CHAPTER FIVE
Merinus woke up aching the next morning. Not the flu or summer cold kind of ache. The utterly female ache of needing a man. How a virgin was supposed to know what that ache meant, she wasn’t certain.
But there was no doubt that was the cause of it. Her cunt was slick and creamy, her panties damp, too damned damp to suit her. Her breasts were swollen, her nipples distended and hard, and she could have swore she tasted cinnamon on her lips.
Her lips were sensitive. She ran her tongue over them. They weren’t swollen, just sensitive enough for her to be very aware of them. Then she remembered the night before. She frowned, her brows snapping together in instant ire. Damn him. He hadn’t even stuck around long enough to wake her up?
She jerked to an upright position, then groaned roughly as her sore muscles protested the effort. Oh hell, now that just hurt. There was no cause for those bastards to act that way. She groaned roughly as she reached for her cell phone. Kane was supposed to take care of this.
She keyed his number in swiftly as she stood to her feet. Waiting on Kane to answer, she shed her clothes and pulled on a big, soft cotton T-shirt until she could get to a hot shower.
“Where the hell were you last night?” His voice came over the line with a stern, cranky tone.
“Watching soldiers,” she informed him tensely, knowing better than to tell him the truth. “There are two on the ridge above the Lyons’ house. I thought you had that taken care of.” His contacts in the private and government sector put him in a place where he would have, or should have known those men were being sent out there. There was silence across the line.
“Damn,” he finally cursed quietly. “Pull out, Merinus. Someone’s gone to the trouble to hide these bastards from me. I’ll bring Dad and we’ll come in—”
“And I’ll head for another paper at the first offer,” she cut in. “You aren’t pulling me off this, Kane.”
“Dammit, Merinus, it’s not safe anymore.”
“So find out who they are and give them a call. Tell them you’ll rip their balls off and feed ‘em to your favorite dog or something,” she suggested. “Make them pull back until I can finish this. Don’t start making excuses, either. I know you can do it.”
Kane was slick, and he could be mean when he had to. Merinus knew that. No one messed with him, and most people in his little world owed him enough favors that he rarely had to ask for anything twice.
“Geez, Merrie, why don’t you just pounce on them yourself if you have all the fucking answers?” Kane bit out.
Merinus bit her lip, painfully aware of the bruise across the left side of her face now. Yeah, that one worked really well.
“Okay, I can do that,” she mused thoughtfully. “They looked kinda big, but hey, maybe if I throw your name around a little—” She should have thought of that one yesterday.
“Dammit,” he cursed. “You would, too. Okay. Okay. Just hang on a few hours and let me see what I can find out here. Stay out of trouble, dammit, until I can find something out.”
“I always stay out of trouble,” she lied smoothly. If Kane knew the trouble she was getting into he would come down, tie her hand and foot and haul her back to New York so damned fast it would make her head spin.
“Yeah. Right.” He grunted absently.
“I’ll be waiting on you.” Evidently he was already hard at work on his trusty little computer.
“You do that,” he mumbled, then disconnected.
Merinus sighed roughly as she flipped the phone off then tossed it on the bed. Dammit. Like she was going to sit around and play dead while he hunted around the Internet for a source of information. Bruise or no bruise, she was hardly finished. And she was growing tired of this game she was playing with Callan.
Glancing at the clock, she winced at the time. Late morning. She had definitely overslept. A shower and lunch first though, then she was tracking Callan Lyons down and that was that. If she had to stake out that damned gas station until hell froze over. Her phone rang, interrupting that furious thought.
“Well, that was fast enough,” she said as she brought it to her ear. “Did you threaten their balls or what?”
There was silence over the line. Merinus frowned.
“Kane?”
“Maybe you didn’t need as much help as I thought you did yesterday.” The male voice was low, rumbling and filled with amusement. “Any woman who could threaten such an important area is tough enough to take on a few mercenaries.”
“Or the asshole that left her unconscious all night,” she bit out. “Callan Lyons, we aren’t going to get along if you keep up like this.”
That brought a definite chuckle.
“Who said we had to get along, darlin’? I was trying to help out some. That scream you blasted out rocked my mountain.”
“Well, big boy, tell me where to find you and I’ll come thank you, real personal like.” Like her foot up his ass for being so damned difficult.
“Hm, tempting offer,” his voice dropped, becoming huskier.
Merinus breathed in long and silent. Oh, what that voice did to her insides. Any minute now her juices would be running from her cunt right down her leg.
“You don’t sound tempted enough.” She grinned, her own voice lowering, becoming silky, intimate.
“Come on, Callan, surely you don’t want to have to rescue me again? I’m not going to give up, ya know?”
There was that silence again.
“You sound soft, Merinus, too damned soft for what you’re up against,” he finally sighed.
“Callan, I can’t give up.” She sat down on the bed, gripping the phone tightly. “You have to talk to me. I have things to show you, things I have to tell you that can only be done in person.”
“I’m not a story, pretty lady, and I know that’s what you’re after,” he told her, his voice so gentle, so soothing she felt stroked, petted.
“Perhaps you are,” she answered. “Why would you be hiding from me if you weren’t? All I want to do is talk.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t stop with talk,” he suggested. “You don’t know me. I could be as mean as those soldiers you tangled with.”
“And maybe I wouldn’t fight you.” She closed her eyes, knowing she wouldn’t. Just the sound of his voice had her pulse skyrocketing, her body heating up like a damned furnace.
Dammit, if her vagina clenched any tighter she would strangle his cock when it finally got inside her.
What the hell was wrong with her?
She could hear him breathing over the phone, deep and rough. She wondered if he heard her as well.
“Like what you saw the other day?” His shocking question was delivered in a hot, rough voice.
Merinus took a deep breath, her tongue running over her dry lips nervously.
“You knew I was there?”
“Oh, I knew. I could feel your hot little eyes on me, Merinus. Do you think I jack off for the hell of it?
I’m a grown man, not a kid. I don’t get a hard-on with just any stiff breeze anymore.” Merinus fought the little whimper that edged in her throat. She clenched her thighs together, fighting the ache there.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why did you do that?”
“Because you were watching. Because I know you want me and you don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“I saw—”
“Son of a bitch,” he growled. He actually growled the words. “Damn you, woman. This is insanity, you know that, don’t you?”
Oh, she knew. She knew it wasn’t the story she wanted anymore. It was just saving his life, revealing a major conspiracy, a crime against nature itself. It was more now, and she felt helpless in the grip of what it had become.
“I could return the favor.” Where the hell had those words come from? Merinus felt her face flush the minute they came from her mouth.
There was silence again. Long, thick with tension.
“You’re tempting me.” His voice sounded strangled.
“You know where I’m at,” she offered, amazed at the huskiness of her voice.
“Why are you doing this?” He sounded as ensnared by the heated offer as she had been at the sight he had given her.
“I’m not really sure.” She swallowed tightly, dragging her hand through her hair as she fought the overriding need pulsing in her body now. “Because I want to be with you. If nothing else, put you through the hell you put me through.”
Her breathing was rough, but so was his. She could hear the throb of desire in it, the same as it throbbed through her body.
“I’m too old for this,” he said, though his voice lacked conviction.
“Too old for sex?”
“For voyeurism. There’s no way in hell I’m actually going to touch you, woman, you’d burn me alive.” Once again, there was no real heat in his voice.
“I want you to touch me.” She was confused by the intensity of her need. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m sitting here aching for you so desperately I’d agree to damned near anything. This isn’t normal for me, Callan.”
“So hunt up an old lover.”
“I’d have to have one first,” she snapped, offended by the desperation in his tone. “Forget it. I’m not going to beg.”
“But I might—” he bit out. “Tell me you’re not a fucking virgin.”
“No, I’m not a fucking virgin. Virgins have yet to fuck, remember?” He cursed. Low, rough, a rumble amplified by the phone connection as heat seemed to sear her across the airwaves.
“I want inside you so bad my cock is about to burst,” he bit out. “You’re fucking dangerous.”
“So jack off again,” she snarled. “No, wait an hour first. I want to at least watch.” The phone disconnected. Merinus threw it across the room as a squeal of feminine outrage erupted from her throat. Damn him. She ached. No she didn’t, she hurt. And all she could think about was that thick cock sliding into her, thrusting hard and deep, her vagina milking it, caressing it deeper and tighter than his hand had done days before.
Enough was enough. The game was over. She would be damned if she would lie here, virtually in heat, dying for some hick moron’s touch that didn’t want her. She would take him the message her father sent her and get it over with. Lay the offer on the table then head for home. She didn’t need this, and she didn’t need him. Now, if she could just convince her body of that.
CHAPTER SIX
“Have you finished hiding from me?”
Callan knew he was in trouble when he saw her approach him moments before. Trouble was always recognizable. It had a scent, a feel, a low vibration of warning that thrummed through his veins. This feeling rioted through his system now. She stood beside him, watching him with a frown as he tinkered with the reluctant engine of his old truck once again and fought to get a handle on his self-control. The scent of her drifted on the breeze, the scent of fresh, clean woman, the beginning heat of arousal. Those scents lay around her now, tempting him, drawing him.
“Are you going to answer me?” she inquired, tilting her head, irritation flashing over her expression.
Long strands of straight, thick brunette hair fell over her shoulder, caressing silken skin and tempting his hands. Dammit, he didn’t need this kind of trouble. Not after that phone call earlier, not after the hot surge of lust her offer had hit him with.
“I’m in plain sight. How’s that hiding?” He tested a line into the carburetor. “Now what the hell did you want with me? Didn’t those soldiers give you a nice little warning, Ms. Tyler? They play for keeps.” She was intent on ignoring the danger of the situation evidently. She leaned her bare arms against the side of the truck, peering into the guts as though she knew what the hell she was doing.
“A friend sent me.” She shrugged. That movement caused the gentle curve of her breasts to rise a shade above the scooped neckline of the sleeveless top she wore.
Red. Dammit, it should be a crime for a woman that damned pretty to wear red.
He glanced at her. Her brown eyes, clear and wide, studied the motor intently, rather than looking at him. The sweet spice of her need wrapped around him, making his cock harden demandingly. Big problem, Callan thought. Literally.
“So who sent you?” he questioned her with mild interest. “I don’t have a lot of friends.”
“Maybe not.” She glanced up at him, suspicion riding her expression. “But your mother had a few. My father sent me to extend his condolences and to see if you needed anything.” He glanced at the woman again. Her gaze was knowing now. She had found him and she was more than aware of it. He laid the wrench down on the side of the truck and took a deep breath.
“You should return to your home, Ms. Tyler,” he told her quietly, warningly. “This is not the place for you or your father’s questions.”
Merinus looked around casually, careful to keep her voice low.
“Father can help you, Callan. That’s why I’m here.”
Frustration filled him now. The naivety of journalists often astounded him. They believed so deeply in their freedoms, the public’s right to know and their convictions of justice that they could not see the evil that shrouded them all. The innocence of this journalist fairly took his damned breath away.
“Come with me.” He rose to his full height, staring down at her as he took her slender arm in his hand and began pulling her along with him.
“Come where with you?” Suspicion laced her voice. There was no fear though, and he wanted to rail at her for her courage. The ignorance of her belief that she would come to no harm.
“Upstairs. To the office.” He pulled her through the garage to the back corner and up the steep stairs that led to Taber’s office.
The garage and attached store was owned by the Pride, as were all their holdings. But Taber was listed as sole owner on paper. It was better that way. Less suspicion. Less chance of being found.
Callan jerked the door open and pushed her inside. Closing it carefully behind them, he turned the lock, reasonably confident of privacy now, considering the sound proof room they were standing in. He would have one chance to bluff his way through this, and one chance only. He was considering how to begin when she drew an envelope out of her purse and pulled out the damning evidence.
“Don’t bother to lie to me.” There was a vein of hurt in her voice, as though she knew what he had intended.
Callan crossed his arms over his chest. He narrowed his eyes on her and let his frustration free in a harsh, rumbling growl that he hadn’t intended to give voice to. The low snarl, catlike in sound, dangerous in purpose, filled the air.
He watched the woman blink. The pictures fluttered from her hand, the heat of her body rose, the scent of it thicker, mixed now with fear. The pictures lay on the floor now, incriminating, damning. Callan, as a child, a thick lion’s fur covering his body, his eyes, amber gold and bright, shining into the camera. The fur had slowly fallen away, until only a smooth, light scattering of fine, nearly invisible, ultra soft hair remained. The other was a sonogram, and Callan knew pertinent information was recorded on the back of it. Blood type, DNA sequence, anomalies. All recorded. All nails in a coffin that Merinus Tyler could help build.
* * * * *
Merinus watched the tall, powerful man as he bent and scooped the pictures from the floor. His face was expressionless, his eyes hard, brilliant amber in the tan darkened features of his face. She hadn’t intended to show him the proof she carried with her, but she had known he was ready to lie to her. The knowledge had vibrated through her body. Lie. The word had been like a whisper, dark and vibrating. But Merinus had proof. She hadn’t come to him with supposition and half-truths. The evidence Maria Morales had sent John Tyler had been conclusive, irrefutable. But to bring truth to the test results and pictures, they needed the man. She hadn’t meant to drop the pictures, but the smooth rumble of warning from his throat had been more than a surprise
“Maria was like a little packrat,” he sighed, shaking his head as he stared down at the pictures.
Long, thick, coarse, tawny gold hair lay below the nape of his neck, framing a sharply lined face, savage in its angles. Wide, tilted eyes, thick lashes and cheekbones with an odd flattened angle where they should curve high and sharp. His nose was aristocratic, but the ridge seemed smoothed out, much as the cheekbones were.
Merinus ignored the hard beat of her heart as he finally looked at her. Her womb tightened uncomfortably, making her cunt clutch and protest the emptiness there. It was unusual, this sensation. She was well aware it was arousal washing over her. It made her breasts feel swollen, made her nipples harden uncomfortably, and those unusual eyes did not miss the reaction.
“She asked Father to help you,” she said, trying to cover her nervousness. “He wants you to come in with me. He has safeguards set up—”
He laughed. His lips twisted into a humorless curve and the bitterness in the sound struck at her heart.
He shook his head, his gaze mocking.
“If this is why you have come here, Ms. Tyler, then you have wasted your time.” Gone was the good ole boy, in its place a cold, hard creature. She saw it in the tense readiness of his large body, the flash of sharpened incisors at the sides of his mouth.
“You aren’t safe,” she told him worriedly. “Our research into this has uncovered a plot to kill—”
“And eventually they will succeed.” He shrugged as though unconcerned. “When they do, steal the body and write your story and good luck to you in living. Until then, I need no help of yours.” Surprise flared inside her.
“You don’t intend to try to stop them? To keep this from happening again?”
“It has already happened again and again and again,” he told her coldly. “They used wolves as well. To my knowledge, I am the only known success they have achieved.” Merinus shook her head. She had seen the pictures of those pitiful forms, born so deformed that there was no hope of life. Only Callan, as he said, had been their success.
“You can’t hide forever,” she pointed out. “You’re letting them win, Mr. Lyons.”
“I am living. I do not kill; I do not follow their command. They have not caught me, nor captured me again since my teens. I will defeat them until I can no longer, Ms. Tyler. Then, as I said, the rest is history.”
“My father is offering you an alternative,” she told him.
She fought a shiver that washed over her body as he moved, bringing his body closer to her. Heat suffused her, making the flesh between her thighs moisten. If the feeling wasn’t so strange, she would have been amused.
Callan Lyons was watching her with a frown, a question in his eyes as he came closer. She watched him inhale deeply, his eyes narrowing on her. As he brushed against her, the shiver couldn’t be controlled. It tightened her scalp, tingled down her neck, then spread out over her body, drawing goose bumps in its wake.
He stopped behind her, his body so warm the heat seemed to wrap around her. She could feel her body wanting to relax against him, wanting to be surrounded by him. Her thighs weakened, and between them she could feel the slow leak of moisture from her inner flesh, preparing her, readying her. Insanity.
She gasped, startled when she felt his chest brush against her back, his head lowering to her ear.
“I am going to unlock that door, Ms. Tyler. When I do, I want you to walk out of here, get in your vehicle and go home. Make no stops between here and there and do not mention my name or what you know to anyone, do you understand me? It just might keep you alive.” Merinus turned her head, a grin edging her lips.
“Are you trying to intimidate me, Mr. Lyons?” Good gracious, where had that husky edge to her voice come from? Maybe the same place that the sharp contraction to her womb originated from.
She felt him tense behind her. His hand moved to her arm, his fingers curling, the backs of them running softly across her flesh.
“Do you know what the Council does to pretty little women like yourself?” he asked her, his voice low, a deep rumble of warning from his chest. “They impregnate you with their latest batch of genetically altered cells. Then they take you out daily, to check the progress. If your body rejects it, then they do it again and again until you either hold the fetus, or you’re too weak to be of use to them any longer. Then they give you to the soldiers to use until you die. It’s not a pretty way to be taken from this earth.” Merinus bit her lip as she felt pain, overwhelming, intense, striking at her chest. It wasn’t fear, it was horror, revulsion, absolute pain for the women who had endured it, the man who had obviously seen it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, staring back, seeing only the thin line of anger his mouth had settled into.
“You are risking your very sanity being here.” His breath caressed her ear, a shiver working over her skin once again as he spoke to her. “Your sanity and your life. You should leave.” His voice throbbed with menace. It pulsed with heated arousal. Thick and husky, it rippled over her nerve endings, seared her cunt.
“So you’ve said.” She stared forward as he moved again, coming back to face her. “I told you, I’m not willing to let them continue to kill and maim, and you shouldn’t be either. We can stop them. My uncle, Samuel Tyler, is a Senator and close to the President. He’s waiting to do whatever is necessary. I have seven brothers, each one doing their part, and my father is willing to put every resource he has within his paper to back you. We have to make them stop.”
“And you think this will stop them?” he asked her incredulously. “Your innocence is to be envied, Ms.
Tyler. It’s actually quite frightening. You can’t take these people down.” She had to. She couldn’t stand to live if they managed to kill him. He was proud, determined and too damned remarkable in his very humanity to allow them to murder him. She had to convince him that his only safety lay in revealing the horrors he had escaped.
“You know who they are. You know what they are. You have the rest of the proof that we need to stop them,” she argued determinedly. “Your mother died because of this.”
“My mother was a victim of a random crime,” he growled. “Had the Council struck her, she would have disappeared and her body returned to me in pieces. The Council did not destroy her.”
“There was no sign of theft.” Merinus had read the police report. “It was a personal crime, Mr. Lyons.
Whoever kil