"At least I'm honest in my enjoyment of him," Gena drawled. "Tell me, Storme, did you enjoy fucking your Wolf near as much?" She leaned forward, her elbows propped on her knees as her nose wrinkled in a grimace. "Styx Mackenzie is a dirty little dog that pretends to be better than what he is. He was forced to eat as a pup just as the rest of them were."
Storme arched her brow mockingly, knowingly. She knew better. Styx Mackenzie hadn't been trained as the other Breeds had been. From birth he had been personally reared by the man who considered himself Styx's grandfather.
Evidently, Gena didn't know nearly as much about the individual Breeds as she thought she did.
"Let's stop wasting time now." Gena sat back and lifted the weapon lying at her side.
The light but powerful laser-powered handgun was pointed directly at Storme's chest. "The data chip, if you please. This is the only place he could have stashed the damned thing and we're tired of searching for it. Retrieve it, Storme, before I have to kill you."
"It's been ten years," Storme mused quietly. "You of all people should know I don't have what the Council wants."
She had fought this battle for so long. For too long.
God why hadn't she just given in to Styx and Jonas while she had been at Haven. There would have been no need for this then, no need for Gena and Marx to believe that kidnapping her would get them what they wanted.
"You didn't give it to the Breeds." Gena frowned at the thought. "Some of those Breeds gossip to one another like old women. If you had given Jonas Wyatt what he wanted, then Marx would have heard about it."
"Would he have?" Storme glanced at the Coyote as he glared back at her. "Why should they? Jonas Wyatt wouldn't have given that information to anyone any more than he would have given out the location of Brandenmore's grave site."
The pure blood societies believed Brandenmore was dead. It was something Storme knew wasn't the truth. She had seen the truth when Jonas stared at her as she threw the accusation in his face that he was keeping Brandenmore alive.
"Where is it?" Marx nearly came over the back of the couch, his eyes glittering now with bloodthirsty excitement.
"She doesn't know where it's at, moron," Gena drawled in amusement as Storme stared back at her. "Wyatt would have never trusted her with that information."
"I didn't say I knew where it was." Storme shrugged. "I said he wouldn't have gossiped about the chip any more than they were gossiping about Brandenmore. It's that simple."
Gena laughed. A harsh sound that grated against Storme's ears.
"Such a little liar," she exclaimed. "I know you better than that, Storme. You don't trust Styx, therefore you don't trust Wyatt."
"He mated her, Gena."
That comment caused Gena to pause as she stared back at Storme.
"You told me you couldn't smell the mating scent." She turned and stared back at Marx as though in confusion.
"I didn't, until this evening." The Coyote shrugged. "It's come on slowly. I would say if he wasn't dead, then the next time he saw her it would have been full-blown heat."
"Interesting." Gena turned to stare back at her. "It took long enough."
Storme kept her expression smooth, praying they didn't see or sense her confusion.
"So has the big boy knotted you yet?" Gena questioned her as she stared back at her curiously. "I hear he's hung rather well. One of those big ole canine knots up inside you can't feel pleasant."
"Jealous?" Storme asked archly, correctly interpreting Gena's lascivious interest.
They obviously believed the tabloid stories that printed that trash, she thought. Stories of some hormonal, genetic virus, an animal mating reaction and uncontrollable sexual urges.
The hateful glare the other woman shot her warned Storme that Gena would exact a bit of vengeance before actually killing her.
"I'm tired of wasting my time is what I am," she announced, her voice cold once again. "You have about sixty seconds, Storme, then I start hurting you. Rather badly."
She had been hurt before, Storme assured herself. She carried scars that she hadn't carried when she was fourteen. The scars of attacks by Council Coyotes and soldiers who had been sent to force the information from her.
Gena crossed a slender leg over the opposite knee, crossed her arms over her breasts and stared back at her with a cool expression.
"Then I guess you better get started," Storme stated as she steeled herself for whatever was coming.
Her brother and her father had given their lives for this information, Styx had possibly given his life in his attempt to save her and the other women caught in the attack.
She had promised herself that if she was ever caught, she would be as strong as her father had been.
"She thinks she's so brave," Marx growled then. "Protecting the information Daddy trusted her with. I wonder how she feels knowing Daddy gave her up all those years ago. That he told us exactly who had hidden the chip for him."
They were lying and she knew it. Her father knew where it was hidden, and how he had hidden it. He had died to keep it secret.
"It wouldn't take Einstein to figure out he entrusted me with it." She shrugged easily. "I wasn't there, the chip wasn't there, and one and one equals two. Big deal."
Marx laughed. "And Daddy died begging us for his life and swearing to make you give it up to us. Don't bother lying, sweetie, we know you hid it. Just tell us where it's hid."
Her gaze flicked to Gena, catching the other woman staring suspiciously out the picture window behind Storme's chair.
"They're out there, aren't they?" she asked the other woman softly. "Styx isn't dead, Gena. I'm his mate. He'll never let me go."
She would have laughed at her own statement if they hadn't seem so damned serious about it.
It was beginning to make her wonder. Hell, it might be scaring the hell out of her. Because she knew she wasn't his mate.
Gena's gaze flicked to the windows again.
"Ghost Team," Marx whispered. "They were the ones that came out at us when we tried to grab the felina and her brats."
"They've not found us." False bravado filled Gena's voice now. "We may not have gotten the prized princess or their brats, but we got this little whore. Once we get that chip ..."
Storme shook her head. "Styx has that chip, Gena."
"You're a lying little tramp!" Gena came to her feet in a burst of fury, came across the room and slapped Storme full across the face with all the fury of an enraged demon. "I want that fucking chip!" she screamed.
Storme could hear her ears ringing from the blow as the side of her face burned with a fiery numbness and the taste of blood filled her mouth where her lips had split against her teeth.
Storme blinked against the dizziness that filled her head and fought to hold on to her consciousness.
Swallowing tightly, she focused on Gena as she paced back to Marx, reached up, grabbed a handful of short hair and jerked his head down for a deep, tongue-tangling kiss.
Hell, maybe Storme would get lucky and they'd entertain themselves long enough for her to figure out a way to escape this time.
This was becoming ridiculous. In ten years she had never been captured until Styx had managed it. He had jinxed her or something, she decided. In ten years, she had never been so damned unlucky, and she had always been smarter than to allow herself to be caught the first time.
She had learned how to hide. She had changed her name several times, her hair. She had worn colored contact lenses and padded her clothing with shape-altering prosthetics. And still, sooner or later, she was always found, but she was never caught.
Through the years, there had been one constant though. No matter who found her, no matter the trouble she was in or how hot the situation, Gena had always managed to pull her ass out of the fire with a smile and a friendly warning to keep her head down.