The Protected

FOUR

SOMETHING told her this wasn’t his first time at this particular rodeo.

As he managed to wedge them both into the tiny bathroom, she kept her face blank and tried to act a little dismayed. It wasn’t hard. She was panicked, trying not to panic more. As they’d come down the hall, she’d pressed a hand to her chest, felt the slight bump of the micro cameras she’d decided to tuck inside her bra instead of her pocket. Thank God.

Thank God he hadn’t found those. If he had . . .

Yeah. It wasn’t hard to fake dismay, wasn’t hard to act a little off balance. She was dismayed. She was off balance.

Just not for the reasons he thought, and she had to totally downplay that.

The boy had literally knocked her off her feet.

She’d been helpless at the hands of a man who was capable of God only knew what.

And damn it, her nose was still trickling blood. All from Alex’s careless assault on her mind.

Did she know anybody with that kind of raw power?

Vaughnne honestly didn’t know. She knew plenty of powerful psychics, yeah. But they were all older than Alex, all of them trained. And none of them were going to accidentally knock somebody out like that.

The kid was dangerous. And he was running around without any kind of real supervision, nobody to make sure he was learning how to control it and nobody capable of reeling him in if he did lose it.

Talk about an absolute mess.

She had been bad enough with her banshee-like voice when she lost it back before she had gotten herself under control, but she’d never had the ability to cause physical harm. Mental harm, yeah. She’d done her share of that. But this boy had caused physical damage. And he was all of what . . . thirteen?

“Here we go,” Gus said, turning away from the minuscule closet and facing her.

The bathroom wasn’t much bigger than a postage stamp, it seemed. There was room for the toilet, the sink, and the tub. That was about it. With the two of them in there, it was something of a tight fit.

“Ah . . .” She glanced at the rag and then eased closer, but that had her brushing up against him. She held out her hand, but he acted like he didn’t notice. She didn’t see how that was possible as he turned on the water, reaching past her to do so. It brought him even closer, and she could feel the wicked heat of his body and she just wanted to lean against him, wrap her body around his, and rub herself all over him.

The image was almost enough to make her whimper with want.

“How is the headache now?” he asked.

That voice of his—black velvet in the dead of night. Seductive and sinful. Something else that could make her whimper with want. She could just get lost in it.

Instead, she gave him a wry grimace and turned away from him to study her rather macabre reflection. He’d managed to get most of the blood off her face, but it was drying on her neck and her shirt was trashed. “The headache is getting better, but I look like a vampire’s chew toy,” she said sourly. She held her hand out over her shoulder. “Can I have the rag?”

He pushed it into her hand, but instead of moving out of the way, he lingered there as she leaned in and started to wash the blood away. She had to rinse the rag out twice to get her neck clean. She went over her face again. Finally, though, she’d cleared it all away, and before she turned to face him, she rinsed it out one more time. “I can take it home and wash it if you want.”

“No. Not a problem.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw his hand move and she tensed.

Slowly, she lifted her head, watching as he stroked a finger across her temple. “How do you feel now?”

The ache still lingered. The dizziness was gone, but she had a feeling she’d be dealing with the aftereffects of this for a while. “Like somebody kicked me in the head,” she said bluntly. “I might want to ease up on the sugar intake if that’s what caused it. I know teenage boys have a different metabolism, but maybe I should dump the cookies instead of letting Alex have them.”

“No. You’re probably right . . . just the sugar. Maybe the heat, if you’re not used to it.” He feathered his thumb over her brow. “If you take a nap, rest for a little while, you’ll probably feel better in a couple of hours.”

He sounded rather certain, she thought. Shaking her head, she casually eased away. His touch had hot little sparks jumping inside her. Not good. “I dunno, Gus.”

“I’m sure it’s fine.” He seemed undeterred by the way she’d casually shifted her body, his fingers trailing down her cheek to cup her chin, angling her head back until he could peer into her eyes.

A light, easy touch—just the press of his fingers under her chin. Barely any contact at all, and yet she felt it ricocheting through her. Her heart slammed hard against her chest, and if it wasn’t for years and years of practice in controlling everything from her physical responses to her emotions, Vaughnne knew she would have been breathing harder just from that light touch as well. She could feel the physical responses that weren’t quite as obvious. Her nipples tightened and ached—thank the maker of lined bras. It was the only thing keeping him from seeing that reaction, and she suspected he would have noticed.

All because he stroked his thumb across her brow, touched her chin.

All because he’d looked at her . . .

What in the hell would she do if he kissed her?

Better off not to know, she warned herself.

Better off.

“Are you still dizzy?”

Dizzy . . . She hadn’t mentioned that. She knew she hadn’t. Giving him a wide-eyed look, she asked, “Was I dizzy?” Then she laughed a little. “I guess I was, seeing as how I did a face plant, huh? Nah. I feel okay, other than my head.”

Wiggling out from between him and the sink, she made for the hallway. So much for trying to figure out a way to plant one of the units in the house.

It was a damn good thing he hadn’t decided to search her while she was out. She was going to have to think about alternative methods, maybe, of keeping a close set of eyes on them.

But thinking would have to come at a time when it wasn’t sheer torture just to move. She hadn’t been honest. She was still dizzy and her head was killing her. Alex’s mental probe had come smack up against her shields, and although she didn’t think he’d realized what he’d hit, just that impact had been enough to send her reeling.

Rest. Reevaluate. But get the hell out of there first.

The room spun around on her, and despite her determination, a groan managed to slip out of her. Slamming a hand against the wall, she closed her eyes and sucked in a breath.

The kid . . . what the hell . . .

She blew out all the air in her lungs and then took another breath, slower. Feeling a pair of eyes on her, she looked up and saw Alex standing at the end of the hall, a nervous, anxious look on his face.

And he still held that stupid plate of cookies, too.

He looked half-sick with guilt, and the cookie he’d been eating was clutched in one fist, but judging by the look on his face, he’d forgotten about it. Sighing, she closed her eyes and took another breath as he started to say something.

She even saw the words forming in his eyes.

But before he could say it, Gus cut him off. “Alex, why don’t you grab her a Coke from the fridge? Maybe it would help if she had a drink.”

Sorry. The kid wanted to say he was sorry, but Gus wouldn’t let him. She realized the problem there . . . Gus couldn’t let him, because neither of them realized she knew what had happened.

What an utter mess.

Babysitting.

My ass.

She managed not to snarl as Gus closed his hand around her arm once more, but it was a close thing.

And once she got out of there, she was going to have a word with Mr. Taylor Jones. A very painful word.

“YOU have to be more careful,” Gus said once Vaughnne was tucked safely back inside her house.

“I’m sorry.” Alex stood there, his head hanging so low, his chin touching his chest. “I just . . .” He sniffled and then looked up, a defiant look in his eyes. “I just wanted a cookie. Why did I have to do that just to get a damned cookie?”

“Watch your mouth, Alex,” Gus warned. “And you know why. So because you’re angry about the situation, you took it out on her. Was that fair? Was that kind? You saw what happened, didn’t you?”

“Her head felt funny!” Alex snapped. He turned away and jammed his hands into his pockets. “It’s not as easy to get inside her head. It’s almost like looking in yours and I had to push harder.”

Staring at the boy’s slumped shoulders, Gus rubbed his neck and tried to figure out what to say, what to do.

He understood, basically, what Alex was saying. Some minds were just more open, easier to read. The more closed the mind, the harder it was for Alex to look inside, but if he really wanted in, Alex would get in. So far, it didn’t seem like anybody had been able to keep the boy out. But Alex usually didn’t cause pain when he looked, and over the past two years or so, his control had gotten better. For the most part, nobody seemed to even notice anything was going on. Before they’d started working on it, Alex had pushed too hard and people had . . . sensed something. Or just sensed that something wasn’t quite right, Gus supposed. He didn’t know how to describe it because he was always aware of it when Alex was probing his mind and he knew the look the boy had on his face when he was looking into somebody else’s.

But as the boy’s control had improved, Gus had stopped seeing those signs of strain, those signs of pain. It happened less and less often, and for more than a year, those occurrences were the anomaly, not the norm.

Until today.

Not only had he caused Vaughnne pain, but he’d sent that woman crashing to the floor. All because she’d brought them a plate of cookies.

Leaning against the wall near the door, Gus stared outside, watching her house, still painfully aware of how she’d felt when he’d picked her up. Solid. Warm. And real. It was a miserable thing, he mused. She’d been unconscious, dealing with a nosebleed, and instead of being wracked with guilt over that, he was too busy remembering how good she’d felt in his arms.

So focused on that, he hadn’t taken the chance he probably should have taken. He could have searched her, looked for an ID, some sign of who she was. Although he’d already run a background check on her, using the piss-poor excuse of a laptop he had. According to the information he’d gathered, she was who she said she was . . . had lived in Atlanta, moved after she’d lost the lease on her house. Did data entry for a living and the company she worked for had been around for a long, long time.

He knew there were ways around that sort of thing, but nothing about her set off his danger alert, and more, Alex wasn’t scared around her. That was the most important thing.

Still, he should have done . . . something. Instead, he’d thought about how soft she felt. How warm. How much he missed feeling a woman in his arms.

Too long, he brooded. It had been too long since he’d had a woman under him. And something told him it had been even longer since he’d been with one like Vaughnne. Maybe even never. She’d never let him run the show and she’d meet him hunger for hunger . . . he closed his eyes as that hunger tore into him.

If he didn’t get this under control soon, they’d have to leave.

He couldn’t let anything distract him. Not even something as simple as sex.

Feeling a familiar brush on the edge of his thoughts, he turned his head and stared down Alex. “You know better,” he said quietly. “You use it only when you have to, and there’s no reason to use it on me.”

Gus had no abilities, something he was ridiculously grateful for.

But he’d also learned that one didn’t necessarily need psychic skill to know when it was being used. Not once you’d felt it a time or two. Or two hundred, in his case. Since they had no way of teaching Alex, years ago, Gus had made the decision to let Alex practice on him.

But it came with rules.

This was outside the rules.

Alex still had his hands shoved deep in his pockets and he looked miserable. Angry. Scared. “Are you mad at me?”

“I have no reason to be angry,” Gus said, shrugging. “You didn’t just knock me out on my butt, Alex.”

“I tried to tell her I was sorry.”

Closing his eyes, Gus shook his head. “You can’t. She doesn’t know what happened . . . we can’t let her know.”

Alex glared at him for a long, tense moment.

Gus held his stare and waited. Finally, the boy turned his back and stormed out of the living room, and disappeared down the hall. It wasn’t a long walk. The narrow little room he’d claimed as his own was all of four feet down the hall. It seemed like the entire house shook as he slammed the door shut. Closing his eyes, Gus rested his head against the wall.

When is this going to end? It wasn’t the first time he’d wondered it. It wouldn’t be the last.

He knew there wasn’t going to be an easy answer.

At this point, he wasn’t even expecting an answer, period.

The boy had to be protected, and he suspected protection was going to be a problem for them even once Alex was no longer just a boy.

Please . . . you must do this for me . . .

Those words haunted him even now. He’d given his word, and he’d stand by it. With no regrets.

But how much longer . . .

It ends when the threat is gone.

The knowledge didn’t improve his frame of mind. Not at all.

REYES lowered the phone.

He wasn’t overly pleased with the fact that the man he had on this job had decided he’d do better if he was working it somewhere . . . else.

It made it harder to watch him. Harder. But not impossible.

He’d made a few phone calls about a replacement, but so far, nobody seemed quite right.

One thing that was intriguing . . . the information his man had given him. That other avenue he’d mentioned. Reyes had been prepared to dismiss it as a hoax, except he didn’t think it was. That was promising. So very promising.

“I want to go swimming.”

The woman at his side stroked a hand down his thigh, and despite his decision to focus and make some headway on this problem, he found himself thinking about that idea himself. Her lovely body, cutting through the water. He could join her. Send his men away from the pool. Not too far, of course. Just far enough away to leave them in privacy.

But he really did need to move forward—

A slim hand slid up and cupped his balls. “Come on,” she murmured. Leaning in, she pressed her lips to his cheek. “I’ll be bad for you again.”

He leaned back, thoughts of work not just forgotten, but gone. Like they’d never existed. “Will you, my dear?”

“Hmmm . . .”

BENT over the computer, Esteban watched as his carefully worded message went live. He’d just gotten off the phone with the boss, and he knew he didn’t have too much time left. He’d heard the impatience in the man’s voice. He was down to weeks now. Maybe even days. Something had to happen, and soon.

This was his best chance . . . a harebrained scheme. His best chance at survival. Maybe he should just end it now.

Once more, he read through the message, his heart slamming hard against his ribs. He’d spent hours on those words. Hours. And he’d thought it through for an entire day before he even sat down to put pen to paper, tucked inside a hotel in the miserable hell that was known as Miami. Away from the boss. Where he might be able to lose himself if he had to.

He’d torn up more than a dozen drafts of the message, carefully burning each shred down to ash. Nothing to trace back to him, nothing to lead the boss to him. Or anybody else, for that matter.

But now . . . now it was done. He had all the right words and there they were, out there in cyberspace, waiting for an answer.

He didn’t know how long he’d have to wait, but something would come of this. It would have to. Because, really, there was no other option.

Leaning back from the desk, he rubbed his hands over his face and stared up at the darkened ceiling as he thought it all through.

No other option. Save for one.

He could run.

It was the last option. The last resort. The thing he’d do only if no other avenue opened up before him, and he’d almost rather put a bullet in his own mouth before he ran. If he ran and he was caught, he knew he’d be better off dead anyway.

But it had always been a faint, almost microscopic possibility.

He knew this, so he’d planned for that eventuality. But he was saving it until there were no other choices.

Right now, this was still a choice.

He just had to wait.

I am trying to locate an item . . .

THE message made the skin on the back of her neck crawl.

Nalini Cole had been watching this website for a long, long time, but why the hell had this happened now? This couldn’t have come at a worse time. She was in the middle of a job that she had to see through.

And this? It just couldn’t wait. She had a number of cockroaches she wanted to smash, and a whole bunch of them were involved in a nasty little nest that had connections to this website. They weren’t number one on her list, but they were pretty damn close. She’d been watching, waiting for her chance.

One of the problems, though, stayed in the shadows, using the website only in the most circumspect manner, and it made it hard to move in on them. Too many of them had powerful gifts that made it easy for them to pick up on the tactics she’d normally use.

Still, the opportunity would present itself. So she watched. And waited. And worked on finding the number one cockroach on her list.

Still . . .

Locate an item . . . Those words left a bad taste in her mouth and a twist in her gut. Absently, she reached into her pocket and touched the necklace she’d tucked away. She didn’t like to wear it, but she couldn’t let it out of her sight, either.

When she touched it, she heard a boy crying. Sobbing.

It threw her back into a spiral of memories that threatened to drown her. Choke her. She couldn’t go there, not now. She was dancing on a razor’s edge with her current job anyway and now with this mess . . . no. She needed her head in the least screwed-up state possible, not the worst.

Squeezing her eyes closed, she whispered, “Just remember . . . you survived.” She’d said it a thousand times. She’d say it a thousand more.

Gathering her dreads into a tail, she secured them at the nape of her neck and then focused back on the message. Locate an item.

There really was no question about what she was going to do, she realized. There hadn’t been from the moment she’d read those words.

Once upon a time, a man had referred to her as an item.

The item in question was last seen in Florida.

“Florida.” Just thinking about that place made her gut hurt. “Damned, forsaken hellhole of a state.”

She’d left there not too long ago, and if she had her way, she wouldn’t go back.

But this couldn’t be ignored . . . and she was already hip deep in a mess of her own.

Oddly enough, the answer to that particular dilemma was one that made her smile. She pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed a number.

Something told her he wasn’t going to be happy to hear from her.

But that was fine.

She’d been looking for a reason to contact this particular man ever since she’d first laid eyes on him.

THE gray cat sat in the window, watching him with a calm gaze.

There was something almost regal about the animal, Tucker decided.

As he pulled a can from the cabinet, he read off the label. “Chicken and beef?”

The cat slitted her eyes and just stared at Tucker. Sighing, he tossed the can back into the cabinet. “Sooner or later, you need to suck it up and eat the damned chicken and beef, cat.”

She meowed. It sounded a lot like, I don’t think so.

His phone rang. One glance told him everything he needed to know. He didn’t recognize the number, so he ignored it. If his housekeeper had been there, he might have told her to answer the phone and tell the caller to fuck off—Lucia wouldn’t use exactly those words, but she’d make sure the message was heard. Loud and clear. Sadly, though, Lucia wasn’t around.

Ignoring the phone was the best option. “Okay.” Studying the rest of the cans, he pulled down two more. “Ocean fish?”

Now Her Majesty flicked an ear.

“Salmon.”

The cat lay down. Yes, you peasant. You may feed me now.

“You’re a pain in the ass.” Tucker stared at Heywood. “One would think you’d be a little more appreciative of the home and all.”

As he was in the middle of opening the can, his phone chimed. Tension skittered down his spine, and in response, lights flickered in his house. He clenched his jaw and powered it all down. Shit like that wasn’t acceptable. Not in any way, shape, or form. As he knelt down to put the plate on the floor, Heywood jumped down and rubbed her head against Tucker’s gloved hand. The gloves, lined with a thin, inner layer of rubber, protected the cat. It was probably overkill, and he knew it, but he didn’t care. He’d long since learned how to control himself, but he didn’t like to take chances.

Sighing, he stroked a hand down the cat’s back before rising.

The phone chimed again.

There was a picture on the display.

A woman.

He knew her.

Just the sight of her was like a visceral, one-two punch.

Long, dense hair, the palest blond he’d ever seen, fell more than halfway down her back. It was done in a series of narrow dreadlocks, and until he’d seen Nalini, he had never paid much attention to that style, but it was so damn sexy. Ever since he’d met her, he’d spent way too many nights thinking about how much he’d love to twist that hair around his hands and feast on her mouth. Then feast all the way on down until he reached the heart of her . . . spread those thighs and . . .

His cock jerked in response as that image whipped through his mind and he felt the answering tension spark through him, a devastating need that spoke of storms and power and heat.

Problems lay down that road, he knew. Hard to get too involved in kissing anybody when his very touch could prove fatal.

One slipup, one loss of control . . . yeah. His encounters of the physical kind were few and far between, and usually with somebody he found only minimally attractive. It was a release valve for him, nothing more.

Snagging the phone, he pulled up the messages and spent a long, long moment staring at her picture. Just staring. He gave himself that before he started thinking things through.

Things like . . . how in the hell did she get my number?

As he was puzzling that thought through, he shifted his gaze to the message that had come with the picture.

If you’d like to know how I got your number, you’ll have to answer the phone when I call. If you like, I can send you another picture. I’m thinking about sending one of me naked. Are you interested?

Tucker swore.