Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two (23 page)

She’d look for more surveillance footage, maybe from street cameras.

Irene waved off my concerns and made me tea.

Still, she hadn’t been in the station that day, or on the receiving end of Jo’s death stares.

Irene sat next to me most of the night, her own laptop balanced on an embroidered pillow in her lap. I would hand names off to her when I finished with them, knowing she could find out more with her people-search magic than I could.

As for me, I was pretty sure I would go back to that agency the next day.

I’d found a few things I wanted to ask Ms. Constance Culare about in person.
 

Given the particular hornet’s nest she had me poking my finger into, I didn’t even want to talk to her on the phone, not with some of this stuff. If these jokers caught on that she’d hired someone, or even that she suspected what had been done in her agency’s name, they might have a tap on her already. I hadn’t been lying to her about the danger...or even trying to freak her out to test her resolve. Most of the sex-trafficking I’d ever encountered in the field or heard about from Gantry came out of the mob.

A lot of it was Eastern European mob.

I didn’t want to mess with those guys, at all...my promises to Mr. Jiāng notwithstanding. Not unless I had a heck of a lot more firepower behind me.
 

Even Gantry’s guys wouldn’t want to get involved with that group, not in a head-on conflict. From what Gantry told me, his people had a kind of cold war going on against factions in that part of the world already. Gantry still took a lot of government contracts, I knew, so that probably meant CIA and Homeland Sec were active there, too.

A lot of the organized crime operating out of there were still ex-KGB.

Gantry made it sound like they were pretty hardcore. He told me the big groups had ties all over Asia, especially China, which had its own hard-core groups, of course. The Chinese-based mafia also dealt in their own, increasingly large trade in human trafficking.

Either way, these weren’t the kinds of guys a small-time PI from Seattle wanted to screw with. These were the kind of guys who blowtorched toes for fun on the weekends, when they didn’t have anyone to torture for an actual reason.

Irene had already gone to bed by the time I gave it up for the night.

Gantry, for reasons unknown, never showed up. Neither did Nik, even though Gantry said they’d both be back at Irene’s before I returned from the police station.
 

I had to assume something came up.
 

Even so, that’s the main reason I stayed up so late, I know.

I think I finally got ready to close my eyes around one a.m. By then, I was practically hallucinating. I fell asleep the instant my head hit the pillow.

Even so, those hands woke me right up.

I woke up more when his mouth fell to mine.

Heat shot into my chest, a sharp enough jolt to shock me a little, and to flip my eyes wide open. When they did, I saw Nik hanging over me in the dim light, illuminated faintly by the fish tanks that glowed from one side of Irene’s living room.

His skin looked pale in the greenish glow, but I found myself staring up at the lines of his chest and arms, feeling the view of him hit at me somewhere significantly lower down than my brain. A flutter started somewhere in my belly, and then his mouth descended on mine once again, and we were kissing for real.

I barely noticed when he started undressing me.

Even so, thoughts continued somewhere, in the further reaches of my mind.

I found myself remembering the last time we really got into this, with Ledi watching us from the other end of the room. It occurred to me that we’d barely touched one another since, apart from that brief make-out session next to that indoor park on Nik’s home world.

Thinking about that made the heat in my chest grow significantly more intense.

Nik’s hand slid down my side, caressing my skin under my shirt until that feeling in my gut worsened, right before I wrapped my arms around his back, digging my fingers into the muscles just below his shoulder blades.

He startled me when I did it, letting out a low groan.

I fought not to remember that he wasn’t human, that I had no idea how he really reacted to this. I fought not to think about how many other women he’d done this with while we were on Palarine. I tried to forget about the fact that he’d been sleeping with women on the ship for weeks, long before I asked him to cut it out...

“Stop, Dakota...” Nik raised his head, panting down at me in the dark. A taut expression crossed his face once he was looking at me, right before he pressed against me, closing his eyes, letting out another low sound, what sounded almost like a growl. His skin had warmed, and he sat astride me now, pinning me to the sagging mattress of the couch.

“Stop it, Dakota...please...stop thinking about that...”

Hesitating only a second, I nodded, feeling my skin flush.

He meant about him and other women.

He must have felt some of that through the lock.

When he lowered his mouth to mine again, I found myself stroking his chest, feeling his heart beat under my palm as he pressed down against me. I decided I didn’t really care that much that he wasn’t human, whatever Gantry had said.

I felt increasingly intense flutters off Nik as his weight grew heavier, and then his hands were exploring me a lot less cautiously. He started shifting his body over me, moving so that he lay most of it directly on mine. I felt him press deliberately against my inner thigh and let out a half-startled sound, mixed with a gasp that held a longing that even I could hear.

My fingers curled into his hair, pulling him down to me again.

I wanted to do this with him.

I was pretty sure I’d wanted to do this with him for a long time...before we got to Palarine, if I was being totally honest with myself. Back then, I hadn’t even been sure Nik
could
have sexual feelings for someone like me, much less the will or ability to act on them.

I wanted you...
he assured me through the implant, kissing my neck, parting his lips as he used his tongue, working his way slower up to my jaw.
I wanted you, Dakota, believe me...I wanted you...

My hands tightened on him more.

I found myself looking down at his body as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, and realized he was still wearing pants. My hands found the front of them in seconds, and I was unhooking the top button on form-fitting jeans he must have gotten from Jake, fumbling for the zipper to get them all the way undone. Nik pressed against me as my hand slid under his clothes, even as another, more intense shot of that liquid heat pooled somewhere in the middle of my chest, right around where I usually felt him through the lock.

Nik let out a low sound when I didn’t stop, then caught hold of the elastic on the fuzzy pajama bottoms I wore, probably the least sexy thing imaginable in my universe of not-sexy things, but what I’d been borrowing out of Irene’s dresser to sleep in since we got there.

Nik didn’t seem to much care about their lack of sexiness.

He yanked them down and I saw his arms tense as he pressed against me again, right before he started working the pajama bottoms all the way past my hips and thighs, his hands practiced now, and dextrous enough to throw me a little.

I let out a low gasp when he had those off me entirely, and another one when he caught hold of me, jerking me against him once more, kissing my mouth.

Those misgivings were getting really faint at that point.

The feeling of him through the lock got stronger.

I let out a startled gasp, wrapping my arms around his neck when he pulled me up, stretching me out more deliberately on the creaking mattress before he wrapped his body around the length of me for real. His legs rested between mine once we settled, and he pressed his chest and weight on me harder, earning another low cry out of me. His fingers coiled around my wrist then, pinning me to the edge of the mattress. He looked down at me, struggling to slow his breathing, and it hit me suddenly that we were both more or less naked, and that I could feel his skin pretty much everywhere.

He met my gaze, still panting lightly, his skin even hotter than before.

“I’m going to do this,” he said. “Unless you want me to stop, Dakota...I’m going to do this. Tell me not to, if you don’t want it...”

“No,” I whispered, conscious suddenly of Irene in the other room. “No, I want to. We just have to be quiet, Nik...okay?”

He nodded, but I saw a taut look cross his expression after I spoke.

“I’ll try,” he said, looking down at my body again.

He kissed me again before I could second-guess any of it, his tongue hot in my mouth. Then his free hand was on my hip, moving me under him until he had me where he wanted me. I found myself holding my breath, gripping his arm with my free hand where I lay under him, when he stopped again, looking down at me.

“I want us to be monogamous after this,” he said.

I fought to control my breathing, looking up at him.

“Aren’t we now, Nik?” I said.

He frowned, but I felt another sharp dagger of that heat hit my chest. It occurred to me only then that he was still holding it back, whatever “it” was. I remembered him saying that sex with us “wouldn’t be as good” with his lock closed. I also remembered that his lock was wide, wide open now. I remembered telling him I loved him on Palarine, too, and that I didn’t want to come back to Earth without him.

That pain in my chest worsened, right before his fingers clenched tighter on my wrist.

“Gantry wants you,” he said.

“What?” I stared up at him, incredulous, but Nik’s gaze didn’t waver. “Where the hell did that come from?” I said.

Nik went on as if I hadn’t spoken.

“...Don’t do this with him, Dakota,” Nik said. “I’m asking you. Please.”

Relaxing a little, I shook my head, massaging his chest with my free hand. “Gantry and I aren’t sleeping together, Nik...you know that.”

“You were. Before.”

“Yeah,” I retorted. “And you were sleeping with half the female humans on Palarine before, too, Nik.”

He writhed under my hand, right before he shook his head. “You understand. I know you do. If you can’t tell me that, then I don’t want to do this, Dakota...I really don’t.”

I stared up at him. As I watched his face in the near-dark, I realized he was right.

I did. Understand, that is.

I knew how Nik saw the two of us.
 

Well, okay, I didn’t know
precisely
how Nik saw us, but I had some ideas. He’d been open about it, at least once we started talking about things in something other than his bizarre morph-code-speak when it came to relationships. I’d also heard enough cracks from humans on Palarine...and even on the ship...to have some idea of how his culture viewed things with me and Nik, now that we were lock mates. And yeah, I
was
his lock mate.

I knew that meant a lot to him...to any morph.

I just wasn’t entirely sure
what
it meant.

Like, I knew Nik had been lock-mates with Razmun, back when they’d both lived on Palarine. But I also knew Nik had been dating Razmun’s sister during that time, so presumably the thing with Nik and Razmun had been platonic. So more of a brother thing? Family? I honestly had no idea, but I definitely got the sense from some of the things Razmun said that it had been intimate.

Meaning, even without him and Nik being, you know...
intimate.

Even apart from the whole cultural thing and Nik’s past girlfriends and Razmun and whatever else, I also wasn’t entirely sure what the whole lock-mate thing meant to me, or how I felt about the implications of that connection, given that I still knew next to nothing about him. Heck, I wasn’t sure I really understood what a lot of those implications were...especially here, in the context of both of us being back on Earth, in my home city of Seattle. I still hadn’t entirely adjusted to the idea of bringing Nik along with me, now that I was more or less back in my old life.

Nik told me once that lock-mates could influence one another’s thoughts, their feelings, even their perceptions of the world...their very reality. Truthfully, that idea scared the shit out of me. Of course, Nik also said that “good” lock mates respected one another’s individuality and free will, and didn’t use that connection to manipulate or control or to impose their own will on their partner. He said that the connection could bring total honesty and acceptance between mates, too...a kind of unconditional love based on knowing someone at an intimate level, warts and all, stripped of whatever masks they might show the world.