Page 11 of A Cougar's Kiss
“That’s probably not too many names considering she still has lots of empty pages left in that book,” Haven added.
“Bite me,” Cam snapped at him. “And you’d better be joking.”
Haven shook his head. “Man, I’m glad I’m not here all the time. She’d probably watch me like a spy as well.”
“I don’t watch either of you like a spy. It’s not my fault neither of you know how to move in silence.”
“You don’t know anything about it either considering you don’t have anywhere to go in silence or otherwise.” Cam never could let anyone get the last word.
“Aw man, that was a low blow,” Haven said with a glance toward Shya.
He was sitting closest to her, so he heard the grumbling growl of her cat before Cam and when she stood, Haven had the good since to back away, scooting his chair across the cement floor with a loud screech. Cam only tilted his head so he could keep staring at her.
“You have no idea what I do or where I go because you think you know everything there is to know about me. But you’re wrong about me and so many other things.” She was thinking about throwing her notebook at Cam’s smug face when she watched his gaze travel over her left shoulder and the look in his eyes grew serious.
“Ms. Shya.”
The voice sounded gruffer than it had last night, but it still ran over every one of her nerves as smooth and as sweet as hot fudge. She turned slowly to see Keller standing a few feet away from her.
“Keller.”
“Do you have a minute?” Today, he was wearing the uniform of the shifter tactical team—navy blue cargo pants matching long sleeved shirt and black tie-up boots. The dark colors made the olive hue of his skin look a little darker.
“Yes.” Did she say that too fast?
“Aren’t you supposed to be at the medical center?” Cam asked.
Shya didn’t know when he’d moved from the other side of the table to stand to her left, but she now noticed that Haven had moved closer to her right as well.
“Not time for my shift yet. Aren’t you supposed to be in the training center?”
Until three months ago, Keller Cross was not a part of the STT. He was a wealthy computer engineer who’d built a secret bunker in Oasis and was accused of hacking into secure files hidden on the Holodeck. But he also had advanced experienced in something those above ground called marital arts which, after a vigorous run-through with her father and Uncle X, had put him in a Senior Guard status here in Oasis. That made him one of Cam’s supervisors.
“We’re done for the day while they prepare for this afternoon’s meeting,” Cam stated, his tone even—not disrespectful and not quite subordinate either.
Keller didn’t respond to Cam again, but instead looked at Shya and nodded his head toward one of the side doors. She didn’t bother to look at the two jaguars she knew would be frowning, they could stand there and wonder what the hell was going on. Grabbing her notebook from the table she started across the floor, more than aware of three sets of eyes on her as she moved. Only one set of those eyes mattered because that was the set that had her cat on edge.
There was a thin line between acting unbothered by the sight of him again after what transpired last night and being unbothered. For starters, he looked way too good in that uniform, like being a part of the shifter defense force was his calling. And he smelled good, even better than he had last night with that cinnamon scent taking on a more potent and spicier tinge that had her nostrils tingling the second he’d approached her childhood group. As she neared the door Shya did everything in her power to rein in the urges she’d harbored in the last months she’d known Keller. They’d culminated last night that should have been enough.
But the moment she pushed through the steel doors and stepped into the hallway with him two steps behind her, she knew it wasn’t. Turning to face him she stared into his poignant eyes. “What’s up?”
It was as nonchalant as she could manage considering her insides were now caught in a low burning blaze. The heat she’d thought had passed throughout the night, had returned with a vengeance in the last few minutes.
“You weren’t as surprised as you should have been last night.”
No preamble, no pleasantries. This was certainly not the way lovers spoke after a night of passion. And she was no lovelorn heroine. Folding her arms over her chest, cuddling her notebook between them, Shya lifted her chin.
“About the sex on the conference room table or the comatose FL talking about an elusive killer shifter?” She could get right to the point as well.
A muscle twitched in his jaw and her fingers itched to touch it.
“Both, but let’s deal with the FL first. Why would you want the codes to his room?”
How much should she tell him? There was so much nobody, not even Nisa, knew about her. Mainly because nobody wanted to know. To everyone in Oasis, Shya was the miracle child, the shifter that everyone had prayed would survive the damiana poisoning she’d been born with as a result of her mother’s interaction with a psychopathic rogue shifter named Sabar. And even after the blood transfusion from her Uncle Ezra which cleansed her bloodstream of any remnants of the poison, she remained weaker than the rest of the shifters, thus making her the one left behind.
What would they all say when they found out she was so far beyond any of them in this place? What would Keller say if he knew what she’d been up to in this last year? Could she trust him with that information? He wasn’t like the rest of the shifters here, she’d known that from day one and admitted it was part of his allure. Keller was known as a renegade, a very loose cannon that Uncle Rome was trying to tame for the sake of all the shifters above and below ground. Could he be trusted? With an inward shrug she figured there was only one way to find out.
“I was the one who hacked into the Holodeck and read those confidential records on Jacques Germain and Cole Linden.”
