Chapter 19
Irena
I felt terrible for not giving Flack the benefit of the doubt.
It had been so easy to leap to the worst possible conclusion, but then he said things that made me certain again.
He was the most intriguing, strongest man I’d ever met, and he was so freaking gorgeous, too.
That’s why I kept doubting that he could really be that into me.
I was just an average Earth girl, a college student who couldn’t decide on a major, and now I was scarred, too.
He told me he loved me after sharing his past with me, and I was still reeling from it.
He said he loved me, and then he barely gave me a chance to respond.
I didn’t even think it was because he wanted to avoid rejection.
He had turned matter-of-fact in a way that had felt like business.
Now I was clinging to his back again, and he was loping into the mansion’s compound with such confidence it felt like we were simply taking a stroll in the park.
Not breaking and entering to steal a diamond and cover our escape.
Flack’s story about his past made me feel like he’d given me the key to his heart.
It made me understand why he was the way he was: rakish, a pirate and a thief, a terrible flirt.
I’d been cautious with my trust, but now I realized that he’d been the same.
He had not given me all of him till then, hiding the insecurities that lay buried deep beneath the surface.
I didn’t think I was good enough for a man as handsome as he was thanks to my scars.
He thought he was imperfect, a failure, because he was not like the rest of his kind. We were both wrong.
“Flack,” I whispered, and the black-tipped ears pinned back, rotating toward me.
I had his attention. Pressing my face to the fur at his neck, I sighed.
“I love you too. I believe it now, the thing you said about mates. I feel it. We’re two halves of a whole.
” He shuddered, his whole body wriggling beneath me, and then he tilted his head and glanced back at me with a look full of reprimand in his blue eyes.
Not to reject my words, but as if he were saying: now? You’re telling me this now?
“You didn’t let me finish earlier. So yes, I’m telling you now.
We shouldn’t embark on a diamond heist without knowing exactly where we stand.
” His grin was wide and very foxy, as was the playful sparkle in his eyes.
I didn’t know if all Sune were like this, but it felt like Flack was the perfect reflection of what a fox turned human would be like.
He ducked behind a building a moment later, still unseen by the patrol I knew was just around the corner.
Then he shifted, turning smaller but not changing shape.
The transformation halted when he was about the size of an actual fox, and then he led the way through a small window and into the building we’d been hiding beside.
I had to climb through the very narrow opening after him while he leaped down.
A squeeze, but no worse than many of the tight places I’d crawled into on the Vidu.
My heart thrummed in my chest like a trapped bird.
I’d never done a heist before, and it wasn’t going at all the way I expected.
As small as Flack could get, I wasn’t sure I’d manage to keep up, and I definitely wasn’t as quiet as he was.
He waited for me at every turn as we wove our way through some kind of underground complex.
Sometimes he’d be bigger, sometimes smaller, but he was never far from my side.
I thought he might have to consult the map he’d had tattooed on his leg, but he never stopped for that.
As it turned out, that was because he’d been going by scent alone.
Once we reached the vault, that changed.
He shifted to his human shape at last and pulled me into a room to get out of sight of the pair of guards stationed by the vault door.
They were a creepy-looking pair, with faces painted to look like skulls.
Or, considering they were red-skinned aliens with sharp claws, maybe it wasn’t paint at all.
They had a few of them like that on the Vidu, too, but I’d never gotten too close to one before.
Drawing me into his arms, Flack brought his mouth down on mine.
Like my ill-timed love declaration, and the surprise springing of his on me, this kiss was hardly appropriate right now.
With adrenaline surging through my veins and the fear of discovery looming huge at the back of my mind, it was hard not to cling to him.
In fact, I clung very much to his wide shoulders, his warm skin deliciously bare and firm.
“Stay here,” he whispered when he pulled back.
“I’m going to take care of those guards, and then we’ll crack the vault together.
” He slipped away on silent feet and left me peering around the corner with anxious eyes.
What was he doing? Just walking up to them like he was supposed to be there?
Like he didn’t stand out, shirtless, and an entirely different species from anyone else we’d seen here.
The guards responded, but they looked so baffled by his appearance that they weren’t moving very fast. Then Flack was right next to him, and suddenly he wasn’t Flack but a beast on two legs.
White fur sprouted, his head reshaping into that of a fox, and his clawed hands whipping out lightning-fast. Two blows and an elbow to the sternum later, and the guards lay in crumpled heaps at his feet.
He gestured for me to join him, and I tiptoed very carefully to his side.
Were they still breathing? Did I care if they didn’t?
I wasn’t sure. Unlike the pirates who I knew were definitely bad guys, these guards could be totally innocent.
They looked scary as hell to me, with those skull-like markings, but that was hardly a fair standard to judge them by.
When Flack started to tie their hands behind their backs, I drew in a relieved breath. He wouldn’t do that if they were dead.
Flack in his hybrid-form—the one shape I hadn’t seen yet—was just as terrifying as the pair of downed guards.
Yet the look in his blue eyes, rimmed with black, still made my heart flutter eagerly in my chest. Trust him.
I could trust him, and I could trust the way my heart and body responded to his nearness without fail.
That didn’t mean I was prepared for it when he abruptly began yanking down his pants. “What the…” I stuttered.
Fur retreated over his big thighs, and then he was leaning down to peer at the tattoo on his leg, totally not caring about having his cock out in the middle of a strange hallway.
“In hindsight,” he muttered, a grin tilting his mouth as he traced the lines of the artwork gracing his skin, “I should have asked Thatcher to put the tattoo on my arm instead. It would have been more practical.”
“A tad,” I agreed. At least there wasn’t a shy bone in Flack’s body; he didn’t care that one of the now-tied-up guards was getting an eyeful.
I turned to look back down the hallway, but it appeared nobody had been alerted to our presence yet.
That surprised me because there were cameras everywhere.
I knew we’d walked a rather convoluted path to get here, likely to avoid them, but there was no avoiding these.
Then an alarm began screaming, and red lights flashed across the ceiling.
“You stand here,” Flack said, completely unperturbed.
He yanked the knife I’d stolen for him free from a holster by his leg, and then went to work on the vault’s control panel.
A massive metal door with no discernible handle or hinges.
Why I had to stand off to the left was a mystery, but he’d claimed this was a two-man job, so I waited for instructions, not-so patiently.
That alarm was awfully loud, and I kept expecting armed guards to come marching down the hallway.
We were trapped in here; there was no way out.
“Aha,” Flack announced cheerfully, his blue eyes twinkling, ears still shifted like a fox’s, and his tail flinging left and right behind his back.
He’d pulled his pants back on and was elbow-deep in circuitry.
His triumphant sound came on the heels of the footsteps I’d been dreading.
I turned to press my back to the wall and watch for whoever was approaching.
Flack was still so calm, and he’d said—sworn, even—that he’d not put me in danger for a diamond…
I was beginning to believe that my definition of danger and his were very different.
“Sorry, I usually go in through the back door. This is more my friend Mitnick’s thing,” Flack said as he waved some broken cables around before carelessly dropping them at his feet.
“You don’t fit through the ventilation shaft, though, but I’ve almost got it.
” So this was just to get me in? What was he planning?
Anxiously, I peered at the flashing lights again and caught sight of armed men marching toward us.
Oh fuck, this was bad. We were lucky they seemed to think they had us trapped, or it would be like shooting fish in a barrel in here.
The vault door made no sound as it began to swing open, so I didn’t notice it until Flack picked me up and carried me through.
The door was at least three feet thick, clearly solid metal, and it fell shut behind us just as the first laser began to fire.
Then, silence. I stood on a cold stone floor, tightly held in Flack’s arms, surrounded by a darkness so deep I felt blind.
The massive vault door had shut behind us, sealing us in.
While that kept us from being shot to bits, I wasn’t sure if we were now just delaying the inevitable.