Dancing on the Wind (7 page)

flush to her cheeks and upon her breasts. Her entire body held his scent.

“Bonded,” she whispered. “Goddamn it, we fucking bonded!”

That was the last thing she had ever wanted or needed.

And with a man like Fallon?

She hissed and pushed away from the vanity, reaching over to pull open the glass

door to the shower. She turned the water on, adjusted the temperature then went

inside, closing the door tightly behind her. Vaguely, she heard the bathroom door open,

but already the steam was clouding the glass, hiding her from him. She could see him

standing at the toilet, bending over to lift the lid. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell

him to be sure to lower the seat when he was finished but thought better of it. Instead,

she reached for the bottle of mango-scented body wash and the net scrubby.

Though she expected him to flush the toilet, he didn’t, and when she heard the

bathroom door close, felt slightly disappointed. A part of her had wanted him to come

into the shower with her while another part had been screaming against such an

intimate invasion. She knew why he hadn’t flushed—he hadn’t wanted the water in the

shower to change temperatures. That small consideration made her smile.

When she came out of the shower with her fluffy white terrycloth bathrobe belted

around her and a towel wrapped around her wet hair, he was gone. The bed had been

straightened—or at least as much as any male could straighten a bed. It surprised her

that he’d been that thoughtful.

Sighing, she walked out into the great room half expecting to find him lurking

about but he had left her quarters and…

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Dancing on the Wind

“Shit!” she said, her eyes narrowing. “He took my book!”

Twenty minutes later, Fallon came out of his own shower with a towel wrapped

around his lean flanks. Barefoot, he strolled over to the bed and plopped down on his

back, picked up the romance novel he’d spied lying on the floor as he’d left

McCullough’s apartment. Some perverse little imp had prodded him into pilfering it

and now he was curious to see what women found so damned entertaining. He opened

the book to the place held by the bookmark, held it open with one hand and shoved the

other under his head as he began reading. What he read surprised him at first then

made him howl with laughter. He went back a few pages to the beginning of the scene,

and when he had read to the end of the chapter, slowly lowered the book and grinned.

“Now I know why you were horny as hell, babe,” he said aloud.

He shifted on the bed. No wonder she’d lit into him as though she hadn’t had a

good fuck in months. He eyed the book with a quirk of his lips.

“Maybe you trashy bitches serve a useful purpose after all,” he begrudgingly

complimented the author then tossed the book aside.

He lay there scratching his bare belly then his balls for a moment before resting his

free hand on his chest. He drew his knees up and stared at the ceiling, wondering why

she hadn’t admitted she knew what had transpired between them. She knew. He knew

she knew and it had shocked her as much as it had him.

What transpired had not been foreseen by either of them and it sure as hell hadn’t

been what he’d wanted. Things had changed, would never be the same again, and he

didn’t really know how he felt about that.

“Bonded,” he mused aloud. “Ain’t that a fucking kick in the ass?”

31

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

The phone rang at a little past six in the morning and Keenan groaned, turning over

to pluck the receiver from the base. “McCullough,” she answered.

“Good morning, Agent McCullough. This is Jonas Cobb, the Supervisor’s EA. He

requests your presence in his office at 0730 this morning.”

Keenan frowned as the connection was broken. She groaned again and hung up the

receiver, lay there a moment staring up at the slowly revolving fan that was once more

barely moving the air about the room then swept the covers aside. For just a moment

she wondered why she was sore as she walked into the bathroom, but then memory

washed over her and she felt herself blushing.

Had she really torn into that stranger, that hateful man like a starved vixen? she

wondered as she lifted the lid on the toilet. Sitting down, she buried her face in her

hands and moaned. What must he think of her this morning? Would that smirk of his

be in place when she laid eyes on him again?

“Idiot. Idiot. Idiot,” she called herself.

All the way through brushing her teeth, washing her face and braiding her hair, she

considered the impossibility of what the two of them had done the afternoon before and

felt her cheeks burning again.

What the hell had possessed her to give in to him? Why hadn’t she fought him

tooth and nail? Scratched his eyes out? Maimed him?

Instead, she had thrown her arms around him and let him screw the living

daylights out of her. She had
bonded
with the bastard!

“Great God Almighty,” she whimpered. “What the hell have I done?”

Her mother’s words came at her from the past…

“Bonding is to be avoided at all costs, Keenan Tarryn. Do you understand? Bonding

to a psychic is a hindrance, a nuisance. Sleep with whomever you choose but—for the

love of God—do
not
bond with the bastard!”

As if she’d been given a choice with Fallon.

Bonding was pretty powerful stuff. When two people bonded, their souls were

linked together for all time. Unbonded, a person could be married to a man for fifty

years, love him dearly, yet if he died first, carry on until it was it was their time to die.

But if the two had bonded, chances were good the woman would follow him into death

within a short period of time, her soul torn asunder by his passing.

“Shit,” she hissed. “Shit, shit, shit, shit,
shit
!”

32

Dancing on the Wind

She tried to push all thought of him out of her mind as she dressed in a loose white

pullover and dark gray cotton slacks. Slipping on a pair of charcoal gray loafers, she

walked out of the bedroom and into the great room, frowning once again when she

thought about the paperback novel with which he’d absconded.

Thinking she’d get a cup of coffee at the commissary before going up to the

Supervisor’s office, she unhooked her shoulder bag from the clothes tree, swung it over

her shoulder and left her quarters. She nodded to a couple of fellow women agents who

passed her in the corridor, but they did not return her greeting. None of them seemed

inclined to want to welcome her or stop long enough to introduce themselves. When

she reached the central area where the east and west corridors met, she noticed none of

the male agents coming from the east corridor spoke to the female agents coming from

the west side of the building. No one spoke or seemed to be interested in anyone other

than themselves as they stood waiting for the elevator. The silence was unnerving and

when they got on the elevator—staring straight ahead—she was vividly reminded of

robots from an old B movie. That image solidified itself when the elevator stopped and

everyone piled off, going to stand on the monorail platform with the same eerie quiet.

Disturbed by such behavior, Keenan decided she’d rather walk to the Exchange

than climb onboard the monorail with the automatons so she took the stairs down to

the ground floor and walked out into the bright early morning sunlight. Glancing at her

watch, she realized she had half an hour to kill before she was due to report to the

Supervisor’s office so she took her time walking to the main building.

Once inside the huge complex, she headed for the commissary and the black coffee

she so desperately needed to stay awake. She hadn’t slept that well—unable to get the

image of Mikhail Fallon out of her mind—and kept yawning as she plodded down the

thickly carpeted corridors.

“It’s Agent McCullough, isn’t it?”

The friendly voice behind her turned Keenan around and she found herself staring

into the very handsome face of a man whose white smile held a million kilowatts of

warmth. His blue eyes were crinkled at the corner and his hand was out. She took it.

“Dr. Matthew Groves,” he said. “My friends call me Matty.”

“You’re joking,” she said with a grin. “Matty Groves? As in the old folk song?”

“I’m afraid so. My mother had a wicked sense of humor,” he said. “My father’s

name was Darnell and my mother’s name was Gay.”

Keenan couldn’t keep the laugh from erupting. Her hand tightened in his. “Well,

little Matty Groves, my friends call me Keenan,” she replied. His hand was warm, filled

with strength and held hers just a little bit longer than was polite before releasing it.

“Welcome to the Exchange, Keenan,” he told her, his gaze roaming over her.

“Ready to start the first day of the rest of your life?”

With hair as ebon as pitch and a pair of devastatingly clear sapphire blue eyes, he

had Black Irish stamped all over him. Tall, broad-shouldered with a flat waist, he

seemed to possess in spades the unique Celtic charm that was so very dangerous to the

33

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

opposite sex. His grin was contagious and Keenan answered in kind, forming an instant

liking of this good-looking man named after a tragic lover’s ballad.

“I have a meeting first thing this morning with the Supervisor so I’d better be

ready,” she told him.

He swiveled his head around to look up at a clock hanging on the wall. “Sweetie,

the old man starts office hours at 0500,” he stated. “Your first thing is most likely his

fifth meeting of the new day.”

Keenan groaned. “Oh Lord. Do I have phone calls at 4 a.m. to look forward to?”

“Not unless you’re one of his Alphas,” he answered. “I imagine your Alpha has

been with the Supervisor since the crack of dawn seeing as he wasn’t in his quarters

when I stopped by to annoy him this morning.”

“You and Agent Fallon are friends?” she inquired.

“Misha and I are more like pleasant enemies. We’ve known each other a long, long

time,” he said. He nudged his chin toward the commissary. “May I buy you some

breakfast before your command performance?”

“I don’t normally eat breakfast,” she replied, “but I’m dying for a cup of coffee.”

They walked into the commissary and he insisted she find a seat while he got their

order. Finding a place by a sunny window, she hooked her purse over the back of the

chair and settled back, yawning again. The rich smell of coffee and the pungent odors of

bacon, eggs and waffles wafted through the air around her. When Groves brought his

tray over to the table, she stared at the massive amount of food piled upon it.

“Surely you can’t eat all that!” she said as he placed her lone cup of coffee in front

of her.

“Down to the last greasy globule,” he assured her, throwing a leg over the back of

his chair and sliding down into the seat. “I’m a growing boy who needs loads of carbs

and fatty foods to start his motor running every morning.”

“Not a very healthy outlook for a physician,” she teased.

“I’m Gaelic,” he said then shrugged. “What can I tell ya?”

“Are you in charge of the med unit here?”

He shook his head. “No, I do research when I’m not doing the Doctors Without

Borders thing. I am one helluva plastic surgeon in my spare time.”

“That’s wonderful,” she said. “I really admire you guys.”

He shrugged. “I just want to help. It’s rewarding to reconstruct the face of a child

born with a harelip or a deformity that hinders them from a normal life.”

“Again, I truly admire you for that,” she said.

As he dove into the large breakfast before him, she leaned back in her chair with

both hands wrapped around her mug of coffee and sipped the piping-hot liquid.

“So you’re from Georgia,” he said in between mouthfuls of egg and jam-smeared

toast. “Where exactly?”

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Dancing on the Wind

“Albany,” she replied, and at his nod, she asked if he’d ever been there.

“I was there to attend the funeral of a college friend,” he said.

“Are you from Iowa?” she asked.

“God, no!” he stated with a snort. “I was born and raised in South Carolina but

grew up in Florida.”

“A Southern boy,” she said, liking him better with each passing moment.

“Yeppers,” he agreed, and slathered raspberry jam on another slice of toast. He

motioned toward her with his bread. “The one thing they don’t have in this place is

grits. Do you like grits?”

“I love grits,” she said with a smile. “With lots of butter and salt and preferably

mixed with cut-up patty sausage.” When he frowned sharply, she asked why.

“Another thing they don’t have here is good sausage. Iowa food tends to be bland

and their sausage sucks.” He looked down into his plate. “That’s why I order bacon or

ham steak with my breakfast.”

“How ’bout boiled peanuts?”

“Nectar of the gods,” he said with a sigh then arched his brows. “Collard greens?”

“Only with a very healthy dollop of pepper sauce.”

“Fried okry?”

“You betcha,” she answered.

“Rutabagas, fried eggplant?”

“Egg pie?” she countered, and he sighed loudly. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“I haven’t had egg pie in years,” he told her then shot out a hand to grip her upper