Rhyannon Byrd - Primal Instinct 05 (13 page)

His mouth curled with a slow smile as he thought of
something guaranteed to take her mind off the pain. “Okay,” he said easily,
looking ahead again. “I’ve been thinking about something you said last night,
when you told me not to think about kissing you when I smelled like a couple of
cheap hookers.”

She tensed in his arms. “Sound advice from any woman,
I would think. Your point?”

“I’ve just been thinking about the fact that you
didn’t say not to think about kissing you again. Just not to do it when I’ve
been close to another woman.”

She drew an unsteady breath. “That’s not what I meant,
and you know it,” she argued, the soft words quivering with emotion.

“You were mad,” he pointed out, his tone light and
conversational.

“And?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s just that people are
less likely to lie when they’re pissed about something. More often than not,
they don’t take the time to filter their words when they’re angry.”

“Kierland.”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

A low laugh slid lazily from his lips. “Hey. You asked
me to say something.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll know better next time,” she
muttered. “And you can put me down now.”

Teasingly, he asked, “Is it that bad, being in my
arms? Are you worried I’ll drop you?”

“I know those Lycan muscles of yours can easily handle
my weight and the luggage, but it’s probably best not to carry me into the
train station. We’ll draw too much attention.”

“I’ll put you down when we reach the station. Until
then, you’re staying right where you are.”

“Have it your way then. But be warned. Your chivalry
could turn out to be a dangerous move. I mean, I might actually start to like
being this close to you, and then we’d really have a problem.” They were soft
words, almost lost to the wintry breeze. But they brought a wave of heat to
Kierland’s body that he couldn’t ignore.

“Fine,” he grunted, giving in and lowering her legs
until they touched the ground. “We’re almost there, anyway.”

They walked side by side the rest of the way, and
Kierland made sure to keep his gaze focused straight ahead, not wanting her to
see the heat still smoldering in his eyes…or the hunger he was sure he couldn’t
disguise.

“THAT WAS REALLY TOO CLOSE for comfort this time,”
Morgan murmured, the second they slipped into their seats on the 3:05 train
that would eventually make a stop in Hannover, before turning north for
Hamburg. “If those guys in that sedan were Casus, just how many do you think
have escaped?”

“Too many,” Kierland rumbled, tipping his head back as
he stretched out his long legs. He’d purchased first-class tickets, and so far
they were the only passengers in the high-priced section, which meant they had
the privacy to speak freely.

After checking to make sure that the small glass vial
Gideon had given them hadn’t been broken during the crash, Morgan set her leather
backpack by her feet. As she settled into her seat, she bit back a low groan,
not wanting Kierland to know how sore she was from the accident. Her headache
was gradually getting better, but she still felt like she’d been trampled by a
horse. “They took some risks, attacking us in broad daylight like that.”

“Our unit’s becoming a thorn in their side, especially
now that we’re loaning out the Markers, giving the Merrick better access to
them. They’ve probably decided that they have no choice but to try and take us
out. Which means it’s only going to get more dangerous for us from here on
out.” He slid her a shuttered look from the corner of his eye. “Or it could
have just been you.”

Morgan’s own eyes went wide. “What about me?”

Rolling his shoulder in one of those utterly male
gestures that looked great with all those mouthwatering muscles, he said,
“After the fight we had against them back in England last month, they probably
think we wouldn’t send out one of the females without a Marker on her for protection.”

“Well, I wasn’t about to take Jamie’s from her,” she
said, frowning at the mere thought of it. “And the others are all out on loan.”

After the fierce campaign the Casus had mounted to get
their hands on Jamie, it’d been decided that the little girl should keep a
Marker on her at all times. And the loaning out of the other Markers that his
unit had found so far had been Kierland’s doing. He’d tried to convince the
Consortium to enable the crosses to be used by any awakening Merrick who needed
them. But the Consortium was still dragging their feet on the issue of the
Casus, and Kierland had finally lost his patience, organizing a system on his
own.

“Who are you calling?” she asked, watching as he
pulled out his cell phone and began to punch in a number.

Holding the phone to his ear, he said, “The main line
at Harrow House. I’m not sure what kind of telephone reception we’ll have once
we get going, and I need to warn everyone to be on guard.”

With her exceptional hearing, and their close
proximity, Morgan knew she would be able to hear every word of the
conversation. She briefly considered getting out her iPod to give him some
privacy, then decided against it. If he was going to argue with any of his
friends because they hadn’t warned him that she was coming to Prague, she
wanted to hear it.

The line rang three times, and then a deep drawl said,
“Shrader.”

Leaning her head back and closing her eyes, Morgan
listened as the hunk beside her said, “Aiden, it’s Kierland. We’ve had some
trouble.” The rumble of his voice sent a shiver of awareness skittering through
her system, and the corner of her mouth twitched with a wry grin. The bloody world
could be falling apart around them, and her body would still react to the sexy
timbre of his voice.

“I was just getting ready to call and tell you the
same thing.” The tiger-shifter’s normally easygoing drawl was unmistakably
strained, and she opened her eyes, her breath held as she waited, dreading what
the Watchman would say.

Kierland sat forward in his seat, one elbow braced on
his knee, his voice thick with worry as he asked what had happened.

“Noah got attacked down in the village,” Aiden
explained. “Quinn and Riley ran down with Saige to get him. They only just got
back a few minutes ago.”

A rough curse, and then Kierland asked how bad the
human’s injuries were.

“They’re working on him now, but it looks like he’s
going to be okay,” Aiden assured him. “They’ve had to stitch up a few cuts, but
that’s about it. Looks like he was one lucky son of a bitch, because one of the
wounds barely missed an artery.”

“Has he been able to give you any details?” Kierland
asked, the muscles in his broad shoulders bulging with tension beneath the soft
cashmere of his sweater. “Who was it that attacked him?”

“Two men. He thinks one was Casus, the other probably
Kraven. They caught him coming out the side door of one of the pubs. Wanted to
know how to get past our security here at the house. Sounds like they still
want Jamie,” the shifter muttered, his fury evident in the hard, harsh words.

After murdering Jamie’s mother, the Casus had
discovered that the curse that plagued the Mallory witches actually increased
the sadistic pleasures of their killers. Westmore and the Casus had already
managed to kidnap Chloe Harcourt, but that wasn’t enough for the heinous
monsters, and they’d launched a desperate hunt to get their hands on little
Jamie, as well. Working together, Morgan and the others had thwarted their
attempts, but that obviously hadn’t dampened the monsters’ determination to
capture the child.

Kierland cursed again in response, and Aiden said, “My
thoughts exactly. But I’m already running a diagnostic on all the security
systems that Kell installed. Those bastards aren’t coming anywhere close to
her.”

“What the hell was Noah doing alone in the village?”

Aiden snorted. “What do you think he was doing?”

“Christ,” Kierland growled. “Next time he feels the
need to go out and get laid, tell him to take some damn backup.”

“So what was your news?” Aiden asked, changing the
subject. “How’s Morgan? You two kill each other yet?”

A tired sigh, and then Kierland explained about the
crash. “I want everyone there on high alert,” he added, after assuring Aiden
that they were both all right. “No one leaves the house.”

“You know we can’t do that,” Aiden argued. “There are
Markers to find and the race is on.”

“And a lot of good it’s going to do us if we’re all
dead,” he ground out, and from her position beside him, Morgan watched the
pulse of a muscle ticking in his hard jaw.

Husky laughter rumbled over the connection, and Aiden
drawled, “You actually worried about me and Quinn?”

There was a pause while Kierland pinched the bridge of
his nose, and then he lounged back in his seat again, before asking, “How’s
Olivia?”

You could hear the smile in the Watchman’s voice as
Aiden said, “Keeping me on my toes.”

“She’s good for you, Ade.”

Another wry snort. “Too good for me, you mean.”

“Nah. You deserve a woman like her.”

“And what about you?”

Though Morgan had turned her head away a little, she
could feel Kierland’s gaze settling against the side of her face as he spoke in
a rich, wry rumble. “I think I’ve got my hands full as it is.”

“You still playing that same old game?”

“What game is that?” Kierland asked.

“The one where you refuse to practice what you
preach,” his friend shot back, making Morgan wonder just what the shifter was
getting at.

“I’m hanging up now,” Kierland said dryly. “But keep
me updated on Noah. And get the word out to the other compounds. They need to
know what’s going on.”

Aiden said that he would, then told the Lycan to watch
his back before he ended the call. “Did you catch all that?” Kierland rasped,
not looking at her as he hitched his hip up and slipped the phone back into his
jeans pocket.

For a split second, Morgan thought of denying it, but
then realized it was pointless. He knew how exceptional her hearing was—knew
how easy it would have been for her to hear Aiden’s voice. “I got most of it,”
she told him, crossing her legs. They talked for a minute about Noah as well as
how aggravated Quinn and the others were that they had to keep postponing their
weddings, and then she said, “You know, in all the commotion, I forgot to tell
you about Ian’s latest dream.”

Like his brother and sister, the eldest Buchanan
sibling possessed a unique gift that had proven useful during his Merrick
awakening. While Saige could “hear” physical objects and Riley could control
them with his mind, Ian had the ability to experience moments of precognition
in his dreams.

“He had another one?” Kierland asked, his gaze focused
on her face with a searing intensity that would have scrambled her wits if
Morgan hadn’t had the sense to look away.

She nodded in response, saying, “It happened the night
before last, so I only just heard about it yesterday. Quinn asked me to tell
you, but with all the madness, it slipped my mind.”

From the corner of her eye, she could see him scrub
his hands down his face, then scrape them both back through his hair. “What the
hell did he see?”

“He saw us all standing together at a gate, trying to
get through, but we didn’t have the key.”

“A gate?”

Morgan waited while news of the train’s departure was
announced over the speakers, then said, “We thought it might be the gate to
Meridian.”

“What did it look like in the dream?”

“Massive. Thick. Some kind of black, gleaming metal,
with markings all over it that reminded him of the symbols etched into the Dark
Markers. Which got me thinking during my flight to Prague. One of the things
that Saige said, just before I left Harrow House yesterday, was that the
crosses are the ‘key to everything.’ I could be way off base here,” she said,
pulling one leg beneath her as she turned in her seat to face him, “but the
more I think about it, the more I think that Saige might be more right than she
realizes. Ever since we learned that Westmore’s desperate to get his hands on
the Markers, we’ve been trying to come up with a reason why. One of our guesses
is that he wants them to somehow bring about the flood, busting all of the
Casus out at once, right? So what if they really are the key? Or keys? What if
that’s why he wants them?”

“You mean the keys that will unlock the gate?” His
voice was rough with surprise.

Morgan nodded, and he asked, “Have you said anything
to the others?”

“No.” She gave a soft laugh and shook her head. “To be
honest, I didn’t want to sound like an idiot.”

“No, it’s good,” he told her, sounding as if he
actually meant it. “When we get back, we need to sit down with everyone and
talk it out with them. I think you’ve got a hell of an idea, Morgan.”

A slow smile curled her mouth, a strange flutter of
warmth in her belly as their gazes held, and in the next instant, something
changed. The air between their bodies became charged…heavy with expectation.
Time became slow. Thick. They both shifted in their seats, their movements
uneasy…restless, as if it’d suddenly occurred to them that they were sitting
together, having a conversation…and actually getting along.