CHAPTER 6
Nisa moved quickly.
The fact that she’d found herself alone after she’d showered and dressed at three-thirty the next morning was not a mistake. Decan Canter was not a shifter who made mistakes. From what she’d been able to research on his family and his time with the military she’d surmised as much. And when she’d lay in that bed thinking throughout the night she realized that every step he made had been deliberate.
There were still questions running through her mind as she’d left the room and made her way to the lowest level of this bunker to where they’d parked their vehicles. Where had he been for the last nine years? He’d only showed up in Oasis last year. His prints and body scan were still logged into ViceSecure from that day. Their internal backup spanned ten years. The master board, however, housed every bit of data from the day of Oasis’s inception. That was located on the holodeck back at Assembly Headquarters. All she had now, was what was stored on her portable board, and while that had given her the shape of the shifter she was dealing with, it didn’t fill in all the spaces.
How and why had Decan stayed above ground for so long and why was he back now? More importantly, why was her father placing so much trust in a shifter they knew hardly anything about?
All these questions masked the biggest anomaly where Decan was concerned. Nisa shook her head as she approached her vehicle and dropped her bag to the ground beside the front tire. The memory of last night, hell, the last twenty-four hours still burned in the back of her mind. Why had she let him touch her? Because she’d been drawn to him. Her and her cat had felt the heat permeating between them from the first seconds he’d walked up behind her back at Assembly Headquarters. Nisa had been trained to put down any shifter who dared to get out of line with her personally, by Lead Guard and Seer Eli Preston. In addition to sharing their knowledge in technology and security, Lead Enforcers and her uncles, Nick Delgado and X Santos Markland had continued her education by rehearsing all the warnings they wanted her to tell any male shifter bold enough to approach her. Her Uncle Baxter had given her all the history instructions she’d ever need on how female shifters handled suitors. But it had been her mother who had taken her to the side after her first shift and then again when she’d turned eighteen to talk to her about men, the calor, and finding her companheiro. The latter two Nisa had tried to dismiss because it had been more than awkward hearing her mother speak of such things, but she’d paid particular attention to the differences between the male and female Shadow Shifters. She’d been doing that all her life. Yet, none of her teachings or personal observances had prepared her for this shifter.
Or the strange things she could hear and feel when he was around.
As she knelt down beside the Tracer and pulled her board from her bag she recalled what happened last night.
His hands and mouth had felt so good on her. He was everywhere she’d ever imagined the right man would be when she allowed him into her bed. Her body quivered in anticipation of his next move and her cat had lay in wait for the moment it could finally receive this type of sexual release. Then there’d been an interruption, voices sounding in her head, scenes flashing in her mind. The name Marlee spoken loud and clear in Decan’s voice. Only, Nisa wasn’t totally sure he’d actually said it, not at that moment.
When he’d stood to answer her accusation he’d looked perplexed. His body was taught with arousal but there was something else present in that room. Something Nisa hadn’t been able to ignore. The stench and force of the lies between them. It had angered her, and made the confusion of what the hell was going on, more prevalent. She hated it all because it made her feel like she wasn’t in control. And Nisa needed to be in control. For once in her life, she needed to feel like everything she did and said was of her own accord, for her own purpose.
She’d needed him to leave and he had. Then she’d begun to think.
He wouldn’t tell her where they were and there was no record of this place on any of her maps. He was lying about who Keller was and why they were there. And when she’d been researching him on her board she’d noticed her secure link to the holodeck at Assembly Headquarters was disconnected. That was why she’d dressed and left her room extra early because she wanted to see what else was different now that they’d stopped at this place.
The tracking system on the Tracer was disabled. The power signal located just behind the front tire was off, and when she tried to access the Tracer’s control panel via her master controls on her board, they were disengaged as well. She moved quickly to the other vehicle, typing the codes into her board only to discover that this one had been disabled as well. Cursing, she stood and was startled when she turned and came face to face with the alluring cheetah that had joined their traveling party.
“Good morning, sexy,” Kyss spoke as she reached a hand out to touch Nisa’s hair.
Nisa didn’t move as she chastised herself for not picking up the shifter’s scent and letting her sneak up behind her.
“Good morning,” she finally muttered and then stepped around her.
“What are you doing out here so early?” Kyss asked as Nisa continued back to her Tracer.
Nisa stopped in front of the door handle on the driver’s side and used the pad of symbols embedded into the steel to punch in her access code. She’d half expected the code not to work since it was clear that someone had tampered with the vehicles. But the locks disengaged and she opened the passenger door on the driver’s side first.
“I’m getting ready to leave,” she replied and lifted her bag from the ground to toss onto the back seat.
“Without our fearless leader?” Kyss continued as she came around to lean against the driver’s side door.
Nisa closed the back door and replied, “He’s not my leader.”
Kyss smiled. “Oh? Then tell me, Nisa, who are you looking for to lead you?”
“I don’t need anyone to lead me,” Nisa stated evenly and reached for the front door handle.
Instead of Kyss moving—which would have been the acceptable action—the cheetah reached out, clasping her hands to Nisa’s waist and pulled her close. To keep their faces from colliding Nisa lifted her hands, planting them on Kyss’s shoulders and held her head back.
“What are you doing?” Nisa asked, wariness circling in the pit of her stomach.
Kyss licked her bottom lip and continued to smile. Her palms had splayed out so that her fingers now grazed the sides of Nisa’s ass.
“I’m trying to get an idea of just how much leadership you actually need,” Kyss told her. “From the rapid beating of your heart and the low rumble of your cat, I’d say you’re ready for full submission. And I’d be more than happy to help with that.”
Nisa could only blink at the cheetah’s brashness. Then she managed a smile of her own.
“If you’d be happy to continue breathing, I’d suggest you take your hands off me and never presume that I’m open to anything other than information you can provide on the Ruling Cabinet murders,” she said in an icy tone.
When Kyss hesitated, Nisa easily pulled out of the cheetah’s grasp, being sure to push her back against the vehicle at the same time.
Kyss chuckled and flicked the long tail of her hair over her shoulder.
“What? Decan’s not sharing secrets with you yet?” Kyss asked and moved away from the door as Nisa had continued to stare at her expectantly.
“Just tell me what you know.” Nisa insisted as she pulled the driver’s side door open.
She had no intention of discussing Decan and what he did or did not say to her with this female.
“I know what I said I knew.” Kyss talked as she opened the other door and sat sideways on the back seat right next to where moments ago Nisa had placed her duffel bag. “Lial was at the scene of the last murder.”
“Gillian Peterson, niece of Aldo Peterson, senior member of the Ruling Cabinet, was killed three nights ago in a hotel room in Houston,” Nisa stated as she recalled what she’d read from the human media sources. It was easy to tap into their global internet system. The trick was doing so without leaving any footprints back to the ViceSecure link that supported all the Shadow Shifter intelligence. She’d managed it easily on more than one occasion. This last time had been the first that she’d been searching for information about a murder.
“They want us,” Kyss said. She was sitting with her elbows on her knees while she stared down at her black painted nails. “They act all scared because they know we can shift into a three hundred pound cat at any minute and rip their throats out. But really, that shit turns them on.”
Nisa was now sitting in the driver’s seat, the door still ajar, hands resting on her lap. She could see Kyss through the rearview mirror.
“I went to this club once. You might know it since your Auntie Caprise used to dance there. It used to be called Athena’s. Actually, it still is even after all this time. Of course it’s under new ownership. Some sleazy old dude. Anyway, humans are still just as basic as an always horny shifter. These two guys saw my tat,” she paused and then looked up to the mirror to stare directly at Nisa.
“It’s on my inner thigh. You can see it too if you want.” Kyss winked.
Nisa tilted her head and quirked her lips. “No thanks.”
Kyss shrugged. “Your loss. So, moving on. After they saw the tat they got all hot. I mean, their cocks were just about bursting through their jeans they were so ready to get inside me. I’d been hitting a three day dry spell so I figured what the hell. We go back into one of the rooms there and the guys are naked in like five seconds. But before I could even take my shirt off they were asking me to shift for them. They wanted to know what it felt like to have a big sexy cat licking all over their body. Wanted to see if that would get them off.”
Nisa gasped. She’d meant to remain straight-faced and stoic, but Kyss’s candor took her by surprise.
“It did,” Kyss continued with a nod and a grin. “Faster than even I thought it would. So yeah, they’re interested in us for all sorts of reasons. Gillian Peterson was just like those hard-up jokers at the club. She loved getting laid by a cat. Lial had been giving her exactly what she wanted for the past few months, for a hefty fee I might add.”
“She was paying him to have sex with her?”
“She was financing her own brothel,” Kyss said. “Lial and a gang of other Serfins were all too happy to give those uptight socialites exactly what they wanted but couldn’t get from their starchy human guys. That’s probably how he ended up in Gillian’s hotel room.”
“Why would he kill her?” Nisa asked.
“I didn’t say he did,” Kyss replied.
“No. But you are saying too much,” Decan announced, irritation clear in his tone as he reached into the back seat and yanked Kyss out.
Nisa had felt his approach, but she hadn’t cared. She wanted to know what Kyss knew and she was fairly certain that if she asked Decan he wasn’t going to tell her.
“I was just answering your girlfriend’s questions,” Kyss replied and looked up at Decan with pouting lips. “I want to ride with you.”
Nisa watched as Kyss’s hand trailed a path from Decan’s shoulder down his torso, to just above the buckle of his pants because that’s when he grabbed her by both wrists and pulled her up until only the tip of her boots touched the ground.
“You’ll ride in the second vehicle. You’re gonna keep your mouth shut and your hands to yourself,” he told her.
Nisa wondered what she was seeing. She was pretty sure that Kyss had just made a very sexual overture toward her. And now she was clearly tempting Decan, for the second time. As much as she normally believed that she loved unraveling a puzzle, this chick and what was going on in her mind wasn’t something Nisa wanted to explore. With that thought she pulled the driver’s side door shut and started the Tracer’s engine. When she’d tossed her bag on the back seat, she’d put her board on the front passenger seat. It was powered up and when she started the Tracer, the vehicle’s diagnostics report came onto the screen. The tracking system had definitely been disabled by someone who knew how to hack into her system.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Decan asked when he had to go around to the passenger side door and open it because Nisa had locked the driver’s side door.
“I’m getting ready to drive to Houston. If you’re coming you should climb in.”
He was irritated. She didn’t have to look at him to figure that out. “I told you this was my mission,” he said.
“And I’m not arguing that fact. That doesn’t mean that I can’t drive my own vehicle. If you get in,” she said and reached for the board, “we can get moving.”
She slid the board down into the compartment on the door so that he couldn’t see the screen. Decan knew that the tracking system had been disabled. He’d had to since he wanted to keep reminding her that he was the leader of the mission. If she asked him why, he wasn’t going to tell her. Or at least he wasn’t going to be honest with her. The aroma of his lies always lingered just beneath that other very alluring scent he carried. The one that was like a direct communication link to her cat.
He surprised her by waiting only a beat and then getting in. But not before giving a nod to someone outside of the vehicles—probably the Serfin guard named Gold that had joined this group along with Decan. This shifter had a history in Oasis, one that was a bit turbulent but not so much that her father refused to let him be a part of this mission. Either that, or Decan had some very special reason for keeping Gold with him and he’d somehow been able to convince her father that this was a good idea. That was something else for her to contemplate.
Only one day in and this mission was off to a turbulent start. All her brainpower and maneuvering was to go into effect in the Central Zone where she could work to impress Faction Leader Maybon. She was also fairly certain that coming very close to having sex with Decan Canter was not on the agenda either, and yet, as he sat beside her and she prepared to pull off, the way he’d touched and kissed her, the path he’d made down her body last night, almost to the point of kissing her…was all she could think of.
“You said you knew I was sneaking above ground alone before.” Nisa stated as she drove through the final stretch of tunnels.
In less than an hour they would be at the Central Zone Headquarters. Then he could drop her off, hear what Jace Maybon wanted to tell him about the search for Cole Linden and get the hell out of there. There’d already been one glitch in his plan. He didn’t want to adjust for anymore.
And Nisa was definitely a glitch.
“Is that how you usually let women know you’re interested in them?” she asked.
She’d been talking for the last half hour, but he hadn’t really been listening. In fact, he’d been trying his best not to get any closer to her than he already had. Even through words. But this last question had him swearing.
“What are you talking about?” he asked as he stared over to her.
She shrugged. “I’m just asking if that’s the way you normally pick up women.”
“I don’t pick up women,” he said.
“Well, not if you go around stalking them first. That’s certainly not romantic at all.”
“And I don’t do romance,” he continued, ignoring her previous statement.
“Oh. Well, yeah, you don’t have to convince me of that fact. You definitely suck at romance,” she quipped.
“I don’t—” he began and then paused to clench his teeth tight enough to possibly break them. Instead it gave him the few seconds he needed to regroup. “I don’t have to convince you of anything. In addition to watching you sneak out at night, I saw the way you cut down any shifter that showed interest in you. The baggy clothes during training sessions, practically staying arm-in-arm with your pal Shya or locking yourself on the control deck to work for endless hours, all the shields you love to employ.”
“I’m not denying them,” she replied, even though he’d caught the quick tightening of her hands on the steering wheel. “I haven’t had a lot of experience with the opposite sex, in that way.”
That’s not something Decan wanted to know. Actually, he did. It made him feel a hell of a lot better than thinking of another shifter with his hands on her.
“It’s not a big deal,” he mumbled and then looked out the window.
The tunnels here were tinted an electric blue color, signifying they were approaching what was considered royal territory in Oasis. The perimeter surrounding each of the zone headquarters were colored passageways to help document where they were in their underground haven. They did not use street or highway names as were helpful to traveling above ground. Down here, they relied on the maps of the tunnels which were programmed into the control board in each of their enhanced vehicles. The lighted passageways were an added notification method.
“Of course it’s not,” she stated. “I mean, it only leads to the continuation of our species.”
Sarcasm was one of her favored shields as well.
“That’s not all it leads to,” he said before rubbing a hand down his face.
“Have you ever been in love, Decan?”
He definitely did not want to answer that question. But Decan knew she wasn’t going to stop just because he wanted her to. Besides, she could be asking him deeper questions—like why the tracking system had been disengaged, or revisiting the inquisition about Keller and the bunker where they’d spent the night. None of which he wanted to answer either. So with reluctant resolve, he figured he’d have to settle for this topic of discussion, no matter how uncomfortable it was making him.
“No,” he replied. “Have you?”
“No,” she answered.
“Well, you’ve got plenty of time for that,” he said, hating how bitter the words tasted in his mouth.
“I’m not looking forward to it,” she told him and turned the vehicle down a narrow passageway. “I mean, I know that some shifters are very focused on finding a companheiro and living some type of happy life thereafter. But I have other plans.”
Curious, Decan looked over at her again.
Her hair was a riot of bouncy dark brown curls. Silver clips gripped the top of her ear and her Topétenia tat was just beneath her right lobe. The jaguar drawing was long, stretching along the skin from the end of her ear, down to almost the start of where her neck spanned out to her shoulders. It was surrounded by colorful flowers and spirals which, to someone not paying attention, might think was just an exotic floral design. But Decan saw the cat, he saw the pulse of her heartbeat vibrating through the primal creature and his heartrate increased.
The heat started then, moving down his neck, spreading throughout his torso and lower, until the hardening of his cock was inevitable. This was insane. He was just looking at her and she was fully dressed and still, there was something undeniably happening between them.
“And those plans don’t include any type of pleasure?” he asked, his hands going flat on his thighs.
Why couldn’t he stop this conversation? Why couldn’t they talk about something simple, like what the Central Zone Leader would possibly serve them for dinner?
“I know how to take my own pleasure,” she replied.
She’d said that as nonchalantly as she may have answered when someone asked her name. As if it were perfectly normal for an attractive twenty year old to be responsible for her own pleasure. To be clear, Decan wasn’t against anyone bringing themselves release. Especially not a Shadow Shifter because their genetic make-up made sexual urges so strong and intense that they could not be ignored as a human probably could. So Nisa could bring herself to climax. That was fine. But the pleasure he wanted to give her, and no doubt would receive himself from doing so, was something he knew she’d never be able to match.
“Do you?” she asked and the look that was most likely meant to be innocent landed on him. Decan almost exploded.
She’d looked over to his face and then, as if she’d known something was amiss, her gaze had dropped to his groin. His erection was unmistakable and she did not instantly look away.
“I always do what is necessary, Nisa,” Decan replied through clenched teeth.
“Oh,” she said and then dragged her gaze back to the passageway ahead. The blue light from outside did not penetrate through the dark tinted windows of the vehicle, so it felt as if they were cocooned, wrapped in privacy just in case.
Decan wanted to refute any “just in case”. There was none. There was only this mission. But his body was saying something totally different.
“What do you want to do right now, Decan?”
“Don’t ask me that,” he groaned.
“I want you to tell me,” she said. “I’ve never heard anyone say it to me before and I know you won’t sugarcoat it because you don’t do romance.”
But that’s what she deserved, wasn’t it? She was the Assembly Leader’s daughter so she should have a jaguar shifter born from a family that her parents approved of, giving her every dose of romance possible. That wasn’t him. Decan, the lion and the former prisoner, should not be the one touching her or thinking about pleasing her.
“What do you expect me to say?” he asked as his head fell back against the seat rest, eyes closing and his fingers tingling.
He was resisting the urge to free his erection and stroke it in lieu of being able to sink inside of her. His thoughts drifted again to her mouth surrounding his length, sucking him deep and strong, but that had him growling, his claws trying to break through his skin.
“Tell me what I could do to make you feel better,” she said.
Her voice was so low he’d barely heard her. So naïve he wanted to scream with the joy of being the one she chose to ask this. It was the best privilege for any shifter. Just not him.
“Nisa,” he said and then let out a whoosh of breath that he prayed would give him some clarity. “I shouldn’t have touched you before. Shouldn’t have kissed you, or anything else. You are a job.”
“I am a female shifter who could have just as easily driven myself to the Central Zone without you. You’re older than me, yes. More experienced, obviously. But I’m not a child and neither am I a fool. I know when I’m feeling intense arousal and can see that you’re having as difficult a time with it as me. So I’m asking you a question and all you have to do is answer.”
That’s all he had to do.
“Put your hand on me,” he said, eyes still closed, claws digging into his thighs as he’d tried desperately to hold on.
He could feel her even before contact was made. Warm and enticing as she cupped him, squeezing with her fingers the way her mouth would when his length was freed. Painful as the heated iron was slammed against his skin. The smell of burning flesh filling the air and making him nauseous. Echoes of cheering in the back of his mind as they tried to break him, to kill the man and the beast. Blood, warm and putrid as the lion was unleashed taking a life with no regrets.
The vehicle jolted and came to a sudden stop. Decan’s eyes opened quickly to see that they had come only inches from crashing into the steel doors leading into the Central Zone Headquarters. He looked down and was startled by his fingers gripping Nisa’s wrist. Her hand was just inches from his erection. The look on her face when he turned to her was filled with confusion, shock, and disappointment.