Chapter Four
Present…
Adam tears the final piece of the wall open and steps through the breach he has created. I huddle back against the far wall, my arms around me, my knees up to my chest as he comes through. I don’t know what he’s going to do to me, but in that moment I am utterly enthralled.
He is wearing thick black tactical pants and a vest. Aside from that, his shoulders, arms, and much of his chest are bare. He is beautiful. Not in a feminine way. In the way only a perfect monster can be beautiful. He is fierce and feral. If he were a man he would be panting hard. His fingers would be bleeding from the effort of tearing at the wall. But he is entirely intact and there is not so much as a drop of sweat on his brow.
If I am not mistaken, he has grown considerably since I last saw him. He had an impressive musculature then, but musculature can be increased with nutrition and work and the right kind of stimulation and I am sure they ran him through all the stimulation they could find to bulk him up to the size he now stands.
There’s absolutely no way out of here. I knew from the beginning that I’d never escape him. I just didn’t realize how I’d feel when we finally came face to face.
I’m terrified, in the best possible way. My heart is hammering in my chest.
He stops and just looks at me. For a long moment, there is nothing but silence between us. I am face to face with what I created—and what the others tried their best to destroy.
He’s more human than I am. His face betrays emotions more complex than even my own. I see triumph. I see anger. I see desire. I see rage. I see loss. All those powerful feelings are locked away behind that perfectly controlled muscular facade.
“Stand up.”
I expect him to roar, but instead he speaks quietly in a voice that is deep and resonant and refined. I can hear the education in his tone, the modulation of his voice. And I can hear the natural dominance. He was made perfect. He was made to be the kind of man who could command other men effortlessly. It works on women too, even terrified, nearly sobbing, curled-up women.
My body unfurls as I rise to my feet. I want to stay crumpled up in that corner, but he will not allow it.
He closes the distance between us as I stand trembling before him. His hand extends, the same hand that just made short work of inches of concrete and steel. He cups my chin gently. I feel a frisson run through me. There is so much strength in his fingers, and yet he touches me with a tenderness that men with a fraction of his muscle cannot master. In an instant, the fear that has been brewing in me since the government agents told me Adam was on the loose and looking for me subsides.
“Lilly,” he says softly. “I missed you.”
In that instant, the years roll back and I am with him again, but he is not as he was. The creature I left in the laboratory has become more than a man. Back then he was under my care. That’s not the case anymore. Now I am not only in his care, I am utterly at his mercy. Adam runs the pad of his thumb gently over my lower lip.
“Don’t be afraid,” he says, his voice softening further, gentling me like a scared animal.
It’s impossible not to be afraid of him. Every fiber in my body is screaming that I need to escape this big creature. But I can’t move, and he wouldn’t let me if I could anyway.
“Adam…” I say his name and my voice cracks with all the emotion I’ve been holding in. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”
It’s true. In spite of the fact that I’ve been running from him—in spite of the fact that I’d still run given half a chance. He came for me for a reason, and I don’t think it was for a gentle reunion. There’s a trail of death and suffering in his wake.
His lips twitch into a smile. “I am,” he says. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get free.”
“Sorry? You mean, you did this for me?”
“You are my woman, Lilly. I have wanted nothing but you since we were parted.”
His words are sweet, but there is a hint of something not at all sweet behind them, a gravel to his voice. An intensity to his gaze.
“What do you want from me?”
“Everything.”
He answers me directly and without hesitation. It’s a vague answer, but it contains the sum of all possible answers, each and every one of which makes the deepest parts of me squirm with fear… and anticipation.