Surrendering To Her Sergeant (16 page)

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” He jerked his
head at Hulk and one of the guards who covered Sage and Rayna, the
one Tait had pegged as a skittish colt. Didn’t seem so skittish
now. He surged forward to help Hulk in pinning Bella’s wrists back.
“What you find repugnant is of no damn interest to me,” he went on,
breezy as if discussing whether LA would ever get its own football
team again. “I just want to know what Enzo Lemare gave you, after
he slept with you. And of course, where you’re hiding it for
him.”

A gasp from the atrium was loud enough
to silence him. Since the atrium was directly behind their couch,
Tait couldn’t see the source of the sound, though the pitch of pure
shock made him guess that the recon team had just found Ava
Chestain.

Sure enough, the woman was dragged
toward Magneto by a couple of his ninjas. She fought their clutches
with rebellious little yanks, making them both grunt—and screwing a
grimace onto Runway’s face that Tait had never seen before. Shit.
The guy’s lips curled so tight over his locked teeth, Tait wondered
if Ethan would chomp right into the jugular of these guys if either
of them gave Ava so much as a broken nail.

He didn’t have to wait long for that
answer.

As the goons pulled at her, Ava fought
them again. Her mass of dark hair fell back, making her whole face
visible, including the shiner that bloomed beneath her left
eye.

Ethan shot up like fifty rounds went
off in his ass. Forget that. All fifty blazed in his eyes, wild and
incensed, even after one of the ninjas slammed him back.

“What the
fuck
did you do to
her?”

One of Ava’s guards jerked his head
over. “Crazy bitch did it to herself. Did a pinball bounce on the
wall and bathroom floor after I found her hiding in the master
shower.”

Ava’s face sparked with victory.
“After I took you down with me, asshole.”

The guard growled as he searched for a
good response for saving face.

He got cut off by the wails of angry
sirens. And right after that, the approaching thunder of a
helicopter over the ocean.

Bella took her own turn to
gasp. Sage and Rayna locked hands. Tait looked at Ethan, who still
stared at Ava like her whole nose had been sliced off. But Ava
kept
her
gaze
glued on her main guard. With a smirk growing across her
lips.

“Did I forget to tell you I
did that
after
I
called the cops?”

“Damn it.” He grunted it in unison
with his partner.

Magneto slowly rose to his feet. Tait
appraised the movement in curiosity. The guy looked like he was the
damn water heater inspector, and Bella simply the pilot light that
gave him grief. “Well, this puts a dent in things,” he
muttered.

Bewilderment made camp in Tait’s
psyche. Looked like the other guys on the team commiserated.
Fifteen minutes ago, these wannabe superheroes had materialized out
of the night and infiltrated the villa with, he reluctantly
admitted, damn fine precision. But now their leader was twirling a
hand in the air, finishing it by jabbing a finger back toward the
beach, like they were all supposed to just cut and run?

“Huh?” He muttered it as
the ninjas did just that, hustling out one by one. He recognized
the disappointment in his voice, thickening as he repeated it in
Franz’s direction this time. “Are we really just watching this?
Captain, aren’t we gonna do
anything
?”

Franz tossed a dark stare.
“You want to run that risk with innocents present, T-Bomb?
Especially when
armed
support is on the way? I’m frustrated as hell too, but maybe
you know something I don’t. Maybe that’s your twenty-two millimeter
thug stopper in those swim trunks and not your dick. If so, then go
get ’em, cowboy.”

He huffed. “Damn it, we’re trained for
this.”

“And so is the LAPD.”

Fuck. He hated it when
Franzen was right. For the second time today, his mind flicked
backward in time, to summer days of nearly twenty years ago, when
he and Fire Hamilton were feeling ballsy. They’d sneak into Old Man
Stromberg’s orchard and concoct epic alien battles from a hay bale
fort. They’d just be set to launch their “big attack” when Fire’s
mom would call him in for dinner. Tait would trudge home, knowing
dinner
wouldn’t
be
waiting, which was no biggie to his deflated stomach.

He felt the same way now.
It sucked ass enough that the ninja assholes had ruined a
once-in-a-lifetime invitation to a celebrity’s Malibu beach house,
but they didn’t have the decency to make the whole thing about
something exciting like drugs, jewelry, money, or even sneaky
paparazzi shots. Now
that
would’ve been cool. They would’ve been the shit
back at base once those pictures broke, showing them kicking back
in Bella Lanza’s fancy digs, eating grilled shrimp with the
glamorous star…

He was getting to give
these whack-offs another heavy snort when one of the minions bumped
him in the haste of their retreat. And damn it if the shithead
didn’t smell a lot like salon-quality hair conditioner. And
fuck
if the guy didn’t
have the most perfect, heart-shaped ass he’d ever—

“Gaaahh!”

He was so far over the cliff from
shock, he couldn’t even swear right. Apparently fate wasn’t
sticking it and twisting it enough at that, because the ninja
stopped and froze—letting him gawk longer at that beautiful
backside. Letting him gaze up over hips and a waist that now, under
second and third consideration, were too damn sleek for a guy on a
team this well-trained.

Tait blinked. How had he missed this
bozo before now? And why couldn’t he stop staring at the bastard,
unable to control the sparks of strange recognition that popped
through him, a case of déja vu set to his mind’s own speed metal
song?

And why, as the guy turned
back to stare at
him
, did he imagine that the space between the ninja’s hood and
jacket parted enough for him to glimpse a ponytail—a coiled braid
of black, lavender, and silver hair?

“Holy fuck.”

He rushed to his feet.
Stumbled forward. Déja vu? Screw that mystical shit. He recognized
that ass from solid, real memories—because he’d seen it before.
Completely naked. Getting Dommed into a thousand beautiful shades
of red, in a dungeon a thousand miles away, on a cold autumn night
that felt thousands of
years
away. The Dom had been his buddy Zeke, and he’d
been the scene monitor who’d never forget that submissive as long
as he lived. He’d jacked off a few hundred times to mental replays
of that scene. To thoughts about that woman and her
daiquiri-in-a-bottle hair shit, and the way that tricolored hair
wove around her breasts like dark seaweed on a pale mermaid. He
even fantasized about hurting her the way Z had, just to make her
smile like she had after their session…just to give her soul
everything it so clearly needed from all that. And yeah, he thought
a lot about holding her again, too. About curling her against him
like he had when Z had to leave so suddenly after the session,
feeling like fucking Zeus when she’d let him.

But that woman had been hauled off to
prison ten days later. She’d aided the criminal who’d almost
murdered Zeke in a revenge-driven zeal to capture Rayna back into
white slavery. She’d finally had a surge of sanity about all that,
and was able to use her proximity to the monster to aid the police
in bringing him down, but sometimes a right couldn’t cancel a
wrong. Tait had walked her to the police van. It had been a
freezing, miserable day, but crazily, the sun sliced through the
clouds as she’d turned to tell him good-bye. It had haloed across
her head and glimmered in her eyes, stunning him into silence with
their brilliant purple light. Sadness yet peace, resignation yet
despair…it was all there, a goddamn universe in her gaze…and they’d
locked it away.

Two states, seven months, and
thousands of miles later, a masked soldier turned and looked at
him—and hit him with that universe again.

“Holy
fuck
.”

There was no hesitation to it this
time. Only his laugh of raw joy.

The soldier gave him a
desperate shake of his—
her
—head. Right before she spun for
the door to the terrace and raced through it.

Tait didn’t think twice about giving
chase.

He caught her a couple of
feet past the terrace’s light. Now that he had her secure, he let
his mind give way to the full, phenomenal reality of this.
Of
her
.

“Luna.” He breathed the
word. “God
damn
.
Luna.”

He got to rejoice in that
for about a second. After she
thwacked
a hand across his face at
full strength, he got busy dealing with his stinging skin, his
bleeding pride—and the violet glower that bore into him with the
subtlety of a power drill.

“Stay where you are, Weasley. I don’t
want to hurt you.”

As he watched her trudge
down the sand and blend into the night, he failed to erase the
music of her voice from his head—especially as she’d wrapped it
around the nickname that she’d given him that night he’d held her
in the dungeon.
Weasley.
He’d laughingly accepted the title, reminding her
that in the world of teenage wizards from where she’d pulled the
name, Weasley was the one who finished off the tale with the
beautiful genius witch on his arm.

He laughed again now, but had no idea
why. As he turned and got ready to face the curious gapes of the
other guys, he muttered, “It’s a little too late for that,
woman.”

Ava crossed the threshold from her
garage into her kitchen and peered around in bewilderment. Turning
the light on over the sink didn’t help the confusion. She ran
fingers over the folded dish towel, the coffee cup she’d scrubbed
and put in the drainer this morning, the miniature herb garden that
grew in a wood box on the windowsill. Though Zeke and Rayna had
gotten up after her and had still been snoozing in the guest
bedroom, everything was exactly as she’d left it sixteen hours ago,
at six a.m.

But nothing was the same.

She folded her arms around herself,
feeling like she hugged an alien. When she’d left this morning,
she’d been sore from pushing it hard at the gym. Now she ached in
newer, stranger ways. Her face throbbed from her face-plant during
the struggle with Bella’s strange intruders. Her arms carried
bruises from where the jerks had grabbed her. But below her waist,
the pain took on a different edge. It had been months since her
last date, let alone one with a man she’d allow in her bed.
Technically, that wasn’t where Ethan had been, either—but her body,
with its most tender tissues aching in the most intimate ways, sure
as hell didn’t know the difference.

And neither did her heart.

That had to explain the nervous jolt
of her stomach as Ethan entered in her wake. His footsteps, though
mellow, were loud thumps in the silence of the house. Rayna and
Zeke wouldn’t be home for a while, as a bunch of the guys were
still ravenous after their dinner was interrupted at Bella’s. He
pressed against her from behind, ensuring the dervishes in her
stomach now formed parades through the rest of her body. Without a
word, he offered back her car keys, which dangled from one of his
impossibly long fingers. She murmured her thanks for him driving
her home, the only words she could seem to get out while her pussy
throbbed from the memory of that finger exploring her with deep,
dominating thrusts.

So much for the dervishes being fair
about this.

Ethan didn’t move for a
long moment.
Dios
,
he felt good there, so large and strong behind her. “You doing
okay?” he asked quietly.

“Uhhh, yeah.” She forced the casual
tone as she turned to face him. “I’m…just wiped. After the cops
asked all those questions, and after Bella—”