Her Perfect Mate (9 page)

She coughed up the water she’d been sipping. “A werecat? You watch way too many movies.”

Now that he thought about it, the idea was pretty ludicrous. But she’d just told him she was a feline

shifter. What the hell was he supposed to think? He picked up his sandwich and took a bite. “I’ll take that as

a no.”

“I was born a shifter,” she explained. “And no, before you ask, my mom didn’t have sex with a lion.”

“The idea never crossed my mind.”

Like hell it hadn’t. In addition to watching too many movies, he sometimes had a very twisted

imagination.

Ivy bit into her sandwich, chewed, then washed it down with water. “The scientists at the DCO said that

somewhere in the past, feline DNA got mixed in with one of my ancestors’ DNA.”

Landon felt his mouth twitch. “Ah. So, your great-great-great-grandmother slept with a saber-toothed

tiger?”

She made a face at him. “No one slept with any saber-toothed tigers. According to the geneticists, there’s

a little bit of this mixed-up DNA in everyone. Even you.”

He downed the rest of the first sandwich and started on the second. “Yeah? Then how come I can’t do

what you can do?”

“Because the genetic coding didn’t become active and cause changes in your physiology when you were

a teenager like mine did.”

“Changes in your physiology. Like claws and cat’s eyes?”

Her eyes, soft and brown now, went wide. “You saw my eyes change? When?”

“When you latched on to my arm with your nails on the confidence course. They changed for a second,

but then went back to your natural color so quickly, I wasn’t sure I’d seen right.”

“I usually only do that at night so I can see better. But they can change whenever I’m stressed. Or

emotional.” She looked at him sheepishly. “I feel awful about clawing you. It was an instinctive reaction. I

really am sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. They don’t even hurt now,” he said. “Any other feline superpowers I should

know about?”

“Well, I’m a lot stronger and faster than a woman should be,” she admitted.

He grinned. “Yeah, I kind of figured that when we were sparring yesterday. Anything else?”

“I can heal twice as fast as a normal human. So, while that fall from the rope bridge would have hurt, it

wouldn’t have killed me.”

“Damn.” That would be one hell of nice superpower to have in Special Forces. “What else?”

“I’m more athletic and agile than a regular person.”

“Right.” He chuckled. “Like that graceful demonstration on the rope bridge this morning.”

“Not quite.” She blushed. “That was me showing off. When you didn’t freak out after seeing me climb a

wall, I got a little carried away. I’m not normally that careless. Especially out in the field. So, no worries.”

Was that her way of telling him she wasn’t going to let what happened to her previous partner happen to

him? Whatever that was. He should have asked, but right now he was more interested in learning about her

animal side.

“Can you turn into a bobcat or lion, or whatever breed your DNA is from?”

She laughed. “You really do watch too many movies. No, I can’t turn into a bobcat. Or a lion. Or a

cheetah.”

He’d been hoping she could. That would have been really cool.

Ivy pushed her plate away so she could rest her forearms on the counter. “Okay. How come you’re not

freaking out about all this? About me and what I am.”

Good question. He shrugged. “I don’t know. Would you believe me if I said I’ve always been a cat

person?”

Ivy smiled, giving him a glimpse of perfect white teeth. “Maybe. If I didn’t know you were lying.”

She was right. He was more of a dog person. But it was either lie or come clean and tell her he’d always

had a thing for Catwoman. An image popped into his head of Ivy dressed in a shiny leather catsuit complete

with ears and a long tail. Now he was hard again.

“You can’t read minds, can you?”

She laughed. “No.”

“What about the other shifters at the DCO?” he asked, partly because he was curious and partly because

he had to do something to get the sexy image of a leather-clad Ivy out of his head or he was going to really

embarrass himself. “Do they have feline DNA, too?”

“Some of them. But others have wolf, bear, whatever.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Working for the DCO? About a dozen or so.”

“Have you ever been partners with any of them?”

She shook her head. “The DCO doesn’t pair shifters with other shifters. They say it’s because their

studies show pairing a human with a shifter creates the strongest teams, but I’m not sure I buy that. I think

it’s because they don’t trust two shifters to work together without adult supervision.”

Or the people in charge were worried one shifter wouldn’t carry out orders to kill the other if he or she

became compromised. Landon wanted to ask Ivy how she could work for an organization that would rather

see her dead than have someone know they had people like her on their payroll, but he changed his mind.

He didn’t want her thinking he was focusing on it. That situation was never going to happen because he

wasn’t going to let it happen. So there was no reason to talk about it.

Landon glanced at his watch. As much as he hated to cut the conversation short, he needed to get

moving if he wanted to see Jayson before visiting hours were over. He slid off the stool.

“I’m going to take off for a while,” he told Ivy.

“Oh.” Was it him or did she almost look disappointed? “Okay.”

He picked up their empty plates and carried them over to the sink so he could wash them. Ivy’d made

the sandwiches, so he figured it was only fair for him to do the dishes. She followed, leaning casually

against the counter as she watched him work.

“Thanks,” she said. “For not freaking out about me being different.”

The way she said it made him think she didn’t get that kind of reaction from people very often. That

wasn’t surprising. It wasn’t every day you ran into someone who was part cat. “Thanks for trusting me

enough to tell me.”

She gave him a small smile. “It’s not like I had a choice. You’d find out anyway, and it was better you

found out from me. I’m just glad you’re okay with it.”

Was he okay with it? He didn’t know. Maybe he just hadn’t wrapped his head around it yet. Or maybe

he was still too sleep-deprived to care.

Setting the plates in the rack beside the sink, he grabbed his keys and headed for the door. He opened it

to find himself face to face with Clayne, the guy who’d showed up at the confidence course that morning

and gotten under Ivy’s skin. While the man wasn’t quite as big as Declan, he was still taller than Landon.

Did that make him a shifter?

Clayne looked past Landon as if he weren’t even there, his gaze going to Ivy. “Hey.”

“Hey.” She walked over. “Landon, this is Clayne Buchanan. Clayne, my new partner Landon Donovan.”

Landon held out his hand, but instead of taking it, Buchanan brushed past him and walked into the

living room. Landon snorted. Ignoring Buchanan, he turned to tell Ivy he’d see her later, but the words died

in his throat when he saw how stiff she was. She looked as tense as when she’d seen him earlier in the day.

“Do you want me to stay?” he asked her, leaning close and lowering his voice so Buchanan wouldn’t

hear.

She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

Landon glanced at Buchanan. He was standing in the middle of the living room, his arms folded across

his chest, a pissed-off expression on his face.

“You sure?” he asked Ivy.

“I’m sure. Go.”

Landon wasn’t crazy about leaving her alone with the guy, but he didn’t see a way around it without

making a big deal out of the whole thing. He gave her a nod, looked at Buchanan—who was still glowering

—then walked out. To say Ivy had shitty taste in friends was an understatement.

***

Clayne shook his head. He was wearing his dark hair longer. It brushed his shoulders. “I’m good.

Why’d Donovan think you wanted him to stay?”

She should have known Clayne’s exceptional hearing would pick that up. “Because you look like you

want to rip my head off.”

He scowled, the muscles in his square jaw flexing. “You know I’d never hurt you.”

“I know that. But Landon doesn’t.”

Clayne was silent for a moment. “How do you like him? As a partner, I mean.”

As opposed to what? Boyfriend? She flopped down on the couch, tucking her legs under her. “He

seems capable.”

Clayne grunted. “I don’t like him.”

“You don’t even know him.”

“I know he’s a norm. That’s good enough for me.”

“You know, when you say things like that, you sound just as narrow-minded as the norms who hate us

because we’re different than they are.”

He growled low in his throat. “I’m not anything like them.”

“Right,” she scoffed.

He clenched his jaw. “Dammit, I didn’t come here to argue.”

“Then what did you come here for?”

Clayne didn’t answer right away. “To ask if you wanted to grab dinner with me.”

“I already ate.”

His lip curled. “With Donovan?”

“Yes, with Landon.” She shook her head. “God, Clayne, you make it sound like we went out for an

intimate dinner at a romantic restaurant. We ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

He scowled. “I just don’t like the idea of you spending time with him.”

Now he was jealous, too. “He’s my partner, Clayne. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together,

especially while we’re getting certified.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to hang out with him in your off-time,” Clayne argued. “Why do you

want to spend time with him, anyway? He’s a human. You know as well as I do how fast their kind can turn

on our kind.”

She knew, only too well. But she didn’t despise everyone who wasn’t a shifter because of it. Clayne

clearly didn’t feel that way. But then his emotional scars went deeper than hers. If she so much as

mentioned his ex-partner’s name, it would only piss him off even more.

“I’m human, too, Clayne,” she said softly. “And whether you want to admit it or not, so are you.”

He let out a snort. “Don’t remind me.”

She was too exhausted for this. “I’m not going to sit here and fight with you. I’m tired and all I want to

do right now is go to bed. I’ve got to be up early for training.”

Hurt flashed in his eyes. He shoved his hands through his hair and blew out a breath. “This wasn’t the

way I wanted this to go. I just thought we could have dinner together. Hang out like we used to, you

know?”

Ivy wished they could do that, too. She missed hanging out with Clayne. But going out for something as

simple as dinner was hard when one of them wanted to be more than friends and the other didn’t.

She uncurled herself from the couch. “I’ve got an early day tomorrow.”

His mouth tightened. “Which is your way of saying you’re not interested. I get it.” When she didn’t say

anything, he stalked across the small apartment to the door. He yanked it open, then turned to face her. “I

just want to know. Would you be willing to go out with me if I wasn’t a shifter? Say I was—I don’t know—

a norm like Donovan?”

She felt her face color as she remembered the not-so-innocent fantasy she’d had in the shower. “Landon

and I are partners, that’s all.”

“Yeah?” Clayne snorted. “Well, you two seem damn chummy for partners.”

Chummy? Who the heck said that? Not that it mattered because she and Landon weren’t chummy. They

weren’t anything but partners. Ivy opened her mouth to tell Clayne that—again—but he was already gone.

Chapter 5

Ivy shifted in her seat, trying to get comfortable as the helicopter careened through the night sky. She

might be part cat, but she felt more like a donkey with all the gear she was carrying. She wasn’t looking

forward to hoofing it through the jungles of Venezuela with all this weight. Hopefully, the copter would

drop them close to their target.

She’d been surprised when Kendra had called early that morning and told her and Landon to report to

the DC office immediately for a mission briefing. Just minutes before, Ivy’d been filling Landon in on the

weeks and weeks of grueling training they had ahead of them before they were certified for field duty. Lock

picking, safecracking, electronic surveillance and wiretap procedures, computer hacking, security systems

bypass, diving, weapons and demo training, close quarter combat, hand-to-hand combat. The list was long

and exhausting.

Yet here they were sitting on a Black Hawk helicopter flying over Colombian territory about to embark

on what was essentially a final certification exercise in Venezuela. This was unheard of. John had told them

that due to her experience and Landon’s demonstrated military expertise, senior management decided they

were more than ready to handle this challenge. She hadn’t bought it and, from the look on their faces, John

and Kendra hadn’t either. That meant only one thing—Dick Coleman, the DCO’s resident rat, was up to

something.

Dick was the DCO’s deputy director under John. At least that’s how it showed up on the organizational