Tempting the Enemy (16 page)

“
That’s
what you were about to become, Jade.

Because you refuse to listen.”

She faced Rysen again, her temper sparking. “I am not yours to command, Detective.”

“Yes, you are,” he snapped, his canines flashing savagely in the moonlight, possessiveness coursing off him. “Mine to command, mine to protect. Mine in every way you can imagine.”

Jade’s eyes widened to the point of hurting. They stared at each other, she in stunned disbelief and he with raw satisfaction. He couldn’t possibly mean that. And she couldn’t possibly be happy to hear such a claim. If anyone were going to own anyone, she would own him. She wasn’t such a pathetic Sibile that she’d allow herself to be dictated to by a male. Not even a male as strong as this one.

And yet, she couldn’t form the words to deny it.

Angry, at him and herself, she pushed at his chest, hard enough that his gaze flickered before she slid out of his arms, onto the snow in a pile of shaking limbs, wiping 136

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cold sweat from her brow. A sick sense of wrongness swamped her, turning her stomach and stinging her nerves. Because she pushed him away? She looked up at him to ask, but he wasn’t there.

Rysen stalked a few feet away, turning his back on her and his brothers, both. His hands balled into fists, his broad shoulders seeming almost to widen against the confines of his coat. As if he were forcing himself from her but the pull was taking all his strength.

Jade instinctively reached out her senses to him, recoiling at the rage surging through his color. Snapping free, she remembered her own anger when she’d felt his rejection against the car. Was he feeling that now? Did that mean he had felt this same sickening sensation of having done something wrong then as well?

Good God, what was happening to them?

“She didn’t see him,” Jade said to his back, ordering herself to move forward. Heat wasn’t rational, but
they
could be. Maybe if she could get him to think past it, could get herself to deal with the necessities, they’d be fine. They’d get through this and talk about all the confusing and overwhelming reactions when they were alone. She would not look over her shoulder at the two men quietly listening to them. Refused to give them any kind of satisfaction at her embarrassment. She stood, forcing her jellied legs to hold her up. “This place was black as ink during the attack. She never had a chance.”

“I already knew that.” Rysen didn’t sound like himself. His voice was deeper, rougher. Still angry.

“The boy’s name is Emmitt.” He didn’t know that, she decided, crossing her arms, wishing her skin didn’t still tingle where he’d touched. “His entire family is gone.

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He wasn’t with her when she died, there’s no point in questioning him about it. She ran to keep him safe.

Everything she did, she did for
him
, including getting him here. For some reason, she thought being here was the ultimate safety. I don’t know why.”

So much for moving forward. Rysen remained silent, his fury still coming off him in waves. The facts were colder than the snow at their feet. They were going to have to deal with this now.

Jade turned to the two men standing sentinel behind her. “Can we have a moment alone, please.”

Jensen’s eyes widened slightly at the request while Tyler cleared his throat. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

“I won’t hurt him.” Though the temptation was there.

She ignored the harsh scoff from the brooder behind her.

Jensen’s mouth twisted wryly. “That really wasn’t our concern.”

Jade stifled a growl. “Maybe it should be.”

Tyler was about to say something unwise—she just knew it—when Rysen shook his head. He hadn’t turned to any of them, but she heard his sigh. “Bury the girl with the others. We’ll be fine.”

The men acknowledged the command with only a flicker of their eyes before moving. They crouched on either side of the girl, doing something with the snow around her. She felt Rysen’s hand around her arm, pulling her back up the mountain. Only when she passed them, unable to take her eyes from the trio on the ground, did she realize they were packing the bloodied snow into the hole in the girl’s chest.

That’s what you were about to become, Jade…

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Her heart thudded heavily, Rysen’s warning feeling less like the unfounded worry she knew it to be…and more like foreboding.

Tyler’s stare met hers, for the first time a trace of darkness showing in his eyes. She let Rysen lead her, tearing her gaze away only when Tyler returned to his work.

“No one will ever know she was here, will they?” she asked, her voice hushed as a fresh snowflake fell on her cheek. She looked up, seeing hundreds, thousands more, drifting softly through the air. Not a snowstorm, just a gentle dusting of new snow. More than enough to erase the mark of footprints and the empty imprint of an angel on the ground.

“No.” Just that. No. A blunt answer to a foolish question, she supposed.

“Will anyone even know she lived?”

They reached the car. Rysen opened her door, the lines of his body still rigid, but a weary resignation cleared his face of the anger from her rejection. “Emmitt will. We will.”

“But no one else.” She wanted to touch him. Wanted to lay her hand over his on top of the car door. To heal the tears she hadn’t meant to cause between them. She kept her hands at her sides. Her instincts couldn’t be trusted.

Touching him would offer something she knew he didn’t want.

“If only.” He nodded his head toward the interior of the car.

Jade slipped inside, frowning. Then she remembered what he said about the death squads. “You think she’d been tagged?”

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“No, if she had been, they’d have gotten her along with the rest of them. But her whole family was slaughtered. That doesn’t happen by accident.”

“Neither does risking everything to get to a cabin in the middle of nowhere.” She watched for some kind of expression to cross his face, but nothing changed. “Do you think I’ll believe it’s a coincidence that she ended up here, in your care?”

He didn’t look away as he slammed the door closed.

She watched him circle the car. He watched her right back, his stare laden with warnings she almost considered heeding. But somehow, in a matter of hours, this man had changed something in her. Tapped into it and there was no going back to the ignorance—the self-preserving cowardice—she’d known before.

The driver’s side door opened and Rysen slipped into the seat. He put his attention to starting the car, adjusting the heater and getting them directed down the mountain.

She let him do it all in silence, waiting for him to talk, but he seemed perfectly content to say nothing. Finally, as the lights of the city became visible in the distance, frustration had her snapping.

“You’re really going to sit there and pretend I don’t need an explanation?”

“That was the plan, yes.” He didn’t even slant a glance her way while he said it.

If she had something heavy, she’d throw it at him without regrets. “What was that girl doing in the forest, Detective? Why did she think coming to you would protect her from the death squads?”

“She wasn’t coming to me. She was there and we found her.”

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“No, the
others
found her. And they called
you,
because
you’re
their Alpha. And,” she added when he took a breath to speak, “don’t try to tell me they called you because they linked her to the Woodsman. The only thing that resembles the Woodsman cases about that scene was that she was dead.”

“I know his scent,” he reminded her.

“Do
they
?”

She got the glance she wanted now. “What did I tell you about getting into my head?”

“I’m not. But I’m not blind, either. Those men are not your equals, Detective. They know it. I know it. You know it. There’s something else going on here. Why won’t you admit to being their Alpha?”

“To have an Alpha, you’d need a pack. You might be a little out of the loop, but I thought you understood that there are no packs anymore. Shifters in groups is a fast way to get dead.”

A fact she knew was true, but she wasn’t buying it.

“You have Woodsman kills you’re not reporting to the authorities. Bodies you’re hiding and who knows how many people coming to you for protection. I want to know why.”

“It’s none of your concern.”

“It is if you’re using me for your own ends. I deserve to know what’s going on.”

“All that’s happening is that you’re helping me track a murderer. It doesn’t matter who he’s killing as long as you do your job.”

“I
was
doing my job,” she replied, her blood heating so fast she wasn’t sure she could keep control of her gift much longer. How was he staying so calm now? Minutes Dee Tenorio

141

ago he was surging with anger. Now…nothing. Just cool detachment, which somehow made her feel all the more unstable. What other proof did she need that how he felt about her had nothing to do with her as a person and everything to do with the state of her Heat? “You’re the one interfering.”

“And I’ll keep interfering as long as you keep putting yourself at risk. I’m not your Order, Jade. People aren’t expendable to me.”

“But I’m not a person to you. I’m just one more Sibile in the world for you to hate.” All the training in the world couldn’t keep her feelings contained now. Each swell of emotion felt bigger than the last, straining her until she felt as if she would burst. Or bite. She flexed her hands, wanting something to claw, to tear apart.

Rysen swore, his voice rich with frustration. “I knew this wouldn’t work.”

“What wouldn’t work?” She swiped at her brow, already tugging at the high neck of her sweater. She could feel every single fiber and all of it itched.

“Me, you, together this long.” As if six hours were interminable. “We’re rubbing each other raw fighting the Heat.”

She heard the car rev and felt the increase in speed.

Out the window, the snow-encrusted trees sped by too fast to be counted. “Something tells me you’re not much easier to deal with without it.”

“Believe me, honey, I’m not the dangerous one right now.”

Well, at least he was starting to understand one thing about her. “Maybe I’d be a little less frustrated if you’d start answering my questions.”

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His silence—not to mention the leap in speed on top of what he was already applying—might as well have been an answer.

Not enough of one. She wanted words from him.

Honesty, at the very least. He’d had no problem being honest about anything else. “How am I supposed to help you with anything if all you do is keep things from me?”

“And how am I supposed to trust you if you can’t take one fucking direction?” he finally roared back at her.

And the strange thing was how much better that made her feel. As if he were finally treating her like an equal instead of something to be tolerated. The stinging aggravation gave way to a triumphant smile she knew showed far too many of her teeth.

Rysen sent her a blistering glare. “All I ask you to do is let me protect you. But no, you throw yourself on any damn grenade you can find. I’m starting to realize why your handlers kept you locked up in that goddamned convent. You’re fucking impossible to control.”

He took a hard left turn, the speed of the car pushing her back into the seat while the wheels screeched out his satisfaction. “And you know jack shit about Wolves,” he bit out, as if that had any bearing on anything.

The car tore into the city, ripping the silence apart as it slashed through the empty, snow-dusted streets. Jade searched for a sensation of fear, but her heart was racing too fast with a feeling she already couldn’t name. There was no room for fear.

“Sibile don’t get controlled, Detective.” She knew she was pushing him…and liking it. “Least of all by lying, pig-headed Wolves who threaten to kill us whenever we displease him.”

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He didn’t bother acknowledging her insult. “You’re no Sibile, Jade. If you’re going to accuse me of ignoring facts, you’d better be prepared to face some truths of your own.”

A sarcastic sneer curled her mouth. “Oh, I forgot, I have to be the perfect little Wolf girl for you, don’t I?

Because that’s the only way you’d be able to stand the fact that you want me. Better that I be shiftless and without enough strength to fight you off than a Sibile who could fry you on a whim, right?”

He took that threat about as realistically as he did the one in the woods. “You have no idea what you’re playing with, little girl. Back down.”

“No.” One way or another, she would get what she needed out of him. If not the connection she craved, then she wanted the secrets he held. “Tell me what you’re hiding out there in the woods.”

A horrible screeching sounded in time with the car lurching to a violent stop, the front end of the machine nosing close to the ground before springing back up and forcing Jade to swallow the heart that had leaped up into her throat. Her relief at surviving was short-lived, because Rysen’s hand wrapped around her neck, holding her effortlessly in place against the seat. She grappled with his forearm, determined not to show fear as he brought his face close to hers, snarling, his eyes glowing a little too Wolf for the man to be completely in control. But he was, she realized, because while his hold was firm, it wasn’t threatening. Simply…dominating.

“Stop. Pushing.”

She stared at him, yearning filling her until she felt heavy with it, from her eyelashes to her breasts to her 144

Tempting the Enemy

fingers and toes. She couldn’t even lift her face enough to taste his lips again. And they were so close…

His eyes changed, refocusing and shifting back to the human iris she knew. “No matter how you poke at me, I won’t take you like this,” he ground out, but he did graze her mouth with his, his beard and mustache tickling her face.

She strained toward him, the warmth of his breath melting the knot of need in her belly. “Why?”