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  He surged up and his arms closed about me, catching me. His touch was light, but I knew with absolute certainty that there was no getting away. He had me.

  Only two thin layers of fabric separated me from him. I wasn’t even wearing a bra. My breasts brushed against the hard wall of his chest. My hands rested on his shoulders. A low, insistent feeling began to build between my legs. I wanted to be touched and stroked.

  He was looking at me like I was the most beautiful thing in the world.

  “What are we doing?” I asked. My voice came out quiet.

  “You know exactly what we’re doing.”

  His breathing deepened. Need and lust swirled in his eyes. I searched their depths for the familiar icy darkness, but it was gone. I had chased it away. He was focused on me completely and I drank it in. Oh, I wanted him.

  I slid my hands up his arms, feeling the hard cables of muscle tense and bulge under the pressure. He made a low male noise but didn’t move. His body was hard with tension against mine, but he didn’t move an inch.

  It dawned on me that he was waiting for me to decide.

  “You’re being very patient.”

  “I can be a good dragon, when the occasion requires it.”

  I licked my lips. His gaze snagged on my tongue.

  I had to decide. I couldn’t stand it any longer. Either we did this, or I needed to march back upstairs. I was a grown woman, damn it. I’d almost died less than twelve hours ago and he was here, protecting me, making sure my family survived the night. He didn’t have to do it. Maybe he was a sociopath, but if he was, for some reason, I mattered to him. In this moment, right now, he belonged to me.

  “This one time, maybe you shouldn’t be.”

  “I shouldn’t be what?” he asked.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be so good.”

  He spun me around. My back pressed against the kitchen wall. His big muscular body caged me in. His blue eyes laughed at me. “How bad am I allowed to be?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

  “Try not to scream.” He winked at me.

  His magic touched my skin just above the knee, a familiar heated velvet pressure. His arms stroked mine, pinning them against the wall. Try not to scream, huh. Aren’t we full of ourselves . . .

  The pressure burst, prickling my skin with raspy heat. Oh my God.

  I gasped and his mouth sealed mine, stealing the sound. The taste of him flooded my senses, overloading me. I wanted my hands on him, but he held me tight, pinning my wrists against the wall with his left hand.

  His magic stroked my skin and slid sideways, to the sensitive spot on my inner thigh just above my knee. It felt rough, a little like a burn, a little like pain, and a lot like pleasure. It lingered and slid up, higher and higher, setting my sensitive skin and nerves on fire. My head spun. I wanted sex. I wanted him inside me, right now. I wanted to feel the full length of him stretching me and feel his body shudder on top of mine.

  I moaned into his lips. He kissed me, pillaging my mouth, the slick heat of his tongue taking over, and I teased him with my tongue, nipping at his lower lip. My breasts felt heavy and full; my body turned pliant. He was all hard muscle and rigid strength, and I stretched myself against him, seducing, enticing. He groaned.

  The magic spilled over my inner thigh and licked the sensitive lips around my clit with its velvet tongue. Pleasure washed over me. I cried out. He caught it with his mouth, smothering the sound.

  The heat was building between my legs, a crazy mix of pain and ecstasy. I was breathing too fast and I wanted more of him.

  Please. Please, more. Please.

  “Shhh, baby,” he whispered into my ear, his voice rough with desire. He kissed me again and again, trailing a line of kisses down my neck. Each touch of his lips sent bursts of electric shocks through me. His gaze roamed my body. “You’re so beautiful. You have no idea.”

  I wanted to see more of him. “Let me go, Connor,” I whispered.

  He hesitated for a moment and released me.

  I pulled his shirt off and looked at him, taking in the solid strength of his shoulders, the powerful chest, and the flat hard lines of his stomach in a single supercharged second. The sheer physical power of him was overwhelming. He had the kind of body that made women sigh because they knew they would never be able to touch it. And here it was, all mine. Not a fantasy. Not an image on the screen. Right here, the reality.

  His hands caught my T-shirt. He pulled it off, picked me up, and slid my ass onto the kitchen table, sliding between my thighs. My nipples were cold and as he pulled me to him, they mashed against the heated wall of his chest.

  I wrapped my arms around him, feeling the muscles of his back roll in response to the pressure of my fingers. I was so far gone I felt like I was drunk.

  He was kissing my throat, trailing a line of heat down my neck. I found his lips and kissed him, quickly, deeply. I was in a hurry.

  “Say my name again,” he growled into my ear.

  The magic licked me, each stroke pushing me higher and higher. My skin burned in its wake as if slapped. It was beyond anything I’d ever tried, but it felt so good. Aaaaah . . . Please, please, please please please . . .

  “Say my name, Nevada.”

  “Connor.”

  The magic drenched me, wringing pleasure from me. I felt on fire. I dug my nails into his back. This was sweet torture and I didn’t want it to end. He bent down, his rough fingers teasing my nipples. His mouth closed on one tight aching bud and he sucked.

  I arched my back against the liquid tease of his tongue. More. More.

  We were about to have sex on the kitchen table. Some part of me insisted I should care, but it was so hard to hear it.

  I found his belt, undid it, and reached inside.

  Oh dear God. I might need two hands.

  He made a harsh male noise and I slid my hand up and down the shaft of his cock, pumping the smooth skin . . .

  His phone screeched.

  “Fuck!” Rogan grabbed the phone. “What?”

  A brisk male voice spat out the words, loud enough that even I heard it. “Semi and four ATVs coming fast.”

  Shit. ATVs, light armored vehicles, served as the armed forces’ version of a Jeep. They carried personnel and each sat four people and sometimes a gunner, which meant more than a dozen attackers were coming our way. We were about to have company. I grabbed my shirt and threw Rogan’s at him. He caught it with one hand. “Which direction?”

  “They just turned onto the west access road.”

  The access road let trucks roll up to the back of the warehouses. We used it for tanks and armored vehicle transport. They’d hit us from the motor pool side.

  “Correction, not a semi. A tanker truck.”

  Better and better.

  “ETA?” Rogan barked.

  “Sixty seconds.”

  Rogan ran for the motor pool, pulling his shirt on.

  I ran to the alarm console and hit the internal panic button. A loud metallic screech rolled through the warehouse. I pressed the intercom’s button. “A tanker truck and four ATVs coming at us from the west access road.”

  I ran for the motor pool. The two industrial garage doors were up, the light of the street lamp spilling through the rectangular bays. Rogan strode into the pool of light and went down the street. Unarmed.

  I keyed the correct sequence into the laptop and the feed from four cameras flared up. I pushed the intercom. “I’m in the motor pool.”

  Grandma Frida burst through the door in her yellow rubber-ducky pajamas.

  “Grandma’s here,” I added.

  “In position,” my mother reported.

  “I’m up,” Bernard said from his post in the Hut of Evil.

  “We have Matilda and Cornelius,” Catalina reported.

  I heard the roar of a tanker truck picking up speed. Out of time.

  I need stopping power. I grabbed an AA-12 shotgun from the weapon cage, unlocked the ammo cage, and slap
ped the twenty-shell drum containing high-explosive Frag-12 shells and grabbed a grenade.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Grandma Frida yank the tarp off of Romeo. Romeo’s real name was M551 Sheridan. He was a light armored tank. He carried nine antitank Shillelagh missiles, and Grandma Frida kept him in perfect health.

  I sprinted to the garage door and stuck my head out. The truck tore toward us on the access road, making no effort to slow down. An oblong cistern loomed behind the green cab. There was no telling what the hell was in that cistern. At this speed, the truck could ram the warehouse and rip through the walls like paper and whatever it was hauling would spill over.

  I couldn’t let it get to the warehouse.

  Behind me Romeo growled into life. It required a four-person crew to effectively operate—a tank commander, a loader, a gunner, and a driver. By the time Grandma swung it around, the tanker truck would have hit us.

  Rogan strode down the road. Apparently he’d decided to play chicken with the tanker.

  I ran after him. If I could toss a grenade under it, I’d derail it before it reached the warehouse.

  The tanker roared toward us.

  Twenty yards between the tanker and Rogan.

  Fifteen.

  “Get out of the road!” I yelled.

  Ten yards.

  “Connor!”

  The truck smashed into empty air. Its hood bent, crushed by an invisible hammer, and tore. The black engine parts bulged out, as if the truck was trying to vomit, and disintegrated from the impact. The top part of its cab folded on itself. Its windshield exploded in a thousand shards, spilling over the exposed motor.

  Holy crap.

  The tanker truck still revved, trying to push its way forward. Its tires spun, spitting acrid smoke, and burst like two loud gunshots.

  Behind us the tank engine growled. I glanced over my shoulder. Romeo tore out of the garage bay and turned left, away from us and the truck, going around the corner to the other side of the warehouse. The attack force must’ve split.

  The truck’s engine snapped, crying and screeching, and began to turn back in on itself, folding. The metal popped, groaned, snarled, folding tighter, and collapsing backward, from the front of the hood toward the cab.

  I stopped in spite of myself as my brain tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

  He was rolling the truck up like a half-empty tube of toothpaste.

  A loud thud echoed through the night. Grandma Frida fired Romeo.

  Rogan took a step forward. The truck slid back.

  Another step. Another slide.

  The cistern exploded. The blast wave punched me. I flew back as a colossal ball of fire roared up, blossoming against the night sky, brilliant white in the center, then yellow, then deep ugly orange. I curled into a ball trying to shield my head. The pavement slapped my back and side. Ow. Something in my spine crunched. Chunks of burning pallets clattered around me.

  Gasoline didn’t burn when shot. You could unload a full magazine into a car with a full tank and it would just sit there. They must’ve rigged the cistern to remotely detonate. That huge fireball had been meant for my family.

  A piece of wood smashed against my arms, burning. Shit. I kicked the chunk of a broken pallet off of me and jumped to my feet.

  The street was empty, except for the massive fire. Where was Rogan? Was he dead? Please don’t be dead . . .

  The fire growled like an animal. Wind howled and the fireball snapped up, shaping into a tornado of flames. The tornado spun and slid sideways like some crazy colossal spin top. The light of its fire illuminated the warehouse across the street, and I saw Rogan pressed into the narrow alcove next to the AC units.

  The tornado edged closer to him.

  If the whirlwind of flames found him, he’d burn alive. The mage controlling the tornado had to be down the street in one of the ATVs that had been following the tanker truck.

  I jumped the concrete barrier separating me from the twin squat buildings of OKR Industries and dashed through the narrow gap between them. Thunder cracked behind me. The air smelled of ozone.

  The gap ended. I glanced around the corner. In front of me, two people in tactical gear and armed with automatic weapons stood on the edge of the street, hidden from Rogan by the front OKR building. The third, in the mage pose—arms bent at the elbow, palms up—floated three feet above the pavement. An aerokinetic.

  Behind them, on the street, one ATV was a crushed mess, with a chunk of the truck’s cistern sticking out of its smashed windshield. Past it, thick steel bars blocked the street. I was one hundred percent sure they hadn’t been there when I drove home.

  “He has to be near that building. Swing it more to the right,” a man next to the mage said, his voice accented.

  I took a deep breath, steadying myself. I should’ve brought the rifle instead.

  “That’s it. Cook him.”

  I braced myself, put the shotgun to my shoulder, and fired. The automatic shotgun barked, spitting death. An AA-12 combat shotgun fired three hundred rounds per minute. Each three-inch cartridge in the drum held a tiny warhead that armed itself three meters after it left the muzzle and exploded on impact.

  I put two rounds into the mage before he realized what was happening. The high explosive ripped his body apart, tearing through flesh. He didn’t even scream. He just fell, but I was already swinging the shotgun around at his friends. Five rounds left the muzzle. The other two bodies jerked and went down without a word, turned into human meat.

  The other side of the street erupted with gunfire. Bullets buzzed, biting chunks from the building around me. I ducked back into the gap. Five rounds for two people at that range was overkill. My adrenaline was too high. I had to calm down or I would panic and then I’d die.

  I grabbed the grenade, jerked the firing pin out, and hurled it across the street. The loud boom of the explosion echoed through the night. I leaned out and ducked back in as a bullet grazed my shoulder, like a red-hot bee. Didn’t get them. Damn it.

  To the right of me, the wind mage twitched on the ground, convulsing. He should’ve been dead. How was he not dead?

  The fiery tornado swung into my view, zigzagging wildly all over the parking lot. It veered toward me. Unbearable heat stole all the air, as if a bonfire had exhaled into my face. It hurt to breathe. I backed away through the gap.

  The mage still twitched. I raised the shotgun and fired. The round took him in the head. The fire loomed over me and rained down. I sprinted back out of the gap toward my home and burst into the parking lot.

  Behind our warehouse, on the other side of the building, lightning cut the sky, flashing again and again, answering a steady staccato of gunfire. On the street, the remnants of the tanker truck burned, the orange flames fighting with the darkness.

  Shots ripped through the night. I spun around. It was probably the same people who’d shot at me from across the street when I took out the mage. They weren’t shooting at me this time. They couldn’t see me behind the building, so Rogan had to be the target.

  A twisted chunk of truck cab shot down the street, as if launched from a cannon. Metal clanged and the shots died. Ha!

  I turned and saw him pressed against a building across the street. He slumped over. Shot? Fear gripped me. No, no blood. Not shot. Tired. Rogan was spent.

  Shadows leaped over the remnants of the cistern, illuminated for half a second by the flames. Hairless, wrinkled, about four feet tall, they didn’t look human. Nor did they look like any animal I had ever seen. Their legs bent backward, like the hind appendages of some demonic grasshopper, while the front of their bodies curved up, ending in two muscled arms equipped with two claws longer than my hand and a dinosaur head with round yellow eyes and a forest of teeth.

  Holy crap.

  The front creature let out a gleeful bloodthirsty screech. As one, the pack spun toward Rogan’s hiding place.

  Oh no, you don’t.

  I jerked my shotgun up and fired.

&
nbsp; The first round took the leading creature in the stomach. It kept coming. I squeezed the trigger and kept firing. The Frag-12 rounds chewed through the monster flesh, shredding their bodies. Strange intestines spilled out. An awful sour stench polluted the air. The creatures fell, one, two, three . . . Seven rounds gone.

  The leading beast was too close to Rogan. If I aimed for it, I’d hit him. The creature leaped almost ten feet, flying at Rogan, his black claws poised to rend into flesh. Rogan sidestepped like his joints were liquid. A knife flashed in his hand. He dodged and buried his knife in the beast’s side. The creature flailed, ripping a gash across Rogan’s chest. Rogan kept stabbing with brutal efficiency, sinking the blade into the wrinkled alien body again and again, slashed its throat, and dropped it aside, his knife bloody.

  Only twenty yards separated me from the last three creatures. They turned and charged me. I fired twice. The shotgun clicked, empty, the drum spent, one beast unmoving on the ground.

  The first beast leaped, claws raised like sickles. I jumped aside and swung the shotgun like a club. The shotgun connected, but the beast was too huge. I might have hit it with a fly swatter for all the good it did me. The creature whirled.

  A chunk of metal smashed into its side, sweeping it off its feet. Rogan.

  The second beast rammed into me, its claws locking onto my shotgun. I hit the pavement with my back and clamped the shotgun with both hands, trying to keep it between us. Across the street Rogan was running to me.

  The dinosaurian jaws gaped open. The monster reared, about to plunge for the kill.

  A dark lean body flew above me. Bunny’s teeth flashed and locked onto the creature’s throat. The Doberman swung its body, throwing all of its weight into the bite. The wrinkled flesh of the beast’s neck tore. Bunny landed on the pavement, snarling. I scrambled upright.

  The monster shuddered, dazed, shook its head . . . The creature’s skull exploded with red. My ears almost didn’t register the shot.

  Mom.

  Two more shots cracked, one, two, with barely a pause. The first took the last creature in midleap as it tried to carve Rogan’s chest. The other shot took down someone out of my view.

  The night was still.

  Rogan stood ten feet away from me, looking like he hadn’t gotten enough blood on his hands. The sudden silence was deafening.