Sandy shrugged. “The wards won’t stop them from coming back, but it’ll sure stop their workings from getting in.” She grinned, a light expression perfectly suited to her coyote nature. “And the very physical lock Ian put on the door will keep them out of the structure.”
Ruger navigated the opposite slope with a casual stride, the bear still clear to Mariska’s eyes—the unhurried manner of his movement, the loose-jointed strength. His shirt hung from one hand, and she knew it wasn’t made of the all-natural materials that would have allowed it to change with him
.
“...should be clear,” Ian said.
Mariska gave him a startled look. “I’m sorry, what?” And then rolled her eyes at his knowing grin. She smiled back at him, ever so sweetly, and full of teeth.
Ian laughed out loud. “The interior,” he said again, “should be clear. But I’d like to go over it again first thing tomorrow. I really wasn’t expecting them to have such stringent measures in place within one of their own installations—especially one this remote.”
“They’re done,” she told Ruger as he joined them, question in his eyes—and tried to keep her voice less grim than it wanted to be. Wearing a predator’s skin didn’t make it any easier to take the life of something small and innocent and suffering.
“Thanks,” he said. “Though I could have—”
“There was no reason you had to,” she told him, impatient all over again.
“I hear there’s a great steak house on the main drag,” Ian said. “Let’s grab some food and sleep. I need to send some images back to the lab, and I’d like to get an early start tomorrow. Those amulets are a treasure trove, and they’ll have to be packed like china.”
Ruger snorted. “China hand grenades, you mean.”
“Something like that. I think we should haul the computers out of there, too—let’s get them back to brevis for a look.”
“Be good to take a look right here, if we can,” Ruger said. “If we’re going to understand what’s going on here, even file headers might help give us context.”
Ian hesitated, an uncharacteristic thing. “I’ll check with Nick. None of us are experts, and there’s no telling what unauthorized access could trigger.”
Mariska looked down at the underground installation, thinking of the security layers they’d already encountered. “Forakkes doesn’t seem like he’d leave a vulnerable flank.”
“Dammit,” Ian said. “Now I’m
really
thinking about steak. Let’s get out of here and into that restaurant before I go all leopard on somebody’s ass.”
Ruger slipped into his shirt and led the way without comment—at least until they had nearly reached the little cut-through access back to the ATVs. Even as he stopped there, Mariska felt it, too. Undefined, intangible...
presence.
Obscured but definite, just the hint of a scent and the hint of Core stench.
She stood there for a silent moment while the others waited, hunting detail...hunting a more accurate impression.
Nothing.
Whatever had been here since they’d left, it had come protected. She exchanged a frustrated glance with Ruger; he shook his head, no more successful than she.
They moved on without discussion. As if that moment of accord had been the most natural thing in the world, hardly even worth noting. Only as they reached the ATVs did it hit her—that this was what she’d truly wanted all along.
This
was what she’d come so close to having, in those initial hours of discovering Ruger, of their accord and instinctive understanding.
But thanks to how she’d handled things, this was also what she would now experience only in such sweet, fleeting moments as the one that had just passed.
* * *
The steak had probably been good. In fact, to judge by the cat-ate-the-ibex expression on Ian’s face, it had been impressively delicious.
Mariska hadn’t noticed one way or the other. She ate in silence, watching Ruger’s easy camaraderie with the rest of the team. And when they returned to the cabins, she watched Ian take Sandy and his team to their cabin to put their heads together over amulets and wards, and she didn’t fail to notice that Sandy and Heckle—
Harrison
—fell together in close proximity, their body language all flirt and obvious intent.
Nothing unusual or untoward in that. The Sentinels as a people were open about their sexuality, nonjudgmental about choice and preference, and happy to give and take pleasure. None of it necessarily meant commitment or even an interest in getting together again.
She’d thought to have the same with Ruger. A night together without strings.
What happens in Tucson, stays in Tucson.
She’d obviously thought wrong.
She headed for the cabin, her personal gear pack slung over one shoulder and her eyes gritty in the long desert twilight. Ruger still stood beside the truck, pulling his own gear from the back...taking much longer than necessary.
I didn’t mean to mess things up,
she thought at him, but pressed her lips together on the words as a black wolf ghosted between the cabins, head low and whisky-colored eyes intense. “Jet,” Mariska said. “We’re back for the night. You?”
Jet merely sat, as tidy and upright as a wolf could be, and regarded Mariska without comment. But she didn’t come any closer, and Mariska took that as clue enough. “Do you need anything? Have you eaten?”
Jet’s jaw dropped in wolf amusement, and Ruger came up to the porch with Mariska to observe, “I’d say that means yes.” He told Jet, “There wasn’t much to the day—we got in, we took some notes, and we’re going back first thing tomorrow. Forakkes is up to something, no question about it—but so far it’s not making much sense.”
Mariska found herself bemused to consider this summary of the day. But Jet took his words at face value, stood, tipped her head at them a moment with something sparking behind wild whisky eyes, and then trotted off into the woods.
“I’m not sure we’ll see any more of her than that,” Ruger said, but he headed into the cabin with a grin tugging his mouth.
It was first of those she’d seen all day, and it stopped her in her tracks. Surely he’d smiled like this at some point in the previous evening—his face hidden in that neat, full beard. She just hadn’t seen it—or felt the impact of it, the sudden openness of clean and rugged features.
She felt it now, all right. Right down to her toes.
Great.
She shrugged off the moment and followed Ruger into the cabin—her first good look at it since arrival. Kitchenette with eating bar, tiny loft room with a bed, tiny bedroom down below, bathroom, and a tiny common area with a faded couch and a token television set. Several fans sat off to the side, but here in the high altitude temperatures and in the shade, she felt no impulse to pull them out. Braided rug, homemade curtains, big picture window looking out to the woods behind them...
They weren’t here to be charmed, but she felt the lure of it nonetheless.
“Top or bottom?” Ruger asked, and then stood still a moment—a
long
moment—and very carefully rephrased the question. “Do you want the loft, or the first floor?”
“Loft,” Mariska said, and dropped her bag at the bottom of the steep, narrow stairs. “Listen,” she said, taking a deep breath to do it, turning to face him and finding him waiting with his expression turned neutral—that grin gone, his eyes distant. “About what we felt on the way out of that installation...it was subtle, but I think...” She stopped, her thoughts fractured by impulse—one she gave way to. “Dammit, I’m sorry!”
His expression opened with surprise; she couldn’t blame him. She hadn’t expected to say those words, and she hadn’t expected to leave the stairs and walk right up to him—close enough so his height and size had an impact. Her body remembered both height and size, not to mention touch and his groaning, whispered response; it teased her with echoes of pleasure.
His surprise grew wary as she reached him, and then again when she didn’t stop; he took a step back, and another—his legs came to rest against the couch so he abruptly sat. Still she didn’t stop, climbing right up to straddle his lap. “I’m
sorry,
” she said. “I didn’t realize it would be so difficult for you. I didn’t understand that I would be stepping on your toes so hard. I didn’t
want
to understand—because I wanted you, and I wanted this chance, too.” She settled against him. He shifted beneath her, his breath catching, his eyes closing.
He didn’t open them when he spoke. “Just because you’re bear enough to go after what you want doesn’t mean you’re always going to get it.” But the muscles of his neck corded, and his hands had come to rest on her hips, whether he realized it or not.
“I was wrong, okay?” She moved closer, her breasts brushing his chest and her breath brushing his mouth. “I should have known it wouldn’t be okay, but I didn’t want to see that. I was wrong and I’m really...
really
sorry.”
His jaw tightened; he thrust slightly against her as if in spite of himself, and his hands had closed in a bruising grip. She moved in response, her body full of spreading heat—trying to maintain her train of thought when she really just wanted to revel in how he felt beneath her, from hard thighs to muscled torso to the clench of his biceps and what it did to his chest. And his mouth. She wanted to feel his mouth... She whispered, “I’m sorry.”
A faint tremble ran through his frame, and she felt the hope of his reaction to her. His head tipped back; his breath briefly stuttered.
But still he shook his head. “I get that,” he said, his voice strained. “I believe that. But you still did what you did, and that means...it’s just the way you—” He gave up, let his head rest back against the couch, his heart beating fast enough so she could see the movement through the shirt he’d only ever half-buttoned into place. He swallowed hard, and started again. “That means...it’s just the way you think.”
She stilled, a spear of rejection turning hard in her chest.
He opened his eyes—light brown gone dark with his response to her, and yet his expression struggling for distance. “I’ve got things to sort out, Mariska. I don’t want this now.”
“You do,” Mariska said, because in spite of the chilling effect of his words, she couldn’t believe them.
Didn’t
believe them. Not with the way he’d enjoyed their time together the night before. Not with the way his body moved beneath her even now, his hips flexing ever so slightly in spite of his words. “You do, and you know it. You want
this.
”
“Yes,” he said, and the admission seemed to be a relief. “I want to turn you over and cover you and take you—” He took another sharp breath, maybe realizing his words had been a mistake as his body responded once more, aroused and hard enough that he had to be aching as much as she. He finished his sentence with a strangled determination. “Take you hard.”
But then his hands fell away from her, and he shook his head. “I want. But I don’t
need.
”
Mariska pushed herself away from him, swiping thick bangs away from her face. “Oh, God,” she said. “You mean it. I just— I thought... Oh,
hell.
” Her face grew hotter than she ever thought it could, and she scrambled back to find the floor, horrified to get tangled in his feet. “Oh,
hell.
”
“Hey,” Ruger said sharply, grabbing her arm before it was quite out of reach and holding so firmly that she would have to turn to an honest fight in order to disengage—and though she jerked back with that impulse, she instantly subsided. She owed him this much. She’d pushed him and shoved him and moved in on him, and if he chose to respond with the same physical assertion—
It was only fair.
“Don’t go there,” he told her, reading her humiliation with an accuracy that only layered in more of it. “Just
don’t.
”
“You must be kidding.” She laughed bitterly on those words, looking down at where he sprawled back against the couch, his erection straining his jeans, his eyes still dark and the stubble of his beard making an evening comeback, defining the strong lines of his face—his expression in control again. “How can I
not?
”
“Because,” he said—and even though she steeled herself for bear-blunt words, he still took her by surprise, “I don’t want to have to deal with it. There’s already enough going on here, and if you indulge in a wallow of regret or embarrassment or whatever, it’s going to be hard on everyone. Own it and go on.”
“Own it and go on,” she repeated numbly.
“And go on,” he confirmed. And then added, “I will.”
She stepped back, and this time he let her go. “The question is,” she murmured, looking at him somewhat askance, “is that a promise, or a threat?”
He lifted his shoulders in a languid shrug. “Go ahead and grab the bathroom, if you’re ready to turn in. It’s going to be a few moments before I feel like moving.”
Own it and go on.
Mariska squared her shoulders and found her determination, and walked away.
* * *
Jet curled up in a hollow between two scruffy, twisted little oaks, tucking her nose over her tail and perfectly happy to be out in the night. She had some curiosities left from the day—wondering what had put that look in Ruger’s eyes, and seeing the faint and atypical worry in Ian as he disembarked, glancing over at Mariska.
She’d drift in close enough in the morning to catch Ian—to interrogate him with wolfish eyes and whatever persistence she needed. Tonight, she left them alone to absorb whatever it was that they’d found.
Besides, they still carried the faint stench of Core, whether they knew it or not. She’d had enough of that to last a lifetime.
She flicked her ears forward, moving nothing else but her eyes—looking down on the cabin she could have been sharing with Ruger and Mariska, if she’d wanted. Never mind her own preferences; she’d have been out here regardless, just to give them space.
Two bears, trying to figure themselves out...she didn’t need to be in the middle of it. No matter the furrow in her brow when she thought of the look on Ruger’s face when he’d seen Mariska at the briefing. There were other things, too, behind that hurt and betrayal. There was longing. There was deep, deep
want.
And Mariska...what she’d done had been wrong and hard and even stupid, but it hadn’t been done with intent.