Predatory Game (16 page)

Saber became aware of the ground undulating beneath her. The trees trembled and the water in the fountains shot up like geysers. A branch in a nearby tree cracked ominously. She leaned into him, laid her head against his shoulder, and put a calming hand on his thigh. Instantly his hand covered hers and he took a deep breath.

“It’s all right,” she soothed. “I’m all right.” He was furious on her behalf, close to a loss of control—no good thing for any GhostWalker. It should have reminded her that Jess was dangerous, in or out of a wheelchair, but all it did was make her happy.

“How old were you?” His voice was very quiet. He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm, trying to find a way to make it all better.

“I think I was about four the first time. We weren’t allowed to show fear and I was afraid of closed in and dark places. That sort of weakness just wasn’t allowed where I grew up.”

He didn’t have to ask who had done such a thing to her. Whitney, damn his soul to hell. Peter Whitney had taken this child and tortured her to make or break her.

“That’s why you like every light in the house on.”

Her hand clutched his shirt, fingers curling around the edge of the material, brushing his bare skin. She didn’t seem to notice so he left it there, covering her hand once again with his own and pressing her palm into his chest.

“I guess they never managed to scare the fear out of me,” Saber admitted. She touched his leg with the tip of her nails.

“Bastards.” He was careful not to ask who “they” were.

She had no idea why his reaction sent a heat wave crashing through her entire system. She took a breath and let it out, catching at his wrist to distract them both. She looked at his watch. “I need to get ready for work.”

“You have hours, take a nap.”

“Out here?” Did she dare when they might be under surveillance?

“Sure, listen to the water, you were just saying it was peaceful. You tell me something from your past and immediately get nervous and want to run.” He slid down, pillowing his head on a rolled-up blanket. “Come on, mystery lady, get over here where you belong.”

Saber hesitated only a moment, then snuggled close to his side. The feel of his body curved protectively around hers was fast becoming familiar, comfortable, as if this was where she belonged. She was tired and the fresh air and absolute beauty of their surroundings, along with Jess’s presence, made her intensely happy. She cradled her head in the hollow of his shoulder, one slender arm flung across his broad chest, and closed her eyes. “If you hear or see anything suspicious, or anyone else comes near us, promise you’ll wake me up.”

So she felt it too, then, Jess noted. He let his gaze drift around them, quartering the area to make certain no one was near. “I will. Go to sleep.”

Jess held her, caught somewhere between heaven and hell. Having already tasted the honeyed sweetness of her mouth, he craved more. His mind was at peace, holding her in his arms, but his body was crawling with need. Slow, he reminded himself, slow and gentle. Saber was worth every ache, every sleepless night. She needed protection whether she knew it or not, because if Whitney had put her in a hole in the ground and she had escaped, then he would be coming after her.

He didn’t want to think of the other possibility—that Whitney had sent her to spy on him, to report how close to the truth he was in his investigations. God help them both if she was betraying Whitney, yet that didn’t feel right to him. She was too close to bolting. A spy wouldn’t be running, she’d be trying to get closer to him.

Saber didn’t like snow, certainly not to drive in. First a series of bad storms, and the weather would be breaking sooner than usual. Once the snow fell Saber would be less inclined to take off and he would have all winter to tie her securely to him.

The words of his song echoed in his mind, a reality to him.

Oh, but those haunting eyes

They make me realize

The depths of my emotions stirring inside

Haunting eyes, haunting refrain, and all so true. Every time he looked into her violet-blue eyes his heart turned over. This was one woman he would never be over. Every day strengthened his feelings for her, his assurance of how completely he was committed to her.

Saber slept with the innocence of a child. Deeply, quietly, still in her sleep, where awake she was quicksilver. It was dark when she opened her eyes, and he knew the very instant by the way her body tensed, her swift intake of breath.

“You’re all right, baby.” He breathed it softly in her ear, firmly turning her in his arms. “I’ve got you. If you open your eyes you’ll know you’re perfectly safe.”

His hands were possessive, his breath warm against her skin, his husky, sexy voice swirling a fierce heat in the center of her body. Saber moved against him restlessly, an unconscious enticement.

“Am I?” She whispered the words, craving the feel of his mouth feeding on hers, needing him there in the darkness.

There was no hesitation. Jess needed her every bit as much. He caught her head firmly in the crook of his arm, fist beneath her chin, and brought his head down to hers. There was nothing of the sweet gentle persuasion he had coaxed her with before. He was too hungry for her. He took possession of her mouth without his usual self-imposed control. Male domination pure and simple. Hot, heated, demanding, an assault on mind and body, his tongue an invasion, mating wildly. It was a turbulent storm sweeping her into a primitive world of pure feeling.

A rush of damp heat, her breasts swelling, aching, her skin ultrasensitive. Jess’s hand moved under her shirt, rested on her narrow rib cage, fingertips brushing the underside of her breast, sending a wave of fire darting like tongues across her skin.

Saber wrenched herself away with a little despairing cry, rolling away from him, from his fully aroused male body and hard threatening muscles. “Jesse, we can’t do this.” It was a heartbreaking moan. Hopeless, forlorn, tinged with desperation.

Jess laid perfectly still, staring up at the thousands of stars blanketing the sky, afraid if he moved he would shatter into a million fragments. His body raged for release, his head pounding savagely. He wanted her with every cell, every fiber of his being. Inside, warning bells were shrieking at him. He could not lose her through clumsy handling.

What the hell was wrong with him? He knew she was afraid. The furthest thing from her mind was any sort of commitment.

He struggled for control, forced a note of amusement into his voice. “Sure we can, honey.” He pulled himself into his chair with the ease of long practice. “It’s the perfect night for it. You’re a woman, I’m a man. Those little twinkling things overhead are stars. I believe it’s referred to as romance.”

Saber sat a few feet from him, arms across her chest. She was fighting just to breathe normally and there was Jesse, laughing at her inexperienced reaction. She had an uncharacteristic urge to slap his handsome face. Patsy was right. He was a cad. Her body was crying out for his, uncomfortably not her own, and he was calmly gathering everything up, ignoring her obvious distress. She sure as hell wasn’t perfect Chaleen whom he had perfect sex with.

Jess watched Saber rake an unsteady hand through her hair and bite at her full lower lip. In the moonlight she looked wildly erotic, impossibly sexy. He had to look away, his jeans so tight they hurt, his body actually trembling.

“I think talking about Chaleen darling and her perfect sex put ideas in your head,” Saber grumbled. “Either that or Patsy, with all her talk of bimbos.”

“You hardly qualify,” he said dryly.

Saber tested her legs, standing up to gather the picnic supplies into the basket. Her blue eyes flashed purple sparks at him. “Is that an insult, Jesse? Because if it is, you can take the big slide.”

He laughed softly, the sound inviting. “You have such a way with words. Here, I’ll carry that,” he said as she took the basket from his lap. It looked nearly as large as she was.

“Don’t start with the short jokes,” she cautioned. “I’m not in the mood.”

He followed her, keeping up easily with a single thrust of his powerful arms. “You mean like: Hey! I’m sitting down and I still have a couple of inches on you.”

She stopped so abruptly he ran right into her, catching her waist, laughing at her squeal of outrage as he pulled her down onto his lap. “What’s wrong, Saber, does it hit too close to home for comfort?”

Saber circled his neck with her arm. “Oh, shut up,” she snapped, but he could hear the answering laughter in her voice.

She couldn’t help but admire the easy way he maneuvered the chair over rough terrain with her added weight and the awkward load of blankets and picnic basket. They were both laughing when they reached the van. But by the time they were home, Jess was quiet, thoughtful, almost remote.

Saber tried desperately to push away the feel of his mouth, his hands, as she dressed for work. It was a good thing she wasn’t trying to go to bed. There would be no such thing as sleep.

E
lation, euphoria poured through his system along with sheer adrenaline. He was so much cleverer than Whitney’s precious enhanced soldiers. He could have walked right up to them and sliced their throats. He’d stalked them,
together
, and neither had been aware of his presence. He was so good. The best. So skilled and yet had none of the training the two of them had. All that time he had circled them, fantasizing about how he would end them both, laughing to himself, feeling so high. He almost couldn’t come down from it. All that money spent, all that training, and here he was, a mere foot soldier without a single enhancement, just brains and skill, eluding both of them.

It didn’t surprise him in the least. He’d always been superior to others, but this should prove it even to Whitney. Whitney, who put his intelligence above everyone else, who believed himself a god. How many mistakes had the man made? His pheromone receptor research had made fools of the soldiers and whores of the women. Look at Wynter kissing the cripple when she should have killed him. Calhoun was inferior now. Useless. He should have had a bullet in his head a year ago, but no, they wanted his DNA. He was going to have to take over her training, because Whitney certainly hadn’t gotten it right. It was becoming harder and harder to wait, to play the game and play the role of a puppet. He wanted to up the stakes and shove it right under their noses now that he knew he could. Oh yes, this was going to be fun.

C
HAPTER
7

S
omeone was stalking them. Saber slipped into the garage and looked carefully around. Nothing was out of place, yet someone had been there, and they were good, very good, because she had an eye for detail—a photographic memory that alerted her the moment something was even a hair off. It was time to step out of her dream world and confront reality head on.

Jess was a GhostWalker. She was a GhostWalker. He had been recruited and trained as an adult already in Special Forces. She had been taken from an orphanage and raised in a laboratory and then later a training compound. How in the world had they both ended up in Sheridan, Wyoming?

Saber carefully went over Jess’s car and then her own, searching for an incendiary device. She needed her electronic equipment to be absolutely certain the cars were free of bugs, so that would have to wait. But as far as she could tell by listening and feeling, both vehicles were clean, and she had always been right. She slipped into her car and sat for a moment, contemplating what to do.

She tapped her fingernail against the dash of her car and stared at herself in the rearview mirror. There wasn’t a single line in her baby soft skin. Her too-big eyes were fringed with long feathery lashes and held a look of absolute innocence. She could barely look at herself sometimes. Her innocence had been lost when she was sent out on her first mission at nine years old. She glanced down at her hands expecting to see blood—something—some evidence of the evil that lurked inside of her, but even her hands looked young and innocent.

She looked back into the mirror. She’d made a promise to herself that she would never go back to that life, but she wouldn’t—couldn’t—abandon Jess. She didn’t believe in coincidence, but there was no way Jess could have planned for her to show up at his home. She had wandered down his road, hoping to find a place to camp before winter set in and she had to move on. She had gotten his name off an Internet site for radio station jobs when she’d looked for an opening in Sheridan.

Her voice was one of her best assets. Radio stations were the easiest places to find work, and if there was no opening, she could often use her voice to persuade them to hire her anyway. She knew Jess had suspected she was a battered woman on the run. He had hired her for work at the station and offered to let her rent the upstairs in return for light housekeeping. How could someone have manipulated their meeting? And if they had, what was the purpose?

She bit at her lower lip while she sat there turning it over in her mind. She couldn’t leave, not when someone was hunting Jess. She was just going to have to be very alert and know that either of them, or both, could be in danger every step of the way.

J
ess watched on the monitor as Saber drove her car through the gates and disappeared from sight. He touched a fingertip to the screen, right over the spot where the Volkswagen’s taillights had been. He should have insisted on a guard for her. Someone was watching them. Someone who knew how to bypass the kind of security he had, knew exactly where the camera’s blind spots were and had utilized them to invade Jess’s territory. He had known the moment he’d gone outside. He doubted if the intruder had breached the house, but he’d followed them to the park. Jess knew they were being hunted.

There was no hesitation as he caught up the phone, punching in a number few people had access to. He knew when he needed help. He had to bring in part of the team and spread them out. No matter how much he loved Saber—or because he loved her—he had to notify those he trusted that someone was orchestrating something big.