His Darkest Hunger (9 page)

“Take the tunnels. We rendezvous in Jersey and then head north to Jagger’s cabin. He’s been off the grid for a while, don’t think he’ll mind.”

Cracker nodded coolly, grabbed a few more guns from the rack, and called the dogs to follow him out. Declan’s eyes were troubled as they settled on Jaxon.

“We don’t have long before they breach the wards. That was some heavy shit surrounding the perimeter. Real dark stuff; I don’t recognize the signature.” His eyes narrowed and his voice became deadly. “Looks like we have a new player in town.”

Jaxon snarled then, the beast clawing hard at him, wanting out. “I say bring it on.”

He turned as Ana piped in, “Okay, I have all we need. The destruct program is almost finished and the timer has been set. We have exactly ten minutes before this whole place goes to shit. So I suggest we make haste and get the hell out of here.”

Declan flashed a wicked smile at them both, “I know the shit is literally hitting the fan, but man, I haven’t had this much fun in a long time. Feels good. Can’t wait to kick me some fucking ass.”

“Good,” Jaxon said. “You accompany Ana through the tunnels.” He looked at his watch. “The sun is already setting so you’re good to go. I’m going to grab Libby and I’ll meet you at the docks.”

Ana tucked a large laptop under her arm and retrieved the bag full of disks, while Declan waited for her. Then she pulled up short and whirled around. “Christ! Jaxon, about Libby.”

“What now?” Exasperation exploded from him as
the need to get Libby to safety weighed down on him.

“I had to give her a sedative to calm her. Sorry, she’ll slow you down.”

Jaxon nodded, his lips tight, and then he sprinted down the hall to Libby’s room.

She was sitting on the bed, her body covered by a thin gown, shaking her head slowly, with jerky uncoordinated movements. He crossed to her quickly, flinching at her violent reaction when another blast shook the foundation of the building.

To her right a fresh pile of clothes had been laid out, and he grabbed for them, snatching up a shirt and a pair of jeans. His hands stilled as her scent wafted up into his nose. Ana had managed to find some of Libby’s old clothes, and for that he was grateful.

His eyes moved over her slight form and he knew they would no longer fit, but it was all they had.

Her head slowly lolled to the side and her eyes shifted up toward his. There was no reaction; no fear, anxiety…nothing but shadowed violet. Damn, what the hell had Ana given her? A goddamn horse tranquilizer?

He reached for her and met no resistance, and even though her body was trembling in wild rapid movements, he managed to lift her up until she was leaning against him.

The feel of her soft curves against his hardness was so familiar, an ache formed immediately, deep in his gut. The intensity of it stunned him, and Jaxon shook his head angrily.

His fingers fell to the tie at the top of her gown and he yanked it undone, but he was gentle while pulling the fabric from her body. She whimpered
then, and he froze, not wanting to alarm her, but the need for speed propelled his hands and he turned her to the side, his eyes avoiding her nakedness as he grabbed the jeans and bent to help her legs into them.

He pulled them up, the worn denim slipping over her soft skin and hips. He looked away from the soft center between her legs, but his hands stilled as they reached the scar now visible to him, low on her abdomen. His fingers reached for it, and he softly caressed the thin, faded line, feeling her muscles clench against his touch.

His eyes slowly traveled up, past the flat stomach, before settling on the gentle swell of her breasts. The rosy nipples were puckered from the cold, but the soft globes were firm and well rounded.

At the moment, they were slowly rocking as she inhaled deeply. His eyes moved from them until they locked onto the deep violet orbs that stared down at him intently.

He sucked in deeply at the look that lay there.

Jaxon’s groin tightened sharply and intense desire shot through him, slamming through every cell in his body like a bolt of electricity. He slowly rose to stand in front of her. The softness of Libby’s breasts called to him, and he inhaled the subtle scent that belonged only to her, groaning inside as the turgid tips caressed the hard flesh of his body.

“You’re so fucking beautiful.”

His voice was harsh, thick with emotion, and he clenched his fists tightly to his sides, forcing them away when all they wanted to do was grab her breasts and lift them to his watering mouth.

“So are you.”

Her simple words inflamed the heat that was slowly turning his blood to molten lava.

Her eyes were fastened onto his flesh, and they wandered from his shoulders and then down, lower, her fingers following suit, tracing the intricate lines of his clan tattoos. When she touched him, the intense fire inside begged to be let out, but Jaxon grabbed her hand and turned her tempting breasts away from him.

What the hell was wrong with him? He needed to get them the hell out before the enemy broke through Declan’s wards. And he probably had about seven minutes until the entire building went the way of Armageddon.

“Libby, I need you to put this shirt on. We have to leave right now.”

His voice bellowed louder then he’d intended, and she winced, but then wariness crept into her eyes as she grabbed the shirt and held it close to her exposed flesh. She turned, and what he saw sent him for a loop.

He hissed at the scars on her back, raw and angry. They stood out in stark relief against her white skin, as if she’d been branded.

Something clicked, deep inside, and he felt his anger recede. It buried itself deep in the dark corner of his soul, the place where the jaguar roared in despair.

There it would wait, festering into something mammoth before he unleashed it upon the animals that had done this to her.

Libby’s movements were still slow, jerky from the effects of the sedative, and he gently pulled the top down over her head. He nodded toward the shoes,
and she slipped her feet into them, leaning against his hard frame for support.

He grabbed her elbow then and they both turned toward the exit.

But there was a huge problem between them and freedom.

A rather large, menacing gun aimed straight at his head.

J
axon swore and pushed Libby behind him.

Good thing a cat had nine lives, and the way he figured it, he still had about five to go.

He glanced quickly at his watch. Five minutes and counting before the big kaboom.

His eyes met the helmet-encased head of his enemy full on as he let the power inside him out.

Yeah. This should be a piece of cake.

“Shit! Never thought I’d snag me a Castille jaguar. Damn, must be my lucky day.”

The arrogance of his enemy was astounding. Normally, he would have enjoyed a little game of cat and mouse, but he didn’t fancy frying his ass over such a pitiful excuse of a soldier. His nostrils flared and he sneered as a low growl erupted. The scent told him the asshole was human.

As if a human with a gun could stop him
.

Even in human form Jaxon was a formidable
opponent. He still retained many of his enhanced jaguar traits, including speed and strength. With a roar, he moved so fast that the soldier barely had time to react. The rifle was smacked from his hands as if it were a play toy, and Jaxon had him pinned to the wall in two seconds flat.

His teeth were bared and his eyes feral, the violence running through his veins almost bringing the cat to the fore. He felt the familiar burn as his skin began to shift.

“Who the fuck do you work for?”

Silence greeted his question, and with a mighty roar, he shook the man until his head hit the wall behind him with a resounding thud. “One more chance.”

The soldier began to tremble as the finality of his situation became apparent. “You’re just going to kill me anyway, so fuck you.”

He sprayed the air with spittle, and Jaxon savagely pressed his thumb deep into his enemy’s carotid artery, rendering him unconscious within seconds.

The shock on Libby’s face quickly changed to fear and she shrank from him, shaking her head, trying to move away.

Jaxon grabbed her roughly, ignoring the huge eyes, and yanked her along behind him. He had no time to pamper her. The clock was ticking away, and he knew if he didn’t get them the hell out of there, his remaining five lives would definitely be toast.

Libby’s movements were sluggish, her arm still favoring her ribs, and with a curse he grabbed her up into the hard embrace of his arms, balancing his bag of weapons on his hip, before running with the
speed only a jaguar possessed toward his sanctuary. There, hidden in his precious jungle, was a trapdoor that led directly to the escape tunnels below.

Shouts rang out behind him, and his eyes glanced off a red laser beam that hit the wall to his right. He ducked just as a shot decimated the wall, building up speed as he flew down the darkened halls.

Libby clung to his neck as if her life depended on it, and he yanked the door to the jungle room open, slipped inside, and locked it. Within seconds loud banging and gunfire was heard on the other side, but Jaxon disappeared into the thick foliage, making his way quickly through the hot, damp interior until he reached the hatch.

Carefully, he placed Libby on the ground and moved a massive tree trunk that to anyone else would have appeared part of the rotting vegetation that littered the earthen floor. His muscles contracted as the heavy piece of wood was moved back, and he gestured toward Libby to climb down the stairs he had exposed.

She hesitated, and he swore under his breath.

“Libby, I know you’re scared, but you need to trust me and do as I say.”

A blast ripped through the room, and he wasn’t sure if it was his words or the shouts that now resounded in the sanctuary, but she hurried as best she could to do his bidding.

Thick, black anger pulsed through his body with every beat of his heart at the thought of his private area being invaded by an enemy. The jaguar inside wanted nothing more than to attack, kill, and destroy.

But there was no time.

Jaxon jumped down, grabbing his bag before the tree fell back into place.

He found a shivering, confused Libby waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. Without words, he once more lifted her up to his chest and ran like hell toward freedom.

Underneath the mammoth building that housed his branch of operations for PATU, there were a series of tunnels that had been put in place for such a situation as this. He’d never had to use them before, and as he ran, his body dripping with sweat from exertion, his memories of the layout were not as sharp as he would have liked.

If he took the wrong exit, well, he’d be screwed.

Familiar scents called to him, and with a grin, his nose led him down the same path Ana, Declan, and Cracker had taken minutes earlier.

He knew it was going to be close, and the adrenaline his body was producing went into overdrive as he spotted the clear night sky up ahead. The concrete ground was slowly elevating, and Jaxon burst through, hearing the motor of a boat as it pulled away from the dock.

Without stopping, still holding Libby firmly in his arms, his long powerful legs carried him forward and he ran to the end of the pier and leapt high into the air. He landed with a jarring force that brought him to his knees, but relief washed over him as Ana revved the throttle and the powerful boat took off like a rocket.

They were speeding up the Hudson River when a massive blast rocked the entire dock area. Fire,
debris, and heat rent the air as Jaxon covered Libby, pulling her into his chest. A shriek tore from her throat as several smaller explosions continued to combust.

“Damn,” Declan said. “If we’d have put music to that, it could have been entered in the Fourth of July fireworks contest.”

Jaxon shook his head, marveling at the way Declan was able to make light of any situation.

“No, I’m serious. We could have called it, ‘Reign of Fire’ or something like that. It would have won, hands down.”

Ignoring the attempt at humor, Jaxon’s eyes swept the waterfront where his headquarters had lived in secrecy for well over ten years. The beautiful sanctuary he’d built with painstaking care was no more, reduced to a pile of rubble and ash.

His eyes hardened at the glow that swept through the air, and he hoped that each and every bastard who dared to enter his domain had died horribly. He grabbed some blankets and wrapped them around Libby before settling in for the short boat ride.

They were rounding Ellis Island and would reach their safe house located on the Jersey shore in no time. He closed his eyes, shaking his head at the deadly situation he’d been thrust into.

The woman in his arms held the key. Of that he was certain. Somewhere, locked away deep inside her damaged mind, were the answers he was looking for.

He sighed, letting the tension fall from his body and feeling the warmth from hers help alleviate the stress he was under.

Tomorrow they’d be up north and far away from here. He growled softly, as a wicked smile slashed over his features.

Once he found out who the hell
them
was, he’d be gunning for their asses. Anticipation licked at his insides as the cat relished the thought of a hunt. Bring it on, he thought. Bring it on.

Libby slowly crawled back from the edge of unconsciousness. Her brain was feeling fuzzy, but that was pretty much par for the course. She licked her lips, grimacing at the feel of her thick tongue. Her muscles ached and she became aware of voices, low and stilted, just beyond the fringe of black her closed eyelids afforded her.

Every muscle in her body was screaming at her to stretch, but she resisted, staying as still as she could. She strained her ears, hoping to hear a clue as to her whereabouts. For one brief moment pure, raw terror swept through her body like a flash flood. Was she back with
them
? Had they come for her?

Images, bits and pieces of emotions, flew at her.

She remembered the tall one, Jaxon, running with her toward a black wall of nothingness, and then there’d been an explosion, great balls of fire erupting into the blackness.

But the images were blurry, incoherent.

A dull ache was beginning to throb at the base of her skull, and the ever near presence of tears threatened to spill from her tightly closed lids.

When would this all end? Wearily, she tried to make sense of the last few days, but it only confused her even more.

A woman’s voice drifted lazily over to her, and
Libby’s body stilled as she concentrated to gather as much information as she could.

“Not sure if we should tell her. It could do more harm than good.”

“I’m sorry, Jaxon. I have to side with Ana on this one. She doesn’t know us from shit. So if we sit her down, tell her who she is and what she’s done, it could scramble what little bit of usable gray matter is in there all to hell.”

Libby winced at the analogy Declan used with such obvious contempt, his deep voice clearer than Ana’s soft one. She could picture their faces clearly as memories tugged at her mind. They were fresh, new ones, only hours old.

Her heart began to flutter, and she fought the panic that seemed to forever live in hiding, waiting for the chance to explode. She’d escaped the faceless monsters from her past, but for how long? She wasn’t sure.

This trio confused and frightened her on a different level all together. Jaxon confused her most. He was haunted as much by his past as she was. When he looked at her, his eyes were filled with a whole host of emotions, all of them dark, and they made
her
ache inside. But it was the other emotions that she had caught glimpses of, the ones he tried to hide from her, that scared the crap out of her. They were incredibly raw and almost animalistic.

“Best bet would be to get her to trust you. Once she relaxes some, she might start to remember and we can finally begin to put the pieces to this puzzle together.”

“I can barely stand to touch her, Dec. How the hell am I going to get her to trust me?”

That last was Jaxon, and Libby cringed at the words he’d uttered so harshly, her stomach clenching at the bitter tone. Yeah, it was obvious his dislike for her bordered on hatred, but he was a liar. She blushed at the vague memory of him helping her get dressed. He’d told her that she was beautiful. She sighed again, not understanding any of it.

“Declan is right, Jax. You are the only one she might open up to.”

“Why the hell can’t Declan perform his freaking voodoo on her and crack her brain wide open?”

“Because, Jax, if I go in and fool around with a mind block that wasn’t put there by me, I could kill her. And last time I looked, we need her alive to find out who’s after you. Hell, considering my ass was involved in the latest attempt, and my restored viper has just been blown to bits, it’s become slightly more personal.”

Libby felt sick at Declan’s words, wishing she knew the answers as he continued speaking.

“Once we’ve figured this all out, I really don’t care what the hell you do with her.”

“Declan,” Ana said, “if you could have seen what they did to her—”

“Ana, what she did, three years ago—”

“Enough. I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, Ana, you need to work on tracing the origin of my intel…and Declan, I need you to contact anyone who’s running under the wire. See what kind of chatter you can dig up, but don’t go through our regular channels. Right now, I don’t trust anyone.”

Jaxon’s words effectively ended the powwow, and Libby tensed, feeling a huge sense of relief wash
through her as their voices faded and silence filled the space around her. She was safe, for now.

She inched her eyes open one at a time, squinting for a few seconds until she adjusted to the light.

She was lying on a bed in a small room. Soft cotton sheets tickled her nose; they smelled fresh. She kept still, but her eyes wandered the perimeter. Though the room was sparse, it was clean and tidy. There was a small dresser next to the door, with gingham curtains at the window that blocked most of the sunlight from streaming in from outside.

If she had to guess, she’d say it was some sort of rustic getaway, just like the ones her father used to take her to when she was a little girl.

She bolted upright then, ignoring the rush of blood that flooded her head and left her feeling nauseous. There was more there…just on the edge, but she couldn’t grasp it. Frustrated, she sank back and closed her eyes again, willing herself to see a face, to see anything that was from her past.

But the canvas was empty and there was nothing more there. Just that one echo from the past.

Gritting her teeth, she sat up once more, squaring her shoulders. That echo was more then she’d had yesterday. That was something, wasn’t it?

She threw her legs over the side of the bed. Her tummy was grumbling and she needed to find a washroom. Her fingers caressed the soft denim that covered her long legs, and the memory of Jaxon watching her flitted into her brain.

Jaxon staring at her bare breasts with an intense hunger that now made her cheeks heat up to a bright, rosy red.

Shakily, Libby pressed her cool palms to her face and stood up on wobbly feet. She took a few moments, listening intently at the door, and when she was sure there was no one outside, she gently pulled it open, grimacing as a soft creak echoed into the empty hall beyond.

Cautiously, she poked her head out, then followed with her body as she turned right and headed in the direction she thought might house both a bathroom and a kitchen. She found the washroom, and after she was done, came back out and continued her exploration.

The hall opened up to a great room.

Libby felt the first splash of pleasure sift through her body as she faced a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that opened up to a vast, rugged wilderness. It was magnificent, and she found herself drawn to the beauty of it, almost like a child pressing its nose up against the window in a toy shop at Christmas.

A large, silent forest surrounded the cabin. Tall, thick stands of trees guarded this little slice of paradise and sloped gently down to the right, where the shimmering blue of water beckoned. It was spring, yet patches of snow could still be seen lingering near the darkened areas the sun was unable to reach.