Unleashing the Storm (8 page)

“I
know I am.” He’d been hard from the second he’d sensed her, and when she’d
walked through the bar, her familiar strut yanked all his chains in so many
different, exquisite ways.

His
cock molded hard against his soft leather pants and the entire right side of
his body pulsed.

“I
don’t know if I can wait that long,” she said. “Why don’t we just stay here?”

“Here?”

“I
already checked out the storeroom—it’s not locked,” she said.

She
ran a hand across the tattoo on his neck, her palm lingering across his throat,
and the fact that she could kill him with her pinky turned him on, maybe more
than anything. He didn’t mind handing the reins over to the beautiful
twenty-one-year-old with a body like sin and a mind to match.

If he
relented right now, he’d be shivering under her touch within minutes in the
storeroom, or in the alley, or on the back of his hog in the woods, but tonight
that wasn’t going to be enough.

Tonight,
he wanted a bed. Because he wanted a lot of different positions, and he wanted
Annika where it wouldn’t be easy for her to just walk away when she was done.
Because as many times as he’d tried to talk to her, she ended up stopping him
by forcing him to use his mouth for things other than talking. And then she’d
leave town on assignment.

She’d
been away for six weeks this time. Kat was pissed that he hadn’t even tried to
be with anyone else—she knew it meant Annika was special to him. She was right,
of course, and there was no reason to try to deny it.

“Come
home with me, Annika,” he murmured, his thumb stroking her nipple through the
thin fabric of her camisole. “Come home to my bed.”

“It’d
be hotter here,” she countered, and at her long, cocky look, he nearly lost his
resolve.

“My
house,” he said firmly, put a hand around her upper arm in an attempt to steer
her out of the bar.

“No,”
she said loudly, her voice carrying over the jukebox music and generally
raucous patrons of the bar. Which made all of them stop and stare.

Most
everyone here knew Creed. He was a hard man to miss because of his height and
the tattoos. He was always being approached and asked the name of his tattoo
artist, and he’d tell them that he’d gotten them done out of the country.
Which, technically, wasn’t a lie.

He
just didn’t mention how far out of the country.

“Problem?”
the bartender asked.

Creed
looked between him and Annika, who still wore that
I’m-determined-to-win-this-round look he knew so damned well, and he let go of
her arm.

“Nothing
that’s going to get solved tonight,” he said, right before he walked out, sans
Annika.

He
kicked his Harley roughly into gear and revved it twice, his normally calm
demeanor shot to hell. Even Kat’s attempt to soothe him wasn’t going to help
him tonight—nothing but Annika in his bed was going to make it all better.

TUESDAY
10 P.M. MST

Ender
was restless—woke with the blankets half off his naked body and a thin sheen of
sweat covering him and he knew he wouldn’t go back to sleep. There were a few things
that could cure that restlessness instantly, things Kira could help him with if
she wasn’t passed out, so he limited his options to outdoor activities he could
do alone.

He’d
never slept much anyway. A few hours of REM would do, and the ability to achieve
that state quickly, and with maximum effectiveness, had been drilled into him
from his first days of Delta training.

He
flipped open his cell phone, brought up the feed of Derek’s room and Derek’s
image, splayed across the bed in the same position Ender left him in hours
earlier.

Derek’s
strength might top his, a fact he grudgingly admitted to, but Ender’s
metabolism allowed him to drink the same amount of the drug as both Derek and
Kira with minimal effects. He’d get a brief, mild high, the same as he would
with double or triple the dose of what he’d used, or even stronger drugs. And
the good people at ACRO had certainly tried them all with him when he’d been
brought in, freshly released from the brig and hating the entire fucking world.

That
hadn’t really changed.

He
slid on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, left his feet bare as he padded to
Kira’s room, opened the door quietly and slid inside.

The
various animals lifted their heads in greeting, a few wagged their tails at him
and looked back at Kira, like they were worried.

She’d
shifted in her sleep, was facing the door, lying on her side, her head resting
on her arm. Totally freakin’ naked.

He
hadn’t been able to get a good look at her in the barn or earlier when all the
animals were jumping around. But now, with the moonlight through the windows,
he was able to take it all in—the fact that she was tanned golden all over, the
dark pink of her nipples framing two of the best-looking breasts he’d ever
seen, the slim waist and the curved hips leading to long, shapely legs.

What
time is it? Should I be horny yet? Because I don’t think I am. Maybe you could
touch me and find out.

He
approached the bed, put two fingers to the pulse on her neck and counted.
Again, a little faster than he’d expected, faster than it should have been. He
used the light from his cell phone to check her color—pink in her cheeks and
lips, breathing wasn’t labored and there were no signs of distress.

I
don’t catch human diseases. No colds. No flu. I got Parvo once. I have to go to
the vet.

He
made a mental note for ACRO to check out her metabolism and realized his own
pulses were now running too high. He turned to leave the room and got
distracted by the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, something he hadn’t given
himself a chance to check out earlier. On the middle shelves, the most easily
reachable, was a collection of Shakespeare plays that rivaled his own. He
pulled out
Macbeth,
his favorite, saw that her copy was also well-worn.
Written in too, with passages underlined.

It
didn’t mean anything. He shoved the book back to the shelf and left the room
without a backwards look, headed down the steps to the outside. Because
something was up.

Once
his feet hit cool grass, he expected to feel better. When he didn’t, he knew
something else was wrong.

He’d
never wanted psychic abilities, but sometimes they’d sure come in handy.

He
moved swiftly toward the back of the barn, letting his instinct guide him.
Something threw a shadow across the back wall and he moved in a way he’d never
been able to describe, not until the people at ACRO taped him in action and he
realized that he moved so fast, he was barely a blur on the screen.

Whoever
it was wouldn’t know what hit him, and Ender didn’t hesitate for one second to
get the guy into his death grip. He looked him in the eye for one second and
was reminded again about who he was and why he was here.

With
a snap, the neck broke and he let the guy’s body slump to the ground. He
searched the pockets, knew he’d find nothing except the gun that was going to
be used on him, and on Kira.

He’d
made Derek nervous enough to call in backup. A nervous operative always made
mistakes, stupid ones too, but this could work in Ender’s favor.

This
was also going to move things along much more quickly than Dev had predicted,
but between Kira’s spring fever and Itor’s agents coming out of the blue, it
couldn’t be helped.

Kira
had bonded with him—she’d taken him without hesitation, as if she couldn’t help
herself, and he’d known out there in the barn that everything the file said
about her was true.

At
least you got to her before Derek.

He
was still restless, and thinking about Kira’s body taut against his didn’t
help. He dragged the body roughly through the wooded area that backed up the
barn and tried to shove him up under one of the old tarps that covered the
cords of wood.

Two
other bodies were in the way. The two missing farmhands, most likely guys who
never did anything worse than spit tobacco and screw the farmer’s daughter. He
peered more closely at them for cause of death and saw that their necks had
both been broken cleanly—with very little effort, based on the state of the
bodies.

Derek.

They’d
been dead for a couple of weeks—with the smell of compost and manure out here,
the decomposition of rotting flesh would’ve been easy to miss. His fresh kill
joined the other two men and he re-covered them with the tarp. He’d bury them
later so the animals didn’t come into contact with them. That was sloppy on
Derek’s part.

He
glanced up at the main house to check that all the lights were still off. He
wasn’t worried about Derek—the guy was going to sleep through until morning. He
wasn’t as sure about Kira, but figured he had at least a few more hours alone.

Something
brushed his back, and he turned swiftly, figuring it was that goat again. But
thankfully, there was no sign of the tattletale creature. Instead, one of the
more beautiful horses he’d seen earlier whinnied and stomped in front of him.

Nothing
more beautiful than a female when she’s looking for attention.

“Come
here, baby,” he murmured, and she complied, head down, and nuzzled against his
chest. He brushed his hands over her neck, then put his head against it and
breathed in deeply.

He
missed this, no matter how much he told himself he didn’t. Maybe if it had been
more of his choice to leave the farm all those years before, things would’ve
been different.

But
tonight, right now, there was no difference between the boy he’d been and the
man he’d become. His muscles stretched, taut under his skin, his pulse raced
steadily, and he knew what he needed. He gave the nag a firm pat on the rump,
and she took off, eager for the game. He was right behind her, cutting through
the night air until his skin was damp with sweat and the trees were a blur, ran
until he couldn’t think or feel anything beyond his own limbs flying and the
natural, desperate high he craved.

THE
TINGLE THAT WOKE KIRA made her shiver between her sheets, even though her skin
felt hot to the touch. She groaned, rolled to a cool spot in her bed and looked
at the clock. Just after ten. Five hours since she’d had Tom.
Five hours.
She must have been exhausted, because her body never let her go more than four.

A
slave to the tight pull between her legs that was worse than usual thanks to
the extra hour she’d slept, she groggily swung her feet to the floor, yawned.
Her head swam. She pressed her palm to her forehead. Sex withdrawals. Right on
time. She needed to hurry.

She
stood. Frowned. Looked down. She was naked. Not normally anything to cause
concern, since she slept that way, but she didn’t remember getting undressed.

She
didn’t remember much of anything after dinner.

Her
body didn’t care about what her mind remembered or didn’t remember. It hummed
with hunger, throbbed with need, and she decided she’d solve the memory mystery
later.

Quickly,
she threw on a pair of shorts and a tank top, and padded out of her room. A
dozen dogs and cats sleeping in various places on blankets on the floor lifted
their heads to watch her with exaggerated hopefulness, like she was a total
sucker.

“Nice
try, guys,” she whispered. “Not time to eat.”

She
crept up the creaky stairs, her pulse already pounding in anticipation of
having Tom inside her. At the landing, Spazzy, a wire-haired terrier mix, lay
at Tom’s door like a sentry. For a moment, she thought Spazzy might have the
same issue as Cheech, but when she reached down to scratch him between the
ears, the sensation that flashed through her wasn’t one of suspicion. Spazzy
liked Tom. And Spazzy had also seen him go outside in shorts and bare feet.

Odd.
Tom wasn’t a smoker; she’d have smelled that. Maybe he’d gotten too warm. The
old house didn’t have air-conditioning, and the rooms overheated on sunny
afternoons.

She
hesitated at the landing, cast a glance at Derek’s door. Derek, who had warned
her about Tom. Who had flirted with her, had liked her cooking. Who didn’t seem
to want Deb like Tom did. She closed her eyes, sucked in a deep breath, pushed
away the strange pinch of jealousy that tweaked at her for the second time
today. She had never been territorial when it came to men. How could she be,
given that she couldn’t limit herself to one man per season?

None
of that mattered right now. She needed sex, and she needed it now. Derek might
not mind her climbing into bed with him out of the blue, but she already had a
connection with Tom. She could save Derek for later. For when Tom wore out or
he decided he’d rather have a stacked blonde.

She
hurried down the stairs and stepped out onto the front porch, grateful for the
cool breeze that rippled the fabric of her baggy sweat shorts and that seemed
to shrink her tank top to her aching breasts.

Find
Tom.