Karina Cooper - [Dark Mission 05]

by One for the Wicked

  No fucking sympathy.

  Except that wasn’t exactly true, either.

  Catching the ledge in both hands, he leveraged himself over the rocky edge and caught her arm before she managed to do more than take two steadying steps.

  It jerked in his grip. “I’m not an idiot.”

  He couldn’t help himself. He snorted.

  “I didn’t know you’d taken me to Old Seattle,” she shot back to his wordless scorn, the hollows of her face dark and eerie as she turned away from the light. “I’ve never been here in my life!”

  “That’s the point, Doctor.”

  Her mouth flattened. “It doesn’t make it a smart move.”

  “Like kissing a stranger in a dark parking lot?” She said nothing to that, her jaw thrusting forward. Stubborn. He expected nothing less from a spoiled topsider. Especially her. “Let’s go.”

  But when he marched her across the short distance, as the chair she’d escaped once already loomed large and imposing in the light, she balked. “No way.”

  “No choice.”

  Her sensible flats scraped across the floor. “I’m not going back in that chair.”

  The hell she wasn’t. He tugged at her arm, forcing her feet to slide in the filth coating the floor.

  She panicked.

  “No!” Her elbow wrenched in his grip, forcing him to tighten his hold before she made another break for it. The cords in her slender throat stood out in sharp relief as she jerked her chin up, resistance thrumming through every tense line of her body.

  She meant it. That much was clear. Her eyes skimmed the darkness, searching wildly for an escape or an excuse.

  Rescue.

  She wouldn’t find it here. He couldn’t afford it.

  He shoved her forward, taking advantage of his greater strength to wrestle her bodily across the room. She fought like a feral cat, hissing and flailing as he dragged her around the chair.

  “Sit,” Shawn ordered. His fingers closed over her forearm as it swung at him.

  Hers closed around his own, hard enough to leave white indents in his skin.

  He glanced down. Frowned at the blotchy brown stain at her sleeve. “You’re hurt.”

  “Screw you,” she snarled.

  Exasperation warred with a wildly inappropriate surge of humor. This was unbelievable. “Look.” He tried for reasonable. “Get in the chair, and I’ll look at your inju—”

  “No.”

  “This isn’t negotiable, Doctor.”

  “I’m not negotiating,” she panted, her voice thin. High. “I’m telling you. You’ll have to sedate me if you want me back in that chair.”

  Shawn didn’t have the patience for this shit. “Sorry, Your Highness, this isn’t exactly a luxury topside resort. You intend to run. I can’t let you. It’s really that easy.”

  She opened her mouth. Closed it when he raised a challenging eyebrow at her.

  “Get in the fucking chair.”

  Her face, already paled to near ghostly translucence by the lantern light, drained of color. “I’m sorry I kneed you in the testicles,” she whispered. “Really.” She shook her head. “But I’ll do it again if you force me.”

  He gritted his teeth as the ends of her hair skimmed over the back of his hand.

  So much for easy. He didn’t have another damned needle.

  He spun her in a hard semicircle, ignored her protest as he hauled her against his chest; backed her hard toward the chair.

  She pushed against him, stepping into his space, into him. As if she could push him back, use him as some kind of leverage or anchor.

  It didn’t have the effect she wanted. Instead, as his brain wised up, his body translated every detail of her small, tantalizing breasts pressed against his chest, of her hips against his. Her breath gusting out against the skin where his neck met his shoulder.

  Damn it, he’d known better. Known that his body wasn’t obeying his directives where she was concerned, that his imagination had already relieved her of that blazer and the flimsy silk shirt underneath. Painted her skin in shadow. His nerves crackled to life at the press of her body, teasingly close. Tauntingly forbidden.

  His brain shorted.

  That his dick, tragically abused as it was, took note of her—her warmth, her vitality—threw logic under the bus of rampant desire. Her fragrance, softer and more feminine than the dust and age and decay he’d grown accustomed to smelling, filled his nose. His senses.

  Ah, what the hell? He’d try for three. That was a good, witchy number, wasn’t it?

  When the backs of her knees collided with the frame, her back stiffened. Her mouth opened again, eyes flashing pure fury. Dread. Warning so sharp, he wondered if he’d bleed by the end of it.

  Maybe it’d be worth it.

  Whatever she’d meant to say, whatever plea or threat or curse, died as his hand splayed across the back of her head and he slanted his mouth roughly against hers.

  She froze.

  Shawn didn’t stop to consider niceties; he wouldn’t have listened to himself if he’d tried. Her lips weren’t relaxed, he couldn’t even say they were warm in the chilled Old Seattle air, but Jesus Christ, his body didn’t care.

  She tasted as good as she smelled. Sweeter than he remembered, after all.

  Her shocked breath caught in her throat. Shawn’s fingers slid from her hair, curved over her collarbone, thumb at the pulse hammering wildly in her neck as he slid his lips along hers. One of her hands found his side, curled into his shirt so tightly that he felt her nails score his flesh beneath, and it shot a bolt of pure pleasure to his hardening cock. Damage forgotten. Even forgiven.

  One more kiss. Hadn’t he promised himself that?

  This was it.

  And as his upper lip caught against her lower, as a low, strangled sound turned ragged in her throat, her mouth softened. Parted. Unmistakable invitation to his tongue; his accidental, unnecessary, unstoppable seduction.

  The chair. This was about the chair.

  Wasn’t it?

  The hell it was.

  Shawn caught her tangled hair in one hand, wrapped it around his fist to hold her head still for a kiss that had nothing to do with names, with places, with plans. Abandoning finesse, he jerked her head back, bared her throat to him, and swore as wild color filled her cheeks. As her lashes shadowed them; her eyes closed, hid her thoughts.

  He wanted to see her shock. Her arousal. Wanted it like he wanted to bend her over that chair and fill her body with his, feel her rise against him, her hips tilted, flesh slick with sweat. The memory of her wet flesh against his hand wasn’t enough.

  He’d never wanted anyone as badly as he wanted her.

  And she was a Lauderdale.

  Kayleigh shuddered. Her white teeth sank into her bottom lip, full and damp from his kiss, and it was enough.

  Too much.

  Groaning, Shawn bent his head to claim whatever hell he’d have to pay by sinning with the devil’s own.

  Her leg lifted around his thigh, curled. Like a moron, he didn’t even consider how close to a second round of pain he’d gotten until it was too late, but she didn’t follow through on the all too easy target.

  Instead, one hand flattened against his thudding heartbeat as she pressed up, into his kiss. Into him. Her toes locked around the back of his knee.

  Shawn stiffened.

  Too late. She wrenched her face away, splayed both hands at his chest, and pushed him hard enough that he staggered. His knee locked into her leg, and he stumbled backward, swearing, flailing. The floor thudded as he landed ass-first.

  “Stop doing that!” Her shout, muffled by the arm she dragged across her mouth, broke. Eyes blazing, feet planted, she glared down at Shawn, her body steel-straight and all but crackling with tension.

  Distress. He read it easy in her stare, in the panicked speed of her breath. Distress, and confusion.

  “You’ve made your point,” she said again, quieter, but trembling. “Stop it, now. It’s
not funny.”

  Shawn stared, his mouth tingling, his brain trapped in a feedback loop of shock, lust, anger, amusement.

  Guilt.

  What the fuck was he doing? “I’m—”

  The chair rattled behind her.

  For a too-long moment, nothing made sense: the woman standing over him, fists tightly clenched, the slick ground under his palms and digging into his tailbone.

  The rumble filling the silence.

  Shawn bolted to his feet. Not fast enough.

  The chair slid an inch to the left. Jerked back to the right. The rumble became a roar.

  Not again.

  “Shit!” The floor bucked beneath them. Balance destroyed, he yanked her away from the suddenly vibrating chair, tripped over her as she lurched into him.

  Kayleigh flung both hands out for balance. Stone cracked as it jarred loose from rotted moorings, metal and brick and moldering remains rained down through the hole in the ceiling.

  Dust exploded in a sudden cloud; dust and mold and fine particles of indefinable grit.

  The remains of the structure listed violently. The chair spun, leaned on its axis, and toppled with a sharp crash. The foundation teetered.

  “Get out,” he roared, snagging her wrist as she flailed for balance.

  Kayleigh cried out, pain and obvious terror overwhelmed by a substantial groan wrenching through the once-silent ruins. Brick peppered them, a stinging hail of shrapnel. She hunched, flailing for purchase with her slick-soled shoes, and with all his strength, he turned, fought the wild toss of gravity to shove her back the way they came.

  She stumbled, toes catching against the floor, a pale blot in the dancing, juddering light.

  He staggered, forced backward by the swaying floor. “Run!”

  She tried.

  Muscles bunching, he strained for purchase, desperately fighting the rolling surface.

  She found the edge of the broken floor. Vanished over it, sinking into shadow.

  With a powerful, desperate shriek of metal giving way, of foundation tearing free, the whole floor tilted violently upright. Shawn hit the grimy surface, twisted to his back just in time to ride the sudden slant down into the darkness.

  Impact came almost immediately. He hit what he hoped was the ground, grunted as his ribs collided with something jagged and unyielding. White light detonated behind his eyelids, flashed red as pain lanced through his chest, his arms, down his spine.

  When it all went black, Shawn didn’t know if it’d stopped or if the fall knocked him out, but he’d take the breather.

  At least until he inhaled a cloud of dust, choked on it, and found he couldn’t take a deep enough breath to cough it out.

  His eyes opened slowly. Light pooled somewhere beyond him, painting ripples through a dust cloud thick enough to eat.

  Coughing, cursing, searing agony licked from ribs to shoulder.

  His brain kicked back into gear only sluggishly. Jerking his hand up slammed his knuckles into a rough block of cement, and he swore some more. “Shit. Shit!” His exhale wheezed.

  He was pinned. And he couldn’t fucking breathe.

  Chapter Ten

  “Shawn!”

  Kayleigh couldn’t see much beyond the fine cloud of unsettled dust and grit, only the faint outline of his shoulder and chest silhouetted by the lantern light she could just make out behind him. A cloudy haze covered everything, coated him in a backlit nimbus, stung her eyes until they watered.

  She half slid, half stumbled down the steep embankment that had, until moments ago, been a floor. She’d seen the floor, felt it underneath her feet. Flat. Sturdy.

  Now it looked like nothing more than a steep incline lit by the abandoned lantern shining weakly from a pile of rubble.

  All remnants of confused arousal, of panicked fury, had been brutalized into submission by the icy reality of terror.

  The earth had, thank God, stopped shifting. That the only sound now was the occasional echo of something snapping in the black, dropping to the ground, colliding with other ruins like it, didn’t help her peace of mind.

  An earthquake. Exactly like the one that had hit those lower streets. Was New Seattle in danger?

  Why hadn’t anybody considered that the quakes could come again?

  Because the witches had caused the Armageddon. Wasn’t that the truth?

  The doctrine had always said one thing, but as Kayleigh scrambled down the newly formed gradient, she couldn’t make it fit her reality. Earthquakes. Not just something that happened to strangers years ago, but to her? Now?

  Rocks bounced and clattered beneath her feet, scraping along the steep slant as she clambered down to the base. The shadows filled the newly formed rubble with inky blots of nothing, secretive voids muffling the occasional shudder of rocky foundation or the rustle and snap of falling debris.

  As she got closer, as the cloud of dust settled slowly, the corona clinging to Shawn didn’t fade. It got worse, thicker, forcing her to squint, brace for the pain of a migraine she didn’t have time for. Each step closer to him heightened the effect, solidified the nimbus until the shimmering cloud of lantern-lit gold colored the world. From within it, tense, raw pain tightened his features to the same harsh edges as the block of concrete trapping his shoulder to the fractured remains of a wall behind him.

  She might be furious at him for his high-handed assumptions—for his betrayal—but he didn’t deserve this. Nobody deserved this.

  His shoulder twisted, streaks of white pressure climbing up his skewed collar. “Shit,” he growled, voice rasping.

  “Stop struggling.”

  His gaze jerked to her. Narrowed before it turned again to the weight he fought to pull himself out from under. “I’m pinned.” Taut. Strained, yet there was nothing in his voice, his expression to plead with her. Nothing that suggested anything but grim resignation.

  She could run.

  The knowledge filled the trembling silence. Caused the halo in her vision to dance and sway. She could run now, leave him to his fate.

  Kayleigh hesitated.

  Cataloging her own hurts took less than a second. Leg throbbing beneath its bandage, wrist stinging fiercely, even a dull ache through her abused muscles from the awkward run through the ruins. The rumble had scared her, his kiss had thrown her off balance, but she was hale and healthy.

  Physically.

  A muscle in her cheek twitched as she blinked at the glittering space between Shawn and the rock. Absently, she pressed two fingers to the twitching nerve.

  Mentally, she had to be losing her mind. The evidence of her evaporating psychological acuity shimmered in front of her.

  Shawn’s dark eyes fixed on her, stared at her as if he expected her to turn her back. Judgment? Some. Acceptance, which surprised her.

  He knew what he’d done to her. She had no doubts of that.

  The world throbbed around her, a visual pulse assaulting her senses, but Kayleigh’s head remained clear of associated pain.

  Clear enough to recognize the opportunity. Run. Escape.

  She took a step back.

  Leave him to die.

  Shawn’s eyes glittered beneath the maddening nimbus of gold.

  She’d never been in an earthquake before. Her father had. She knew the stories. Weren’t the old ones caused by malicious witches?

  She wasn’t a witch. But . . . but was he? Was her captor a witch?

  Could one man pull this off?

  Why would he want to?

  Another step back sent her vision dancing, sparklers of light flickering at the corners.

  Framed by the halo she couldn’t shake, his lashes lowered, jaw tensing as the muscles in his free arm bulged with effort to shift the concrete block. Blood slid in a thick line from a cut over his eyebrow, mingled with dirt and dust to turn black.

  His vengeance could destroy her.

  The certainty of it filled her thoughts.

  Kayleigh turned, her heart hammering. One chance. This was it.
She could run like hell. Common sense demanded that she leave him to his fate and . . .

  And . . .

  His growl caught on a sharp note. Rock and metal grated, fragments pattering like rain to the uneven ground.

  She didn’t know what made her stop. What made her pause long enough to look over her shoulder.

  The air thickened with something indefinable. Turned heavier. Kayleigh’s hand lifted to her head, smeared sweat into mud, but her vision didn’t clear. The corona didn’t fade. Blood and dirt coated Shawn’s face, stained his shirt. His teeth, obscenely white against the grime, bared with effort as he strained. Muscles bulged in his arm, the skin at his eyelids tightened.

  It was if she stared at two of him, superimposed. Similar, but different somehow.

  His choices could right the past.

  The thought—heavy with knowledge, serious—sounded like her own, but the words were alien. Confident.

  How could she know with such conviction? Who was she to decide?

  What was she thinking?

  She couldn’t leave him to die. Not like this, and not willingly.

  Kayleigh’s feet turned. Carried her over rubble, found purchase unerringly in the hazy light. His head jerked up in surprise. His eyes narrowed, breath coming in low, tight wheezes. “What are you doing?”

  She didn’t know. She had to be crazy.

  As if she watched herself from far away, she crouched down, one hand curved over his shoulder. One pressed against the hunk of cement. Her fingers slid across his chest, eyes closing as she traced taut muscle and rumpled fabric. Found the seam where rock met flesh and felt for breaks. For trauma worse than bruising.

  The latter would be unavoidable.

  He stared at her.

  “Is anything broken?”

  “No.” He paused, and she felt his chest bunch beneath her fingers. “No, I don’t think so.”

  She took her own time, worked her fingers between the rough cement and him.

  He stared at her, eyes narrowed. His lashes were coated with dust, glinting strangely in that nimbus she couldn’t shake. “Why?”

  She wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t know what he asked. It echoed the question she demanded of herself. Why was she helping him? Gaze focused on the dark seam where her hand vanished under the weight, she allowed seconds to pass while she considered it.