time, it would be Sebastian Perry. Just one more concrete reason why Bas’s ogling of Caprise needed to be checked—immediately.
She kept walking right into the dark canyon. A breeze blew by and for the first time, X realized she could actually be chilly. So instead of speaking again he closed the distance quickly, pulling her arm so she’d have no choice but to stop walking and turning her to face him. With his other hand he thrust the shirt at her, an air of deja vu surfacing. “Put it on,” he said forcefully.
Of course since it was Caprise he was speaking to she rolled her eyes before yanking the shirt from his grasp. Another man might have had the decency to turn away while she dressed. But X had never claimed to be like any other man. He watched, with great interest, as her arms stretched upward to slip the impossibly large sweatshirt over her breasts.
“Better now?” he asked when he was certain he could speak without his voice cracking like some punk-ass little boy.
Why the sight of her naked never ceased to arouse him, X had no clue. He’d seen this body a couple of times already. He’d touched her, fucked her, he should be so over it. And yet here he was, standing in the middle of some damn healing canyon after they’d killed three shifters, with a hard-on that was quickly growing painful.
“You’re an ass!” was her heated retort.
X chuckled because for one scary-ass moment he thought she might actually cry. Her bottom lip had quivered when she turned back to face him and her forehead looked a little furrowed. And she was a female— whom he’d discovered were prone to emotional fits after battle. But he should have known better.
She was in his face in about two seconds, her bony finger poking—with a little discomfort—into his bare chest.
“You do not fight for me! I can handle my own. And I had that cat. I would have taken him down without your help,” she yelled.
After she’d finished and gulped in air for a breath, X grabbed the wrist of the offending finger and pulled. For good measure he grabbed her other wrist and looked her right in the eye.
“I interrupted because I didn’t want him to roll over and kill you,” he told her.
“I had him!”
X nodded in agreement. “You did.” She’d also had a good portion of his self-control as he’d watched both cats tumble over that butte falling about ten feet to the ground. “But I’m not used to watching females take a fall like that. And I’m definitely not used to seeing you in that position.”
“I can fight in any form,” she told him, yanking at her arms for him to let go. “I can take care of myself, whether it’s from a cat or a … I … I mean…” Her voice trailed off.
Then she did look away, her head down, wrists still trapped by his.
“I know you’re a fighter, Caprise. But that’s not what this is about, is it?”
“No,” she said, her head snapping back around at him. “It’s about you not trusting me enough to handle myself.” She huffed.
Okay, X could accept that. Nothing would stop him from taking down a kill. That’s how jaguars operated. And despite her earlier denial, Caprise was a jaguar. And if he wasn’t mistaken—which he really didn’t believe he was this time—Caprise was about to have some type of breakdown. X still prayed for no appearances by tears, but pulled her close to his chest, kissing the top of her head.
“You did good out there. Even though I told you to stay behind me.”
“I don’t have to stand behind you or any man.”
X waited a long moment, giving her a minute to catch her breath, to clear her mind, which he knew was whirling right about now.
“You want to tell me about the man you did stand behind? The one who hurt you so bad you’re throwing stones at me every chance you get.”
She remained still. X admitted to himself that he could have been wrong. This could have been about something totally different. But no, he wasn’t. From what he did know about females there were only two things that could get them this worked up—family and/or a man. And since Nick was the doting older brother who had been trying his damndest not to even yell at Caprise, X was betting on the latter.
“Why should I tell you anything?” she asked quietly.
“You don’t have to,” he told her even though right at this very moment he wanted her to tell him more than anything else in this world. “But it might help.” Again, hypocrisy almost choked him. But X had good reasons for keeping his trap shut about his past—good goddamn reasons.
“And Caprise, I have to be straight with you about this. I’m going to find out sooner or later. You could save us both some time by just telling me who the guy was that was stupid enough to fuck with you.”
Her head shot up at his words. “And what are you going to do? Go shoot him with your big gun? Or show him your teeth and scare him until he pees in his pants?”
She had a sarcastic tone, most of the time. Now was no different, but it kind of made X want to laugh. Was this how she pictured him? The man that handled things with violence. If so, she wasn’t exactly wrong. His plan was to find the bastard and snap his neck—okay, no, he wasn’t going to snap the guy’s neck, but he was going to make sure he’d never mess with Caprise again.
“I’m going to handle the situation, that’s all you need to know.”
She took a deep breath. “Well, all you need to know is there was a man and now there isn’t. It’s been over for a really long time.”
“But judging from his texts to you, he’s not on board with that decision.”
“That’s not him,” she said, and the scent of her lie almost suffocated X.
That alone made him just a little edgier, if that were possible. “Then who is it?”
She shrugged. “Wrong number.”
“Wrong answer, Caprise,” was his response.
“So what did Hernandez have to say after your overnight ultimatum wore off?” Bas asked several hours later when they were in his office.
X and Caprise still hadn’t said more than two words to each other. But he had received an email from his office with the information on the phone number trace he’d done before leaving DC. The results weren’t good, but at least they gave X a place to start looking for Caprise’s stalker. Unfortunately, it would circle him right back to Athena’s.
“He wrote down some dates—I guess for when meetings occurred—and some amounts that he knew were exchanged. I’m going to take all the info back to DC and work on it from there.” That wasn’t all that Hernandez had told him, but it was all he planned to tell Bas for now.
“Intel from Comastaz came in just before you arrived,” Bas said.
He sat back on the chocolate-brown couch that was across the room from his desk. After the early morning they’d all had, coming back to the room to get some food and some rest had been first and foremost. And instead of the cat X had seen a while ago, he was definitely looking at the man now. He wore cream-colored linen pants and a matching shirt; his shoes were some type of loafer, something X would never try to squeeze his feet into. But on Bas it looked right, as if these things were made for this man. Whatever, X shook his head and took a seat in a chair across from him.
“What’s going on there? You thought it might be a leak or something,” he said, recalling their conversation from a few weeks ago about the government-owned lab in Sedona.
“It’s not good. We were able to get a shifter inside, sent him in as a rep from a waste management company. He found some interesting emails on one of the computers.”
“The joys of technology,” X replied grimly. Bas wasn’t looking like his normally suave self; in fact, X noted the guy’s brow was just a bit furrowed, his eyes a little shielded.
“Well, that technology has confirmed one of our greatest fears. I’m telling you this before I tell the other FLs because I know you’ll report directly to Rome the minute you return to DC.”
X sat up, resting his elbows on his knees. “Give it to me,” he told Bas.
“Somebody’s asking questions about another species. There was talk of some photos and containment. They don’t sound like they have specifics, just a hunch. But it’s the government, you know where they can go with
