by Sadie Jacks
“Please, what, baby?” I needed her to tell me what she wanted. That she wanted this as much as I did.
Pink rode her cheeks as she dipped her head. With an exaggerated eye flick, she let me know what she wanted.
I would have laughed if the need to hear the words, heavy with want, come from her lips hadn’t gripped me by the throat. I wouldn’t accept anything less than her full surrender. “Use your words, Ki.”
She growled at me. The sound had my hips jolting forward, increasing the contact between us. Her legs crimped around my hips as I brushed her cloth covered clit again.
Moans filled the air. I didn’t know where mine started and hers ended.
Kiema leaned forward and bit my lower lip.
But as she leaned back, I noticed her wince. She raised her hands from my body, lifted them to the water, creating breaks in the spray against my back.
Fuck. I was hurting her. The bottom of my stomach dropped out.
I pulled at her legs quickly, careful to keep the contact of our skin as brief as humanly possible. I set her away from me, then reversed our positions in the stream once more. The cool water splashed in her face and sluiced down her sexy body.
I needed to get out of here, away from temptation. Cold shower or not, she could get a rise out of me. I lowered my head, glaring at my dick. Not today, pal.
“I-I th-think I c-c-can get-t-t out-t-t-t n-n-now,” she said, her blue-tinged lips shivering.
A smile pulled at my lips even as my body tightened in protest. “Let’s get you dry and warmed up.” I shut off the water. Our shivering breaths loud in the sudden quiet.
I stepped out first and grabbed a towel off the rack for her. Thrusting it behind me without looking, I grabbed a second towel and strode from the room. I needed to get my head on straight before I lost control again.
Chapter 20 – Kiema
Hair scraped back in a high ponytail, shrouded in layers of clothes, I huddled under three blankets next to the roaring fire Ransom had built while he waited for me to come out of my room.
I couldn’t stop the shivers and trembles that wracked my body. I should be warm. Hell, I should be roasting. But I felt cold to my bones. Even my soul felt frozen.
Ransom brought me a bowl of steaming tomato soup. “Here. Try this. It should help warm you from the inside.”
He was careful to keep his skin from touching mine.
A piece of my heart shriveled. “Th-th-thank you.”
“Okay, there has to be a reasonable explanation for all this.” He sat on the floor across from me, a bed sheet wrapped around his waist. Another sheet covered his top half.
As much as I hated it, I was thankful he’d covered up.
My face almost inside the bowl of steaming soup, I made a noise that he should keep talking.
“All right. What do we know about healing magic?” He looked at me, his dark blue eyes serious.
“It’ssss used to heal p-p-people.” I hid my smile behind my bowl.
He rolled his eyes at me. “Thanks, Sherlock. Nothing getting by you. Do you know anything else about it?”
I did, but I couldn’t tell him. That would be handing a new jailer the keys to my prison cell. But, for the purposes of this conversation, I’d never experienced anything like this before in my life.
I just shook my head.
He huffed a sigh. “Do you mind if I call some close friends? They could do some research for us.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I’d rather you didn’t.” Success. No stuttering on that one. Maybe I was just catching a cold?
“That’s fair. Do you have a computer here? I could do some research.”
I shook my head. “No. Nothing like that. Other than phones, which don’t have good reception, there’s nothing that links to the outside world here.”
Ransom studied me. “By your design or your parents’?”
I worked on focusing on my soup.
He growled.
What could I say? Sorry? I wasn’t apologizing for my captors. I’d done absolutely nothing wrong.
He cleared his throat, I brought my gaze back to him. A line of red decorated his cheekbones.
“What?”
“What if I told you I could contact these people without the use of technology?”
I felt my mouth drop open in stupefaction. “You’re telepathic?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny the claim.” His face shut down.
“But you said you didn’t know any magical people. That you weren’t magical. Telepathy falls under magic.” Had he been lying to me this whole time? A queasy feeling set itself up in my stomach. The soup didn’t look so appetizing now.
His gaze drilled into mine. “I swear I’m not lying to you.” He cleared his throat. “I’m going to reveal something to you. You would be the only person outside of a very small, trusted group who knows the truth. If, for some reason, this truth becomes known to others, it will be very easy to track where the leak came from. Are you willing?”
Ransom’s voice had all the warmth of a legal disclaimer. His expression was shut down, and there was none of the sparkle in his eyes that I’d come to expect.
I tipped my head to the side as I studied him. He was willing to share. I had absolutely no one to share any kind of secret with. Nor would I, if he could help me understand what was going wrong with me.
“I’m willing.” I nodded.
A look of hesitation crossed his face before his eyes lost their frost and went unfocused.
I waited.
He just sat there.
Is he kidding me right now? That huge build up just to check out on me. Something buzzed near the back of my head. I fought to free an arm and brushed at it. It stopped and I returned my arm to the warm cocoon.
“Ransom?”
Another buzz, this time on the other side of my head. I brushed at my hair again. There shouldn’t be any bugs in here.
I looked all around, trying to find the source of the buzzing.
There was nothing.
Now, I’m going crazy.
I started to put my arm back under the blankets when it started again. “Where the hell is that coming from?” I blurted. Throwing off the covers, I shot to my feet, grabbing a magazine from the end table and rolling it into a tube.
“What are you doing?” Ransom asked as I stalked around the room, weapon at the ready.
“There’s something buzzing around my head. I’m going to kill. Kill it dead.” Something flickered out of the corner of my eye, drawing my focus to the windows. I darted in that direction. “Come here, my pretty. I promise to make it fast.” I checked each sill and around the door.
“Ki?”
“Shush. I’m stalking my prey.” There it was. A fat, hairy fly was nestled on the farthest windowsill. It was still there. I lifted my arm, magazine at the ready.
Something buzzed by my head. I was still watching the fly. “What the hell?” I smacked the fly with the magazine. It fell to the ground, apparently long dead.
I turned to Ransom. His eyes were wide, his mouth hanging open in surprise.
Yeah, my crazy had no bounds. Get over it.
“Does it feel like this?” His dark blue eyes went a little unfocused.
The buzzing returned.
“You? You’re doing the buzzing?” I asked.
His gaze sharpened. “You can feel that?”
I rubbed at my hair. “Yes. What the hell are you doing to me?”
“I was contacting my group.”
“With what? Long distance radio transmissions?” I sulked back to my bed of blankets and curled into their warmth.
He huffed a laugh that ended on a sigh. “Basically.”
I stared at him. “I was joking.”
“I know. Which makes it that much funnier. About ten years ago, my friends and I pooled our resources and built a technology research and development company.”
I stopped fiddling with my blankets and watched him.
“You’re so you
ng. What, you didn’t have enough to do at your dad’s firm so you started your own while you were still in college?”
His lips twisted. “Something like that. Anyway, around seven years ago, technology made the leap we’d been waiting for. Wearable tech became common place. Five years ago, technology could run third-party apps and run different software. Two years ago, we were approached by a developer. Implantable technology.”
“You’re carrying a phone inside your head?”
“More like a two-way radio with a set frequency.”
I shook my head. “So you can only contact certain people who are set to the same frequency and have the same implant.”
He nodded.
“Unbelievable.”
“It’s still highly experimental.”
I gaped at him. Were these people idiots? “If it’s experimental, why did you get it implanted into your head? What about cancer? Bad tech? Tissue erosion? Long term allergies? Alloy erosion?” I curled my fingers into fists with the urge to beat the shit out of him.
I wasn’t going through all the pain of healing him just so he could kill himself early with untried technology.
Ransom chuckled. “All of those things are being monitored by not only the doctor in our group, but also the development team. We’re hoping for limited distribution in the next three years.”
“But why do I feel you using the tech? Shouldn’t that have been adjusted for? It kinda loses its covertness if other people can tell you’re using it.” I wasn’t even a scientist and the thought had occurred to me. Hopefully their brain trust was smarter than me.
“You’re the first to have noticed. Believe me, the doctor in our group wants to get his hands on your brain.” He flashed me a smile that was more teeth than humor.
“You sweet talker, you.” I rolled my eyes at him. “That’s not going to happen.” I had plans that didn’t include becoming a science experiment.
“I’ve already told him that. I feel like I owe you with how well you’ve healed me already. I’ll do whatever I can to protect you, Kiema. You can trust me.”
My stomach clenched. “But the healing—”
“Isn’t stable or complete. I know. But you’ve already done more for me in less than forty-eight hours than years of work with other ‘healers.’ I’ll always be eternally grateful to you.”
I just stared at him. He’d changed my life, too. Not enough for me to share my plans, but enough to give me hope of a brighter future.
“I’m glad I could help you. I’ll feel even better if I can make the healing changes complete and permanent.”
“I’d definitely like that, too.” He smiled at me, the edges of his eyes crinkling.
I cleared my throat. “I’ve got some theories on that when you’re ready.”
He nodded. “Great. We’ll get to that in a second. My group says I can share the information with you.”
I laughed. “Well, that’s good since you just told me about it.”
“Touché. But now we can get them started on research for your magic. We have access to some pretty exclusive libraries and people. I just need a good direction to point them.”
“Oh. Right.” How to do this without sharing everything? “I was tested by MagCorp when I was three. I couldn’t tell you who my assessors were, but it should be part of my medical record. I can sign whatever you need for you all to access it.”
Ransom smirked. “I’ll have you sign something if it comes to that. But I’ll tell the guys where to start searching. Do you have anything else that could help them?”
“Um.” Tipping my head to the side in thought, I squeezed my eyes closed. There was something tickling my brain, but I couldn’t quite grab the whole thread of it. “Sing me something.”
Silence. Then, “Excuse me?”
“I’ve almost got a big thought, but I need something to distract me so I can catch it. Sing me something.” I rolled my hand in the air. “Come on, come on. Anything. I don’t care.”
“Er…okay.” The first few notes of a popular song floated on the air.
“Keep it coming.”
My head bobbed along to the tune. He’s pretty good, nice timbre, good pitch. He slides up—
“Elevators!”
The song stopped. “You want my guys to research elevators?”
I opened my eyes on a laugh. “No. I do word associations for information I need to keep secret. Since I can’t write anything down in case someone else finds it, I’ve had to develop a pretty elaborate way of keeping info organized in my brain.”
His jaw clenched and he grumbled under his breath.
“I didn’t catch that.” I leaned forward.
“It wasn’t nice. Tell me about elevators.” He waved me on.
Okay then. “Elevators go up and down. Sometimes they fall.”
“Yes, they do. Good job, sweetheart.” He went to pat my head.
I kicked at him. “Some Adune dude back in the day invented them. His name was Siemens. Another dude, Iashiran, invented the safety thingy that keeps them from plummeting into the ground if the cable snaps. Said dude’s name is Otis.”
“Don’t really care about the history of elevators, Ki.”
I glared at him. “Otis is an acronym. O-something, T-something, Iron, Serpent. Or maybe snake. Something to do with things that slither.” I shuddered. Bugs and snakes were big no-gos for me.
His eyebrows were climbing into his hairline. “You want me to send them on the hunt to find something that may or may not be about iron snakes? Sure it wasn’t zebras? Or gorillas?”
He didn’t have to be a jerk about it. Rude. “I saw it on my father’s office desk one day a couple of years ago. I don’t remember most of what it said, but there was a big emblem on the top left of the page. Looked kinda like the healing staff with serpents, but not quite.”
He was still looking at me like I was crazy.
“You have a doctor friend, ask him.” I crossed my arms. See if I helped him again, the douche.
His eyes went unfocused and the buzzing started in my head again.
That was going to get really annoying. I rubbed at the side of my head.
His gaze followed the movement. Well, part of it. His eyes seemed to get stuck at breast height.
I took a deep breath, pushing my boobs out, and lifted my other hand to my hair.
He gulped. Then winced. Slamming his eyelids closed, he took a deep breath.
Chapter 21 – Ransom
“Daaaamn, man. No wonder you’re getting all riled up about her,” Asher exclaimed with a low whistle.
I hadn’t meant to send them the mental image of Kiema’s tits. But, Gaia, they looked so damn good, even under the layers of shirts. Just the size to fill my palms with a little left over for my lips and tongue.
“Caduceus,” Doctor Atlas said, pulling everyone back on point. “The winged staff with two serpents is called the caduceus. Typically seen as the emblem of the medical profession.”
I slammed my eyes shut. I couldn’t afford to get sidetracked right now. Not even for the two things I wanted to touch the most.
“Ransom?” Kiema said, pulling my attention back to her for a moment.
I held up a finger for her to give me a minute.
I told them about the possible acronym, but didn’t hold out much hope for anything to come back from that.
“I finally found her file, Ransom. Kiema Rosalinda Feuer, aged twenty-eight, height of five-six, weight at time of admission of 157,” Xander—Hacker Extraordinaire—added.
“Damn, baby got back,” Asher said.
“I’ll get him under control, Ransom,” Saint said.
“Thanks, Saint. Either that or we’re down a member.”
“Nah, all his shares revert to me. If you want to knock him off, let me know,” Xander added.
“Bitches be hating,” Asher added.
“Back to her medical records,” Xander interrupted. “I had to get them from her father’s secure server.
They’re not filed with MagCorp or even the Feuers’ insurance company. According to both, she died when she was eleven during a family vacation.”
“Are you fucking serious?” I asked, furious.
“The info’s right here. I’ve even got the signed death certificate, boss. Juan and Ferria took a lump sum payment for her life insurance payout. A bloody ten million.”
“Fucking Juan and Ferria.”
“They declared their own daughter dead?” Atlas asked, a soft note of curiosity coloring the tone.
“I’ll tell you later. Everyone see what you can find with what I’ve given you. I’ve got to get back to her.”
“You tap that, you tag me in when you’re done. I call dibs,” Asher said.
“I’ve got him, Ransom,” Saint said before signing off.
“Saint’ll beat the shit out of the little fucker,” Xander said.
“It’s Saint or me,” I said. “I’m out.”
**
I blinked, bringing Kiema back into focus. She had her elbows perched on her knees, hands intertwined under her chin. Her gaze was steady on my face.
“Oh, good. You’re back. That took forever.”
You have no idea. “Lining up research can take some time.”
“I guess. Ready for my theories?”
“Hit me.” I settled back against the couch. Gaia, I wish I had some real clothes. These sheets were getting way too warm.
“Okay, so not really theories, but I’d like to try something.” She looked like she was holding her breath.
“I’m going to need to hear the idea before I agree to anything.”
“So untrusting, Ransom. It hurts me.” She laid a hand over her heart, a snarky smile on her face.
“You’re crushed, I can tell.” I waved her on.
“I want to do a ritual with you.”
My body hardened in an instant. She wants to touch me. I can feel her skin. Touch her in return.
I swallowed. “No.” I couldn’t—wouldn’t—risk hurting her again without some kind of guards in place.
“Hear me out.” She wrinkled her nose at me again. She added a glare to top it off. “You’re so damn bossy. You know that right?”
“Get used to it, sweetheart.”
