by Tamsin Baker
In fact, nothing about Gideon disappointed.
I scraped my fingernail up the outside of his leg, my blood heating at the glorious way his cock filled his pants.
Fuck.
I’d stopped waiting for that moment. For the bubble to burst and for my spirits to free-fall and crash to the ground. He’d given me no reason to believe he was anything but committed, to me, to us, to the whole Prophesy hoo-ha and spending the rest of our mortal lives together.
The idea wasn’t as alarming as it had been in the past. A lifetime with Gideon.
It was kinda warming. Kinda cool. Kinda fucking incredible.
Chapter 30
Gideon
It was time.
Tiff’s body curved perfectly into mine. She fit, so right, so good. I’d woken up, hard as a rock, wanting to sink myself into her heat and leave the world and all its burdens behind.
Then vibrations echoed from my bedside table and I glanced at my cell. Damon. His chiseled, taciturn face filled the screen and I knew.
I tamped down my hunger. Time enough to satisfy it when the day was done. Tiff would be in my bed tonight, and every night hereafter. It was destined. The Prophesy didn’t lie.
Slowly easing my arm out from under her body, I edged backwards until I met the edge of the bed and slid out from under the covers. A chill hit me with a rush I’d never experienced before now. Or was it the familiarity of Tiff’s warmth that made everything feel like ice in comparison?
Dawn was still a couple of hours away, the perfect time to execute our plan undetected.
I dressed, then removed her keycard from her jacket pocket. If the action niggled, I ignored it. I’d be done and back in bed before she stirred, none the wiser. Not that this made my actions any less deplorable. But as I’d been lectured so many times before, the needs of the many . . . blah-di-blah-di-blah.
Stealth is what I do best, so I made it out the front door with barely a sound. Tiff was still sound asleep, but I walked the bike down half a block before I started the engine just to be sure.
My first stop was Mannie’s duplex. I’d long since cut a key after my initial visit, so I entered through the side door. I logged into his computer and tweaked the formula, using the specs Damon had sent across. Then, part one completed, I left the same way I’d entered, ready for part two. I made for the lab.
I was in and out in less than fifteen minutes. On schedule. Twenty minutes more and I’d be home, in bed, losing myself in Tiffany’s heat.
Black sky was already transforming to blue and a chorus of trilling woodpeckers heralded the new day. I texted Damon confirmation that the first stage was complete then glanced up from my screen.
My bike was the only vehicle in the far parking lot, but it wasn’t alone.
I slipped the keycard into my pocket and tried to look as if I wasn’t caught red-handed with my dick swinging in the breeze.
I swallowed, my throat rubbing as dry as the gravel path underfoot. “Tiff.”
She stepped forward, arms crossed, shoulders squared, gaze narrowed and fiery, a viper poised and ready to strike. “Two questions, Gideon, and your answers had better be fan-fucking-tastic.” The deepening red on her cheeks screamed one fuse short of an explosion. “Why are you using my keycard to enter a restricted area? And is that the reason you fucked me five ways to Sunday before convincing me to stay on at Hagen?”
Chapter 31
Tiffany
Old habits die a hard and painful death.
For as long as I could remember, I’d been cursed with light sleeping—no good could come from forgetting one’s surroundings. Self-preservation had made it so.
My inability to sleep through any disturbance, no matter how unobtrusive, had seen me wake the moment Gideon had left the bed. I’d initially assumed he’d return, but when the minutes ran into tens, and his movements seemed more clandestine than considerate, suspicion set in.
Still, even then, I’d chided myself with paranoia.
I’d followed him out the front door in time to watch his motorcycle taillights disappear into the darkness. My investigative activities would have ended there but for one salient fact. He’d taken my keycard.
Only one reason for that.
He wanted access to the lab’s restricted areas. Why, I hadn’t a clue. All I knew was my blood thundered through my veins and my heart broke a little with each treacherous thought.
Thank fuck for Uber. I called, booked and was on my way to Hagen in less than ten minutes. I arrived first, without a clue where he’d gone on the way, or even if my deduction had been correct. I waited, half hoping I was wrong about him using me to access the lab, the other half wondering where he’d gone instead. Another woman?
I wasn’t sure which scenario cut less.
Both were a betrayal, and both demonstrated I’d been duped yet again.
Stupid bitch.
This time the words were mine, not Richard’s.
*
“What the fuck, Gideon?”
He stood, palms open, my frigging stolen keycard in his jacket pocket. “I can explain.”
“It better be fucking good.” His sudden blink and the shutter in his expression made me add, “And it better be fucking true.”
He strode forwards, reaching out for my arm. I wrenched back. I didn’t want his touch. I wasn’t sure I’d ever want it again.
Something in my heart splintered. The one piece the past few days had managed to make whole again.
He scrubbed the back of his neck and I didn’t want to notice the play of muscles beneath his tee. Muscles I’d owned and enjoyed, thinking I’d own and enjoy them through years beyond now.
“Let’s go somewhere private.”
“Let’s not.” I stepped back, just in case he thought me standing there was an invitation for him to join me. “Tell me what’s so goddam important you had to screw me and spurn all that ‘truth and honor abound’ bullshit.”
He scanned the area, all Jason Bourne and conspiracy theory like. “I can’t do this here. It’s not secure.” His gaze looked so destroyed, as if he were the one who’d been betrayed.
What the fuck?
“Give me one good reason why I should trust anything you say.”
“Because what I’m doing is so damned important I’d risk my mortality and even my life.”
A ten ton boulder slammed me full in the chest.
Heartstrings that had seen me blunder in the past pulled me back under their spell. Why did I find it so impossible to harden my heart against this man? How did I know, even now, if the words spilling from his lips were true?
Short answer—I didn’t.
But I had to trust something. Perhaps the past few days and the feelings he’d stirred up inside me, feelings he’d seemed to return. Unless they were all lies, too.
My head spun, belief and doubt swirling with equal confusion about my brain. Whatever the outcome, I had to know.
I shrugged, as if this whole situation wasn’t devastating the world he’d made me believe was possible. “Fine.”
The absence of that cocky, all-knowing smile was enough to hint my tentative trust may not be unfounded.
He sidestepped past, handing me my helmet before putting on his. The irony hit me. “Why do you wear a helmet?”
“It’s the law.”
Of course. It wasn’t as if the colored polycarbonate and foam could save him. Only I could do that.
Was even that true?
Something deep inside me said it was. Perhaps it was the vision, or a connection between us I seemed unable to shake. But when he said we were fated to be together, everything else in my life made sense.
Until he’d lied and used me, that is.
Just a small fucking wrench in the works.
Much as the last thing I wanted was to be plastered against the lying bastard, I followed him onto his bike, steeling myself as I wrapped my arms around his torso. I pulled his betrayal front-center to my thoughts and held it ther
e, a barrier between him and my body’s need to sink into him.
That whole prophesy hoo-ha wielded some strong voodoo shit, because my mind screamed even while my heart twisted and hammered at our close proximity.
I’d been so deep in my thoughts, I didn’t realize where he’d taken me until the large white sign appeared before us.
No fucking way.
By the time my mind computed, he’d already stopped and was engaging the Harley’s kickstand. I jumped off and away from the memories, sudden cold slicing deep into my bones. He’d forever ruined my sanctuary and I resented the crap out of him for it.
The brook bubbled in the distance, failing to provide its usual sense of peace. Even the birdsong welcoming dawn failed to chip at the tension in my spine. I waved my hand in his direction, trying to stem a shivering that cut me deep to the core. “Talk.”
He nodded, still astride his monster of a machine. “Promise you won’t breathe a word to anyone.”
Was he fucking kidding?
“I’m not promising shit. Not when I have no fucking idea what that promise means.”
Chapter 32
Gideon
I was a stick of gum stretched one tug shy of snapping.
What the fuck was I supposed to do?
Come clean and put the lives of my coven, my entire kind, at risk? Or maintain my silence and lose my one chance for a normal life, and worse, my chance for love.
Time froze. My thoughts spiraling backwards two hundred years past and a decision that forever marked me. I’d trusted a woman, and others had suffered for my mistake. I’d vowed never to risk that kind of trust again.
Our mission, modifying the antidote, hurt no one and saved more lives than any one man could count. It was bigger than me, than Tiff, than our fated futures.
I had to believe that.
I left the bike to breach the distance between us. “I can’t tell you what I was doing or why, but I can tell you it’s for the better good.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“I need you to trust me.”
She laughed then. An empty, mirthless laugh that fell far short of her heart. “You ask me for trust but won’t trust me back.”
“I . . .” I scrubbed the back of my neck, doing nothing to unravel the kinks. “I can’t.”
“You want something for nothing. That’s not how the world works, Gideon. You, of all people, should know that.”
“This isn’t my secret to tell.”
“Then whose is it?”
I wanted to give her something, but how could I? Impossible to know where safety ended and consequences began.
“Things are going to happen in the next few days, and they’re going to seem bad. I need you to know that what I’ve done is for the good of more than just vamps. It benefits you too.”
“But you can’t tell me what.”
“No.”
“Yet you want me to trust you. Blindly.”
“Yes.”
“You’re so full of bull.” I almost growled. “Trust you, my ass. Take me back.”
“We should talk about this.”
“That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it? You talk, I listen, you convince, I foolishly believe. That’s not the way this goes from now on.” Her teeth gritted so tight I could hear the grind of enamel against enamel. “Take. Me. Back.”
I stepped forward, nostrils flaring. She wrapped her arms around her torso and stumbled back, shivering as if the cold in my blood had invaded hers.
The sight made me want to yell and rage and curse a world that seemed determined to destroy me.
I returned to the motorcycle, holding out the helmet for her to take. She snatched it from my hands, then stepped away, as if I were poison. Then she carefully mounted. Her stiff, detached hold around my waist chilled my already cold blood. So different from the previous, warm wrap of her arms.
I took her straight home. She was quite clear about that. And in terms of her drawer and its contents back at my place, she was unequivocal—toss them into a box and drop them into her office at work, preferably when she wasn’t around.
Subtext—if I see your ass any time this millennium, it’ll be too soon.
I walked her safely to her front door, despite her protests, then watched her disappear, the sharp turn of her lock severing the final link between us. Slashing my last hopes of mortality and escaping what my very mission sought to prevent.
*
The lab was in chaos.
The mission had gone as planned. Damon had already called to voice his pleasure and inform me that global destruction of the serum antidote had been a success. The cold storage failure had done its job.
The only remaining original antidote was stored under lock and key, back at the coven’s lab.
I hadn’t shared that I’d been caught in the act by Tiff. I know what his next order would have been and I wasn’t about to eliminate a threat I didn’t believe existed.
Graeme paced the corridor, angst oozing out from his shoulders and his blistering glower. He railed at Mannie, who in turn railed at anyone who would listen. The room had been serviced only a month previously. What could possibly have caused it and the generator backup to fail? And not only fail—the room had heated to the point of denaturation, rendering every sample inside useless. A short circuit in the security system made it impossible to determine whose keycard had last accessed the room. It had to be human error.
Close, but not close enough.
“A fucking mess.” Graeme waved a pudgy arm towards Mannie. “Call WHO and beg off some of their serum.” With a huff, he stormed off in the direction of his office, leaving a bunch of lab techs to dispose of the spoiled samples.
I felt no guilt. Perhaps heads would roll, but more likely—once they discovered the global destruction—blame would fall as it had in the past. Peace of Nature was the perfect foil. The group had protested vigorously against the antidote’s airborne release, arguing the potential for unforeseen side effects on wildlife, as well as the environment as a whole.
They weren’t far wrong.
Despite the bedlam overtaking the lab, it was Tiff’s gaze I sought.
Her glare hurled daggers and they hit their mark, straight through the place where my beating heart would have been.
She had to suspect the cold storage malfunction was my work, yet she hadn’t shared her intel. Not yet. I had to hope she’d continue her silence.
What I did discover, through another of Graeme’s rants, was she’d withdrawn her application for Head Scientist. I was thankful she hadn’t tendered her resignation at the same time.
Maybe that was more about timing than her desire to stay on in a laboratory with me.
I tried a grin, which probably translated as a sort of a twist, and tossed her a light “Hi.”
She nodded then turned her back. She may as well have whacked me with a baseball bat. Her cheeks were flushed, her gaze glossy, as if she tottered on the brink of tears. I did that, and every fiber of my being wanted to take it back.
There were too many all-seeing eyes around for me to say more. And in reality, what could I say? The only way out of this animosity was to tell her the truth, and that was something I couldn’t do. Not while there was still room for the mission to crash.
I trudged back to Mannie’s office and prepared to further my deception with offers of help and support.
For decades I’d maintained a distance from those around me. Detachment was easier than suffering the wrench each time I left with no word, no trace. I’d believed I was prepared for all this mission entailed, but time had dulled the memories, and the consequence of getting too close. Of using and hurting people I’d come to call friends.
I may not brandish a live, beating heart, but I still hurt as readily as any normal living man.
Chapter 33
Tiffany
So much for an invigorating bike ride to clear my head.
The heavens had waited
until I was halfway home before they opened up and unleashed. Too far from the lab to turn back. Too far from home to escape the downpour. I was so wet, it was useless to even think about stopping to don my jacket.
I ducked my head—at least that way the rain dripped off my helmet and onto my handlebars—and peddled faster. A two mile ride and I was only one mile from warmth and dry clothes.
The road was quiet, only a trickle of traffic slicing through puddles and spraying water up my legs, soaking my thighs.
Wet is wet. You can’t get any wetter, right?
A perfect end to a perfect day.
Gideon fucking Fang. Trouble since the day he’d waltzed into our frigging strategy meeting, then just as easily waltzed into my heart.
Yeah, his betrayal sucked. He’d made me care, then cut at emotions I’d previously kept buried beneath a veneer of control.
I knew he’d tampered with not only the cold storage, but the backup generator as well. And he’d used my keycard to do it. I just didn’t know why.
And until I knew the answer to that question, how could I come clean? I was complicit—I’d fucking slept with the guy, giving him free and easy access to my keycard, to any and every avenue of access I had to the lab.
Somewhere in the far recesses of my heart, I hoped whatever his reasons, he hadn’t been lying. That his actions were, as he’d promised, for the greater good. Although how allowing the spread of a virus that threatened pandemic proportions could be termed “good” escaped me.
Another vehicle approached, and I swerved as close to the berm of the road as I dared. Wet or not, at least it would lessen the spray.
The surrounding road glistened gold with headlights that seemed determined to remain abreast rather than passing. An engine gunned.
“Tiff!”
Even with the roar of wind and rain in my ears, I heard the voice. Warmth fluttered deep in my gut, fanning out until my blood burned. Ridiculous when my skin was like ice and I was still fucking furious at the deceitful bastard. It seemed my body was still to come to the “I’d been burned again” party, instead of remaining under Gideon’s orgasmic frigging spell.
Freaking typical.
