Full Moon Rising (Riley Jenson Guardian 1)

"Hey, pretty lady," he said, wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me close. "Guess what?"

"What?" I said, my voice little more than a husky whisper. God, he felt so good pressed up against me that my hormones were begging me to drop him to the ground and shag him senseless

"Rhoan and I drew straws. We won the bed tonight."

I linked my hands behind his neck and kissed his chin. "Meaning we're under the stars tomorrow?"

"Afraid so. But the weathermen say it'll be fine."

"It doesn't matter anyway, because I've had scout training. I'll make us a shelter."

His grin was decidedly wicked. "Shame you didn't bring the uniform along. Wouldn't mind seeing you in that."

I raised an eyebrow. "Got a fetish for women in uniform, have you?"

"Especially when they're leggy redheads." His breath caressed my mouth, then his lips found mine and our kiss became a long, slow seduction that had my knees wanting to buckle

"Enough, you two," came Rhoan's comment from behind Quinn. "Some of us have to stomach food."

I came up for air and accepted the plate my brother shoved at me. "What's this?"

Rhoan gave me a flat look. "What does it look like?"

"I don't know. I think it resembles steak and fries, but it can't be. I mean, it's not black."

He picked a bean off my plate and flicked it at me. His steak, I noted, was very, very rare. "When we get home, you're on cooking duty."

I caught the bean midair and shoved it in my mouth. "That means you do the laundry, bro." Which was a good threat, because Rhoan hated washing as much as I hated cooking. We both hated ironing, which was why our living room was overflowing with clean, unironed clothes. "Maybe you should take some cooking lessons from your lover."

"I can think of better things to do with my lover."

"So can I," Quinn whispered into my ear

I blew a breath across my forehead, but it did little to ease the fever assailing my skin. Why did I have to meet this man right in the middle of a disaster?

"When you're ready, people," Jack said from the table

I glanced past my brother and saw Jack had laid the maps we'd found out on the table. At one end was his computer unit, currently lit up with diagrams. I followed Rhoan over and sat down. Quinn sat next to me, his knee brushing mine and sending little tremors of electricity up my leg

"I scanned in the diagrams you found and did a cross-check of all known military installations," Jack said. "We found three possibles - all of them sold off fifty years ago by the government."

"Any idea who owns them or what they're now used for?" Quinn said, his gaze on the computer screen

"One was bought by a residential development company and now has several thousand homes on it. Another is currently owned by Hoyle-Brantin, who make household products. The last one is owned by a company called Nashoba, which lists itself as being a cosmetics research and marketing organization."

I raised an eyebrow. "Nashoba is not a brand of makeup I've ever heard of."

"Nor I," Liander said, and flashed me a bright smile. "And I probably use more makeup in a day than you use in a year."

"When you're naturally beautiful like me, you don't need makeup," I said, and ducked the fries thrown at me

"Considering Nashoba itself doesn't seem to exist," Jack commented, "I'm not surprised you haven't heard of it."

"It's a front for another company?" Quinn asked

Jack nodded. "The paper trail is a mile long. The computer system is working on it as we speak."

"We seem to be hitting more than our fair share of paper trails lately," Rhoan said