“I’m not certain why you think that’s such a bad thing, Kadan.”
His eyes darkened more. “You think you need me more than I need you. You think I’m stronger and that I’ll grow tired of your dependence. I’m in your head. I know what you’re thinking, but you aren’t really seeing me, Tansy. I want you to see me.” He let his breath out in a little rush. “You’re home for me. You and your body. You’re home.”
“All right.” She lifted her gaze to his, to make sure he knew she meant it. “I’m absolutely all right with you touching me. I love your hands on me. I especially love your mouth on me, and if you want to be inside me, say the word and I’m there. Just try not to throw me on the kitchen table in front of everyone and we’ll be fine.”
The knotted muscles in Kadan’s stomach unraveled and he could breathe freely again. He hadn’t scared the hell out of her, but then, Tansy didn’t scare all that easy. She stood up to killers and she willingly faced hell and madness to track murderers. She wasn’t a shrinking violet, and if any woman could handle his needs, he was betting his heart it would be Tansy.
“The kitchen table is fine, but no audience. I’ve got that.”
A slow smile tugged at her mouth. “I’m glad you made that distinction.”
“I can exercise discipline when necessary.”
Tansy laughed, and the sound was music to him. Kadan pulled her up and kissed her thoroughly on her mouth, just because the sound of her laughter sent warmth careening through the ice in his veins.
“Come on, baby.” He gave her bare bottom a swat and then rubbed caresses into it when she yelped. “Let’s find you some clothes before the others get here.”
She looked at the mess in the bed and sighed. “I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”
“I’d walk through hell barefoot for you, honey, so a little shower is no problem.” His heart would never beat the same, but if that was the price of bringing her back from the brink of madness, he’d accept it.
“You said something about a cup of tea. Would you mind making me one while I clean up?” She didn’t want him in the shower while she retrieved her torn clothes; it would just be too humiliating. He might have thought his dark secret was a match for losing one’s mind, but she didn’t think so, and she needed a few minutes to pull herself back together.
His gaze slid over her, assessing her pale face. “Is your head still hurting?”
She sidestepped the question. “I’m much better. I really would love a cup of tea.”
He could feel her will pushing at him. He didn’t want to leave her. She looked very pale. There were red patches, scratches, and bruising marring her skin. Her hair was wet and dark, sliding down her back in a long tail, still dripping a little water onto the floor. He could see her thighs wet with his seed. The vise seized his heart again and he turned away, emotions too intense when he was so unfamiliar with them.
“Tea it is,” he said gruffly and yanked jeans out of his pack.
Tansy padded barefoot into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Haunted eyes stared back at her. She was a mess. She lifted her swollen hand and stared down at the mark embedded in her skin. It was beginning to fade, but it told her volumes. She had come too close this time. She’d been lucky that Kadan had fought for her. Her mind was still healing from too many battles with violent energy, and she needed to be more careful if she was going to survive intact.
She threw her torn clothes away and took another shower, washing her hair and rinsing the abrasions on her body. She’d done that to herself, nearly taking her skin off. She couldn’t think about it too much, because the sensation of blood coating her skin crawled over her the moment she looked too hard at her body. Rubbing her familiar, soothing lotion into the scratches helped some, and she braided her long hair to get it out of the way before dressing in jeans. She didn’t bother with a bra, but just pulled on a dark-colored T-shirt before stripping the bed and throwing wet sheets into the washing machine.
She stood in the doorway of the kitchen watching him. He was an amazing specimen of a man, heavily muscled and quiet on his feet, a tapered waist and a great butt. He was too rough to be called handsome by any stretch of the imagination, but he was striking, compelling, a man one paid immediate attention to.
He knew she was there, she could tell he did. There was always something remote about him when she first came into a room, but then he gentled, the glacier thawing so that he sent her a warm smile over his shoulder.
“I’ve got your tea. I put a little honey in it. It’s good for you.”
“You’re lucky I like it with honey,” she said and sat in the chair he pulled out for her.
His gaze slid over her, clearly saying he didn’t give a damn if she liked it or not. He would have poured it down her throat if he thought she needed it. She made a face at him as she wrapped her palms around the warmth of the mug. Her hand was very sore and she flexed her fingers.
“We have to find another way to open my hand when you want me to drop whatever object I’m handling.”
He shot her another piercing look. “It’s a moot point because you’re not doing it again.”
She forced back her protest and took a sip of the tea, allowing the liquid to warm her before answering. “I know it must have been frightening for you to see me like that, but we can’t stop now. I know with what I got on Frog you should be able to find him. He has some kind of water business on the side. Fishing. Whale watching. Taking people down in a shark cage, who knows, but it’s the ocean and the business belongs to him. He loves to be underwater. I think the cylinder was a scuba tank.”
“You just won’t stop, will you?” There was warning in his voice.
Tansy met his glittering eyes, not flinching from the arctic chill in his stare. “No, absolutely I won’t, not after seeing these men. They aren’t going to stop, Kadan, and the police aren’t going to find them. They’ve had all this evidence, and yet no one can find a print, or a motive, or anything but the game pieces. You didn’t even know there were eight players before I started helping you.”
“Your sanity isn’t worth it to me.”
She held his gaze, refusing to back down. “It is to me. If I can save one life—prevent a child, a parent, anyone at all from suffering at their hands, you bet it’s worth it to me. You’re willing to trade your life for your country; well I’ve got this talent no one else seems to have, and whether it’s a gift from God or a mutation, I don’t know, and frankly, it doesn’t matter. I choose . . .” She looked him right in the eye. “I
choose
to use it to stop killers. For me, the sun may rise and set with you, you may rule me in the bedroom and every other place, but not in this. In this, I say when I stop, not you.”
Kadan tipped his chair back, not saying anything, regarding her through brooding, half-closed eyes. He looked frightening, his face a hard mask, his mouth tight. Her heart began to beat very fast. Kadan would never hurt her, certainly not for taking a stand, not when she was right—not
ever
. She forced herself to remain silent, not to appease him, although she wanted to. She lowered her eyes and sipped at the tea, holding the mug tight against her throbbing palm, hiding the knife impression from him.
“Your choice was to stop. I dragged you back into it.”
She shook her head. “You walked away. You were going to tell them you didn’t find me, or that I’d lost my abilities. I chose to come with you.”
His jaw tightened. A muscle jerked and his eyes were twin chips of blue ice. “You have no idea the lengths I’d be willing to go to keep you safe.”
There was no give in him and he didn’t sound loving. He sounded cold and hard and terrifying. She caught a glimpse of that eight-year-old boy who found a gun in a river of his family’s blood and chose to pick it up and seek his own brand of justice. He was ruthless and merciless, and he would be even more so protecting her.
“I’m counting on you to keep me safe while I do this, Kadan. But we have to stop them. Not for your friends, but because they’re evil and we can’t leave them running around loose on innocent people. You know it as well as I do. You have no intention of stopping.”
“That’s different.”
She nearly snorted tea out her nose. “Why? Because you’re the heap big man?”
He leaned forward then, the chair legs coming back to the floor with a crash as he bent over the table, catching her chin in his palm. “No. Because you’re my woman and I’ll be damned if anything happens to you. I didn’t feel a whole hell of a lot before I met you, and now that I do, I don’t like where it can take me if something bad happens. You don’t want to hear this, Tansy, but I’m not all that far removed from the men you’re hunting.”
“That’s not true, Kadan.”
“Lie to yourself then, but don’t ever be stupid enough to think that I wouldn’t kill for you, or die for you. You want to do this, then you do it my way. I mean it, Tansy, you do it my way. That’s all I’m going to give up.”
“That’s not giving up a thing.”
“The hell it isn’t. I don’t want you anywhere near this mess. I can slap your ass in a safe house with ten guards on you around the clock and there’s not a thing you can do about it, so don’t tell me I’m not compromising here.”
“You’re being a bastard.”
He put both hands on the table and leaned in close again, his voice pitched low, his eyes turning glacier blue. “I
am
a bastard. It’s time you figured that out.”
She sat back in her chair, glaring at him over her tea. After a moment of silence she heaved a sigh. “Fine. Tell me how we’re doing this.”
“You will give me your word of honor that you won’t touch anything to do with the murders or the killers or the victims, nothing at all, without me present, and only with gloves. No handling anything without protection.”
“I may not be able to track the puppet master,” she protested.
“Then it won’t happen. Gloves and me, or no handling. Your word.”
His implacable tone set her teeth on edge. “Kadan, try to be reasonable. Do you realize how much information I got this time? We haven’t even had a chance to go over it.”
He didn’t reply. He simply stared at her, unyieldingly.
“We can find a way to make it safer.”
“Take it or leave it.”
She growled at him. “You’re so stubborn. Fine, then. You have my word. I could shake you sometimes.”
“Well I could paddle you sometimes. So I guess we’re even.” There was no give in his voice, no triumph, just stating a fact in that wicked, black velvet, suggestive tone.
She had the feeling he was really contemplating turning her over his knee, and something perverse in her had her tingling with unexpected arousal. How did he do that, turn everything into sex with just a tone? She was in for one wild ride with him, but she couldn’t let him just take her over. She had to learn to hold her own.
Tansy leaned her chin into her hand. “You’ve got that look in your eyes.”
“What look?”
The one that took her breath away and made her panties damp. And they were arguing over something important.
“The argument is over. We both compromised,” he pointed out, reading her mind. His lips curved into a sensual smile. “I’m fortunate that I make your panties damp. Lift up your shirt for me.”
She regarded him steadily, wondering if he was challenging her or testing her. She didn’t care which it was, she’d told him the truth. If he needed access to her body, she was more than willing to give it to him. She pulled the hem of her shirt up over her breasts and held the material out of the way. His eyes darkened from ice blue to midnight. His fingers trailed over the creamy slopes, brushed over her nipples, and followed the red marks down her body.
“Did you put something on this?” He stroked a caress over one angry streak on her belly.
She nodded. “It looks worse than it is. My skin marks easily.”
He tugged her shirt down and leaned over the table to kiss her. “Do you want more tea before we do this?”
“No. Do you have a recorder?”
“It’s on the sink. I knew you weren’t going to let this go.” A ghost of a grin touched his mouth.
She wadded up a paper towel and threw it at him. “I can’t believe you.”
He placed the recorder on the table and turned it on. “Why was the puppet master thinking about Frog instead of Blade when he carved the knife for Blade?”
“He despises Blade and men like him. He thinks Blade is a bag of hot air and dismisses him even though he runs the team.” Triumphantly she glanced at Kadan. That was a confirmation that she’d been correct and Blade was the leader of the East Coast team. “If you can track Frog, using the water business, scuba gear, and being able to hold his breath for phenomenal amounts of time, you should be able to find Blade. They work together.”
“In the military.”
“I believe they are, or they were. They might have another business, something to do with security.” She caught her breath. “Yes. They all run a security company together. That was the puppet master’s idea. He made them think it was their idea. He’s good at manipulating people. He manipulated Whitney. How? How did you do that? I’m so on you,” she whispered. “And you’re not going to get away from me.”
Kadan stayed in her mind, intrigued by the speed with which she gathered pieces of information from images and thoughts and put them together with amazing accuracy. Her brain amazed him.
“He handpicked these men. For his own purpose. He duped Whitney. Whitney the all powerful.” Her eyes lit up and she stabbed a finger toward Kadan. “He worked for Whitney during the testing process, Kadan. Can you track him that way? There have to be records. Whitney couldn’t have run the testing. He had to interview only those who got through the first few rounds. And he was testing for psychic ability at that point, not whether or not these men were psychologically suited to be enhanced.”
“We believe Whitney enhanced a few men who were screened out of the program for his own personal army. A group of men who were tested were listed as missing or dead over the next couple of years, but we found one or two of them very much alive and enhanced. Could these men be part of Whitney’s army?”