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  If the bitch and her boss were holding operatives, Weston and Bane would get to the bottom of it, but not here and not now. It was time to get while the getting was good and live to fight another day.

  Chapter Seven

  Paisley stayed close to Weston as he led her through the darkened club. It seemed empty now, but she knew it wasn’t. Everyone with any sense was probably hidden. Had she had any sense she’d have never been there to start with.

  Closing her eyes briefly, she held tight to Weston’s hand as he led her in the direction of the entrance. She thought about Gale and about the vampire’s words—they were holding captives. Was Gale one?

  She tugged on Weston’s hand, getting him to stop.

  He looked down at her. “You’re not staying here.”

  “I know, it’s just, well, maybe she knows something about my friend,” she said, understanding it was dangerous to linger any more than necessary in the place. She’d been lucky to have Weston walk into the room and not whoever was running the show at the club.

  She knew that and she was currently looking a gift horse in the mouth. Nothing good would come of it.

  Weston’s hunky friend bumped into her. “Sorry.”

  Heat rushed over her as she collided with Weston. When he drew her back to arm’s length, she noticed his eyes were dilated. He felt it too.

  “Weston?” asked the other man. “You all right there?”

  Paisley stared between the men, wondering how it was possible to have two hunks like Weston and his friend occupying the same location. Wasn’t that against some sort of universal code? One that kept women from fainting? If not, it should have been. She gulped. They were both very sexy and all male. But Weston won out in her eyes. Not that his buddy was lacking in any way.

  It was the makings of an erotic-fantasy sandwich, one to each side of her. The totally hot friend’s jeans were barely done up and he was minus a shirt. Like Weston, the man had scars on his body, though his were not as faint as Weston’s. A set of the scars lined up so perfectly it looked as if he’d been attacked by a huge animal that had swiped his arm and gotten his torso in the process. And, like Weston, none of the scars took away from how sexy the men were despite the fact that several of the new guy’s were much longer.

  The man looked at her and quirked a brow before he stole a glance deeper into the club. “Weston, you’re taking one for the road? I wasn’t aware they offered to-go packages.”

  Paisley wanted to be offended by the remark, but she glanced at Weston and found whatever she carried inside her kicking into high gear again, making her squirm in place as she watched him there, his muscles bulging, pulling attention to his torso. Man, she loved the guy’s abs. She glanced back at the new guy. His were pretty awesome too. Did they work out together? Oh man, she wanted to see that workout session. She could imagine all that hard man muscle just dripping with sweat, the two of them looking like gods with lickable goodness just beading up on them.

  “Stop drooling over my friend,” snapped Weston, touching her chin and forcing her gaze to his face. His blue gaze was heated and she wondered what was going through the man’s mind. From the looks of it he seemed torn between scolding her and pressing her against the wall and fucking her into oblivion.

  Hope it’s the latter of the two, she thought with a breathy sigh.

  “Have you seen him?” she asked, before thinking any better of it. Her mind and body were at war with one another. Too much had happened too fast for her to fully absorb any of it. She knew deep down that she was more than likely in shock. Didn’t stop her behavior any, though. “Hard not to drool.”

  Weston’s jaw set and a low growl came from him, making something in her lower body tingle with anticipation. She pushed against him, her gaze on him fully. “Take your shirt off again. I want to drool over you. In fact, I want to lick you.”

  She sounded a lot like Gale at the moment, and Paisley wasn’t sure how she felt about that realization. She almost apologized to Weston for the outburst, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. She did want to drool over him, and her body ached for more than he’d offered her. Much more.

  His eyes widened and his friend laughed, the sound deep and sexy. “Man, Weston, your face. This is priceless. Want to tell me why you’re not taking her up on the offer to let her lick you? I know you want it. I can smell the desire rolling off you, brother.”

  “You’re brothers?” she asked, glancing between the men. They were both huge and bulky and seemed to be rocking similar close-cut beards, but she didn’t see much of a resemblance beyond that.

  Weston took her chin in his hand once more, making her look at him. She didn’t mind. He was gorgeous. She could have been forced to look at far worse when her body was craving sex. He wasn’t a hardship by any means.

  “Bane,” he said over her head to the man with them. “How do you propose we get out of here? I can smell more of them.”

  “The rotten smell?” asked Paisley, wondering if it had been the men who attacked them that smelled of death.

  “Yep. Hybrid dicks,” said the other man. “I swear there must be an assembly line of them nearby. More and more are popping out of the woodwork around here lately. Like roaches.”

  “And all of them smell like zombies,” said Weston.

  Paisley’s eyes widened. “Zombies are real?”

  “Shall we exit out the front and make a splash?” asked Weston, grinning.

  “That works,” said the man—Bane—his hand moving her shoulder. “She’s hot. Never thought I’d suggest sharing a woman, but hey, I’m sure they have a price for that here too.”

  She froze.

  Weston roared and the next thing she knew, he was past her and slamming into the man called Bane. Weston pushed Bane over a table and they crashed into a chair, splintering it almost instantly. Snarling, Weston drew his arm back, claws emerging quickly. “She’s mine!”

  Bane’s dark eyes widened as he reached up calmly with both hands, almost in a surrender pose. “You all right there, brother?”

  “She is mine!” Weston shouted louder this time.

  Bane gasped and then pushed off Weston, charging a group of men behind them. Paisley stepped back into the shadows, watching as the men once again fought through what she’d had assumed was an unmovable force. She was fast starting to suspect the man claiming to be her mate was actually a superhero. No other way around it.

  A jerk at times, but a hero all the same.

  She tried her best to stay out of the way, letting Weston and Bane do whatever it was they did. Something yanked hard on the back of Paisley’s hair and she yelped as she found herself being dragged backwards by one of the smelly bad guys.

  She clawed at his arm to no avail and then kicked her feet, forcing him to slow his pace as she flailed about like a maniac. That got her nowhere fast. She did her best to avoid screaming like one of those women from the movies who seemed to always need to be saved by the big hunky men. She’d grown up on the streets and was hardly a delicate little flower. She wasn’t to Weston’s level of fighting by any means, but she wasn’t a weakling and she wasn’t going to be a victim any longer.

  The thing dragging her growled and spittle dripped down and onto her arm, turning her stomach. He bent, putting his face dangerously close to hers, his eyes glowing red. He flashed a double row of teeth at her, making her instantly think of a shark. Whatever the thing was, he smelled horrid and was butt ugly. He also wasn’t taking her another inch. Not with any ease.

  She clawed at his eyes but missed and he grabbed her wrists, slamming them back at the same time he rode her body to the floor, crashing his full weight upon her, knocking the wind from her. Stunned, she lay there a moment, unable to draw in a deep breath.

  The monster on her grabbed at the hem of her skirt, and when she wrapped her mind around the fact the thing was pushing her skirt up, trying to get between her legs, she shut off, her body and mind suddenly feeling very relaxed. A strange buzzing seem
ed to build deep in her at a rate that should have frightened her. It didn’t. Deep down she knew it had to be. That whatever was happening to her was a good thing. That it was there to help. Not to hurt her.

  The thing on her made progress, his hand skimming her inner thigh. Vaguely, she heard Weston yelling, his voice sounding so much deeper than it already was. Paisley sounded him out, her focus on the monster above her. She let the pressure and buzzing sensation in her build more and did nothing to stop him as he ripped from her, bursting out as if she were an exploding sun. One second the monster was on her and then it was no more.

  Gone.

  Poof.

  Nothing there.

  She sat up slowly, the energy seeming to pulse through her, the buzzing loud, the pressure there but not painful in the least. It was almost liberating. It took her a moment to hear over the ringing in her ears, but when she did, she heard Weston yelling for her.

  “Let go of me,” he shouted. “She needs me!”

  “Brother, calm down,” said Bane, sounding strained. “You can’t touch her right now. Don’t you feel it?”

  “Let me fucking go!”

  “I can’t. She’s got Fae power rolling off her,” said Bane. “If she hit you with it you’ll go splat like the other guy too.”

  Go splat?

  Paisley glanced around herself, noting that her body and the area directly around her was clean, free from anything, but beyond that was something her mind couldn’t wrap around. Beyond that looked as if a grenade had gone off and only blood splatter remained.

  Pink dust.

  The thought hit her hard as she realized what she was sitting in the center of—the monster who had been on her. He was now nothing more than pink dust all around her in the hall.

  Her mouth opened and she heard someone screaming. It took Paisley a few seconds to realize she was the culprit. Lifting her hands, she stared down at them, the energy she’d felt seeming to lessen, drawing back into her, the buzzing ending, taking the strange calmness with it. She screamed more and scrambled to get to her feet. Twisting, she found Weston being held back at the end of the hall by Bane, who didn’t look as though he could hold on much longer.

  Paisley continued to scream, keeping her hands up in the air, horrified at what had happened. At what she’d done. She’d never done anything of the sort before.

  Weston broke free from Bane and charged her. He snatched hold of her and lifted her off her feet, running with her through the carnage around them. Bane followed close behind. When they burst free from the club, they ran toward a black SUV. Weston set her down and Bane grabbed her hands, lowering them.

  “No offense, lady, but I’d rather you not aim those at me,” said Bane with a shaky breath.

  She blinked up at him, the screaming finally done. “W-what happened?”

  “You don’t know?” he asked as Weston lifted her into the SUV as if she were a child. He climbed in the backseat with her as Bane ran around to the driver’s side.

  Weston yanked her against him so hard she couldn’t breathe. She had to push on him to get him to loosen his grasp. When he did, he bent his head, his lips instantly finding hers. The kiss was hot and branding, helping her to find her center once more.

  As he pulled his head back to look at her, she started to shake again, her hand going to his chest. She shook her head. “I think I just made a man blow up.”

  “Yep,” he said, as if that sort of thing happened to him daily. Maybe it did.

  She looked down at her hands, shock still coursing through her veins. “You’re not hearing me. I made a man blow up. Boom. Splat. Poof. Blah. Grr.”

  When he didn’t respond, she met his gaze to find him grinning at her, his blue gaze light and cheery. She shook her head. “Are you not understanding what I’m telling you?”

  “Woman, I’m getting every damn word you’re saying,” he said with a lick of his lower lip. “I, for one, am fucking thrilled you did it.”

  Her eyes widened. “What?”

  “Baby, he was going to do bad things to you,” said Weston, his gaze hardening. “And I couldn’t get to you fast enough. I’m so happy you turned him into hybrid puree, that all I want to do is roll onto you and spend my seed in you.”

  Bane cleared his throat from the front seat as he drove. “If we could refrain, that would be great.”

  Weston laughed. “Did you see her, Bane? She was amazing.”

  “She was something all right,” said Bane, his dark gaze on her in the rearview mirror. “This isn’t something you knew you could do?”

  “No,” she whispered. “And I don’t ever want to do it again.”

  Weston grumbled. “If you are ever threatened again, you most certainly will puree them. Do you understand me? You’re my mate, and if I say you explode someone to protect yourself, you better damn well obey.”

  “Obey?” she asked, the word tasting sour.

  Weston pursed his lips. “Not obey. Obey was a poor choice of wording.”

  “Huh,” said Bane from the front seat. “I was sort of stuck on the whole use of the word mate.”

  Weston rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, about that.”

  “Is anyone else super tired?” asked Paisley, feeling as if the weight of the last few weeks came crashing down upon her. She sank against Weston’s embrace and closed her eyes, bone tired.

  Chapter Eight

  Weston held Paisley partially on his lap in the back of the SUV as she slept. Bane kept stealing glances at them from the mirror. Weston caught his friend’s gaze and held it a second.

  “Stop worrying about her. She’s no threat to us,” said Weston. “And I know what you’re thinking. She’s not a liability, either.”

  Bane exhaled loudly. “Actually, I was worried about you, not her. In case you missed it, you verbally laid claim to her to mark her and then you referred to her as your mate.”

  Weston hadn’t missed it. “Yes.”

  “I thought we were going to the club to blow steam off so we could go searching for this supposed mate of yours,” added Bane, making a hard right turn and driving at a speed that would have worried other people. Defensive driving was a skill all the operatives possessed. A learned one. The scientists had ramped up their reflexes so they were pretty much all-around badasses behind the wheel of a car. The men had a lot of skills and an equal number of flaws.

  “That had been the plan,” replied Weston softly, skimming his thumb over Paisley’s cheek, noticing for the first time the hints of olive undertones in her skin. She was a blend of something. Whatever it was left her being the single most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes upon. “Plan kind of went out the window when I found her there.”

  “You’re sure she’s your mate?” asked Bane as he raised one hand from the wheel to indicate he didn’t mean anything bad by asking, but that he had to at least ask.

  “Without a doubt,” said Weston. “From the second I met her I’ve been fighting the urge to bite her and claim her fully.”

  “Heard that was the way of it when mates come into play,” said Bane, his voice strained, and from what Weston could see of his reflection in the rearview mirror, the man had a pained expression on his face.

  “You’ll find your mate,” said Weston, wanting to ease his friend’s pain. Though, the reality was, no one was assured to have a mate. No one was guaranteed they’d find that person that made them feel whole. Nothing in life was a for sure.

  Especially not mates.

  Bane didn’t respond. He just kept driving, his focus on the road and off the topic of mates. At least verbally. There was no doubt in Weston’s mind that Bane was still thinking on it all. Weston hadn’t thought of himself as the type of man to want something long term with a woman, especially since he liked to stay on the move. Holding Paisley in his arms changed that.

  He had a few homes spread around the world that were more than he’d term safe houses or crash pads. They held a little bit of his personality and he tended to sp
end more time than he should within them.

  The government hadn’t come knocking in the last few years and he’d started to wonder if maybe they were done trying to track down their Outcasts.

  Yeah, right.

  “How much longer do we have until we’re there?” asked Weston, wondering how long he’d get to simply hold his woman and soak in the sight of her before they reached the safe house.

  Bane cleared his throat. “Maybe twenty minutes.”

  Weston could feel a question coming on from his friend. He was guessing it was one he’d not like with how much beating around the bush Bane was doing to get to it.

  “Why was your mate in that type of club?” asked Bane softly as if the volume of the question might lessen its blow.

  Weston sighed. “I asked the same thing.”

  “And the answer was?”

  Weston touched her cheek lightly as he spoke. “From what I can gather, she was looking for someone named Gale and she knows Jinx.”

  Bane glanced back at him. “As in the woman who’s mated to Asher Brooks? Colonel with the Immortal Ops?”

  “You heard about that too, huh?” asked Weston, not really that surprised. Not much happened within the Ops world that didn’t spread like wildfire through varying contacts, eventually reaching the people who needed to know. Sometimes the information came by means that weren’t standard—such as Weston’s dreams. He wasn’t the only Outcast with the gift or curse of foresight. Some were better with it than him. Others didn’t have a fucking clue what they were doing.

  Bane nodded. “Good for him. But how does your woman know Jinx? She work for her at the brothel?”

  Weston’s jaw set. “I don’t think so. She mentioned something about being there because she needed to feed.”

  “She’s not a vampire,” stated Bane clearly. He then tapped the steering wheel lightly. “That vampire chick at the club mentioned the boss had a thing for succubi. Your girl there one?”