Pilar went to the back of the car and pawed at the trunk. He understood that she wanted him to open it. It took him a few minutes to get himself moving, then he had to tiptoe through the carnage to pop the lock.
He hurried to the back of the car, looking into the trunk where Pilar was sitting with her paws up on the edge. Maverick groaned as he caught a glimpse of the bodies in the trunk.
“These are the real DOD guys,” he muttered. Pilar growled in response. She motioned with her head back to the building, and he nodded, hurrying back inside.
The nightmare never stops. My fantasy and my perfect hell were colliding all at once.
The security guard at the door came running out, asking if he was okay. Maverick nodded, even though he really wasn’t.
“Just … keep people away,” Maverick said. “It’s all official business. There will be a team along soon.”
“No problem,” the security guard said. “It’s lucky you have that shifter with you.”
“Yeah,” Maverick replied, sounding a little hysterical.
He fumbled for his phone as the elevator took them up, calling the DOD as he went back into his condo. His hands shook, and his voice was breathy with shock, but he managed to explain what had happened. The DOD said a team was coming immediately.
While he finished his phone call, Pilar stalked up the hallway to her room, coming back a few seconds later in fresh clothes. Maverick was a bit disappointed that he wouldn’t get to see her naked … even though that had been the main source of his torture just a short time ago.
“How did you know?” he asked, collapsing on the couch. Pilar sat in the armchair across from him, her beautiful eyes full of concern.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” he said bluntly. He knew she had just saved his life … again … but he was still worlds from okay. “Tell me how you knew.”
“I smelled blood,” she said, sitting back a little. “Then I noticed that one of the guy’s faces didn’t match the picture on his badge.”
Pilar shrugged as if tearing apart three men was an ordinary occurrence.
Maybe it is.
“You couldn’t have warned me?” he snapped. Stress, shock, and, yeah, sexual frustration were all starting to take it out of him, and Maverick wasn’t sure how much patience he had left.
“If I warned you, I also would have warned them,” she snapped back. “I had to get the jump on them. This is my job. Why don’t you just let me do it?”
Maverick stared at her, his heart full of conflict. He wasn’t used to this kind of violence … this was her world, not his.
Still, what she said made sense. She had to act according to the situation, and if she hadn’t, he’d be dead by now.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “For saving me. Again.”
“It was my pleasure,” she said softly. Even though it had been a truly terrible fight, he felt like she really meant it, and he didn’t know if it scared him or turned him on.
Both.
Maverick realized that his respect for her had just risen considerably and, with it, his trust. She wasn’t crazy or reactive … she was good at channeling her animal instincts and responding to the situation.
It only made him more attracted to her. Maverick watched her gorgeous, electric blue eyes as they searched his face, enchanted by the frame of her golden hair and the deep red of her lips. Every moment that they spent together, he found more reasons to worship this woman.
Every one of those reasons only brought him more pain. He had to fight his attraction to her. He had no choice.
I will not reach for her. I will not make a move. We’re too different, and we can never be together.
What made it hurt so much more was that the exact same feeling seemed to be echoed in her eyes.
CHAPTERSEVEN
PILAR