Marie Harte - Grayson's Gamble

So why the order to kill her? Unless she orchestrated the rogues and mutants. Maybe she wasn’t innocent at all. So the intel was wrong, so what? Did his grandmother doubt his ability to do the right thing? Gray didn’t fail. Ever. He lived to protect, like the others in his family. He and his sister had been helping the government in one fashion or another for years. So why would Alicia suspect him of not being capable? Had his disappointment with the job shown? He was going through a down phase, so he kept telling himself. But to have shown any measure of poor performance… He cringed at the idea and turned back to the map.

After studying it, he pocketed the paper and resolved to find Bas today. No more wasting time. More rogues would come after Ross if they weren’t already working for her. If Gray weren’t careful, he’d lose his partner and fail the mission before he had the answers he needed.

He started running, intent on finding Bas and exacting some justice. He ignored his imagination—odd thoughts of Bas and Ross fucking like bunnies that didn’t belong with the danger so close—and hurried to save his obnoxious partner. God help Ross if she’d touched so much as a hair on Bas’s head.

After a full night and half the day spent playing with an insatiable Circ in bed, Ali stroked Sebastian— Bas , he’d told her to call him—with rough affection. Her beast wanted to dig her claws into him, to see his pretty blood run red. But Ali wanted to pet him in thanks for giving her peace. She felt a calmness she hadn’t felt for the past twenty years, from the time she’d first been taken to the hated labs at the tender age of six.

“That feels so good.” Bas purred under her. After an entire night of wild, bone-melting sex, he hadn’t made one plea to escape. Other than a request to relieve himself, which she’d allowed while she’d trained her gun on him, he’d been a low-maintenance guest. Prisoner . A low-maintenance prisoner.

It was too easy to think of him as a friend after sharing such intimacies. She’d never been taken with such thoroughness or tenderness. He’d let her do whatever she wanted and hadn’t been nasty or rough at all. Of course, the restraints holding him down might have had something to do with that.

“Why are you here?” she blurted, hating herself for needing to know. So much for killing him without a qualm after some fun.

“To find you.” He didn’t react except to sigh and enjoy her touch.

“You found me. Now what?”

An acceleration in his heartbeat alerted her to be wary.

“And then we figure out why there are so many rogues in the area. Not to mention the mutants.” He lifted his head, and she met his gaze. “Who is Trenton?”

“Like you don’t know.”

“I don’t.” He frowned. “I’d tell you if I did.”

“Sure you would. I admit, you’re different from the usual ones he sends. You’re prettier. You smell better. And you sure know what to do in bed.”

His smile blinded her. “Thanks. I aim to please.”

She snorted to cover a laugh, baffled at why she should find such joy with one of Trenton’s rogues. “Point is, I’m not going to breed with you. And I’m not going to let you kill me.” She studied him, curious as to what his reaction would be. Truth was, she couldn’t control her fertility the way some of the females could. But Trenton didn’t know that.

“Honey, I like you. But we just met. I’m not ready to play daddy. And I’m not going to kill you.” He said it with such finality, as if he meant it. But did he?

“Why not? You’re here to take me back, aren’t you?” She sat up next to him, uncaring of her nudity, though his gaze dipped low and stayed there. “I’m not going to volunteer to spread my legs there any more than I would here.” She held up a hand to stop his obvious rejoinder. “Yeah, I chose to fuck you. My choice . That’s the difference.”

“First off, we didn’t exactly fuck. We made love.”

Was he serious?

“Secondly, it’s funny you’re all about choice. Because seems to me I’m tied up and at your mercy, sweetheart.”

She definitely heard some zing in that sweetheart . Finally, the Circ dropped the act. He was annoyed and showing it.

“Yeah, Bas? Well, you might have been at my mercy, but you sure as hell enjoyed yourself. Don’t pretend you didn’t.” Yet she couldn’t help a flush of shame that she had forced herself on someone unwilling.

Memories flooded her. A glance at his manacles no longer made her feel safe. Instead she felt sick inside. Jesus, she’d done to him what they’d once done to her.

“I won’t say I didn’t enjoy it. But—hey, wait a minute. Where are you going?”

She darted off him and escaped down the corridor, back up the stairs into the cabin. Tears filled her eyes, and she let them spill. The beast that had taken great pleasure in having the male didn’t understand, and she couldn’t explain it. Not to a being that thrived on her id, on the basic drives that defined life. She wanted, she took. She hungered, she fed. She wanted sex, she raped a man.

Ali had turned into the monster she’d feared for so long. She hurried into the shower and scrubbed her skin raw. Then she dried off, dressed, and left the cabin in search of answers. She needed to know what to do, how to act. Never had she thought she might deserve the shit she’d been through. The constant invasions into her privacy. The examinations that left her feeling vulnerable and sick to her stomach. That one nightmare session spent with a much larger male, one who wouldn’t stop rutting until she’d been forced to kill him—with him still inside her.

The terror of that long-ago event had since faded, but the reminders of the brutal nature of the male of the species could never be erased.

And now the victim had become the abuser. How fucking clichéd.

She tried to tell herself he could have said no. That he might have refused her. He’d been with her every step of the way. All those “more” and “yes” and “harder” pleas she’d been helpless to deny. Yet she’d riled his lusts, enflamed the beast inside him. And like most rogues, he’d been lost to his hormones when she called on hers.

Not able to handle the blame and mortification snowballing on her psyche, she retreated under a wall of indifference. It wouldn’t matter what she’d done in a few more weeks. She just had to last long enough to infiltrate Trenton’s heavily guarded lab. Once she’d figured out how to get to him, she’d kill him. After that, she’d erase each and every one of the monsters still willingly working for him. A bullet for each one, then herself at the very end. Easy as pie.

Yeah, right.

Ali sighed as she trudged through melting snow. Reality wouldn’t go away just because she wanted it to. What the hell should she do with Romeo at the house? Should she kill him? Set him free? Fuck him again? Because damn if her libido would let her forget how good he’d felt inside her, even if he hadn’t exactly wanted to be there.

Shame again washed over her, and she snarled in denial. The sound of rustling to her left called on her fight-or-flight response, and like usual, she fought. Ali followed the sounds and changed without thinking. She filled out her overlarge sweatshirt and baggy pants, glad she’d thought to go barefoot, and hauled ass after what smelled like a doe. To the animal’s misfortune, it had been injured and didn’t have the speed to outrun her. Ali’s beast took her rage, lust, and confusion and funneled it into a new hunger. One for destruction.

She gave the poor creature a quick, clean kill and forced herself to ignore the urge to maul it. But all the while, her thoughts dwelled on Bas and that sweet scent that lingered over him, separate yet a part of him. She bathed in the doe’s blood to satiate the beast, and as she did, she wondered if her eyes matched the dark red of the doe’s arterial spurt.