“You’ve only been looking for what, two weeks?”
“Thirteen days. I found out the morning after you arrived it was a sore spot with you. I’ve been looking ever since.”
She wondered why he cared. Maybe he just wanted to know so he could use the information against her.
He nodded as if he followed her thoughts. “Yes, I wanted to use the information about your parents to get more information from you, but I wouldn’t have lied about what I found. Thirteen days. Hundreds of man-hours. Nada. Zip. Nothing.” He shook his head. “I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve done more in thirteen days than you’ve done in thirteen years, but the end result is the same. Cipher.”
“So nobody knows.” Another piece of her heart shattered. If he couldn’t find something with all his resources, what chance did she have of unraveling the truth?
“No. That means someone knows. Someone who doesn’t want anyone else to know.” His mouth was a grim slash.
“You make it sound like I’m some horrible secret.”
“Maybe you are.”
His comment hurt, and tears threatened, but she forced them back by gritting her teeth.
He touched her shoulder. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
She shoved his hand off. “Yes, you did.”
“What I meant was your parents expended a tremendous amount of time and money in an effort to keep themselves hidden. There has to be a reason.” He stroked the back of her hand. “I promise to find out everything I can.”
The sincerity in his voice and his eyes compelled her to lean closer to him. When he cupped her chin and kissed her, she melted into him with a sigh.
He groaned when he pulled away. “There’s something else that I think you should know.”
“What?” She was almost afraid of the answer.
“Remember that test list, the one the villagers used to pin your nickname on you?”
“It’s a joke.” The defense sprang automatically to her lips.
“One sick joke to play on a seven-year-old girl.” He looked like he took the nickname personally, but she had no idea why.
“It wasn’t played on me. Some proud parent posted the list at the tavern to brag about his son. My part came after by mistake.” She told the tale by rote, as if truth, even though she’d heard other renditions.
She hated her nickname and remembered the first day Jennifer Newsome said it. She remembered running home in tears after the entire class chanted the name when she walked in for the fifth day of grammar school. The nickname stuck. Even she couldn’t help but refer to herself as Remarkably Average Mary.
School became a nightmare, a living horror where she ignored everyone, teachers included. She purposely did poorly on tests, because she refused to participate in anything connected to school. Forbidden books became her salvation. Emmet became the only person she could trust.
“In the end, the joke is on them.”
She braced herself for the punch line.
“You are anything but average.”
His words floored her. He’d said the same thing on their picnic, but this time, she believed he felt that way. The thudding of her heart filled her ears. Maybe she could trust Commander. Every bit of her wanted to.
With a pained expression on his face, he winced when he said, “Emmet is the one who posted that list in the local tavern.”
“He did not!” She leapt from the bed in a tangle of silk bedclothes. To think she’d drawn close to trusting him! Forgetting about her cast, she took two steps before plaster crippled her proud stalk. Her arms shot out and windmilled as she lost her balance, hit the edge of the bed, then slid off to the wool-carpeted floor. Landing hard on her fanny, she spewed vulgarities at the top of her lungs.
He rushed over and attempted to pick her up. The smell of his citrus and pine annoyed her, and she pushed him away.
“Stay away from me, you liar. I’ve heard them say that. I don’t believe it. Emmet loves me. He would never hurt me like that.” Commander tried to make her doubt the one person who’d raised her and loved her through it all. Emmet, the only person she trusted in the whole of the Void.
“Mary, look, I don’t know why Emmet has done the things he’s done, but they add up to a man who’s hiding something.” Commander crouched beside her, keeping his hands to himself. “A man who seems to want to protect you yet torment you in the same measure. How the IWOG fits into all this, I haven’t a clue, but I’ll do my best to find out.”
Against her snarling protests, Commander picked her up and placed her carefully back in bed.
“Just get out, Co-man-dur. Take your unlimited resources and go use them to screw yourself.”
He looked down at her as she arranged herself in the thoroughly despised bed. He attempted to help her prop the pillows below her cast, but she slapped his hands away.
“There’s one thing I haven’t tried.”
“What’s that?” She was certain she didn’t want to know.
“I could have your DNA profiled and run it through databases to see if we find anything.”
“Who keeps DNA profiles?”
“IWOG. At birth, consumers are registered, profiled and placed in a database with the time, date and place of birth.”
Mary took a moment to imagine the possibilities. “But there has to be billions of profiles.”
“Trillions.”
“One of my parents would have had to have been an IWOG consumer. What are the odds?”
“Pretty good, I’d say. Doc Murphy found evidence of genetic tampering in your DNA.”
The news that she might be part IWOG shocked her. How could she have come from the very people she despised with all her heart? The enormity of the information was too much to take in, so she turned her mind to practical matters. Profiling would cost him a fortune. He didn’t seem to care one whit about that. Such a search would also take a long—enlightenment hit.
“Oh, I get it. You tell me you’re looking and I stick around waiting for the results.”
His jaw dropped. “You are the most suspicious person I have ever met. I am trying to help you.”
“Yeah-huh. And what will we do while we wait?” She paused for effect. “No, no. Let me guess.” Her gaze wandered to his groin, where a still rather prominent bulge pressed against his leather pants. “I knew you wouldn’t let me go. I’m just a stupid game to you. Well, you got a handful of goodies and the information you wanted, so what’s next? Oh, yeah, right.” She flopped back on the bed, her limbs splayed out. “Go ahead.”
“Go ahead and what?”
“Fuck me. That’s the last part of the game, isn’t it?”
He winced as if she’d struck him.
“What’s wrong? Don’t you want me if I make it easy for you? Do you like to feel like you’ve worked for it, earned it?” She lifted her head and glared at him. “How about I scream and try to get away, just like you’ve heard?”
After a long pause, his face split into a teeth-baring grimace. Fury etched lines into his face and his whole body tightened, as if he would pounce. She feared she’d finally pushed him over the edge.
“You are playing with fire.” His voice had a low, seductive menace. “Keep it up, and you’ll get burned.”
“Yeah-huh? Then torch me to cinders.” She was proud of how steady her voice sounded when her heart pounded loud enough to deafen her. “Do whatever you have to do, then leave me alone.”
“Indeed. How easy for you to leave everything up to me. Then you can sit back, boo-hoo and say I forced you. Variation on a theme, isn’t it? The devil made you do it.” His golden-brown eyes twinkled. “Truth of the matter is, you want me inside you so badly, you burn with need. Problem is, you don’t want to take any responsibility for getting me there.”
What kind of signals was she sending off? He read her like a freaking map, but she would never admit the truth. “That’s absurd.”
“No. That’s cowardice.” He glared down into her face. “I
never would have guessed in a thousand years, but you’re a coward. Is this your standard MO for all your lovers?”
God only knew what he’d heard about her sexual escapades. From the way he spoke, she figured he’d heard about the football team. Probably heard she initiated and loved every second of the locker-room high jinks, even though she begged the boys to stop.
“Yeah-huh, this is what I do to every guy. I get them to do all the work and I just sit back and cry.” Let the f’idiot think what he wanted. His opinion didn’t matter when she knew the truth.
“Believe me, if I took you up on your offer, the only crying you’d be doing is with ecstasy.” Commander tucked in his shirt and buttoned up his pants.
“My, my, aren’t you impressed with yourself?” She sneered. “I can’t believe me, you and your flaming arrogance can all fit in the same room.”
“My, my, aren’t you forgetting what just happened here?” His intense gaze went from his hand, to her hips, to her face.
“That?” She shrugged as if she had a hand up her skirt several times a day. “I can do that to myself, thank you very much.” Had she, she never would have had such a cataclysmic reaction to him. As if they sparred in the dojo, he changed tactics with alarming speed.
“Do you know what you do to me?” He grabbed her hand and held her palm against his throbbing erection. “That’s what you do to me. You make me so hard I hurt.” Despite her resistance, he forced her to stroke along the length of him. Groaning, leaning back slightly with his eyes closed to half-mast, he took her hand up and down several times. “Your touch only makes me harder.” His eyes snapped open. “What I need is a soft, wet, welcoming place. You have exactly what I need.” He took a deep breath and groaned again. “I can smell the paradise between your thighs.”
“Help yourself.” She opened her legs a bit wider, daring him, a part of her wanting him to take her up on her bold offer.
“I don’t think so.” He shook his head. “Maybe I’ll make you beg me. That should make me different from all the others.”
Obviously, he’d not only heard the tales but also believed them. She was profoundly disappointed.
“The only thing I’m likely to beg you for is a gun to put me out of my misery.” It took her a moment to realize she was still stroking him, no force needed.
“Suicide?” He grinned. “You are a coward.”
“Murder.” She smirked. “I’m not a coward.”
“So, now you want to kill me.” His eyebrows shot up.
“The thought has crossed my mind.” She yanked her hand away from the pleasure of touching him.
“I wasn’t holding your hand there. You were.”
“Yeah, well,” she said, fighting down a blush, “maybe I want to drive you insane before I kill you.”
“Maybe you want me.”
His confidence annoyed her. “Maybe I’m just a tease.”
“Granted.” With a wink and a grin, he adjusted the prominent bulge in his black leather pants. “Teasing can be a two-way street.”
“I thought information could be too.” She felt he’d stripped her of many layers that protected her heart and soul. There wasn’t a person in the Void who knew more about her than Commander did, and she didn’t even know his real name.
“Information. Do you want to chat more?” He plopped down right next to her on the bed and took her face in his hands. “What do you want to know?”
“Your name.” It came out like a prayer, breathless and soft.
One edge of his mouth lifted as he cocked a brow. “So you can scream it out? I’d like that.” His hand settled on her knee. “I’d love to hear you screaming my name in the throes of passion.”
She gripped his wrist to keep him from sliding his hand up her skirt. “I want your name so I can damn you to hell.”
“Really?” Using his other hand, he traced her ear, her neck and then cupped her chin. His simple touch shook her body more profoundly than what he’d done earlier between her greedy thighs. “You have to get better at compelling me.” His breath tickled her face. “Why would I tell you my name just so you could damn me to hell?”
She sat up and forced her voice to come out steady. “Because you don’t believe in hell. What harm could there be in telling me your name?”
Chapter Twenty-One
I could lose everything in one breath of truth.
The thought hit him like a blow to the face. Michael pulled back from Mary and climbed off her bed. “You’d only abuse my name.”
Confusion swept her face. “You don’t like it much when I call you Co-man-dur, do you?” She shook her head. “I don’t like it much when people call me Remarkably Average Mary.”
“I called you that. Once.” If he could, he’d snatch back that one time, knowing now how much the nickname hurt her.
“In your office, when you had me fully bound.” Her gaze locked on his. “You unshackled me, then forced me to yield.”
“Not true.” No way would he let her slip out of this. “I offered a fight, which you accepted. Despite cheating, you lost. I forced you to yield because you wanted to fight for control.”
“Control?” She laughed. “No. You offered a fight for information or freedom.”
“You didn’t have to accept.”
“What else could I do?” She shot him a look of pure fury. “Had I not accepted, I’d be branded a coward. Had I accepted formally, I’d be deemed an idiot.” She shook her head dismissively. “Either way, I come off as a total ass when I had no choice but to try to secure you as a hostage by cheating.”
He realized the truth of her statement. In her battered boots, he would have made the same choice.
“In the dojo, you made it abundantly clear that to fight you physically would be a total waste of my time.” Her voice had a hurt and bitter edge. “You didn’t have to grind the truth in my face. I already knew.”
He settled himself at the foot of her bed and took a moment to gather his thoughts. He drew a deep breath but stopped when the scent of the room—peaches and hyacinth—mixed with the lovely aroma of her still lingering orgasm, made him so hard he had to stand back up. Pacing, he tried to expel the energy coiled in the pit of his belly. Her gaze followed him.
“I’ll level with you, Mary. Had you focused, your sudden attack in my office could have killed me. Had the heel of your hand actually hit my solar plexus, I wouldn’t have been able to breathe, let alone move, but you missed. By a damn inch, you missed. Your exhaustion allowed me to escape unscathed from underestimating you.”
“I never aimed to kill you. I just wanted to get away.”
“You would have killed me to get away.” He remembered the scent of determination she exuded in his office. “Don’t lie.”
“Yes.” Her face tightened with resolve. “I would have killed everyone in that room to get away.”
“You’d kill me now.”
“Yes.” She didn’t even hesitate, but dropped her gaze. “I don’t want to kill you, but if I had to, I would.”
He didn’t say anything until she glanced up.
“That is why I won’t remove the bracelet.” He felt a brief flash of guilt that he allowed her to continue to think the plastimetal was full of Baka when he’d filled it with Vergessen, a strong sedative. Then he remembered Duster’s admonition not to underestimate her again.
She looked at her wrist, as if for the first time, and her eyes startled. Fear ran her floral scent dark. “You haven’t underestimated me, but I’m beginning to think I may have underestimated you.”
It was as if she’d read his thoughts and spoken them aloud. “I don’t think you have.”
“Funny.”
“What?” He moved away, unable to bear her luscious scent anymore. He wanted everything out in the open, but he also wanted to leap on the bed and lose himself in her. When they touched, nothing else mattered.
“You said you smelled fear and desire on me.” She tilted her chin. “I’m not a reader, but I f
ind the same from you.”
He suspected she was a reader, an intuitive. “I won’t argue with the desire, but there is no fear in me.”
“I may not smell fear, like you do, but I can feel fear.” She dropped her gaze to his lap. With an arched brow, she smiled up at him. “In the bedroom you are a god, and you know it. Accolades or, rather, dresses from hundreds of women have been tossed at your feet.” She nodded to the overflowing closets. “Seducing me brings you nothing you haven’t had. Keeping me prisoner is nothing but a way to torment me. You could do anything to me, and we both know it, but something holds you back. I think it’s fear.”
Her sharp analysis convinced him Mary was an intuitive. As he read her scent, she read the very feel of him.
Having sensed his weak spot, she dug further. “You fear me, yet I don’t know why. Why don’t you tell me why?”
Fear did run through him for reasons he wouldn’t admit at gunpoint. Love frightened the hell out of him. People in love did crazy things. Kraft had killed herself for love. Michael feared loving Mary would force him to give up part of himself and trust someone who could hurt him. And the pain of not knowing if she felt the same immobilized him. He could read her scent, but all he found was the same heady mix of fear and desire, not love.
He did his best to toss off with a casual air, “You’re so good at this game, why don’t you tell me?”
“I would if I could, but I can’t. So where does that leave us?”
His wrist com gave three short beeps.
“Saved by the bell.” She settled herself against her pillows, probably unaware of how distracting he found her sprawled position. When she gave him a pointed wink, he realized she knew exactly how he felt.
He opened up the channel with a tense, “What?”
“Is Mary with you?” Duster asked.
“Yes.”
“Jones figured out how she sabotaged the bracelet.”
“How?” Michael watched her eyes widen as she cast a guilty glance toward the vanity across the room.
“She covered the plastimetal with plastimirror.”
Overlord: The Fringe, Book 2 Page 18
