Wild Thing (2 page)

No, Tayla had no need to look at him. She met Carter’s gaze instead. “What’s going on?”

“New assignment,” Carter said. Generally, Tayla kept to her foundation assignment—rotating between the city’s extensive parks to troll for human predators. But sometimes Carter pulled her in for the short, hard hunts to which she was so well-suited; she either worked solo, or as part of a team large enough to let her blend, one in which she could drift away to fulfill her own role.

Cheetahs. Not known for being team players.

At least, that’s what she liked to tell herself. Excuse enough.

Carter handed her a folder. She couldn’t help a glance at Mark; she found him with a folder already in hand. The realization caught her by surprise, and she missed Carter’s next several words. “…calling it a summit. But you can think of it as a major informant download—and you’ve only got a couple days to secure the site.”

Mark raised an eyebrow. “If you want us to keep the Core from shredding this guy—“
literally
“—we
 
need more time than—“

Carter cut him short. “The escalated timing is his call.” End of discussion, that. “You two will be working the site.” As if already hearing the words rising in Tayla’s throat, he lifted his head to stop them with nothing more than that hard gaze. “You’re both right. We need more time. But we don’t have it. So you’ll go in low and quiet, a small, specialized team. You’ll know every crack in the sidewalk before our informant arrives—“

“Scottsdale,” Mark said. His voice was still what she remembered—an amazing velvet that made her bones vibrate. Vibrate and crave more. “No cracks on those sidewalks.” High-end area on the west side of Phoenix, extra buff and gloss and cost to match.

“Maybe not,” Carter admitted. “Contact will be made at Eldorado Park—or Vista del Camino a block south. Our man will be staying in the Fronds Hotel, but he’s playing it cagey about the meet.”

“And us?” Tayla asked. She stuttered over the very thought of a hotel room.
Quiet torture. Cruel, quiet torture.

“Empty condos next to Vista del Camino, at least until we get a handle on the meet. But that won’t be your responsibility. You’ll cover before and after. Keeping the area clear of surprises.”

“But…” Tayla said, searching for words—trying to maintain her strong, aloof self and floundering around somewhere in awkward teenager-speak instead. “But…”

Mark spared her a glance, if not much of one. “If you’re worried about last night—“

Last what?
But she saw the faint wince around Nick Carter’s eyes and she suddenly knew, and
awkward
made way for
horrified indignation.
“You were
there
?” She stood, not even realizing it, the ventilated bike helmet clutched before her. “You were the one? You saw—“ And over to Carter. “You
told
…?” Because of course that’s how Mark had known of her bobble. Her hesitation, the self-doubt that had allowed her quarry to escape.

But she caught the tightness in her throat, and the strain in her thinning voice, and she caught the knuckles white around her helmet chin strap. No, that’s not the way she wanted to do this. She took a breath. A deep one. She found herself. “This is a park thing—I can work it alone. I can work it
better
alone. And—“ she flickered a glance at Mark, just enough to see his faint recoil when she added “—if I’m not alone, then I need someone who can keep up with me.”

Someone who could shift. Whose other form knew speed.

She hadn’t meant to put that faint gleam of hurt in his eye. Only to protect herself. To regain herself.

“I don’t need to prove myself to you,” Mark said. “Not to anyone.”

“No, I meant—“ She stopped, every part of her miserable and hating this. Worse than not being noticed. “It wouldn’t make sense to put me with Ruger, either.” Massive Ruger, who took the bear. “In a team, maybe. As partners…it just gives us something to overcome. That’s why I usually work alone.”

“Ruger is a healer, not a tracker. Not security.” But he took it down a notch. “It’s no big deal, Garrett.” Even if maybe it was, if maybe a moment ago he might have called her
Tayla
instead. “You can be the legs if you want.” His gaze flicked down the length of her knickers and down her bare calves, all the way down to her biking sneaks, and right back up again, all the way to her—

She fought the urge to cross her arms over her chest. “Really,” she said firmly, speaking to Carter. “I work better alone.”

She expected him to shake his head. He wouldn’t have brought them here if his mind wasn’t already made up. But she didn’t expect—

“Let me be blunt,” he said. “I need more from you than you’re giving. I need more from you than you
can
give right now. I’m borderline on taking you out of the field for assessment.” He stopped—out of pity or mercy, she couldn’t tell. But you know these parks. You’re a tracker. You work personal security. You’re used to putting on an innocuous front.” Okay, maybe she’d get through this unscathed….

Or maybe not.

Carter’s gaze narrowed. “But not by yourself.”

She dared another glance at Mark. No, it really couldn’t get any worse. She’d fumbled in front of him, she’d insulted him, and now Nick Carter had stripped her bare and naked in front of him. He no longer looked hurt or angry; he looked distant. Maybe even sorry for her.

Great.

“Mark’s unique perspective can make a difference,” Carter told her. “I
need
it to make a difference. And so do you.”

Tayla stood a little straighter, lifted her head a notch higher, and dragged herself through the moment with sheer strength of will and a stubborn chin.

“I mean it,” Carter said. “Don’t pretend you don’t see the problems lately. If you want to stay in the field, you’ll listen—you’ll let Mark be your partner, not just someone you pretend isn’t there.”

Mark snorted gently beside her. So he’d noticed, had he?

“And Tayla,” Carter said, not easing that hard wolf gaze of his one little bit, “the Sentinels need it to make the difference, too. This summit is critical—more critical than I can even tell you. We
must
have this information.”

Mark leaned forward. “This have anything to do with the leak on that Tucson operation?”

Carter stiffened. Ever so slightly, if only for an instant. He said only, “It’s important. Too important to let personalities and feelings rule what happens next. Do you both hear me?”

“Yes,” Tayla said. She’d caught a snatch of equilibrium in that scant exchange, moments when the spotlight had turned away. She might not agree, she might hate this, but she understood clearly enough—this choice was no choice at all. She’d come to terms with the details once she had some space to herself. She could ground herself in that, find a certain calm there.

In the next instant, Carter shattered it. He said, “Starting tonight.”

She’d been stunned.

Mark didn’t need an empathetic connection to know it—he’d seen it on her face, in every stiffened muscle of that long, graceful body.

Only
that
body could wear
those
clothes—biker geek—and make him instantly hard, there in the office of his field supervisor plus.

For Nick Carter didn’t bother with the average field assignment. He knew about them all, he watched over them all…but sending Mark and Tayla out to scour the Vista del Camino in the late spring heat of the desert? Not an assignment that needed his personal attention.

Unless it really was all that important.

Almost important enough to get Mark’s mind off his own body. Off
her
body.

But not quite.

Carter gave him a mildly amused gaze, there in the wake of Tayla’s departure. Chin tipped high, green eyes fighting to stay cool and floundering with panic, fiery red-gold hair unruly in the wake of the helmet, the perfect mussed look.

That panic told him what he needed to know. She wanted nothing to do with him. Not his non-shifting self, not his very human reaction to her.

Carter waited for the door to latch firmly behind her and speared Mark with a direct look. “That went more easily than it might have.”

“You think?” Mark said flatly.

“You know, don’t you, that she hasn’t been initiated?”

Flat out. Carter just said it flat out. As if he wasn’t talking about Tayla Garrett’s very private sex life.

“Uh,” Mark said. In the back of his mind he heard
gusty panting, a cry of pleasure, a demand for more; the tingle of his nape as fingers traced the cowlick pattern there and the delicate touch of a tongue
—

He closed his eyes, swallowed hard.

After a moment—during which Carter left him suspiciously alone—Mark said, “That sounds like her business.”

“Under the circumstances?” Carter offered up a snort that might have passed for amusement. “Until she finds herself a Sentinel bedmate, she won’t fully mature into her abilities. It’s slowing her down, and it’s integral to her confidence issues. So at the moment, it’s very much my business. And yours, as of now.”

“I…” Mark said, giving Carter a look of patent disbelief. “Uh. What?”

Carter shook his head, shoving paperwork aside to clear his desk as if this conversation was the most important thing in the world. This conversation about Tayla Garrett, Mark Burton, and sex. “I’m not blind, though the two of you just might be.” Another hard look, unyielding. “Sort it out, Burton. Because the root of her problem is
you
.”

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Chapter 3

Empty condo. All theirs.

Not damned empty enough.
Not with only one bedroom. Oh, and a kitchen, already stocked. A sparse living room, with couch and recliner and no television but a laptop with a secure connection to brevis. And that one bedroom, with one bed.

The root of her problem is
you
.

Or so Carter had said.

Looking at Tayla now, Mark wasn’t convinced. She stood in the living room, temper flaring as bright as her brilliant red-gold hair in the Phoenix sun, flush riding high on her cheeks, eyes hidden behind sleek trendy sunglasses but expression not hidden at all.

Mortified. Humiliated. Resigned.

And determined.

“It’ll be Vista del Camino,” she said, nodding out the double doors of the private balcony—enclosed, its corner filled with a terra-cotta pot containing an impossibly groomed and healthy rent-a-plant, the second-floor height looking down on the perfect view of cultured green landscape, tree clusters, and improbable ponds. “Eldorado is too busy—between the skate park and the baseball diamonds and all that night lighting, I don’t see our snitch feeling at home there. So we should focus on clearing del Camino.”

“He’d do better to hide in his hotel room,” Mark said.

She cast him a look of surprise. “There’s no way we’re letting him bring in active amulets—and that means he’ll have to do protective workings on the spot. He’ll want to be where he can steal from the earth for that.”

He’d known that. If he’d stopped to think about it. But thinking still wasn’t his best thing. Not with prescience—
gusty
 
panting cry of pleasure
—tickling around his nape.

Or wishful thinking. Possibly a little of both.

“Let’s head out,” she said. “I need some real ground under my feet.” She’d changed from her biking gear and now looked perfectly ready for a power walk in the park in sporty capri pants that made her legs look longer than ever and settled on her hips in just the way to taunt a man—
don’t you wish your hands were here
—along with tidy walking sneaks, neat sport socks over trim ankles, and a sleeveless pale green shirt with a slender empire tie that made her perfect breasts just…

“Perfect,” he murmured.

“What?”

“Perfect idea,” he told her. “The park.”

She sighed. “Look,” she said. “This is hard enough, being thrown together on an op with no chance to warm up to it. Carter may have a layered agenda, but I think we should just forget it. Go for the op. That’s the important thing, and, anyway…Carter’s full of crap.” She said it again, more assertively. “He’s full of crap.”

“We trained together,” Mark pointed out.

“We trained in the same place,” she corrected him, voice exquisitely dry. “You would have to have looked at me once or twice to say that we trained together.”

He’d looked at her, all right. Seen what she was.
Cheetah. Glorious speed, wild abandon, feral grace
. All wrapped up in emerging from herself, back then, crying out for the space to do that—but unmistakable to anyone with eyes.

Mark Burton had always had eyes. The prescience had helped even then, layering in visions of what she would be.

It hadn’t been wrong, either.

But she hadn’t seen any of that, it seemed. Hadn’t felt his regard, only his distance. If she now gave that distance back to him…

He could hardly blame that, no matter what Carter thought or said or wanted.

He cleared his throat. “The park,” he said, and reached for the condo keys he’d tossed on the counter upon entering. “Show me around.”

“I wonder what’s really going on,” Tayla mused, taking Mark to where the park’s second pond trailed off the teardrop shape of the first. “Carter’s been tense. And for once it’s not about Dolan going rogue down in Tucson regional.”

“If something’s wrong down south, blame Dolan Treviño…that’s the party line,” he said. “Not one I buy.”

“Whatever it is, it’s turning the heat up on our summit,” she mused. “The snitch is going to choose a place where it’ll look natural to settle in for an hour, maybe two. We can anticipate that. He’s going to want vantage, defensibility…but not predictability.” She walked them along the wavering, incongruous asphalt path that followed the trickling ponds through the long, narrow park, and if she had any awareness of him—from the unrelenting echo of blood pounding in his ears at the sight of her in those ass-hugging pants or the uncomfortable restriction of his jeans—she gave no sign of it.