The Valkyrie's Guardian (7 page)

The two questions we can't solve either. My guess is that Boris tracked me there. Chances are he'll come here too. As for who thinks he can run Merodach's operation in his stead, I'd like to meet the man myself.

Cassie watched his mouth pull from a grim smile into a frightening grimace. He flexed his fingers, rippling tendons and muscles from his wrists to shoulders. She hoped Jack got his hands on the mystery villain too.

Merodach, the Babylonian thousand-year-old extra-sentient with the power of resurrection and mindbreaking, first declared war on Kyros in the eighteenth century. He didn't appreciate Kyros interfering with his sabotage of the American Revolution, and the vendetta evolved into a centuries-long private war. Kyros' own family had been the casualties.

Cassie wanted to ask, “What do we do now?” but reminded herself she wasn't in the superhero club.
What happens now?

Kyros will reinforce security at the academies. They're in Inverness, Rio and Quantico now, but he won't send me in case I'm being tracked.
Jack twisted his neck and clenched his jaw, and Cassie could see this rankled him.

Will Kyros relocate again?

No. He thinks Boris is waiting for it. I'm going to play bait instead.

Cassie groaned, just now remembering that Jack had carried his duffel down the stairs this morning. She should have noticed the giant block letters, MACGUNN stenciled below the drawstring — his soldier pack. Jack thought he was invincible, and she hated when he left on black ops missions. She couldn't take much more of the sleepless nights and fruitless hours waiting for the phone to ring with news of either his safe return or grisly demise.

Okay, I'll ask. How are you going to play bait?

Got asked to do Hell Week in Coronado.

A smile sneaked past her pursed lips. The only adventure Jack loved more than a dangerous mission was training gullible mortals to go on dangerous missions, and he was Naval Special Warfare Command's favorite instructor for their grueling initiation.

When do you leave?

Today.

Figures.

Kyros also wants me away from you.

She turned her head to look down at him, finally meeting his gaze. No harm in speaking aloud now. “I suppose this brings us to the second forbidden topic.”

“I didn't want to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“I'm a berserker, Cassie.” He said it so gravely, she nearly laughed.

She lifted her shoulders and her eyebrows in tandem to mean,
Yeah, I know?

“This reaction between us. It's not supposed to happen with you. It means we're mates. At least, it's a biological compulsion to mate.”

“How romantic.”

“You haven't met my family, but you should know that all of them, including the women — especially the women — are big.”

“I figured you were six-foot-six for a reason.”

He smiled, but tension pulled the corners of his mouth. “MacGunn women are big like their husbands, because they give birth to big berserker babies. You don't know what that entails, and I'm glad.”

Cassie couldn't help the shudder down her back. A few years of residency in an L.A. emergency room had honed her vivid imagination.

That stray thought, a reminder of her greatest failure — quitting her residency program in her last year — made Jack cringe. She heard an echo of his anger and frustration and thrust the topic from her mind, making it clear she didn't want to talk about it.

Jack cleared his throat. “You should know there is no contraceptive that works for a berserker. I can't sleep with you, Cass — I'll get you pregnant.”

Her eyebrows hiked even higher and she tried not to grimace.

He added before she could argue, “Doesn't matter what time of the month. One-hundred-percent, since the Vikings recorded their history.”

Cassie watched the water swallowing the beach, the seagulls fighting over washed-up Cheetos, and turned Jack's words in her head. Cassie's mind wandered to the legion of blonde peppy women he flirted with, undoubtedly went home with …

He snorted. “No little bastard MacGunns running around terrorizing the world. I wouldn't do that.”

Cassie blinked, then burst out laughing with her head tossed back. Imagine! Jack MacGunn: insatiable flirt, smokin' hot Atlas lookalike … a virgin. Impossible. “But that's what you mean, right?”

“Laugh it up, princess. You are, too.”

That sobered her. She shouldn't have laughed. It was unkind. She felt a little guilty. Only a little. “So, you're some kind of monk?”

“No way. I'm sixteen years past due for taking a mate from the clan and settling on the family land.”

Her eyes flickered to his impressive form, lying stretched on the beach with his hands tucked behind his head. It flexed his ridiculous twenty-one-inch biceps and inflated the cords of tendon around his neck. His Navy-issued BDU pants hung jauntily on his hips, contrasted by the designer watch strapped to his wrist. “I'm trying to imagine you with a bushy beard, hiking over the heather in a kilt, and I just can't see it. Where would you park your Camaro?”

“Next to my truck.”

“I bet you don't even like haggis.”

“Might eat it on a dare. But I do have a kilt.”

“That's totally hot, Jack.” She mocked, “So, you're a misfit among the highlanders?”

He shrugged in agreement and raised his head to study his wristwatch, clearly uncomfortable. “They're a dying breed, and I succumbed to the soulless ways of the modern world.”

“I see.” All the fight went out of her. The realization that she'd made a dozen wrong assumptions about him sat uncomfortably. It was humbling. She spread his fingers open and slowly razed his palm with her nails. This hypnotized him, she knew. “So, if you were to show up with me at the MacGunn family reunion … ”

“They would say it figures. They wrote me off as a loser long ago.”

“Never mind that you save the world at least once a week.”

“No fealty to God and country, that's me.”

What he didn't say, was that he'd chosen Kyros, and by so doing had chosen Cassie over his family, since he had been her bodyguard all her life. The revelation hit her like a car crash. The air seemed too thick to breathe, her eyes stung and her tip of her nose buzzed, reverberating the powerful emotion tugging on her heart. She'd felt a taste of it yesterday in the truck when Jack pulled over to yell at her, and now she let it have its way with her.

“Jack.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “I think I'm in love with you.”

He froze, then made a choking sound. “Crazy woman. You really do say whatever comes to mind
.
”
His eyes narrowed, then flashed iridescent. “I've loved you all along, Cass.”

He reached to take her cup and twisted the base into the sand, then tugged her wrist, pulling her down to lie over his chest. Waves of heat wafted from the sand as it heated. He grazed his fingers over her sides, lingering where her shape dipped inward or flared out. At least he appreciated what curves she did have.

Wish you wouldn't think that way.
He circled his hands around her waist and rubbed his thumbs over her abdomen. “You're strong, and tight, and shaped like … ”

“Like what, Jack?” Impossibly, he heated even more, apparently embarrassed. He wouldn't finish the sentiment, but she was curious. If Jack somehow found her figure attractive, she had to hear why. “I thought men want women like Lyssa.” Cassie gave a mental salute to Lyssa's 34E bust and twenty-seven-inch waist over shapely legs on a five foot seven frame. Proof that life is unfair.

“Most do,” he agreed, weathering the death threat her eyes sparked at him. “It's the contradiction. She always looks like she's just been tumbled but manages to look innocent about it.”

“Wow, Jack, you've really thought it through. Does Kyros know you're hot on his wife?”

“Am not. Just explaining. Besides, he'd disembowel me.”

“True.”

“But you, Cass … ” He paused to carve her shape with his hands again. “You intimidate men. You're classical. A goddess. You definitely give off the
unattainable
vibe.”

“You make me sound scary.”

“You are, lass.”

“But you don't think that?”

“Course I do. I'm scared witless of you.”

He half-mumbled this while staring at her mouth. Even the unspoken suggestion that he might repeat the sort of kiss he gave her last night set off a dozen alarms in her head and kicked her heart kick.

“Just do it,” she taunted, her lips brushing his as she said
do.

Shouldn't.
He nipped back, paused, then kissed her lightly as though asking a question.

It was too gratifying to provoke him, to make him war with himself. Cassie stretched and shifted, fitting against him like biological puzzle pieces. She felt his pulse through his arms and throbbing near his groin, felt every muscle contract. Their pulses had matched since he first came into the kitchen, but now the tempo increased in unison.

Cassie gripped his jaw on both sides and stole control of the kiss. She tilted her head to delve in, catching him off guard. She answered his half-hearted plea to stop with a slow lick using the tip of her tongue from the bottom of his throat to his earlobe.

Before she drew her next breath, Cassie found herself flat on her back, caged under Jack's iron arms with the breath knocked from her lungs. His eyes burned bright green, warning he risked succumbing to a rage. Her next breath drew in dust, but the sound of her cough was drowned by Jack's groan. He bared his teeth, and Cassie thought he was boiling mad before he tossed his head back and made a helpless noise.

He collapsed on her, all 240 pounds of him, but Cassie repressed a grunt to spare his ego. It actually felt nice. Really
nice, like a heavy quilt, with rock-hard pecs and …
Oh my.

Please, Cass. Don't say anything about it.

About what?
she teased. He sighed against her neck. The muscles in his arms relaxed and he went limp in defeat — well, not all of him. Jack grunted again and rolled away.

The little devil on her shoulder made her say, “You do have
huge
hands.”

“Knock it — ”

“Just saying I'm impressed, that's all.”

“I said
stop,
Cassiopeia.”

“If the military doesn't work out, you could have a big career as a po — ”

His eyes flashed bright green. Next thing she knew, air whistled in her ears and her entire body jostled as it bombed through cold water. She floated to the surface. A wave crashed over her head. Jack paced, fuming as she stalked out of the water toward him on the beach.

She tossed her wet hair over her shoulder and shot him a flirty smile. “Look who can't take a joke.”

His gaze raked her up and down. His nostrils flared, he flexed his hands. If he had a tail, it would be lashing back and forth. He was itching for a fight and wouldn't be satisfied until he got it.

She looked sideways to check for observers, then threw her weight into a low tackle to his waist, meant to throw him off balance. It worked — they crashed to the ground and skidded in the dirt. He whipped his shoulders to the side to get out of her chokehold and scrambled to his knees. She rolled out of his way, but too quickly he snatched her thigh and dumped her onto her back.

He cried foul when she yanked him by the hair and wrapped her arm around his throat, but then she heard his very male satisfaction as she hooked her leg behind his knee and flipped him onto his back. It tangled them in an erotic pretzel, and that was the turning point for his anger into sport.

She grabbed the dog tags hanging from the beaded chain around his neck and pulled him down for a rough kiss. They'd come full circle, and before long they were fighting again, which she didn't know was possible while still locked in a kiss.

Odd that violence inspired some deep thinking, but every moment in his arms her heart sang. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry, delirious with a dark, hungry feeling.
You're in love, stupid,
her helpful subconscious whispered. Cassie made a choice then, one she would wait to tell him.

Forty minutes later Jack finally conceded and dropped to the sand, panting gusts into the dirt-powdered air. Cassie had felt every minute pass slowly, muscles screaming, her lungs overtaxed. Other than that, she felt
good.
Fantastic. Her lips still tingled from their wrestling-slash-making-out.
Dirty sparring.
She liked it.

Cassie reached across the heated space and traced down Jack's arm with one finger, watching it climb up and slide down at dramatic angles. She could feel the incredible pressure behind his blood pumping through the raised veins lacing his skin, triple the normal human reading for cardiovascular peak. She monitored his pulse as it slowed with the perspective of a doctor, noting that his resting heart rate — thirty beats per minute! — would be medically comatose if not for the thundering strength behind his pulse. His body temps always ran high, like a fever.

“Don't ever go to a hospital, Jack.”

“I know. Freak show.”

His skin was velvet stretched over steel, surprisingly soft. She couldn't quit touching him. He let her explore, took it like a champ lying still, but only because she'd already worn him out.

“What I want to know is, what does an eligible Scottish chick have that I don't?”

“Another two inches and forty pounds,” he quipped. “Double-wide hips.”

“Can't say I wish for that.”

His lazy smile was breathtaking. One corner of his mouth pulled upward but dropped back while the other side made the attempt. His lips twitched a few times before he managed it, and then the most debonair lines creased his cheeks. Sunlight caught on the faint stubble dusting his jaw, his morning shave already nil. Suddenly all trace of boyishness vanished and a swashbuckler, smug Casanova showed through in his features.