THE COUGAR'S BABY - 14

C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N - - - - S H A U N

Shaun wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing. It was not a feeling he enjoyed.

He’d taken her to a little diner he’d come to know well, on a nondescript street corner that suggested privacy but not too much of it. The food was greasy and rich and felt like the cook actually put some time into getting acquainted with his herbs and spices, an art that seemed to be mostly lost in the rundown city of Ilocos.

Shaun poked at his burger thoughtfully, though his gaze kept creeping over to Dani, who was sucking on a strawberry milkshake and looking equal parts fuckable and nervous. Perhaps it was the latter that made the former so convincing. He plucked a fry off his plate, squished it in some ketchup and popped it in his mouth, reveling in the pure sodium bomb that it delivered to his brain.

“So, what’s your story?” he asked, finally finding the words to speak on topics other than small talk and the weather, which had both been exhausted a while ago.

“Excuse me?” she asked, quirking a brow as she removed her lips from the straw.

He was sad to see the connection broken. Her cheeks hollowed out so nicely as she sucked on it, leading his despicable brain down other paths that were best left untraveled.

“Where’d you go? I checked with Ace, I checked with Hemingway. You pulled a disappearing act, not only on me but on them. Unless they were lying, which I don’t see much of a point of because… well. No point. So you were either deep undercover or you decided to quit pretty much the moment you had boots on US soil. Which one was it?”

“Is it any of your business?” she asked, an edge to her words.

“It could be,” he admitted with a shrug, feeling the unwelcome sensation of strain in his muscles, tension building.

“Why?”

It was a repeat of the conversation they’d already had, but he couldn’t stop pushing, even if she’d made it clear there was nothing between them. Her cheeks were lighting up with something akin to annoyance and a very big part of him wanted to keep pushing her, pissing her off. She was fucking gorgeous when she was mad as hell.

He’d seen it on the battleground in that godawful jungle and he wouldn’t mind seeing it again. Those green eyes flashing with rage, those teeth bared in a snarl… Shaun had to assume she’d be magnificent in her jaguar form.

“I didn’t kill you. In my book, you owe me one. And it’s hard to cash in my debts if the mark has gone underground,” he remarked, picking another fry and devouring it as Dani seemed to forget all about her shake.

“We’re awfully self-assured, aren’t we,” she snorted, but there was mirth in her tone, not all claws and daggers now.

“We have to be, yes. Don’t lie, baby, you’re no different.”

“What makes you say that?” Dani questioned, picking up her drink and taking another sip, her long fingers curling around the icy glass, breaking the beads of perspiration on it beautifully.

Still gorgeous. Still maddening in all her entirety, just as she had been that night.

“Because of what you do, because of what you’ve done. That jungle. Your service before that. Yes, I did check up on you. Yes, I know about the medals, I know about you quitting. I even know about fucking New York City and the Black Masks, the gang you helped apprehend. But shit like that does not come naturally for someone normal, someone entirely okay in the head. Being self-assured comes with the territory, I think, and I bet it’s no different with you.”He picked up the burger and chomped into it, shifting his attention to the food instead of her. If he stared at her for too long, he might end up forgetting how she’d made a good show of stomping his admittedly blue-eyed hopes into the dirt the day before. This was only business now, he couldn’t forget that. And he needed her to get Carter back, in whatever state he was in.

Even if he was only fit to fill a box at that point, then his father would still want him in the ground near him. That much Shaun would have to be able to give him, even if he failed Syke when he promised to protect the kid.

“I left The Firm,” she said finally, a sliver of a sigh in her tone. “I wasn’t undercover, I wanted out.”

“Why?”

He was beginning to hate that question, both when he had to ask it as well as when it was directed at him. Did it really matter? Would it have to matter? But he knew it did. And that was even more irritating than the need to know itself.

“Personal reasons,” she said, a twinkle in her eyes as Shaun rolled his, catching the throwback to their heated conversation the day before.

“A man?”

She hesitated before answering and that caught Shaun’s attention, a shadow crossing his features. He had no claim on her, that much was evident, but the thought of her in anyone else’s arms but his… well, his fingers itched for a trigger and a mark, let that much be said.

“You could say that. But not like that. It was for me, ultimately. Let’s say for the common good,” Dani said, stealing a fry from his plate before he could bat her hand away.

She slipped it in her mouth and his gaze tracked the way her lips grazed across her finger, lapping up the tiny bit of grease and a kernel of salt. His cock throbbed. It was ridiculous. He’d have to find some bar hag soon enough and bury himself in her, before he drowned in Dani without the semblance of a chance of relief.

Not for the first time, he was sure that she would be the death of him.

“The Firm not high and proud enough for you?” he questioned, taking note of people piling into the mostly quiet diner and taking a seat farther from their booth to his quiet relief.

“It isn’t,” she agreed with a grin, falling back against the red pleather of the seat, the neon blue light casting ghostly shadows on her pretty features as she twirled the straw around in her glass. “But that wasn’t it. Well, maybe a little. A girl can only be betrayed so many times before she begins to question her loyalties.”

“The Firm is loyal to no one,” Shaun hmphed, one of his steadiest grievances with the entire operation.

“So why do you stay? Why don’t you go and do something better?”

“Like what? Help elderly women across the streets, rescue puppies, and build housing for the underprivileged?” Shaun scoffed, grabbing a napkin and wiping his fingers on it.

“All valid choices,” Dani uttered, laughter in her eyes and on her kissable lips, her teeth nipping down on the striped straw and doing nothing to quell the urge in Shaun to toss her down on the table and fuck her in view of everyone until she admitted that the night wasn’t some offhand bit of fun to her as she was so steadfastly claiming.

“One finds that there is not much room for a coldhearted killer in the universe, except in the company of other murderers like he is,” Shaun replied solemnly, meeting her gaze.

It didn’t waver. Good girl.

“I think you might be selling yourself short,” Dani said after an electric bout of silence, clearing the buzz in the air between them.

“You think I cannot kill, Dani? Were you not there in the jungle? You must have seen that guy next to you hit the ground like a bag of rocks,” Shaun protested with a snort, reliving the moment in all its gory glory, making his insides twist with discomfort.

As much as he lived for his job, it never got any easier. They were trained to only see bad in people, to recognize that a gunman killed was a life saved, one that was hopefully more worthy, but at what point did the hero become the villain? In someone else’s scope, he would look just as much the part of a devil as the people he took out did to him. At the end of the day, it was all really an elaborate game of who to blame and who to believe and Shaun wasn’t sure that he was always on the right side.

“I have no doubt that you can, but that was not my point,” she said, scrunching her nose slightly in the cutest way. “We’re all killers, but we’re not murderers. And we’re certainly not coldhearted. I was in the service, I know what comes with it. But it doesn’t mean we have to internalize it. There are lives to be led outside of the code, if one wants it.”

She seemed utterly sure of herself, with a fire in her eyes that he hadn’t seen before. He’d noted an inkling of fear when he’d gone for her the previous night, and a whole lot of defiance, maybe even a bit of worry. But this was new. This was like the look in the woman’s eyes he’d met in the jungle, who bore a lot of resemblance to the Dani before him now, but was still curiously changed.

“Was that what you went for? A life outside, something different?” he asked, reaching for his beer and taking a swig.

“Yes,” she answered simply, brushing her hair back over her shoulder.

“And I assume it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, seeing as you’re back here, under Ace’s twisted umbrella, jumping when he says jump, cowering when he tells you to duck and roll?”

It might have been too harsh. She certainly flinched that way and the burst of anger in her was oddly comforting for Shaun. Showed him she had some backbone still. He’d begun to worry, considering her reaction to him on their unplanned meeting. He tried to push himself to accept that all of it had been in his head, that whatever he’d imagined to be between them was simply a figment of an overactive, sleep-deprived imagination and was best left forgotten. It proved harder than he would have liked.

“Don’t think you’re the only one with reasons. Life isn’t so simple. Coming from someone who hasn’t even attempted it, those are fighting words, soldier.”

“Sailor, baby. I’m a sailor.”

She groaned softly, her irritation replaced with an expression of amused surprise. He was half-expecting her to throw a fork at his head.

“Sure, whatever. The point remains.”

“Well, that’s where you and I differ. You think there’s something better out there; I don’t share the sentiment. I have my brothers in blood, my family-in-arms. That’s the best I can hope to do, as illustrated by certain recent developments.”

He shut his mouth before he said something additionally incriminating, though the way Dani pulled back told him that she knew. It wasn’t hard to guess. He was aware he had to have kept staring at her like a lost puppy every now and then, despite his best intentions not to. Something inside of him still kept hammering away at the now-moot point that she could be his and his alone and it was getting increasingly aggravating.

Daniella wasn’t going to be his. She had said enough to the effect and he’d have to drop it. But his jaguar apparently hadn’t gotten the memo.

“What if someone showed you that there was something else as well?” she asked, and he couldn’t quite decipher her expression when she spoke the words.

Shaun frowned, downing another gulp of beer that was neither filling nor intoxicating, more a way to keep his mouth occupied while he racked his brain for a response.

“I can’t imagine what that something else could be. And as far as I know, there’s no one willing to take the chance.”

“Fair enough,” Dani replied, turning back to the last remnants of her milkshake.

Shaun shook his head quietly. This would be one long mission if things kept up that way.