Tactical Magik (Immortal Ops) (7 page)

He stirred.

There was a slight buzz to the air around her. For a moment, she assumed it was coming from the blond guy. When she realized it was emanating from her, she gasped and nearly pulled away from the man. The pulsing need to touch him again won out. She laid her hands on him, palms over his upper chest and the buzz around her grew. It consumed her arms first, moving through her torso and then downward. Gasping for breaths, she panted as she kept her hands on the man.
 

She blinked, sure her mind was playing tricks on her as the gash on his head closed over. The only sign there had been a cut at all was the leftover blood. She yanked her hands away from him, unsure exactly what had happened between them.

He stirred and reached out for her, catching her hands in his. She yelped. He tugged, pulling her closer. The strange buzzing intensified even more. It sounded like hundreds of bees were around them when in reality there were none to be seen.
 

He drew her down more, his eyes still closed, his full lips parting. Inara tried to pull free but not that hard. She was sort of pleased to be this close to him. His breath skated over her lips and she bit her inner cheek in an attempt to bring her rational mind around to thinking for her again in place of her hormones.
 

Sadly, her hormones won out.
 

This man was sexy in a way that made her ovaries scream at her to stop thinking at all and jump his bones. Alarmed by the raw need to have him, she managed to resist. It was hard.
 

Very hard.
 

Especially when he moaned her name out in a hushed whisper. The way he said it was so incredibly erotic that her nipples responded, hardening, scraping against the thin material of her t-shirt.
 

Shit. If he could do this to her when he was out like a light, what could he do to her awake? She nearly moaned as well at the thought. “M-Mister, please wake up before I give in and pet something you might not want me petting.”
 

“Hmm?” he mumbled as his blue-gray eyes snapped opened. “Inara!”

“Shh, I’m right here. I’m fine.” She hid her smile even though she should have been freaked he knew her name. He was awake. That had to be good. She had to tug to get her hands free from his, not that she truly wanted to be released. It just seemed like the right thing to do, considering everything.
 

He sat up slowly and as best he could with his hands bound, though the chain did have a good amount of give. She wondered what the purpose of it was. He could still move around. His skin, where the shackles lay, was red as if he was allergic to them.

He groaned and then shifted his weight up, sitting on his own. “What the hell happened?”

Inara had to force herself to stop staring at his lips. “You were so busy looking at my boobs that you missed the goons coming up behind you,” she snapped. Kissing him was what she’d wanted to do, but somehow she only managed to get catty with him. “You had the upper hand until you worried more about me than you.”

His gaze raked over her, settling on her covered chest. A silly, lopsided grin spread over his face. “Yeah, your breasts.”

She nearly smacked him, but was too happy to see him sitting up on his own to bother. “We have more important things to focus on here.”
 

“If you say so,” he said, still grinning at her chest. He shook his head slightly and then stiffened. “How long have we been in here?”
 

Inara debated on telling him her theory. “I think we’ve been here a while now.”
 

He was quiet for a bit. “I think you’re right.”
 

“Got a name?”

“Eadan.”

He brought his hands up and touched the side of his head, where the blood had pooled. “Ouch.” He seemed confused, as if he was expecting an injury. She didn’t comment. No sense announcing something she didn’t fully understand and, really, who would believe a bunch of invisible bees showed up to save the day?
 

She slid even closer to him, their bodies touching. At least she’d finally stopped sneezing around him. “So, you’re magik?”

He tipped his head slightly. “I am, but how did you know that?”

She touched the tip of her nose. “I seem to have an allergy to magiks. They make me sneeze.”

His bright smile nearly stole her breath. Hot damn he was sexy, even beat up. “Magiks make you sneeze?”

She shrugged. “Yep.”

His lopsided grin made her heart flutter. “Ironic.”

“Why is that?”

“No reason. So, why does it make you sneeze?”

“Don’t know why. But I end up with sneezing fits that normally last an hour or two. Once I’m used to your scent, I don’t do it too much.”

“I have a scent?” he questioned, as he glanced around the container they were being held in. She strongly suspected he was trying to keep her calm while he looked for a way to escape.

“You do.” She sat on her bottom next to him. “Yours is different from other magiks. Yours is more of a mix of fresh air and mountaintops. I guess the best way to put it is you smell like nature.”

“That a good or bad thing?” He moved to his hands and knees and struggled a bit with being shackled as he stood. She stood too, using her body to help him keep his balance. From the looks of him, the goons had not only electrocuted him and beat the crap out of him, they’d more than likely electrocuted him again for good measure.

“It’s a good thing,” she admitted. “What did you do to piss these guys off so much?”

He was quiet a second and she got the sense he was trying to decide if he’d be honest or lie. She really hoped he picked option one.

He stood on his own and stared down at her. Man, he was tall. She wasn’t short for a woman, yet he towered over her. “I came here looking for you. I’m guessing they figured that out.”

“Me?” She was about to ask why and it hit her. “You’re a man in black.”

His brow arched. “A who in what?”

“Man.
In black
,” she answered slowly, because he probably was suffering a brain injury or something. Guess the invisa-bees hadn’t been all that helpful after all.
 

He sighed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“A guy from the organization that has been hunting me down for years,” she said, her voice raising. “The same goons who have come for me over and over, trying to toss me in an unmarked van?”

He snorted.

“I don’t find that funny. I’ve seen movies. I know what happens when you get put in an unmarked van.”

“What happens?” he asked, faking distress.

She knew he was teasing her with his questions. Still, she couldn’t help herself. Oddly, she felt comfortable around him.
 

 
“They fish your body out of a river after showing unflattering pictures of you all over the media in hopes someone has spotted you. In reality, you’re already swimming with the fishes.”
 

“And they told you they were going to kill you?” he asked, still looking amused. “Interesting.”
 

“Like serial killers inform you of their intent.” She huffed, waving a hand in the air frantically to get her point across. “They claimed they just wanted to talk. Pfft. Do I look stupid? No way was I going anywhere with them.”

“So you evaded them three times,” he mused.
 

“I did.” She almost asked how he knew, but had a hunch he was with them. “I went to the police once for help.”
 

“How did that work out for you?”

She bit the corner of her lip. “They held me in a cell, and when they opened it, a guy from one of the groups who tried to take me was there. He’d bailed me out. That is pretty twisted, don’t you think?”
 

“Not if he was really trying to help you.” Eadan shook his head. “And what did you do then?”

“Faked being sick. When they went for help, I ran. No way was I letting a group of nutjobs steal me away to take me apart in tiny pieces and dissect me.”

He laughed. The entirely too sexy jerk actually laughed at her. “You mean a member of the group who has been trying to get you, bring you in safely, and tell you about the actual bad guys?”

She stilled. Wait. The men in black weren’t the enemy? How could that be? She’d spent so long believing them to be the ultimate threat. Dare she believe Eadan? Jimmy would tell her to trust her gut in this situation. He’d say she had to follow her instincts. Her gut said Eadan was on the level. That he was being honest. And years of drawing him, sketching every detail of his face, left her feeling a bond to him. One she didn’t want to see broken now that she knew he was actually a flesh-and-blood man, not just a figment of her imagination.

“Oh. So they aren’t the bad guys?”

“No. Well, the majority of them aren’t. It’s complicated. Suffice to say, I’m not a bad guy.” He began touching the walls of the container. He hissed and pulled his hand back. “Lead.” She watched him as he jerked on his chains. “I’m betting these are lead laced as well.”

Stories Jimmy used to tell her of other types of supernaturals came back to her. Her eyes widened. Excitement raced through her. “You’re a faerie!”

He responded with a slight laugh. “I am.”

“That is so cool,” she said, sounding very child-like. She didn’t care. She’d always wanted to meet a faerie. “Are you a Trooping Faerie?’

“Am I a what?”

She smiled wider. “Can you fly?”

He paused in his search for a way out. He faced her direction. “Do I look like a pixie to you?”

She eyed him. “Well, no, but I’ve never seen one, so maybe.”

“They’re smaller than me. Much smaller.”

“And they can fly?”

The look he gave her made her blush. “No, they don’t fly like in the normal sense of the word. They levitate and can suspend themselves in midair for a period of time. I guess it gives the illusion of flight.” He huffed. “Why are we talking about them again?”

“I thought
you
were one.”

He shot her a hard look. Oddly, it just turned her on. Under normal circumstances her temper would have gotten the better of her and she’d have added to someone’s injuries. Not this someone. He was different.

She just wasn’t sure how or why.

Flashes of how it felt to touch him washed over her. She had to put her thoughts on something else and fast. The next she knew she was blurting out, “How old are you? Are you, like, a thousand? A friend of mine told me he knew some faeries that were pushing a thousand.”

Eadan exhaled slowly. It was evident he was trying to be patient with her. “I’m going to be thirty-one soon.”

Some of her elation waned. “Great. I dreamed up the baby faerie.”

“Baby faerie?” he questioned. “Do I look like a baby to you?”

Hell no. He looked like he’d be a killer in bed. Something about him oozed sexuality. Even beat up he gave off a vibe that said “once I take you, you’ll never want another”. She swallowed hard, remembering the feel of his chest. “Um, no. Not really so much.”

“And for the record, we prefer the term Fae to faerie.”

“Sounds more manly. I can see why,” she said, before thinking better of it.

He snorted and then went all the way around the container, to no avail. She suspected his eyesight wasn’t quite as good as her shifter one was, so she didn’t bother pointing out that his mission had been a lost cause. They were locked in.

“So,” she started, “what is it your organization wants with me, Eadan?”

He returned to her and sat again, looking tired and sore. “We’re called PSI.”

She merely listened as he continued on.

“We deal in paranormal security and intelligence. Intel came in on you,” he said softly. “It led us to believe you might be a child of the Asia Project.”

“Asia Project?” she asked. She’d heard Jimmy mention it once in passing to one of his contacts.

“Bad guys doing bad things to babies, hoping to make super soldiers, or the at least, the next wave of super humans.”

She was quiet for a while as she let what he said soak in. “And you think I’m one of these babies from the Asia Project?”

“We know you are,” he said. He watched her in a way that made her feel as though she was the sexiest woman put on the face of the Earth. Not the street rat she really was. “We were able to track down your adoption records.”

She shook her head. “Not possible. My adoptive parents got me from a backwoods orphanage overseas. The place had a fire. All its records were destroyed.”

Eadan touched her hand with his and heat shot through her. “PSI swept in during the fire, grabbing what they could and reconstructing as much evidence and information as possible. They took the copies and got rid of the rest. They needed to protect your identity and the identity of others like you who were funneled through the same orphanage.”

There were others like her? Others who didn’t know what they were or why they were this way? She turned her hand, taking Eadan’s in hers. “Did you find them all? The others?”

He shook his head. “No. You’re the first one from
this
orphanage we’ve been able to locate. And you’re hard to pin down long enough to bring in and tell everything to.”

She blushed. “In my defense, I thought you people wanted to dissect me or leave me in a river.”

“No. We don’t do that sort of thing.” He held her hand and lifted it, his chains rattling. “We gave that up some time in the early twenties.”
 

Sensing he was joking, her lips twitched before giving in and smiling. “You hear this from the old timers?”
 

“Oh yeah, they sit around talking about the good ole days.” He met her gaze. “When you could just toss whoever you wanted in the river and be done with them.”
 

“Glad I missed out on that,” she said.
 

He stared at her for the longest time. “You’re too thin.”

She knew.
It’s not like I can help it.

“I never said it was your fault,” he said, surprising her.
 

She tipped her head, watching him, wondering if he’d really read her mind.