Rascal (Edgewater Agency Book 2)

by Kyanna Skye

  Kirin reached for her hand. “How could anyone think that? You’re a beautiful woman. We all grow through phases as we grow. When I was a boy, I was scrawny. What humans would call a ninety-nine-pound weakling?”

  Rayna laughed. “I can’t imagine.”

  He shrugged. “It’s true. Does your father think differently now?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Rayna said. “To be honest, I’m surprised he allows me to still work here. After the incident with Poe, we had a really bad argument about why he’s keeping you here and how it’s not helping anything. I finally stood up to him. He was shocked. He’s come to expect me to agree with him or at least to be silent about my opinions. We haven’t spoken to each other since. But apparently, Dr. Sidell is off my back for the time being. I haven’t heard anything from him either.”

  “I’m sorry my presence here has caused you trouble,” he said. “I don’t understand how your father feels the way he does. You’re a beautiful woman in every way. He should be so proud to have raised you, especially since he did it alone.”

  Rayna blushed. “It’s sweet of you to say so.”

  “No, it’s not,” Kirin said. He stood up. “It’s the truth and obviously something you don’t hear very often. I know how you think and how very hard you are on yourself,” he touched her cheek. I find it disturbing. You’re such a kind woman to me and everyone else but the things you think about yourself are absolutely cruel.”

  Rayna stood. She didn’t know what to say to him. What he was telling her was true. There was no way she would ever call anyone else the things she routinely said to herself: fat, ugly, stupid, un-loveable. Her father had said those words to her first, and she had clung to them as if they were true. Those words were her defense. If she failed at anything at all in life, how could she be surprised when she knew and “acknowledged” all of her faults?

  The spot on her cheek where Kirin touched her was wonderfully warm. The heat radiated all over her body in much the same way it felt to step into a pool of warm water. She had touched his skin often (when taking samples and bandaging his wounds) and felt nothing akin to this before.

  And then he kissed her.

  Kirin placed both hands on the side of her face, drawing her to him. From the moment his tongue touched hers his warmth spilled into her, and exchange of energy. He moved his hands to caress her shoulders and then to put his arms around her.

  Neither of them had spoken of the kiss they shared the day Poe died. That had been so quick and had ended quickly when he was pulled away from her. Other than the firmness of his lips and tongue, she couldn’t remember very much about the sense of it. This was something completely different. This kiss was not meant to comfort as their first kiss was. It was a touch of his desire, his need. She moaned, her own need echoed back into him.

  Kirin moved her backward to the little bed. Rayna was very aware of what was about to happen between them. She knew she didn’t want him to stop. He watched her with those amber eyes and she felt a quiver of excitement. His hands went to her blouse. Pulling at it, he managed to get it off of her body. The top of her breasts swelled over her bra, and he kissed her there, taking his time. He took a nipple into his mouth and sucked, never looking away from her eyes as he did it.

  He only stopped long enough to take off his clothes, and Rayna did the same. Seeing him naked again, she realized that she had missed the sight of him this way over the last few weeks. She smiled. Kirin’s body was beautiful as always, perfect in every way she could think of.

  He leaned over, running his hands along the curves of her body: breasts, hips, and legs.

  “What part of you do you think should not be loved?” he whispered, kissing her neck. “Is it here?” He asked, and dipped to kiss the sensitive skin between her breasts. “Or maybe here,” he said, tracing a line down to her belly button. He kissed it, causing Rayna to moan with anticipation. “It better not be here,” he said, rubbing the skin of her thigh. He kissed her there too, sucking her skin between his lips. This time, she giggled.

  His hands continued to travel her skin, dipping between her thighs. Stroking her delicate skin with his finger, his voice took a deeper tone. “I know you deserve love, and I want you to believe it too.”

  “Ah, Kirin,” she whispered. She rested her hands on his shoulders.

  Lying on top of her, he moved, putting one hand on either side of the pillow. He stared into her eyes. “Let me show you.”

  A week passed, and Rayna found herself in a sort of romantic bliss. She had her own worries about Kirin; what would happen in the near future, if he would ever gain his freedom and under what circumstances. Every day she went to see him, he reminded her to focus on the present. The rest was completely out of their control. They subsisted on stolen kisses and secret lovemaking. Sometimes they just held each other’s hands and talked. Rayna’s visits to see him in the evening grew progressively longer until she was leaving long after nightfall each night. She wanted every crumb of time she could get with him.

  She found him in a fairly good mood on Thursday evening. By the time she came back to see him shortly after five the next morning, he was visibly upset.

  “What’s happened?” she whispered, closing the door of the enclosure behind her. When he wouldn’t look up at her, she tilted his chin up with her forefinger. His eyes had turned red. Shocked by the change, she took a step back. Tears streaked down his face, and he wiped them away.

  “My people are coming. They’re very close by. And they are angry! They will tear this place apart and everyone in it looking for me. Promise me,” he stepped forward, taking her hands in his own. “Please promise you’ll get away from here! I can’t let them hurt you. But if I stay locked in this place they will come for me.”

  “I can’t just leave you! And allow everyone else to be hurt? Is there anything that we can do to appease them?”

  “If I phased into my dragon form, I could escape. But it would mean taking out everything and anyone in my way.”

  “What if I helped you escape?”

  “Rayna. That could put you in danger.”

  “If what you’re telling me is true,” she replied, “I am already in danger. We all are. Let me do what I can to help. My father may not approve of me but he won’t allow his guards to harm me. Meanwhile… we can’t be sure of anything that the others would do, right?”

  “They will stand down if I am unharmed. I don’t know what happened to my unit. If they have been hurt or killed, it may not matter.”

  Rayna moved closer, whispering in Kirin’s ear. “I don’t know for sure. They might be held elsewhere. There are many Dynamic Tech locations scattered across the world. And there are six of them in California. What are the chances that they’re not at different facilities within the state? All of these test samples from your body are being compared to something. I don’t think they’d have needed more than one to compare to human biology. What if they are testing you to compare the results to the others?”

  The idea calmed him. She watched Kirin’s eyes change back to their regular gold-brown color. “It’s a possibility. It makes sense.”

  “It takes a lot to hold you, and I can’t imagine they would want more than one dragon at any facility. It’s always a possibility that some of them could be out of state or in one of our international hubs, but I can’t imagine anyone would want to transport them so far, even in their weakened, human condition. If they were a few hundred miles apart from you, would you be able to sense them?”

  “No,” he said. “If we were outside, I might be able to, but with all the miles and walls between us, it would be too far.”

  “I have an idea,” she told him. “I will come back later. Just have faith. Don’t give up yet.”

  He kissed her goodbye, and she hurried away. Rayna’s heart raced. If they were lucky, there might be a way to avert war. It wouldn’t end well for her personally. If Kirin escaped successfully, she would never see him again.

  She already knew
that she loved him.

  The day dragged by horribly.

  Rayna went through her usual morning routine. Before he attacked her, she’d enjoyed her little exchanges with Poe. He had not been replaced, and as she passed the door to his empty enclosure, she always felt a pang of sadness. He’d seen a route for escape, and his animal nature took over. The whole episode was terrifying. Kirin had acted correctly in taking him out. But she didn’t blame the primate for his actions. The blame for that rested squarely with her father and all the rest who had allowed the captivity and experimentation of the primate for all these years.

  Rayna realized with some sadness that she too had allowed herself to become a cog in the wheel of Dynamic Tech’s machinations. Not anymore.

  Mimi, the gelatinous creature, greeted her as usual by replicating Rayna’s face on its surface. There was even the expression of a scowl, executed perfectly.

  “Thanks Mimi, I’ll try not to frown at you,” Rayna said. She placed her palm against the glass.

  Mimi shook, making a sound. Rayna had been told this was the creature’s pleasurable response; akin to a cat’s purr when it was pleased. The sound was a gentle sloshing as Mimi moved along the glass. Rayna hoped that was true, and not some sort of fear response. She didn’t think so. But lately, she was questioning many things she might not have taken time to notice before.

  Johnny gave her the usual trouble, scooting frantically around his tank to avoid her before she caught him. She had grown so accustomed to it that it didn’t bother her anymore. She was able to get what she needed from him with very little effort.

  This left her with three hours to fill before her lunch break. She went back to her office to kill time. After entering her latest test results, she looked around the company website, trying to find tidbits of information about the other Dynamic Tech locations. The four closest ones to her office were each about a hundred miles from each other. It was far away enough for Kirin not to sense his men, but only a few hours’ drive in either direction.

  At 11:30, Rayna couldn’t stand the waiting any longer. She clocked out for lunch and got into her car.

  Traffic heading across town was thick. It took almost thirty minutes before she was able to exit the freeway. All things considered, it didn’t take as long she feared it would. She had been taking long lunch breaks for the last couple of weeks or so, which she more than made up for by staying late. Since this was her usual pattern, she could only hope no one would think it was odd for her to be away from the office. It was a risk she had to take.

  Crowded surface streets soon gave way to the tree lined avenues of the suburbs. Rayna swallowed over a lump in her throat. She hadn’t been here in a long while. The sight of the white house with its red roof and shutters always elicited sadness. She parked a few houses down the block. She looked over her shoulder, and didn’t notice anyone paying attention to her movements. Unless her father had recently changed the locks, her key should still work.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when her key opened the door. This was the house she grew up in but she still felt like an intruder. She went directly to the back of the house.

  Father’s office had not changed. He had an old fashioned mahogany desk which took up most of the back all. The monstrosity was as wide as a sedan. On the top of the desk was a computer, a closed laptop, a paper tray and a cup filled with pens. She had always known her Dad to keep a lot of sensitive information on his home computer, despite the fact it was against protocol. She had no access to the security level she needed to get answers at work, but she hoped to be able to find something here.

  The password to the computer was Belinda: Rayna’s mother’s name.

  Rayna took a seat. She bit one of her nails as she looked back through his emails. He copied all of his work emails to his personal email address, supposedly so he could work on items on his agenda at home. This had been a habit with Ashton as far back as she could remember. She made quick work of the ones she needed to see. It was easy to backtrack and see the succession of events, following the time stamps between conversations. All she had to do was follow the path to the logical conclusions.

  She jotted a few quick notes into the notepad function on her cell phone. It was nearly one o’clock. If she hurried, she could get back to the office within the half hour. She logged off of the computer, stuck her phone in her pocket, and headed out of the house. As she drove back towards work, she dabbed tears from her eyes. Ashton could be greedy and cruel, but she had not expected the lengths he would go to for money. Her brief search told her things she never knew. Rayna could only hope it wasn’t too late to reverse the damage he’d wrought.

  “Rayna, I need to speak with you.”

  Ashton was standing in the lobby, leaning against the reception desk much the same way he did on the first day she came to work at Dynamic Tech. She swallowed over the lump in her throat and took a deep breath to calm her erratic heartbeat.

  “I do have a lot of work to do today. Could we meet an hour from now?”

  It was a bold request. He was the CEO after all. But she didn’t trust that he hadn’t somehow found her out, and there were some things he should be willing to grant her as his daughter. A few minutes to get her wits together before he disciplined or fired her shouldn’t be too much to ask.

  “No, this conversation has taken far too long as it is. Come with me, please.”

  Instead of taking the elevator up to his office, he ushered her into one of the empty conference rooms on the first floor. This is a very bad sign, she thought. No one from Human Resources was present. But maybe he’d decided to reserve the satisfaction of firing her all for himself.

  Rayna took a seat at the table. There was a minibar beneath the counter at the front of the room. Without asking, Ashton pulled out two bottles of water and gave her one. She opened hers and took a long drink. Under normal circumstances, she would have thanked him. But she was pretty sure he was about to tell her something unpleasant.

  Ashton did the same. He looked worried. It seemed he was trying to weigh his words before he spoke. This was something Rayna found highly uncharacteristic of him.

  “I want to apologize for the argument we had last week, Rayna. No matter how angry I got, it should never have come to blows. I am ashamed of myself for my behavior. “

  She was floored.

  “Dad. I appreciate that had to be hard for you to say, but I am not looking for apologies so much as I’d like to see a change in your actions.”

  Ashton sighed. “If this is about the Dragon, I am not changing my stance about him. There are protocols, and there are reasons we’re keeping him here. I am aware of your… fondness for him. I’ve made changed to his living arrangements to make him more comfortable. I don’t know what you expect me to do.”

  “Let him go!” Rayna cried in exasperation. “His people are going to raise all hell if they find him imprisoned here.”

  “Let’s say I believe the fairy tale this man has told you, which sounds to me as if it were tailor-made to gain your sympathy,” Ashton said. “How do we know we’re not in danger anyhow? Certainly, all of the aliens aren’t going to be like him? When have you ever heard of any species in nature that is most comfortable being at peace? What species will not kill, or war, and do whatever is necessary to ensure their own survival? As a biologist, I know you’re aware such a thing does not exist.”

  “You’re talking about lower animals,” Rayna said. “Dragons are an intelligent species. They could be reasoned with. Just like we can, supposedly, when we're not absolutely stubborn for no reason.”

  Ashton sat back in his chair. And he laughed. A long, shuddering laugh that shook his shoulders. Rayna stared at him, fuming.

  “I have been wondering what it is, all this bravado that’s come out of you all of a sudden. You’re really very much like your mother. Sweet and retiring until she was pissed off about something. You’re more like her every day.”

  Rayna knew how much he loved her moth
er. She sometimes believed he never got over losing her. His coldness, his single-minded determination to have more money and success than those around him was the pursuit he used to fill the emptiness he felt. While she would always have sympathy for him, she could not condone his actions.

  Before she could tell him what was in her heart and mind to say, an alarm went off.

  They both stood up as several men burst into the room. One of them held a machine gun, pointed directly at Ashton. He put his hands in the air.

  “This is their leader, and his daughter,” one of them said. “Take them both.”

  The men pushed them past empty offices and down the elevator to the basement. There were four men in all. Rayna, though terrified, tried to speak with them. “Are you Kirin’s men?” she asked. “I am his friend. He told me all about you.”

  It was only a guess, but she knew she had hit pay dirt when one of them men turned and gave her a suspicious glare.

  “Which one of you is Tarik? His Co-Commander?”

  “I am,” a soldier turned to her, a brown-skinned man with a shaved head. “Did he tell you these things after your people tortured him?”

  “No! I am his friend.”

  The door opened. Rayna and Ashton were shoved forward into the dim basement, ending chances for a conversation with their captors. Rayna was shocked to see coworkers and staff had been bound and gagged. They sat silently, eyes pleading, backs against the walls. No wonder the offices upstairs had been empty. Somehow, the men had managed to get into the building and subdue all of these people. At first guess, Rayna estimated there were thirty people: scientists, clinical staff, and administrative personnel. There couldn’t be too many others left in the building, except security.

  “Pol. I don’t really care about these others, but him,” the youngest of Kirin’s men motioned towards Ashton. “We should do him. He’s the one responsible.”

  “We’re waiting until we know about Kirin,” Tarik said. “We wait until we know for sure.”