Ghostwalker 06 - Predatory Game

total grace. He was always alert and ready, yet still when he was at rest, unlike her. She fidgeted, always moving, always wary of standing in one spot.
    Her breath caught in her throat as she watched him glide through the water. He reminded her of a sleek, powerful predator, silent, deadly, moving with deceptive laziness as he cut through the water.
    Saber couldn’t take her eyes from him, watching the power in him. He’d never told her what had happened to his legs, but the scars were still red and raw and the doctors visited him often. She knew he’d had numerous operations, but it wasn’t something he ever discussed. He worked out and he went to a physical therapist daily. He excelled at swimming. Once, he’d stayed under so long, she’d dived in, terrified he’d drowned, only to have him scare her by grabbing her around the waist and tossing her to the surface. No wonder he’d been a Navy SEAL; he was more at home in the water than out of it.
    When Jess halted, using powerful arms to tread water, Saber dropped her towel on the deck and dove in, not wanting him to catch her staring at him.
    Jess dove right after her and met her beneath the water. His hands spanned her waist and shot her to the surface. She erupted from the water laughing, came down, eluding his outstretched hands, and dove beneath him. They played an energetic game of tag and football. Saber was the football. They raced, tried a strange form of water ballet, and finally ended up clinging to the bars that ran the full length of the pool.
    Breathless, her eyes dancing, Saber wiped droplets of water from her face. “This was a great idea, Jess.”
    He hooked one arm around the metal bar and lay lazily floating, buoyed by the water. “I always have great ideas. You should know that by now.” He sounded impossibly arrogant.
    She sent a jet of water at his smug, grinning face, squealed, and dove to the center of the pool when he retaliated. By the time she had surfaced he was sitting at the water’s edge striving for innocence.
    Her heart jumped just looking at him. His smile. His laughter. The way his eyes lit up. How could she have ever gotten so lucky as to find him? She sent another column of water shooting toward him, then turned and swam away. She spent several minutes doing hard, fast laps, driving herself, trying to push her body into fatigue.
    Jess settled into the hot tub and turned on the jets, allowing the water to massage his damaged legs. He sat in silence and watched her small body cut efficiently through the water. Strangely, when she swam, his body always went on alert, every sense flaring into self-preservation mode. She was a beautiful swimmer.
    She moved with the rhythm of a ballerina, silently and gracefully. He knew she had fast reflexes. He’d even tested them a time or two, simply because of this—the way she swam.
    When she allowed herself to forget he was near, she swam fast like a racer, but when he’d asked if she’d ever competed, she’d flicked him a glance of such utter disdain that when one second later she’d laughed and said of course, he knew she was lying to him.
    He should have used that—added it to the things he knew about her and continued to search for her true identity. She had a valid driver’s license, but her prints didn’t match the prints in the system. Not even Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    close. He wiped his face with the towel and continued to watch her perfect form. It was mesmerizing to see the way she shot beneath the water as she made the turn, gliding half the distance to the other side before surfacing to stroke. Not a single sound gave her presence away, even as she surfaced, and that was more than fascinating to him. He practically lived in water, and just how could she be so completely silent?
    Saber. He played with her name in his mind. A sword—for justice? She’d taken the name, obviously.
    And where did Wynter fit in? Things just didn’t add up with his roommate, yet he couldn’t bring himself to put his team on it. He sighed as he watched her surface again, looking first at the shimmering leaves on the tiles and then up at the ceiling.
    She looked so exotic, yet innocent. She was thin, but there was muscle beneath that smooth skin. She turned her head and found him—and smiled. God. It hit him like a punch in the gut. His body immediately heated, blood rushing, centering in his groin, until he thought he might