Unleashing the Storm (13 page)

But
she’d stopped listening, her movements getting more frantic, especially once
she realized she wasn’t getting what she needed from him.

He
turned his neck slightly, so his trachea wouldn’t take the brunt of the chain,
pulled his hands away and reached down to free himself from his shorts. He
gagged, choked, the world spun from the pressure on his neck and, fuck, he
wasn’t so kinky that he got off on asphyxiation. But as much as he struggled,
his reflexes, his speed, didn’t seem to matter—like the life was being sucked
out of him, and he forced himself not to panic.

He
exerted what seemed like an inordinate amount of energy to get his hands back
under her wrists at the same time he slid fully inside of her. That seemed to
satisfy her, because she groaned, released his neck, and he responded with a
grateful gulp of good, clean air. And even though he didn’t want to, was pissed
as hell, the part of his body that never gave a shit about his other emotions
pulsed inside her, his hips rocked upward and he knew Kira was going to take
what she wanted, with or without his consent.

He
wanted more too, wanted to feel himself pushed deep inside her heat, because it
was so fucking good when they rutted together. And when she moved forward, he
was able to sink fully into her with a loud, satisfied groan.

“God,
Tommy, God,” she whimpered. She’d thrown her head back, closed her eyes and
smiled as he let her wet heat rub him in all the right ways.

So
fucking good.

He
grabbed her hips for leverage as she arched back, her cuffed wrists pressing
his rib cage as she came. He followed soon after, came with enough force that
he sucked air through his clenched teeth as she collapsed against him, sobbing.

She
was fucking sobbing. He’d never, ever understand women. She rolled off him,
curled up in a ball as her crying quieted, and his breath came in harsh gasps.
He’d have the impressions from the chain across his throat for days.

He
moved his hand in front of his face, pleased to see the silver blur. His excedo
skills were still there. Just not when Kira had him so deep in her rut.

A
man’s never safe when he’s fucking,
Dev always said, and Ender had always laughed, told him,
I’m always in
control.

But
this, this wasn’t control, not with her spring fever increasing in a violent
cycle that promised to last two weeks, if not longer.

They’d
find ways to service her at ACRO safely. Privately. She wouldn’t be his concern
anymore once they got to the facility. None of them ever were, and this
wouldn’t be any different.

Ender
took the keys from his pocket and unlocked the cuffs from her wrists. After he
backed away, she sat up, hunted for her shorts. Once she’d pulled them on, she
pulled her knees up to her chest and looked at him where he continued to lay
sprawled on his back on the grass.

“Are
you all right?” she asked.

He
ignored her question. “Twenty-one hours,” he told her instead. “I’ll give you
twenty-one more hours here on the refuge. Until midnight tomorrow night.”

“Then
what? Either I join you and your agency or you kidnap me?”

“Something
like that,” he said, shifted on the ground to find a more comfortable position.
He’d heal more quickly than the average person, but he still felt pain just
like everybody else. “By tomorrow night, it’s not going to be safe for you to
stay here. You’ll put everyone’s lives in jeopardy. Including your precious
animals.”

“Stop
trying to scare me.”

“I
thought I’d already succeeded in doing that, Kira.”

“Screw
you,” she said, pushed up off the ground and stood over him. With the moonlight
streaming behind her she looked almost unreal, too pretty and too pure to be
anywhere near him, despite what had just happened.

“You
just did, honey,” he said, his voice harsher than he would’ve liked. But his
patience had finally worn through. “I’m trying to tell you the truth, but
you’re too pigheaded to hear it. This is much bigger than you are. I can only
hold off the men Derek worked with for so long. I’m not Superman.”

“Yeah,
could’ve fooled me,” she muttered. “And you never told me what you are. You
know everything about me and I don’t know if a single thing I know about you is
true.”

He
swore softly, grabbed for his shorts and shirt and dressed quickly before
standing. “That’s the way I like it. And you’ve got the day to decide if you’re
going down easy or hard.”

“Aren’t
you worried I’ll escape?” she asked, absently rubbing her wrists where the
cuffs had been. He was pleased to see that the red marks were already fading,
and no bruises were apparent.

She
hadn’t even struggled against the steel bonds. He wondered what it would feel
like to be that out of control, and realized she’d given him a real taste.

He
reached out, grabbed her wrist and brought her hand to his crotch. Then he
smiled. “No. I’m not worried, honey. You seem to know what side your bread is
buttered on.”

He’d
planned on walking away then, leaving her jaw-dropped and sputtering mad in the
middle of the field. He had work to do, and by his calculations she needed sex
approximately every four hours.

He
turned his back, but she called after him. “Just because your dick’s big and
you can bring me to orgasm doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to keep me
satisfied. Asshole.”

He
didn’t turn back to face her. “I’ve never had any complaints.”

“Yeah?
Well, guess what, Mr. Big Shot Bionically Enhanced Operative. I don’t need
orgasms. Not when I’m in a heat cycle. Don’t you think I could take care of
things myself if it were that simple?”

He
sighed, finally turned to face her. “Then why are you craving my dick every
four hours?”

“Your
agency didn’t hire you for your brains, did it? It’s all about
your
orgasms. My body gets what it needs from your fluids, like any good animal
does.” It was her turn to smile now, and damned smugly too. “So we’ll just see
how up for this job you are. In the meantime, I hope you’ve got a backup plan.”

He
wanted to ask her what happened if she didn’t get what she needed, but didn’t
want to give her the satisfaction. Still, she knew. She walked up to him, her
eyes gleaming.

“If I
don’t get what I need, I die. Mate or die, Tommy. Like I said, I hope you’re up
for it, because my life is on the line.” And then she marched past him, toward the
main house, as every muscle in his body tensed.

Son
of a bitch. He needed to get back into control, hit the ground running again
and find some way to bring this forty-eight hours to a satisfactory close.
“Kira, wait,” he called. She stopped, her shoulders tightened but she didn’t
turn around to face him.

Instead,
he closed the distance between them, ended up in front of her. “It’s a lot to
take in,” he said.

She
nodded, crossed her arms in front of her and looked somewhere over his shoulder
before settling her gaze on him. “Are you saying you’ll give me more time?”

“I
can’t do that. Wish I could. But here’s the deal—in twenty-one hours, no matter
what else happens, I’m out of here.”

“And
I have to go with you,” she said.

“No,
you don’t. But what I told you before is true. Your life
is
in
jeopardy.” He spoke slowly, carefully, wanting his words to sink in but not
wanting to use intimidation this time. “If you don’t leave with me, you’re
going to be killed. And that’s something I can promise you will happen.”

“So I
can stay here and take my chances or leave with you tomorrow night?”

“Yes.”

She
laughed, but it came out harsh and bitter. “That’s not much of a choice.”

“We
never have much of a choice, Kira, no matter how much we try to kid ourselves.”

She
nodded slowly. “And you’ll be, ah, around for me all day tomorrow?”

“Yeah.
I’ll be around for you,” he said.

She
turned and took a path that would lead her toward the barn instead of the main
house, while he limped there instead. He’d take care of Derek, make a comms
report to Itor using the codes Bryan had gotten for him. He knew trying to
convince Kira to leave this fucking place before she was ready, if she was ever
ready, was worthless. He was going to use tomorrow to get his freakin’
perspective back so he could do the job he was sent here to do, no matter which
way things went down.

RYAN
MALMSTROM DISCONNECTED his comm link to the man who had just pretended to be
Derek Martin. Whoever the guy had been, he’d done an admirable job with the
impersonation, but Ryan was an expert in voice recognition and languages, and
no one could fool him.

The
consequences of being caught in a lie firmly in his mind, he e-mailed his Itor
supervisor, a soft-spoken, stuffy Brit named Andrew, letting the guy know that
everything on the animal whisperer assignment was rock solid, that Derek had
checked in as scheduled. And then Ryan signed the e-mail as Steve Kurtz,
because that was the name Itor had given him upon recruitment. All Itor agents
took new names and identities.

Of
course, Itor had no idea ACRO had given him a false identity as well, had named
him Curtis Hancock and had planted him in the civilian world to make waves
until Itor took notice and recruited him.

Such
was the life of a secret agent.

A
knock at the glass door of his tiny cubicle startled him, and he turned to see
Gabrielle, a stunning blond psychic with a heart of titanium. She didn’t wait
for permission to open his door. “Have you heard from Victor?”

He
shook his head. “He’s not due to check in for another day.”

She
sniffed, shut the door. No thanks, no acknowledgment, no fuck you. Bitch. It
wasn’t his fault her precious Victor, a Dreamer who got off on giving people
nightmares that caused heart attacks, hadn’t completed his assignment in
Israel.

A
green flashing symbol appeared on his computer, and he opened the file sent by
someone a lot higher up in Itor than anyone he’d met, and cursed at the photo
on the screen. A photo meant to titillate. Yeah, right.

His
boss at ACRO had cooked up a full meal deal when he created an identity meant
to lure Itor to Ryan, and that identity included an extreme BDSM fetish. The
more depraved a person was, the easier to control them through their desires,
and Itor thought they had him under their thumbs. Small gifts, like the picture
on his screen, were supposed to make him happy and hard.

They
made him want to take Itor down from the very top to the bottom, to erase every
one of the sick bastards from existence, especially because he knew the picture
was only the beginning of today’s
gifts.
Tonight they’d send him a
woman. Hopefully, this time a willing one, because he couldn’t afford to fake
illness again to get out of a potentially nightmarish situation.

Yeah,
these fucks needed to go down. Unfortunately, doing so would take time and a
hell of a lot more freedom than he’d been given. He didn’t even know which of
Itor’s six main sites he’d been taken to. All he knew was that the sites were
located outside the United States, all in different countries, which ensured
that the destruction of one would in no way cripple the agency.

Their
paranoia didn’t end there. Until new agents proved their allegiance, constant
surveillance kept them in check, and regular interrogation and intrusive
psychic procedures kept them honest.

Fortunately
for Ryan, his gifts went well beyond the ability to learn any language in a
matter of hours and crack language-based codes. He could also portion out his
thoughts, something many psychics could do on a limited basis to fool other
psychics, but that he’d taken to an exceptional level.

Instead
of separating a single thought from his mind and circulating it like a shield
that guarded his true thoughts, as most psychics did, he could create entire
scenes, histories, stories. He would then arrange them inside an imaginary
force field surrounding his mind, where it effectively blocked all attempts to
penetrate. Anyone sifting around inside his head came away with innocuous
images of his childhood, some bogus college recollections and perverted
depictions of his false sexual fetishes.

The
ability made him the only ACRO agent capable of infiltrating Itor.

His
true talent, though, the one ACRO and Itor hired him for and that complemented
his talent for language, was his ability to use any mode of electrical
connection to step inside another person, to see, briefly, through that
person’s eyes.

Which
was why, when he’d been speaking with “Derek” a few moments ago, he’d seen a
few fleeting images of animals, a bedroom and the speaker’s foot. Had the guy
looked in the mirror, Ryan might have recognized him. Then again, he’d not met
every ACRO agent, not even close. And it was possible the guy wasn’t ACRO. He
could be a free agent, or even someone from a U.S. government agency.

What
he had learned, though, was that whoever’s eyes he’d been looking through had
been resistant to his presence. Probably not on a conscious level, but the
guy’s mind had definitely not wanted Ryan there, and the images had been
disjointed, fuzzy and unremarkable.