Sienna bent over Jax, and shook her head while he convulsed on the ground. “That’s what you get for bugging me.” She then pulled out a small cylinder that looked like a mini lipstick tube. Except this stuff was way cooler. Colorless, odorless, and über potent. She took off the cap and ran it across his neck the moment his hand grabbed her calf. Instantly, his grip relaxed, and his eyes fell shut. The guy would be out for hours.
She pulled the wires from his chest, retracted them into the Taser, and slid the weapon back into her waistband. Then, she felt around his neck for a transmitter and realized it was an all-in-one earpiece. She placed it on top of the log and crushed it with her heel.
“Hey.” A voice startled her from behind. She swung out, and he ducked. “Nice one.” Legian sounded more pleased than pissed that she tried to clothesline him.
She settled back down on the log and felt a bump the size of Texas forming on her shin. At least her leg wasn’t broken. Jax didn’t need to know that she’d exaggerated slightly. She pulled out her black bandana with pink skulls and wiped the sweat from her face, and then she looked up at Legian. “Where’d you go?”
“Leading the rest off trail. I hijacked this one’s transmissions and tricked the others into thinking I was him. Should buy us extra time before they figure it out.”
“So that’s why Jax couldn’t get a hold of them.”
“This is Jax?”
Sienna nodded down at the guy lying on the ground. He stalked toward the fallen soldier, and she hoped he wasn’t going to do what she thought he might do.
“I may still be bugged,” she blurted out in an attempt to distract him.
Legian stopped, looked at her, at the soldier, then back at her. Then he held out a small button. It looked like a mini Easy Button. Ironically, the thing was even red. “I blocked the signal.”
“Awesome,” was all she could say. After all, when it came to that sort of thing, Legian was pretty much
Mission: Impossible
. Then she stopped cold. “So I couldn’t be tracked …”
“Once I activated the blocker,” he finished for her.
She stared at him for a moment, and then shoved him. Or, at least tried to shove him. The big oaf didn’t move an inch. Not even for charity’s sake. “You could’ve done that the moment I left the bar.”
“I wanted to know if they planted tracers on you.”
“I think the first tracer you found gave it away,” she replied drily.
“Yes, but I wanted to understand how they operate.”
“And now you know?” she asked with her hands on her hips.
“I know more. Your race is better trained than I anticipated.” She glared, and he sighed before speaking again. “I would never have done it if I felt you were at risk. You know that, yes?”
She stood for a moment before relaxing. “I know,” she whispered.
He smiled and held out a hand. “Let’s go.”
“Uh, Legian?”
“What?”
She didn’t want to ask, but she had to. “What do we do with Jax?”
“Leave him.”
She was still pissed at the betrayal, but leaving the soldier was flat out wrong. “We can’t leave him here. What if they don’t find him? What if he gets bit by a rattlesnake or eaten by a bear?”
“The bears in this area are small. They could only gnaw on him.”
“Like that’s any better.”
“Not my problem.”
“Well, it’s mine. I knocked him out. He’s not part of a catch-and-release program.”
“He’ll slow us down. You can’t afford to be soft, Sienna. He wouldn’t show the same mercy to you.”
Legian wouldn’t back down. Sienna wouldn’t back down. And so the battle of the wills began. Not that he was always hard-headed. Even though he could be a vicious tiger around everyone else, when he was alone with her, he usually morphed into a fuzzy kitten. Not that she could blame him. Whenever she hurt his feelings, she felt like a complete shit. She figured it had to have something to do with the whole
tahren
bond. She’d rather undergo death by a thousand cuts than see Legian hurt.
She could feel him already wavering when it hit her. Win-win. She snapped her fingers. “Leverage! Once Jax wakes, we question him — which does not mean torture, by the way — to find out how much the military already knows. They’re obviously onto you guys a whole lot more than we thought. And we can prove to him that we’re on the same side. It’s perfect, really. If we play our cards right, he’s our perfect in.”
“In?”
“As in a trigger to start building an alliance with the U.S. leaders. We help him get back to his unit. He’s got to have connections, and those connections can connect us with someone who can get us on the right track toward a partnership. An American-Sephian coalition.”
It had been something that nagged the back of her mind since she moved to the base. The Sephians came here without any prior contact. That alone looked suspicious. If they tried to introduce themselves to the President or some senator, it would get them killed or imprisoned. Neither would help their cause.
Tonight was Sienna’s first shot at trying to help out. It took nearly three months for the Sephians to trust her enough to not track her every move. Unfortunately, she brought with her few benefits. She had no real connections to speak of. She’d done plenty of work with the military as a ten-ninety-nine, but most of that had been at the mid-and lower officer-level. Her best option was Bobby’s unit.
After several moments of thinking through her words, Legian responded with his unique cross between a grumble and a sigh that she’d come to call his
grumbligh
. She knew he couldn’t argue her point. More than anything, the Sephians needed the world’s leaders on their side to beat the more technologically advanced Draeken. It would be foolish to leave a potential solution lying on the ground.
Legian pulled out what looked like black rubber bands and fastened Jax’s hands behind his back. With a grunt given more for effect than strain, he lifted the unconscious soldier onto his shoulders, and they made their escape through the woods.
But Sienna’s gut was telling her that they weren’t out of the proverbial woods yet.
An hour later, a very sweaty Legian dropped Jax like he was nothing more than a sack of rotten potatoes onto a slate-covered creek bed and began rummaging through the soldier’s pockets. He pulled out the GPS device and looked it over. Then he pressed the Easy Button he held in his other hand, and a bleep reappeared in the bull’s-eye of the GPS. He held up the device, raising an eyebrow at Sienna.
Still panting from the nighttime marathon, her eyes widened at the same time her mouth dropped open in shock. She pointed at the device. “Do you
want
them to find us? Turn that thing back on until we get back to the base.”
He re-clicked the Easy Button, and the bleep disappeared. “The blocker is not one hundred percent effective. We can’t risk it failing en route. There’s only one way to be safe.”
She could have sworn he had a shit-ass grin on his face when he said the last bit. “I know, I know.” Sienna pulled off her shirt and threw it at him, which brought on an unadulterated smile in response. With a huff, she gave him her back so she wouldn’t have to look at him. Although she could be sure he never took his eyes off her. Legian never seemed to tire of looking at his
tahren.
She leaned against the trunk of a tall evergreen tree and let out a long, deep breath. She had really screwed things up this time. The entire base — all five hundred-plus Sephians — were put at risk because of her good intentions. The only human on the base, she had to be better, smarter, much smarter than everyone else. Instead, tonight proved she was a fuck-up with a long way to go.
And she should’ve known better. Growing up, Sienna always had to be on her toes. Traveling with her parents to the most screwed up places in the world put a neon sign on her back that said, “American. Take Me.” She’d been both smart and lucky. She had lost friends whose parents were in similar lines of work. Some were returned unharmed after being kidnapped for ransom. Others never made it home.
And many more were left behind at some prep school in the States for their protection. She didn’t know what would’ve been worse: getting kidnapped or abandoned. Her parents weren’t what you’d call the warm fuzzy type, but at least they’d never left her behind. If only she could reach Kat now.
“Sienna?” Legian asked.
Her back straightened, but she didn’t turn around. “You call the base for pick up yet?” The bond had its perks, but sometimes having the
soullare
was a real pain in the ass. Sometimes she didn’t want to talk about her feelings. Sometimes she wanted to wallow in them.
A dry chuckle escaped her lips. Of all things to complain about. Her lover asking her about her feelings. Hell, she’d dreamed of finding a man who would do that. Guess it all boiled down to be-careful-what-you-wish-for crap.
Sienna could feel Legian’s eyes boring into her back. She walked over to a large rock and brushed off grit and dead leaves. Pulling out her bandana, she laid it out daintily across the surface, sat down and unlaced her boots. The autumn air was chilly, and goose bumps prickled against the cold sweat on her skin. She rubbed her arms while she kicked off a boot. It landed with a thud on the rocky forest floor.
Whenever the moon peeped out from a cloud, the giant evergreen trees of the forest became ominous skyscrapers, with crooked, threatening arms reaching down toward her. It gave her the heebie-jeebies. The whole night would have made a perfect scene for a horror movie. Scary scene? Yep. Half-naked woman? Yep. Big, scary killer? Hell, Legian could pull off that look in his sleep. A shiver shot through her. Hopefully their night didn’t have a scary ending.
“I’ll call once I know we cannot be followed.”
She balked. “You mean you’ll call once you’re done getting a peep show.”
At least he had the sense not to comment. As a reward, she put her seductive powers to work unbuckling her belt and unbuttoning the fly on her Levis. He continued to rifle through Jax’s pockets, glancing up every couple seconds to watch her with a growing intensity. She pushed the jeans off her hips. Legian tilted back on his heels, resting his arms on his thighs, his attention one hundred percent focused on her. Sienna leaned against the rock and pulled off her jeans, one leg at a time. By the time she had nothing on except her bra and underwear, Legian was making no attempt at hiding his arousal.
Something small hopped onto her foot. “Eep!” She shimmied up the rock. He frowned, and then came to his feet.
“Bug.” Holding her knees to her chest, Sienna shivered when the night breeze brushed past her. She hated bugs. And tonight she had seen too many bugs of both the natural and man-made kind.
Legian gave her that slow shake of his head — the one where he didn’t understand her and gave up trying. She blew him a raspberry, and he went back to examining the pretty impressive pile of weaponry he accumulated from frisking Jax. She stayed on the rock, above the creepy crawly traffic on the ground and watched.
Her
tahren
was a nice golden package of raw sex, even when he was in soldier mode. Heck, that just made him even sexier. She had no idea how she found a man who handled her whims and still had a spine. Sure, they’d had their share of complications. Enough to put that Mars-Venus book to shame. The truth was those snags were minor compared to what really mattered.
She was so absorbed in staring at Legian, she hadn’t realized he’d finished going through Jax’s belongings and was now watching her right back. When he caught her eye, he nodded toward what little clothing remained on her body. “Everything goes.”
She shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest. “There’s no way in hell Jax got a tracer in my undies.”
“Want to bet the safety of the base on that?”
She scowled at him another moment before surrendering the remainder of her clothes, all the while muttering under her breath. If Legian heard anything, he knew better than to say.
In all her naked glory, she shivered in the night air, not enjoying her situation one bit. “If I get a tick anywhere near a girl part, you’re taking care of it. And then you’re going to kiss it. A lot. Now give me something to cover up with. Before my tatas freeze and fall off.”
Legian raised an eyebrow and a slight grin before walking over and pulling her into his arms. “I would hate for you to lose those. They’re one of my favorite parts on you.”
“Figure of speech. Hopefully,” she muttered before turning on him. “There is no way in hell I’m walking onto the base wearing nothing but my birthday suit.”
He pulled his head back far enough to allow his hungry eyes to climb down her body. “You should wear it more often,” he murmured in her ear.
She shivered. Only this time it wasn’t from the cold.
Legian stepped back and pulled off his shirt. His golden skin sparkled in the moonlight as he laid the material across her shoulders. Her nipples hardened against his hot skin. Something grew long and hard against her, which she rubbed against and received a pleasurable growl in response.
“I know where ‘extra’ in ‘extraterrestrial’ came from.” She giggled, reaching down to cup him. He nibbled on her neck. New goose bumps popped up across her skin.
A murmur passed from his lips and over her skin as he kissed a trail down her neck and shoulder. She lowered her head to the side to give him better access. Hazily, she looked out into the night to see two furious brown eyes watching them.
She hollered something that even she couldn’t make out before she curled into Legian’s body for cover.
In a blur, Legian pulled out his gun and jerked around, knocking her off the rock in a heap. She pushed the barrel toward the ground at the same time clutching Legian’s shirt against her. “Jesus. Don’t shoot him. He startled me. That’s all. I didn’t think he’d wake up so soon.”
“You tazed me.” Jax actually sounded hurt.
“You pointed a gun at me. Call us even,” Sienna snapped back.
Jax gritted his teeth. “Bobby would be rolling over in his grave right now.”
Her jaw dropped before clamping back shut. That hurt. A lot. “Fuck you,” she snarled. “You have no right to judge.” Legian embraced her, pulling her up, and his warm energy calmed her. Enough to put a Band-Aid over the hurt inside.