Dawn Endeavor 4: Gunnar's Game (5 page)

Mrs. Sharpe grinned, and he did his best to guard his thoughts. He cleared his throat and took the next cupcake she handed him, feeling like a calf being fattened up for slaughter. “LaGarda was the same rogue Circ who helped Sheridan and Jules escape from that jungle prison a few months back. The bastard also admitted to helping Melissa Ramirez—that was her real name—pull one over on us.

“He didn't know who he was really working for other than her, but he thinks she knows. Said the woman always referred to the guy as Lonnie.” Mrs. Sharpe didn't react, but the absolute stillness in her petite frame reminded him of how Jules had reacted before. Her tension said what words did not.

The woman was seriously freaked.

“Mrs. Sharpe?”

“Lonnie?” she whispered. She paused in thought. “That
can’t
be right. No.” She closed her eyes, then opened them, her expression bleak. “But it makes a twisted kind of sense.”

Oh hell. The woman was blinking back tears. In the year Tersch had been working for her, he'd rarely seen anything upset her. An arched brow, a mocking smile, one or two sharp words, but nothing of panic or grief, even when Ava had been held at knifepoint in the woods outside the house, right before they'd killed Montaña.

“You're not going to cry, are you?” he asked in a hoarse voice. Where the fuck was Ava? Olivia, hell, Sheridan?

Mrs. Sharpe blinked. “Of course not. I had something in my eye.”

“Right.” A part of him wanted to hug her, to reassure her that he'd protect her.

But he couldn't make that call, not when he feared hurting her in the process. If only he could keep a handle on that monster inside him. The raging chaos that wanted nothing more than to destroy.

She took a deep breath and exhaled a shaky sigh. “I have a few things I need to look into. I'll talk with the rest of you later. Let the others know to meet in my study after breakfast tomorrow. Nine o'clock.”

He started to really worry when she didn't make any “don't be late” comments before she left.

Not sure what the hell was going on, Tersch decided to grab a shower, then a late lunch and some rack time before dinner. While the others were no doubt screwing themselves silly, his libido had been sated by Jules and the guys yesterday. Maybe it had been a mating heat after all, because seeing the female Circs today hadn't aroused him at all. Normally, he felt at least a pull of attraction at remembrances of Olivia or Sheridan in their Circ forms.

But now all you can think of is Ava, normal or
changed—
and that is a sight
worth seeing again
. His beast purred his pleasure at the thought. The creature wouldn't leave well enough alone. Even his damned berserker wanted to mark and claim the female, and that wasn't happening. It would be one thing if Tersch could fuck Ava out of his system. He'd take her and forget her. Except he knew it wouldn't be that simple.

Not with Ava.

The man would make love to her; then his beast would push his way into claiming her, fucking, biting, petting, which would then lead to his berserker trying to break free from the tight hold he held on it. And that creature wanted nothing more than to possess Ava. No, not possess,
own
. As if Ava would allow that to happen. But when the time came, he'd just have to make her realize…

He started, aware he hadn't questioned the
when
of claiming her, but the
how.

“Hell, this is not what I need right now,” he muttered and stomped up the stairs to his room.

Someone had cleaned it, because he'd left it a mess, as usual. Chaos made him feel at home. A clean room reminded him too much of his early years spent trying to please Eric Tersch, a time best forgotten.

He closed his bedroom door behind him and sighed as he finally relaxed.

Letting the tension ease from his tired muscles, he stripped off his boots, socks, and shirt. He walked into the bathroom and grinned at the stacked towels on the sink.

“Bet that burned her ass.”

Some twisted part of him got off on making Ava serve him. Probably because it annoyed her to no end, and he liked the strange relationship they had. He wanted her but wouldn't have her. She wanted him but didn't want to desire him. And they both knew how the other felt, so they dealt with their common frustration by pissing each other off. It worked for him.

He shifted on the balls of his feet when her scent hit him—the clean, pure smell of Ava Belle. Oddly enough, she didn't smell like a typical Circ. Nothing fruity or flowery about Ava. Hers was a feminine perfume uniquely her own.

And it was growing stronger.

He leaned closer to the towels. Not there. He turned around and followed his nose…to the slumped figure fighting to hold on to the bedspread. He hadn't seen her before since the bed canted to an angle, but she was now visible over its massive mattress.

“
Shit
.” He dashed to her side and easily lifted her in his arms. Gently lowering her to the bed, he looked her over, running his hands over her to make sure she hadn't broken anything. “What the hell, Ava? Baby, you okay?” He stemmed the guilt he felt as pleasure coursed through his veins just from the simple contact of touch.
I’m not copping a feel; I’m trying to make sure she’s okay. So why am I so
fucking hard right now?

She groaned.

“Ava, talk to me. You're freaking me out.” With one hand he felt for her pulse, relieved to feel the steady thrumming of her heartbeat. She didn't look injured, but he couldn't tell with her clothes on.

At the thought, he froze, one hand on her belly, the other on her neck.

She dragged a hand to the one he had plastered to her T-shirt and opened her eyes. He stared into orbs more green than brown. So clear, so goddamn beautiful.

Sooty lashes made a mystery of those eyes, and she blinked lazily, like a cat, as she watched him.

“You're hot,” she said in a throaty drawl.

Unconsciously, he spread his fingers over the flat plane of her stomach, feeling the muscle and warmth of the vibrant woman beneath him. “So are you.” Any pain he might have expected to see on her face didn't appear. Instead, hunger and a familiar feminine defiance looked up at him.

His beast responded with an eager growl, taking note of a prime female waiting to be claimed.

Tersch had to force himself not to accept the challenge she presented. He slowly withdrew his hands and sat next to her on the bed. He coughed to clear his throat and hoped his position, sitting with his side to her, hid his erection.

“So, uh, Ava. You going to tell me why you were dozing on my floor?” When she flushed, he smiled. “Looking under my bed for something? All my nudie magazines are in the nightstand, if you're interested.” And the ones he used for inspiration all featured women who looked like her.

“Ass.” She tried to sit up, but he put his hand on her chest and forced her back down.

He quickly pulled his hand back from the pillowy feel of her soft breasts. “Spill, or I'm telling Grandma.”

She glared at him, relieving him that whatever had befallen her had been temporary. Ava seemed well on her way to recovery if she could stare holes through him.

“I tripped, must have hit my head.”

He raised a brow, knowing how much the gesture aggravated her. “Oh?” He ignored her protests and ran a hand over her soft brown hair, taken with the silken strands. Ava's light brown skin tone and straight hair hinted at European ancestry somewhere in her family tree. The woman fascinated him on every level. He loved everything about her. Small, curvy, pretty.
Mine
, his beast had to add.

Unfortunately, it was getting harder and harder to ignore that inner voice. Too easily, he could imagine taking her hard, uncaring of her concerns as long as he could bend her to his will. Pain and pleasure, a heady offering only a monster would need…

But the disgust wouldn't come, buried under a desire so deep, he could no longer ignored its call.

“Funny, but I don't feel any lumps,” he murmured in a thick voice and turned to add another hand, stroking her scalp with pleasure.

She moaned and twisted under his touch as if seeking more. “You're a real jerk, but you have such good hands.” She relaxed under him and closed her eyes.

“That feels good. Yeah, get the lower part behind my head, just above my neck. A tension headache.”

He rolled his eyes. Somehow he'd gone from interrogator to masseuse. The woman had a way of wrapping him around her finger with little effort. God help him if she learned she had so much power. “Ava, tell me what happened.” He stopped his ministrations.

She blinked her eyes open. “It's no big deal.”

“Ava,” he warned in a soft voice.

“Okay, okay.” She glanced up at him, her lips parted, her eyes becoming more brown. The damned things changed color with her moods, and he could see her worry. “I need your help.”

“Oh?”

“It's only happened to me once before. A searing pain in my head. But it's Grayson's fault.”

He grimaced. “The psychic? The same one you told me you were sleeping with but who denied it like crazy? That Grayson?”

She scowled up at him. “I did no such thing, you pervert. He's my brother.” He blinked. “Like hell.”

“No, he is. I'm not lying.”

“Who the hell knows with you? You told me before that you were sleeping with one of the psychics. Now you're not, and he's your brother?”

“We have the same eyes.”

“Yeah, but you're brown. He's white.”

She sighed. “I'm black, not brown.”

He tried not to be taken in by her wide eyes and that soft, creamy skin. But where Ava was concerned, Tersch was weak. He'd made so many mental comparisons of that sweet flesh, he could tick them off on the fingers of both hands.

“No, baby. That skin is nowhere near black. A rich coffee, a dark caramel, a milk chocolate, something sweet I'd like to eat up one bite at a time.” His hands tingled where they touched her. He leaned closer, unable to help himself.

“We…we were talking about my brother.”

“Were we?” His brain seemed to have shut off. He'd been wondering for an entire fucking year what it would be like to feel her mouth under his. And she was so close. In his room. On his bed…

Don’t do it. Keep the monster away from her. You’ll put her in danger
. In the back of his mind, he heard his sister's cry, Susanna's plea for life, an enraged roar.

But Ava surrounded him with pure, sweet need. He couldn't resist the temptation, not any longer.

He planted his hands on either side of her head and lowered himself so that his bare chest pressed against her thinly clad breasts. Fuck, he could feel her nipples against him, his body overly sensitized to her nearness.

“Gunnar—”

“Ava,” he whispered back and kissed her.

She tasted like everything he'd dreamed. Womanly, sweet, and so sexy, it was all he could do not to rip her clothes off, mount her, and fuck her like the animal he was. He licked at her lips and thrust his tongue inside when she opened for him on a moan. He invaded, taking as much as giving.

Tersch gripped the mattress on either side of her head with fingers quickly turning into claws. He shivered, so under her spell, he could barely remember his own name. Ava, finally his. The mate he'd been longing for, the answer to his hopes and dreams. So soft, so feminine, desirable…

Her hands crept up to his shoulders, and the feel of her palms on his flesh made him rock hard in seconds. She stroked his shoulders, then his neck, and pulled him closer into the kiss.

He slanted his mouth to angle for deeper penetration. She met his tongue stroke for stroke, allowing him to plunder, to take what he'd been wanting for so long.

Breathe. Have to…breathe
. He pulled away, gasping, but couldn't stop planting kisses over her smooth skin.

“Mmm, yes,” she murmured and ran her hands over his shoulders to his chest.

“So strong.”

He made the mistake of leaning back to look into her eyes and saw her beast staring out at him through slit pupils, daring him to take what they both knew to be his.
Take her. Mine, ours. Now
. If it were only his beast, he might have succumbed.

But his berserker wanted more, and a sudden flash of the recent past intruded.

He’d been so angry, so furious at not being able to help Jules. So he took it out
on the nearest opponent. Fallon. He’d pummeled the bastard, enjoying the outlet,
excited to exercise so much anger. Then someone tried to stop him. He turned and
would have smashed Ava in the face if Fallon hadn’t knocked him out of the way.

Ava—beautiful, intelligent, sexy Ava, a victim to a brutal monster’s rage.

Scenes of violence against women inevitably drew him to the fateful night he'd spent a lifetime trying to forget. His father's manic shrieks, his mother's screams, his sister's tearful pleas before his father choked the life from her. And then, the stark sound of his girlfriend's neck snapping in the sudden silence broken only by grunts and sobs…

Tersch pulled back from Ava as if scalded and leaped from the bed. He ignored the aching need in his body and paced until he could control, if not will away, his arousal.
The past is the past. Not the here, not the now. I won’t hurt Ava. Not ever.

Let it fucking go.

Ava sat up, grumbling. “I'd call you a cock tease, but we both know you give
them
what they need.”

He flushed at her referral to his teammates. He couldn't help it. She was right.

But he knew they could take care of themselves. Even though he'd seen Ava as a Circ, he couldn't help stop thinking of her as a smaller, frailer woman. The thought of hurting her made him sick.

“Tell me about Grayson,” he said, his voice rough with frustration.

She grunted. “Well,
that
killed the mood. Sure, whatever. Grayson
is
my brother, you know. He's not exactly white, either. We have a nice little mix of ancestry in the Belle family. Grayson likes to say he's the light end of the spectrum.

I look like Mom; he takes after Dad.”

“Your parents are still living?” Just about all the Circs in residence were the last of their lines. Well, except for Morgan, but Tersch didn't count him because he'd mated into the Dawn Endeavor family.