Engage Page 3

  I shook my head. “Can’t. I have to find those bastards.”

  Her fingers went to her mouth, her teeth worrying at the skin around her thumbnail for a second, then she whirled, presenting me with her back while dropping her skirt.

  I kicked her clothing aside. “Everything, Janie”

  She hesitated a moment, then unhooked her bra and dropped it to the sand.

  “All of it.”

  I saw the stiffening of her shoulders, the longing to refuse, but she stripped her underwear quickly, stepping out of the plain white panties.

  And there she was, naked before me in the early-morning sunlight.

  Even knowing it was the only time I’d see her naked, I couldn’t stop to drink my fill of the silver luminescence of her body. Jag had disappeared for a reason, and that meant we weren’t safe here. I scanned the area, all my senses on alert, but whatever had shoved me into the pit had disappeared.

  As I pawed through Janie’s clothes, checking her underwear, I resisted the urge to let my hand linger. Found six of the hairy black bastards hiding, waiting to attack Janie. My Janie.

  No. Not mine. The bondmating was wrong and, provided we never kissed, we’d be fine. Go our separate ways.

  Except Janie’s words played in my head, refusing to be dismissed.

  Buy a girl a drink. First.

  First. She hadn’t laughed in my face, hadn’t shot me down. She’d acted almost…amenable to the proposition. Both to a drink and to taking her clothes off, without the persuasion of the spider invasion.

  I shook my head, like I could dislodge the ridiculous thought. Maybe an armor spider’s bite had a different effect on Felidaekin? Because, though my body wasn’t paralyzed, my brain obviously was—or maybe it was inflamed, or something? Because it sure was not functioning right.

  Shame Janie’s interest was all in my imagination, though. If she’d been prepared to allow the second bond, that would’ve been enough for me.

  Maybe.

  But Janie would never be my kind of girl. Or, more correctly, I could never be her kind of guy.

  Slamming my foot down, I killed the spiders. Probably with a bit more vengeful thoroughness than they warranted, but, spiders. Then I held Janie’s shirt toward her, though her back was still turned.

  The rounded orb of her bottom glowed in the light, that magical hour when both the sun and the second moon hovered above Glia. I snatched the shirt back. “Your hair,” I paused to clear my throat. Must’ve swallowed one of the eight-legged buggers. “Let your hair down, Janie.”

  She pulled the leather tie from her high ponytail, and a thick, silver sheath of hair spilled down her back, reaching the indentation at the top of her buttocks. I stepped up close behind her, running my fingers through the luminous cascade, searching the thick locks to make certain no more armor spiders hid in there. As I trailed my fingertips across her scalp, I could smell her fragrance, an off-world mixture of flowers and beejus. “Your hair…”

  “What about it?” She twisted nervously, looking at me over her smooth shoulder, as though afraid I’d found a spider nest.

  I stroked my hand down the length of her hair, my fingers moving just below the blunt cut tips, searching for that hollow in her lower back. My lips were close to her ear. Far too close. Although we needed to be cautious until I could work out what the hell had happened to Jag, I didn’t need to speak that quietly. “Back home there’s a waterfall. It’s called…well, it doesn’t matter what it’s called.” As Glians couldn’t get their tongues around our real names, the nine syllables of the waterfall name would definitely trip her. “Anyway, it’s beautiful. It falls for more than five thousand feet, straight down. Because it’s fed by the ice floes of the Skrigor steppes, the water is silver, shot through with white and shades blue so pure, they almost seem purple. Your hair reminds me of home.”

  Janie ran her hand through her hair, lifting it from her forehead and pushing it back, so the soft silk draped across my shoulder, where I was pressed against her back. Her voice was low. “Is it a good memory?”

  I nodded, my lips grazing her cheek. “It is. In your tongue, the name of the waterfall translates as Monezme. But in any language, it means beautiful.” That was as close as I dared come to sharing my feelings with her.

  She shook her head slightly, her hair stroking me. “My tongue?”

  “Glian.”

  “I’m not Glian, Leo. Not entirely, anyway.”

  “You’re not?” Why did that make hope leap in my thundering chest? It wasn’t like she was about to say she was Felidaekin of any sort.

  She kept her face to the desert, as though she was ashamed. “I’m half Median.”

  “You mean half Regime?” Hells, at least she knew her birthright. I’d been in a litter left at a roadside refuel back on Aaidar.

  She nodded. “Does that make a difference?”

  Her nearness was messing with my brain. And my erection, which was nudging into her lower back. “A difference to what?”

  I heard the faint click as she licked her lips, the whisper of air as she took a deep breath. “To us.” She turned to face me. “That feeling, that sensation when you touch me. That’s bondmating, isn’t it?”

  Hells, she knew about the bondmating? Yet this beautiful, statuesque woman wasn’t tearing naked across the sandhills to escape me? “Janie, I—” I could hear Jag pounding across the desert. Two feet, not four, so he hadn’t shifted and it wasn’t urgent. I should be glad he was alive, but that wasn’t the emotion that swept me right then.

  He held up one hand as he careened into view. “Whoa. Dude. And dudette. Maybe get a cave, or something?”

  I stepped in front of Janie to shield her from Jag’s view as she scrabbled for her clothes. “Pit full of armor spiders. Clothes full of armor spiders.” Brain full of nothing. I could barely form words.

  “Well, the doc’s might’ve been,” Jag sniggered, “but she’s managed to get them back on. Which is more than I can say for you, man.”

  Janie stepped out from behind me, strode to the edge of the pit and collected my bag, handing it to me. “I guess you have spares in here?”

  I nodded my thanks.

  Jag’s eyes roved over Janie’s now fully-clad body, though she’d zipped her jacket closed to hide her ripped shirt. “Punching a bit above your weight there, aren’t you, Leo?”

  Yeah. He was right. She was far too good for me. “Where the hell did you get to, Jag?”

  His face went serious, the laughter falling from his piercing blue eyes. “Heard one of those damn drones coming in. Chances are, it was bringing in reports from the outliers, letting Smithton know me and Herc have defected to the Resistance. The machines seem to be in skimming in pairs, so I figured you’d be safer underground while I chased them down.” His eyes flickered over Janie again. “You can thank me later, bro.”

  Yeah, I owed him.

  I tugged on my camos and knelt to lace my boots. “Well, we’d better plan fast, before those drones show up on the Regime’s system as out of action, and they start investigating.”

  “Is Maya safe, though?” Janie blurted, taking a short step toward Jag. “You and Herc managed to find her?”

  Jag rubbed the back of his arm across his face, leaving a trail of red sand above his dark brows. Must’ve worked up a sweat chasing the drones. “We did. Thanks to you.” He glanced to me as though checking whether it was okay to say more.

  I nodded. Hells, I wanted to yell from the rooftops that it was okay, this woman was my bondmate. I still didn’t see how that could be possible, but the bondmate could never be wrong. Janie was destined to be mine.

  Jag flicked the black hair from his eyes. “I left her and Herc in the Resistance stronghold. We’ll get Khal, then we’re out of here.”

  The sand was already warm beneath my hand as I shoved back upright. “How are we going to get Khal out of the compound?” Despite Jag’s speed in cat form, there was a risk other drones had beaten him across the desert ex
panse. “Chances are, we’ve already been compromised. We could be on the kill list, by now, so we can’t just waltz back into the place and tell Khal to pack his overnight bag.”

  Janie bit at her thumbnail, her gaze flying between Jag and me. “You can’t. But-but I can.” She sounded uncertain, not like the forthright, assertive doctor I knew from the clinic. “Well, not waltz. But I know a way to get in. I’ll warn Khal.”

  “Hells, no!” The words burst from me. No way was my bondmate heading into any kind of danger.

  Chapter Three

  Janie

  T hroughout my medical training, I’d seen my share of aroused men.

  Ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent of the time, their random woody meant absolutely nothing.

  Guys often had little control of what went on south of the border, especially when a doctor was working on them.

  So, Leo’s hard-on didn’t mean a damn thing.

  He was just…spontaneously erect. In a desert. After squishing a bunch of bugs and escaping a pit of hell hosting a gigantic spider and her smaller, furry friends. That’s all this was: an erection brought on by the heat of the moment. The escape.

  The adrenalin rush.

  But that touch of his hand on mine. Sigh. And the bolt of lightning that shot through me…He hadn’t denied my implication about bondmates. How in the world was this possible? Me, and Leo?

  Gods. I should do something, but what?

  Ignore it.

  “Take this.” I shoved the small computer drive into Jag’s hands.

  He stared down at it. “And…?”

  “Get it to Maya. Tell her…” Maya was smart, but would she understand? “Tell her the Regime is experimenting with shifter DNA.”

  “Hells, no,” Leo said, moving closer to me.

  My body quivered as he drew near, but I told my brain to drop it. I’d be crazy to think this hot alpha shifter male was interested in me for anything more than a quick toss on the bed.

  I was thirty-three. Leo had to be near ten years younger than me. He was gorgeous, while I was…well, I guessed I was ‘okay looking’. Meaning, guys asked me out every now and then, but they weren’t exactly panting at my door.

  Let alone sporting hard-ons after seeing me completely naked.

  That tingle that had spread through my limbs like wildfire, the one that made me instantly wet and panting for whatever Leo might be eager to do next, meant nothing.

  Let it go.

  “How is this possible?” Leo asked.

  “They somehow obtained shifter blood,” I said. “They’ve isolated the specific shifter gene and they’re trialing ways to turn on a host who has the recessive trait.”

  Jag shot Leo a confused look. “A host? What in all seven hells does that mean?”

  Leo frowned. “It means—”

  “Oh, gods,” I blurted, staring at the pit behind them, where a rage-filled she-spider was clambering out of the hole with our death shining in her glossy, big black eyes. A rumble rose in her chest.

  Oh, oh. Mama spider was pissed off and wanted revenge.

  Faster than I could blink, Leo shifted back into an enormous, gorgeous, ferocious lion more than twice my size and fifty times as powerful. He was stunning. Awesome. Unbelievably sexy.

  And determined.

  Snarling, he leapt on the spider, taking her down in a flurry of tawny fur, flying sand, and flailing black arachnid limbs.

  My heart bolted in what had to be a lethal rhythm, and I gasped. Pointed in that direction. “Help him!” I shoved Jag, who, strangely enough, just turned around to stand beside me, his arms crossed on his chest. He watched the battle with undisguised glee.

  What was he thinking? This wasn’t a housecat with a teromotan, batting it around before crunching through the thick exoskeleton with its sharp teeth.

  “He could be hurt,” I yelled.

  Leo growled as he and the spider rolled together across the sand. The spider’s largest claw clamped around Leo’s neck, but he snapped his head back, escaping her grip before it could dig deep. He arched off the spider and tumbled along the ground.

  “Nah, he’ll be okay. Watch,” Jag said with a smirk. “So, back to the drive and the Resistance. While I’m taking the information to Maya, you’ll be…”

  “Going back inside the compound to eliminate all the data related to the project.”

  “That’ll go over well with him.” Jag jerked his head toward Leo, who snarled and snapped while he and the spider battled in the sand. The creature shrieked, and a leg with a sharp black point plunged toward Leo, who leaned to the side, barely avoiding being impaled.

  “It’s not up to Leo.” Eyes wide, I flicked my hand that way. “Are you going to shift? Help him? He needs you!”

  Jag chuckled and leaned near my ear. “Tell me something.”

  “What?” I looked around frantically, hoping to find a rock or a stick or anything I could use to defend Leo.

  Why was Jag so calm about all this? He had to do something. Shift. Attack. Anything but stand here as if this was just a random sports match.

  “You two touched yet?” Jag asked, his blue eyes gleaming. “Like, physically touched?”

  “This isn’t about bondmating,” I shouted.

  “Ah, you have, then. And…?”

  I gnashed my teeth. “It was…He was…Leo yelled bondmate when our hands connected.”

  “Cool,” Jag nodded, a big grin on his face.

  It wasn’t cool. This situation was infuriating.

  The spider loomed over Leo, who lay sprawled on his back on the ground. Oh, gods! I was going to watch him die before my very eyes.

  I’d started toward them, ready to tackle the spider and yank her off Leo, when Jag grabbed my arm, holding me back. “Give it a second. He’s fine.”

  “He isn’t.” Straining, I tried to pry myself away from Jag’s grip.

  Jag let go, but patted my shoulder. “Just want to say. Bonding couldn’t happen to a better couple.”

  Leo slashed his claws at the spider, severing its head from its upper body. Sort of. Spiders didn’t really have heads to decapitate. But something gooey went rolling along the sand.

  Yuck.

  While my belly lurched at the sight of green blood squirting from the thrashing spider body, I reeled back from Jag. “Why are you doing nothing?” Was Leo hurt? I had no medical equipment with me. Not even a solitary bandage. How would I help him if he was mortally wounded?

  “Do something for me, would you?” Jag asked, still as calm as ever.

  Stunned by the way this situation had unfolded, I just blinked up at him.

  “Kiss him.”

  What a rush that would be. I couldn’t imagine wrapping my arms around Leo—him holding me close—our mouths coming together.

  Reality would probably be me kissing him before he shoved me away.

  My heart crumpled at the thought of his rejection. It shouldn’t hurt, but it did.

  “Why would I want to kiss him?” A quick glance told me Leo seemed okay, because he was moving. Still in lion form, he braced himself on all fours, panting, while staring at the spider body, as if he worried it would somehow reconnect itself with its head and attack again.

  Jag held up the drive, and the shiny sirdar surface winked in the sunlight. “I’m off to the Resistance to deliver this baby. You two go get Khal and join us. But kiss Leo soon. He needs it. And you’ll both like it.”

  No, I’d love it.

  Leo, however, would not.

  That hard on, though…It kept teasing me with promises beyond my wildest dreams.

  “It’s not like that between us,” I said. “He doesn’t…like me that way.”

  Jag chuckled. “I’d love to be around to watch this unfold, but I’ve got to dash.” He took a few steps north, before turning back with a smile. “You into naked guys?”

  Call me bewildered, because I could only gape at him. “Why?”

  “I’m going to shift. If you want an eyeful—thou
gh I have a feeling Leo wouldn’t be too excited about you getting that eyeful—then, you’re welcome to watch.”

  Groaning, I pivoted away sharply.

  Face lined with exhaustion, Leo started slowly in my direction, leaving the unmoving carcass of the spider behind him.

  A soft sound made me turn back to Jag. Now in jaguar form, he grabbed his pack in his large jaws. Gathering himself, he bounded away in a burst of fur and muscle, heading north.

  Leo, in man form again, stalked over to me. Now this was a naked guy I was totally interested in viewing.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked. Frantically, I ran my hands from his corded neck to his impossibly-broad shoulders and down his arms. Along his back. His firm, muscular butt. Tracing my fingertips around to his defined chest, I worked my hands lower. Assessing for damage. Sort of.

  Heat was rising inside me like an inferno.

  Act professional.

  I’d bent forward to examine his thighs when I realized I was eye-level with his other enormous parts. Parts that were rapidly growing bigger.

  More adrenalin reaction?

  Flustered, excited, as well as a bit raw and vulnerable, I straightened and stared up at him. “Sorry. I…was making sure you were okay.”

  What in all hells should I do? My face must be redder than the sunset on an evening before a cyclone.

  But, but…he’d called me bondmate. Did I dare pass up this opportunity to find out if it was true?

  When in doubt, follow directions. And Jag’s would do just fine.

  I stepped forward, so close, Leo’s chest brushed against my lab coat. I couldn’t help noticing his nipples. How his breathing sped up. The rapid tick of his pulse in his throat. Reaching behind his neck, I nudged his head down close to mine.

  I rose up onto my toes and kissed him.

  A blaze sprinted through me. My heart arced like I’d applied pads and delivered one-thousand joules. My skin pulsed with electricity.

  Good thing he’d slid his hands around my waist, because my head spun so badly, I’d have fallen otherwise.

  His scent, rich and spicy and all male, consumed me. The taste of him filled me to overflowing. His large, calloused hands slid down my back to grip my butt. He thrust his hips forward as he pulled me full against his male arousal, driving me nearly insane.