by Rachel Caine
“Confirmed,” Annie’s voice said, but again, it wasn’t Annie’s at all. There was a cool, mechanical tone to it. “Protocols canceled.”
And then the shine in her sister’s eyes faded, and it was just Annie, shivering. Bryn adjusted the blanket around her. “It’s okay,” she told her. “You’re okay now.”
Annie, for the first time, seemed to take an interest in where she was. “This is—where is it? Not your apartment.” She almost laughed, but it was more of a rasping sound. “I’ve been to your apartment. It’s not this fancy.”
“No. I don’t have that place anymore. I gave it up.”
“Why?”
“Well…” Bryn gestured around vaguely. “This was kind of…available. And it’s safer. And nicer.”
“Huh,” Annie said. She blinked. “It’s his house, isn’t it?”
“Patrick’s. Yes.”
“Rich?”
“His family is. I don’t know that he’s personally dripping with it.”
Annie smiled a little. It was newborn and fragile, that expression, but at least it was an attempt. “Wow. Who knew you’d be the one to snag a billionaire? And I was really trying. I read books about it. I was thinking about going on one of those reality shows.”
“He’s not a billionaire,” Bryn insisted, and felt her cheeks heating up. “And you need to rest. Your body’s exhausted from the repairs. I’d give you something to help you sleep, but it doesn’t really work; the nanites burn it off fast.”
“Nanites,” Annie said. “There are times when I think this is all just a crazy drug trip. You know that, don’t you? We’re talking about tiny little machines. In my blood.” She was definitely much better, but she seemed drowsy. Exhausted. Maybe that was a good thing.
“I know it’s crazy.” Bryn kissed her forehead. She smelled like Annie now—clean, scrubbed, flowery as spring. But there was still something wintry in her expression, as if she’d never really let go of the fear again. “Please, try to sleep. I’ll check on you in the morning. I’ll be right next door.”
“Okay.” Annie kissed her when Bryn leaned down, then turned on her side. “Bryn?”
“Yeah, sweetie?”
“Thank you,” Annie whispered, drugged by exhaustion. “Thank you for coming to get me.”
Bryn pulled the heavy tapestry coverlet up and over her, turned out the lamp, and left her bathed in the dim glow of the night-light. She didn’t want to leave her, but Bryn was exhausted herself, and full of a sharp, cutting tangle of emotions. She needed to talk, and she couldn’t with Annie.
She locked Annie’s door from the outside. Just in case. She changed out of her battle gear into a soft pair of pajamas and a thick robe, and then took Annie’s soup bowl and spoon downstairs to Liam.
He was in the kitchen, tidying up—there was never a spot, a crumb, or a thing out of place in this temple of culinary arts. He took the empties from her and rinsed them, then added them to the dishwasher racks. “You look tired,” he said. “I assume that Annie’s all right?”
“Better,” Bryn said. She wouldn’t go so far as to say all right, not without a full hearing of what Annie had been through. “Thanks. She needed something to eat.”
“Quite all right. If she’s hungry later, there are some premade things in the refrigerator you can heat up, or you can ring me.” Liam finished wiping down the sink and folded the rag before putting it in the laundry basket beneath the counter. “Are you in search of cocoa?”
“I could murder one,” she admitted. “Would you mind…? I know you’re probably off duty.”
“I live here, too,” Liam said, and sent her a sharp, kind smile as he got out four cups, cocoa, sugar, milk, and marshmallows. “And I make myself snacks from time to time. I expect we’ll have company as soon as they smell things heating.”
He was right about that. As he mixed and stirred the cocoa in a copper-bottom pot, Pat and Joe came in and took seats at the round kitchen table. Joe had a neatly applied bandage on the side of his head.
“I forgot to ask,” Bryn said. “Joe, how are you?”
“Flesh wound,” he said. “But Fast Freddy got me with a Taser from behind. My own fault. I should have known that little fucker is sneaky.”
She pointed at the bandage. “That’s from a Taser?”
“Nope, that’s from the gratuitous boot to the head after the Taser. Your friend Freddy’s a real piece of work.” Joe popped his jaw and winced. “Should have sawed his damn head off when we had the chance.”
“There were other problems at the time,” Pat said. “How’s Annie?”
“The shots are working. She seems better. Just tired. I’m letting her sleep.” She cleared her throat. “I canceled the Protocols. And just in case, I locked her door.”
He nodded, gaze lingering on her as if he was trying to tell without asking how she was. For her part, she wondered about him. He’d taken an awful risk, dropping Freddy like that with Joe’s life at stake. Even Joe had been rattled, and he didn’t spook easily.
Ice water in his veins. When Patrick had spotted the grenade, he hadn’t hit the deck; he’d calmly, methodically taken it away.
There were times when Bryn would swear Patrick, rather than she, was part machine. He could just…switch things off. She envied that a little.
As he accepted his hot cup of cocoa, he just seemed like a normal guy. His five-o’clock shadow was pronounced, and he looked tired, but not like the same ice-cold professional who’d done the things he’d done tonight. When that switch was off, it was off.
He looked like a man who badly needed human contact, just now. And when he saw her watching him, he smiled. There was warmth in that, and understanding. If we were alone…But they weren’t. All too often, really, they weren’t.
Liam joined them with his own drink. “So,” he said. “I gather tonight was productive? And, from Mr. Fideli’s bandage, eventful?”
“You could say that. Pat almost shot me in the head,” Joe said, with remarkable cheer. “Mmm, good cocoa.”
“Almost doesn’t count,” Pat said. “I told you, he was going to drop you if I didn’t drop him first.”
“Yeah, and I’m still partially deaf in that ear from the round he popped off on the way down. Next time, just give me a signal first, ’kay? I’d like to get a last prayer sent up.”
“I thought working with me, you’d be fully paid up on that account at all times.”
“Point,” Joe said, and toasted him. “You know what would make this so much better? Alcohol.”
“Irish whiskey, coming up,” Liam said, and rose to get it. He came back and poured a shot into each of their cups, including his own. “To surviving. May it happen every day.”
“Every day,” Joe said, and clinked china with Liam. Pat and Bryn echoed him, although Bryn’s had a strong taste of irony to it. Joe sipped, and winced. “Damn, I think I cracked another rib.” He held out the cocoa. “Medic?”
Liam added a second shot.
“Aren’t you driving home?” Bryn asked, and saw Joe and Pat exchange a lightning-fast glance.
“Nah, thought I’d stick here tonight. No sense in waking up Kylie. I already let her know I’d probably be out.” He sounded casual, and if she hadn’t caught the look that had passed between the two men, she would have thought it was legitimate. “Besides, staying here at the Millionaire Home for Wayward Orphans ain’t exactly stressful.”
Something was up. Bryn drained her cocoa, and the warm flush of the alcohol only stayed in her system for a few minutes before it faded, carried off by those industrious little nightmare machines. “I’m going to check on Annie,” she said. “Good night. Thanks for the cocoa, Liam.”
He nodded to her with another of those warm, gentle smiles. “I’m glad you found her safe.”
As she pushed her chair back, Patrick rose as well. He took both their cups to the sink and rinsed them, then put them in the dishwasher. Liam watched him with, Bryn thought, a certain amount of alarm, as if h
e hated seeing anyone else touching things in his kitchen. Which was probably the case. “I’m off, too,” Pat said, and Joe raised a hand in lazy farewell.
“Usual time for breakfast?” Liam asked.
“I’ll be off early tomorrow. I’ll catch some coffee on the way in the morning. Don’t get up.”
“But it’s the most important meal of the day!” Joe called after him, and then, to Liam, “Listen, if you want to make me breakfast, I’m damn sure going to let you.…”
His voice faded behind her as she followed Patrick through the dimly lit rooms. One of the estate’s many dogs—a greyhound—watched them from the comfort of his bed in the corner of the gorgeous sitting room but didn’t get up; they were all more Liam’s pets than Pat’s or Bryn’s.
She wasn’t planning on catching up with Patrick, but she found herself moving faster nevertheless, and by the time he was at the top of the stairs to the second floor, she was beside him, step for step.
Patrick stopped. “You’re checking on Annie?” His voice was neutral, and she couldn’t read his face at all.
“I should,” she said.
“Good night, then.”
“Yes, good night,” Bryn said, and watched him walk away. He didn’t glance back, just opened his bedroom door and closed it with a firm click. She went to Annie’s room and checked her door: still locked. Bryn turned the key in the lock, slid it open a crack, and peeked inside.
Annie was asleep in a tangled mound of covers and a storm of disordered brown hair. She looked so young this way and so thin that it made Bryn’s heart ache.
But she was breathing steadily, and she looked…alive.
And she was safe. Safe, finally.
Bryn shut the door again, turned the key, and leaned her forehead against the heavy wood. It smelled of lemon polish, a comforting, normal thing, and for a few seconds she didn’t move at all.
Then she pushed away and looked down the hall.
Patrick McCallister was standing in the darkened doorway of his room, looking back at her. His black shirt was unbuttoned halfway, as if he’d stopped in the middle of the task, and he looked deliciously, warmly rumpled. Like someone awakened from a vivid, sensual dream.
“She’s all right,” Bryn said. “Sleeping.”
“I suppose we all should be,” he said again. But he didn’t go in. He just kept watching her.
She walked to her door, passed it, and kept moving toward him.
He stepped back to let her inside, and for the first second they just…looked at each other. Then Bryn reached over, swung the door shut firmly, and said, “You look tired.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Yes.” She pulled in a deep breath. “And…no. Not particularly. I thought maybe we could…continue what we started earlier tonight. In your office.”
He didn’t speak, but the incendiary look in his eyes answered for him. She reached out and drew her fingers gently down the exposed skin of his chest until she hit cloth and button, and began to undo the rest.
It was as if she’d unlatched a cage, and the tiger leaped out. Her reactions were by no means slow—faster, if anything, with the addition of the helpful nanites—but she wasn’t prepared when he lunged forward and pushed her against the door, then put his hands on either side of her head. He got kissing-close…but their lips didn’t meet. “I want this,” he said, and there was a rich, focused intensity in the words that made her shiver. “I want this very, very badly, Bryn. So don’t start this if you don’t. Just tell me no, and I’ll back off. You can go. And everything can be as it was yesterday.”
It was as much a warning as an invitation, she thought. And there was definitely something different about him now; Patrick was such a careful, controlled man, and seeing him trembling on the edge of letting go was like standing in front of an oncoming hurricane.
It was exhilarating and frightening.
“I need to know something first,” she said. “Don’t you care?”
“Care about what?” He took in a deep breath, as if he was savoring the smell of her skin.
“About me being dead.” There, she’d said it, and it surprised him, but only a little.
And it didn’t drive him away as she’d expected it would.
“You’re not dead, Bryn.”
“I’m not alive, either. I’m…stuck.”
“Oh, you’re alive,” he said. “Your heart beats. Your skin’s warm. You feel things.” For proof of that, he touched a fingertip to the notch of her breastbone and traced the hard outline of it, the hollows around it. “In no way do I think of you as dead.”
“I need a shot to stay this way.”
“And I need to eat and drink and sleep. Even then, every day I come a little closer to the end of my life. And you don’t. Which of us is dying, exactly?”
“You saw me,” she said. “You saw me with a bag over my head. I was dead. How can you—”
He put that single finger over her lips, stilling them. “That’s not what I remember,” he said. “I remember you turning on the water.” She blinked, because that made no sense, no matter how she ran it through her head; her confusion must have shown, because he smiled. “When you woke up in the room at Pharmadene, and I left you there to think about things, what did you do?”
“I—”
“You went to the bathroom and turned on the tap, and put a cup in place to catch the drops. You timed the drops to pulse beats. You made a water clock so you could keep track of the time,” he said. “It was brilliant. You’d been murdered. Revived. I’d just told you I might let you rot. And that’s what you did. You took control of your own existence in the only way you could.”
“I really don’t understand why that’s a turn-on, Patrick.”
“I like women who take control,” he said, and his lips came close again, but didn’t touch. “I also like women who know when to give it up. Do you trust me?”
Did she? Did she really? Suddenly, there were so many sensations and emotions in her body that she couldn’t sort anything out. It was all just…overwhelming.
“Say something,” he said. It came out as a bare, raw whisper.
“Yes,” she said. Just that.
It was more than enough.
He kissed her with so much force behind it, she felt a burning instant of panic, but then the hurricane hit, blowing through her defenses and barriers, and she met him at least halfway. His hands yanked the hem of her knit shirt up and fitted around the bare skin of her waist, and oh, the burning brand of them—she felt as if they’d left scorch marks. She finished loosening his shirt, but he was too busy to strip it away—busy pulling hers up, baring the black satin of her bra cups. She didn’t want to stop touching him, not for an instant, but she had to lift her arms. The soft knit was a cool counterpoint as it slid away, and then his big hands circled her wrists and held her arms pinned above her head as his lips came back to hers. She let out a trembling breath that was lost in the heat of his mouth, and the silky invasion of his tongue as it teased hers.
When he let her arms go again, he did it slowly, sliding his fingers all the way down the smooth, taut skin to her shoulders. As she reached for him again, he put his hands around her waist, pulled her forward, and spun her around with dizzying speed to face the door. She gasped and slapped both hands flat on the surface, about to push off, but he was close against her, heat like a bonfire at her back. Those suddenly gentle fingers traveled up her arms again, and he whispered in her ear, “Now do you trust me?”
In that flickering second, she wasn’t sure. He was so strong, so fast, so…decisive. Like he’d been out there at the marina, facing Fast Freddy and calculating the odds of killing his best friend. Could a person who could do that be trusted, really?
“No,” she said, and felt him go intensely still for a second before she said, “But I want to trust you. So help me.”
He sighed, breath stirring the hair on the back of her neck; it made her shiver in delicious dread. “I’ll work o
n it,” he promised, and settled a sensual, warm kiss where the gooseflesh had formed. She felt a faint pressure on the bra catch, and then it loosened; the straps slid off her shoulders and down her arms. “Do you want me to stop?”
God, no. A thousand times no, her whole body shrieked in protest at the idea. “Would you? If I said yes?” His fingers stroked down her back, and that was not helping her keep focused on words.
She almost missed the very soft answer. “With a great deal of effort. Of course.”
Bryn pulled in a shaking breath. There was something so…revealing about that answer, on all levels. It spoke to the depths of what he was feeling, and to the man he was.
And more important, she believed him.
She licked her lips and tasted the memory of his kiss. “Do you want me to stay like this?”
“For now.” His whisper this time was dark, deep, and as silky as the touch of his skin on hers. She moved her head to the side as his mouth touched her neck—a lick, and gentle suction, then moving up. She made an inarticulate sound as he sucked her earlobe, teeth clicking on the gold stud earring, and then his warm tongue traced the outer curve of her ear and left her shuddering with bizarre pleasure. She’d never liked that, but somehow, the way he did it…
And then his hands moved up her sides, and he reached under her loosened bra to cup her breasts. When his fingers crossed the aching surface of her nipples, she felt them swell under his touch, every slow caress harder, more demanding, just trembling on the edge of pain but tipping into pleasure.
She wanted him, with a feverish, vivid intensity that shocked her. She hadn’t ever wanted anything so badly. It frightened her, and delighted her at the same time.
He was expert at stripping more than her defenses. Her belt went next, and then her pants. He kept her panties on for the moment, but they were hardly a barrier to the relentless progress of his hands, and as they slid beneath the elastic, she arched against his chest in a silent explosion of pleasure. The contrast of the hard, cool wood against her bared breasts, his heat at her back, those clever hands exploring her boundaries, drove the breath out of her in hot waves. Not quite an orgasm, not yet, but he was toying with her, reading her frequency.
