So she knew his partner well enough to call him by his nickname, and she wanted him safely out of the way.
Interesting.
“But if I move, you two will kill each other,” Bas protested.
Gray glared at him. “I’m not going to hurt her,” he said at the same time she said, “Hell, yeah. I’m going to gut him. He’s a killer.”
“So am I,” Bas argued.
“No, you’re a mediator with fangs,” Gray corrected him.
“Fuck off.” Bas turned and shoved Gray with a strength that still surprised him. “Keep
talking,
and I’ll let her have you.”
“
Let
me?” The woman
laughed,
a deep chuckle that sent shivers up his spine.
He realized the scent that had held him fast before had retreated enough so that he could think. But it was still there, a tempting fragrance that called him to come closer. He tried to shake it off but couldn’t. And then he remembered where he’d experienced that reaction before.
Damn
. She’d been controlling him with her pheromones, the way a few females on the Circe’s Recruits team, a Circ team he’d once worked with, were able to do. Had she wanted, she could have killed him easily while he lusted, unable to think beyond sex.
Intrigued at the many facets of this female, he kept his beast in check and let Bas lead.
Bas held up his wrists, and Gray saw the metal that had slapped into him when they’d wrestled. “Honey, I hate to break it to you, but if I’d wanted out of my restraints last night, I’d have gotten out. So yeah,
let
you.”
Gray eyed the cuffs with disbelief. “You tied him up?” he roared at the woman while his beast mentally applauded her.
Strong female.
Smart, sexy.
Ours.
“Yeah.
And you’re both lucky he’s still breathing, so shut the hell up.”
He wasn’t used to hearing anyone talk to him like that. Except for Bas, but the aggravating Circ did it all the time.
Before Gray could snarl back at her, Bas interrupted.
“Ali, we both know you’re the lucky one. Just who was riding who last night?” He smirked the same way he had right before he’d kissed Gray that first time.
The remembrance shook him as much as Bas’s words shook her. “You had sex with him?” He turned to Bas. “You fucked her while I was marching all over the mountain looking for your sorry ass?”
Bas put on a sad face that didn’t fool Gray in the least. “I was tied up. She forced me.”
A glance at the woman showed her torn between anger and embarrassment. A rogue turning mutant would feel anger, but shame? She reacted like a normal woman would at having her sex life dissected before a stranger, though her looks were anything but ordinary. That being the case, no way would he even think about putting her down with a bullet. Not when he could see she wasn’t the enemy he’d been told to expect. And not when he had to know how she’d taste, just there at the crook of her neck.
But before he could take another step in her direction, Bas had him by the throat.
“What the fuck?”
“What do you want me to do with him?” Bas asked her, his grip like iron.
Alison Ross looked from Bas to Gray and back. She gave Gray a mean smile, and his beast fell in instant and utter love. Gray sputtered and tried to break free from Bas, but his beast took every ounce of his strength and sat on it, letting Gray struggle like a limp worm on a hook.
“Bring him along. But make it easy on yourself. Remember how I handled you.”
Before Gray could ask what the hell that meant, Bas squeezed his neck with both hands.
Gray blacked out.
When he came to, he found himself flat on a mattress that smelled like Bas, the female, and sex. His wrists and ankles were fastened to the corners of the bed in what looked like the manacles Bas had been wearing. They adapted to his size when he
changed
and
changed
back. Gray decided to remain in his human form, knowing Bas wouldn’t seriously hurt him.
He’d let his partner play his games. Maybe Bas thought that by pretending to go along with the woman, he’d earn her trust?
Or maybe he’d been fucked so thoroughly last night, he’s caught by his cock
. The uncharitable thought made a lot of sense, especially when Bas and the female—freshly scrubbed, her hair still wet—entered the room. She looked like a walking advertisement for rough, satisfying sex.
“Her name is Ali. Not
the female
,” Bas said offhand.
Stunned, Gray sent with his mind,
“You can hear me?”
“
Yeah.
Unfortunately, I can.”
The glare Bas shot him reminded Gray he’d thought some ugly thoughts about mating and Bas in particular not too long ago.
“Oh, come on. You can’t hold that against me. I don’t want to mate anyone. It’s not personal. And you can’t be mad that I’m telepathic, not when you used telekinesis on me. Yeah, I remember all of it.”
Especially how damn sexy Bas had been.
He must have let that slip, because Bas’s scowl softened.
“Alison Ross is much more than she seems.”
Gray stated the obvious.
“Not the male we’d come to kill, then.”
“For God’s sake.
Don’t tell her that. I explained we’d been sent to investigate rogue Circs.
She’s barely trusting
me as it is. Just play along, okay?”
Relieved he’d pegged Bas right in the first place, Gray played the part of angry partner. To Ali, he asked, “Why the hell am I here? Why is my partner, that asshole, helping you?”
“And this is why he has so very few friends,” Bas murmured to Ali. He turned back to Gray. “You can’t hurt her. She’s the one being hunted. Not the hunter. And she’s only killed in self-defense.”
Ali nodded. “But nothing says I can’t kill you two. I’m still not sure how you’re not right there next to him,” she said to Bas.
“Trade secret.”
“Yeah, right.”
She huffed, but Gray noticed her body language. She leaned toward Bas, not away from him. A measure of trust existed, clear as day. “So what’s this prick doing here?”
Bas laughed. “You nailed it. He’s an arrogant prick who thinks he’s better than us because he was born Circ.”
Damn. Bas wasn’t supposed to announce to the world just how different Gray was.
“A Circ is a Circ in my book. Long as they’re all dead, we’re doing just fine.”
Bas frowned. “You can’t mean me.”
“Why not?
Just because you’re pretending to care doesn’t mean you do. Sex is physical. You come, you’re done.”
“And that’s all it meant to you?”
Bas’s quiet alerted Gray to pay attention. Ali continued, but she didn’t answer Bas’s question.
“My point is that every Circ who’s come up into this mountain has had my capture and/or death in mind.”
“Yeah, I found your last boyfriends.” Gray tugged ineffectually at his wrists again.
“Bullets through their brains.
Nice shots.”
“Glad you approve.” She walked right up next to him, and Bas joined her.
Despite trying to hold it in, Gray couldn’t contain his arousal. He ached to bite, to suck, to kiss both of them until they moaned his name.
Until they accepted his dominance and submitted.
Bas had already offered him so much. Would Ali?
“See?” Bold as you please, she ran a hand over the bulge in his pants. “This is what you want when you come here.”
“Christ.” Gray forced himself to lie flat when every instinct demanded he arch into her palm to prolong the contact. “If you don’t want it, tone down the scent, woman.”
“I am.” She frowned. She glanced down at his cock and tightened her hand, and Gray wanted to fuck her with a violence that surprised him. A glance at Bas showed him glued to the play, his interest readily apparent. But Ali ripped her hand away as if disgusted with him.
Bas cleared his throat and drew her attention. “I’ll say this for him. He’s hell on wheels in the sack. But then he opens his mouth and ruins it.”
She chuckled, and Bas smiled back.
Gray liked their interaction. But he wanted to be a part of it.
No, dammit, I don’t,
he yelled at his beast.
I want out of these restraints and to get back home. Then I want a long vacation away from everyone and everything.
Yet he couldn’t look away from the enticing Circs standing so close to him.
“So what now?”
Bas asked.
“Yeah.
You going to keep me locked up forever?” he sneered.
She ignored him and answered Bas. “I have to clean up. We left tracks.” She walked to a nearby cupboard and opened the drawer. Then she turned and shot Bas in the blink of an eye.
Bas took a confused step forward,
then
dropped like a stone. Gray yelled, “I’ll fucking kill you for that!”
“Oh, relax. It’s just a
tranq
.” She showed Gray the gun, pointed to the dart over Bas’s left pectoral, and his heartbeat returned to normal. “I wasn’t born yesterday. Bas is nice, he’s hot, and he’s perfect.
Too perfect.
Your partner’s about-face is cute, but I’m not buying it. You two want me back in the labs. I get it. Nice approach too. Tell Trenton I’m done playing. Once I dump you—”
“Wait. Trenton. Do you mean Dr. Caleb Trenton?” Gray
stilled,
his every sense on alert. “He was killed three years ago in Panama.”
She frowned, studying him. “We both know who he is. Don’t act surprised he’s alive.”
“Well, I am, because I’m the one who shot him.”
Or I thought I had
. “He’s a very bad guy. Almost on the same level as Elliot Pearl, the doctor who first came up with the Circe serum. Trenton served for a few years under Pearl before he left the service. Then he started his own experiments.” Gray looked at her and knew. “He made you, didn’t he?”
“You could say that.” Ali lowered the gun to her side. She paused and sniffed in his direction. “You’re not lying.” She sounded surprised. “You don’t work with him, do you?”
“No. My job, and his,” he said, nodding at Bas, “is to get rid of scum like him.” He scrutinized her from head to toe. She couldn’t have been more than thirty, probably a few years younger. “How long did he have you?” Gray’s voice softened as he imagined what this young woman had been forced to endure. Despite the mutations he could clearly see on her, a wounded innocence remained in her eyes. If he hadn’t seen that, he might have delved into her mind for answers. But he suspected she’d already been used in ways no woman should ever be.
“Since I was six.”
Her gaze took on a faraway look. “My father needed work after he left the army, and he’d made friends with Trenton. I think he knew what Trenton did was wrong, but he didn’t care. They used me like a lab rat.”
“Even lab rats get better care than Trenton’s subjects.”
“Yeah.”
She cleared her throat and focused on him again. “So fast-forward two decades. I’ve been in and out of those labs over the years. It was mostly innocent at first.
Tests and more tests.
At first I could go without issue. But when they started a weird breeding experiment two years ago, I became a prisoner instead of a patient.” She stopped for a moment. “After all their hellish tests, the first time didn’t take. I didn’t plan to let them have another go at me.” Her eyes hardened, and his beast felt her fury as if it were his own. “I’m going to kill Caleb Trenton and destroy his lab. And I’m taking out
all
of his mistakes.”
Including me
, he swore she said to herself. His beast roared inside his head in denial. No way in hell he’d let that happen; Gray and his beast agreed completely. “Yeah, well, if you’d let me out of these, I’d help.”
She shook her head. “Sorry. No can do. You talk pretty, but I’m not in the habit of trusting Circs.”
Frustrated yet proud of her sense, he didn’t know what tack to take until he remembered how she’d treated Bas. She might not want to, but she liked his partner. Hell, everyone who met the big bastard liked him.
Even Gray.
“So you won’t free me. Could you at least help him out?” He looked over the bed at Bas, crumpled on the ground.
She nodded. “You’re right, you know. He’s dangerous, but he’s no killer.
Doesn’t have it in him.
That’s why I…” She didn’t finish. Instead, she
changed.
Darker, thicker hair.
Skin that scaled in odd places where the black was most prominent—her forearms, her hands, parts of her neck—a thickened and taller frame. She reminded him of the wild women where he’d grown up, deep in the Amazon jungle.
Strong, sturdy, and lethal.
They hadn’t been raised in the soft environs of human society. Instead they’d grown up alongside predators and the rich flora of the jungle. Ali possessed that same edge.
A hardness
she tempered with the natural purity deep inside her. A little girl forced to become a monster to survive.
He understood her, and it floored him.
Because he sensed a kindred spirit.
A lot like the one he’d felt in Bas, only she had a stronger backbone. Dominant, not submissive like his mate—partner.