An Alpha's Lightning (Water Bear Shifters 2) (8 page)

Jade let herself be lost in the new sensations that were flooding over her body. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the rhythm of Ace’s body as he thrust into her over and over. For a full minute, the only sound in the dark room was her heavy breathing joined with Ace’s, punctuated by an occasional grunt from Ace as he moved inside of Jade. When Jade reached the point where she could barely hold back anymore, she let out a few happy whimpers. Ace had her on the verge of exploding once again, and she pushed her hips up against his as she felt the impending tsunami coming close to overtaking her. She panted, gasping for air as she enjoyed a final few thrusts of Ace’s body before the wave overtook her.

Then she screamed, crying out his name with passion as she rode the surf of wave after wave of pleasure. She lost herself completely in the moment, unaware of anything except the heat and electricity pulsing through her body as her muscles clenched hungrily around Ace’s shaft inside of her. He continued thrusting for several moments, and then, with a giant roar, he found his own wave of passion to ride. He stiffened, and came into her with a pulsing hot stream.

For a significant stretch of time, neither one of them spoke, or moved. They both lay there, trying to catch their breath as their naked skin glistened, sweaty from the exertion of making love. Finally, Ace gently slid out of Jade and snuggled back down next to her.

Your body is incredible,” he said. “But that’s not surprising, since the rest of you is incredible, too.”

Jade smiled shyly. “Thanks,” she said. “You’ve got a pretty stellar body yourself.”

“It’s yours, anytime you want it.”

Jade closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. “Well, then, I’d have to say I’m a pretty lucky girl.”

Ace kissed her forehead and shook his head. “Don’t be silly,” he said. “I’m the lucky one.”

Then he snuggled in next to her, wrapping the blanket around them again before drifting off to sleep. Jade took longer to fall asleep. Her mind was racing from the excitement of everything that had happened this evening, and she needed some time to come down from the incredible high she had just been on. She found herself peering over the side of the couch, squinting to see the stars again from the living room window.

She was hoping to see another shooting star, but all of the stars twinkled in place.

Jade grinned, and mentally kicked herself as she realized that she was still searching for some sort of sign. But why? She knew, as she felt the rise and fall of Ace’s sleeping chest, that she had found exactly where she needed to be.

Her days of searching for a sign were over.

As the weeks passed, Ace and Jade spent every possible spare minute together. By April, things had slowed down for Jade at work, so she and Ace were able to spend some time together relaxing. They discovered a mutual love for the cinema, and often spent their free days seeing two movies back to back before grabbing dinner together. They managed to spend a good deal of time at the beach as well, enjoying the beautiful spring weather in San Diego. Life was good, and Jade even managed to keep herself from worrying the entire time Ace was on a Coast Guard shift. She realized that, although death or injury was an ever-present risk in a job like Ace’s, he was very good at what he did. He considered the safety of his crew to be of utmost importance, and he kept his aircraft in perfect condition. He performed constant safety checks, even beyond what was required of him. And he did more than the required training to make sure his flying skills were in tip-top shape. He had an innate protective instinct, and he fiercely guarded the lives of those he cared about.

Jade wasn’t surprised by this at all. She had learned more about Ace’s background, and how he carried the alpha gene, which made him naturally overprotective. She had also learned the details of how his clan had been wiped out by the scientists. Losing a fiancé had felt unbearable to her. She couldn’t imagine what Ace must have gone through when he lost every single person he had ever known and loved. It must have felt so much worse. When she told Ace this, however, he had rebuked her sharply.

“Don’t ever compare the pain of what you’ve gone through to the pain of others, or think that the suffering of others makes what you have suffered less significant. Everyone who loses someone they care about has experienced a devastating heartache.”

Jade was finding that, despite Ace’s tough exterior—and despite the fact that he seemed to love a good, knockdown argument with his friends—he had a softhearted side to him as well. Jade saw his sensitive side often. He treated her like a princess, and he shared her deep concern for the animals she rescued.

On a sunny April afternoon, Jade had yet another chance to witness Ace’s concern for the rescue animals. It was her day off, and she was getting ready to go spend the morning at the beach with Ace. Their plans changed abruptly when Jade got an emergency call from the rescue center, asking if she could assist with a sea lion rescue. A civilian had called in a report of a sea lion suffering from a gunshot wound on a quiet stretch of beach north of San Diego. The center was having an unusually busy day, and all of the rescue staff was already off helping other animals. Jade told Ace he didn’t have to spend his day off working on the rescue mission if he didn’t want to, but, as she suspected, he jumped at the chance to help out. He wouldn’t dream of passing up a chance to help her rescue an injured animal.

Ace talked and laughed with Jade for the entire drive to the beach. Jade tried to keep her mood upbeat, but she was worried. Animals that were being rescued for gunshot wounds often didn’t make it. Their injuries tended to be severe, and often the more humane action was to put them down. Jade’s heart burned with anger toward those who thought it was funny to injure these innocent animals. Federal law made shooting a marine mammal a crime, but the people who committed such atrocities usually had no respect for the law, anyway.

Jade was pleasantly surprised, however, when they found the sea lion, and realized that the injury was a relatively minor one. The bullet had grazed one of his front flippers. With some recovery time at the rescue center, he should be as good as new relatively soon. The sky turned cloudy as they worked to get the scared animal into a net and then into the kennel for transport back to the rescue center. Ace complained about the gloomy change in the weather, but Jade was actually thankful for the clouds. Getting an injured sea lion into a kennel was a strenuous task, and the sun had been hot. Jade was happy to be given a reprieve from its burning rays.

Even with the cloudy weather, Jade was covered in sweat by the time they finally got the sea lion in the kennel and loaded onto the bed of Ace’s truck. Jade wiped her forehead off with the back of her arm, and let out a big sigh.

“Whew,” she said, then grinned in Ace’s direction. “You must like your women sweaty, or something, because you’ve seen me looking like I just ran ten miles more times than I care to admit.”

Ace returned her grin. “I like you sweaty. Especially when you’re sweaty in bed. Let’s get out of here so we can engage in a little lovemaking workout session.”

“Perfect,” Jade said, making sure one last time that the kennel was securely strapped down so it wouldn’t roll around on the drive. “Let’s go.”

She hopped into the passenger seat, and rolled the window down as Ace pulled back onto Highway One. The breeze coming into the truck off the ocean felt amazing, and dried off her sweaty forehead within minutes. Jade closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat, letting her arm and hand hang out the window to enjoy the wind.

Moments later, her reverie was abruptly interrupted by a loud, angry exclamation from Ace.

“What the heck!” he shouted, swerving his truck sharply to the right. Jade’s eyes flew open as her head hit the side door. Confused, and frightened, she looked around for an obstacle, thinking Ace must have had to swerve to avoid something on the road in front of them. But the road was clear. Disoriented, she looked over at Ace, trying to figure out what had just happened. His mouth was set in a tight line, and he was staring straight ahead as he floored the gas pedal. The truck lurched forward and to the left, off the shoulder and back onto the highway.

“What the hell is going on?” Jade asked as her head was slammed backward against the seat from the truck’s momentum.

“This black SUV behind me just tried to run me off the road,” Ace said, pushing his truck as fast as it would go. Which, unfortunately, wasn’t very fast. This vehicle was more of a workhorse than a racehorse. It hadn’t exactly been designed to win any highway races. Jade turned around in her seat and saw the black SUV Ace had mentioned. It was gaining momentum on them, and started pulling off to their left.

“He’s gonna try to run me off the road again,” Ace said grimly. “I can try to outmaneuver him, but we’re just too slow to outrun him. I’m gonna have to fight him.”

“
Fight
him? Who is this guy?”

“My guess is he’s somehow affiliated with the scientists.”

Jade felt her blood go cold at Ace’s words. Until now, the scientists had been an abstract notion in her mind. They had been a distant worry, something that didn’t really seem real. Now, one of them was closing in on them in the middle of nowhere, and he was driving a huge vehicle that was very real and very close to sending Ace’s truck careening off the road. As the SUV started pulling up next to them, Ace yelled at Jade.

“Get down!”

“What? Why?”

“Get down! I don’t want him to see you. If they haven’t discovered you yet, then I don’t want them to now. As soon as they know who you are, your life is in danger.”

Jade ducked down, leaning over so that her face was below the bottom edge of the windows. She felt her heart pounding in her chest as the truck swerved. She could hear the sea lion in the back, barking and yelping. The poor thing was probably scared out of his mind, and in a lot of pain. Several minutes of wild driving later, Ace finally lost control of the vehicle and went bouncing off the pavement. After several hundred feet of bouncing across an uneven surface, the truck screeched to a halt. Ace had slammed on the brakes.

He threw the car into park and unfastened his seatbelt with one hand while reaching for the door handle with the other.

“Stay in the truck,” he said, his voice tense. “And stay down.”

Then he was gone, leaving the truck and slamming the door behind him. Jade could hear the sea lion behind her, barking in a fit of hysteria. She felt like giving in to hysteria herself, but forced herself to remain calm and think. She heard Ace shouting, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. She heard a car door slam, and then what sounded like crunching metal. Another male voice started yelling back at Ace, followed by more crunching metal.

Jade knew Ace would be furious if she peeked out the window, but she couldn’t bring herself to stay down on the floor, listening to what might very well be the end of the man she loved. She had to see what was going on. She had to see whether there was something she could do to help.

Slowly, Jade raised her face until her eyes could just barely peek over the windshield. The truck was parked on an empty beach, about a hundred feet away from where the black SUV was parked. Two huge dents had appeared in the side of the SUV, which explained the sound of crunching metal, although Jade wasn’t sure what exactly had caused the dents. A man in black sweatpants and a gray t-shirt was tumbling around in the sand with Ace. Fists were flying in all directions, and Jade had a hard time keeping track of whose arms were where.

“Oh my god,” she whispered. She couldn’t tell who was winning, and the brawl kept going at about the same rate for several minutes. Just when she thought Ace had managed to gain the upper hand, things would shift again, and the other man would get ahead. Jade frantically tried to figure out a way to help. She considered calling the police, but she realized that it would take them a long time to get out to this location. By the time they got here, it’s likely that this fight would be over, one way or another. Besides, Ace had warned her that involving law enforcement in fights related to shifters was almost always a bad idea. The authorities tended to fear and distrust anyone whom they discovered was a shapeshifter.

She knew Ace kept a handgun in the glove compartment of his truck, but the men were too entangled for her to get a clear shot of Ace’s attacker. If she shot the gun, she ran the risk of accidentally hitting Ace with a bullet. As Jade ran through options, she suddenly saw the other man push Ace backward to gain a few feet of distance, then pull a strange looking black and yellow gun out of his pocket.

“Ace!” Jade screamed. “He has a gun!”

Before Ace could react, the man pulled the trigger on the gun, and Jade saw Ace convulse and fall to the ground. Jade screamed again, causing the attacker to glance in her direction. He squinted at her with curious eyes for a split-second, but quickly turned his attention back to Ace.

“Now, I’ve got you, you scoundrel,” the man said. “Let’s see if you’re a bear, like I suspect.”

Ace convulsed again. He was trying to move, but seemed unable to. Suddenly, Jade realized that she had seen a gun before just like the one the man was using. Her late fiancé, Mike, had carried one on all of his police officer shifts. It was an electric stun gun. This man had just tased Ace. But why?

Jade sunk down as low as she possibly could while still watching, even though it was pointless anymore to try to pretend she wasn’t there. The man had clearly seen her, but didn’t seem interested in her at the moment. He wanted something from Ace.

He reached into his other pocket and pulled a strange looking black device out. It looked like an oversized pen crossed with a flashlight, and when the man hit a button on it, a blue light shot out from the front. The man pointed the light at each of Ace’s eyes, then hit another button, and the light went off.

“Calculating,” the device said in a loud, robotic voice. Then, a few moments later it said, “Confirmed, bear.”

“I knew it!” the man said, hitting another button on the device. “You
are
a bear. Let’s see what kind. Black bear? Grizzly? Probably not a polar, huh? It’s a little too warm here for that.”

“Calculating,” the device said again. “Match found. Panda. Alpha male.”

Even through the dirty windshield glass, and from a hundred feet away, Jade could see the color drain out of the man’s face. “No way,” he said, staring at the device in disbelief. “I found the pandas?”

In response, Ace let out a giant roar. The next thing Jade knew, the truck was shaking violently from side to side, and she had been knocked backwards onto the floorboard. She sat up slowly, holding her head where a trickle of warm blood was oozing down from the spot where she had just collided with something sharp in the car. Outside, she could hear screaming punctuated by what sounding like growling. She sat up just enough to peer out the windshield, and then gasped.

Where Ace had been lying moments before, there was now only a pile of torn clothing. A few feet away from there, a huge panda was standing with its teeth bared. The panda was roaring and growling, and the man, who had been so cocky moments before, was now on his back in the sand, screaming at the bear. The panda did not seem interested in showing any mercy, however. Jade watched in horror as the bear swept his giant claws across the man’s chest, slicing through his t-shirt and leaving ribbons of blood and torn cloth behind.

Jade ducked back below the windshield and covered her face with her hands. Ace, or, more accurately, Ace as a panda, was going to kill that man. She couldn’t watch. She knew he was doing what he had to do, and that the man would have killed him if given a chance. Still, Jade couldn’t bring herself to watch someone dying.

After several more moments of loud chaos, everything went silent. Even the sea lion in the back of the truck seemed to have given up on his barking protests. Jade sat on the floorboard and pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging them close. She looked up through the passenger side window at the cloudy sky. A few drops of rain were sporadically hitting the glass. She breathed in and out deeply, trying to calm her racing heart. She didn’t bother looking to see whether Ace was okay. She knew he would be. There was no way that man would have been able to fight off the outraged bear Jade had just seen. Even if the man had a real gun, which Jade suspected he did, there would not have been time for him to get it out and pull the trigger. Ace had been on top of him in a matter of moments.