As Chelsea drove, perhaps faster than the speed limit suggested, he sat back in the passenger seat and focused on rebuilding his control. He’d had to do that a lot in the past weeks since Chelsea had left the Agency. Irritability and a lack of patience plagued him constantly, and taking care of the various details of the Agency that Chelsea had always taken care of flat pissed him off.
Hiring anyone else was out of the question. Even before Chelsea had come into the Covert Law Enforcement Agency, he’d found it hard to work with anyone on a daily basis. For some reason, rather than grating on his nerves, Chelsea had actually calmed them with her presence. She took care of complaints, made certain paperwork was filed and saw to the hundreds of details that irked the hell out of him.
And then she’d left.
After her resignation his temper had become even more unpredictable, and he couldn’t even explain why. He had no idea why the lack of her presence affected him as it had.
It had become so bad in the last week that his men avoided him whenever possible. At this rate, the Navajo Council would end up asking for his resignation before much longer.
Forcing himself to remain silent, to keep his questions to himself during the drive, Cullen was relieved when she finally turned onto her street and seconds later pulled into her driveway. Her shadows pulled into the driveway next to her house and before she shut the truck off, the two Breeds were moving to the front door of her home.
Their caution and foresight where her protection was concerned only irritated him further. The fact that they were wary enough, on guard to such an extent, led him to suspect that the danger she was facing was far more severe than Draeger and Tobias let on.
And that, Cullen knew, he simply couldn’t tolerate.
Nothing could happen to Chelsea. No matter what it took, no matter the blood he would have to shed, he couldn’t lose her.
CHAPTER 5
From Graeme’s Journal
The Recessed Primal Breed
It is a good thing a woman’s heart was created to nurture and to forgive—for a Breed, whether recessed, active or anything in between, will tempt his mate to murder.
Chelsea stared through the darkness to the small house she rented, wondering at what point Cullen had decided he could master her life in this way. That he could master her.
What disturbed her the most was that she was letting him get away with it. He was running roughshod over her objections and doing what he wanted to do. And rather than retaining control, she was letting him do it.
If she let him into the house, then he’d
end up in her bed. She knew it and he knew it.
“Are we sitting here all night?” The question was low, the roughened quality of his voice sending a flush of need racing through her.
How many years had she fantasized about him? Ached for him? Even as a young girl Cullen had drawn her. His close association with her family, the tormented depths of his dark eyes and quiet strength had always made her hurt for whatever pain he’d known. When he’d married her distant cousin, Chelsea had only been twelve, but she remembered sensing that Cullen cared far more for her cousin than Lauren felt for him. To her knowledge, Cullen had never learned that his wife had known about her cancer before they married. That their relationship was instigated in the hopes that the stories in the tabloids about Mating Heat were at least partially true.
Lauren hadn’t loved him; she’d wanted to live and believed Mating Heat would cure the cancer and extend her life.
“Chelsea, you don’t want to have this conversation sitting in your driveway,” he warned her, his voice oddly gentle.
“Why?” She licked her lips, uncertain how to proceed. “Because you intend for your discussion to end up in my bed?”
She turned to look at him then, her fingers clenched tight on the steering wheel, her body humming with tension.
“It’s going to happen,” he sighed heavily. “Tonight, tomorrow night, but it’s coming.”
A sharp, incredulous laugh left her lips.
“I worked for you for four years and not once did you even hint at any desire for me. And now, a month after I resign, you’ve decided you just can’t wait to get into my bed? Really, Cullen?”
“Really, Chelsea,” he mocked her, though gently. “And I think we both know it didn’t just happen. I just stopped fighting it.”
“And just like your determination to ride home with me, your sudden determination to sleep with me is all that matters.” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Why don’t you just take my truck and leave. You’re just making me crazy, and I was tired of crazy when I resigned.”
Turning in her seat to stare back at him, Chelsea was caught by the somber intensity in his expression and in his gaze. His green eyes gleamed back at her with savage fierceness while his tall, well-honed body appeared as tense as she felt.
“You didn’t resign because I made you crazy. You resigned because you weren’t getting your way,” he retorted, his tone cool, almost unemotional. “You think you were ready for Ops. You weren’t.”