Fox and Feral by Angela Knight

All hell was breaking loose down in the New York street ten stories below. Gunfire sounded in a continuous pop pop pop, sounding thin and harmless at this distance. The way the NYPD cops huddled behind their cars revealed just how far from harmless it really was. They were outgunned all to hell by eight men with M-30s who strolled up and down the sidewalk in front of the bank, firing as if they were at a shooting range, not bothering to take cover at all. Didn’t need to. The robbers were wearing military grade body armor, designed as protection against weapons a hell of a lot more powerful then the cops’ handguns.

Luckily, our armor was better. And we hit harder.

Thing was, they had a hostage. Bank teller, or maybe a customer. The leader held her with an arm around her neck while he shot around her one handed. The woman screamed once, thin and high, like a rabbit being killed.

I could almost taste her terror. We had to get her out before they blew her brains all over the street.

Saving people is the whole point of the FBI Special Services unit. We get called in when hostages are in imminent danger and the cops are afraid rescue is impossible.

“Well, this is a Charlie Foxtrot,” Feral drawled, using the Marine expression for another Marine expression: cluster fuck. “Saving that hostage is going to be a bitch, Cap.”

“I’ll get her,” I told him. “You distract the asshole brigade.” And try not to lose your frickin’ mind. I didn’t say that, though. Thanks to the Desert Warrior program, it wasn’t something he could really control. Besides, three tours of duty in the ’Stans, two as Black Ops, had left Feral with some serious issues.

I keyed my throat mic to broadcast on the cops’ frequency. “Fox and Feral, coming in. Hold your fire.”

Feral leaped, a perfect, flat dive out into space. I tried not to watch the flex of his ass under the dragon scales, but it’s one hell of a view, and I’m a girl who loves a fine male behind. But then, everything Feral’s got is fine.

As he shot his line at one streetlamp, I aimed my fist at another and sent a mental message through my armor. The thin, high tensile line shot out of my wrist unit, and its weighted end swung around the light support. I gave it a tug. It held, so I ordered the line to retract and leaped off the roof of the ten-story building. Any normal human would have been street pizza, but neither of us had been completely human in years.

The top secret military program we’d volunteered for in 2032 had altered our DNA, increasing our endurance as well as the strength of our muscles and the density of our bones. We were now six times as strong as a human the same size and gender. And considering how damned big Feral was, that’s saying something.

Being a hell of a lot smaller, I’m nowhere near as strong as he is. But I’m fast, and agile, and I know how to use what I’ve got.

The line jerked me down toward the streetlamp. For a moment, it was like flying — a breathtaking swoop through empty air, the ground careening toward my face. If I mistimed the release, they’d have to hose me off the side of the bank.

Christ, I loved this.

My timing was dead on. The line stopped retracting at my command, and I swung upward, slowing my plunge just enough. I released the line at the top of the arc and went free fall, tucking into a ball to hit the ground rolling. The impact jarred my teeth even through ten layers of Titan Laminate helmet and an inch of anti-concussive gel.

I bounced to my feet. There were two thugs between me and the guy with the hostage, so I threw myself into a roundhouse and kicked one robber right behind the ear. His helmet cracked under my Titan-cored boot, and he fell like a bag of wet cement. I glimpsed a figure whirling toward me and drove my elbow into his throat, not quite hard enough to crush his larynx. He choked and collapsed, more interested in breathing than giving me shit.

I raced to the hostage’s captor, snapped one booted foot up and kicked the bastard right in the back of his thigh. Crack! He went down with a howl, dropping his gun to grab for his broken leg. Greenstick fracture, given the way I’d hit him. Served the fucker right.

I hauled the hostage up from where she’d fallen in a heap with her captor, pushed her ahead of me, then bent to scoop up the jackass’s gun. “Go, go, go!”

She looked back, saw my facemask, and screamed like a horror trid blonde.

“I’m a federal agent!” I yelled at her. “Get your ass moving!”

She ran, skittering on her high heels as best she could. I galloped behind her, one hand on her shoulder as I sought to both steady her and shield her with my body.

Hey, I was wearing full body armor. She was wearing JC Penney.

BlamBlamBlam!

Something that felt like a Volvo rammed me in the ribs. The impact spun me around and dropped me. My head hit the pavement with a meaty melon thunk, and stars exploded behind my eyes. When the pretty lights faded, I saw the girl get snatched behind a patrol car by a long, blue-clad arm.

I couldn’t breathe. My chest felt paralyzed.

“Fox!” Feral shouted in my ear on our com frequency, but when I tried to answer, my frozen diaphragm still refused to budge.

He made a weird growling sound, building to a howl that might have been my name. Oh fuck, he’s gone berserker.

The raw panic in that thought punched so much adrenaline through my system that my chest jerked into a huge, desperate gasp, and I started breathing again. I tried to sit up. My ribs howled like a whole pack of werewolves. Some fucker had shot me in the side with multiple rounds from an M-30. My suit’s protection had held, but I’d be black and blue from shoulder to hip.

I looked toward the bad guys, vaguely surprised nobody was using me for target practice.

Oh. Feral had hit them like a cat in an aviary. He wasn’t even using his wrist guns. He snatched one robber’s M-30 and smashed the jerk-off’s jaw with the other fist. The robber flew fifteen feet and hit the side of a building.

They do that when Feral hits them. Especially if he’s pissed.

Another shooter crabbed closer, his gun trained on Feral’s helmeted skull. Asshole must have known our armor can absorb anything but a contact blast with an M-30. Feral spun, bringing the rifle butt down and around in a vicious arc that slammed into the guy’s belly. He bent double, and Feral clubbed him on the base of the skull. He ate parking lot.

The last guy jumped Feral from behind, a knife in his fist. As his arm closed around Feral’s neck, my partner grabbed his elbow and jackknifed, jerking the guy up and over his head to hit the pavement with a crunch. As the creep hit, his knife pinwheeled across the street. Feral leaped astride him and powered a big, armored fist into his face. His arm moved like a piston, punching the bastard ten times in less than two seconds, his fist blurring. Blood flew. I could hear him growling in my earpiece.

Fuck. He was definitely berserk. If I didn’t pull him back in, he’d kill the bastard, and we were screwed. I pushed my aching body to my feet and lumbered into a skull-jarring run down the street toward them. Grabbing his arm in mid-punch, I hauled back on his wrist, only to be jerked completely off my feet as he hit the guy anyway. “Feral!” I shouted as he tossed me around like a rag doll. “I’m okay! Get off him!”

“He shot you!” At least I think that’s what he said. The snarl made it hard to tell.

“Didn’t penetrate my armor. Now let him go, Marine!” I managed a credible battleground bark that time, and his fist froze. Thank God for training. I got my feet on the ground and braced, just in case.

Feral dropped the asshole and got to his feet. I looked around. The eight robbers sprawled on the ground, but they all seemed to be breathing. I blew out a breath of my own, relieved.

Killing people is a pain in the ass. You wouldn’t believe the paperwork.

The cops started cuffing the thieves and tossing them into patrol cars.

“Agent Fox!” a guy in a suit called as he trotted down the street toward us. Probably the incident commander.

Before I could answer, Feral locked one arm around my waist, pointed the other at a streetlamp, and jumped as his line retracted, whipping us both skyward.

“Feral, what the fuck are you doing?” I yelled.

He didn’t answer, swinging his legs up at the top of the arc and releasing the line. We flew through the air to land on the same roof we’d jumped from.

Feral fell to his knees with me in his arms. Rooftop grit rasped under his armor, and I smelled sun-heated tar. A flock of pigeons wheeled overhead in the reddening sky, riding the thermals of sunset. In the distance, I could just hear the crackle of police radios.

He reached for the seal of my chest plate. I tried to knock his hand away, but he grabbed my wrist in one big hand and clicked the release with the other.

“Feral, I told you I wasn’t hurt. Would you cut it out?”

He ignored me. The armor section split in half like a clam shell, revealing my bare torso. I tried to muster my best hard-ass captain snarl and order him to get his hands off! My mouth opened but nothing came out.

Feral froze. I couldn’t see his expression behind his helmet’s polarized faceplate, but somehow I could feel the heat of his gaze on my naked breasts.

Then he pulled off a glove. I caught my breath, but he just rolled me to my side and skimmed my bruised ribs with his fingertips, his touch delicate as a butterfly’s wing beat. I damn near moaned. “Anything broken?”

“No, damn it,” I snapped, finally able to talk. “Would you get off me?”

“I’m not on you.” Then I thought I heard him mutter, “But I’d like to be.”

I decided to ignore that, especially since he sealed my armor back up and helped me into a sitting position.

He pulled off his helmet and raked a hand through his thick hair, leaving it standing up in short sable tufts. Strictly speaking, Feral wasn’t a gorgeous guy. His face was more bad-ass than male model, with deep-set eyes under thick brows, a crooked nose and a lantern jaw. A shrapnel scar bisected the aggressive jut of his chin. But his mouth looked soft and inviting, and I had dreams about kissing him.

Among other things.

Trouble was, I’d been his commanding officer for four years in the Corps, and I was still his control now that we were FBI. You didn’t seduce a guy who took your orders. There were rules against that shit for good reason.

In our case, it’d really be a dumbass thing to do, because everything rode on my ability to snap him out of it. Would he still listen to me if we were warming the sheets? I couldn’t take the chance. Somebody would die, and Feral would spend the rest of his life in jail.

And Christ, my life would suck without Feral in it.

“This isn’t working, Candace,” he said. “I can’t do this anymore.”

My heart stopped. He only called me Candace when things got ugly. The rest of the time I was Fox, or maybe even Cap if he was channeling the Corps. “What’s not working?”

But I knew.

Those bright blue eyes met mine, level and naked in their honesty. He was always honest. I was the one who had to lie. “I want you.”

“Don’t do this to me, Jim.” I unbuckled my helmet, jerked it off, and raked my hands through my sweaty red curls.

“I’ve wanted you since the first time I saw you. Why do you think I gave you so much shit?”

“Everybody gave me shit.” I was a female officer in a Special Ops unit, a good four inches shorter than everybody on my team. Big tits, no testosterone. Of course they tested me, at least until I established I was meaner than every motherfucking one of them.

They’d started calling me Killer Fox inside a month. Behind my back, anyway. Only Feral dared call me that to my face, and I’d made him scrub the latrine with his toothbrush for his gall.

“This thing between us is distracting the hell out of me, Cap,” Feral said. “I’ve jerked off thinking of you until I’ve got calluses on my dick.”

“Christ, Feral!” Heat flooded my face in a humiliating blush. No way would I tell him how many times I’d given my vibrator a workout fantasizing about him. Those hot little daydreams had been getting steadily kinkier, too. Feral in handcuffs, yum. Hell, me in handcuffs.

Nope, not telling him that. I’d known since the Marines that if you gave Feral an inch, he’d take the whole fucking football field — and dance in the end zone.

I could feel his bright blue eyes like a laser sight boring into my skull. Knowing too much. “You want me too, Candace.”

I bounced to my feet and started to pace, unable to sit still any longer. “I’m your control, Feral. Fraternization is a serious infraction of Bureau regs.”

He rose to his feet, crossed his arms, and loomed. Feral has a talent for looming. “Cap, play that tune for somebody who doesn’t know you. You don’t give a shit about the rules. Hell, you love bending them until they scream.” He smiled, and I felt the wet bloom of need low in my belly. “That’s why I’ve always liked you, even when you’re being a flaming bitch.”

“So we fuck,” I snapped, whirling to face him, wanting him so damned bad my teeth hurt. “The next time you lose your shit on some asshole, and I try to haul you off, what happens? You tell me you’re gonna listen to some piece of ass you’re banging?”

His head rocked back as if I’d hit him. “You’re not a piece of ass to me.”

“Because you’ve never done me, Jim.” I turned away and started striding across the roof again, trying to burn off my frustrated anger. “You think I don’t know how it works? I gave orders to grunts for three tours in the ’Stans. The minute they think of you as ass, you lose any authority you ever had. Remember Bryce and Starnes?”

“You’re not Starnes, and I’m sure as shit not Bryce,” he growled.

I ignored him. “They started sleeping together, and the next time she gave him an order, he fucking didn’t listen. He got shot, and she ended up a guest of the Tangos. We damn near didn’t get her back before they cut off her fucking head on YouTube.”

Feral leaned forward, eyes going narrow. “Richard Bryce was a moron. You’re right, the Lt. was nothing to him but ass. He nailed her because he wanted to nail a lieutenant, and she fell for it. He never respected her. That’s not us. That was never us.”

I shot him the look that comment deserved. “You respect me because you’ve never banged me. I’ve seen you with women, Feral.”

“None of those women were you.”

“Yeah, right.” Christ, I wanted to believe him.

“I’m going to ask for a transfer.”