Taken by Fire by Sydney Croft

going.
    Thing was, the way he was looking at her got her going a little too. Heat flooded her veins, her skin tingled, and despite the fact that they’d just had sex, she grew achy between her legs. When he came at her, she wasn’t sure if he was going to kill her or fuck her, but she braced herself for either.
    He did neither.
    At the last second, he pivoted, roared, and shattered the door with a jumping kick that sent the thing blasting into a million pieces. He stood there for just a second, panting, his assessing eyes taking in the area, and then he fixed his gaze on her.
    “Let’s get the fuck out of here. And that Maurice asshole? He’s mine.”
    * * *
    S tryker’s fists had curled as he spoke Maurice’s name, the anger welling up inside of him in a way that would be deemed unacceptable by the National Earthquake Society, Devlin, and just about everyone else who liked their planet in one piece.
    And then, with the elemental changes came the god-awful arousal that caused him to lose any and all train of thought.
    Breathe, man, breathe and relax
.
    He did and his cock got harder. Yeah, the whole change-in-atmosphere thing was totally screwing him over—and badly—because all he could think about was screwing.
    Mel’s close proximity wasn’t helping, and man, seeing Phoebe had sent him on a really not-nice trip down memory lane.
    Phoebe
.
    He wanted to kill that bitch—and the more he learned about what she was into, the more his instincts to protect Mel kicked into overdrive. Which was ridiculous, because they were the same person.
    Somehow.
    “Stryker, we should go.”
    Mel was touching him—yanking on him, actually. And he snapped to, because they were nowhere near out of danger. The shattered door in front of him was a great reminder as well.
    “Let’s move out,” he said, like it had been his idea all along. Mel shot him a
duh
look and started walking and he tried not to stare at her small, round, perfect ass … the one he’d held with a death grip while she’d moved up and down, impaled on his dick.
    The perfect ass Maurice claimed he’d sunk his teeth into.
    He ground his teeth and he swore he felt the building … shift. Mel felt it too.
    “You’ve got to control that,” she said.
    “You’re telling me about control? That’s fucking rich,” he muttered, and she yanked at him again, and dammit, the pull to her was much stronger now that they’d had sex twice.
    Would it get worse after each time? Because that would be really not good.
    “Stryker, come on,” she said, and he was about to make another cutting remark when he saw the look in her eyes—it was couched, but the fear was there and he remembered what the fire-bitch of a sister put her through on a regular basis. Mel wasn’t even an agent and she was doing a pretty decent job of holding it together.
    But this was his show and he had to do better.
    “We’ll be fine—come on.” He paused to grab her injections and his weapons, then took her by the hand, her cool palm in his warm one, and they traveled along the maze of basementlike hallways until they found the exit to the stairwell.
    He put his hand on the door and the hairs on the back of his neck rose. He pushed Mel behind him as the door swung open away from him seemingly of its own accord.
    Maurice stood on the small landing, waiting for them.
    Fists curled. Uncurled. Building shook. Not good to bring it down on their heads. “Move out of the way and I’ll let you live,” Stryker said.
    Maurice pushed his sleeves up, revealing wide leather wristbands, and Stryker froze.
    Those bands hid wicked poison-filled spurs. That had been Akbar’s power, and now Stryker’s mentor’s face swam in front of his eyes.… He remained locked up hard as Maurice unsnapped the bands and smiled, showing those damned, perfect white teeth.
    Stryker swore he smelled smoke and he definitely saw red, but the emotion was too raw, too real, and pretty soon they were going to be covered in