by India Kells
Dylan nodded. “I don’t think a red dress is my first step.”
Margot angled her head. “I don’t think red is your color anyway. What is your first step, Dylan? The one only for you. Coming spontaneously into your mind.”
Thoughts swirled in her mind, from stupid to illogical, but one stayed, one that would be making her or breaking her.
“How sure are you about your gag reflex?”
Margot lifted her styled eyebrow, amusement in her eyes. “I can certify it is well mastered. Some day, with a lot more time and wine, I may tell you more about how I acquired such a skill. What do you have in mind?”
Dylan turned to close and lock the door, a shaky breath escaping her lips. “Hang on to that thought.”
When she turned, Margot hadn’t moved. Her face was intrigued, but she only stood there, waiting. And Dylan was very glad about it, as there was no word coming to her mind. It was as if she was on autopilot. Only a deep part of her brain was shouting that she was a complete idiot, acting in a way so far off herself, she must have gone insane. But somehow, when Margot came in, when she admitted being a survivor, something clicked inside of her. Numb and disconnected, Dylan kicked aside her shoes and unbuttoned her jeans, pushing them down, only keeping her panties. Stepping away, Dylan pulled off her hoodie. Now naked except for her underwear before the almost strange woman, she forced herself to lift her eyes.
Margot was looking at her, and as expected, at the intricate patterns on her skin. She was still a few feet away, but her body was slowly bending forward to get closer without moving her feet.
Dylan swallowed despite her parched throat, but was relieved to see more curiosity than disgust on her face.
“Can I?” Margot gestured, gently asking to come closer. Dylan only nodded, her throat shut so tight, she was unable to speak. Slowly, as if she approached a frightened animal, Margot inched closer, until her hand was within reach, hovering over her. “I don’t know what to think.” There was reverence in Margot’s voice.
Dylan blinked. “What do you mean?”
And for the first time since she had gotten naked, the beautiful dominatrix straightened and faced her. “I’m so angry against the bloody bastard who did this to you. If he was before me, I would whip him until he screamed himself deaf. On the other hand, you look like …”
Dylan expected a blow, for an insult or raw pity, but was surprised when her warm hands touched her hips and started caressing her slowly, tracing the lines and scars up her ribs before returning to her waist. When she looked at her face, she saw Margot lick her lips. “You look like a fierce Amazon. A fantasy … and to be brutally honest, my own personal wet dream. Hell, did I tell you I like both men and women? One word from you and I will be on my knees. And I never do that, by the way. Please tell me you’re into women, too.”
Dylan was surprised at her reaction, and she had to take a few breaths before finding her voice again. Someone was touching her and nobody puked. She wasn’t aroused, but she was elated. Laughter bubbled inside of her, and she smiled, grateful beyond words.
“I’m so sorry, Margot. I’m into men. Only men. But what you just gave me …” Without thinking, she took the latex-clad women in a fierce embrace. The action must have surprised Margot as she started laughing.
“Well, that’s a first. The first time I’ve been turned down, and I don’t really mind.” And awkwardly, the dark beauty patted her back before Dylan released her. “Glad I could be of help. Do you want me to go get Owen?”
To hear the name from her lips was like being dropped into ice water. Panic rose and she started to pull on her clothes as if there was a fire.
Margot crossed her arms as Dylan was putting the hoodie back on. “What got into you? One minute you’re giggling, the other you’re jumping in fright. What’s going one? Is it because I mentioned Owen?”
Dylan didn’t answer, and Margot continued. “It’s Owen. This was a test of some sort. If I didn’t react badly, it would be a confirmation for you.”
Dylan put back her shoes and started pacing. “What I just did wasn’t for Owen. It doesn’t confirm anything. What I did here, it may not work the same with Owen.”
“Why not?”
“Because when he did touch me, I freaked out!”
Dylan didn’t notice she had yelled her answer until she realized Margot had taken a step back and lifted her hands.
“Calm down, Dylan. It was only a question.”
Her lungs burned and her only thoughts were about getting out. Margot said something, but she didn’t hear, or she honestly didn’t care. How could a major victory make her feel like she had failed?
Retracing her steps, Dylan made her way outside, into the small backyard. The air was cool and humid. The sun had sunken down the horizon. As she looked at the barren yard, she saw a small alley leading to the street. Her body was high strung and she felt anxiety digging a hole through her stomach. It had been too long since she had burned some energy, and it showed in the worst way. After her abduction, the doctors and psychologists begged her to take drugs to help with her recovery. She did for a while, but it changed her too much, dulled her senses, her brain, and her emotions. After a zombie period she’d rather forget, Dylan decided that the only way out was through the pain. Training had been her salvation along with her computers, and Beatrice. Too bad she didn’t have her daily, so necessary, dose.
Pacing the restricted area, Dylan focused on her breathing, focused on bringing the burn down. From the corner of her eyes, she saw Owen coming out the door, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw her. She didn’t acknowledge him, and instead continued to move. The door closed again, but she didn’t stop or turned. He must have gone back inside. Bless him. Damn him! When she shed her clothes in front of Margot, in front of a complete stranger, she had pushed herself, and it had been such a relief to see she could do it and not dissolve into an emotional mess. She wished …
Frustration slowly replaced anxiety and she let out a loud growl.
“Are you okay?” His voice made her halt. Owen appeared relaxed, leaning by the door, hands in his pockets. But the intensity of his gaze told her a different story.
“Am I okay? You’re looking at a textbook fucked up, what do you think?”
“I don’t think you’re fucked up. It’s normal with everything you’ve been through—”
“Stop!” Now frustration blended into rage as she faced him. “Don’t you dare analyze me! It’s been years, not days since my abduction. I’ve worked hard to get myself back even if it’s not perfect. I should have found the solution to return to who I was, find my way back. Instead, I’m here, losing my mind, behaving like a lunatic in front of a stranger. If that is not fucked up, I don’t know what it is!”
Owen remained immobile as she resumed her pacing, and she didn’t know if it infuriated her more, or calmed her. Dylan wanted to punch him for being so reasonable.
“I don’t think it was fucked up. You looked magnificent.” It took her a full second to realize what he had just said.
“Repeat that.” She turned, looking at him, searching his face, his eyes, waiting for him to confirm he had changed the subject. Was even making a joke.
“When I returned to the office, and you were gone, I thought you had gone back to the apartment, but as I was leaving, I saw that you had switched on the security screens.”
Now her head buzzed. Everything in her coiled, waiting for his answer. Dreading it. “Tell me you didn’t …”
His blue gaze was on her, steady and unyielding, and still, she couldn’t wrap her mind around it. “I did. I couldn’t look away.”
And now she was the one who couldn’t look at him. Dylan closed her eyes and lowered her head, defeated, as he continued.
“I wondered what you were doing there with Margot. And to be honest, that room was one of the reasons I didn’t want you in the club. I feared that it would bring bad memories to the surface. I was about to go and get you out when you started
unbuttoning your jeans.”
She wanted to stop listening, but her body was frozen in place, frightened to death, and quietly expectant.
“I saw what I felt earlier with my fingers. I saw the lines, the scars and the patterns.”
Dylan couldn’t swallow the ball of emotion lodged inside of her throat. Apart from her face, neck, and part of her arms, most of her body was covered with it.
“And as I looked at you, standing there, naked, do you want to know what I thought?”
Part of her was desperate to know, the other was terrified, so she remained petrified, silent.
“I’m a Navy SEAL, from the start I forged my body and mind to face anything. I’ve been dropped into situations where I barely survived. I have suffered and endured a lot. I sometimes feel my soul may be made of titanium. But when I saw you, standing there, taking a risk, I realized that I’m not as strong as you are. Woman, you have more courage than I have ever seen in my entire life. So what if you have issues, so what if you’re still trying to figure things out? Just looking at you, I know you will find your way back, on your terms, kicking ass along the way.”
Strangely calmed by his words, humbled and flattered, Dylan lifted her head. Owen hadn’t moved. He was still leaning against the brick wall, his hands in his pockets, his bearded jaw set and his blue eyes on her. Honesty. Admiration. That’s what she saw in his gaze, a beacon pulling at her, the hope she too often gripped by the tip of her fingers to let it go now. It grounded her, making her solid, stable. A thrill coursed through her as she approached him. Now, standing so close they could almost touch, Dylan waited, lost in her new flaring hope.
“Dylan, despite everything you might think about me, when I look at you, I don’t see someone broken. I see a fighter. Believe in that. If only that.”
On impulse, she cupped his pelted cheeks and brought his head down before kissing his warm lips. The contact was soft, tentative. The heat of his muscled body made her relax and she leaned against him, groaning at the contact she still yearned for. Owen didn’t deepen the touch; he simply continued to kiss her as if she was made of silk and crystal, taking his time, retreating when she tried to heat up the connection, relaxing again when she softened her lips once more.
The kiss was soothing and arousing at the same time, making her linger into it, forgetting about time and place. As she let her hand trace his corded neck and shoulders, she realized that Owen hadn’t touched her. His arms were against the wall, his hands into balled fists. The realization made her stand back to look up at him.
“What’s wrong?”
His eyebrows shut up. “What’s wrong? If something had been more right, I might have gone up in flames.”
“You … you didn’t touch me.”
As she hesitated, and felt even more vulnerable now than she had been moments ago, naked in front of Margot, Owen smiled.
“I’m desperate to touch you, all of you. And taste every inch of you. But I’m not going to risk freaking you out until you’re truly, completely, unequivocally ready. We’re a team in finding your copycat, we’re a team in doing this, too.”
“Are you serious?” Blinking, Dylan thought she had heard wrong.
Owen nodded, very stern. “You can touch as much as you like, but until you feel one hundred percent comfortable with me, I’m not going to risk triggering a bad reaction.”
Dylan wasn’t exactly sure how to act. “And how am I going to know I’m ready for that if you don’t touch me?”
Owen winked at her and sidestepped, opening the door. “You’re the genius here. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
Chapter 14
Dylan ignored her grumbling stomach and wished for Owen to get back with the pizza before she completely self-digested herself. They both decided against returning to the apartment and instead get some take-out to eat in the office.
After securing the computer’s access and hiding its very existence the best she could, the next step was to start sending feelers through known channels, the same the creep had used to get to her. In normal circumstances, she would have pursued a much straighter line, as very few people would have even detected her presence. But this was no ordinary foe. That copycat had skills.
Threading through the dark Web, much creepier and complex than what the normal human would experience when searching for a restaurant review or shoe shop, she peeled away different layers, explored possibilities.
Dylan was in the one place where she could feel solid, all-powerful even, and yet, she was twitchy. Since what happened in the last few days, some of her hard-earned serenity had been chipped away. She rolled her shoulders and realized that apart from stress and fatigue, it was the silence now surrounding her that made her uneasy. She hated silence. It reminded her too much of that horrible basement, echoing in her screams. If she wasn’t careful enough, silence was a trigger of an anxiety attack.
This was Owen’s computer, could there be music? It would have only taken seconds to open one online player, but she was much more interested in looking into the SEAL’s personal files.
As she expected, his profile was secured, but it only took a moment to get over that pesky detail. She would need to remind him to up his security. Or maybe she should it do it for him. The computer was neatly organized, as she suspected. Military men. Dylan blinked when she realized how many mp3 files were in there. A lot. She scrolled down the list and noticed a couple of personal playlists with interesting names. One made her smile. If she was feeling edgy, the “Beat the Shit Out of Stupid” would probably help her. When she clicked on it, she thought it would only play through the computer’s audio system, but instead, the low-beat operatic music resonated throughout the entire room. She didn’t recognize the music. The beat was insistent, maddening, with plenty of electric guitar, but it was the voice of the female singer that tied the odd melody together. The harmony was very masculine, aggressive, but her voice floated over it, making the song hypnotic and strangely feminine. For a while, she listened to it, letting it flow around and inside her, almost directing the beating of her heart. When she opened her eyes at the end of it, she sighed and stretched. It did the trick, she was back, her focus sharp again.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Owen come back with the food, but finished her sequencing before turning to him. He set the coffee table by the couch with napkins and plates, then went to a small bar fridge tucked in a corner to retrieve bottled water.
As she let the final round of setup files run, she got up and stretched again, only to see Owen smiling. Dylan frowned and was about to ask a question when she realized the music was still so loud, he wouldn’t have heard a single word out of her mouth. Quickly, she turned the volume down, letting only lingering notes in the background.
Owen handed her a plate and she didn’t even bother to use utensils. The gooey cheese and spicy sauce made her moan at the first bite.
The man chuckled. “Glad you like it. When I stay here, it’s my favorite place to get pizza. Especially glad they’re open 24/7. Locked up in this office, I tend to forget what time it is.”
Dylan smiled. “Yeah, I tend to do that, too. When lost in my programming and decoding, time ceases to exist.”
“Any luck?”
Dylan took another bit and chewed, shaking her head. “Nope, not so far. But I didn’t expect anything easy or fast, especially since I’m hiding myself constantly and taking so many detours, it’s dizzying. However, I saw that our creep tends to use certain servers. More specifically I mean. And not official or industrial servers, but rather private ones, used by small or medium-size companies.”
“Is it something good or bad?”
Dylan took another bite of pie and pondered his question for a moment. “It depends on the security level. If high, it can be a pain in the ass to hack as you tend not to be that invisible. On the other hand, if security is mid-level or even low, you could hop around like a rabbit in a field, with enough free space around to see anyone coming. That’s
one of the reasons it’s taking me so long. It’s tough to stay invisible in an open field, and not scare the rabbit.”
Grabbing another slice, Owen leaned back. He seemed relaxed, but she saw the wheels turning in his head. “And what about the name of the companies where the servers are? Could that give us useful information?”
“Maybe. If the security level is mid-level and up, that would mean that the creep can’t access it from outside. The first entry would need to be done from inside, linked directly to the server.” As she was debating the idea, she wiped her hands on her jeans and went back to the computer. She started to bring up the locations of the different servers. “All US sites. Some East Coast, most West Coast, and two from Texas. The two from Texas are the ones he used the most lately. And maybe to a fault. In fact, the last intrusion to the Purgatory server and the last hack into my system was done from that specific location. It’s very strange … either he’s careless or very dumb.”
