Wicked Attraction (The Protector)

by Megan Hart

  “Nothing.”

  He didn’t have time to press her for a more honest answer, because the transpo had pulled up at the base of his driveway. She waited for him to go first, unusual for her. By the time they got to the house, Ewan had started to worry. Just inside the front door, he turned and took her by the shoulders.

  “Nina. What’s wrong. Is it another glitch?”

  She nodded, then shook her head. “No. I mean, yes. Maybe. I just had a couple seconds of something. I’m fine.”

  “It’s obviously more than that,” he said. “Talk to me.”

  The bare, blank look on her face confused him, because he’d never seen an expression like that on her before. It took him a few seconds to recognize it, and once he did, he wasn’t sure how to process it. Nina looked . . . terrified.

  Ewan’s first instinct was to pull her into his arms. She allowed it, taking the two steps toward him but remaining stiff in his embrace for a few seconds before the tension in her body eased. He held her tightly, more than a little frightened himself. What could be so bad that it would scare her?

  “Nina, please tell me what’s going on.”

  She shook her head after a second, her face pressed against him. “It’s just a glitch.”

  “Does it hurt this time?”

  “No.” She paused, then added, “it would be easier if it was just pain.”

  Ewan didn’t say anything right away. His hand stroked over her back and the softness of her curls, over and over. “I’m sorry, for whatever it is.”

  “It’s like looking up at a night sky, with pinpricks of stars shining, and watching them wink out. One by one. Except that the stars being consumed by the darkness are memories. Small things,” Nina told him in a shaky voice so utterly unlike her usual tone that she sounded like a stranger. “Like what I had for breakfast two days ago.”

  He’d been worried before, but at her explanation, a chill crept over him. “How frequently does this happen? Maybe we need to get you to a doc . . .”

  “It won’t matter,” Nina said, her words low and muffled against his chest. “They can’t do anything about the degrading tech, Ewan.”

  “And I’m the reason why you can’t get it upgraded,” Ewan replied, sick to his stomach at the unspoken accusation.

  She shook her head without moving out of his embrace. “You’re part of it, but at this point, it’s beyond your control, Ewan. There’s nothing you can do about it. I know that.”

  He stroked his hand over her hair when she fell silent. He closed his eyes, sending up a plea to the Onegod or whatever deities existed that this meant what he hoped, that Nina was going to give him another chance.

  “I’m going to—”

  She held up a hand, blocking his words. “Please, don’t. I can’t handle any empty promises right now. I want to believe you, Ewan. I want to forgive you. I just don’t think I can.”

  She pushed out of his arms to look him in the face. Her voice shook, but although her eyes glistened, no tears slipped free. He had time to wonder if that was a measure of her body’s extreme self-control, or if she simply wasn’t crying over him. Them. Over the end of things. He didn’t want her to cry, he didn’t want to know he’d hurt her so badly that she had to weep. But he also didn’t want her to feel nothing, no emotions at all about it, or about him.

  “This . . .” She waved a hand between them. “Sex. That’s all this is.”

  “Not for me.”

  Nina shook her head. “This is all it can be, for me. Just like in the beginning. Before we . . . before it became something else.”

  Part of him wanted to take what it seemed she was offering, something solely physical. With someone else, anyone else, he might have been able to. Not with Nina.

  “I don’t want sex.”

  She lifted her chin. “You didn’t seem to mind about half an hour ago, when you were going down on me.”

  “I don’t want there to be just sex,” he corrected. “I realize you’re angry with me—”

  “It’s not anger,” she interrupted. “If I was only mad at you, this would’ve been over a long time ago.”

  “You’d have forgiven me?”

  She laughed, but it was humorless. “No. Probably not. But I’d have walked out on you the first second I saw you were the one who’d hired me. I wouldn’t have cared, Ewan.”

  “But you do care. Now.” He kept himself from reaching for her again, trying hard to give her what she needed and not simply try to take what he wanted.

  She didn’t answer him at first, and she cut her gaze from his. She didn’t look scared anymore. She looked sad. This was worse. It sliced him bone deep.

  “I’d give my entire fortune to take that look off your face,” he told her. “I’d give everything I have.”

  “What look?”

  “The one that tells me how deeply I cut you. How much I hurt you. The look that says you can’t forgive me, even though you want to, because what I did was so awful it can’t be forgiven.” He drew in a breath and raked a hand through his hair. His throat felt tight, lungs burning. He wanted to scream, throw and break things; he wanted to rage.

  None of that would change her mind.

  “I will never not want to make love to you, Nina,” he said finally. “That will never change. But it’s not enough for me. I know we can’t go back to what we were before. I don’t want to. I understand if you can’t ever forgive me, but if you’re not going to ever feel anything other than physical for me . . .”

  “How can you think that?” Nina demanded, stepping closer. “Of course I feel something for you. I feel everything for you, Ewan! Why am I here, if not because my entire heart is straining, reaching, yearning for you again? How could you think anything less?”

  She put her fingertips to her temple and her eyelids fluttered. She didn’t stagger, but he reached to catch her anyway. She didn’t try to shake off his grip.

  “Let’s get you something to eat,” he said, alarmed but trying not to show it. “A drink. You can sit. We can talk about this more calmly.”

  In the kitchen, she sat with a glass of ice water in front of her while he brewed tea. She watched him. “The glitch has nothing to do with me being upset. It’s not triggered by emotions or stress or anything like that. It’s a simple degrading of the tech.”

  “I know that. I invented it.”

  She gave him a sad smile. “But you didn’t think you’d ever be faced with having to actually see what it meant, did you?”

  “When I saw what that tech could do, I was determined nobody should ever have to be subjected to it,” Ewan said evenly. “So no, Nina, I never thought I’d be standing in my kitchen watching the woman I love more than anything in this world struggle against it.”

  She put her face in her hands. Her shoulders heaved. Tears fell between her fingers to land on the table, and he felt no better at the proof of her grief than he had about anything else.

  Ewan put the mug of hot tea in front of her and let his hand rest on her shoulder for a second or so. He wanted to take her in his arms, but settled for gently squeezing and letting her go. “Drink this. It will make you feel better.”

  Nina shook her head. “In a minute.”

  He took the seat across from her. He hadn’t made a mug of tea for himself. His stomach churned too much to drink anything. He put his hands flat on the table.

  “I want to make things up to you,” Ewan said. “I don’t know how, and in fact, I’m not sure I can. But I want to. More than anything else. I hope you can believe me.”

  “I do,” she answered, still without looking at him.

  “Nina,” he said, desperate for her to see him. “This is hard enough. Please look at me.”

  “I can’t.”

  He waited a second or so before reaching across the table to tug at her hand. “Please? It’s not that bad, is it? Is it so awful that you can’t bear the sight of me?”

  “It’s not that.” Her voice was low. Guttural. She shook he
r head the tiniest amount.

  “What, then?”

  At last, she removed her hand from her face and sat up straight. Almost defiantly. She met his gaze head-on, the way he’d asked her to, but the sight of what she’d been hiding was enough to make him recoil.

  Her entire left eye had become threaded with crimson. It got worse as he watched, blooms of red slowly creeping around the pale white sclera and even into the amber of her iris. The pupil in that eye had become a pinpoint while the opposite one dilated even as he watched.

  He must’ve made a noise of alarm, because she shook her head again and reached across the table to grab his hand as he tried to reach for her. The force in her fingers reminded him of exactly how strong she was. For a second, she gripped him hard enough to make him wince, and this was different than the times when she hurt him in the ways that felt good. She let him go abruptly, leaving him to draw back his hand and rub at the ache.

  “I’ll be fine. It’s nothing. I heal faster than normal people do.” She cleared her throat and lifted her chin, her expression so purposefully neutral he knew she was forcing it. “It’s nothing for you to worry about.”

  Ewan frowned. “But I do worry about it.”

  “Well, you don’t have to,” she snapped, and her anger was so much better than her blandness that he couldn’t even bring himself to be angry in return. “I’ll be fine.”

  He almost told her, then, about his plans to start lobbying for the reversal of the Enhancement Repeal Act, but at the last minute, Ewan stopped himself. He still hadn’t finalized all the necessary pieces, and without them in place, he might as well be spitting into the wind and calling it a rainstorm. She’d think he’d made her a promise solely to get back in her good graces. She might even think he’d outright lied to her, and he couldn’t risk that. He had to wait until he was sure everything he planned to do was going to work, or it would only make her hate him more than she already did.

  “Can I get you something? Anything?”

  “No,” Nina said as she stood. “I’m . . . I’m going to go take a hot shower and go to bed.”

  “Sure.” Ewan nodded, still able to taste her, still able to smell her. “That sounds like a good idea.”

  She paused to look back at him with a small smile. “Thank you for today, Ewan. It was . . . one of the best times I’ve ever had.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, and although he didn’t say the words “I love you” aloud, he hoped she heard them anyway.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Work harder.” The bro in the navy scrubs is not a doctor. His name is Marco, and he’s not a drill sergeant, either, although he’s actually more demanding than any one of those that Nina’s ever had. “Push.”

  She’s pushing, all right. Harder, faster, stronger. Every time she thinks she’s going to have to quit, another surge of energy bursts through her, and she keeps going. Nina stopped taking pride in this a few days ago, when it really sank in that none of this was because of anything special about her.

  It’s all the tech.

  Everything hurts, but it’s not the pain that drives her. There will always be pain of some kind or another. Nina is convinced of that. She pushes herself because once she proves to them that she can do everything they want her to do, be all that they’re expecting her to be, maybe then they’ll release her from the hospital. She’ll be able to go home. See her family. Get back to the life she left behind.

  There are huge parts of that life missing from her memory, but she doesn’t let this stop her. She can get them back. That’s what she tells herself as she sweats and runs and jumps and pushes. Harder. Faster.

  Stronger.

  “C’mon. Let’s go. You can beat your last time, no problem. Get through this course in under five minutes, and you can have an extra helping of pudding with lunch.”

  The crack of Marco’s big hands is extra loud, and Nina has to focus on dialing back her hearing. She’s still learning how to adjust. The first few weeks in the recovery hospital had been a terrifying, exhausting, and excruciating stream of lights and noise. Now that she’s here in this other place, it’s getting easier.

  She wipes her hand over her eyes to clear them. She tastes salt when she licks her lips. She straightens, stretching her back, shoulders, and neck, all sore. Then each leg. Her arms, too. She jumps up and down, shaking out her hands, clenching them into fists before spreading her fingers wide apart.

  In front of her is an indoor obstacle course designed to be changed every time it’s used. This means that she can’t rely on memory to get her through it. Every time is brand new and a little more dangerous because of that.

  Nina wants to believe the people who run this facility haven’t deliberately set up an obstacle course that will actually kill a runner unwary or unskilled enough to not make it through. She is not, however, convinced that’s true. There are others like her, but she’s never seen any of them. For all she knows, they could be picking them off, one by one, in some kind of test to leave only the strongest standing. If that’s the case, Nina thinks as she breathes out slowly, focusing, then she intends to be the one who’s left.

  “Ready?” Marco claps again, the sound sharp and piercing, digging deep into her skull.

  Nina gives him a wry look. “If you really think pudding is a great motivator . . .”

  “C’mon, they make the best tapioca I’ve ever tasted. But shiny fine. Pudding or not, I do know that you want to win this thing.” Marco’s laugh reveals a line of straight white teeth that sparkle, literally, with some kind of cosmetic upgrade.

  Maybe her idea about it being a competition isn’t so far off. “I didn’t realize it was something I had to win.”

  “Everything in life is something you need to win,” Marco says. “Let’s go.”

  Nina doesn’t wait a moment longer. She pushes off the platform she and Marco have been standing on. She’s airborne, but not flying. Falling. She hits the ground in a crouch. They took the padding out of the floor last week, and at first it made a difference, but now she’s used to the impact. She rolls before springing back onto her feet.

  “Fancy moves!” Marco shouts. “But you’re losing time!”

  Above her is a mirrored observation window. Nina has no idea how many people are behind it, watching. She gives it a cheery wave anyway as she jumps onto a balance beam and runs across it. Today, she pretends there are snapping alligators on either side of it and if she falls off, she’ll be gobbled up. At the other end, she has two choices. One, a pegboard wall without any hand-or footholds that she can see. The other, a series of foamy mushroom type platforms on wobbly springs. Both choices lead to the next section of the course, but if she picks the wrong one she will lose more time, or possibly face something worse. Sometimes, they have electric shocks set into the obstacles. Or gas that can knock her out for minutes or longer. Or something she hasn’t yet experienced.

  She chooses the wall because it looks harder and therefore seems less likely to be rigged. She’s wrong. As soon as she leaps at it, the current of electricity runs through her, stiffening every muscle. Nina doesn’t let go of the wall’s top edge, not because she’s that good at hanging on, but because her fingers curl and cramp and keep her from falling.

  A low, guttural moan rips from her throat. This new, fresh torment sends her into a sharp focus. She can give in to it. Fall. Or she can fight it back, and that’s what Nina does. In another moment she’s up and over the wall and landing on the other side. Hard, on her side, her feet still not ready to get under her and her body tense and shaking from the shock. She manages to get up but without the grace and coordination of that first fall.

  The tech has given her greater control over her body’s reactions. It doesn’t mean nothing can wound her, just that she can recover faster. They didn’t bother to tutor her on how to do this. She’s learning the same way she learned to walk as a toddler, one step at a time. Her brain takes over, moving the muscles that need to tense or stretch. Coordin
ating her nerve impulses. Helping her balance.

  She is going to beat her last time on the course. She’s determined, now. This determination has nothing to do with tapioca pudding and everything to do with the fact that those faceless, voiceless observers behind that glass think it’s entirely shiny fine to do this to her simply because she signed some papers that said in the event she lost her life in the pursuit of protecting her country, they could use her body. She’d thought it meant they’d take her organs, not that they’d fill her head with experimental tech and bring her back from death.

  Nina finishes the course a full half a minute faster than she did the last one. She breathes hard, because having greater control over the rate at which her lungs and bloodstream work together to absorb oxygen doesn’t mean she’s still not worn out from the effort. She gives Marco a solid, steady stare. A smile, teeth bared. Nina waits for him to acknowledge that she’s allowed to leave the obstacle course room and have lunch.

  “I’m starving,” Nina says when Marco doesn’t speak up right away. “You promised me pudding.”

  He puts a finger to his ear, cocking his head. He must be listening to his personal comm via an earbud. He gives Nina a long look while he nods at whatever the person on the other end of the call is saying. Finally, Marco grins.

  “You won it,” he says. “I knew you could do it.”

  His praise sounds genuine, but leaves Nina cold. She hasn’t been doing any of this to impress him, and even though she knows Marco is only doing his job, right now she kind of feels like punching him directly in his sparkling smile. Instead, she takes the hand he offers her. She squeezes, holding his grip a little too long, until he winces and tries to drop the handshake.

  “Sorry,” Nina says, not sorry at all. “I guess I don’t know my own strength.”

  “I figured you’d be more excited,” Marco says.

  She waits for giddy joy, or satisfaction, or a sense of gloating, but all she feels is . . . nothing. It’s a relief, this numbness she realizes must have been growing inside her for a while now. It’s better than the constant pressure of terror or grief or anger. She’s glad for it, though only vaguely.