Rhyannon Byrd - Primal Instinct 05 (6 page)

“A man who acts like a damn child. There are a million
things that could go wrong. Chloe could already be dead for all we know.”

Morgan knew it was a testament to his fury that he
could utter those words without wincing. “According to her sister’s ghost,
she’s still alive.”

“Was still alive. God only knows if she still is. You
know damn well that Monica is no longer communicating with Molly. And what was
the point of sending you here in person, anyway? It isn’t going to stop me from
going after him, and Quinn knows that.”

Quietly, she said, “You’re not thinking it through,
Kierland.”

“I’m thinking just fine,” he argued in a raw voice.
“Where did you leave your bags?”

“At your hotel.”

“Call the front desk and tell them to have your things
brought to the airport. Your ass is going back home to Nevada. I’m going after
Kellan alone.”

She started to respond, but he cut her off, saying,
“It’s for your own good, Morgan. This is only going to get uglier from here on
out. I don’t want someone who’s not part of the group put in danger.”

“No, you just like to call me in to act like the
professional piece of meat.”

He slid her a quick look before focusing that glowing
green stare back on the road. “You still pissed about Ian’s awakening?”

Ian Buchanan was not only a friend of theirs, but he’d
also been the first to have his dormant Merrick blood awakened by the return of
a Casus named Malcolm DeKreznick. Worried that he might accidentally take the
life of the woman he loved, Ian refused to give his awakening Merrick a proper
feeding, which could only be done by taking blood during sex. Kierland had
asked Morgan to come to Colorado and offer the use of both her body and her blood
to the stubborn Buchanan, so that he could finally face the Casus who had been
preying on innocent human victims, and she’d agreed.

Morgan could only thank God that Ian had refused to
touch another woman, knowing he would lose Molly forever if he did, since
Morgan had had no desire to go through with it. Ian Buchanan was a gorgeous
alpha male, but she wasn’t the kind of woman who did one-night stands, much
less the kind who jumped into bed with a man she didn’t even know.

Though that was obviously what Kierland thought of
her.

She knew that of all the female Watchmen in his
acquaintance, he’d specifically asked her because he believed she was the type
of female who could easily give herself to a stranger. And the soldier in her
had seen the rightness of the plan. Had known that giving the Merrick what he
needed to defeat the Casus was the “right” thing to do. But deep down, Morgan
strongly suspected that the woman in her would never have been able to see it
through.

Wrapping her arms around her middle, she turned her
face to stare out the passenger-side window. “To be pissed about anything that
you do, I would have to actually care, Kierland. And I know better.”

“If you knew anything,” he muttered, “you never would
have come here.”

“And you’re wrong about my not being part of the
group,” she said, still not looking at him. “I might as well tell you now, I’ve
transferred to your unit for the time being.”

Stunned silence, and then a low, hoarse rasp. “You
can’t do that.”

“It’s already been done,” she murmured, rubbing her
arms. “Quinn put in the request for me, and the Consortium approved it
yesterday.”

“Quinn is going to get his ass kicked,” he growled,
dropping the Spider into a lower gear.

She snuffled a soft, bitter laugh under her breath.
“Yeah, he said you would say that.”

He didn’t say anything for a heart-pounding span of
seconds as they sped through the foggy streets of Prague, the old-world
architecture of the city lending a ghostly edge to the night. And then the
eruption came, blasting against her like a hot, dry wind. “Fine. Don’t go back
to Reno. I don’t care one way or another. But you’re going back to England,
Morgan. We are not going after Kellan together.”

Blowing out a tense breath, she said, “Actually, you
can’t go without me, Kierland.”

“Wanna bet?” he grunted, the low, guttural words
sounding more animal than man.

Morgan turned to look at him. “Name the stakes.
Because I’m not going to lose.”

He turned his head toward her as he stopped at a red
light, eyeing her with such a violent dose of rage, she almost flinched.
Holding her ground, she said, “You might never find him without me.”

“What are you saying?”

“Bread crumbs.”

He glared, not comprehending. “Bread crumbs?”

“Before Kell left for Norway, he came to see me. Said
to tell you that if things worked out the way he wanted, I was his trail of
bread crumbs. Because he doesn’t think you’ll be able to find him otherwise.”

Morgan knew the instant he realized what she was
saying. The instant all the dots clicked together in his head to form a
complete, coherent picture. A shudder moved through his long body, and she
braced herself for the storm she had no doubt was about to hit. “He fucking
didn’t.”

“Actually, he did.”

The sudden blaring of the horn from the car behind
them made her jump, and he hit the gas, accelerating through the intersection
at a dangerous speed. “You linked with him?” he asked in a hard, gritty voice.

Thanks to her eclectic bloodline, Morgan had been
gifted with the unusual, but not unheard of gift for some breeds of
blood-tracking, which enabled her to “track” the location of a person once
she’d taken their blood.

She nodded in response to Kierland’s question,
watching him warily from the corner of her eye as she said, “That’s why you
can’t leave me behind.”

THE LOOK KIERLAND CUT IN Morgan’s direction was one of
pure, savage fury. “Are you telling me that you took his blood into your body?”

With a frown, she explained, “Stop making it sound
dirty, because I didn’t sleep with him. Not that it’s any of your business, but
I’ve never slept with him. I took his wrist, and Quinn was in the room with us
the entire time.”

His mouth twisted with an expression that was too mean
to be a smile. “And I’ll bet Kell just hated it, huh?”

True, blood-taking tended to arouse the one being
bitten, but that hadn’t been the case with Kell. The idea made Morgan cringe.
God, she thought of the Lycan as a brother, for crying out loud. But she didn’t
waste her breath trying to explain it, when she knew Kierland wouldn’t believe
her anyway. Instead, she simply said, “He did it for you.”

His laugh was low and ugly. “Like hell he did.”

“Kellan said that if he found the lead to follow, he
knew you’d want a way to find him, but that it would be nearly impossible. So I
made the connection.”

“Yeah,” he rumbled, rubbing his hand over the grim
shape of his mouth. “It was all just for my peace of mind.”

“Well, for Chloe, as well,” she reminded him. “From
what Kell’s learned about the compound, the only way to get her out alive is
going to be from the inside. Security’s said to be too tight to sneak in, which
is why he’s going to allow himself to get caught by Westmore’s men. Once we’re
close enough, I’ll be able to pinpoint where he’s being kept, but we’re not
meant to take any action. At least not until he’s expecting it. Kell figures
it’s going to take him nearly a week before he gets close enough to be captured,
and we’re meant to give him no more than a week on the inside, which would mean
his time limit runs out two weeks from yesterday. If he hasn’t gotten Chloe out
by then, we’re to call in the others and launch an attack.”

“And save his ass.”

“Actually, Kell was very clear about the objective.
It’s doubtful we could breach their defenses, but if we do, we’re to get the
witch out first, even if it means leaving him behind.”

He didn’t say anything more as they turned down Third
Avenue, the luxury hotel where he was staying just a block down the road.
Morgan had been there earlier that night, when she’d picked up Kierland’s scent
and followed it to the nightclub. Strange how the event seemed like ages ago,
rather than a mere handful of hours.

Pulling the car into a parking space in the hotel’s
underground garage, Kierland cut the engine and shifted in his seat, facing
her. “Tell me where he is, Morgan.”

“I’m not trying to be a bitch or to manipulate you,
Kier. But I can’t just tell you the location. It doesn’t work like that, and
you know it. My best guess is somewhere in Scandinavia, probably northern
Norway, since that’s where he was heading out from, but that’s all I can give
you until we get closer. So you have to take me with you. If you don’t, you
might never find him. It’ll be all but impossible to track him by scent in that
climate.”

He climbed out of the car, pacing back and forth in
the row of empty parking spaces, then turned and slammed his fist into the
brick wall. The violent blow split his knuckles open, the warm scent of his
blood filling her head as she got out of the car. Morgan wasn’t afraid of him.
For all his jealousy and his anger, she knew he would never harm her. Kierland
would rather gnaw off his own arm before hurting a woman.

No, she wasn’t afraid. But she knew better than to
offer him comfort.

He braced his hands on his hips, his head hanging
forward, and took slow, deep breaths. Then he tilted his face up and locked his
glowing green eyes with hers. “I’m going to kill him for this,” he rasped, his
lips barely moving as he formed the quiet, guttural words.

“I knew you weren’t going to like it, but you’re—”

“I hate it,” he snarled, cutting her off. “I bloody
hate it, Morgan.”

“Well, you can hate it all you want,” she told him,
straightening her spine, refusing to look away from his angry, hate-filled
stare. “But until we find Kell, you’re just going to have to live with it.”

AN HOUR LATER, THOSE WORDS were still ringing through
Kierland’s skull as he sat on the edge of the bed in his hotel room. He leaned
forward and braced his elbows on his parted knees, while his nerves itched for
a cigarette so badly he could taste it. Locking his jaw, he listened to the
roar of his pulse thrashing inside his head…and stared at the closed door.

Not just any door. No, this one led to the room where
Morgan Cantrell would be sleeping that night.

“Christ,” he groaned, as he fell back onto the bed. A
sharp curse slipped from his lips when he wondered for the millionth time why
he’d ever given up cigarettes to begin with. At the moment, he needed the burn
of smoke in his lungs so badly it was a physical ache. Needed the acrid taste
in his mouth to destroy the lingering remnants of that bloody kiss. Needed to
get his hands on more of Morgan’s soft, smooth skin….

Shit, he thought, snarling so loudly that the savage
animal sound echoed through the spacious room.

He couldn’t believe what he was going to do. That he
was actually going to take her with him. Blood-tracking or not, he had to have
lost his freaking mind. His heart hadn’t stopped beating like a jackhammer
since he’d set eyes on her in the club, and it was still taking all his
willpower not to go hard with lust.

No shock there. I’m always like that around Morgan.

His lip curled at the thought, disgust flavoring each
shuddering breath that he pulled into his tight lungs. Kierland despised his body’s
weakness, wondering how there could be such a disconnect between his brain and
his cock. His damn body parts were all working on the same team, so why the
hell couldn’t they agree on this one simple thing?

Morgan Cantrell was bad news. Always had been, and she
always would be.

They’d arrived back at the hotel an hour ago, picked
up the luggage that Morgan had left at the front desk and gotten her a room of
her own for the night. A room that was right next door to his. Then they’d
parted ways to clean up, agreeing to meet again in his room within the
hour—which meant that she would be walking through the doorway that connected
their individual rooms any second now. And then the real battle would begin as
they continued to bitch each other out, same as they always did, their wills
clashing like two opposing forces of nature.

His relationship with Morgan had always been a
nightmare in the making. The teacher falling for his pupil, though only a
handful of years had separated their ages when she’d come to complete her final
stage of training at the academy in England. But in terms of experience, they’d
been light years apart. Kierland had seen her as the shy, innocent
eighteen-year-old he’d had no business lusting after, and he’d been…well, a far
cry from innocent.

He’d known he had no business getting involved with
her. So he hadn’t. And it’d still led to disaster.

But it wasn’t the past that worried him now. No, what
worried him was the future. All those new opportunities for disaster. The
possibility that his brother could well be on the way to his death. Not to
mention the news that another Dark Marker had fallen into the hands of Westmore
and the Casus. And last of all…the chilling fact that spending any amount of
time with Morgan Cantrell was dangerous, perhaps even deadly.