Page 22 of A Lion's Heart
CHAPTER 6
Nisa moved quickly.
The fact that she’d found herself alone after she’d showered and dressed at three-thirty the next morning was not a mistake. Decan Canter was not a shifter who made mistakes. From what she’d been able to research on his family and his time with the military she’d surmised as much. And when she’d lay in that bed thinking throughout the night she realized that every step he made had been deliberate.
There were still questions running through her mind as she’d left the room and made her way to the lowest level of this bunker to where they’d parked their vehicles. Where had he been for the last nine years? He’d only showed up in Oasis last year. His prints and body scan were still logged into ViceSecure from that day. Their internal backup spanned ten years. The master board, however, housed every bit of data from the day of Oasis’s inception. That was located on the holodeck back at Assembly Headquarters. All she had now, was what was stored on her portable board, and while that had given her the shape of the shifter she was dealing with, it didn’t fill in all the spaces.
How and why had Decan stayed above ground for so long and why was he back now? More importantly, why was her father placing so much trust in a shifter they knew hardly anything about?
All these questions masked the biggest anomaly where Decan was concerned. Nisa shook her head as she approached her vehicle and dropped her bag to the ground beside the front tire. The memory of last night, hell, the last twenty-four hours still burned in the back of her mind. Why had she let him touch her? Because she’d been drawn to him. Her and her cat had felt the heat permeating between them from the first seconds he’d walked up behind her back at Assembly Headquarters. Nisa had been trained to put down any shifter who dared to get out of line with her personally, by Lead Guard and Seer Eli Preston. In addition to sharing their knowledge in technology and security, Lead Enforcers and her uncles, Nick Delgado and X Santos Markland had continued her education by rehearsing all the warnings they wanted her to tell any male shifter bold enough to approach her. Her Uncle Baxter had given her all the history instructions she’d ever need on how female shifters handled suitors. But it had been her mother who had taken her to the side after her first shift and then again when she’d turned eighteen to talk to her about men, thecalor, and finding hercompanheiro. The latter two Nisa had tried to dismiss because it had been more than awkward hearing her mother speak of such things, but she’d paid particular attention to the differences between the male and female Shadow Shifters. She’d been doing that all her life. Yet, none of her teachings or personal observances had prepared her for this shifter.
Or the strange things she could hear and feel when he was around.
As she knelt down beside the Tracer and pulled her board from her bag she recalled what happened last night.
His hands and mouth had felt so good on her. He was everywhere she’d ever imagined the right man would be when she allowed him into her bed. Her body quivered in anticipation of his next move and her cat had lay in wait for the moment it could finally receive this type of sexual release. Then there’d been an interruption, voices sounding in her head, scenes flashing in her mind. The name Marlee spoken loud and clear in Decan’s voice. Only, Nisa wasn’t totally sure he’d actually said it, not at that moment.
When he’d stood to answer her accusation he’d looked perplexed. His body was taught with arousal but there was something else present in that room. Something Nisa hadn’t been able to ignore. The stench and force of the lies between them. It had angered her, and made the confusion of what the hell was going on, more prevalent. She hated it all because it made her feel like she wasn’t in control. And Nisa needed to be in control. For once in her life, she needed to feel like everything she did and said was of her own accord, for her own purpose.
She’d needed him to leave and he had. Then she’d begun to think.
He wouldn’t tell her where they were and there was no record of this place on any of her maps. He was lying about who Keller was and why they were there. And when she’d been researching him on her board she’d noticed her secure link to the holodeck at Assembly Headquarters was disconnected. That was why she’d dressed and left her room extra early because she wanted to see what else was different now that they’d stopped at this place.
The tracking system on the Tracer was disabled. The power signal located just behind the front tire was off, and when she tried to access the Tracer’s control panel via her master controls on her board, they were disengaged as well. She moved quickly to the other vehicle, typing the codes into her board only to discover that this one had been disabled as well. Cursing, she stood and was startled when she turned and came face to face with the alluring cheetah that had joined their traveling party.
“Good morning, sexy,” Kyss spoke as she reached a hand out to touch Nisa’s hair.
Nisa didn’t move as she chastised herself for not picking up the shifter’s scent and letting her sneak up behind her.
“Good morning,” she finally muttered and then stepped around her.
“What are you doing out here so early?” Kyss asked as Nisa continued back to her Tracer.
Nisa stopped in front of the door handle on the driver’s side and used the pad of symbols embedded into the steel to punch in her access code. She’d half expected the code not to work since it was clear that someone had tampered with the vehicles. But the locks disengaged and she opened the passenger door on the driver’s side first.
“I’m getting ready to leave,” she replied and lifted her bag from the ground to toss onto the back seat.
“Without our fearless leader?” Kyss continued as she came around to lean against the driver’s side door.
Nisa closed the back door and replied, “He’s not my leader.”
Kyss smiled. “Oh? Then tell me, Nisa, who are you looking for to lead you?”
“I don’t need anyone to lead me,” Nisa stated evenly and reached for the front door handle.
Instead of Kyss moving—which would have been the acceptable action—the cheetah reached out, clasping her hands to Nisa’s waist and pulled her close. To keep their faces from colliding Nisa lifted her hands, planting them on Kyss’s shoulders and held her head back.
“What are you doing?” Nisa asked, wariness circling in the pit of her stomach.
Kyss licked her bottom lip and continued to smile. Her palms had splayed out so that her fingers now grazed the sides of Nisa’s ass.
“I’m trying to get an idea of just how much leadership you actually need,” Kyss told her. “From the rapid beating of your heart and the low rumble of your cat, I’d say you’re ready for full submission. And I’d be more than happy to help with that.”
Nisa could only blink at the cheetah’s brashness. Then she managed a smile of her own.
“If you’d be happy to continue breathing, I’d suggest you take your hands off me and never presume that I’m open to anything other than information you can provide on the Ruling Cabinet murders,” she said in an icy tone.
When Kyss hesitated, Nisa easily pulled out of the cheetah’s grasp, being sure to push her back against the vehicle at the same time.
