Her Perfect Mate (11 page)

and Ivy left. Kendra had pulled him aside and told him that some moron in the DCO named Dick Coleman

had been the one who’d decided to yank them out of training and put them in the field early. Since Landon

was this great Special Forces warrior with tons of training and experience, and Ivy had been through the

training twice, Coleman felt they didn’t need any more training. It might have been a compliment, but the

truth was that this guy was hoping they’d fail. And if they failed, Landon was going back to Special Forces,

Ivy was out of a job, and the DCO was going to have one hell of a black eye.

“Why would this guy want one of his teams to fail?” Landon had asked.

“Because some of the people on the Committee would love to see the EVA program get canned.”

Landon had been trying to figure out what Committee she was talking about when Kendra continued.

“Look, none of that is important. All I’m asking is that you cut Ivy a little slack. She’s had a string of

shitty partners, which has led to some trust issues,” Kendra told him, then added, “But you two have what it

takes to be an amazing team. She just needs you to trust her.”

He’d wanted to tell Kendra the trust thing was a little difficult. He didn’t know the first thing about Ivy,

other than she was a cat shifter and had better hearing, eyesight, and sense of smell than he did. And—as

he’d learned a little while ago—she had
hunches
. He was used to putting his life in other people’s hands—

you did that every day in Special Forces. But he didn’t know what kind of training she’d had or what her

instincts were like in a gunfight. Putting his life in her hands wasn’t easy.

But he knew what it was like to have people want you to fail. When he’d gone from enlisted to officer,

a lot of people had wanted to see him fail out of the program. That was reason enough to help Ivy—even if

she didn’t fully trust him yet.

“I’ll try,” he told Kendra.

Ivy motioned and they both slid into the dense jungle alongside the trail. A few seconds later, a troop of

twenty-five ragtag soldiers stomped past their hiding place. She
was
good.

As they knelt there, something else Kendra’d said came back to him—about the difficulty Ivy had with

previous partners. Kendra was the third person—fourth if you counted Buchanan—who had mentioned the

problems Ivy had with her previous teammates. He’d discounted everything Foley had said, but Kendra got

him thinking, especially after the little run-in he’d had with Buchanan as he was leaving the dorms that

morning. Ivy had already left for the DC office and he’d been moving fast to catch up. He’d seen

Buchanan, but since the shifter had brushed past him without so much as an “excuse me” the first time

they’d met, Landon decided to return the favor, ignoring the man as he headed for his truck. But Buchanan

grabbed his shoulder.

“Where’s Ivy?”

Landon had the urge to tell him to fuck off, but instead simply told him the truth. “She’s headed to the

DC office.”

Buchanan’s eyes narrowed. “You think you’re hot shit, don’t you?”

Landon clenched his jaw. The jerk acted like he was the reason Ivy wasn’t interested in his sorry ass.

“What the hell is your problem, Buchanan?”

“You’re my problem.” His lip curled. “You and every other norm. You’re not good enough to pick up

her trash from the curb much less be her partner.”

It would have been so easy to introduce Buchanan’s face to his fist. After the visit he’d had with Jayson

the night before, he was certainly angry enough. But that’d only be playing into Buchanan’s hands and

make the people in charge think he had impulse control problems.

“Yeah. Well, the DCO disagrees.” He grinned. “So does Ivy. In fact, I’m sure we’ll make a damn good

team.”

Buchanan took a step closer, a growl low in his throat. “I’m warning you right now, if you ever try and

pull the shit her previous partners did, I’ll rip your throat out with my bare hands.”

Snarling, he held up his hand and slowly let his fingernails extend until they were long and ragged—far

more dangerous than Ivy’s. Those nails could do some serious damage. But if Buchanan thought that was

going to scare him, he could forget about it. Landon refused to even flinch.

“I don’t know what happened with Ivy’s previous partners, and I don’t give a rat’s ass. I take care of

my teammates, so back the hell off, shifter.”

Buchanan’s lips curled back to reveal sharp canines. “You’re telling me to back off. That’s funny.”

“I don’t see you laughing.” Landon closed the distance between them until he was inches from the other

man. “Just so you know. The fact that you’re Ivy’s friend isn’t going to keep me from kicking your ass if

you get in my face again.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

With a growl that turned into a laugh, Buchanan turned and walked off.

Landon ground his jaw at the memory. Before he and Ivy got back on the trail, Landon found some of

the plant he’d been looking for all morning. The bugs were really getting to be a nuisance.

“Crush the leaves and smear them on your exposed skin,” he told Ivy. “It’ll keep the bugs away.”

She followed his suggestion without comment. He hadn’t been able to bring up the subject of her

former partners at any point during their flight to Colombia, and last night had been out of the question. But

maybe it was time to ask Ivy about them. If Kendra had gone out of her way to warn him and Buchanan

was willing to kill him over something they did to her, there must be more to the story.

He moved closer to Ivy. “Any bad guys nearby?”

“No. I think we’re clear.”

“Good. Because there are a few things I think we need to get out in the open, and the first among them

is what the hell happened with your first partner. A couple people have brought up this Jeff guy, but I’d

rather hear the real story from you.”

When she didn’t answer, he figured she wasn’t going to tell him.

“He tried to assault me.”

Landon did a double take. He hadn’t seen that coming.

“The official story according to Jeff’s old friends, like Foley and his camp, is that I’m a cock tease who

tried to cover up my incompetence by getting Jeff to sleep with me.” Her voice was unusually soft in the

stillness of the jungle, as if she were almost speaking to herself. “When Jeff turned me down, I used my

shifter abilities to attack him and leave him for dead. Then I ran back and whined to management that I’d

been sexually assaulted. According to their version of the story, the DCO believed me over an honorable

and decorated military hero because I was one of their EVA pets.”

“That must make it hard to work in a place when so many people hate you.”

“You get used to it.”

She clearly hadn’t.

“Of course Foley goes out of his way to make sure every new person in the department gets his version

of the story before they meet me.” Ivy looked back at Landon. “I have to admit, I was a little worried that

first day when I saw him talking to you. I figured you’d buy his crap since you were both in the military

and all.”

“And all? What, because I have a penis?” He laughed. “Trust me, Ivy. I smelled shit the second Foley

opened his mouth.”

Now that he’d gotten her talking, he wasn’t about to let her stop. “How long did you and Jeff work

together before he tried to attack you?”

“A little over a year.” She glanced at him. “It worked out okay at first. I mean we were never a high-

speed, well-oiled team by any stretch of the imagination, but at least he didn’t think I was a freak of

nature.”

“What was the problem then?”

“He always wanted to do things one way, and I wanted to do them another. One of us had to

compromise, and it usually ended up being me. Maybe that’s why he thought I’d give in when he wanted to

have sex. Because I gave in on everything else he wanted to do.”

Landon knew where this was going, and he didn’t like it. “Ivy, whatever happened wasn’t your fault.”

“Not directly. But I hung out with him outside of work. I thought it would make us a better team. He

thought it should make us bed buddies.” She made a disparaging noise. “I should have known there was a

problem when he stopped calling me Ivy and started calling me babe. I mean, I had sexual harassment

training for heaven’s sake. But I thought it was completely innocent on his part, so I let him get away with

it. Until he copped a feel of my ass.”

“I take it you didn’t report him?”

She stopped long enough to open her canteen of water and take a sip. “No. I thought I could handle it

myself. I told him if he did it again, I’d break his hand. Jeff acted like the injured party, saying he’d done it

accidentally and that it wouldn’t happen again.”

“What happened from there?” he prompted.

She recapped the canteen and started moving again. “We were on a stakeout on a rooftop in the worst

part of town in Mexico City. One minute I was lying flat on my stomach looking through a telescope at a

cartel drug dealer meeting with a DEA agent, and the next, Jeff was on top of me trying to rip off my

clothes.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if reliving the nightmare. “I was so shocked it took

me a minute to realize what he was trying to do. My first instinct was to scream bloody murder, but I knew

if I did I’d give away our position to not only the DEA agent and the drug dealer, but to half the street gangs

in the area, too.

“My survival instincts—my animal instincts—took over and I shifted without even realizing it. Probably

because I was so terrified. And so damn pissed. I kicked Jeff halfway across the roof, hoping he’d stay

down long enough for me to get away, but he immediately got up and came at me again. He must have

figured I didn’t need to be conscious for what he had in mind because he hit me hard enough to knock out

a normal woman. He forgot I’m a shifter, though. All that punch did was infuriate me more than I already

was, and when he tried to pin me to the ground and tear off my clothes a second time, I clawed his face to

shreds.”

“If you ask me, he got off easy. What’d you do then?”

“I walked off the roof with the video of the DEA agent taking bribes from the drug dealer, and then I

went back to DC and told John that Jeff tried to rape me. I wasn’t sure he’d believe me since one, the bruise

on my cheek from where Jeff punched was already gone by the time I left Mexico, and two, Jeff—when he

finally had the nerve to show his scratched-up face—claimed I attacked him without provocation.

“Luckily, it didn’t have to come down to he said/she said. The DCO had satellite footage of the whole

thing. Turned out Jeff attacked me on top of a building in the middle of one of the most scrutinized cities in

North America.” Her lips curved. “Nothing says sexual assault like photos taken from several hundred miles

up in space. John fired him on the spot.”

Landon didn’t think too much of Buchanan, but now he understood why the man would be willing to

rip apart anyone who did what her previous partner had done.

He glanced at Ivy. He couldn’t fully see her expression, but he knew it had to have been difficult for her

to talk about what happened. He felt guilty for bringing it up.

“Hey. I didn’t mean to make you rehash everything like that.”

She shook her head. “It’s okay. It was a long time ago, anyway. Jeff is history, and I’m over what he did

to me.”

Was she?

Ivy was trying to act tough and hard, but he could see in her eyes she was bothered by the memories.

When she looked like that, he’d never know she wasn’t completely human.

He sounded like that asshole Foley. Landon had never been the type to care whether someone was

Native American, Hispanic, Asian, or anything else. He wasn’t going to start now. Ivy wasn’t some kind of

nonhuman freak, she was simply different. That was the way he was going to treat her, even if she didn’t

think too much of him. Ivy
was
human. Period.

Time for a change of subject. “How’d everything go last night with Buchanan? He looked pretty pissed

off when I left.”

Okay, he was fishing for information, but so what? There was definitely some history between her and

Buchanan. Besides, they had to talk about something.

Ivy groaned. “Don’t ask.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Yeah.” She gave him an embarrassed look. “I’m sorry he was rude to you.”

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”

“Actually, it kind of is. Clayne is in a bad place right now and I think I did more damage by telling him I

didn’t want to be anything more than friends.”

“You can’t control who you’re attracted to.” If he could, Landon wouldn’t be having unprofessional

thoughts about Ivy every time she walked in a room.

“I know.” She held up her hand for a second, listening and sniffing the air. Apparently it was nothing,

because she started again without comment. “I just hate hurting him like this. He’s one of the few shifter

friends I have and I don’t want to lose him.”

“When did Buchanan decide he wanted to go from friend to boyfriend?”