Savage Hunger(27)

“How did you find out about the shifters?” His voice took on a hypnotic note and she found her gaze unwillingly lifting to meet his.

Everything around them faded as her attention locked onto the gray-blue depths of his eyes. Her breathing slowed as she watched his pupils dilate. A calm settled over her.

Warrick moved his arm and a moment later he traced two fingers lightly down her cheek.

“Tell me, Sienna.”

She exhaled softly. “I was told about them.”

“Good girl.” His thumb brushed over her lower lip. “Who told you about them?”

Can’t tell him that. Don’t tell him that.

His head dipped, his lips so close to hers she could feel the hot breaths of air over her mouth.

Almost of its own violation, her body leaned into his. Her eyelids fluttered closed.

Warrick’s lips grazed the corner of her mouth. “Who told you, Sienna?”

Her lips parted on a sigh. The name ready to roll off her tongue.

“Warrick.”

The harsh male voice snapped her from the daze. The heaviness that had taken over her mind and body dissipated and she blinked her eyes open in dismay.

Shit.

Warrick stared down at her, his gaze clouded with frustration and a burning heat that turned her bones to liquid.

“What’s up?” he called back, without moving away from her.

Larson answered a second later. “I need you to help me with something in here.”

Sienna slipped beneath his arm and stumbled away from him. Her ankle hit a protruding root, but she caught herself before she could fall. Her body trembled from the blood rushing through her veins and she shook her head.

Dammit. How had he gotten her to almost spill her guts? What kind of crazy spell—

“We need to get back inside.” His terse command snapped between them before he turned away and walked back toward the safe house.

Obviously he expected her to follow, and really, what choice did she have? Run and get two feet away?

Sienna started after him and tried again to figure out what the hell had just happened.





Immaculate, gold-tipped nails flew across the keys on the keyboard, the rapid succession of clicking noises the only sound in the isolated office.

Jocelyn’s chest tightened as she searched for another key word that might pull up the file on her office computer.

From the corner of her eye she could see Robert pacing in front of the desk. His hands laced in front of him and his head moving back and forth in denial.

He cleared his throat. “We’ve tried everything, my love. The files disappeared with the—”

“Did I ask you to talk? Shut the fuck up.”

Merciful silence returned and she bit back another savage curse as her latest search indicated that no matching file was found. Her head started to pound and she pulled her hands from the keys to press her fingertips to her temples.

Christ almighty. How in the hell could this have happened?

Years. She’d spent years planning this. And now it was gone. Everything. The shifters. The data on what the shifters had been given.

“Surely somebody backed this information up?” she said tightly. “Didn’t you send it to me?”

“You requested the only place the data be stored was on the computer in the labs and the jump drive.”

And they’d burned down the lab after discovering the jump drive was now missing. Taken by that little lab rat, no doubt. And the one man who could’ve recreated the data had been killed in the fire at the lab.

The pounding in her head grew stronger and a bitter smile twisted her lips. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so quick to issue his death sentence.

“You wanted as little information as possible that could be traced back to you,” Robert reminded her delicately.

“I remember what I ordered.” Her terse response had her lover flinching and stepping back. “I didn’t count on the man we hired to help growing a goddamned conscience.”

And steal the jump drive and hand it off to some unremarkable grad student…

“Has there been any update on Sienna Peters?” she demanded. “Have the police found her yet?”

She had insiders within the police department. If Sienna were to be arrested it would be all too simple to retrieve the jump drive and make the woman simply disappear. Or perhaps arrange another accident.

“No. She’s managed to avoid police detection. Her apartment hasn’t been accessed and her car is still in the parking lot at Feloray Laboratories where she was last spotted attending the gala.”

Jocelyn issued a harsh laugh. “Her face is all over the news. The police are after her. How is it possible no one has seen her?”

There was another bout of silence and when she glanced up at Robert something about his fidgety demeanor sent alarm bells off in her head.