Didn’t release her. “Who…” Too much going on in brevis these days to ignore that fact. “It matters…”
“It matters to me,” she told him. “But it is not yours to have.” She rose, a fluid motion, and strode away down the buffer zone. No looking back…but there, at the edge of the trees, the slightest of hesitations.
But then she moved on.
And Nick’s shaking arms gave way, and he plowed down into the dirt without grace. He spat an unequivocal curse and rolled over to his back, wiping dirt from beneath his lip with the careless and uncoordinated swipe of his wrist.
All right. Fine. He hadn’t intimidated her into sticking around. It had been a long shot. He tried Annorah again, got nowhere—his focus was too scrambled, his energies likewise. So he needed to get up on his feet and find his way across the fairground to his car. Or at the least, onto the agility grounds where someone would have a phone.
Because he had no doubt his mystery betrayer-and-savior was right. If Gausto was behind this, if he’d had any doubts of the outcome…he wasn’t far off. Or his people weren’t far. No matter how the Septs Prince had instructed him.
Get up. Walk. Stagger. Crawl, if he had to. To the phone, in the car. Across the show grounds. Gausto would seed these grounds with his people if he realized that Nick was here, loose and vulnerable. And unlike the Sentinels, the Core agents carried guns. Guns and amulets and no compunction about damaging their prey.
His fingers twitched; fever cold chased him. And he realized, some moments later, that he hadn’t moved at all.
Son of a bitch.
…no, still hadn’t moved at all.
He didn’t hear her coming.
There she was, standing over him, and in his mind he rolled up and sprang to his feet and he caught her—claiming every bit of the intimacy she’d established with her invitation to run in the desert, every bit of the conflicted tangle between them, driven into place with her four-footed romp and lighthearted play.
But no, he still hadn’t moved at all.
“You,” she said, glaring down at him. “Have. To. Go. Are these the wrong words?” She made a frustrated noise deep in her throat, something that probably hadn’t started out human. “He said it would not hurt you.”
Nick coughed out a laugh. He hunted words, found only another wry truly amused laugh, even if it turned into a groan of effort as he did, finally, roll back over to his elbows. “Honey, he lies.”
“Jet.” She leaned over to grasp his upper arm, hauling him halfway to his feet with one smooth effort. He staggered into her, but she took advantage of the movement, hauling him forward.
“Jet?” he asked, the word a gasp as she slipped under his arm, wiry strength in that lean frame. “Where—?”
“Can you drive to leave this place? No. Then you come with me.”
“Wait!” Still a gasp, but more emphatic—and when she hesitated, there on the edge of the desert, he managed to keep his own feet. “Compromise.” Because he’d gathered this much—she was on the run, as of now. Breaking away from Gausto, and lucky she’d be to survive more than a few hours of that defiance. “You have no place to go. I have no way to get there. Come with me. ”
She stared at him, the lowering sun slanting down to light whiskey-gold eyes into a glow. More of a glower, really—a demand. “Did that make sense?”
Nick waved off such details. “In fact,” he said, “it didn’t. But I think you understand me. Because I’m pretty sure I understand you.”
She snorted. “You understand nothing,” she told him. “But I will take you to your place, and then if it pleases me, I will consider staying.” She adjusted her grip on his arm as it draped over her shoulder, and turned back to the motorcycle propped up against the tree line, a blazing red Triumph Tiger for which he couldn’t help but make a sound of appreciation. Pride flashed across her face. “Even if they are near, they will not catch us,” she said—and then cast him a dare of a look. “As long as you don’t fall off.”
He didn’t fall off.
It was a tall bike, but she handled it ably on the desert caliche and once on the road, shifted smooth and fast up to speed. Good thing, that smoothness—the back suspension wasn’t adjusted for his weight, and it wallowed.
They managed the turn onto Houghton; he clamped his hands at her hips and lurched into her back. He sent her across the bridge to the access road and south, staying off the highway. They cruised down along the Pantano wash, and then onto the little side roads toward Pisto Hill and towering Rincon Peak. The developments fell away and turned into worn, distant homes, baked dry in the sun over the years. A country store and post office, a small farm supplies store, a mom-‘n’-pop grocery…
Nick didn’t truly see any of them, sidetracked by the tremendous effort of staying upright on the motorcycle, of hanging on. And his dimmed and fuzzy senses were otherwise full.
Of her. Jet. The scent of her, swirling around them with the billowing dust, settling into his pores. More wolf than anything he knew, the scent of fresh clean wild and honest effort and some edgy unknown element that came through as pure Jet.
Then again, that was the problem, wasn’t it? More wolf than anything he knew. Because far too much about her didn’t mesh with Sentinel blood. Not the scent, not the way she’d changed, not the way she spoke.
Not the way she worked with Gausto.
And here I am, bringing her home. Lurching and slumping against her until the strong, athletic lines of her body became familiar—until his hands took for granted what they would find when he adjusted his grip, and yet still that shape—the flex and stretch of steady muscle as she handled the tall bike, the neat curve of her ribs and the quiet tuck of her waist, the swell of her hips and the push of a gorgeously rounded ass against his thighs—made him greedy for more.
Dumb bastard. She’d poisoned him. She’d left him helpless for Gausto.
And then she pulled me out of there. Saved his wolf hide.
Dammit, I can’t think. He leaned his forehead against her shoulder, let it settle there.
Eventually, he realized they’d stopped again—that she needed direction. “Little,” he told her. “Adobe…Beagles.”
She turned her head; her voice came muffled by her helmet, full-face sport helmet in stark red and white against black. “I don’t understand.”
But Nick wasn’t going to be much help. The best he could do, as he slid down against her back and tipped off the bike, was not take her with him.
Jet stared at him, oddly bereft without the sensation of lean, hard muscle pressing up against her, the warmth of his hands at her waist. He sprawled in the dirt at the side of the road—gritty pale sand scattered over caliche, full of rock and dryness and surrounded by all things spiny. An ocotillo soared above him, its thin, spindly arms offering no shade; a cactus wren churred nearby and flittered away.
Her hand slipped the clutch; the bike stalled out. Silence settled around her, until the sound of her own breathing within the helmet magnified, filling her mind with a surreal susurrus of white noise.
She’d never been out on her own before in the human world. Entirely on her own. Not on an assignment with carefully learned routes, not accompanied in the Tortolita foothills while learning to ride the bike. Not accompanied by Gausto out on training runs on the street. No one looking, literally, over her shoulder.
It was simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying.
And what of Nick Carter? Did it even matter?
Oh, yes. That answer came swiftly and inexplicably. It didn’t particularly make sense,