Dancing on the Wind (14 page)

said. She stared into his eyes. “My God, Fallon. That leaves fifteen of those things out

there!”

“Yeah,” he said grimly. “And potentially that many people infected.”

They both looked at the charred bodies of the
drochtáirs
as the chopper began to lift

from the ground.

“Fallon, look!” she said, leaning toward the window. “There’s a phosphorescent

glow along the burrow’s edge.”

He pushed the control stick to the right and swung the chopper around so he could

see what she meant.

“If they all leave that kind of residue behind them, we can easily pick up their trails

even in the dark,” she proposed.

“I found another hole and have destroyed the inhabitants. There was a cluster of three each

time in the far western provinces,” An Fear Liath Mor’s
voice whispered to them
. “I am

rapidly losing strength and need to rest.”

“Then rest, Coim,” Fallon told the creature. “We’ll take it from here.”

“It is my belief the seven landed in that many provinces, hound. Look to Ontario now. I

have the far western two under control.”
Once more the gruff voice faded.

“That leaves twelve in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan,” Keenan mused.

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Fallon and Keenan trudged up the slight incline to the little cabin where they would

be spending the night in Manitoba. They had not slept or rested since starting out from

the lakeside cottage the night before. Flyovers of Ontario had finally netted them a

glowing trail from another burrow and they had tracked the
drochtáirs
to a small farm.

Too late to help the five people slaughtered by the insatiable beasts, they had managed

between them to incinerate their quarries but had then been forced to do the same with

the victims. As a result, Keenan was dead on her feet, exhausted, completely drained.

It was just past eight in the morning when they entered the cabin. Fallon set the

alarm clock for 2 p.m. then he and Keenan flopped down—fully clothed, still wearing

their boots—on their bellies. Within seconds, both were sound asleep.

“
Wake up, hound
!”

Fallon sat straight up in the bed with a gasp. The loud command that had shot

through his sleeping brain had caused his heart to thud wickedly in his chest and a

brutal ache over his right eye. For a moment he had no idea where he was. At the

movement beside him, he looked down to find Keenan struggling to push herself up.

“He’s got to stop invading our minds like that,” she mumbled as she turned over to

her back.

Sometime during their sleep, Fallon had flipped over and dragged a pillow beneath

his head. Keenan had been lying flat and now had a crick in her neck, which she rubbed

vigorously as she sat up.

“I have taken out the nasties in Saskatchewan while you were taking your beauty rest,”
the

Guardian grumbled.
“Must I come over there and do the same in Manitoba?”

“We’ll handle it,” Fallon growled back at the creature.

“Hop to, hound!”

“I think I’m beginning to hate that thing,” Fallon mumbled.

* * * * *

The trip back to the States was uneventful if tiring and by the time the car from the

Exchange dropped them off at the dormitory, Fallon and Keenan were exhausted and

feeling grungy. They parted at the elevator, going to their separate suites.

As she undressed and reached in to turn the shower on, Keenan thought about the

conversation they’d had in the elevator.

“You don’t like elevators, do you?” she’d asked.

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Dancing on the Wind

He’d shaken his head. “I wouldn’t have gotten into this thing alone. With you, I can

handle it.” He shifted his shoulders. “Up to a point.”

“Are you claustrophobic?”

His amber eyes flicked to her. “Yeah. All Reapers are. The containment cell is a hell

unto itself.”

“What’s a containment cell?”

“Where they put me when I go through my quarterly Transition cycle,” he said.

“That’s three to four lovely days of pure agony. No tenerse, no Sustenance. Nothing but

sheer torment.”

She’d had no idea what tenerse was, but she was fairly sure Sustenance meant

blood, though she had yet to see him drink anything that resembled it.

“I inject a vac-syringe of tenerse into me every morning to keep my cycles on

schedule. Without it, I’d be a jibbering idiot. Reapers get addicted to the stuff. The

Sustanence, I take as I want it. If you’d looked carefully in the fridges in the places

where we stayed, you’d have found the plastibags of it in the vegetable drawer.”

Keenan pushed the glass shower door aside and climbed in, letting the full force of

the hot water hit her chest and belly. The thought of Fallon swilling down blood didn’t

sicken her in the least, although before she’d met the man, such a thing would have

made her stomach heave. Things were certainly moving along at the speed of light.

She smiled.

“I don’t remember inviting you into my shower.”

His arms came around her and he pulled her tight to his chest.

“I don’t remember you saying I couldn’t join you,” he countered, nuzzling her neck.

“Ah, how did you get in here anyway?” she questioned.

His right hand slid down her belly and his fingers spiked through the wet curls at

the apex of her thighs. “Memorized your code when you punched it in.”

“In other words, you were skipping through my mind.”

“Skipping, slithering…” He bumped her ass with a rock-hard erection. “Writhing,

wriggling.” He rubbed himself against her and his tongue flicked at the opening of her

ear, his voice going low and throaty. “Probing.”

“Pervert,” she labeled him, and moved so she could turn to face him. Bringing her

arms up to encircle his neck, she pulled her body up, wrapping her legs around his lean

hips then tilted her head to one side as she gazed at him. “So show me what you got,

lineman.” She pronounced the word as two—line man.

One ebony brow quirked upward as he molded his hands to her bottom.

“Lineman?”

“Well, you are working with a pretty stiff pole there, aren’t you?”

He nodded and took a step forward, putting them both under the very warm

cascade of the water. Expertly, he dipped his knees and aimed his stiff rod at her

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

velvety folds. With one thrust of his hips, he was buried inside the slick sheath and her

back was against the tiled wall.

“You have a shower fetish, don’t you?” she asked.

“Cleanliness is next to godliness,” he mumbled as he trailed hot kisses down her

neck. The rasp of his five o’clock shadow on her tender flesh made mincemeat of her

flesh.

With him seated deep inside her and beginning a slow yet forceful upward push

with his hips as she rode his cock, Keenan closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of his

thick, wet hair rubbing her against her cheek. She cradled him to her, reveling in the

slick slide of their wet flesh upon one another. The steam was rising along with the

lustful arches of his body, and she clung to him, her lips against his ear.

“Fuck me, Fallon,” she whispered. “Fuck your woman.”

A low growl of acceptance rumbled from his throat and he began slamming into

her with even more force, his hard shaft thrusting to the very core of her cunt.

Distantly, she heard the phone ringing but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered at

that moment except satisfying the immense itch his rod was causing inside her. She

gripped him tighter with her legs, pulsed her inner muscles around him and smiled

when he hissed at the sensation. She clenched him again and they both came hard and

long—his spurts seeming to fill her as he rocked her up and down the wall until with

one last quiver of his muscles, his head sank to her shoulder and his warm breath

fanned over her breasts.

“I love you,” she heard him say.

“Right back at you,” she whispered into his wet hair.

Fallon raised his head and looked at her. The love he had expressed was glowing in

his amber eyes.

“I mean it.”

She brought one hand around to run her fingertips over his lips. “I know, baby. I

know you do.”

He kissed her fingers, speaking past them. “I never thought to ever tell a woman

that.” He grinned wickedly. “Or a man for that matter.”

Keenan’s brows shot up. “You’re bisexual?”

“Some Reapers are,” he said. “It’s rare but it happens.” He shook his head. “I’m not

one of them though. I was joking.”

“Well, I don’t share my toys with other girls or boys,” she said. “So you’d best be

content with me, Fallon. I’m all you’re gonna have.”

“You’re all I’m ever gonna want,” he said, and slanted his lips over hers.

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Dancing on the Wind

“He is not in a very good mood,” Cobb, the Supervisor’s executive assistant,

quipped. “You’ve kept him waiting and he doesn’t like that.” He narrowed his eyes.

“Where were the two of you? Neither of you answered your dorm or cell phones.”

“Must have been problems on the line,” Keenan said.

“Or on the lineman,” Fallon mumbled then grunted when Keenan drove her elbow

into his side.

Cobb sniffed. “Don’t let it happen again. You both know you are to be contactable

at all times.”

“We
were
contacting, Jonas,” Fallon said with a sly grin. “As a matter of fact, we

couldn’t have been contacting more if…”

“Will you stop?” Keenan asked, face turning crimson. Fallon chuckled.

“Just go on in,” Cobb snapped, “before I too wind up bearing the brunt of the

Supervisor’s ire.”

Fallon opened the Supervisor’s door and ushered Keenan in ahead of him, looking

back at Cobb to give the officious little man a broad wink. Since he wasn’t looking

where he was going, he plowed in his partner’s back, not realizing she’d come to an

abrupt stop. When he looked around, his gaze went past her to a stranger bending over

the Supervisor, pointing to something on the desk. The moment the stranger looked up

and his eyes met Fallon’s, the Reaper knew who he was even before Keenan spoke.

“What are you doing here, Zack?”

Breslin—Keenan’s ex-partner—straightened, folded his arms over a broad chest and

smiled nastily. “Going over plans with my new boss, Kiki,” he drawled, never taking

his smirk from Fallon. “Happy to see me?”

Keenan swiveled her head to look at Fallon. “I had no idea he would do this,” she

said, pleading in the way she was staring at him not to cause trouble.

“There is to be no trouble between the two of you,” the Supervisor said. “The

Extension stands. Agent Breslin is not here as a field agent but as a trainer.”

“In what?” Fallon inquired. “How to hit women?”

Breslin’s gaze narrowed. “I never laid a hand on her or any other woman.”

“Not from lacking of wanting to though, was it?” Fallon challenged.

Breslin shrugged. “Once you’ve been around her long enough, you might find

yourself wanting to smack her around too.”

Fallon started toward the smirking man, but Keenan caught his arm.

“He’s baiting you,” she said under her breath. “Don’t buy into it.”

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

His hands clenching and unclenching at his side, Fallon swung an angry look to the

Supervisor. “You must be scraping the barrel if you can’t find trainers any better than

this one.”

“Why you…” Breslin snarled, and started to skirt the desk, but the Supervisor

barked an order for the man to stay where he was.

“I am not going to have any pissing contests between you two!” the Supervisor

grated. “Is that clear?” He waved Keenan and her partner to chairs in front of his desk.

“Sit down and let me tell you why Breslin has been hired.”

“And before you think I followed you here, Keenan, you are welcome to look at my

employment papers so you can see the date I put in to work here. It was long before

you did,” Breslin informed her.

Fallon turned to Keenan. “Didn’t you say he was an empath?” At her nod, he

swung a glower back to Breslin. “Then he knew what you were planning.”

“That’s neither here nor there,” the Supervisor said, obviously wanting to forestall

any argument. “We have a situation and Breslin was the right man to bring onboard to

help us contain it. He has extensive knowledge of faith healers and psychic surgeons, is

an expert on the subject actually.”

“What has that got to do with what the Exchange does?” Fallon asked. “We go after

brutal things that go bump in the night, not Aunt Tildy’s psychic healer.”

“Because there’s a new kid on the block,” Breslin said, “and she’s not above having

anyone who investigates her or tries to stop her or her people murdered.”

“You’re talking about Mignon Bolivar,” Keenan said.

“The woman based down in Georgia?” Fallon queried.

The Supervisor nodded. “She has what she calls Healing Centers in all fifty states

and one on Guam. She’s applied for licenses in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The

men and women who perform the psychic surgeries and faith healings are called

Sensitives and she has over a hundred of them on her payroll, two per Healing

Center—one man, one woman.”

“The Healing Centers are actually huge circus tents from which her Sensitives bilk