Puma

by Jorrie Spencer

  “I think I’ll be okay,” she said quietly.

  “Even if you are”—he raised his face—“he’ll kill you for being immune, and then convince everyone around him that he didn’t. He’s that powerful. He has his local police in the palm of his hand.”

  “It sounds quite hopeless.”

  Scott didn’t react, though his confusion at her dry tone came through clearly. He actually expected her to become panicked by these pronouncements.

  “Do you think I’m stupid, Scott?”

  He flinched, just slightly, so she supposed there’d been threat in her voice. She hadn’t meant to put it there, but he was making her angry.

  “I actually don’t,” he said carefully.

  “Then why tell me all this? Why prepare me for my own bloodletting? Just let Max the enforcer waltz in here and either enslave or kill me. Then you can get back to your happy little life with Dev and Ruth and Madison under your control.”

  “Eleanor is going to be extremely unhappy with me for having lost control. In her eyes, I’ll have proven I’m weak. Max will be allowed…” His voice trailed off.

  “Allowed to do what?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “You’re quite wrong. I do want to know.” She gestured for him to continue.

  Scott examined his handcuff, then spoke to it. “Weak Minders are considered a liability. They can expose the pod. At the very least I will be punished.”

  She frowned, wondering at his potential punishment, but before she could ask, he continued, “I don’t want to be hurt. I don’t want Dev and Ruth and Madison to return to Eleanor and Max, for they will take them back and destroy them.”

  It was hard not to think of this as hyperbole, even if the boy seemed incredibly earnest. Hysteria and earnestness, quite a strange combination. Callie let out a long sigh. “What do you want, Scott?”

  “Let me go,” he entreated, eyes pleading, and Callie was oddly tempted. She wondered idly if that was his ability working on her at a low level, or if she simply had a soft spot for a fellow freak. “I’ll leave the house, go back to the pod, Eleanor won’t know anything about you. She’ll have no reason to think something has gone wrong at this house.”

  “You must know I can’t do that. I simply can’t trust you.” Callie decided it was unwise to say out loud that Scott, with his powers, might be able to convince someone to do her harm. He hadn’t succeeded in making Dev punch her, but another person might be more malleable. Apart from that, Scott shouldn’t be able to harm normals the way he’d been doing, and she could not allow it to continue. She’d certainly stopped other freaks from harming the world at large. God knows she had led werecougars to their deaths.

  She flinched from that last thought, found she didn’t want to bring someone in to be killed again, even if Scott needed to be contained. “I can’t let you go, Scott.”

  He nodded, having expected her answer, and licked his lips. “If you can’t do that, there’s another thing I would ask of you. If you can do it.”

  “And that is?”

  “I want you to kill Eleanor.”

  She blinked in surprise, then stared into his eyes, wishing they could tell her what to believe of this strange young Minder who foretold of death and punishment. Was he deranged? Was he a liar?

  To her horror, Callie realized she believed him, believed he wanted her to kill Eleanor, that is. Obviously, she needed a break from this conversation.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  She left the room, feeling a palpable sense of relief as she shut the door and leaned against it. Slowly, she made her way downstairs only to be accosted by Ruth who gripped her arm and gazed at her imploringly. “How is Scott? Did you hurt him?”

  Callie had this terrible desire to joke that she’d ripped Scott’s throat out, which wasn’t funny even if it were a joke that Ruth would get.

  “Well.” God, how to sum up Scott and his state of affairs? “He’s a little stressed. So am I. He should have something to eat and drink, I think.”

  “Oh, right. Food.” Ruth paused, brow creasing. “But Dev’s not here.”

  Something snapped in Callie. “For fuck’s sake, Ruth, can you not get Scott some juice and a sandwich? Is that such a challenge?”

  “Yes.” Ruth glared. “It’s just that, I dunno, I just know that’s Dev’s job. I’m used to it. It’s the routine.”

  “Okay, sorry.” Callie held up both hands in surrender. This wasn’t simply Ruth being lazy, this was Ruth who’d been living with a Minder for months apparently. “I know things have been very structured here for a while, but you need to be flexible now. And we need to figure out what is going on.” As Ruth pulled bread and cheese out of the fridge, Callie asked, “You realize things haven’t been right in this house, eh, Ruth? That Scott’s been controlling you?”

  “I wanted him to.” Said with little inflection.

  “Or does he want you to believe you want him to?”

  Ruth straightened, set down the food and slammed the flat of her hand on the counter. “I don’t care. Honest to God, I don’t care.”

  “Okay.” Enough of that topic. Ruth angrily put together a sandwich, scraping butter over the bread, mashing it a bit. Callie grabbed some food and drink for herself while Ruth prepared Scott’s snack. When she was done, Callie braced herself to ask her sister, “Who is Eleanor?”

  “Who?” She had a distracted air, but Ruth wasn’t distressed.

  “Eleanor.” Callie expected more of a reaction after Scott’s somewhat hysterical description of the pod leader. Going by Ruth’s expression, she didn’t even recognize the name.

  “I don’t know.” Ruth shoved the sandwich at Callie who reached for a plastic plate.

  Callie leaned a hip against the counter. “Where were you before you met Scott?”

  At that, Ruth’s eyes clouded over, then she gave a quick shake of her head. “I don’t want to think about it.”

  Callie bit her lip, wondering if she should ask more. Or perhaps first ask Dev. “Where’s Dev?”

  “He took Madison outside. She wanted to go for a bike ride.”

  “All right. I’ll take the sandwich up to Scott.”

  Ruth didn’t argue, which made Callie suspect she didn’t actually want to be in Scott’s presence, but still Callie warned, “Don’t go near Scott, okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I heard you before.” Ruth let out a long breath. “I’m feeling more comfortable now. With what you’ve done. Like maybe…maybe I needed to stay away from Scott a little. See, usually he comes and goes quickly, doesn’t stay here this long. You changed that.”

  “I certainly changed something,” Callie agreed and with that she carried food and drink up to Scott.

  He was gazing at her as she shouldered the door open, his body still balled up against the headboard.

  “Hungry?” Callie asked.

  “I skipped breakfast.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Dev was supposed to make pancakes and we got distracted and only the bacon got fried.” She passed Scott the juice first, which he took in his free hand. She briefly wondered if he’d throw the drink at her in a fit of pique, but he simply brought it to his mouth and gulped it down before handing back the empty glass. Well, she’d made a point of bringing up a plastic glass so he couldn’t brain her with it or hurt himself with any potential shards. She didn’t think he really wanted to do himself harm, but she couldn’t tell for sure. Especially with his apparent fear of these other Minders.

  She placed the glass on the dresser and turned back. “So tell me, what’s with Dev doing all the cooking and food stuff?”

  “He likes to cook.”

  “All the time?”

  “Enough that he doesn’t resist my suggestion he keep everyone well fed. He needs to keep busy. He’s an active kind of guy.”

  “I see. So you’re doing him a favor, really, getting him to make you meals.”

  “I only visit. It’s the others he feeds.” Scott pau
sed, hungry eyes on the plate. “Do I get my sandwich?”

  “Ruth made it.”

  “It’ll be shit, then.”

  “It’s edible.” She handed him the plastic plate and he picked up the sandwich in both hands and began eating hungrily. It wasn’t going to be enough. He was a young man. They ate a lot. Not as much as shifters of course, but more than this meager sandwich.

  “Tell me why Dev doesn’t want to leave this house,” Callie said abruptly when he was almost done eating.

  He swallowed his bite. “Ask him yourself.”

  “I will. But asking Dev questions can be painful. Hurtful to him, I think. So I need to do it sparingly, choose my questions with care.”

  “There are much worse ways in which Dev can be hurt.”

  “Yes, yes, I’ve picked that up. Just answer me.”

  “Dev wants to be with me.” Scott wiped his mouth after his last bite. There was something triumphant in the statement.

  “I don’t think so,” Callie said slowly. “Or he would have come to this room.”

  Here, Scott’s gaze slid away. “I’ve miscalculated,” he admitted. Then he hung his head while he laughed a little. “You know, it is a bitter, strange, yet enormous relief to be talking to you. Or it is when I believe you aren’t another Minder toying with me.”

  “I’m not a Minder.” It seemed like she couldn’t say that enough today. “You miscalculated…?”

  He stared at his handcuff. “I thought Dev could withstand a couple of years under my sway.” Scott gripped his hands together, wringing them. “You think he’s close to cracking?”

  “Come on. You know it.”

  “Dev thought he could do it, you know.”

  “What?”

  “He agreed. He was always a do-gooder, the protective kind. That’s how he met the others, of course.”

  “Explain, Scott.”

  “We were going to rescue people, Dev and I, once he realized what Eleanor was. We did a few. Ruth was a junkie, getting used in every way possible by Max and Eleanor.”

  Callie felt sick and she hoped Scott was just trying to freak her out about Ruth, that this wasn’t true. “Don’t fuck with me, Scott. I have a lousy temper.”

  Scott was on a roll. “Max didn’t know what to do with Madison. She was a little girl who cried all the time and wasn’t very useful. Helen was hired out as a prostitute by Eleanor. Ian slit his wrists but got found in time.”

  “I think you’re making this up. I think you are toying with me. I think you don’t know how not to toy with people.”

  “I think you don’t understand what you’ve walked into. I just hope to God you can handle Max because he’ll arrive here first.” With that, Scott turned over, put his back to Callie and stared out the window. “If you can’t beat Max, I’m going to slit my own wrists.”

  Either Scott was a very good actor, or he believed what he said. Callie was too pissed by his histrionics to figure it out. She went downstairs to wait for Dev’s return. While Dev wouldn’t welcome it, she desperately needed to ask him some more questions.

  Chapter Eleven

  Callie didn’t talk to Dev till the end of the day. He avoided her, pretty much using Madison as a shield, intentionally or no, while he showered attention on the child. There was a lightness to him, as if the shadow of Scott’s presence had lessened. Even if Scott was directly upstairs. Callie found she was ready to give Dev a few hours of peace and herself a few hours of mental preparation—she wasn’t exactly used to being in charge of a Minder—before they sat down and figured out how to get out of this mess they found themselves in, and what they were actually going to do about their prisoner.

  Callie went in and out of Scott’s room, delivering more food and drink, and dealing with the slight awkwardness of Scott using the toilet. There were more dire warnings and he made the occasional attempt to “push” her. She was getting the hang of some of the lingo. The people a Minder controlled were sometimes called zombies, but Scott disliked that term. One of the very few things, perhaps, that Callie and Scott had in common.

  “They’re actually my friends,” he told her with a kind of awful earnestness. “I’m as careful as I can be with them.” Callie didn’t bother to voice her “yeah, right” reaction to that declaration.

  Ruth set up her bedding on the couch in the den and crawled into bed early. Scott, too, slept shortly after the sun set. The day’s events had exhausted them all. When Callie left the boy sleeping, Dev was standing at the threshold of his room, arms crossed, evidently waiting for her, a weariness now dragging down his expression.

  He didn’t want to talk, that’s what his body language said, but he gestured for her to enter, and she walked past him.

  As she did, she became acutely aware of him, his unique scent, the breaths he took, the curve of his well-muscled shoulders. He’d kissed her and with everything that had happened since then, she’d almost, well, forgotten wasn’t the right word—given that she’d occasionally touched her lips during the rest of the day—but she had set the kiss aside.

  He had surprised her, given his distinct distaste for touch, and yet there had been some kind of desire there—she thought. She wasn’t an expert on these matters by any means.

  “How is Scott?” Dev’s question jolted her back to the problem at hand and she turned towards him.

  “Tired, actually. He’s sleeping.”

  “How are you keeping him in the room?”

  “I handcuffed him to the bed.”

  He lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “Where the hell did you get handcuffs?”

  “I didn’t. Ruth had them. God knows why and I haven’t had the strength to ask her. She’s resented the questions I have asked, and it seemed less important to find out about handcuffs than her history with Scott.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What are you going to do?” She knew the echo sounded unsophisticated, but she wanted to know what was on his mind, if he planned anything.

  He scrubbed his face. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Why not leave? Now that Scott can’t talk to you, you can escape. Isn’t that what you want?” She couldn’t imagine Dev wanting to be under Scott’s control, under anyone’s control.

  Dev looked a little ill. “I can’t.” At her confusion, he added, “I can’t leave Scott.”

  “You don’t even talk about rescuing him, like Ruth, so why can’t you leave him?”

  “I owe him,” he said listlessly.

  “That’s Scott talking.”

  Dev shrugged. “Could be. Doesn’t matter.”

  “It sure as hell matters, Dev.”

  That seemed to ignite something in him, and he took two long strides towards her, gripped her shoulders. “I can’t leave Scott. I owe him.”

  “You don’t. He’s…he’s…” It was hard to say it directly to Dev whose dark eyes looked so intently at Callie. But she had to. “He’s abused you, Dev.”

  Instead of replying, or even responding to her statement, his gaze dropped to her mouth. His hand slid over her shoulder, across to her neck; fingers forked up into her hair and made a fist to anchor her head so she couldn’t move. His mouth was a mere breath from hers.

  “I’m going to kiss you, Callie.” He watched for her reaction and she didn’t know if she was supposed to give a verbal yes, or not. He must have seen something to encourage him. She thought he would kiss like before: sudden, deep, all his for the taking.

  His lips brushed hers and before she could protest his leaving, he returned, caught her lower lip between his gentle teeth, scraped it lightly. Like the end of this morning’s kiss, but this was a beginning. A noise rose from her throat, in question, in desire, and with the fist that held her hair in his grip, he angled her head.

  “God,” he said, a guttural sound, before his mouth covered hers, forcing her mouth open, stroking her tongue with his. He tasted of mint and chocolate and Dev; and she tried to welcome him though all she could do was accept as
he devoured her. She’d been kissed before and hadn’t much liked it, hadn’t liked the invasion. Dev was different, demanding, yes, but focused on her. His large hand splayed across her back, between her shoulder blades, and pushed her flush against him so they had full-body contact. The flood of sensation, from his talented mouth—she had never felt so thoroughly kissed, his tongue demanding hers to dance, then withdrawing to explore her lips before delving in again—to the warmth of his body pressed against hers.

  She actually went weak in the knees.

  As she sank against him, he cupped the back of her head, holding her in that kiss, while the other arm wrapped around her waist, anchoring her to him. He slid his hand under her T-shirt and clasped her ribs, his palm and fingers warm against her skin.

  His tongue released hers, and he retreated to nibble her lips. He kissed across her jawline and descended to her neck where he sucked at the sensitive skin there. Her throat vibrated, half-groan, half-purr, all pleasure. As he kissed across her collarbone, he said, “Callie, Callie. I want us to make love.”

  He pulled back sharply then, as if to give himself a shake, and she reached for him, hands on his shoulders, scared he would go away. She couldn’t stand it, couldn’t take being released by him now.

  He eyed her while he raised his hands to rest upon hers. For a terrible moment, she feared he was going to remove her hold on him, return to that “don’t touch” manner he sometimes projected. Instead, he caressed the backs of her hands, feather-soft strokes of his fingertips over her knuckles, between her knuckles and, most sensitively, between her fingers. She trembled in reaction, amazed that her hands could react to his touch so. A warmth gathered in her belly.

  He did lift her hands off, but linked fingers with his and brought their arms down together, pulling her up against him again. Perhaps he too craved touch despite his… She bit her lip.

  “What, Callie?”

  “Earlier you said you weren’t interested in sex.”

  He stiffened and she closed her eyes, wishing the thought hadn’t flitted through her mind, wishing she could have lied or at least fobbed him off with a “nothing”, though it was important to her that she be honest with Dev.