Hawk's Revenge: Lone Pine Pride, Book 3 (8 page)

That was what she’d told herself, over and over again, as she’d gone to meet him that night, knowing what she would have to do.

She’d told herself he knew the dangers as well as she. Some part of her had been expecting discovery for weeks, waiting for the other shoe to drop. And then it had—like a ton of bricks on her chest, making it hard to breathe normally.

She was good under pressure—quick on her feet. If she hadn’t been able to think with adrenaline rampaging through her system, she would never have survived as long as she had—but that day as Mr. Washington had interrogated her, her brain had short circuited and she’d known only fear. Luckily, the illusion of cooperation had been her only play for so long it was second nature. They’d thought she was just a gullible female, a pretty face with an advanced degree being taken in by a shifter con artist.
How long have you been seeing this man, Dr. Russell? Have you told him anything about the Organization? When will you be seeing him again? Think of this as an opportunity for advancement, Dr. Russell. A chance to prove your loyalty. Of course, we want to believe you’re loyal. You’re the best we have at what you do. That’s why you’re still with us, my dear.

That subtle emphasis on
with us
. That thinly veiled threat…

Adrian shook his head, eyes dark and unforgiving. “You should have come to me. Told me what they were asking of you. I could have—”

“What? Waved your magic wand and made it all better? They were monitoring me. I couldn’t risk sending a message to you. Too many lives were at stake.” She shook her head, brushing furiously at the frustrated tears that threatened her eyes. “And even then, even knowing it was the best move to turn you over to them, I still almost didn’t do it. That night, I tried to warn you, tried to get you to fly away, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“So it’s my fault you stabbed me full of sedatives and let them have me?”

“I didn’t say that.” She scrubbed at her face, not even wanting to think of how wretched and puffy she must look right now. So much for vanity. “I swore to myself that I would do everything in my power to protect you while you were in Organization custody and I kick myself every day for not being able to watch over you better.”

He went rigid, eyes blazing. “That’s what you call it? Watching over me?”

“I know I failed you.”

“
Failed
me?” he parroted incredulously, lurching up and away from the table.

She could hardly blame him. “Maybe I made the wrong call, maybe we should have run—but we wouldn’t have those schematics now if I had. We wouldn’t have their rosters or their financials. We wouldn’t be able to mount a successful offensive against them—like you were always talking about. And there are over seventy shifters free today who would still be in Organization custody if I’d run then. Children, Adrian. So forgive me if I took a gamble that hurt you in the name of the greater good. I shouldn’t have made the choice for you, but would you honestly have wanted me to make a different one?”

His eyes narrowed as he stood over her, his firm jaw locked. She felt his gaze like a touch—on her shaking hands, her breasts as they rose with each gasped breath, the tears that still clung to her lashes.

“You’re very good.” It didn’t sound like a compliment.

Rachel huffed out a sigh and looked away from him, that sense of frustrated persecution rising again. If she even had the right to feel persecuted after everything she’d done to him. She’d tried to balance the scales with everything she’d done
for
him, but it may never be enough.

Did he hate her now? She wanted to ask but was afraid to hear the answer. Afraid she already knew.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Sorry wouldn’t be a bad place to start.”

“
Sorry.
” She released a humorless laugh. “I am sorry. I am so sorry. I must have said that to you a dozen times. How many times do you need? A hundred? A thousand? Would you like it in writing? Or maybe I should get a tattoo.”

“You haven’t said it. Not to me. Not once.”

She’d said it. She knew she had. He may not have heard it, but she’d spoken the words over and over when she was helping him escape. And in his ear before she stuck him with the needle, begging him to forgive her. But she would gladly say it again.

Rachel looked up, meeting the chilled yellow stare head on. “I’m more sorry than I can express for everything that I have done that has caused you pain in any way.” She wet her lips, knowing she should leave it at that—but Rachel had never been good at leaving well enough alone. “Can you say the same?”

Chapter Eleven

Adrian stared down at her across the table, trying to pin down why he couldn’t just do as the Alpha had instructed and present the bargain the Lone Pine Pride had come up with for the woman who was both Organization doctor and savior to so many shifters. He’d come in here to do that and only that, but one look at Rachel and all his good intentions had burned away.

She wasn’t lying helpless on the bed like he’d expected, but sitting at the table, looking beautiful and rumpled and still somehow so elegantly composed and so damn
beautiful
, as if she didn’t need him at all. And once again she hadn’t flung herself into his arms, damn it.

He’d wanted to push her, to punish her, to rage at her and to beg her forgiveness all in a single breath. He wanted to reach across that table, drag her into his arms and kiss her until they both forgot why they were angry and all this awful, awkward distance between them melted into heat.

When she’d spoken his name, he’d gotten half-hard. When she’d cried, he’d felt a simultaneous spike of vicious satisfaction and the achy need to pull her into his arms and croon that everything was going to be okay. She pulled to the fore in him the most protective and most vengeful sides of his nature, this woman he’d once dreamed would be his mate.

More fool he.

Could he say that he was sorry for everything he’d done to hurt her? He was sorry—the regret that he’d left her behind had been riding him hard ever since he’d woken up at Lone Pine—but he choked on the words. If he gave her even an inch, it would feel like cracking open his chest and giving her a free shot at his heart.

He ignored the question.

Laying his palms flat on the table, he fought to make his face as impassive as possible. “We have a deal for you.”

Her beautiful brown eyes flared wide with surprise, soft lips parting. “A deal?”

“Regardless of my personal feelings for you—” which was lucky because he didn’t have the first fucking idea what those feelings were, “—and taking into account the fact that you did work for the Organization, the shifters I’ve been working with still feel that you’ve been a friend to our people. You did help many of us escape—” including several who had made their way north to join the Lone Pine Pride and seemed intent on deifying Rachel as some sort of Mother Teresa goddess who had rescued them from a fate worse than death, “—and, like you said, without you, we wouldn’t have the hard drives which have been so useful in our efforts against your employers.”

“Former employers.”

“As you say.” He couldn’t be more civil than that. Not when her only explanation for tormenting him in captivity was her
failure
.

Those pretty eyes narrowed, and the urge to yank her across the table and plunder her mouth returned with a vengeance.

“The deal?”

He straddled the chair again—less likely to lunge for her that way. “You’ll tell us everything you know about the Organization and their plans.” And everything she said would be checked and cross-checked a dozen times because Adrian wasn’t going to be tricked in the name of the greater good again. “In exchange, you won’t be killed.”

She glared at him, unimpressed. “I was going to tell you everything anyway. I want to
help
.”

“And you will. But you’ll
forgive
my suspicion,” he said, emphasizing the word she seemed to like so much, “if we don’t give you free run of the place.”

“I take it the chain stays.” She shifted her feet and the metal rustled.

He hadn’t thought of it actually. The chain had just been all he could come up with on short notice to make sure she stayed put if she woke up while he had to run down to the main pride compound to get supplies and check in with Grace. “It does.”

“For how long?”

He didn’t answer, just lifted a brow. Her face flushed, eyes flashing—she really was entrancing when she was angry.

“How long? Two weeks? A year or two? Fifty? Are you going to keep me chained up in the woods until we’re both eighty-five and too senile to remember why you brought me here in the first place? Because if I don’t have any chance of earning my freedom, I don’t see why I should help you.”

“I thought you wanted to help.”

“I do and I will, but I’m not the enemy and I don’t deserve to be treated—”

“Don’t tell me how you deserve to be treated, Dr. Russell.”
Everything between us was real
, she’d said. Even those moments when she’d tormented him, laughed at his pain. “Every second I was in Organization hands I dreamed of this moment, of having you at my mercy. I will treat you however I damn well please. You’re
my
prisoner, not the pride’s.” That had been his condition. No one got to say a word about how he treated her. She was
his
.

One would think that would worry her, but her attention had caught on another word.

“A pride? Is that where we are? With lions?”

“Lions and tigers and bears,” Adrian said dryly.

Her expression turned skeptical—as if he was the one whose word couldn’t be trusted. “I thought the shifter species rarely mixed.”

“This place is the exception that proves that rule.” He waved his hands expansively. “Welcome to Lone Pine.”

“Does the Organization know about this place?”

“That’s one of the questions the Alpha is hoping you will answer, Dr. Russell.” Adrian had been hesitant about being so forthcoming with her about the pride, but the Alpha’s mate had lobbied hard to be open about who and what they were—within reason—in an effort to gain Rachel’s full cooperation.

Rachel shook her head, her long loose hair sliding against her cheeks. “I was never involved in field operations. I know very little about that side of things.”

“Then what good are you?” He said the words just to taunt her and her glare said she knew it. She didn’t bother answering.

“When do I get to meet this Alpha of yours?”

“Not of mine. He doesn’t rule me, so don’t go thinking you can charm him into making me let you go.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

He frowned. He’d never seen her like this. Snarky and sarcastic. Angry and letting him see it. Before his capture, she’d always been the sweet, biddable Southern lady, yielding readily to his greater knowledge in tactics and strategy. In the cells she’d been viciously pleasant. He’d never heard this spunk from her before, this fight, though he supposed he should have suspected it was there. She couldn’t have survived inside of the Organization for four years without a will of iron beneath all that gentility and silk.

“So this Alpha?” she prompted when he was too long studying her. “Is he on his way now? Should I whip up some lemonade like a proper hostess?”

Adrian shook his head. “It’s after midnight. We’ll go in the morning.”

“Go? You mean leave this palace? Aren’t you afraid I’ll see something and betray you?”

Jesus, once she went sarcastic, she went all the way. “You’ll be blindfolded,” he said, just to piss her off.

He would have preferred she stay here, where none of the other pride members could see her, but there wasn’t enough room in the tiny shack for all the pride’s lieutenants who would need to listen in on her debriefing. So he’d take her up to the main house on the goddamn hill, in full view of the pride and everyone. No matter how queasy that idea made him.

There had already been several attempts made by small packs of angry shifters against the Organization prisoners before they were tucked away in a building with armed guards. The security forces weren’t terribly keen on hurting their own people in an attempt to protect those who had hurt them in the past, so it was only a matter of time before someone broke through and got the vengeance they were all hungry for. Dominec had been reprimanded for the slaughter this morning and taken off the incursion team that would be going on the next raid—but that hadn’t stopped him talking to anyone who would listen about how good it had felt when the warm blood of his enemies had painted his skin.

Anti-Organization sentiment in the pride was higher than ever—no surprise there, many of their newest members were so recently rescued they still woke screaming at night—and Adrian couldn’t predict how the other shifters would react to Rachel. Sinner or saint? Monster or savior? He had a feeling it would be some of both and he wasn’t going to allow anyone else to lay a finger on her. She was
his
.

“I’ll need shoes, if it isn’t too much trouble. And a change of clothes and some shampoo wouldn’t hurt.”

“Making demands already, Dr. Russell? Was I allowed those things when I was your guest?”

“Just a suggestion. I’m less likely to be bothered by my stench than your people are. I wouldn’t want to offend the shifters’ sensitive olfactory systems.” A rustle of chains beneath the table. “Why is my foot bandaged?”

“Tracker,” he grunted.

“Meaning you tagged me or you removed the Organization’s tracker?”

“The latter. Though tagging you isn’t a bad idea, now that you mention it. I’ll get Mateo on it.”

They almost hadn’t caught the tracker in her foot. It had seemed like overkill when that same foot would have been blown off if the anklet detonated, but all the Organization prisoners had been scanned—and every single one of them had pinged the system with their left feet. Dr. Brandt was getting good at extracting them—practice made perfect. Rachel’s incision was tiny and already healing well.

“How long was I out?”

He shrugged, tempted to lie, tempted to tell her six months—the same amount of time she’d stolen from him—but in the end he told the truth. “Not quite a full day.”

“And this place? It’s yours?”

He stiffened, irrationally defensive of the shabby hut.

He’d moved out here to the far edge of the pride lands, well away from the main complex, as soon as he was able to leave the infirmary. The shack was old, but sturdy, equipped with all the necessities, though little in the way of luxuries. Exactly how he liked it. But somehow bringing her here—Doctor Barbie who was probably used to the finer things—the place felt bare rather than utilitarian.

“As much as anything here is,” he muttered, ready for the blade of her sarcastic tongue, but she surprised him. Her gaze slid sideways to the beat-up futon mattress resting on a plywood frame.

“You don’t mean to stay here with me, do you?”

“Concerned about your virtue? It isn’t like you have any charms I haven’t sampled. Or any that would appeal to me now.” The words felt like a lie, but he willed them to be true.

“Concerned about the size of that mattress, more like.”

His blood instantly heated. She hadn’t said it suggestively, but it was too easy to picture the two of them together on that undersized futon. God, it had been so long.

But that wasn’t why she was here. She wasn’t his lover anymore.

He had planned to stay here, but he hadn’t given sleeping arrangements a thought for a second. The idea of sleeping in her presence seemed so wrong to him that it hadn’t even occurred to him to worry about the bed. He would be awake, his instincts screamed, guarding her—though whether he was guarding her to keep her safe or guarding against her treachery, he couldn’t say.

His raptor gaze quickly scanned the room, finding the solution. He’d prop the heavy chair he sat in now against the door and sleep there. She wouldn’t be able to reach him to strangle him with the chain, and anyone trying to get to her would have to go through him. Perfect. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d slept sitting up, nor the worst place he’d ever slept by a long shot.

“The bed is all yours, princess.”

“I’m not tired.”

He rolled his eyes. “Then sing
Ninety-Nine Fucking Bottles of Beer on the Wall
to entertain yourself until morning. You won’t bother me.”

“I’d like to take a shower.”

Another memory hit him like a sledgehammer of lust to the groin. He swallowed thickly and feigned disinterest, waving to the tiny bathroom—which had only required minor plumbing tweaks to make livable when he’d moved in. “Be my guest.”

“And how am I supposed to get these pants off with the chain around my ankle?”

With my help.
“Very carefully, I imagine.”

She glowered at him. “Are you enjoying being an ass to me?”

He paused, giving that one the thought it deserved. “Yes. I believe I am.”

Misery loved company and as uncomfortable as the erection he was concealing behind the table was, she had a lot of misery to make up for.

She muttered something uncomplimentary about his lineage and stood. He heard himself laughing, the sound rusty and strange. “And here I thought you were the virtuous preacher’s daughter who never let a word stronger than
shucky-darns
pass your lips.”

She paused in her stomp to the bathroom, half-turning to face him over her shoulder, he shifted to keep her from seeing what she’d done to him.

“My daddy taught me every swear I know. He always reckoned the Good Lord wasn’t afraid of a little language.”

Her accent had grown thicker as she spoke about her father, the southern lilt coating the words in sugar and sex. It had to be the first time he’d ever been turned on talking about God. “Then why do you blush every time you curse?”

“Oh hush up.” She turned and sashayed into the bathroom, as much as she could sashay while dragging the chain, her exit only slightly marred by the fact that she couldn’t get the door to shut properly with the chain wedged in the way. She struggled with it, cursing some more, but couldn’t manage to get the door to close that last inch.

“Relax,” he called out. “I’m not going to peek.” His memory was sharp enough without needing a refresher course.

She went still, all noises from the bathroom ceasing, then shouted back, “Fine, then.”

He would have heard her if she’d whispered. Just like he heard the whisper of cloth, the rustle of the chain as she struggled to shimmy her slacks down over it. Soft thumps as she hopped and lurched against the wall.

He knew the second she was naked. Even before the faucet creaked, the old pipes groaned and water splashed into the narrow shower stall. He could picture every inch of her, hear the sound of the first droplets hitting her skin.