Flirting With Fate (5 page)

“We’re married,” she said, pushing toward the
exit. “We’ve been trying to have a baby for a little over a year, and we’re
looking for a fertility doctor to help us conceive since we can’t seem to do it
on our own.” She kept her eyes averted as she told him their cover. Last night,
after giving him a piece of her mind for going through her things, she’d kicked
him out of her apartment and gone to bed feeling cocky as hell.

A couple of hours later, the last of the Grey
Goose wore off, and she’d woken up feeling like a royal fool.

All this time she’d been so convinced he wanted
her, so sure she was the one keeping things from getting physical between them.
But at 2 a.m. it had occurred to her that maybe he wasn’t interested.

He was attracted to her. She knew that, but that
was a simple biological reaction. It didn’t mean he consciously wanted her. Yet
she’d touched herself thinking he’d watch.

Why hadn’t it occurred to her before last night
that he’d never pursued her, never asked her out, never tried to kiss her?

It sure as hell occurred to her now.

“Josie?” Tanner said, making her realize she
hadn’t been listening to him, just pushing her way through the crowd.

“I’m sorry. What?” Damn it, it was those visions
that made her cocky. How many times and ways could she see herself getting down
and dirty with a guy and not assume he wanted her?

“What have we tried?” Tanner asked. When she
blinked at him, he said, “Sex wise?”

“Sex?” Her mouth went dry, imagining how different
her night would have been if he’d materialized at the end of her bed, if his
mouth had finished the job her hand had started.

“How often are we having intercourse? Have you
been charting your cycles? Taking your temperature? What have we tried before
seeking a doctor’s help?” He took her hand and pulled her into an alley. “It’s
probably better we finish this discussion before we go in the office.”

She swallowed.
Get with it, Josie.
Tanner
had done his research. “Yeah, sorry. Natural family planning is the method
we’ve been using.”

“The one where you check cervical mucus?”

She frowned. “For a single guy, you know a
freakish amount about fertility.”

“Google?” He raised a brow as if to suggest this
was something she should look into.

“Yeah. We started about charting six months ago
and still haven’t had any luck.”

Tanner nodded. “How often are we having sex?”

Josie opened her mouth, closed it, then thought
Screw
it
. Hell hath no fury like a woman rejected. “I think that all depends on
you.”

He drew his brows together. “How so?”

She smirked and lifted a shoulder carelessly. “How
often are you up for it?”

His smile stretched across his face like she’d
told a great joke. “I don’t think frequency would be a problem on my side.”

Josie gaped. “Are you suggesting
I’m
the
reason we can’t get pregnant?”

Tanner shrugged. “Isn’t it usually the woman who’s
not interested in sex? I mean, we should have a believable story, so maybe
that’s part of the problem.”

“Ha! I don’t know what women you’ve been dating,
but I’m a healthy young woman with a matching sex drive.”

He leaned against the building and turned his
palms up. “For your vibrator, sure. But how often can you handle the real
thing?”

He was
mocking
her now? First, he turned
down her invitation to watch her and now he was mocking her for masturbating?
“Listen,” she said, closing the space between them, “I’m sorry if you’re
intimidated by a woman who can get herself off without a man’s assistance, but
if you and I were trying to make a kid, I’d be up for whatever you could
supply. Twice a day? I’m your girl. Four times? Even better.”

His lip twitched. “I’ll remember that.”

Heat flared in her cheeks. He’d been baiting her!

He dropped his eyes to study her curves for a
few—too brief—seconds.

Her heart pounded.

He lowered his lashes and said, “Shall we?”

She shook her head. “I’ll get you for that,” she
muttered. She took his arm and like the happily married couple they weren’t,
they headed into the fertility clinic.

Tara was almost surprised to see he’d come. She
half expected him to ignore her message.

Collin Raines didn’t look up from his coffee when
she lowered herself into the seat across from him. “Make it quick,” he said,
shifting his gaze to the window.

“They gave me a job,” she said, barely keeping the
excitement from her voice. “I’m gonna be a Stiletto Girl.”

That got his attention. He turned his icy eyes on
her and narrowed them. The ragged scar that ran diagonally across his face
never ceased to startle her. He’d gotten that saving her sister, and by
extension, saving Tara. “You want me to be happy about that?”

Tara lifted her chin. “Yes, I do.”

He set his jaw and looked out the window again.
“Good for you, then.”

Things hadn’t been right between them since what
happened in Eden last winter. Tara and Collin had worked together to bring down
the old leader of the Ascendants. Tara and Collin’s plan to lure Winston into
drinking her poisonous blood had worked.

But Tara’s sister didn’t care. All Paige could see
was that Collin had been willing to let Tara die. And because she was
unfailingly irrational, she didn’t take into account that every Seer saw Tara
dying whether she helped Collin or not. In the end, Collin had
saved
her, but Paige didn’t see it that way.

“Is that all?” Collin asked, not looking at her.
Paige had told him to leave Tara alone, and he’d listened. Tara hated Paige for
that.

“I need your help,” she blurted.

“I doubt Paige would be inclined to let me help
you with anything at all.”

“I need to lose my virginity.” The words came out
too loud and several curious patrons cast glances in their direction. Heat
blossomed in her cheeks.

Collin spoke under his breath. “So you’ll announce
it to the whole diner and take them on a first come, first served basis?”

“I told you we should meet at your apartment. Do
you believe me now?”

“We’re not going to my apartment,” he said, nearly
growling the words. “And you’re not losing your virginity. You’re a child.”

She sucked in her breath. Why didn’t he just slap
her while he was at it? He sounded like Paige. “I’m nineteen years old,” she
said between clenched teeth. “Virgins my age are a rarity. I’d hardly be pulling
down the average.”

Sighing, he shook his head. “You know what I
mean.” He pulled a hand through his hair. “Okay, I’ll humor you. Why do you
want to…to…to do this?”

She giggled. “You can’t say it, can you?” His face
hardened and she sighed. “My powers still haven’t come back.”

His eyes softened.

She tensed at the sympathy on his face. She’d
gotten enough sympathy to last a lifetime. “Stop looking at me like that!”

“Tara, you’re one of maybe a few dozen Specials
who had powers before losing her virginity. You’re the only one who didn’t die
from the condition that accompanies premature powers. Don’t you think losing
them was for the best? When your powers went away, the sickness went with it.
They were linked.”

She swallowed. They had no way of knowing if what
he said was true, but that was the general consensus. “But all the other
Specials—the ones whose powers don’t make them ill—don’t come into their powers
until they lose their virginity.”

“It’s unlikely and the worst possible reason you
should consider something so important. Why don’t you try to be a normal girl?”

She gritted her teeth. “You mean a normal girl
who’s willing to give herself to a guy because she loves him?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“That ship has sailed, Collin. Except instead of
my body, I was willing to give my life.”

His gaze snapped to hers when he digested her
words. The emotion in his eyes was unreadable—pain? indifference? disgust?
Maybe that came from a childhood of being poked and prodded like a lab rat. As
a Blocker, it was appropriate that he hid his feelings well. But as the
girl—no,
woman
—who loved him, it was frustrating as hell.

“Collin, I’m never going to be a normal girl. But
right now, I’m only normal in a way that makes me weak. Don’t you want me to
have a power? So I can protect myself?”

In one fluid movement, he pushed himself out of
the booth and stood. “This conversation’s over.” He threw a ten on the table
before sweeping out of the restaurant.

She ignored the stares of the diners as she chased
after him.

His strides were long and fast, and he was in the
parking lot before she caught up with him. “What upsets you most?”

He lifted his face to the sky. “About what?”

“What upsets you most about the conversation we
just had? That I fell in love with you? Big deal. I’m over it. That I want to
lose my virginity? It’s mine to lose. Or is it that I’d just as soon lose it
with you as some random frat boy? It’s not like I’d be the first
nineteen-year-old Sykes you screwed.”

She’d meant to hurt him by throwing his past with
Paige in his face, so his laughter startled her.

“What?” she said, feeling foolish for the first
time all day.

“Tara, when I slept with your sister the first
time, I wasn’t the old man I am now.” He shook his head.

She swallowed. He would be forty soon, but to
Tara, he wasn’t old. He was...perfect. “You know, I’ll just find someone else
if you don’t do it.”

“I gather as much, and, as you say, it’s yours to
lose.” Slowly, he closed the space between them and ran his finger along her
jaw line. “But I won’t be the selfish bastard your sister believes me to be.”

Her heart pounded in her throat as his gaze
dropped to her lips. “How would this make you selfish?”

He sighed and dropped his hand. “Good luck with your
new job, Tara. I sincerely hope the man you find to do this little job for you
is worthwhile.”

 Two seconds after stepping out of the SIA field
campus office, Tanner heard shots. He dropped to the ground and rolled behind a
tree.

Fernandez was there, his back pressed against the
trunk of the tree. He nudged Tanner with the butt of his gun. “They get you?”

Tanner shook his head and rolled behind the
scrapped hood of a car to avoid another round. The ball of paint exploded on
the ground two feet to his right. “I’m clean,” he said, thinking,
barely
.

He was not in any mood to join in on the SIA’s
weekly paintball match, but his team had lost to a group of desk jockeys last
week. If he made them lose by not showing tonight, Darian and Fernandez would
chop off his testicles.

Ten yards away, Darian caught a blue team opponent
off guard, touching him and making him drop his gun. He could have projected
pain—this was a no-holds-barred match—but from the way the idiot began
blubbering, it was clear Darian had chosen emotional pain over physical. Darian
snatched up the extra gun and jogged over to cover with Fernandez and Tanner.

The air filled with a sharp screeching sound,
forcing the men to drop their guns and cover their ears. It stopped nearly as
soon as it began, and they could breathe again.

“I hate it when Simons uses his sonic scream.”
Tanner muttered, rubbing his aching ears.

Darian peeked around the tree and chuckled.
“Apparently, so do his teammates. Cooley is the one who shut him up.”

“Good. Jesus, when I need hearing aids at
thirty-five, remind me that Simons gets to pay for them.”

“I didn’t see you at the office today,” Darian
said. “Where were you?”

“Jacking off,” Fernandez mumbled, reloading his
gun with green paint pellets.

“Pretty much,” Tanner said.

Darian pulled his attention from the field where
someone from team purple had just made team blue’s guns disintegrate into dust.
“Excuse me?”

Tanner shook his head. “I’ve been following up on
a couple of leads for a potential case.” But he was doing it blind because he
hadn’t found a thing in Josie’s apartment about the fertility clinics, and she
hadn’t exactly opened up to him about it either. “I think they might be dead
ends.”

They’d gone to five clinics today, and he’d had to
leave a sample at every one. He wasn’t sure what the point was, but Josie insisted
they might want to return to any number of the clinics, and this would give
them a handy excuse.

His dick was practically chafed from stroking one
out for every doctor, and yet all he had to do was remember how Josie had
looked last night and he was hard again. All that pale, creamy skin exposed,
save for what was behind the pink thong and the lacy cups of her bra. He
couldn’t get her out of his mind—the image of her slipping her hand between her
legs, the sound of her moans as she made herself come.

And then she’d bitched at him for not watching?
Yeah, bitched at him, then turned around and chewed his ass for being in her
house to begin with. He had a feeling that had been a lose-lose situation all
around. She called him dickless for not watching, but she’d have thought him an
ass if he had.

Hell, didn’t she understand he’d wanted to? She
had to have known, or she wouldn’t have done it. What a fucking turn-on it was
to see a woman pleasure herself. It was the sign of a woman who liked sex, knew
her body, and appreciated the way it could make her feel.

“Get your head in the game, Wiley, or you’re gonna
get your ass shot.”

Tanner looked down and blinked. Hell, he hadn’t
even made himself invisible, which was pretty much his only defense against
these bastards and their bad ass powers.

He concentrated and put up his shield of
invisibility, and Darian said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Fernandez shot a glare over his shoulder. “We’re
about to have our asses handed to us. Please, save this sissy shit for later.”