“We should eat,” Kaia murmured, and though she didn’t say it, he knew she was thinking about his continued recovery.

He had the piercing knowledge that were she his, he’d never again miss dinner. Kaia would make sure he ate. That was what Kaia did—look after the people who mattered to her.

Her aunt nodded at her. “You know where everything is.”

“Your mother was the youngest?” he asked Kaia after they were alone.

“By quite a few years. It hurt her sisters a lot when she died.” Weaving her fingers through his, she smiled sadly. “Aunt Natia cried but Aunt Geri got angry. I think part of her is still angry.”

“She protects her own.”

“Yes, just like Mal and his father. All three of them are the same.”

“She and Mal don’t look alike, not really, but there’s something in the presence.”

“He looks more like his dad.” Leading him inside, Kaia took him to what appeared to be a small break room. “Because the city’s so big,” she said, “it’s divided into grids. Each grid has a central kitchen, but there are smaller eating and lounge areas like this scattered around.”

“Communities within a community.”

A true smile, one that lit up her eyes. “Exactly. The whole point of BlackSea is being one. We don’t want anyone feeling isolated from the group.” Her smile faded. “George did, though.”

“George often chose his isolation.” KJ was right in that. Even Bo, a stranger, had walked out into the atrium and grabbed a seat with different people. George, he’d noticed, had always taken his food into the lab—even when invited to join a table.

Kaia didn’t reply, her expression pensive.

“Let’s sit outside,” he said after they’d made sandwiches and grabbed bottles of water. Kaia was a creature of the deep; he had the sense she’d feel better if she could see the ocean. “It’s not every day I visit a floating city in the middle of the ocean.” Lantia moved under him, the motion slight but ever-present, as if BlackSea eschewed too much physical stability. “Does this city float away at times?”

“No, it’s very strongly anchored.” Kaia looked around the outer deck to which they’d returned. “No chairs.”

“I don’t mind sitting on the ground.”

Without a word, she sat down beside him, their backs to the wall and their eyes on the black stretch of open water. They ate in silence, protected from the view of any others up this late by another pile of small shipping containers. Waves crashed against the edge of the city, throwing up bits of foam, the ocean in competition with the star-studded sky.

Putting aside her plate and his, the half-drunk bottles of water beside them, Kaia shifted to kneel between his legs. And in her eyes, he saw an infinite darkness. But she didn’t give him a chance to speak, to ask about the terrible sadness within. Her kiss was an invitation . . . and it was a request.

Need crashed into him, as primal and untamed as the ocean.

He could no more deny her than he could stop breathing. Weaving the fingers of one hand into her hair, he kissed his siren with the sad eyes and the lush curves and the marshmallow heart, giving her everything. They kissed until his heart pounded and his lungs protested and she was breathless.

She sat back on her haunches, her hands on his raised knees. “I still don’t want to tell you my secret.” A pained whisper.

The wind blew her hair forward, surrounding him in a silken wave of deepest brown threaded with black. He closed his eyes, drew in her scent. “I can wait,” he said when he opened his eyes. “For you, Kaia Luna, I’ll wait an eternity.”

Her throat moved as she swallowed. “You don’t mind?”

Bo’s lips kicked up. “How could I mind?” She might not be ready to share whatever it was that she held inside, but she’d done nothing to hide its existence. “And security chiefs learn patience. It’s a prerequisite for the job.”

Crawling up close to him, Kaia undid the buttons of his shirt, then slid her arms around him and cuddled in, the side of her face pressed to his bare skin.

Heart an ache, he wrapped her in his embrace, her hair a warm weight over his skin. “I love your hair.” The heaviness of it, its coconut and tropical flower scent, the way it fell down her back in a dark waterfall.

She traced a pattern on his chest with her finger and they sat quietly for long, still minutes while the sea crashed beyond. Nuzzling at her when he heard the distant tread of a boot, he said, “Someone’s coming this way.”

A soft breath, a puff of warmth. “Will you stay with me tonight?”

“Try to drag me away.”

Shifting, they buttoned up enough of his shirt that he was decent, then rose and slipped away into the sleeping city. Kaia knew exactly which rooms they’d been assigned. Bo was glad to see they were side by side.

They went into hers.

As he turned after locking the door, his breath rushed out of him, his knees going week. Kaia had already stripped down to the glowing warmth of her skin, strands of her hair brushing the lush heaviness of her breasts, her nipples dark and the curls between her legs even darker.

Naked, his siren walked to him on silent feet. He stood, her prisoner, while she undid the buttons again and this time, pushed his shirt off his shoulders to crumple onto the floor. Stroking her hands up over his shoulders once more, she pressed herself against him. “Love me, Bowen.”

His hands on her hips, he buried his nose in her neck, just breathed her in as he lifted without thought and turned to pin her against the door. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her hands shaping his body, her touch caressing and possessive and a branding.

“I’m yours,” he said against her mouth, the wrenching he felt inside him a violent thing, as if part of him wanted to tear away and lay itself at her feet.

“Bowen.” Her eyes shimmered.

It was inevitable that he’d kiss her, that he’d surrender to the need. She didn’t shy. Arms locked around him, she met him kiss for kiss, a sleek, strong creature who was nothing he’d ever dared dream.

Walking backward away from the door, her body held safe against his, he managed to stumble into the bed. He fell back on it with her on top. She laughed in a sudden delight that eased the knot in his heart, before nipping at his lips and kissing her way down his throat.

Bo managed to kick off his shoes, but it was Kaia’s fingers that went to his jeans. “You look uncomfortable,” she said with a solemn solicitousness belied by the mischief in her eyes. “I think you’ll feel better if I undo this.”

Beguiled, enslaved, hers, Bo ran his hand over the smooth skin of her thigh, felt her shiver. “How about you come closer first?”

Abandoning his jeans, she leaned in, her hands braced on his shoulders. When he clasped the back of her neck and held her to him for a kiss followed by a soft bite, she melted voluptuously into his body. He moved his hands down the curves of her in a slow exploration, stopping to caress and squeeze and delicately tease every few inches.

Her breath catching, she sucked soft and wet at his throat before demanding another kiss.

Drunk on her, Bo was more than willing to give Kaia everything she wanted. Her nipples rubbed against his chest, the musk of her arousal rising to scent the air. Groaning, and knowing his control was on a razor-thin edge, he flipped their positions so she was on the bottom. And began to kiss his way down the sweet curves of her body.

“Kaia.” It was a song in his heart, her name, her scent, her. “My beautiful Kaia.”

He gave himself permission to suck on her nipples, having learned exactly what made her back bow and her skin shimmer. But he couldn’t linger today; he wanted to drench her in pleasure, wanted to take a little more of the sorrow from her. Because one thing he knew: his greatest weakness now had human form.

He couldn’t bear it when Kaia lost her smile.

The curve of her belly quivered under his kiss, her voice a whisper as she said his name. Determined to drown his lover in erotic sensation before his control went up in flame, he licked his way through her delicate folds, one of his hands on her inner thigh to hold her wide open for him.

Her body arched, her hands pulling on his hair. He felt her muscles clench as she came apart for him, and her trust, it was a gift he’d never take for granted.

It was as he was rising up over her, his need as frantic as hers, that the comm panel on the wall began to buzz in an urgent beat.

Chapter 53

Unusual activity spotted in quadrant delta-4. Going to investigate.

—Call-in by Rina Monaghan, DarkRiver leopards

BO HAD TO force himself from Kaia to answer the comm. He did so audio-only. “Has George been spotted?”

“Long way away,” was the answer from a familiar male voice. “We have a jet waiting for you on shore.” A slight pause. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t have to buzz Kaia’s room to get you.”

Bo told Armand they’d be there soon, then hung up.

Returning to the bed, he brushed tangled strands of hair off Kaia’s face. “We’re going to have to finish this another time,” he said, though his whole body ached.

Eyes stark, she tugged him down onto her. “We’ll be quick.”

Bowen didn’t argue. He sank into her, she wrapped herself around him, and they shut out the deadly countdown for a fraction of time.

* * *

• • •

GEORGE had surfaced over four thousand miles from Lantia. It was an almost unimaginable distance for him to have traveled so quickly. He must’ve surfaced at some point to take a high-speed jet to cross over from the North Atlantic to the Pacific, though no one had spotted him. But even if he was extraordinarily fast and relentless in the ocean, on land, he became a man. And the land was Bo’s hunting ground.

“San Francisco?” He couldn’t believe it. “Why would he emerge anywhere near allies you might contact to capture him?”

“Because they are allies,” Armand said, his hair tumbled by the sea breezes today but his black T-shirt perfectly fitted to his body. “The leopards won’t react violently if they spot him—they might give him a pointed warning that he’s meant to alert them before entering their territory, but they won’t harm him.”