldn't have accompanied her. She could have used their input.

  No matter. By projecting her own light scent of trust, she'd control the players of this game she had no intention of losing. Her Circs, her great-great-granddaughter, and her entire future depended upon coming out the winner.

  Her mind now on this new mystery, she slowly made her way from the room into the hallway. She walked down the corridor toward Admiral London's office in this five-sided puzzle palace. Time to see just how deep Lonnie had sunk in this quagmire of deceit.

  He watched carefully as she walked down the hall. Lonnie had to make damn sure the woman couldn't see the truth. She had eyes like a bat and the intuition of a soothsayer. For all he knew, she really did see the future. Alicia Sharpe knew enough to be dangerous, like that asshole Kisho Hayashi. Personally, Lonnie had no use for prognostication. What was the use of knowing a future that might or might not come true? It gave him a headache to ponder the probabilities—if tomorrow would happen because he'd affected it that way, or because it was meant to happen.

  Fortunately, his talent lay elsewhere. He'd been working his mojo on Sharpe for years. Though they'd only come together officially on this project, he'd set the stage some time ago. He needed her to trust him, and with the press of his fingers against her hand, those harmless handshakes, he'd infused a link she had yet to deny. He had her right where he wanted her. If she'd found him out, she'd have killed him long ago.

  He could respect that. From one predator to another, taking out the weak, disabling the enemy, made sense. And speaking of weak… He felt the small note Melissa had left in his jacket pocket and wanted to kill her, right the fuck now. He'd been so careful for so long. Apparently, forcing her to leave the other night hadn't done him any favors. The bitch had sneaked an apologetic love note into his inside pocket, amid a few other business cards he'd tucked away.

  He had only himself to blame, of course. He should have gone through his things before coming to work. Aside from Sharpe, there were hidden psychics running amuck in the Pentagon, more turnouts from the PWP. Both a blessing and a curse. While he took credit for the project's successes, he also had to guard against being found out. Unfortunately, he couldn't count on all of his men standing by him, not when he sometimes awarded foreign nations rights that ran counter to American objectives.

  Lonnie tried to shrug off his concern. If Sharpe had detected him or his tie to Melissa, she would have confronted him about it. It's not as if he hid from her, not with his office a stone's throw from Berstrom's.

  Berstrom suddenly stood with a sick smile. “Admiral. So good to see you here.

  Robert and I were just finishing up.”

  “I just wanted to make sure our budget for the next fiscal year is in order. No worries, right, Berstrom?”

  All three men nodded at one another, the semblance of friendly camaraderie one that they all knew to be false.

  “Things are fine, Admiral,” Berstrom answered in a chipper voice. “Just fine.” And it would be. Just as soon as Alicia and her Circs were no more. Time to scrap the Dawn Endeavor project, finally, and move on to bigger and brighter things.

  Chapter Eight

  Gunnar sat in the cabin where he could think, away from everyone and everything. He couldn't help it. He knew Jules and the others needed him. Admiral London was due to visit in another fourteen hours, and they needed to prepare. But fourteen hours was half a day away. He had some time to kill.

  Time to kill, not people to kill.

  Regret for the way he'd ended things with Ava hit him hard. His berserker and beast refused to rise, weighted down under lashing sorrow. For all that he'd claimed he'd killed his girlfriend and sister, he could too easily see their happy faces glowing just for him.

  Gentle Sophie, his younger sister. He remembered white-blonde hair and blue eyes. A soft smile, that special pleasure she reserved just for him. The poor kid hadn't had much to smile about growing up dirt poor under the stern eye of an autocratic dickhead. And what about Susanna? For all
that he thought he'd loved her, would never live without her, he'd survived long enough to join the navy, become a SEAL, a Circ, and fuck anything that moved.

  At first the sexual needs had felt like a betrayal. But since screwing other women had hurt him as much as it soothed his physical needs, he'd reveled in the emotional pain, because he deserved it. If he'd been less selfish, less concerned with his fucked-up need for affection and belonging, he never would have invited Susanna into his life, and she'd still be alive today.

  Sophie he should have protected, and he knew that. She'd always been in danger, but Susanna had been a true casualty of bad timing and the bad taste to see something good in him.

  A replica of his father, Gunnar had the same height, the same brawn, the same cold, ice blue eyes, or so his mother had repeatedly told him before she'd died.

  The bitter woman had blamed him for so much. Too weak to leave his father, she'd put the fault for Eric Tersch's abuse at Gunnar's hands.

  You’re too loud, too quiet. Too neat, too sloppy. Hurry up. Slow down. No matter what he did, he was fucked. She doted on Sophie, though. His father did too, until he drank or forgot how much loved her. Sophie was the little ray of sunshine in a house from hell.

  Was it any wonder he'd killed his father? Tersch had been born and trained to destroy—by example.

  Eric Tersch loved order, and he loved control. The raging beast was never far from his father's mind. No, not a beast. A berserker. The fucker didn’t deserve a beast. He’d have killed it for being a pure-hearted thing. Though Tersch's beast liked his anger, he knew better than to harm because of it. His beast protected the innocent. Always. It was the berserker that went off half-cocked.

  His beast puffed up with pleasure at the distinction before urging Tersch to return to the mansion to find Ava. Claim her. Need her. Love her.

  Tersch rubbed his eyes, so tired of fighting himself all the time. “Christ. I do love her. That's why I'm protecting her from it, you bastard.” And now I’m crazy for talking to my schizoid beastly personality. Fuck.

  He'd known from the moment he met Ava that one of them would eventually have to leave Circ central. He wanted her, but he couldn't have her. And now seeing she was Circ, he really had to go. After he dealt with the dickheads trying to kill the team, he'd look for another place to live. It would kill him to leave his friends, to leave Ava, but he had no choice. He'd learned his lesson the hard way.

  Best to sacrifice his happiness than kill an innocent woman, the way his father's berserker had killed the women in Tersch's life.

  He groaned and lay back on the blankets covering a section of the dirt floor.

  Since he'd discovered the place months ago, he'd taken pains to make it more livable. Hayashi had helped, and Tersch now had a place to sleep, a stash of Tastykakes in a cooler to repel wildlife, and several bottles of water he filled from a nearby natural spring. Solitude and silence, just what he needed.

  “I know you're in there.”

  He jumped to his feet in shock when Ava pushed through the open doorway, bathed in moonlight. “What the hell?”

  “Didn't hear me or smell me, I know. What can I say? I'm good.” She grinned, and the sight of her smug smile pained him enough to bring tears to his eyes.

  Don’t be a pussy, Son. Man up. He heard his father's scornful words and felt the open-handed slaps to his face as if he'd been struck yesterday. So much for years of distance and repressed memories to salve the pain.

  He turned before she spied his weakness, embarrassed anew. So much for control. The damned woman unraveled him like a fucking black widow.

  “Gunnar?”

  Shit. Not the soft, concerned voice. “I need space, Ava.”

  “I know. That's why I'm here.”

  Did she not hear him? “I said—”

  “I know what you said. But you're an idiot. You don't know what you need.”

  “Didn't you listen before?” Anger returned, and as much as he welcomed the strength of the emotion, he feared it as well. He couldn't get too carried away, or the berserker would return to hurt Ava.

  “I said shut that bitch up!” Eric yelled. He struck Sophie so hard, she hit the table and sliced open her forehead. “I want space, quiet. I can’t think with all that racket.”

  Momma stared at him in silence, a broken woman. And then Susanna made a noise, and his father pushed open the door to his bedroom, where Gunnar had been hiding her. She’d showed up at the house unexpectedly. He’d warned her never to come around. Especially not with Eric home, drinking, mad…

  “I won't go away. Not again.” Ava's beast stared at him through dark black eyes. “I've come to claim my mate.”

  He snorted, trying to pretend he wasn't shaking. “Bullshit. You're just pissed because I don't want you.”

  She had the nerve to laugh, then hit him so fast and with such force, he saw stars. Before he could recover, she moved in a blur and stuck him with a specially tipped needle to penetrate his thick skin. Even in human form, Circ skin was tough.

  She depressed the plunger and injected him with something. Tersch wanted to be mad, but both his beast and his berserker approved the trickery. Good mate.

  Smart.

  “It'll just relax you a bit. Enough to hide your rage under a calming haze, but not too much.” She smiled at him.

  God, she was so pretty. Crazy but gorgeous.

  “Now you just lay there while I strip those clothes off you.” Alarmed at the idea, he protested, gratified he had enough cognizance to know she shouldn't get him naked. “No. The shit you gave me isn't working fast enough. If I can still think, I can still get mad. Leave me, Ava. I don't want to hurt you.”

  “You won't. You love me,” she said defiantly, as if daring him to contradict her.

  “And you love me. So how stupid does that make you?” he growled. “Now let me… When—What the fuck did you put on my wrists?” Shocked, he tugged but couldn't free himself from the dark cord wrapped around his wrists and fastened to stakes on the ground on either side of his head.

  “I told you I'm fast, sweetie.” Ava hummed under her breath as she used her claws to strip him of the trousers he wore. He'd left the house the day before while changed and didn't wear anything else.

  “Man, have I told you how much I love that you go commando? That is one beautiful cock.”

  His dick stiffened, pointing directly up at her. To his mortification, he felt his cheeks heat. “Ava, come on.” He squirmed and sucked in a breath when she closed her small hand around him.

  “You're so thick, I can't wrap my hand around you. You're always big, aren't you? Even when you're not changed.” She licked her lips, and he groaned. “Now, this is how it's gonna be. I'm going to ride you until you're begging me to come. Then I'm going to make you bleed and do it all over again.” She lifted a hand and flashed her pretty claws at him.

  The meanness in her tone turned him on so much, his dick grew wet. Not just from the oils he naturally secreted when changed, but from a burst of precum that dampened his slit.

  “You can't. The beast might play nice, but my berserker's going to hurt you, Ava. Why the hell do you think I've never claimed you before?”

  “Maybe because you're scared?” she taunted. “Not used to fucking a woman who can put you on your ass.” She ran a claw down his belly, and he shuddered.

  “Hard to pound into a woman you're afraid of crushing under all that might, hmm?”

  “Dammit,” he rasped, completely under her spell. He could barely concentrate on anything but the feel of her sharp nails over his skin. She didn't play nice at all.

  She dug hard enough for him to feel it, but not hard enough to break the skin.

  “I can do this all night.” Ava chuckled. “But I don't think you'll last that long.”

  “I can last forever if I have to.” An empty threat, and they both knew it. His cock felt so hard right now, he feared he'd come without much more provocation.

  She wiped her fingers over
his slit and rubbed it over his cockhead.

  He bucked in her hand.

  “I already know how good you taste.” She licked her lips. “Do you remember how good my mouth feels?”

  “Shit.” He panted, trying to bring himself back under control. He'd never been this turned on, and he kept worrying that his beast would push past the drug she'd given him. Once his beast took control, his berserker wouldn't be far behind.

  “No, no. That's not right. I want your honest response, Gunnar.” Ava remained clothed, and the sight of her fully dressed while he was naked lent her an impression of power. Impression? Hell, the woman has me tied down like a fucking sacrifice.

  “I'm not going to tell you again. Let me g—Ava!” She swallowed his cock in one large breath, taking all of him to the back of her throat. She didn't move or suck him, just held him there, helpless, aching, and needing to come so badly.

  “Baby, oh yeah. Fuck me,” he pleaded.

  She slowly withdrew until the tip of him rested against her plump lips.

  He couldn't stop staring at the erotic sight, drugged on her skillful play.

  “Where do you want it, sweetie? In my mouth or in my cunt?” Hearing her talk like that, watching her lick and nibble at his cock, turned him inside out. He felt his berserker rage to break free, and then Ava slapped his chest hard and raked her nails down his abdomen, drawing blood.

  “You, wait for it,” she snarled, and he had the oddest notion she spoke not to him, but to his berserker.

  Staring up into pitch-black eyes bemused him enough that he ceased movement. His berserker stared into the Circ he wanted with his last breath. To his astonishment, he felt something inside him give. He couldn't understand how this slight female could break him down so completely. But he couldn't deny his berserker's subtle approval. A distant surrender.