Twenty-Three
Ian
I stepped out of the shower, still tucking the towel in at my waist, and looked up to find Kori standing in the bedroom in fresh clothes, a blue silk scarf only half hiding the bandage on her neck. Her conflicted gaze met mine, then traveled lower, and I let her look.
She took a few hesitant steps forward and her hand twitched, like she wanted to touch me, but also wanted to run from me. But she kept coming, slowly, and I stood still, afraid to spook her, because she kind of looked like a deer caught in oncoming headlights. Like she was mesmerized for the moment, but any small distraction could send her fleeing into the night.
“We’re grounded,” she said, her voice a whisper.
“Like a broken airplane?”
She shook her head. “Like a naughty child.”
“What does that mean?” I asked when she stopped on the threshold, one hand clutching the bathroom door frame, like her grip was the only thing keeping her from fleeing. Or maybe from coming in.
“He knows about the park, and he knows about the alley,” she said, still standing in the doorway, and I wondered if she was stuck there. Not in, but not out. Hovering in that liminal moment between realizing there’s a choice to be made and actually making it. “So we’re supposed to stay here all night.”
I fought the urge to pull her closer. “Tower’s punishment for not telling him about the park is to lock us up here together? All night? I’m not sure he understands how punishment is supposed to work.”
“It’s not punishment. It’s a safety precaution.”
Right. Normally I’d feel the need to remind Tower that I don’t take orders from him yet. But I wasn’t going to object to a night spent with Kori, even if we did nothing but play cards and watch TV all night long.
“How bad is it?” I asked, eyeing the scarf around her neck.
She shrugged. “It’s just one night.” Then I reached for the scarf, and she understood. “Oh, the cut. It’s fine. It’s hardly bleeding anymore.” My fingers brushed the silk, feeling the rough texture of the bandage beneath. Then I pulled her hand away gently and tugged on the scarf. The filmy material fell through my fingers, and she sucked in a breath, like I was removing something more intimately located than the scarf around her neck. Her gaze locked with mine as I tucked her hair behind her shoulders and unwound the last layer of scarf.
The silk slipped over her arm as I pulled the material loose and let it fall to the floor between us. Her hands found my chest, but there was no clear intent in her eyes. She didn’t have a goal, and for once she wasn’t overthinking things. She was just…touching.
I closed my eyes as her hands skimmed my bare, damp skin, skittering over my ribs toward my stomach. Her touch was light, just enough contact to make me desperate for more, and I wanted to lean into her. Offer her more. But she had to set the pace. That was the only way this would work.
Her fingers traced the edge of my towel, playing over the skin south of my navel, and my next breath was shaky. My fingers twitched at my sides, itching to touch her. To explore her like she was exploring me. It took every bit of willpower I had to let my hands hang empty, giving her free rein.
She bit one side of her bottom lip, and I wanted to taste it. Her hands shook at the tuck in my towel, and I wanted to steady them. Her gaze held mine, and I saw fear in her eyes, but I wasn’t sure if she was more scared of giving in to the need gripping us both or resisting it. When she did neither, I grinned, my brows arched in challenge.
That did it.
Kori leaned into me, her hands on my sides for balance, and I didn’t realize what she had in mind until she licked a drop of water from the left side of my chest. I groaned, and my hands clenched around air, aching to grip her hips instead.
She bent for another taste, and this time she moved from drop to drop, her tongue leaving a hot trail across my skin, higher and higher, weaving back and forth until finally she licked a drop beaded on my right nipple, and that was all I could take. I reached for her waist and pulled her closer.
Kori looked up at me and her hands stilled. Her mouth opened and I leaned in to kiss her, my heart beating so hard I could almost hear it. Then my phone buzzed from the counter and she jumped, startled by the sudden interruption.
Kori glanced at the screen. And froze.
I followed her gaze to see a text from Meghan.
Can’t do this anymore, Ian. Tell her whatever it takes to get the job done. I’m counting on you.
I reached for the phone, but it was too late. She’d already seen the message. “What job?”
“It’s not—”
“What job, Ian?” She shoved me away, and I stumbled backward, toward the mirror.
“Kori…” I said, but she was already backing away from me. She spun sharply in the bedroom, bypassing the dark closet in her haste and anger. I caught up with her halfway through the living room, and in my desperation to keep her from leaving, I forgot.
“Kori, wait!” I grabbed her arm, and she turned on me, already swinging. Her fist slammed into my jaw and my head rocked back sharply, pain spreading across my face.
“Damn it!” I dropped her arm to rub my chin, and when I reached for her again, she smacked my hand away and spun into a wide, high kick. Her boot slammed into my chest, and I stumbled backward, and had to grab the back of a chair to keep from falling.
“Don’t fucking touch me, you lying, traitorous son of a bitch,” she spat, and by the time I’d regained my balance, she was nearly to the front door.
I jogged to catch up with her, one hand clutching the towel at my hips, and I slid in front of the door just as she reached for the lever. “Wait. Please.” I held both hands up, palms out, careful not to make my request sound like an order. “I won’t touch you. Just please hear me out. It’s not what you think.”
“Fuck off.” She backed up two steps, and rubbed her forehead so hard it looked like she was actually trying to shove her fingers through her skull. “Jake’s going to kill me. You’re some kind of a spy, or a…a mercenary.”
“No. Kori, let me explain…”
“The fighting. The shooting. I knew you couldn’t be a fucking systems analyst. You never had any intention of signing, did you? You don’t give a shit about me or my sister.” Then her eyes widened. “Kenley. Fuck!” She dropped into a squat, clutching the back of the couch with one hand and her stomach with the other, like all the pain from my betrayal had settled there, and my own chest tightened in response. “You’re here for Kenley. You’re a fucking poacher, aren’t you? The whole thing was a setup, to get you through Jake’s defenses.”
“No! Well, yes.” I exhaled slowly, trying to figure out how much of the truth I could tell her without spilling the beans she’d then have to feed to Jake Tower.
“The hockey game. I should have known. You’re too smart to accidentally reveal yourself like that.” She stood, angry tears building in her eyes. “You’ve fucking screwed us both!”
“No, Kori, I’m not going to let him hurt you or Kenley.”
“Who do you work for?” she demanded.
“No one. I’m not a poacher. That’s not what this is about, I swear on my life.” I stepped closer, aching to hold her but she backed away. Her eyes lost focus. She wasn’t hearing me. She wasn’t even really seeing me. She was seeing the consequences to come in what little future she thought she had left.
“I don’t want to do it,” she mumbled. “I don’t want to let him drain you, but you lied, and I’m as good as dead, and the only chance Kenley and I have now is if I hand you over and beg for mercy in exchange for turning in a mole.”
“Kori, please.”
She woke up then, and focused on me with startling clarity. Resolve surfaced behind her eyes, hardening her gaze like a shield slipping into place between us, and my heart hurt like someone was squeezing it, milking the life from me drop by drop.
“Get the hell out of my way, or I will break your jaw,” she growled through clenched teeth.
I crossed both arms over my bare chest and stood firm in front of the door. “Fine. Do it. I won’t hit you back. I don’t want to hurt you, Kori. I just want to explain.” She came at me, fists clenched and ready, and I rushed ahead, words spilling from my mouth like blood from a gaping wound, and I wanted to take them back as soon as I heard them because they were true, but they weren’t the truth. They were facts out of context, wielded like sword and shield. I said them to protect her, but I hated myself for it. For the foundation of lies supporting the most fragile and precious relationship I’d ever tried to build.
“The hockey game was a setup, yes, but I’m not here to poach your sister. I just needed to get Tower’s attention. Quickly. I need something from him.” Technically that was true. I needed his Binder. But I wasn’t going to poach her for someone else.
“So you’re not a systems analyst?” Her fists were still clenched, but they hung at her sides now. Her eyes were still narrowed in suspicion, but she was listening.
“No. I only type thirty words a minute and can barely work a cell phone.”
“But your name’s real. What kind of spy uses a fake backstory, but his real name?”
I shrugged. “What kind of recruiter shows her recruit the dark side of the syndicate, instead of the advantages?”
“I’m not really a recruiter,” she said.
“And I’m not a spy. Tower would have known inside a minute if I gave him a fake name.”
“So what are you doing here? What do you need from Jake?”
I exhaled slowly, working up to the last part—the truest of these truths out of context. “Tower has the resources I need to break the seal on a binding.”
Kori frowned. “Can’t be done. The best you can do is destroy the binding itself. Burn the paper it was sealed on it. Assuming it was sealed on paper?”
“It’s a name binding, so it probably was,” I said. “But we have no idea where that paper is. If it even exists.” For all I knew, Steven’s binding could have been sealed in graffiti on some wall a thousand miles away. The binding itself was a dead end. We had no choice but to break the seal.
“And ‘we’ includes Meghan? Who is she, really?” Her gaze held mine, demanding truth while trying to hide how much my answer actually meant to her.
“She’s really my brother’s girlfriend. Well, technically his fiancée, now. He proposed a couple of weeks ago.”
Kori frowned as the implications sank in. “Oh, shit, your brother’s the one who’s bound.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s he bound to?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t know, either. It’s bizarre, and scary, and infuriating. I have to get him out of it. That’s why I’m here.”
“So, you need to break the seal on a binding you can’t locate or identify…” she said, thinking out loud, and I nodded. “What makes you think Jake can help?”
“You said he did it for Kenley, when she got into trouble in college.”
“That’s why you keep asking about Kenley…” Kori looked so relieved I didn’t have the heart to correct her. Not that I could have anyway. Not while she was still bound to Tower.
“Do you know how he did it?” I asked, but she only shook her head.
“She never told me and I never asked. A lot of things go unsaid around here.”
“So, can I talk to her?” I was pushing my luck, and I knew it. But Steven didn’t have much time left, and I couldn’t tell Kori anything else until her binding was broken.
“We can’t leave here tonight, and she can’t come over without Jake’s permission and an escort. And I doubt he’ll let her, considering how much trouble I’m in right now. But I guess I can call her…”
I swallowed a moan. This wasn’t a phone-call kind of conversation, and it certainly wasn’t anything I could say in front of Kori, while Tower’s marks were still live on her arm. “It can wait until tomorrow,” I said at last, desperately hoping that was true. I was less than a day from losing both my brother and his fiancée, and I’d be lucky if my recruitment ruse with Jake Tower lasted that long.
The clock was ticking.
The noose was tightening.
And Kori was looking at me like I held her life in my hands. Because I did.
“You’re still going to sign, right?” she said, and there was a thread of steel beneath the fragile surface of her voice. “Or was that part of the act, to get you in the door? Because you know that whatever Jake did for Kenley, he won’t do that for your brother unless you sign.”
“I know.” But I had no intention of letting Tower anywhere near my brother. Or anywhere near Kori, if I had my way.
I took her right fist and uncurled her fingers until her hand lay flat in mine, and I placed my other hand over hers. “There are things I haven’t told you. Things I can’t tell you while your marks stand between us. But soon none of that will matter. What matters is that I am not going to leave you and your sister here. I would swear to that right now, if there was a Binder here. I’ll do whatever it takes to be with you. To stay with you. If you want me.” I stared into her eyes, trying to see past the anger she wore like a mask to cover fear and vulnerability. I tried to see past all of that, to the part she never showed anyone else.
“Do you want me, Kori?”
Kori
I couldn’t make sense of the tangle of emotions balled up inside me. I was frustrated, and scared, and angry, and somewhere in there, I felt a tiny kernel of hope, struggling to survive in such harsh conditions. But every last thread in the jumble of conflicting emotions led back to Ian, through one twisted route or another.
He was hiding something, yes. He’d practically admitted that. But he’d shielded me in the wine cellar and refused to leave me in the alley. He’d talked me down from panic and he’d said I was a lion that could not be tamed. He knew what I’d had to do for Jake, and what Jake had done to me in return. And he wanted me anyway.
And I wanted him like I’d never wanted anything else in my life. So I pulled him down with one hand and kissed him.
Ian groaned against my lips. He tugged me closer, then his mouth opened beneath mine, pulling me in. My hands wandered on their own, slowly exploring the hard planes of his back until I realized his towel was loosening, and my fingers were damp with water from his shower, and we were pressed so tightly together I could hardly breathe. But his hands hadn’t moved. One cradled my jaw, trailing beneath my ear. The other sat at my waist. Above my clothes. There, but demanding nothing.
Did that mean he didn’t want to touch me?
No. I could feel how badly he wanted to touch me. But he had patience. Self-control. It almost felt like…manners.
“You okay?” he asked, when I pulled away and looked up at him.
In answer to a question I never wanted to hear again, I tugged him through the living room, hall and into the bedroom, where I let go and started to unbutton my shirt.
Ian’s brows rose, but his gaze never left mine. “Are you sure?”
I nodded and pushed another button through its hole.
He watched me for another second, then he was there again, kissing me, and my hands fell away from my shirt so his could take over.
My pulse rushed too fast and the room spun, a blur of dark wood and rich fabrics, shadowed on the edges by the fear I pushed aside with every breath I took. I threw myself into that kiss, letting the taste and the feel of him chase everything else away.
When the buttons were undone, his hands slid beneath the cotton and gently pushed the material down my arms. He kissed my shoulder and unhooked my bra, and I let it slide to the floor. Then I reached for the towel at his hips and pulled it loose.
His towel fell off and he moaned, his lips pressed to the unbroken side of my neck. His arms slid around me, guiding me as he walked us backward, and I felt the mattress against the backs of my thighs.
I sat, then lay back, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Darkness closed in on the edges of my vision, and with it came flashes of memory I couldn’t push back. Dead shadows trapping me. A weight on my chest. A cruel hand twisting, and pinching, and bruising, and invading.
Ian lay beside me, naked, reaching for me, and my throat tried to close.
“I can’t,” I whispered, and his hands fell away. I pulled the rumpled blanket over me, confused, and humiliated, and drowning in frustration. Pissed off by my own fear.
He propped himself up on one elbow and I made myself look at him. “It’s okay. There’s no rush,” he said, brushing hair from my cheek.
But it wasn’t. It wasn’t fucking okay, and it never would be until I could push past the fear and anger devouring me from the inside out. Until I could touch and be touched and just live in the moment, without reliving other hands. Without feeling like the world was spiraling in on me, constricting around me, compressing me until I couldn’t move. Couldn’t fight. Couldn’t breathe.
Why now? Why did I have to meet him now, when I couldn’t tell from one minute to the next whether I wanted to touch or hit, kiss or bite?
This wasn’t okay. And it wasn’t going to be okay until I could do whatever the fuck I wanted with whoever the hell I wanted. Until I could take control back, not just of my body, but of my mind. If I gave up now—if I let fear chase me from what I wanted—the next time would only be harder.
Ian stroked my hair, spreading it over the rumpled comforter. Touching me without touching me. And suddenly I wanted to cry. He was so patient.
I looked up at him, and he was still watching me. Not smiling. Just watching.
“Make it dark,” I whispered, and he frowned for a second. Then he sat up and reached for the bedside lamp.
“No.” I laid one hand on his arm, and he turned back to me. “Make it dark. True dark.” The kind I knew. The kind I loved. The kind I could escape into whenever I needed to.
The kind Ian carried in his soul and could gather at will.
He smiled, and the darkness rose around us, faster than ever before. Cool and calm. Quiet. Soothing. Like it had been there all along. Waiting.
I couldn’t see a thing, but I’d never been more sure of where I was.
I reached for him and my hand found his stomach. I trailed my fingers up the hard lines of his chest and over his collarbone, then around to the back of his neck. I pulled him down, and his mouth found mine. He couldn’t see me, but he could feel me, and that was more than enough.
I kissed him. I couldn’t taste enough of him. His hand found my side and threatened to linger there in chaste caution until I arched into his touch, and his fingers wandered up slowly. Gingerly.
The dark settled around me, touching me everywhere he didn’t, and I reached for him, pulling him closer. His hand found my breast, his fingers brushing my nipple, and when I moaned into his mouth, his hand tightened, bolder now. I arched into him, fumbling with the button on my jeans, and his hand trailed down to brush mine aside. A second later, the button was free, my zipper down.
Ian sat up on his knees and his hands slid down from my waist, slipping beneath the material at my sides, sliding it over my hips so slowly I squirmed in anticipation, my eyes closed. He followed the material all the way to my feet, leaving a trail of kisses down my left leg. Then he kissed his way up the other leg, his hands blazing the same trail in advance.
When I couldn’t wait anymore, I pulled him up, opening for him, reaching for another kiss. He settled between my thighs, and I could feel him, hot and hard, and ready.
“Are you sure?” he asked again, whispering in my ear this time. “I need to know that you want this.”
I blinked in the dark, and hot tears trailed silently down both sides of my face. “Yes. I want you, Ian.”
He exhaled, and I felt the tension in him ease. He slid one hand over my hip and down to my knee, then lifted my leg, guiding my ankle around his waist. My heart thumped almost painfully as I tucked my other leg behind him and pulled him down for another kiss.
He entered me slowly, and I gasped, sucking air from his mouth. Rising to meet him. When he was all the way in, he stayed for a moment, and I sucked his lip into my mouth, holding my breath. Reluctant to move.
Then he withdrew and slid inside me again, and we found our rhythm.
I clung to him, arching with him, holding him close. He buried his face in my hair, holding me with one arm, supporting his weight with the other. And everything else faded away, swallowed by the darkness he wrapped around us.
I remembered nothing but Ian. I felt nothing but him. I wanted nothing but him. And I never wanted that moment to end.
Then the rhythm changed, and I rode the waves, coasting toward an edge I could feel building, tighter and tighter. He moved inside me and I rose to meet him over and over, faster and faster, and the fire burning between us consumed all conscious thought for one precious moment. Then that fire crested to spill over the rest of me in a hot, desperate wave of pleasure and I clung to him again, riding it out to the finish.
Ian collapsed on the bed next to me and I rolled over to face him, unable to quell the languid smile I could feel forming. He leaned forward to kiss me, then I rolled onto my back again and put one hand on his chest, because I wasn’t done touching him. I never wanted to be done.
Slowly he let the darkness fade, and as the light rose to replace it, I found him watching me. And for the first time in months, maybe even in years, I felt safe.