Heroes In Uniform (124 page)

What about Mad Dog
? Mick thought, recalling his earlier encounter with the man. At his hesitation, Franklin prompted him again for an answer and he said, “Whatever happens with Mad Dog won’t involve you. I promise you that. It’ll be between him and me.”

Because they had a score to settle.

“Thanks, Mick. I’ve got too much to lose,” his friend said and hung up.

He swiped the phone to end the call, Franklin’s last words digging into his brain.

“I’ve got too much to lose”, but Mick had little if nothing to lose.

He rose, intent on checking on his captive, when he heard the insistent beep-beep-beep of the alarm system signaling that someone had opened a point of entry into the house.

He rushed to the guest room, hoping it hadn’t been Caterina, but she was gone.

Cursing, he grabbed the stair railing, vaulted down to the middle of the stairs, then up and over the handrail to the next level. He landed on the wooden floor with enough force to rattle the minimalist accessories on the nearby furniture.

Ahead of him the kitchen door leading to the backyard was wide open.

He ran toward the door and the cell phone at his hip began to buzz.

A message flashed, alerting him to the fact that Caterina had breached the designated perimeter for the ankle bracelet she was wearing.

He rushed outside, believing he would have to give chase as she ran off the property, but instead he watched as she executed a graceful dive into the built-in pool in the backyard.

Shocked, he was about to go after her when the house alarm increased in pitch, alerting him to the fact it would soon trip and dispatch instructions to the central station.

Since Caterina didn’t seem to be going anywhere and he didn’t need the police coming to check out the call from the central station, he returned inside and shut off the alarm. He answered his phone when it rang a second later.

“I got a warning here at the station about the ankle bracelet. Do I need to send in the troops?” Ramon asked.

Mick walked toward the edge of the pool where Caterina was treading water in the center, her arms wrapped tight around herself, shivering. The violent chattering of her teeth was visible even with the long distance.

Something was wrong, but it was nothing that needed to involve Ramon.

“No, Ramon. Everything is under control here,” he said, but as Caterina’s skin faded away to the bright blue of the pool lining, nothing could have been farther from the truth.

Mick walked to the edge of the pool and crouched down, meeting her gaze. The reflection from the pool water had made it an almost iridescent aqua. Her skin was increasingly taken on the intense hue as well.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Hot . . . burning up,” she replied and slowly sank beneath the surface of the water.

Shit
, he thought. Liliana would be pissed as all hell if he let Caterina drown on his watch.

He quickly yanked off his shirt, pants, and shoes, placed his cell phone within easy reach on the pool deck, and dove in.

With one powerful stroke he reached her.

Wrapping his arms around her body, he dragged her to the surface where they both gulped in a big breath of air.

To his surprise, she laid her head on his shoulder and once again said, “I’m burning up.”

She was. Even with the cool waters of the pool surrounding them, heat poured off her skin. Her body shivered against his with brutal force, her teeth rattling together until with each second that passed, the chill of the waters penetrated her body and brought some relief.

Relief from the fever racking her body didn’t bring an end to the transformation of her skin. Luckily the high fence surrounding the property offered some privacy for the moment, but not much.

Anyone with a second story window or balcony facing their way would get a good glimpse once they left the water. He had to get her to restore more of her human state before they returned to the house.

He raised his hand and ran it across the slick strands of her hair in a soothing gesture. Bringing his lips close to the shell of her ear, he whispered, “Are you feeling better?”

She nodded and finally relaxed a bit, releasing the tight hold she’d had on her own body to wrap her arms around him.

So not good
, he thought at the soft press of her very womanly body against his.

Think baseball
, he said to himself as he cupped her cheek and urged her to lift her head. When she did so, he said, “I need you to lose the camo, Cat.”

Realization sank in as she shot a quick glance at her arms.

She screwed her eyes shut and beneath her breath began her mantra. Her lips barely moved as she said, “Focus. Focus. Focus.”

He braced one hand in the middle of her back and joined in the mantra, only it distracted him from safe thoughts of baseball and brought home to Caterina the natural reaction his body was having to her proximity.

“Focus,” she said, more loudly and opened her eyes.

They were back to normal, not that you could ever call eyes that blue and beautiful normal.

She bit her bottom lip, worrying it with her teeth as she raised one hand to steady herself against his shoulder.

The movement only pressed them closer together and revealed another truth – he was not the only one aroused.

The pebbly hard tip of her nipples bored holes into his chest and he would have had to be a saint not to touch.

He was no saint, but somehow restrained himself thereby possibly earning sainthood.

He cupped her cheek, leaned his head close, and asked, “Do you feel well enough to go back into the house?”

* * *

Caterina focused on his warm breath and the hard palm of his hand against her skin. She closed her eyes and imagined it was a lover’s touch. A touch that begged for sweet compensation in return.

Opening her eyes, she inched toward him until her lips almost brushed his and whispered, “Yes.”

His breath hitched in his chest and against her body, his erection jumped in answer. He applied gentle pressure and urged her face upward as she acquiesced to that demand.

Human demand.

The call of male to female somehow reaffirming that she was still a woman. Still so much more than someone’s lab rat.

When she raised her head, he was bending toward her. He paused as his lips skimmed against hers, the warm spill of his breath enticing her to savor his mouth.

She touched her lips to his, telling herself to focus on them. On him. On the pleasure his touch brought her.

* * *

Mick groaned at her consent, certain that it was insanity and yet he couldn’t stop kissing her.

She brought both hands to his shoulders. They were still hot against his skin, but not as hot as before. But way more hot than was right and he knew that as good as this felt and as much as he wanted to part her thighs and drive himself into her, honor demanded that he stop.

Easing himself away, but keeping a steadying grasp on her, he said, “We need to get you back inside. Make sure you’re okay.”

Puzzlement traveled across her features followed by confusion and possibly disappointment. “You don’t want me?”

“I do, but not like this, Cat,” he explained.

He’d had one too many cases of want with little else attached to it.

She was a case of too much want with too much luggage, none of it good.

Until it could be more and be something less dangerous, she was off limits
, he told himself.

“Let’s go in,” he said, seeing that her body had returned to normal during their make-out session.

She confirmed his request with a nod and with a kick and one strong swipe of his arm he propelled them from the deeper end of the pool to where they could stand.

Side-by-side they walked to the stairs and stepped out onto the pool deck, the summer night air balmy against their skin. The wet oversized t-shirt clung to her body, shaping every curve. Exposing her long legs and the graceful sweep of her neck and one shoulder as the sodden fabric slipped downward with the weight of the water.

His own state was too obvious through the tighty whities he wore.

A bright flush stained her cheeks as she noticed. With a quick pivot on one heel, she raced back into the house, leaving him to mutter a curse, and hurriedly scoop up his clothing and cell phone.

Inside the house, he re-armed the alarm system before snagging a beach towel from the mud room off the kitchen. He wrapped it around his waist, grabbed another towel, and followed the trail of wet footprints up the stairs.

The door to the bathroom was closed and he knocked on it. Caterina only partially opened the door, but it was enough for him to see that she was now totally naked. He thrust the towel through the opening in the door and stalked to his room, where he toweled off and changed into dry sweats.

With Caterina’s fever, she needed something more lightweight to wear and he located an old cotton robe that would do.

He exited his room and found she was already back in the guest room, sitting in the bed, her knees tucked to her chest and the beach towel encircling her naked body. Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself in a defensive gesture.

She had brushed her hair and it was slicked back from her face, bringing to stark notice her wide cerulean eyes and classically perfect features.

He stalked to the recliner, held out the robe to her, and sat down.

She took the robe from him, eased it on, and tied it closed. She then proceeded to do that shimmy thing that all women seemed to learn as some part of growing up ritual, shifting a bit here and there to slip the towel off her without dislodging the protection of the robe.

“What were you thinking?” he said.

She looked away toward the window at the far side of the room and shrugged. “I felt so hot and all that cool water was out there . . . ”

Her voice trailed off and she faced him once again. “I won’t do it again.”

It was difficult to be angry when she was so damned agreeable and innocent-looking as she sat there, arms wrapped around her bent knees. Head leaning on those knees as those damned blue eyes locked on his face. Skipped over his features with a force as powerful as a kiss.

“When you keep on tripping all the alarms, remember that it may not all be White Hats that answer,” he said, forcing a rough gruff to his voice to reinforce his concern and fight the feelings she stirred.

“Are you a good guy?” she asked, but beneath the innocent tones of her voice lay challenge. She seemed to recognize all too well the line he walked between black and white.

“It depends,” he said and because he was becoming too interested in her as something more than his target, he inched to the edge of the recliner and placed his hand on the crook of her neck. One hand was all it took to almost encircle that fragile column as he placed his thumb over her larynx.

He tightened his grip just a bit, but enough for her to realize his intent. Her eyes widened with apprehension and she grabbed hold of his wrist with both hands.

“You won’t hurt me,” she said.

Sins of the Flesh: Chapter Twenty-Four

“I won’t?” Mick replied, increasing the pressure on her throat and achieving the result he wanted.

Her fight or flight response kicked in. Her skin erupted with the deep maroon color of his cotton robe and her hands tightened on his wrist, almost painfully so.

I can handle her like this
, he thought. He could handle her when she wasn’t all soft enticing female and then she said, “You may claim you’re a killer, but you’re not.”

Reason told him to increase the pressure at her throat. To disprove her belief, but he couldn’t because she was right.

* * *

Caterina met his gaze as her heart thumped in quick allegro beats and her skin tingled in response. She held fast to his wrist and as she did so, the weird halo sight she had battled earlier returned, outlining his body in a bright blue while the center of him became a combination of other colors which communicated to her brain the heat of his body.

Like one of those cheap love meters on the boardwalk, she noted the cooler outside edges of his limbs and the increasing warmth moving toward his core.

In the middle of his chest, the brightest of all the colors. The most intense spot of heat.

She shifted one hand from his wrist to that spot. Absorbed the thump-thump of his heart against the sensitized pads of her fingers. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. A steady reliable beat like that of a conductor’s baton.

Splaying her hand against that beat, she closed her eyes, and concentrated on it and as she did so, the pressure at her throat eased until he finally moved his hand away.

But she didn’t move away.

Opening her eyes, she met his gaze. The color of his dark brown eyes had deepened to almost black. His irises were wide and beneath her hand, the thump-thump remained steady, but tension had crept into his body.

She finally shifted her hand away and wrapped her arms around her knees once again.

“You know what I think?” she said, alternately confused and accepting of what was happening between them.

“I don’t care what you think,” he replied, still obviously struggling to convince her that he was a bad ass.

That didn’t dissuade her. “I think you’re a White Hat only you’re afraid to admit it because if you do, that somehow makes you less dangerous. It makes you afraid that you won’t be able to control people if they think you might actually have a heart.”

She’d learned about fear and control from her father so she understood it well.

Amazingly he saw past her words to the emotion which drove her. “I’m not your daddy, Cat. But you will do what I tell you.”

On some level, she knew he only meant well. That he wanted to protect her and his sister and anyone else that he felt was his responsibility. But she had struggled to be free for too long. She had lost that precious freedom at Wardwell and she’d be damned if that happened again.