Seduced by the Storm (2 page)

Special
Forces—SEALs, specifically. The drill sergeant at boot camp had taken one look
at Wyatt’s lanky six-foot, three-inch frame and laughed. Wyatt had knocked him
out cold with one punch, spent the night in the brig and found himself in BUD/s
two days later. As punishment.

He
loved it—every single brutal minute.

He’d
passed his psych evals for the Navy with no problem. He’d faked it, the way
he’d faked a lot of things, and the Special Forces community wanted its men to
be a little bit on the crazy side anyway, even if they didn’t outright admit
it.

Fuckin’
A right.

But
the sex thing,
oh, yeah,
he’d let his handle on that slip, especially
this past week. Mainly because it was fun as hell letting it go out of control
and he’d known he wasn’t going to get laid at all during the next phase of his
mission.

He’d
been tamping it down hard when he’d been rigging for two weeks straight—so hard
that it made his head hurt.

When
you could have any woman—or man, if he’d swung that way—sex got old fast. If
his libido wasn’t in constant overdrive, he’d have given up sex altogether long
ago, shaved his head and become a monk.

He’d
tried the monk thing once, when he was seventeen. His apprenticeship lasted
exactly three weeks, until he couldn’t stand the other men trying to break into
his room to have him. The head of the abbey agreed with Wyatt’s decision.
Didn’t stop him from trying to screw Wyatt, though.

Wyatt
was still learning to control his pheromones—most of the time they only worked
on people he wanted them to work on, unless he let himself go too long without,
or if he and the object of his desire were around other people when he got
turned on. In that case, everyone and their mothers—literally—needed to watch
out.

And
there was an even bigger price to pay for the sex mojo—the women he’d been with
never remembered the sex once he left the room. So yeah, that would be great
when trying to have any kind of long-term relationship—waking up in the morning
with a woman who would soon forget sleeping with him in the first place.

He’d
put the mojo to rest completely yesterday after a round with two women in a
ménage à trois that lasted all night and into the afternoon. Sex wasn’t a
severe drain on his powers, but it did mess with his head.

When
a man’s fucking, his walls crumble,
Dev always said. And yeah, that was the truth in plain English.

English.
Like the accent purring against his ear: "Got any plans for tonight,
love?"

FAITH
BLACK’S PLANS for the night hadn’t included a tall, dark and handsome man, but
with someone trying to kill her, she’d had to make some adjustments.

The
stranger she’d propositioned wrapped his arm around her waist. Before she could
so much as blink, he tucked her between his long legs. The bar stool bit into
the front of her thighs and his fingers bit into her hip, and for some reason,
all she could think about was biting into
him
.

"I
can always make room in my schedule for a beautiful woman," he said, in a
rich, whiskey-smooth southern drawl that made her want to drink him in. And
those eyes…even in the hazy, dim light from the beer signs, they glowed clear
green. She’d never seen anything like it.

And
as a biokinetic—a specialized telekinetic with the ability to manipulate living
tissue—who had grown up alongside people with gifts even more incredible than
hers, she’d seen a lot. She’d seen even more since the day she and her partner,
with funding from the British government, had started up The Aquarius Group, a
small, secret agency employing people with special abilities, like herself.

"I’m
not usually so forward," she said, tearing her gaze away from his when the
pub door opened. "But see that man walking in?"

The
stranger inclined his head almost imperceptibly, as though he hadn’t looked,
and she gave him points for his astute assessment of the situation. She gave
him extra points for having the most gorgeous, stout-colored hair, which just
brushed the collar of his tee.

"He’s
my ex-lover," she lied. "He’s a loon. Completely mad, and he’s
stalking me. I told him I have a new lover—"

"And
I was the first guy you saw?"

"Yes."
No, but when she’d detected a tail as she strolled along the moonlit boardwalk,
she’d slipped into the nearest public place that would be full of men, and as
luck would have it, these weren’t just men. They were bikers, oil drillers and
roughnecks, and the man who now held her had stood out as the toughest of the
tough.

Not
to mention the best-looking.

Marco
watched from near the entrance, not bothering to hide his annoyance.

"Well,"
the stranger said, threading one hand through her hair to pull her face close
to his, "I can either take care of you, or I can take care of him."

A
sweet offer, but no matter how capable this guy looked—and he did look capable,
all steel-strapped muscle and broad shoulders beneath his black AC/DC
T-shirt—Marco was a trained killer, an excedosapien with reflexes ten times
faster than the average person’s. She knew because she’d gone head to head with
him a year ago, and though her combat skills couldn’t be better, his speed and
fondness of the wire garrote had nearly spelled her doom.

She
fingered the black velvet choker that hid the thin scar circling her neck,
before catching herself and dropping her hand to his shoulder. "I’d love
it if you’d play along, for just a bit."

One
corner of his made-to-please-a-woman mouth turned up like she’d picked the
right answer, and suddenly she was experiencing just how much that mouth was
made to please.

The
contact was gentle, more a brush of lips than anything, but her body’s response
was immediate and alarming. A blast of heat that had nothing to do with the
Florida autumn temperature licked at her breasts, her belly, her inner thighs.
When the expert sweep of his tongue opened her mouth, her legs opened too.

At
least, as much as they could open with her caged between his jean-clad thighs.

This
was not good.

Mustering
all her self-control, she concentrated on Marco, using her unique form of
telekinesis to probe his aura with her mind, searching for a weakness, a chink
in his armor. On average, it took her thirty seconds to penetrate the
protective weave of energy around a human, but in the heat of battle, thirty
seconds was about twenty-nine and a half seconds too long—which was why she’d
honed her hand-to-hand combat skills to a machete edge. Fortunately, she had
time now, but this wasn’t going to be a thirty-second jobber. It figured that
Marco’s aura would be the psychic equivalent of Kevlar.

"What’s
your name?" the stranger murmured against her lips, and for a moment, she
forgot about Marco.

"Faith
Black. Yours?"

"Wyatt."
He dragged his mouth across her cheek to her ear. "What did he do to
you?"

Marco
sauntered toward them, his khaki business-casual out of place in a rough crowd
like this. Men jeered…until Marco shot them a dark look that shut them up in an
instant. Even predators recognized when they were in the presence of something
higher on the food chain.

His
flat, black eyes remained trained on her as he took a seat at a nearby table.

"Nothing
I want to talk about," she said finally.

Wyatt
pulled back as though he wanted to say something, but the bartender, a pit bull
of a man with gray hair pulled into a low ponytail, interrupted.

"Can
I get you anything, lady?"

Taking
the opportunity to peel herself off Wyatt, she sank down onto a bar stool.
"I’ll have what he’s having."

The
bartender palmed a highball glass. "Jack neat with a beer back, coming
right up."

"So,
Faith," Wyatt said after the bartender slid her drinks to her, "where
in England are you from?"

She
sent out another probing pulse toward Marco, and—thank God—found the chink in
his aura. "All over, really."

Standard
answer. She’d spent a lifetime cultivating an accent that wouldn’t reveal a
background from any particular region, especially Devonshire, where she was
born, or Yorkshire, where she grew up after her parents were killed. In order
to blur the lines even more, she threw German inflections and American phrasing
into her speech.

Blending
in helped keep a secret agent alive.

One
of Wyatt’s hands came down on her knee, but she felt it to her core. Moisture
drenched her panties. Her head felt light, her breasts heavy. The sensations
breaking over her body were strangely intoxicating, and she had to give a
little shake of her head to clear it. No man had ever affected her like this.
Not even Sean, the one and only man she’d ever loved.

It
had been a year since she’d last seen Sean, since they’d played cat and mouse, pain
and pleasure. He couldn’t resist her even when his job was to kill her.

She
was counting on his predictability once more, because this mission could get
her very dead if Sean’s love for her had finally taken second place to his job
with Itor.

"It’s
a little hot to be wearing leather." Wyatt’s gaze took in her goth attire,
which went against the whole blend-in thing—her black leather pants, the
crimson silk-and-lace corset top and her leather jacket—his appreciation
obvious in the way his lids grew heavy.

"The
heat doesn’t bother me." Neither did the cold. She’d always been able to
regulate her own body temperature, though that was the extent of her powers
over her own bodily functions. She could, however, do anything she wanted to
anyone else.

Sliding
a glance at Marco, Wyatt downed the whiskey in his glass. The fine muscles in
his throat worked beneath the golden, whisker-roughened skin there, holding her
gaze for a moment. When he finished, he spun the glass across the polished bar
top and nodded to the bartender for another.

"Think
the heat will bother khaki-boy?" he asked.

She
grinned. "It might," she said, knowing full well that nothing would
deter Marco from his goal, but needing time to finish breaking through his
aura.

"Let’s
find out, because the way he’s looking at you is bugging the shit out of
me." He palmed the back of her neck and slanted his mouth over hers once
more.

Even
though she’d anticipated the kiss, her breath caught. The way he maneuvered his
lips, teeth and tongue with gentle, dominant skill…Christ, the man could
probably make her orgasm from kissing alone.

"We’ve
got to be convincing, right?" he whispered, and then licked the swell of
her bottom lip, and a ragged moan escaped her. "Open for me."

She
didn’t hesitate, welcomed the slide of his wet tongue against hers. He tasted
like whiskey, smelled like earth and man, a potent combination that made her
loosen up more effectively than if she’d poured the entire fifth of Jack
Daniel’s down her throat—her throat that throbbed in a grim reminder that Marco
wanted to slit it.

Again.

Doing
her best to ignore what Wyatt’s hand was doing to her thigh, she used her mind
to pluck at the weak strings in the weave of Marco’s aura. Finally, with Wyatt
trailing kisses along her jaw, visions of the internal workings of Marco’s body
filled her brain.

Marco
still watched, but had leaned forward, elbows propped on knees, enjoying the
show. The dozen or so patrons in the pub could care less, too fascinated by the
two scantily clad women near the pool table who were doing a lot more than
kissing the four guys they were with.

Marco’s
heartbeat gave nothing away. Slow, steady, strong. She could stop it in an
instant, give him an aneurysm, or boil his blood.

But
all of those things would attract attention. Besides, killing one of Itor’s men
when she would be meeting with a top Itor operative tomorrow was not conducive
to a good working relationship. Even if—or especially because—she was going to
be faking the relationship.

In
the back of her mind, she knew Wyatt was nuzzling her ear, knew he’d pulled her
nearly into his lap and that he had a monster erection nudging her hip. She
knew her fingers were gliding over his hard, bunched biceps, and that her sex
had flooded with silken cream.

If
Marco weren’t a threat, she’d drag Wyatt No Last Name to her hotel room and
rock his world.

But
she wouldn’t put it past Marco to try to take them both out before they made it
to her bed.

A
psychic flare-up drew her to Marco’s stomach, full after a meal. In her mind,
she reached for his pylorus, the ring of muscle that separated the stomach from
the small intestine. With a mental nudge, she opened it, allowing unprocessed
food to spill through.

Marco
winced, rubbed his belly. He’d cramp up soon, but she needed something more
immediate to distract him until the cramps started.

"Wyatt,"
she gasped, when she felt the slide of his palm beneath her corsetlike top.