Her brow lifted.
His brows lowered into a brooding frown. “Keep giving me that look, sweetheart, and I promise you’ll have reason to suspect a hell of a lot of things, but my motives won’t be one of them.”
“What about the bugs we just found in the room? Placed here while I was conveniently busy in Jonas’s suite? Tell me, Lawe, do you think, compounded by your Breeds following me, that may have aided my suspicions where your motives are concerned?”
Lawe’s head jerked to the side, his gaze cutting as it sliced to Jonas, almost in accusation.
“Not me.” Jonas lifted his hands in denial as he faced Lawe’s wrath. “Hell, Lawe, you’re the one I give the order to if we bug someone. Did I give you an order?”
Lawe’s lips thinned. “Where are they?”
Silently, she pointed her thumb over her shoulder and watched as each man moved around her to the tiny devices that had been left on the table.
Neither man touched them. They bent close, their gazes trained on the devices as she watched silently. Her eyes locked on Lawe’s bent back and she swore she could feel her mouth watering for him.
Her timing was incredibly bad, to say the least. The very fact that her libido was kicking in now, when she was furious with him, was enough to flat piss her off.
She didn’t need this. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want anything to do with it.
At least right now.
She and Lawe Justice were like oil and water.
She was independent and he wanted a lap kitty for a mate, wife or lover. She wanted a man who trusted her abilities and the lifetime she had spent training, adapting and learning to protect not just herself and her men but those she was hired to protect and/or rescue.
She wanted a partner for a lover, and Lawe would never be a partner to his mate any more than he had been one with his lovers. Even the Breed lovers he’d had were forced to either stay behind the walls of Sanctuary or do without that perfect, hard, incredibly sexy body.
She bet he even growled when he fucked.
The thought of hearing that dangerous rasp in his throat as he came over her, inside her, was enough to send a shiver of anticipation surging through her.
And if he were her mate? There would be the barb, that extension her sister had told her about that emerged from beneath the wide crest of a feline Breed male’s cock when he found his release inside his mate.
The flush that mounted her sister’s cheeks and the gleam of remembered ecstasy in her eyes had been enough to immediately bring Lawe to Diane’s mind.
She turned away from him quickly.
She had to do a hard reverse where such thoughts were concerned or—
“Too late, he can already smell your arousal.” Jonas’s voice had her swinging around with a frown to glare back at him.
Both he and Lawe were watching her closely.
“Do you expect me to blush?” she asked as she crossed her arms over her breasts, more to hide her hardening nipples than out of confrontation. “Sorry, boys, I stopped blushing in my teens. I would like to know where those bugs came from, though.” She indicated the devices, then flashed Lawe a tight smile. “Any scent I may have, I can’t smell, so I can ignore.”
Lawe’s brow arched. “As long as you don’t expect me to ignore it.”
“I may not be able to ignore the fact that the mating heat is there, but I can sure as hell ignore any scent of need that I, myself, can’t detect,” she informed him firmly. “And you can ignore it too, Lawe, because it’s not going to happen. Period. You’re arrogant, imperious, and your attitude where women are concerned just piss me the hell off. We’re not pets, and I’ll be damned if I’ll play your little lap kitty, for even a second. Now take your toys there and get the hell out of my room. I’d like to get some sleep before I have to decide how the hell I’m going to repair the damage you did to my team when you showed them you’ve had your little purr boys watching over me rather than respecting my ability to protect myself.”
“As you did in that little village in Syria last year when your uncle’s enemies got their hands on you? Where were your men then, Diane? Let me tell you where they were,” he informed her as he cast a hard and brutally iced look. “They were nice and safe and not risking their asses because Thor and the two Breeds with you at the time had the good sense to contact Sanctuary. Do you have a fucking clue the danger it would have represented if your captors had had a clue that they held the sister-in-law to the director of the Bureau of Breed Affairs?”
Lawe could feel it. That loss of control that signaled Diane’s determination to challenge him in both words and deed. He could smell her intent to push him, see it in her gaze and in her expression as she stood there glaring at him.
“What about those Coyotes that pierced your hide with their bullets last year?” she charged as her brow lifted mockingly, anger glimmering in her dark brown eyes. “Neither of us exactly lives a safe life. Stop trying to pretend you’re the only one who does.”
“And I’m supposed to stand aside when I have the ability to hedge your chances of surviving?” He could feel the growl threatening to edge into his voice.
Damn her, he could feel the animal inside wakening at her determination to place her life in danger. As though she were daring the enemy to strike. Daring him to make his move and challenge her.
“What you should have done was left my Breeds on my damned team instead of taking them away from me and giving me the choice to contact you when I needed them.” Her voice rose along with her anger as she glared back at both of them.
“The shooter today was Gideon,” Jonas informed her quietly as he broke in on the battle getting ready to flare to life. “He’s been following you for weeks, Diane. The team tracking you has had signs of the shadow on your ass but they couldn’t verify. All they had was a sense of it. Catching sight of him has been impossible despite their efforts, and you know my men are damned good.”
She knew Gideon, the Executioner, had no intention of killing her, despite appearances. Not once had she herself been struck by one of the precisely aimed bullets. But three of her men had been. Three she couldn’t be certain weren’t betraying her.
“And if your men hadn’t been between me and him, perhaps he would have taken the advice I left for him at my previous location and actually come out of the shadows and arranged a meet,” she suddenly yelled at him as she threw her hands up in fury.
In her room she’d left an answer to the message she’d received in Argentina. She’d done everything possible to draw the Executioner to a meeting after he had left her the warning that she was being betrayed.
“My God, Jonas, do you realize how many times your men, by his order probably, stood between me, my contacts and my damned missions?” She stabbed her finger in Lawe’s direction as a haze of disbelief filled her mind.
She was furious.
There was no scent quite as intoxicating as feminine fury, unless it was female lust. And the lust was definitely there, Lawe thought as he felt that instantaneous, burning hunger suddenly sear his mind.
She wanted to hide it. She wanted to deny it. She would have denied it to hell and back if he confronted her over it. She would cut her nose off to spite her face and they both knew it.
She was so determined to be alone, to push him away, that she ran in the opposite direction of him every chance she had.
“Both of you stand down,” Jonas ordered, his tone harsh with irritation.
Turning to him, Lawe realized the other man hadn’t taken his eyes off the devices lying so innocently on the pristine gleam of the table.
“Why don’t you take your handler and leave,” she ordered him, the command grating on the animal instincts threatening to take over. “Then the two of you can moon over the electronics together.”