Chapter 17
The look on his face was something else. She stared at him in surprise; then a warm feeling swelled within. “You really care, don’t you?”
He stared at her and gave an abrupt nod. “Always have. But I struggled knowing you were keeping big secrets. It made it feel like I was only connecting to half of you.”
“Secrets were the norm in my world,” she said quietly. “My parents did warn me constantly that I couldn’t tell people I was living in the basement or about the chair with the straps or about the poisons.” She shrugged. “Not that I had much chance to talk to anyone. Silence had become the norm. Life came every damn day, yet it didn’t give me a chance to figure out how to fix it. When my stomach was retching from the headaches, the cold sweats or from the hallucinogenic dreams and I wanted it all to stop, morning always came.”
Her mind returned to all the faraway memories she thought she’d looked away from. The days of waking up and hating how she was once again alive. Determined to find another way out of this existence, hoping that overdosing the next time would work. And yet none of them were viable options because what was she but a child? Nobody called the authorities and stopped her parents. Something else he wouldn’t understand either.
“Unbelievable.” He leaned against the porch railing. She joined him.
“You must remember this was the only life I knew. I thought every other child in the world lived in their basement with parents doing similar things to them. That every doctor and nurse and teacher went home and did this to their kids. On the surface I was normal. Just like they all were. So I assumed, because I wasn’t normal on the inside, they weren’t either. There isn’t anything easy about growing up like that. But it was natural. When something is so natural it doesn’t matter how bad it is, you still prefer it over the unknown options. Where was I to go? Foster care? No, it was better for me to succeed. To thrive, become better than they expected. And that I could do. My parents did change some over the years.” She frowned, trying to remember how. “Changed experiments in some cases.”
He pounced. “How? Why?”
She gave him a quizzical look and asked, “What about me is different from other women?” She held his gaze as he studied her eyes, trying to see if she was serious.
She was serious. He shrugged. “Well, your skin for one. There’s something very otherworldly about it. It’s creamy and smooth and soft, with an odd glow to it.”
She nodded. “What else?” She realized he was uncomfortable. That wasn’t what she wanted. “Honestly, what else is different?”
“Your hair. Your hair has this look to it. The whole package almost gives you an odd fey look. It’s incredibly attractive. Like you’re some kind of fairy creature.” He looked foolish, embarrassed. “I don’t know how to describe it. Your eyes, everything about you, just give you something slightly different than other women I know.”
She chuckled. “And now you know it’s from a lifetime of eating poison. You are right. All three of those things are very different, as are my nails. She held out her long nails in front of him, bending the nails forward and backward. She heard his gasp, saw him wince in pain. She chuckled. “I can’t feel any of it. These probably aren’t the only things that are different.” She shrugged. “There’s nothing I can do about it. They are what they are.” She stared out at the backyard and added, “I considered suicide at one time.”
He turned her to face him. “Don’t talk like that.”
She gave him a sad smile. “Why? I don’t have anyone to discuss it with. When I said I’m alone, I meant I have been alone most of the time.”
“But you’re not alone anymore. So stop saying that. Stop trying to distance yourself, putting up a barrier between the two of us. It won’t work.”
She jutted out her chin. “You can’t stop me.”
He shook his head, and his mood dropped the atmosphere around them, instantly changing from heated and dark to hot and electrified. “Maybe I won’t stop you. Maybe life with you is the only way I can live. Maybe if you kill yourself, I’ll kill myself.”
She snorted. “What good will that do anybody?”
“Exactly.” He lowered his head, sliding his hands to cup her face, his palms holding her jaws, his thumbs gently stroking across her cheeks. Just before his lips touched hers, he whispered, “You might have been alone then, but you’re not anymore. If you take yourself out of the equation, you’d leave me to live alone for the rest of my life. Don’t do that, please.” Then he kissed her.
The touch of his lips sent myriad emotions into her so fast she didn’t know what was coming at her. From rage and passion to loss and regret to hope, all of it wrapped up, pleading and grasping for love. Her body was buffeted by his energy that slammed into her. He held her close, his hands holding her head locked against him. She couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to. Her hands gripped his forearms hard as he deepened the kiss as if stealing into the very soul of her. As if to make sure she couldn’t walk away and leave him alone. As if, by pouring himself deeper, harder, and more passionately into her body, she would realize she couldn’t do anything without him.
And, for once, she realized she really didn’t want to. But how could she trust he’d be there for her when he hadn’t been before? How could she trust he wouldn’t walk away, or worse, throw her under the bus like his brother had? If she did trust him this one time, would he look at her as a freak? The closer they got to making love, she wondered if he wouldn’t consider the same thing. She wanted to fight against it. She wanted to tell her body to behave. But there was no controlling, no tempering this.
She pressed against him, her body pinned against the railing along the back porch, her legs between his thighs as he held her firm in his embrace. She could feel his erection surging between them. She marveled at it. She’d treated her virginity like the group of girls she’d known at the time. They got rid of it as fast as they could. She’d done the same thing, trying to figure what all the fuss was about. She hadn’t enjoyed sex. She’d loved being held afterward, but the actual process was messy, uncomfortable, slightly painful and embarrassing as hell. Being held in her lover’s arms afterward had been the best of everything. Just some things in life one did to get to the payoff, she presumed.
Not this time.
She could feel the dampness between her thighs. Her breath came in small gasps as he traced his lips along her cheek to her ear, where he gently circled it with his tongue. His warm breath shuddered through her, feeding her warmth, adding comfort and peace, in contrast to the cold she’d held for so long. She let out a shaky breath, her hand clutching at his shirt. Her body trembling with new awareness.
He wrapped her up close and held her against his chest, his head resting on top of hers. “Easy. Take it easy.”
That’s when she realized she was trembling so badly her body didn’t know if she should jump his bones or collapse to the floor and burst into tears.
“How do I deal with this?” she whispered. “With these feelings?”
He tilted her head back and considered her eyes. “You don’t deal with them. You just let it happen. Let the gates open. Let the flood flow.” He lowered his head again, and, just above her lips, he whispered, “Do it now. Feel your body’s need.”
She stared at him, not sure she understood what she was supposed to do.
“Let go of the control. Let go of the restraint you used in your life until now. Release who you really are inside. Just. Let. Go.”
And he took her lips with a passion she’d never felt before. It drove in spikes through her spine to pool in her belly. Her breasts swelled, tension twisting deep inside her. She got one leg outside his and wrapped around his hips as she rubbed against the ridge at her groin. He reached down and cupped her rear, pulling her to him, hard. He slid his tongue into her mouth, gently rubbed against her, coaxing, teasing, demanding a response.
She whimpered. Her arms wrapped around his head as she cried out for something, she knew not what.
“Let go,” he whispered.
His lips trailed her throat to the open neck of her shirt, his tongue leaving fiery pathways on her sensitized skin. She groped his chest; he pinned her against the railing. His body was exactly where she needed him—only they were both fully clothed. She cried out in frustration.
He cupped her breasts and squeezed gently, his tongue sliding inside her mouth, in, out, in, out.
She shuddered.
“Let go.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. I’ll be here. I’ll catch you.”
She shook her head, crying out, “I can’t. Don’t you understand? I can’t.”
But he wasn’t listening. He looked into her eyes. She could barely see—blind with passion, knowing they could go anywhere; yet frustrated, torn, her body thrust against his with a need she’d never felt before.
He whispered, “I love you.” He whispered, “Not just for now—forever.”
Her gaze locked on his. She heard the words with wonder. She studied him. He smiled one of the gentlest, softest, most caring smiles she’d ever seen before.
“Yes, it’s true,” he whispered.
She was so desperate to believe him. She didn’t want to be alone anymore. Her life was so cold, so lonely, so lost.
“Believe,” he whispered, his lips at her temple. “Trust.” He dropped kisses on her eyelids, her nose, her chin.
“Let go.” And then he repeated, “I love you,” before he took her mouth in a mind-searing kiss.
Her body exploded into a million shards of experience—fired by his passion, completed by his words. And knowing that, … for the first time in her life, she was no longer alone.
When it was over, he’d picked her up, twisted her around and held her close while he sat perched against the veranda railing and just cradled her in his arms.
When she could, she lifted her head and said more than a little shyly, “Why would you do that?”
“Because you needed it. Because we needed it. Because I promise I will always do what’s best for you from now on.”
She laid her head against his chest. She so wanted to believe in him. She wanted to trust him. But how did she do that after all they’d been through? She should be embarrassed. She should be mortified. Instead she felt so damn good, and none of it mattered.
*
That wasn’t what he intended to do. But she was so tense, so wired, so completely unaware of how close to the edge she was living.
When he first touched her, passion erupted inside her.
The same as it always had been. He never had a chance to drink fully from the well. Her sweetness and light touched him so much at the time that he’d been shocked, overwhelmed and enticed, but he’d been slow to make his move. More concerned about making sure she was all right that it was him, not his brother, who held her.
The last thing he wanted was to have her imagine Derek holding her and not London.
She slipped out of his arms. He reached for her, figuring out how to take her from where they’d been to where they currently were, without making her uncomfortable. Hell, his own need screamed at him.
She spun out of his arms and turned to stare at him. “What did I just hear?”
He froze, tilted his head and said, “I didn’t hear anything.”
She shook her head, bolted into the house. He raced behind her. Glass shattered, followed by sounds of something rolling. He’d heard similar sounds too many times in his life. He picked up speed, tried to grab her. Only to find her spinning and pushing him back out again.
She screamed, “Run. Run.”
“Not without you.” He grabbed her hand and hauled her back toward the back of the yard. “Come on.”
She pulled free and yelled, “Get out before it kills you. Find the man who did this.”
He gave her a startled look and saw the fog, a white cloud coming behind her. He shook his head. “It’ll kill you.”
She gave him a sad smile. “I’m not sure anything can kill me.”
She pushed him once more out onto the deck and slammed the door. Through the door she yelled, “Keep going. You need to be well away from the house.”
He bolted to the far side of the yard, feeling like a coward. He spun around and grabbed his phone, punching in Steve’s number. “I don’t know what the hell just happened, but it’s like a smoke canister shot into her house. She said it was poison and screamed for me to get out.”
“Is she with you?” Steve asked in alarm.
“She locked the door behind me. She’s still inside.”
Silence was on the other end, then Steve said, “Why would she do that?”
London shook his head. “I have no idea. I’m heading to the front of the house now.” His feet were already on the move as he raced around the side of the house. In front of him he heard an engine turn on, power up and race past him.
He didn’t get a look at the driver, but it was a private car with no logo on the side of the vehicle. Nothing to discern who and what owned it. The license plate was covered. He had no way to track it.
“You’re still there? What the hell’s going on?” Steve yelled into his ear.
“I don’t know, but another attempt was just made on her life.”
“What do you mean by another attempt?”
“She told me some things today. Someone tried to poison her in the courthouse after she was acquitted. Apparently my own asshole of a brother tried to poison her before the trial started.”
Steve’s voice faded in and out. “I’m in a vehicle heading toward you.”
London raced up the front steps, putting his phone away. The front window had been broken as the smoke bomb, or whatever the hell was, had been thrown in. He was at the front door but had no way to get in. It was locked. He took his jacket off, and, using it as a protection, he widened the hole in the living room window.
He raised his nose, sniffing for the gas. He didn’t smell anything. He stepped inside, his boots crunching on the glass underfoot. He raced to the kitchen where he last saw her. She lay on the kitchen floor, her hand wrapped around the canister. Her skin was white, waxy. She looked more fairy dust than human.
He reached out a hand, placing it on her neck and felt no pulse. “No,” he roared.
He punched in the number for emergency. Just as the call connected to dispatch, the front door burst open. He spun, expecting to face a new threat, but the doorway was empty. London had this weird feeling, as if a conversation was going on around him. As if somebody was here, but he couldn’t see who. He straightened and yelled out, “Who’s there?”
Gun out, he spun around, searching the front of the house. And the same thing happened again. He felt the presence of someone. “What the hell’s going on?”
The room filled with weird colors, weird energy and weird everything. He reached out a hand as if to touch something and almost had a heart attack when it looked like a hand reached back. He jumped backward and said, “Who are you? What the hell’s going on?”
Then a burst of air hit him. But he couldn’t quite figure out what he saw or what he heard. He stepped forward only to come up against a barrier he couldn’t cross. He tried to force his way through, but he appeared to be up against a glass wall that he couldn’t see—with Fern on the other side. The colors on the other side built and glowed. He stopped and stared, his jaw falling open as he realized, for the first time, that maybe something was alien about Fern. Maybe she wasn’t even of this world. He didn’t understand. Questions pounded through him. And whoever it was, whatever this was, it was trying to help her.
The voice whispered through his head. Step back. We’re burning too much energy keeping you out.
Instinctively he took a step back. His hands came up defensively. “I only want to help her.”
That’s what we’re doing.
“She said there wasn’t a poison that could kill her.”
When people mix cocktails and add unnatural stuff to them, they might not kill her, but it could put her in a coma for the rest of her life.
His hands dropped, and he stared in shock. “Please help her.”
We are.
With that Fern rolled to her back and opened her eyes. She glanced around and smiled. “Stefan, Dr. Maddy. Both to the rescue again.”
London heard the words but struggled to make sense of it. Had that been Stefan’s voice? How the hell did that work?
He’d heard the rumors. In law enforcement, Stefan’s name was legendary. But London had always tossed it off as being something blown out of proportion.
Of course Dr. Maddy was an icon. All was very hush-hush, but the stories about her were incredible and had grown over time. To the extent that they opened a new wing in the hospital where children of all ages and nationalities with different illnesses came and were miraculously healed. The hospital did their best to keep the news quiet. The media had some agreement to keep it all quiet also. Apparently negativity affected the healing of those within. And he realized that, if anybody could help Fern, it was Dr. Maddy.
“Will she be okay?”
A male voice slid through his mind again. She’ll be fine now.
“I don’t understand.” London pointed at the canister Fern held in her palm. “That was poison in the canister?”
Yes, it was.
“So someone is trying to kill her?”
Maybe. Stefan’s voice was harder to hear and getting fainter.
“Wait,” London called. “Don’t leave without giving me some answers.”
The answers are for you to find. You’ve broken through some of her barriers. But now you need to keep her safe. Those poisons from that canister should never have made it into her house. She would’ve seen and heard that well before.
London felt a shock, the guilt like a blow to his heart. “I didn’t know.”
Neither did she, Stefan said softly. She’s opened herself up to another, and that’s weakened her shield. She lowered her defenses and let you in, so now you must keep her safe.
He shook his head. “What could I do to keep her safe when she can neutralize poisons?”
She doesn’t neutralize them. She absorbs them. Her act here wasn’t to save her own life. She did what she did, knowing a foreign substance was in this cocktail, to keep you safe. She didn’t think about it. She just instinctively sucked it all into her energy, into her lungs and her body, in the hope her act would save your life.
London spun and said, “No way the poison has been contained. It should be everywhere. It should be all around us. I should be dead.”
And you would’ve been if she hadn’t taken it all inside her energy field. She has an affinity to poison, that’s true. Like a drug addict.
And, with that, the male voice left his mind, leaving London standing in shock. Lost. Guilty.
A woman’s gentle voice whispered through his mind and said, Don’t feel guilty. She let you in. It is a bond you had before this nightmare began. So it was much easier for you to break through her defenses now. She’s always had a weakness for you. And that weakness still exists. She forged the wall closed again with no hope of a future with you. But it was never as strong. Now it’s open. She hasn’t had time to put a barrier around both of you to enclose you within her inner circle.
London didn’t know what to say. This was such a foreign concept he didn’t know how to make it work.
There’s nothing to make work, the woman said, obviously capable of reading his mind. What you must understand is what she did was a selfish act. One of love.
And the voice faded. Along with the fading came a snap and crackle, as if energy around him changed. He did a slow circle, figuring out what just happened. When he turned to stare at Fern, she was sitting up, her gaze deep, fathomless. The green in her eyes was like bejeweled emeralds. Her skin was even more translucent.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
He fell to his knees beside her, clasping her hand. As soon as he touched her, there was an odd zing. She pulled her hand back and smiled, scooting along the floor to put distance between them.
“Oh, no, you don’t. You’re not backing away from me now.” Her wary look made his heart break. “You’re not alone anymore. Especially not after Stefan and Dr. Maddy were just here.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Did you see them?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what the hell I saw. I saw colors. I reached out a hand, and it looked like a hand reached back.”
A small smile played at the corner of her lips. “It can be pretty traumatic the first time.”
“And they spoke to me,” London said in a low voice. “Or I’m losing my mind.”
Her voice was soft as a whisper. “No, you’re not losing it. They’re telepathic. Even if you don’t want to, they can communicate with you. Both are so damn strong in what they can do. And every year, every day that they’re out there doing what they’re doing, they get stronger and stronger.”
“Are you like them?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m not like them at all.”
He hated that he was relieved to hear that. There must have been a flicker in his face because she nodded as if confirming something to herself.
Using the counter, she pulled herself to her feet and said, “I might be weird, but I’m not completely nuts.”
*
Did they like his gift? As a test subject, she was fascinating to work on. Of course she had no idea she was being tested. He’d seen her walk past the windows so knew she’d survived. How?
There’d been enough poison in there to kill several full-size men.
And she was just a slip of a woman.
So, what skills or adaptations did she have to survive something like that? There was a slim chance the canister hadn’t opened as expected—mechanical failures were something he had to deal with on occasion. As irritating as it was, he couldn’t quite get away from it.
Still, that wasn’t likely in this case. He’d seen the cloud. He knew she’d been exposed.
So how had she survived?
He wanted to knock her out and throw her into his lab so he could find out.
Soon. Very soon.