Flirting With Fate (7 page)

But Blockers were as rare as they were valuable,
and both the Ascendants and the SIA sought them out. Could this be the man who
had planned to help her parents? Wouldn’t he recognize her?

“Everything okay, sweetie?” Tanner asked, coming
up behind her and rubbing her bare shoulders.

She closed her eyes, waiting to see pieces of
their future. If this meeting Llewellyn had changed anything...

The hot spray of water covered them as he
lathered her body. He trailed his fingers down between her breasts, over her
belly. He dropped to his knees, but there was nothing sexual about the way he
pressed his lips to the spot under her navel. She knew the kiss was for the
child that grew under his lips.

Love coursed through her.

Josie gasped and stepped forward, away from
Tanner’s touch.

The nurse was studying them both. “Follow me,
please?”

“After you,” Tanner said, motioning to the door.

They stayed several feet behind the nurse, and
Josie avoided eye contact until Tanner squeezed her hand. “What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“What’d you see?” He squeezed her hand again, and
again the image of him kissing their unborn child punched her.

“He’s a Blocker,” she muttered. She couldn’t share
her vision with him. It would influence his actions too much. Hell, she
wouldn’t be surprised if it made him abandon this investigation in favor of
running far, far away.

Hey, lover, I see the future, and did you know
I’m gonna have your baby?

It would make any normal guy run for the hills.
She studied Tanner. He winked at her as they turned to follow the nurse down
another hall. She swallowed hard.

Tanner was far from normal.

The nurse opened a door directed them inside and
pressed a cup into Tanner’s hand. “The specimen goes in there. Magazines are on
the wall and videos in the cabinet.” She looked Josie up and down, taking in
her Stilettos, Inc. standard issue uniform: knee-high stiletto boots,
miniskirt, halter.

The nurse rolled her eyes. “Not that you’ll need
them.” She backed out and closed the door behind her.

Tanner turned to Josie, eyes hot.

Josie backed against the wall. “I can’t believe
you told them you wanted me in here,” she said, faking bravado when the look in
his eyes had her heart pounding double time. He’d been acting differently since
she’d met him this morning. Like he had something on his mind. “What do you
think you’re doing? We can’t leave here without giving them a sample, and I am
not going to watch while you—”

He closed the space between them and cut her off
with his mouth. He pressed his lips hard against hers, and her body instantly
responded. Energy pulsed through her. Her powers bloomed to life, and she told
herself she had good reason to indulge in a single kiss. The only thing that
revived a Special’s power more than sex was blood, but the power-hungry
Ascendants who drank blood to become stronger definitely qualified as “bad
guys” in her book... not to mention that Josie couldn’t stomach the yuck factor
of blood drinking.

She’d been ignoring the heat between them and the
images that raced through her mind in his presence. But after two full days by
his side, and six months of ignoring her visions, she couldn’t deny herself
this simple indulgence. The man she’d been dreaming about had her cornered and
she didn’t want to escape.

His kiss was demanding while his hands were
gentle. She grabbed his arms as his palm cupped her chin. As he coaxed her
mouth open with his tongue, she squeezed his flexed biceps. At least the
visions faded when she was aroused. If she had fresh images of hot, sweaty
bodies in her mind, she’d probably never be able to stop the kiss. As it was,
she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

Something about the way he kept his hands on her
face—so tender and innocent when she wanted wild and wicked—made her move
closer when she should have pulled away. She ran her hand down the front of
him, feeling his taut muscles through the thin tee and following them down to
the low waist of his jeans.

She cupped her hand over the rigid length of him,
hard under his jeans. He groaned against her mouth, and she was faintly aware
of the hollow clack of the cup as it hit the floor.

Finally he moved a hand from her jaw and found her
breast. When he cupped it firmly in his hand, she nearly whimpered with
gratitude.

She fumbled with his zipper. She wanted to feel
him in her hands. She knew from her visions that his dick was long and thick,
but suddenly desperation clawed at her. She wanted to wrap her hands around the
width of him, to drop to her knees and take him into her mouth.

Before her clumsy fingers had even undone the
button, he stopped her hands with his. He leaned his forehead against hers, his
breathing heavy, his eyes closed. “If I had known you’d react that way,” he
said, between slow, measured breaths, “I would have done that a long time ago.”

Her hands resumed their work under his. “Then
why’d you stop?” She didn’t want to think about the future. She didn’t want to
think about what she’d seen or how much she wanted it—
him
—everything.
She didn’t want to think about what she had to do when she found the doctor.

She only wanted him. Now. Inside her.

He groaned. “Josie, you’re not making this any
easier.”

She stopped working the button on his jeans.
“Honestly, I was thinking more about making it harder.”

He gave a sardonic laugh. “Any harder and the damn
thing could cut glass.” He kissed her again. A hard, closed mouth kiss that
held at once warning and tenderness. “I don’t trust that guy. If Llewellyn’s a
Blocker, any information we’re going to get here, we’re going to have to get
without him.” He flashed a wicked grin. “Isn’t that why you brought me?”

She frowned. Stuck on
hard enough to cut glass
,
she was a little peeved the guy could so quickly switch into work mode.
“Right.” She exhaled sharply and smoothed her hair.

Remember your mission, Josie.

He tipped her chin up, rubbing his thumb over her
bottom lip. “If you want, we can get back to this later.”

Later she’d come to her senses. She’d remember
that finding out who was behind the murder of her family was more important
than scratching an itch. She’d remember that she needed to become a different
person to stop Ascendant rule.

She exhaled slowly. “You ready?”

He smiled, then faded before her eyes.

“That’s so freaking cool,” she said when he was
entirely invisible.

His low chuckle came from nowhere. “Says the girl
who sees the future,” he said softly.

“Let’s do this.” She opened the door wide enough
that he could exit behind her. No one would know he wasn’t still in the room
filling his cup.

The nurse looked up from her station. “Can I help
you?”

Josie gave her best apologetic smile. “I think
we’re gonna need some towels.”

Tanner slipped into the back hallway past private
offices until he found the placard that said
Lab
. The lab door required
a PIN for entrance, but he was used to being patient.

He pushed himself against the wall and waited.
Josie could stall.

Five minutes later two men in white coats were
walking toward him. One carried a clipboard and the other keyed his PIN into
the number pad. Tanner watched closely and memorized the number.

The door beeped and they entered the secured room,
unaware of Tanner slipping in behind them.

Inside the lab, there were filing cabinets,
computers, Petri dishes, and what had to be billions of dollars’ worth of
various microscopes and sonogram equipment.

The filing cabinets appeared to be unlocked, but
as the men sat down at their computers, Tanner saw the password screen pop up.
This was where they’d find the new charts.

He watched one doctor’s fingers and memorized a
password. Easy peasy.

The Keeper narrowed his eyes at the news clip of
the president on TV and growled. The now-president had been an ill-advised
pawn. They never thought it would matter that he wasn’t one of them. After all,
he was only supposed to be vice president.

Six months ago, the Ascendants had succeeded in
their plot to put a Special into office. But Winston had been too greedy and
too impatient and he had paid for it—all the Ascendants had paid for it. Now
they were waiting to claim their rightful place in the world.

Lucky for them, the Keeper’s hundred years of life
had taught him to value what Winston had lacked. Fifty years ago, he’d set the
wheels in motion for a better plan—the final plan. They’d erred on their first
attempt, but this time they had all the pieces. This time they would succeed.

In a blink, Alyson appeared before him. “Her
mother’s journal, Your Majesty. We believe she’s found something in her
mother’s journal.”

The Keeper nodded, having learned long ago that
expressing his emotions only made him appear weak to his followers. “Send
someone in for it. Someone who can make her forget.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

This was just a bump. Everything was going so
smoothly, and soon he would have the power they needed to make non-Special
humans what they were intended for: food, energy, and power for the superior
race.

Tanner knew enough pop psychology to understand when
his actions were rooted in latent “daddy” issues. He knew he was more
interested in impressing the SIA chief than in stopping some fertility doctor
from interfering with whether or not a child would have special abilities.

So when he stood outside the dark, locked lab and
asked Josie, for the hundredth time to let him do this by himself, he couldn’t
put his heart into it. Whatever she was keeping from him had to be important.
If she let him go in on his own, he might look in the wrong places altogether.

“I’m going in,” Josie repeated.

He shrugged, then made himself invisible. “It’s
your face on the security tapes, then.”

She rolled her eyes, and pulled a stocking over
her head. Again, not exactly his original fantasy of Josie and hosiery, but a
guy had to be willing to take a kick in the balls from time to time if he was
going to get anywhere in this world. With Josie, it just so happened the kicks
were repetitive and turned his balls blue.

He’d had worse.

He picked the lock and opened the door. A
millisecond later, the warning bell was chirping.

Tanner nudged her toward the security pad near the
back door, signaling for her to work her number-wizard magic and disarm it.

She took her damn time sauntering over and pressing
numbers, seemingly at random.

“Show off,” he grumbled.

She lifted a shoulder. “I suppose you could have
done the same?”

“I’ve been trained.” But he was no numbers whiz
like Josie.

“Yeah, but could you have done it before the
police got here?”

Tanner ignored the question and headed toward the
back hallway.

Josie cleared her throat behind him.

He turned and she was standing there, tapping her
foot. “I can’t see you,” she hissed.

“Back hall,” he whispered, reaching to touch her
hand.

A smile curved her lips as she looked down at her
hand resting in his invisible one. It looked as if she held it in midair. “You
can still touch me when you’re like this?”

He chuckled. “I can do more than that.” He thought
she might have blushed, but he couldn’t tell in the low light with her cheeks
hidden beneath the sheer material.

He led her down the hall and stopped at the lab,
punching the numbers in the combination lock.

Tanner held his breath as he heard the mechanism
clicking. When it beeped and the lock released, he exhaled.

“Let me go in first,” he whispered.

Josie nodded, and Tanner slid into the room and
scoped it for security cameras. He didn’t see any in the obvious
places—corners, edges of ceilings. But maybe whoever ran this lab didn’t want
his employees to know they were being watched.

A lab with this much equipment wouldn’t be left
unmonitored.

He studied the walls more closely.

“Wiley?” Josie called from the hall.

“Gotcha,” he muttered when he noticed the clock
hanging at the top of the far wall. He pulled the clock down from its hook and
smiled to himself when he saw the tiny spy camera inside. “Don’t mind if I do,”
he whispered, disabling the device in the fastest and most effective way he
knew—by crushing it under his shoe.

“Wiley?” Josie called again, her voice still
hushed.

She jumped when he grabbed her hand. “Holy crap,
don’t do that!”

He chuckled. “The camera’s been disabled.”

“Thanks.” She stepped into the room and peeled the
stocking off her face.

He booted up a computer then looked to the filing
cabinet. “Do you want to start with the—”

Before he could finish, she’d pulled a drawer open
and was digging through files. What was she looking for?

He shook his head and took the computer while she
worked the paper files.

He paused for a minute, noticing how damn cute she
looked with her hair mussed and her cheeks flushed. Again, not exactly his
ideal method of getting her that way.

He cursed himself for stopping their kiss. What
kind of dumbass puts on the brakes when his dream girl is reaching for his dick?

The kind of dumbass who is so out of his league
that he was taking his buddies’ romance advice.

Kiss her,
Darian had said.
Plant the
seed and back off.

It wasn’t as though it was rocket science. Tanner
was a natural with most women and probably would have done the same without
guidance if it had been anyone but Josie. But Josie wasn’t most women. She was
the
woman.