Strangers of the Night

by Megan Hart

  “Like children bred and raised in a cult designed to create extrasensory mental abilities?” He turned to face her. His headache was softening. His mouth, though, had gone dry, his throat scratchy. If he’d been asleep as long as she’d said, he’d missed several doses of meds. This was going to hurt.

  “Yes, like that. Are you sure you feel all right?”

  He frowned. “Of course I don’t feel all right. I just got busted out of a top secret research facility to prevent my murder. Unless you still plan to off me.”

  “No!” She looked startled and shook her head, moving closer. “No, look. I know you have no reason to trust me...”

  “I can feel if you’re lying to me,” Jed interrupted in a low voice, very conscious of her body heat and the faint smell of her shampoo.

  She studied him for a moment with a curious tilt of her head. A faint smile. “Can you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you feel anything else about me?”

  Jed looked into her eyes. “Yes. I can tell that you want to touch me. I told you, I don’t have a fever. But if you need to check, go ahead.”

  “I don’t need to check you for a fever if you’re feeling all right. But I do want to touch you. Yes. Can you feel that?”

  He could feel something inside her, but it was so much a part of everything that made Samantha who she was that he couldn’t untangle it from the rest. She moved closer to him. He tensed, unsure of what she meant to do. At the brief brush of her fingertips across his forehead, he sighed and closed his eyes.

  “What do you feel about me?” she asked quietly.

  He tried to show her, but although it was easy enough to make things happen around him, making a person feel something was completely different. There was more to it than emotion. Desire. Longing. Anxiety. There was also sensation.

  The touch of fingertips on the inside of his wrist.

  The smell of her shampoo.

  The sound of her voice.

  He tried his best to give her all of this, everything that made up who she was, to him. Convinced he’d failed, Jed opened his eyes. Samantha’s eyes glistened with tears.

  She kissed him.

  Chapter 17

  Even as Samantha slanted her mouth against Jed’s, she wondered if he was manipulating her into this. She knew all too well what his talents could do. Yet, there’d never been anything in her life that she wanted to do more in that moment than to kiss him, and she hadn’t even tried to resist it.

  His lips were soft and warm. They parted instantly when she put her mouth on his. He was surprised, she thought as she cupped the back of his neck. He wasn’t trying to get his tongue inside her mouth. She’d startled him. It didn’t matter. The kiss deepened in the next minute, and she couldn’t tell and didn’t care who’d initiated it. There was an ebb and flow to this kiss she could not deny.

  Neither of them could.

  She did not break the kiss, but she did ease her mouth away. She pressed her cheek to his. Her other hand went to his chest, over his heart. Hers was beating so hard she could feel the throb of it at the base of her throat, and after so many months of checking his vitals, she could tell at once that his was beating much faster than normal, too.

  “The other day. When you were giving me the checkup,” he said.

  She remembered. “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have...it was wrong to do that to you.”

  He was serious. She sat back, frowning. “What?”

  “I shouldn’t have touched you like that, without asking. Without you saying it was okay.”

  “You didn’t touch me, Jed.”

  He furrowed his brow. “I did, and you know it. I don’t have to use my hands. You know that, too.”

  “Did it feel like I didn’t want you to?” She sat back, but only a little. She let the hand over his heart slip down his arm to circle his wrist. Then to take his hand, linking their fingers. He wouldn’t look at her.

  She’d never seen Jed react emotionally to much of anything. She’d long assumed it was the meds they kept him on. The years of isolation and lack of normal social contact. Now, though, he pressed his lips together and swallowed hard, blinking away tears.

  “Jed.” She turned his face gently to face hers. “Did it ever feel to you like I didn’t want you to touch me?”

  “I don’t know!” he shouted, and pushed away from her to stand and pace.

  She’d chosen the small, empty bedroom off the safe house kitchen because of its first-floor access, in case they needed to get out the windows, which had been covered with blackout curtains. It was little more than the size of a walk-in closet, barely big enough for the sagging twin mattress on the floor, so he didn’t have much room to move. He spun on his heel when she stood, moving in front of him so he had no choice but to face her.

  “You know how I feel. If I had ever once thought or felt like you were manipulating or hurting me in any way, you’d have known it.” Samantha wasn’t positive if this was true. There’d been hundreds of tests done to research what Jed could do. Nothing about how it affected him emotionally or mentally. “Right?”

  Reluctantly, he nodded. “Yes.”

  “You didn’t hurt me. You didn’t do anything to me that I didn’t...want.” It was her turn to swallow hard.

  “But why?” he demanded. “Why would you want anything like that from me?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Pity,” he said with a sneer that hurt her to see. “Curiosity.”

  She couldn’t deny that at least a little bit of that was true. But not all of it. “Why does anyone ever want something like that from another person? Who knows why two people connect? I’ve never been able to figure it out. And you know what, I’m not sure I care, to be honest. I haven’t been with anyone for a long time. Sex feels good—”

  He snort laughed, half choking. “Sex!”

  “It feels good,” she continued. “Especially with another person, especially with someone you care about. So maybe it wasn’t right, what you did. It wasn’t right for me to allow it or enjoy it, then. I was your caregiver. It was crossing a line. But it felt good and I didn’t stop it. So, who’s the one in the wrong?”

  “It made you feel good?”

  Heat crept up inside her as she lifted her chin. “Yes. Very good.”

  “It wasn’t sex,” Jed said. “Not real sex.”

  He was a virgin, Samantha thought suddenly. All those years locked up. She wanted to take a step back, but his expression told her he knew what she was thinking. She didn’t move. She reached for him instead, snagging his wrist to tug him a step closer to her.

  “You didn’t do anything to me that I didn’t want, even if I didn’t know until you did it that I wanted it. And I won’t...” She coughed lightly, unsure how to go on without embarrassing them both. Screw that, she thought. They were on the run from people who wouldn’t hesitate to kill them. She’d gone off plan and had no backup from the organization who’d hired her to protect him. They were in a tiny box of a room with nothing more than a candle and a mattress on the floor. If she couldn’t be honest with him about this now, there wasn’t going to be any better time. “I won’t touch you unless you want me to.”

  “How could you think I wouldn’t want you to?”

  Because it was crazy, she thought as Jed moved toward her. Because there wasn’t time for this here or now. When he kissed her, there was no more thinking. No more excuses. Jed kissed her as though he’d been waiting a lifetime for the chance to put his mouth on hers, and in a way, maybe he had.

  At the stroke of his tongue, Samantha gave a small moan. His hand tightened in her hair while the other found her hip and anchored there. He pulled her against him, and the heat of his erection nudged her through the thin fabr
ic of her nurse’s uniform. Somehow they were on the mattress, Samantha straddling Jed’s lap as he tugged and tore at the white tights she’d hated since the first day she’d been assigned them. His fingers found her heat beneath; her white cotton panties were about as far from romantic as she could imagine, but he didn’t seem to care.

  “Oh, my god,” Jed whispered into her mouth. “You’re so hot, Samantha. So wet.”

  He’d boldly slid two fingers inside her before she could say a word; all that came out after that was a gasping sigh that spiraled up into a low cry when he began to slide them in and out. Something nudged at her mind, a feeling she remembered from the days in the hospital. Like an inquiry. But this time she knew it was Jed, and she opened herself up to it. Embraced him not only with her body, but her mind.

  “Oh...” he said. “Yes. That, there. Now I know.”

  He might never have touched a woman this way, but it didn’t matter. Whatever he was feeling from her showed him exactly what to do. Kissing her harder, he pressed his thumb to her clit, circling as his fingers moved inside her.

  Her fingers dug into his shoulder as she pushed herself up a little to slide her hand between them and get at the loose tie of his scrubs. Somehow in seconds after that, he was inside her. She had his face in her hands. Their teeth clashed and she let out a small, surprised laugh that turned into a moan when he sucked her tongue.

  Jed’s hands slipped under her ass to move her. They rocked together. The sound of their breathing was loud in her ears, harsh in her throat as she gasped with the pleasure filling her.

  They should slow down, she thought. Savor this. Make it special...

  “It’s all right,” Jed said. “I don’t need candles or rose petals, Samantha, just fuck me.”

  His words sent shards of icy fire through her. She ground herself against him as her climax rose. Shuddering, she tipped over the edge with her face pressed into the curve of his shoulder. For a moment she couldn’t move, she could only let her body take over, clenching on him.

  It seemed that was enough. Jed said her name in a low, hoarse rasp and arched. His fingers tightened on her hard enough to hurt, but only for a second before he eased the grip. They moved together for another few strokes before she looked into his eyes, once again cupping his face.

  Jed blinked, gaze hazy. He slid his tongue along his lower lip. She’d seen him smile before, but this was the first time she’d ever seen it fully reach his eyes.

  “Thank you,” Jed said. “Wow. That was amazing. You were right, sex is great.”

  * * *

  He didn’t have to be able to feel her to know that whatever he’d said wasn’t quite right. Her quickly shuttering expression did that for him. Samantha made to get off him, but he held her hips and waited until she’d looked at him.

  “Wait.”

  “We need to clean up and get some sleep. We need to be out of here when it gets dark,” she said matter-of-factly. “I need to get you to a rendezvous point where they can take you to someplace really safe.”

  “Samantha...didn’t you...want to?” Again horrified at the thought that somehow he’d manipulated her into having sex with him, Jed let her go.

  She got up, rearranging the clothes they hadn’t even taken off. Was that the problem? Should he have undressed her all the way? They should’ve been naked. Had he misread her?

  “I wanted to. Yes. I told you, sex feels good. And you obviously wanted it, too. So we’re both good. That’s all. I’m going to the bathroom.”

  He followed her, waiting outside until he heard the water running in the sink before nudging open the door. “You’re angry.”

  “No. Look.” She turned. “I was assigned to take care of you, to protect and watch over you and to get you out of there when it was time. Not to fuck you. This complicates things, that’s all.”

  Jed had watched hours of daytime television, enough to know that what she said could be true. But... “Does it have to be?”

  She stepped aside to let him into the bathroom, where he used the toilet unselfconsciously until he noticed she was looking away with a strange expression. He finished and turned to the sink to wash his hands. It hadn’t occurred to him to be modest about it—he’d spent his entire life being observed through cameras.

  “I’m sure you’ve watched me pee before,” he said.

  She shook her head. “That’s not... Jed. We can’t...”

  “Can’t what?” He shook his hands as dry as he could and took her by the upper arms. “Samantha, talk to me.”

  “Can’t you just feel what I’m thinking?” she said, sharp and fierce.

  Angry? Disappointed. No...something else he couldn’t quite name.

  “It doesn’t really work that way,” Jed said. “You should just tell me.”

  In answer she left the tiny bathroom and headed back to the small bedroom, where she kicked off her shoes and stripped out of the shreds of her tights. She tossed them in the corner, then put her shoes back on. He watched her from the doorway for a few seconds before coming into the room to stand near the mattress.

  “You can have it,” he said, pointing. “To sleep.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We can share it.”

  “It’s not much better than the floor,” he pointed out. “And I don’t want you to feel like you have to.”

  She drew in a long, deep breath. “C’mon. Let’s just get some sleep, okay? When it gets dark, we’ll get out of here.”

  Together, they stretched out on the hard mattress. There wasn’t much room, but he put his back against the wall to make sure there was space between them, which she seemed to want. Without the candle, the only light came in through cracks around the closed door and the rooms beyond.

  He listened to her breathing slow. She was dozing, not fully asleep. Because she was making sure to be ready in case she needed to protect him, he thought.

  He didn’t want to need protection.

  Jed put a hand on Samantha’s hip, urging her back against him. She woke, everything about her going tense and alert and aware, but she softened after a second and shifted to let him hold her. He wasn’t entirely sure why she’d gone distant from him, but if this was the last chance he ever had to hold her, he was going to take it.

  “You’re not like anyone else,” he said against her shoulder, his voice muffled.

  Samantha drew a breath and turned her face a little. “No?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t really know anyone else,” she said.

  Jed closed his eyes, breathing in her scent. “I know you.”

  “Yes,” Samantha said after her heart had thumped four or five times. “You do know me. I’m not entirely sure how, but you do.”

  “I’m sorry if I upset you.”

  She didn’t say anything for long enough that he’d started to drowse. Her voice was quiet enough not to fully wake him, but he knew it wasn’t a dream. “Is it crazy for me to feel like I know you, too?”

  Jed nuzzled the back of her neck. “Nobody else ever has.”

  Her shoulders rose and fell; she gave a hitching half sob that made him open his eyes and frown. He hugged her, marveling in this simple contact that meant so much. Felt so good.

  “You’re going to have a whole, huge world to learn. New people to meet. This won’t be... I will just be the first,” she said. “I won’t be the only.”

  He wasn’t sure how to answer her. He could feel her confusion and the rest of her tangled emotions, but that didn’t mean he understood them—because she didn’t. “Do you want to be the...only?”

  “That wouldn’t be fair.” She didn’t turn from his embrace, though something in the way she tensed made him feel as though she wanted to.

  Jed laughed. “What’s fair? I can’t think of much of anything in my life tha
t’s ever been fair.”

  Samantha sat, twisting on the mattress to look down at him. “But this should be.”

  He sat, too. “What are you saying?”

  “Never mind. We should rest. Are you feeling okay?”

  He wasn’t, but it had nothing to do with his efforts during their escape. As she settled back onto the mattress, once more putting a distance between them, Jed tentatively tried to reach toward her with his talents. To figure her out.

  But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t get inside her.

  Chapter 18

  The safe house had running water, but it was cold. That turned out to be fine. They didn’t have time to linger over anything, and the frigid water slapped some sense into her. Yesterday had been a mistake, there was no question, but it didn’t have to be irreversible. In a few hours, they’d reach the pickup spot where Vadim’s Crew members would take Jed somewhere safe.

  In the kitchen, she found him at the sink. “You shouldn’t stand by the window.”

  He looked at her. “It’s fine. I can’t feel any of them around here.”

  “Could you? If they were close enough?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “I could feel if someone meant harm. Maybe not who it was or where they came from, but yeah.”

  “We need to get going. It’s about a five-hour drive.”

  “I’m not going,” Jed said.

  Samantha shook her head. “Yes. You are. Please don’t make me—”

  “What?” Jed asked calmly. “What can you do to me, Samantha? I know you’re trained. You’ve used weapons. I know you’ve killed a man.”

  She tensed, stepping back involuntarily. “It was the job. He—”

  “He made you afraid. I know. I can feel that. But do you think you could kill me? I know you felt like you might have to,” Jed said. “I know you weren’t sure if you could. Do you think you could now, to stop me from getting away?”

  She could not, and he had to know it. She shook her head, her eyes meeting his. “Why do you want to get away? I’m trying to help you. The Crew is trying to help.”