Act of Surrender: An Immortal Ops World Novel (PSI-Ops / Immortal Ops Book 2) (20 page)

“Laney,” he said. “We need to talk.”

She motioned to James, paying Casey no mind. He knew her better than that. Knew she’d heard him but was trying to give him an out, a way to avoid hearing the truth. It was a truth she wasn’t prepared to have confirmed.

“Casey, this is James, the guy I had a date with tonight and these are his friends. Something really bad is happening,” she said.

Casey snorted. That was the understatement of the day. “I know.”
 

She narrowed her gaze on him and then looked around the room. She was putting it all together. “What happened in here? It’s trashed.”

“Bad men came to kill
our
Laney,” said Bill, patting his knees and then clapping his hands as if playing a game of patty cake all by his lonesome. He’d been known to do stranger things. “Casey and his wolf said no. His wolf came out and it let them know that our Laney was not to be harmed. Nope.”

“Casey and his wolf?” Laney paled and then bent forward, looking as if she might be sick. James moved closer to her and rubbed her back. She touched his thigh and Casey considered forcing the man to get the hell away from Laney. Mating energy coated the air around them and Casey’s overdeveloped senses picked up on it right away.

Fuck.

He did not want her mated to a PSI Operative. A supernatural male who lived a normal life was his choice—not that he got to make one. Destiny had other plans. And she seemed to need his comfort at the moment so he allowed it.

“Casey is a shifter, isn’t he?” she asked James.

James’s gaze met Casey’s and there was compassion reflected back. “Sweeting.”

Casey sighed. The moment of truth was upon him. “Yes, Laney. I am.”

She looked up at him. “All the stories you told me about the government and the experiments on humans to make them into animal-like soldiers, it wasn’t just theories you heard, was it? You weren’t telling me stories you made up. Were you?”

He shook his head. “I lived it.”

We should go
, pushed Gus.
Now.

Casey looked to Corbin. “Gus says we need to leave. Believe me, he’s right. He must sense something big coming.”

Laney frowned. “Gus doesn’t talk.”

“He does, but not in ways most can hear, hon,” Casey said, hating that they’d kept the truth from her. They’d only wanted to keep her safe. The less she knew the safer she would have been.

Damn her curiosity.
 

She gasped. “Danger? Someone shouted
danger
in my head earlier. It was Gus, wasn’t it?”

Casey shrugged. “He might have. Even I’m not clear how he does what it is he does. I do know if he says we should go, he’s not playing around.”

“Let’s take this show on the road,” said Duke. “I fucking hate standing around waiting to be attacked again. We can debrief somewhere safe. Can we leave the little loud one?”

“Bill comes with us,” stated Casey clearly. “As does Gus. I want them safe.”

“Laney needs to rest,” said James, drawing Laney closer to him. “She’s been through a lot and I want her checked over before we do anything else.”

“I’m fine,” said Laney.

It pained Casey to tell her what he’d had to do. He knew it would upset her. “Laney, your computer system.”

She blinked up at him. “What about it?”

Bill lifted his hands in the air. “Casey was a bad, bad boy. He broke it.”

Laney’s eyes widened. “What?”
 

Casey exhaled slowly. “When I realized the hit team was looking for you and not me, I did what needed to be done to protect you. I know how much that computer meant to you but, Laney, the information you’d been digging for, it nearly got you killed.”

She said nothing as she turned, taking James’s hand in hers as she headed for the door. Casey tried to follow, but James glanced over his shoulder and shook his head, as if sensing it wasn’t the time.

Chapter Sixteen

Bertrand snarled as he held one of his pets by the throat. “Tell me again how they escaped?”

The hybrid, a mix of man, bat, vampire and tiger, shook its head as best it could with Bertrand’s claws biting into its flesh. “We don’t know, sir. We sent a team. We found a cleanup crew in the alley, disposing of our team’s bodies.”

Bertrand’s vision narrowed as red filtered into the rims of his view. “You and the others are weak. You let a hacker and an injured shifter bring you all down.”

“No, sir. No. I’m sure they had help,” the hybrid said, pleading with his eyes for mercy.

It wasn’t in Bertrand to grant anyone leniency. He twisted quickly, tearing the hybrid’s throat out and flinging it aside, his gaze finding the row of other hybrids, none saying a word. They knew he possessed the power. That without Bertrand they would not continue to receive the injections they were now dependent upon for their survival.

“What of the other team?” asked Bertrand, fire in his belly. “The one sent to the location the girl lived?”

“Dead,” whispered one of the men. “All dead.”

This was what he got for dealing with the bottom of barrel in regards to trained professionals. If he was ever going to get Gisbert and the other heads of the Corporation to see him as a leader, he had to act now. He couldn’t take this defeat lying down.

“If you want something done, you have to do it yourself.” With that, he clicked his fingers for a towel, waiting before one appeared, and then wiped his hands. It was time he took matters into his own hands. He would pay Hagen a visit and he would get what he needed once and for all.

Chapter Seventeen

James took the now-cooled mug of tea from Laney’s hand and pushed her damp hair from her shoulder. This woman had seen him at his worst—eating hybrids while stuck in a bloodlust shifter state—and she still somehow managed to see something good in him. He couldn’t understand why. She had agreed to come to his home with him, rather than a safe house. Even after all she’d seen and been through.

The worst first date ever.

Here she was, in his home, on his sofa, her smell coating everything, and he loved it. Shame pushed through him. She’d had a hell of a night and
he
was thinking of how good she smelled.

They’d stopped first at his lab, where he’d looked her over, making sure she wasn’t harmed. He’d also taken samples of her blood and had another, trusted doctor at PSI, working to see what he could find. Patterson swore he’d call the minute he learned anything conclusive. James had already phoned him twice, seeing if he could speed up the process. PSI labs were equipped with technologies other labs, even top-notch ones, weren’t. Things that seemed more sci-fi than real. A perk of the job.

If only the damn job would call him and full-out confirm his woman was supernatural and enough supernatural for him to be able to claim her without it being the end of her. James had seen it happen to men before—men who went against what nature ruled and decided to try to make a life and a family with a woman who lacked paranormal qualities and certain levels of supernatural in her line.

It always ended bad.

Very bad.

“Casey, Bill and Gus are okay?” she asked for probably close to the tenth time since they’d parted ways at headquarters with them. She sipped the tea and he was happy she was finally putting something in her stomach.

James nodded. “They are. Bill and Gus are going to be spending some time in a halfway house PSI actually owns and operates. It’s for supernaturals. And there are people there who are trained to help with their special circumstances.”
 

“They’ll be okay there?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And Casey?”

James sighed. “He was offered a chance to stay on and help at PSI. But, Laney, you need to know something.”
 

She looked up at him, mug in hand. “What?”

“Corbin called when you were showering,” he said, wishing he didn’t have to be the bearer of bad news. “Duke and Striker left Casey in one of the extra sleeping quarters there, and when they went in to check on him after his supposed shower, he was gone.”

“Gone? Like vanished?”

James nodded.

“He just walked out of a secret government facility without anyone noticing?” she asked, doubt on her face.

“Yes. He did.”

The edges of her lips curled upwards and her mood seemed to lighten somewhat. “He outfoxed
the Man
.”

James grunted. “I guess he did.”

“I never knew he was a shifter,” she said. “I should have seen it. He shouldn’t have felt like he had to hide that from me. I’d have understood. It wouldn’t have changed how I saw him.”

He knew she would have understood. She’d been accepting of his own wolf. More than most would be in her place.

James pushed her damp hair over her shoulder. She was punishing herself for something out of her control. She hadn’t known the truth about Casey, but Casey kept it from her. The man had learned long ago how to hide what he was. Laney couldn’t kick herself for not figuring it out. “He cares for you. He waited until he knew you were safe before he vanished. He could have left at any moment, but he made sure you and your other friends were in good hands.”

She twisted slightly and the shirt she had on, which was one of James’s dress shirts, pulled to one side, showing the mounds of her breasts. His entire body had been on fire since he’d laid eyes on her. The cold shower he’d taken while she was taking a long, hot warm one in his master bath had done nothing to temper his cock and its single-minded focus. Seeing the pale globes of her breasts, there, so close, knowing they were bare under the thin material, nearly pushed James over the edge of sexual sanity.

He put his hands on his legs, trying to think on anything but Laney’s breasts. As he rubbed his palms, trying to get the sweat from them, he realized something. He’d not limped once since he’d fully shifted. In fact, nothing on him hurt.

Well, unless he counted his dick.

That hurt like a motherfucker.

It wanted in her. Wanted to know what pleasures her body could bring.

He tipped his head back, swallowing hard.

You will not take advantage of her in this state
, he chanted.
You will not take advantage of her. You will not…

She put her hand over his, her fingertips skimming his inner thigh.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. You will not take advantage of her.

He jerked and sat up some, hoping to keep from both coming and ignoring his inner voice.

“Thank you for saving my life,” she said sweetly, the innocence in her voice making him feel like an even bigger douche.

“All in a day’s work,” he mused, earning him a slight smile from her. She’d been quiet since they’d left the hotel, barely uttering a word as James checked her in his lab, and saying nothing on the ride to his house. “How are you holding up with all of this?”

“What’s a mate?” she asked, surprising him to the point he actually, for a brief moment, forgot about his seemingly endless hard-on.

“Why do you want to know?”

She handed him the mug of tea and faced him more. “Because your friends said something in the alley. They said I was your mate. I want to know what that means.”
 

James nearly crushed the mug. He had to try to gently set it on the side table when all he wanted to do was permit his wolf up to do what it had wanted to do from the word go.

Claim the woman before him.

“W-what, exactly, happened?” he asked, needing to be sure and that his wires weren’t crossed.
 

“Striker said he smelled Fae on me. Then Boomer said he smelled panther and then they both sniffed me like basset hounds before announcing that I was your mate. Your woman.”

Closing his eyes a second, James let out a long, slow breath, the tension and fear of doing something regrettable leaving him. He wasn’t mis-wired. He wasn’t nuts. His body had been doing what it was supposed to do—try to get him to claim his mate.

His woman.

Mine.

He didn’t fear the word anymore or what it implied.

The burning need to wait for medical clarification eased. His brothers-in-arms would never say that if it wasn’t true. They’d never lead him astray. They knew how important and special it was to find one’s mate. And both liked Laney—a lot. Striker had even taken to calling her Punky at headquarters. That was right after he tried to get her to trick out his online profile page so that it would auto growl and howl at women who were hot.

Thankfully, she’d declined to help him.

James touched her cheek, his feelings for her growing by the second. They’d spent a week connecting intimately through conversation and then an evening together, fighting for their lives all the while the attraction growing.

It’s more than merely attraction
, he corrected.
It’s love. As it is between a mated pair.

“It means you were created for me. A perfect match according to the supernatural world. The woman who is meant to be my wife.”

She frowned and stared at her lap.

She didn’t want him. The knowledge cooled him and he slid away from her, giving her space. He stood slowly. It hurt to be rejected by the woman he knew in his bones was his, but he understood. He wouldn’t force her to be with him, even though, by archaic laws that still existed in the supernatural community, he could.

That wasn’t James.

“I’ll phone Corbin and arrange for you to be placed in protective custody. I understand you don’t want to be here with me.”

“What?” she asked, confusion knitting her brow. “Are you sending me away?”

“Gods no,” he said. “I thought you wanted to leave.”

“Why would you think that?”
 

He sat again and offered a slight smile. “Because I can’t read your mind.”

“So you claim,” she teased, easing closer to him, her hand returning to his sweatpants-covered thigh. It felt damn good to be out of the leather pants. They’d been very constricting. When she was showering in his master bathroom, he’d used the guest bath and cleaned up as well, needing to wash the scents of the alley off him.

“Laney, my body sees you as its mate,” he said. He put his hand over hers. “And if Striker and Boomer both sensed it too, I believe it’s true. That being said, I know you’ve never been with a man before and that we’ve only just officially met, and that this was a horrible date night.”