Harmony's Way

CHAPTER 13

The moment her voice crooned over the comm link, Lance felt the response surge through his body. His cock was already painfully erect, but the sexy tone of her voice had it jerking in his jeans, impossibly harder and ready to fuck.

Damn her. She picked a hell of a time to turn into a sex kitten.

“Okay, Steven, let’s move in. She has him.”

He was aware of Steven’s quick, surprised look as they headed into the house, with the paramedics coming in behind them.

Lance waved them to the corner where the mother, Liza, was cradling her young son. She was bloody, beaten, but appeared conscious.

Moving quickly, he and the two State Police officers moved into the bedroom, guns drawn, before pulling up to a quick stop.

Tommy Mason was spewing vulgarity as Harmony sat on her haunches listening to him, her head tilted, a mocking smile on her face as she ran her thumb slowly down the edge of her blade.

“You think you’re so smart,” Mason spat. “You freak. You’re nothing but a nasty damned animal and you’ll get yours.”

Harmony lifted her head to Lance. “He’s just full of information,” she drawled. “All kinds of supremacist rhetoric. You have some fine folks in your fair town, Sheriff Jacobs.”

She moved aside as the officers gripped Mason’s arms and picked him up from the floor. Harmony slid the knife deftly into its sheath and stared back at him expectantly.

“I’m hungry,” she stated. “Didn’t I see a fast-food joint earlier? Think we could detour before we have to take care of all that nasty paperwork?”

He watched her closely. Her eyes were unnaturally bright, her voice huskier than normal.

“Are you okay?” He moved to her, his gaze going over her carefully. “Did he manage to cut you?”

She gave an unladylike snort. “Please.” She waved the question away. “He was such an amateur. People should learn how to use knives before attempting to play with them.” She reached behind her and pulled the switchblade, encased in an evidence bag, from her belt. “Here you go. I didn’t even get any of my nasty little paw prints on it.”

He took the bag carefully, allowing his fingers to brush hers, feeling the unnatural cold of her fingertips.

“Let’s go get those statements taken care of,” he said and sighed. “Steven and his men will take care of Mason.”

“Are they going to lock him up?” She moved ahead of him as they left the bedroom and headed for the front door.

“They’ll lock him up. He’ll be lucky if he sees the outside of a cell in the next twenty years. Shooting at the State Police is a heavy crime.”

Lance had seen the officer carefully lifting a pistol from the bedroom floor and putting it in an evidence bag as his partner read Mason his rights.

“They’ll lock him up for shooting at a police officer but not for beating the hell out of his wife?” Harmony shook her head as they moved outside. “The world is a sick, sick place, Lance.”

“We do our best, Harmony.”

“And when your personal best isn’t good enough?” she asked as they reached the Raider.

As she turned to him, Lance saw the shadows that filled her amazing green eyes. They were pure, brilliant, with no specks of darker color. Almost mesmerizing.

“When my personal best hasn’t been good enough, I keep fighting,” he sighed as he leaned against the door, trapping her between him and the interior of the vehicle. “I come out here every time the neighbors call. I try to help Liza as best I can. Until she lets go of her fear enough to help me put him behind bars, then there’s nothing I can do.”

“And the little boy?”

“I do my best, Harmony.” He knew the question she was asking, the warning behind it. “I uphold the law, baby. I don’t make it.”

She inhaled slowly. “I’m not cut out for this job. Maybe Lenny will trade places with me.”

They both knew that wasn’t possible. The papers she had signed had been clearly written. Harmony had to work patrol, not a desk.

“You have to take satisfaction from the good you can accomplish,” he whispered, reaching out to touch her pale cheek. “When you see the arrest turn into a conviction, when you know you’ve done your job well enough to stop the leaks in the system. The good outweighs the bad, Harmony.”

“If he gets free again, he’ll kill them both,” she told him. “He told that boy to scream if anyone came in. And he almost screamed. He’ll make that child pay. And when he does, I’ll go hunting.”

And there was Death. He heard the transformation in her voice, watched as she stared back at him ruthlessly.

“Will you let Jonas win that easily?” he asked. “How many other children could you help by living, Harmony?”

“What will it matter if I’ve failed one of the few who gave me his trust?” she asked him then. “Don’t let that bastard escape your law, Lance, or he may well find Death’s justice.”

Then she reached up, laying both hands against his chest as a breath shuddered from her. And he felt it then. The heat in his body building, reaching out to her as the winds whispered of pain at his ear.

Reaching up, he covered the backs of her hands with his own, standing silently as she let her head lean forward to rest against his chest as well. Other eyes watched them, and Lance knew it. As the ambulance pulled from the drive, the other officers moved slowly to their vehicles, glancing back at them curiously. And Mason. Lance could feel his gaze boring into his back, stripping through him as hatred pressed against him.

Tommy Mason was going to be a problem. Lance could feel it.

“Sorry.” Harmony straightened with an abrupt movement, pulling her hands from his chest and straightening her shoulders as she stared up at him defiantly.

His hands still held hers. Turning them over, he looked down at her reddened skin and knew that the mating heat was taking its toll.

She had touched another man. The hormonal forces inside her didn’t differentiate between touches. It was showing her, warning her, that no other male’s touch would do.

“I didn’t think about this,” he whispered as he lifted her hands to his lips and placed a kiss in the center.

She inhaled roughly as Lance felt arousal tearing through him. Dammit, wrong place. Definitely the wrong place for this.

“Let’s get those reports written so we can head home.” He released her slowly. “We can check in on Liza and Jaime at the hospital if you want to, when we’re finished.”

She shook her head firmly as she ducked away from him and slid into the Raider.

“It’s better if we don’t,” she finally whispered. “Better for all of us.”

As they drove to the department, Lance kept his window down a bare inch, allowing the winds to move through the vehicle, to whisper at his ear. Warnings. Danger. Pain. And Tommy Mason’s name.

He pulled into the parking lot of the Sheriff’s Department and sighed wearily before leaving the vehicle, staying close to Harmony as they moved up the steps toward the entrance.

Inside, a crowd milled within the reception area, which wasn’t that unusual on a Friday night. The State Police cruisers were parked at the curb, which meant Steven and his partner, Lyle, were booking Mason.

Following Harmony, he stepped into mayhem. With no warning, no whisper of the wind to guide him, he came face-to-face with Reverend H. R. Alonzo.

“Sheriff Jacobs, your actions tonight border on the criminal.” Alonzo stood with perhaps half a dozen of his society members backing him as deputies looked on warily.

Harmony tried to move to the side, to skirt the crowd and escape the coming confrontation. Until one of the larger men stepped in front of her, his hand reaching out to grip her arm.

Harmony hissed. A furious feline sound of anger as she bared her teeth and jerked back from him.

“Alonzo, what the hell are you doing here?” Lance grabbed Harmony’s arm before it could go for her knife, and pushed her behind him.

“You can’t save her.” Righteous indignation flushed the reverend’s heavy jowls as his pale blue eyes burned with fanaticism. “We saw what she did to that poor man the State Police just brought in. The brutality of her attack was uncalled for.”

Lance stared back at him coldly. Brutality, his ass.

“If you have a complaint to file, come back in the morning,” he snapped. “Until then, get the hell out of my way.”

“Do you think you can force these animals on Godfearing people.” Alonzo’s voice rose, the strident question posed in a sermonizing tone that grated on Lance’s nerves.

Behind him, he could feel Harmony watching, waiting. The air began to hum with danger then.

“Alonzo, it’s too damned late for this,” Lance growled as he gripped Harmony’s arm and began to move around the crowd. They shifted with him as their voices began to rise in volume.

“Since when do we cater to animals, Sheriff?” one woman’s voice rang out. “It’s bad enough we have that cousin of yours consorting with those creatures and messing up our town.”

He swung his gaze to one of the matrons of the city, a prudish, troublemaking old busybody who protested everything under the sun. He should have known she would be here.

“Take it up with the City Council, Matilda,” he snapped. “Not here.”

“He’s as ensnared by the creature as his cousin is to her own pet,” Alonzo cried out. “Abominations are what they are. It’s time to cast them out of this God-fearing town…”

“David, clear this place out!” Lance snarled at the deputies watching in indecision, as he began to push his way through the crowd, tugging Harmony along with him.

A second later she was torn from him. Turning, Lance watched in fury as a heavyset male attempted to twist her arm, to force her to cower. Deputies were rushing to the confrontation, but before they could push through the crowd, Harmony turned, twisted and within a breath had the much larger man on his back, her gun lodged beneath his chin.

Lance was thanking God it wasn’t the knife.

“You have just assaulted an officer of the law.” Her smile was smug, despite the edge of pain in her gaze. “It is with great personal pleasure that I inform you that you are under arrest.”

“Get these people out of here,” Lance yelled to a deputy as he turned to Alonzo’s triumphant expression.

“Your society member just assaulted one of my deputies,” he informed him furiously. “As the leader of this little get-together, maybe I should arrest you while I’m at it.”

Lance could feel the rage building inside him as he forced himself not to plant his fist in the reverend’s gloating, overblown face.

“My lawyer will be here in the morning,” Alonzo assured him as the rest of the crowd began to move toward the door. “Don’t worry, Sheriff, I’ll make certain I do God’s work, with or without your help.”

“God’s work?” Harmony was breathing roughly as she came to her feet, turning her attacker over to the deputies as she rushed for the reverend. “Let me show you—”

“Harmony,” Lance snapped, turning on her quickly. “You have reports.”

She stopped in her tracks, the tone of his voice causing her to hesitate, before her eyes narrowed and her gaze focused over his shoulder.

“Now,” he reminded her firmly.

He could see the tension shuddering through her body and knew the pain was beginning to build inside her. Two men in one night that she had been forced to protect herself or others against.

Her lips thinned before the upper curve curled menacingly.

“Reports,” she said slowly, her eyes never leaving Alonzo. “Of course, Sheriff. Just let me get on that. I can play later.” The muttered threat wasn’t lost on him or Alonzo.

“Only animals react in such a way…”

Before Lance could stop himself his fist was bunched in the material of the stiff shirt the reverend wore as he lifted the other man to his tiptoes.

“Get the hell out of my department,” he snarled. “And while you’re talking to your lawyers, tell them to expect a call from the county prosecutor as well.”

Lance pushed him toward the door, hating the fury rising inside him. He had fought for calm all his life, fought to find that balance inside himself that Harmony had yet to learn. But there were people, such as Reverend Alonzo, who could disrupt it every time.

Alonzo jerked back and straightened his shirt with a huff as his bulbous nose twitched in anger.

“You haven’t seen the last of me, Sheriff. It’s my duty to make certain these creatures don’t infect us all. And I will see my duty through. No matter the obstacles. I have sworn my duty to God—”

“And I’m sure he thinks about as much of it as I do,” Lance growled. “Now, get the hell out of here.”

Turning, he waved Lenny toward the reverend.

“Make sure he finds the door. Fast,” he ordered the deputy as he stalked to his office. “And make certain he doesn’t return.”

Lance slammed the door behind him before stalking across the room to where Harmony was rubbing her hands together, her expression frantic.

“My hands are freezing.” She stared up at him in distress. “Or burning. I can’t make it stop.”

Harmony didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. What had been merely uncomfortable, irritating, before was now becoming strident. The cold burn in her hands and along the front of her body felt blistering. Especially between her thighs, where she had been forced to straddle the two men.

As Lance gripped her hands, she expected another of those tender kisses in the centers of her palms. It had helped before. Instead, he pushed her hands beneath the loose tail of his shirt as he gripped her head with his free hand.

And he kissed her.

He devoured her.

His lips plundered her own with deep, drugging kisses as his tongue slipped and slid against hers. Harmony moaned in overwhelming relief and hunger as the heavy, swollen sensation of the glands beneath her tongue began to ease. The sweet taste of it fired her senses further, sensitized her flesh, but nothing could have made her need Lance more than she already did.

Adrenaline pumped through her body; her greatest weakness was that surging excitement. Coming down from it normally filled her with depression, with a need for the human comfort she had always denied herself. She wasn’t depressed now though. She was desperate. Hungry.

Her hand tore at the small snaps on his shirt, flipping the edges apart before her arms curled around his neck. The silk of his hair was a comfort against her palms, but the heat of his body was a fire in winter, warming all the cold lonely places inside her.

And she needed more of him. Before she completely understood exactly what she was doing, she was trying to climb his body. Her thighs wrapped around his as she pressed her aching pussy into the wedge of his cock, rubbing against him, moaning in exquisite pleasure as his hands gripped the cheeks of her ass and held her to him as they ate at each other’s lips.

The kisses were intoxicating, fiery. Harmony felt the cold burn beneath her flesh retreating as they became deeper, hungrier.

“Goddamned office isn’t the place for this.” Lance tore his lips from hers as he moved, his voice husky, lusty.

Harmony gasped as he lowered them to the small couch across the room. With her legs wrapped around his hips and his body now coming over hers, the press of his cock against her sensitive flesh was firmer, more heated.

“Oh, I like that.” She shifted beneath him, her hips stroking over the hard, jeans-covered erection.

“I bet you do.” The half laugh, half grunt had a small smile tugging at her lips. “We’re going to keep fucking in my office, I’m going to end up fired.”

“I’ll protect you.” She panted as his head lowered, his lips moving to her neck. “Tell them I held a gun to your head… Oh God. Lance…” His hands slid beneath her top, cupping her breasts with firm, demanding fingers as his teeth raked over her neck.

“Like that?” He nipped at her neck, then soothed the little pleasure-pain with his tongue.

“Oh, I like,” she moaned, arching closer to him, gasping as he gripped her nipples in his thumbs and forefingers and rolled them deliciously. “I like that too.”

She was panting, drunk with pleasure. She had held herself back from him despite the demands of her body, and she realized then that it was only making the need grow.

“God, you taste good.” He came back to her lips, covering them, taking them both on a mindless journey of pleasure as Harmony writhed beneath him.

“Lance, I need more.” She pressed her hips closer as his lips moved back to her neck, then lower to her collarbone. “I need more now.”

“In a minute. One taste at a time,” he growled as she arched her back, feeling his lips moving over the upper curves of her breasts that her snug shirt revealed.

“More. Now…”

She tossed her head, turning it to the side as her eyes widened in shock. Jonas stepped into the office, closing the door as he stared back at them mockingly.

“This isn’t my night,” she whispered as Lance paused, his head turning as well. “Do you think we could just ignore him?”

That brought a frown to Jonas’s dark face, but a chuckle from Lance.

“He’ll get testy,” he told her with a sigh before moving to kiss her quickly on the lips.

She caught his head, intending to hold him to her for just a second more. A second lengthened, his moan dulled her senses, and she nearly forgot that they had company of the worst sort.

“Hellion.” Lance moved back before she could stop him, though his smile was frankly approving as he gripped her arms and pulled her to her feet. “Go get those reports written. I’ll take care of this.”

“What’s there to take care of?” She straightened her shirt as she stared back at her brother.

“I can see she hasn’t changed much,” Jonas stated as his lips quirked in amusement. “And from the report I heard from the society members outside, she hasn’t gotten any slower.”

“Actually I have,” she drawled. “A week ago I wouldn’t have hesitated to pull the trigger.”

“Reports, Harmony.” Lance caught her eye, the warning in his gaze determined as he resnapped his shirt.

“Fine. Reports.” She straightened her shirt again. “I swear, I never had to write a report when I killed the bastards. Slice their throats and walk away. No paperwork, no hassle. Unless you have a brother determined to kill you.” She smiled snidely back at Jonas.

He inclined his head in acknowledgment as she walked from the room. Snarling silently, she made her way to the desk and plopped into the hard wood seat before finding the papers she needed. Stupid reports. Assassins didn’t file reports. This was ridiculous.

“How can I help you, Jonas?” Lance waved him to a chair before moving behind the desk and taking his own.

His body was humming with lust; the need to push the Breed out the door and finish what had begun on that sofa was nearly overwhelming.

Jonas took his seat, his expression as coldly mocking as ever. There was something about Jonas that both repelled and drew a person. It was there in those quicksilver eyes—a ruthlessness, a sense of purpose that you were never quite certain you could trust.

Lance knew he couldn’t be trusted.

“Is she settling in okay?” Jonas leaned back in his chair, his expression curious.

“She’s doing fine.” Lance nodded. “But I have a feeling that’s not exactly why you’re here at…” He looked at the clock. “One o’clock in the morning.”

“I was passing through.” Jonas shrugged. “I’ve been at Megan and Braden’s this evening. Braden told me you had changed your schedule so I thought I’d drop by.”

That was interesting. He had a feeling Jonas was never curious about anything; he always had an agenda.

“Cut the shit, Jonas,” he growled. “Drop your little bomb and head on out. It doesn’t take Harmony that damned long to write her reports, and I have a feeling that for the time being, you two are better off separated.”

Jonas’s lips quirked.

“In all seriousness, as I said, I merely stopped by to see how she was doing…”

“Or to see if she had conceived yet?” Lance leaned forward as he lowered his voice. “Braden mentioned once that a Breed can smell new life. Were you curious enough to check and see if you had managed to defeat her?”

Jonas stared at him silently.

Lance shook his head wearily as he leaned back in his chair.

“I’m not a stupid man, Jonas. What do you want from her? You always have a reason for everything you do. You knew when you brought her here what would happen. Just as you knew the chances for early conception if she didn’t get the hormonal supplement in time. Is she pregnant?”

Jonas’s face was devoid of expression by the time Lance finished.

“What do you want from her, Jonas?” he asked him, his voice grating. “What put her in a situation you could almost bet she would fail within if your intent was to save her?”

That bothered him. Jonas was her brother; his main concern should have been in making certain she succeeded, not in making it as hard for her as possible.

“Is she learning how to work within the law for a change?” Jonas asked, rather than answering the question.

“Perfectly,” Lance snapped. “Now answer the question. What do you want from her?”

Jonas stared back at him silently.

Lance shook his head. “Forget it. I’ll figure it out eventually. And if I find out you’re putting her in harm’s way, I’ll make you pay. Breed or not. You will pay, Jonas.”

Jonas had played with Megan and her loyalties the year before, attempting to blame Lance for the leak in the office, to force her into throwing herself into the nightmare of emotions caused by two Breed deaths. Megan’s abilities to pick up on their emotions as they died had been important in the investigation to find their murderer. How he had attempted to maneuver her hadn’t sat well with Lance, or Megan’s then lover, Braden.

“I can see checking up on her is a useless endeavor then.” Jonas rose to his feet, his expression forbidding as their gazes clashed. “Keep a leash on her, Lance. I’d hate to have to give her over to Breed Law if she crosses the line again.”

Lance came slowly to his feet. “And I’d hate to have to kill you if you tried, Jonas,” he answered coldly, tensing at the threat implied in the other man’s voice. “Make no mistake, your games will get you killed if they involve Harmony much more. Law or no law, what’s mine stays mine.”