Taken by Fire

Tempting the Fire

Taming the Fire

Seduced by the Storm

Riding the Storm

The acrid stench of burning flesh filled the air, tangling with the sound of screams and the sight of a man engulfed in flames. Gunfire rang out, clean, crisp pops that seemed distant and unimportant
.

The man on fire was too distracting. He flailed, running blindly into trees until he hit the ground and rolled, but even as the flames began to snuff out, his movements flagged, until he was nothing but a charred, quivering lump on the jungle floor. Gray wisps of smoke rose from his body, reaching out to her, telling her the fire had done its evil work …

Melanie Milan jackknifed upright in bed, her lungs seizing in terror, a cold sweat coating every inch of her body. Panic wrapped around her as she slapped a trembling hand down on the mattress, groping blindly for something familiar. Anything.

Please, please, let me be alone
.

Sweet relief washed through her at the feel of her own satin comforter. Now that her vision had cleared of the dream-smoke, she could see the position of the alarm clock, the mirror near the
foot of the bed, the window that was cracked to allow a cool breeze inside.

She was at the Rome apartment. Thank God. She never knew where she was going to wake up.

Usually, waking up in the body she shared with her sister was the nightmare, but sometimes, like tonight, her dreams were far worse than waking up in some strange bed, possibly with some strange man. Or woman. Or both.

The burning man’s screams still echoed in her ears, and the foul odors clogged her nose. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t actually seen or heard the man burning alive. She knew it had happened, and she knew her sister was responsible.

Seeing Phoebe’s memories as nightmares was one of the worst things about sharing a body and brain. Melanie wasn’t consciously aware of anything that happened while Phoebe had control of their body, but sometimes, like now, Phoebe’s actions played out on the movie screen of Melanie’s mind.

This particular event had happened eight months ago—Melanie knew, because she’d suddenly come awake to take over the body after Phoebe retreated during a rare moment of terror. The first thing Mel had seen was the face of an extremely pissed-off man who was trying to kill her. The second thing was the dead, burned man on the ground, and she’d instantly known Phoebe was responsible.

And now, thanks to her nightmares, she was bone-chillingly aware of exactly how it had all gone down.

Melanie flopped back down on the pillow, afraid to sleep … but what sucked was that she was even more afraid to be awake.

Rome wasn’t a place where Stryker Wills was comfortable. Sure, the women were gorgeous, the food amazing, and fucking and eating were two of his favorite pleasures in life. But man, there was a lot of history here he could potentially destroy. The cathedrals and the Colosseum, not to mention the Vatican, had all survived hundreds, or even thousands, of years and he could take them out in one fell swoop with a flash of temper.

Knowing that made him more wary than usual. He’d been tense all morning, despite the beautiful women who’d been propositioning him as he ate at an outdoor café—he didn’t like mixing business with pleasure. And this trip was business, pure and simple, as he tried to get a bead on the fire-and-ice woman, a split-personalitied agent who’d killed his friend and nearly taken Stryker out—twice—eight months earlier in the Amazon jungle.

Stryker had been out for blood ever since—his easygoing personality fading into the background as his hunger to avenge his fellow murdered ACRO agent grew with each passing day.

Now the woman responsible for the murder was close. His hands fisted and he realized that he was no longer the same man who’d left ACRO for this assignment all those months ago.

Itor operative Phoebe Milan had killed his supervisor and friend, Akbar Shatar, setting him on fire while Stryker watched, helpless to do anything. And when Stryker returned to ACRO after Phoebe escaped, he’d gotten his new instructions from Devlin O’Malley, head of the ACRO agency.

Kill her
, Dev told him. No further discussion needed.

It was an instruction ACRO agents heard often. As an operative with rare abilities, Stryker had actually lived on ACRO’s massive compound since birth, as his parents were also both longtime agents with the Agency for Covert Rare Operatives.

His parents had assumed he’d have abilities, but man, had they been surprised at both the type and the extent. Mating a telekinetic with an excedosapien with superstrength hadn’t seemed like a crazy idea at the time—and most agents tended to marry other agents anyway. But the first time two-year-old Stryker’s temper tantrum ripped a fault through the middle of his house, everyone at ACRO had taken quite an interest in him.

So yeah, he’d grown up within the organization and, thanks to that, he was one of the few agents with special abilities who didn’t have major adjustment issues, but that didn’t mean that sometimes he didn’t feel intimidated by his own might.