Protector: The Elect, Book 1 (3 page)

“I don’t know, baby.” He cocked one eyebrow. “You’re the expert. You tell me.”
 

She pressed her lips into a hard, pale line and then sighed. “You don’t need me. You have Zach Littman. He can tell you what you are.”
 

He jerked his chin at Zach, indicating he should leave the room. When the door clicked softly behind him, Brax moved closer, careful not to spook her but desperate to touch her.
 

“I need to hear it, baby. What you know and what you suspect. I need you to acknowledge that this information can never be released. It can’t be published. We can’t be exposed.”
 

He was near enough he could hear the pulse pounding in her veins, see the pebbled nipples hidden under her shirt and behind the white lab coat. Damn, that thing had to go. He reached out, slow and easy, and pushed it from her shoulders, let it fall to the floor.
 

“Esme?” he whispered, but he didn’t give a damn about her answer. He was enchanted by the rise and fall of her chest, by the scent of her growing arousal.
 

“I wouldn’t expose you. I was sure I could trust Zach and I wanted a second opinion.”
 

His head bent to her neck, her shoulder. He couldn’t stop. He had to taste her. Feel her soft skin against his lips. “What else, angel?”

The sooner he got the questions over, the sooner he could take her to bed. Strip her. Spread her. Taste and touch and
indulge
. He wanted to go slow and easy, wanted to savor her and give her more pleasure than she’d ever dreamed of or experienced. He’d never considered himself a tender lover, but for her he wanted to try. It might be a week before he came up for air.
 

“I already said. New species.” She gasped as his teeth scraped over the vulnerable skin under her ear. He nibbled his way to the curve at her shoulder. “Hominid. I’d need to study the strands that are different to guess how the species are different.”
 

She’d already done that. He could feel the knowledge leaking from her mind. She wasn’t able to shield her thoughts as well when he was touching her. He growled in satisfaction. If he had to fuck her, sate her, to get the information he needed to keep her safe, well, he was up to the challenge. He felt her struggling against the need, but she couldn’t fight against the desire cascading through her senses and he wasn’t about to give her time to recover.
 

He yanked her T-shirt over her head and groaned at the sight of the skimpy cotton bra she wore. It was white, innocent, at odds with the hard peaks of her nipples poking through. He couldn’t resist. He bent and licked one, sucking it between his teeth when she groaned and thrust forward. Hell yeah. She burned as hot as he did. He could scent her desire answering his, could feel the quickening in her body. He shoved the fabric under her breasts, baring her to his lips. Her nipples were hard, pink points.

“Oh, yeah. So sweet and pretty.”
 

Her hands gripped his shoulders. For a moment she clung to him, then he sensed her pulling back a second before she pushed him away. She stepped back, panting, pulling her bra back over her breasts, but it in no way hid her desire.
 

Chapter Two

She’d finally lost her mind. There was no other explanation. Why else would she be ready,
eager
, to rip her clothes off for this stranger and beg him to take her, if she was still sane? She could feel his desire, his hunger. She’d had uncanny intuition as a child. She knew what people felt, what they thought. Their darkest desires. She could communicate telepathically with her brother, could influence people, plant suggestions in their thoughts without their knowledge. She’d almost used that talent when Brax snuck into her office. It had saved her more than once as a child, but she couldn’t say why she held back now.

Her gift, her curse, had made life hell when she was a child tossed into the foster care system. She didn’t want to know if the new father she’d been stuck with had lascivious thoughts about young girls. Or boys. She didn’t want to know she’d only been brought into a house because of the money the state paid. She was different. She knew it, and inevitably, they knew it. She’d been fighting that difference for years. Repressing it.
 

She wasn’t stupid. She’d studied schizophrenia and paranoia. For years she’d thought she really was crazy, despite seeing the difference in clinical descriptions and what she knew was her reality.
 

Eventually she’d learned to control the telepathy. It was all about emotion. If she repressed her feelings, she could keep it under control. She didn’t have to feel other people’s thoughts. Didn’t have to feel what they did. But now, the ability to do so was loose. After all the effort, all the work to suppress it. It pissed her the hell off.
 

She snatched her shirt up from the floor and pulled it on, glaring back at him when he snarled at her. What the hell?
 

“I’m going home. I know what you are. I have no evidence. And even if I did, I wouldn’t expose you.” She gave him a tight, angry smile. “See? No worries.”
 

His eyes narrowed on her, and she felt his anger and refusal before he spoke. Damn it, she didn’t want this. She didn’t want to know what people were thinking. She didn’t want to be different. She wanted to be
human
. And she wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
 

“You aren’t going anywhere, Esme. You know it isn’t safe.”
 

She sighed, the fury deflating out of her like a stuck balloon. She’d known he’d say that. Just as she knew he wouldn’t let up until he had her in his bed.
 

“Would that be so bad?” he asked softly.
 

“I didn’t give you permission to snoop in my head,” she snapped.
 

He gave her a wolfish grin. “You’re projecting your thoughts so I don’t have to snoop. Tell me, sweetheart, you’re a geneticist—have you ever tested your own DNA?”
 

She froze. He knew. He knew she was different. He knew she wasn’t human anymore than she suspected he was. It infuriated her.
 

So where the fuck had they been? While she’d gone through the childhood from hell, alone and lonely, abandoned by her own parents? Her own people? Watching her baby brother suffer alongside her and then being separated until they were adults?

 
She lifted her chin and faced him. Damned if she’d show him how much that hurt. The solitary life she’d been forced into.
 

“What do you call yourselves then? How many of you are there?”
 

Was her mother among them? They’d been taken from her so long ago. Later, Esme had discovered she’d been hospitalized for a mental disorder. She’d claimed to hear voices. But Esme knew, while the voices may have unhinged her fragile mother, they were real. On her release, she’d disappeared.
 

“We’re the Elect. There are about two thousand now that we know of, most here in the Tampa area. We’ve made it our home base.”
 

Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself. She’d known, of course. Eventually
Homo sapiens
would evolve, a barrier would be jumped. She’d known she couldn’t be the only one. She’d also known she couldn’t ever let anyone know what she was. She had no intention spending her life as a rat in some privately-funded, top-secret lab.
 

Why hadn’t she heard? It was a small community she was a part of. And shit, she needed a phone. She needed to call her brother and warn him. It wasn’t his blood she’d tested, but she was certain she’d get the same results. It was his son’s, a little boy who’d been plagued by illness since his birth six years ago. Carter hadn’t even known about the boy until a few months ago, when the boy’s mother had died. He had been contacted in Iraq.
 

Thankfully, his tour was ending so he was on his way back to the States anyway. But Esme had been surprised to learn he’d already put in a request to resign his commission. When she’d asked him why, he’d just said it was time. He’d served twelve years, the war was over and it was unlikely he’d get promoted again. Too much competition for too few slots, he’d said. But she couldn’t help wondering if that was the whole truth. Had some instinct told him that soon he would be needed at home? Since his service obligation had been met and Kaden’s unexplained illness, combined with his mother’s sudden death, created a family hardship for the boy, Carter’s resignation had been approved without jumping through too many hoops.
 

She’d only known her nephew a short time, but Esme would do anything for that boy. Whatever it took to save him and her brother. She’d failed to save Carter when he was a child, and that wouldn’t happen again. She took a deep breath and looked around the study, recalling the security when they’d come in. Then she looked at her captor. His eyes were hot, blazing. One part pissed off and the other part lust. She only cared about two people in the world. She’d make a deal with the devil to keep them safe if she had to.
 

“You find them using DNA testing, don’t you?”

He nodded. “Yes, and we protect them.”

She arched her eyebrows. “Decided not to kill me, huh?”

He rolled his eyes. “You knew that in your lab before we even spoke. You’re safe with me.”

“Everything but my virtue,” she muttered and glared when he grinned. He was smart enough to clear the satisfaction from his expression.

“I get the feeling you’re working up to something here, angel.”

“It is safer here,” she conceded.
 

Much safer than her place or her brother’s. They lived close to neighbors, and though they had security alarms they couldn’t compete with the fences and cameras she’d spotted on this estate. Not to mention the dogs and guards she’d seen while they were driving in. She met Brax’s gaze and tried to ignore the heat she saw reflected there.

“Is it a requirement of your job to protect any members of the Elect you find?”

“Yes, it is,” he said firmly. “So whoever you got that blood from will have sanctuary here.”

And access to Zach Littman. If anyone could help her figure out what was wrong with Kaden, it would probably be Zach. Her instinct said she could trust him, but she wanted assurances.

“I have your word we’ll be safe here?”

His eyes caught the light and glinted as he stepped towards her. She knew she’d irritated him pushing like she was, but she couldn’t let it go.

“Yes, you have my word,” he agreed.

She remembered the gunshots at her lab and her escape with Brax. If he’d wanted her dead, would she still be alive? She doubted it, and really, what other options did she have?

“The blood was my nephew’s,” she said. “If you bring him and my brother in here and promise me they’re safe, I’ll give you what you want.”
 

Her offer did not engineer the response she expected. He was furious. “You would sell yourself for them?”
 

It hurt, that contempt, but she hid it and tilted her chin up. “They are all I have. All I have ever worked for.”
 

“Family loyalty. I understand that,” he said softly, approvingly, as he glided forward. “But you’re wrong about one thing, baby. They aren’t all you have. You have me.”
 

She held her breath when he reached her, his gaze snaring her. So hot. So carnal. She wasn’t innocent, but she was a virgin. She could block other people’s thoughts as long as they weren’t touching her. Add physical contact and it was game over. It was damned hard to have sex with a man when you could read his mind. When he was thinking her breasts were too small or her ass was too big. She’d given up trying long ago. But she didn’t feel anything from Brax but approval. Nothing but need and desire. She shared it and had every intention of indulging it. When she knew Carter and Kaden were safe.
 

“I have to call him.”
 

Somehow she made her voice firm and regained her outward calm, though she knew he saw through it. He nodded, stalked to the door, and jerked it open, barking orders at whoever was out there. He trailed a finger down her cheekbone when he returned, and she swore her knees knocked.
 

“You won’t relax until they’re here, will you?”
 

She bit her bottom lip—it was the only way to not beg him to take her—and shook her head. “I need to know they’re safe,” she whispered.
 

She needed him thrusting inside her. That wasn’t happening yet, but she saw the promise in his eyes. That and so much more. He edged closer. His hands settled on her hips, stroking up and down her sides as he stared down into her eyes.
 

“I hope you’re ready, baby,” he whispered. He was gentle. Seductive. “We’re not human. My needs aren’t human.” His head dipped to her shoulder and he nipped her, humming at her jerked response. “And neither are yours.”
 

Oh God, she was in so much trouble here. He released her, a wicked, carnal smile curving his lips that made her pussy clench in anticipation.
 

“Call your brother.” He motioned to the phone on his desk. “Tell him Mason Cole is picking him up with a team.”